Some Honest Thoughts About the State of Shadowlands

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Everyone knows shadowlands is an awful expansion, including blizzard. No point in bringing it up over and over in a fan site, that will only rile up the fan boys.

Put your money where your mouth is and stop supporting a subpar product.

[Ryzek]

I'm enjoying it for what it is, is it great? no but its isn't the worst.

[Swnem]

So, you're saying you loved the infinite AP grind, titanforging and random legendaries? Cause i sure didn't.
WoD was fun to me. Honestly still my favorite xpac from the post cataclysm.
I am liking shadowlands too.

The reason why is simply the classes. They are somewhat fun again and i enjoy optimising and reaching a good level.

The think is, i can live with xpacs that lack content if the gameplay is good.
I get agravated if the gameplay isn't good and the xpac has predatory gambling and infinite grinding systems.
For me Legion is the worst expansion this game ever had. BfA was just legion 2. Shiny weapons weren't enough to blind me on that. Though the focus on class fantasy is totally the best way forward for the game. Down with boring faction wars and up with class orders.

[enigma77]

I have zero time for Raiding in my life now. To sit in my computer chair and be in my office for 3 to 4 hours straight. No way. Just can't spend that much time away from my wife and kids and dog and house chores etc...

I can only play WoW for an hour or so now.

Then in all honesty you are playing the wrong game.

[Soon-TM]

Yeah, I enjoyed Cata more than MoP. OP is right though that this 'systems' design has over stayed its welcome. They were near perfect in Legion and god awful in BFA. I think Shadowlands is honestly a better implementation then BFA but they aren't going to recapture Legion where it was fresh and perfectly designed. They are now trying to take something perfectly designed elsewhere and transition it to a place that doesn't work as well. They would have been better off keeping the artifact weapons from Legion and doing an Argus expansion where we continued their use. IMO they've been on a downwards trajectory since the Argus patch because they can't seem to find a direction to really take the game in now.

You can have the best systems in the world, but they will mean jack!@#$ if there is no actual content to try them at (e.g. WoD). Conversely, you can have a buttload of content, but it will be greatly diminished if the systems at play are faulty (BfA, especially before 8.1.5 and the whole !@$%show of corruptions). Legion actually managed to fill both promises: steady stream of generally well received content, backed up by novel systems which were far better than their iterations in following expansions.

[Rendark]

Everyone knows shadowlands is an awful expansion, including blizzard. No point in bringing it up over and over in a fan site, that will only rile up the fan boys.

Put your money where your mouth is and stop supporting a subpar product.

But it's not bad tho.

[Samuraijake]

Seriously, Asmon doesn't need to extra advertisement.

seems like you hate asmon for no actual reason

[Palapop]

But it's not bad tho.

The only good thing about Shadowlands (so far) is the cinematic.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

seems like you hate asmon for no actual reason

Or I hate people coming to this website to advertise their favorite streamer/youtuber. I've said the same thing in similar thread.

[Cyram]

It was fun now that we get the nostalgic feeling of not having to suffer the way things used to be.

But I remember the shitshow that the community was during Mists.


- How much people hated the dumbed down dungeons
- How much people hated that the dungeons gave nothing good. Oh, and the fact that there were no new dungeons throughout the entirety of the expansion.
- How much people HATED scenarios, to the point they were thrown out never to be seen again outside of quest chains.
- How much people hated the legendary cloak campaign and the fact that you had to pvp to get it.
- How much people HATED the time-gated reputation grinds... which leads me to:
- How much people HATED doing the Golden Lotus dailies.
- How much people HATED its first patch, which only had story and an added zone... unless you count the Brawler's Guild as a raid or something.
- How much people HATED the theme of the expansion.

I didn't mind most of it, but I did quit (only time I've done it in over 10 years) after having to go through the Golden Lotus with my enchanter alt to get the recipes I needed.
But most people remember the best parts of it and forget how much people bitched endlessly about every single aspect of the expansion.

[Dazu]

Then in all honesty you are playing the wrong game.

Although somewhat ironically SL is far more forgiving to play little than Legion ever was. Theres no real power gain just for putting in far too many hours in SL unlike legion where you needed to keep grinding to level up your artifact, along with how punishing it was for multiple specs between artifacts and RNG legendaries.


