Now that Shadowlands is over, what are some things you actually liked about it?

[Johnjohn]

I only played the expansion for a month so probably not the best person to ask, but I would say I really liked the themes (outside of the Maw which was bad). Bastion, Ardenweld, Revendreth and Maldraxxus were all very interesting thematically. I also loved the cinematics for all 4.

Speaking of cinematics and cut scenes, some in game scenes were great as well. As a big night elf fan, I really enjoyed some of Tyrandes scenes as well as Ysera's rebirth.

[arcturusm]

That the abysmal state of SL Beta was already telling enough to make me entirely skip this expansion.

[dwarven]

The art and music were great as usual. They should have just released a CD and an art book. The little I've played of SL was the worst experience I've ever had in WoW. Part of that is probably due to the fact that the game is nearly 18 years old and feels dry as fuck compared to a lot of modern games.

[DeltrusDisc]

You mean the info that came from YouTubers who have no actual source, some of which have been doomsaying in similar ways for years?

Forgive me for dismissing their info when it's based off of flimsy info and their negativity is also the source of their views, and their income due to that.

I'm saying their ideas are flawed because I've seen the vast departure of players due to the ideas. I want to see this game do better - I know it can be better, I've experienced it being better. It's not in that state right now. I wish you could see and recognize it.

The game isn't failing. It's still the most played and trending mmorpg on the market,

Prove that it has a higher active player count than FF14, please.

Oh wait. You can't. It's definitely doing significantly worse than it did years ago, you cannot deny that.

[Powerogue]

Well now my thread feels redundant. https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...itivity-Thread

I maintain everything I posted there, and will add that sometimes "NOT doing the bad thing that was in the previous expansion" counts. We did not have an infinite power grind like azerite, anima was pretty much entirely cosmetic and a few conveniences, and we did not have the wildly unbalanced spike in passive player power that was corruption. We did not have gear that would only become good after you grinded azerite for several more weeks, cause you to lose a non-dps passive you liked, and gets replaced by 3 more items with the same problem by the time that grind is over that was azerite armor.

[Dartz1979]

I enjoyed seeing my waifu ysera again

[Jester Joe]

I'm saying their ideas are flawed because I've seen the vast departure of players due to the ideas. I want to see this game do better - I know it can be better, I've experienced it being better. It's not in that state right now. I wish you could see and recognize it.

That isn't at all what I was talking about or discussing though.

[facefist]

Best part of Shadowlands, for me, will be when it's over.

Aside from that - I struggle to like anything.

I hope you didn't play for more than one month. I'm not surprised though that even when the topic is "what did you like", the first poster is someone who has to let the world know that wow sucks.

My personal favorite thing was leveling for the first time.

[Osmeric]

I enjoyed seeing my waifu ysera again

Yeah, you're coming back for DF, I'm guessing.

[Linri]

the questing to max level was enjoyable, i liked the vastly different themes of the zones quite a bit

however, the negatives outweighed the positives for me in my grand total of 3 weeks playing and i left

[saltyjumper]

I don't know, only got to lvl58. seems like there is nothing to do at max level anyway. the zones where the worst yet, totally boring.

[Katchii]

I honestly did enjoy the leveling experience from start to finish. The story as it was told that I got to experience. The part that killed it for me was how grindy the Maw and the rest of the story through the Covenants was. The intentional, blatant time gating for the story and associated content

I don't mind when the story or content literally doesn't exist yet and gets released in the patches (like in FFXIV, sorry not trying to do a game vs game I just know how that one works and don't have another example) but when it's is there, but you just can't get to it, because of some purposeful time gate that's linked explicitly to grinding...I fucking hate it, with a passion.

Yes, make me unlock it through questing, make me work for it. That's fine, but teasing it in front of me and saying you can do it as soon as you do this repeatable, horrible, boring, daily quest until you reach XYZ reputation feels SO much worse. One way feels organic, natural and logical the other doesn't.

[Osmeric]

I like how it moved WoW one expansion closer to ending.

[Runicblood]

Prove that it has a higher active player count than FF14, please.

Oh wait. You can't. It's definitely doing significantly worse than it did years ago, you cannot deny that.

Well, I can, it must have been hard for you to do the research on your own.

Significantly worse is a bit of an exaggeration.

With the average player count being about the same as it has for years, i really don't think it's doing worse than it did years ago, no cataclysm population is not a good point of comparison. Yeah, subs went down, but how many of those subs were even active players to begin with? From the charts i've found, the average fluctuation over the past 5 years has been between 1-2 mil daily users, with peaks on patches of course.


According to steamcharts, FF14 has an average of 30k users online, with a peak of about 40k, and an ALL TIME HIGH of 95k.
whereas my totally legit source says taht wow currently has 47k users online.

And then according to my other totally legit source, I found out that the average daily users for the past month in WoW was "1,128,879", whereas the average ff14 monthly users was "1,091,566 "

Nice try bro, you can't take down the king.

[DeltrusDisc]

Well, I can, it must have been hard for you to do the research on your own.

Significantly worse is a bit of an exaggeration.

With the average player count being about the same as it has for years, i really don't think it's doing worse than it did years ago, no cataclysm population is not a good point of comparison. Yeah, subs went down, but how many of those subs were even active players to begin with? From the charts i've found, the average fluctuation over the past 5 years has been between 1-2 mil daily users, with peaks on patches of course.


According to steamcharts, FF14 has an average of 30k users online, with a peak of about 40k, and an ALL TIME HIGH of 95k.
whereas my totally legit source says taht wow currently has 47k users online.

And then according to my other totally legit source, I found out that the average daily users for the past month in WoW was "1,128,879", whereas the average ff14 monthly users was "1,091,566 "

Nice try bro, you can't take down the king.

Using Steam for FF14 when lots of FF14 players, like myself, don't use Steam to access it, isn't the best way to account for how many users are online.

WoW stopped giving sub numbers years ago and WoW definitely had more players back in Cata-days, even when you don't factor in fake players. I can tell you from having experienced the game since TBC onward.

But oh... you call WoW the king. Sorry you cannot see other games in a light and consider WoW might need to step down to improve itself. Stop drinking the Blizzard Kool-Aid. It's okay for other games to come along and do better. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say it is better for WoW if they do, because it gets Blizzard to try harder. If you really think BfA and SL have been Blizzard trying hard, then I truly feel sorry for you. And no, Dragonflight, with the (anything but) new and innovative "dragon-riding" needs to show more before we can say Blizzard are actually trying hard.

I mean really, the new race is using the female Nathrezim model. Boooo

For the record, at present, my FF sub is inactive, my WoW sub is active, but only for Classic, not retail purposes. As the days go by, I've been annoyed with WoW and am planning to re-up FF at this point.

[Swnem]

The only thing i liked was the spec builds you could make, in particular when restrictions were lifted.

I also weirdly liked Korthia after they fixed it too. I enjoyed doing the weekly, getting some gold and a conduit upgrade. The zone was small and the quest progressed at a good pace as to not be overly grindy.

[DrIvoRobotnik]

The first 4 zones were pretty cool looking, all be it overly compacted. Ravendreth and Ardenweld music was great. Loved the first raid and the majority of the 9.0 questline. It was a very strong first step forward other than the anima farming. The Maw and Torghast had it's moments.

[ippollite]

I really love the vision they had. Maybe also the commitment to their vision... in theory. In execution its kind of bad, but i put that down to "metrics".

To explain... right now im on my second alt (my monk - which im very shit at). But the game is fun. Leveling was fun. Mobs died at a decent pace (id just come off the back of my resto shammy doing the same thing and hating my life), hit 60 yesterday, today im messing about in torghast through the MSQ and really enjoying it. Its like all that promise pre-9.0 is being realised. Theres no power gain to be had from mucking about in torghast (i could just progress the story and unlock zm and all its gear), im doing it because its helping me understand the synergies in the spec and its also super fun hitting that collection of powers that has you one and two shotting every challenge. Its fun in and for itself. And it really makes me understand and appreciate (if you take out all the timegating, engagement, very slow reward creep vs time invested), just how much potential the game has. Heck, having a character tied to maldraxus and not ardenweald (my main) makes me so appreciative of the reward system, Ardenweald rewards are so ugly, whilst the maldy are exactly what i want! But also... on top of even this... i have a new story to play through. Its so alt friendly... exactly as they obviously envisioned. But like a year and a bit later than i hoped they would implement it.

This is genuinely the game i wanted to play back in january 2021. I could genuinely smell it, it was so close. But they keep tripping over themselves to make it such a miserable burdening experience. I understand why. But i hope they learned their lesson for df. This game could be so fun.

[Leyrok]

Torghast was really fun, at least with friends

[Sableye]

Torghast was interesting but blizzard couldn't quite figure out where to position it before just seeming to forget about it after they left the Maw. I think the idea for a dungeon crawler is cool and had potential but you either have to make it useful to gear up, which blizzard didn't, or make it give you some thing cosmetic as a reward, which they sort of did. There's potential there for something but I think they backslid from the goals they had with the Horrific Visions instances. The late addition of a talent tree was welcomed but the scoring system is not, people want to progress, not clear 5 floors of hell only to be told they needed some more points to unlock the next floor and it really only encourages tank classes since they can just pull a floor and clear it faster. Torghast should have been the Island Expeditions for Shadowlands and rewarded the players with Anima for completion, and with its catchup mechanics would have greatly eased the anima grind since unlike island hopping you could group up or do it solo, and stealing anima back from the jailer fits with the story.

The Maw itself is an interesting mechanic and I think having that limited time window initially to explore it was great at keeping it fresh but playing it over on an alt, the progression on the Maw needed to be account wide with unlocking things like grapple and teleporters, which is strange because they did make the eye of the jailer account wide.

Covenants were a great compromise between class factions like legion or useless mission stuff like BFA, my only gripe is the anima grind which has been a complete failure for this expansion, but take away that and you have pretty good stories, compelling reasons for progression, even some hidden endings to the main campaign that you only see in the covenant, and you feel more connected to a certain zone. even the abilities aren't that bad, though some classes have one standout ability vs others. I think blizzard will continue this sort of thing in dragonlands but hopefully without the endless grind for anima

the Vault has been good, they seem to be happy with it too

oh and while it sucks on the ground, once you have flying Revendreth is amazingly detailed. they should have included a half working mirror network for non covenant players because the story really does a lot of sending you from one mesa to another mesa and back, doing the story with flying enabled was much better and let me enjoy just how much detail they put into this zone without trying to figure out how to get from point A to Point B without falling off a cliff, looking for an elevator, or getting killed by 10,000 mobs