To people praising MoP, do you actually remember the beginning of the expansion? Like seriously, needing to farm dailies for bonus rolls, rep to buy VP gear, rep to buy enchants/recipes. And it wasnt just a few, it was regularly 15+ dailies, a day, and good luck with an alt at all. Granted by Isle of Thunder and SoO release it was a really good expansion because almost all those restrictions were gone, or no longer relevant.
Legion was a crapshoot start. All the bugs with legendaries, and the fact that some were near worthless and wasted a RNG drop towards your cap early on etc, the fact even playing an alt meant missing out on artifact power, which was spec specific along with the relics that went into them and reduced your chance to get the right legendary, the fact world first raiders NEEDED to level multiple of the same class just in case of the legendary drops, and constant remarks on how people rerolled/levelled a character simply because the legendary they had drop was the wrong one and it was better use of time to start over than keep grinding etc. One of the key systems of the expansion forced competitive players to either buy a boost or spend 10-15 hours + making a new character if you got bad RNG and yet people complain about doing Torghast for an hour a week.

People need to stop comparing the end of expansions to the first patch or 2 of the current one. Almost all first patches have had their fair share of complaints including TBC (actually probably had more legitimate complaints than Shadowlands aside from I just dont like this complaints). Almost all expansions have been relatively good by the last/in the last patch with maybe the exception of WoD which didnt really improve (great raids, lacklustre everything else).

[rybat117]

Almost all first patches have had their fair share of complaints including TBC (actually probably had more legitimate complaints than Shadowlands aside from I just dont like this complaints).

Out of curiosity, what were some of the complaints about TBC launch? I didn't play during TBC, I've just always heard it referred to as the best/one of the best expansions in WoW, so it's interesting to hear there were complaints then too. The only big flaw I've heard about was the Dark Portal camping on pvp realms.

[ippollite]

Launch chaos.
Attunements/keying.
General lack of tanks for said keying.
Cc reqs (particularly in heroic shattered halls).

Just a few i can remember.

[Azerate]

I think the main problem is the wait for 9.1 this time around. I found the content pretty solid overall and the systems interesting. Maybe a little bit too much reliance on anima and farming it but otherwise it's all good.

[Malania]

Didn't realize he even still played.

[Zantera]

As a raider I'm enjoying SL pretty good so far. That's not to say I think Castle Nathria is one of the best raids they ever did or anything, but for an expansion starter raid, it's arguably quite high up. Just comparing this to Wotlk-Naxx, Uldir or even Emerald Nightmare I feel like this one is far better.

[Azadina]

So many people calling MOP the "golden age." LOL! Remember the Kung Fu Panda freak outs. Lots of people quit. So many opinions, so little time to care about them. If you enjoy the game, play it, if not, stop or take a break.

As one of those people who still to this day can't stand the whole kung fu pandas, chi ji ding dong monks as a class, or the thematic of the expansion; Even I have to admit that MoP was the absolute best time I've had in the game when it comes to gameplay and class design. Classes were simply amazingly fun to play.

[deenman]

In your opinion.

WoD lost half the sub, doesnt make it a bad expansion.

Thats the logic you got.

yes,i agree,what we had in wod was good,the problem was it wasnt enough

- - - Updated - - -

This isn't true at all. Classic realms were packed and extremely crowded for months. It was so bad, that you couldn't even farm anything. Classic's population was incredibly high for several months.

yeah it was packed for a long time,but nothing like the early boom where every realm almost had thousands of people in que

[Nyel]

yeah it was packed for a long time,but nothing like the early boom where every realm almost had thousands of people in que

The first major drop of players resulted in the slow but steady removal of layers, which didn't happen for the first months overall. The complete removal of layers took place one year after Classic's launch. There were 4-5 layers with thousands of people online at the same time for the biggest Classic realms and they existed for months and months after launch. So yes, there was a huge drop in players, but it happened way later than suggested.

[deenman]

The first major drop of players resulted in the slow but steady removal of layers, which didn't happen for the first months overall. The complete removal of layers took place one year after Classic's launch. There were 4-5 layers with thousands of people online at the same time for the biggest Classic realms and they existed for months and months after launch. So yes, there was a huge drop in players, but it happened way later than suggested.

all i know for sure it that my pve realm had thausands of que early on and after it had 0 que