Shadowlands -- Is it the worst expansion?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

No, but only because I'd rate BfA as the worst. SL comes pretty close to being as bad as BfA though.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Even WoD isn't the worst gave ever. I think my scale is pretty good. 1-3 are for broken games that dont work. 4 and 5 are for bad games with little content. Anything 6 and up can be considered enjoyable if you the the IP, but once you get to an 8 the games become fantastic.

5 would usually imply average, 6 slightly above average on a x/10 scale, which is why I asked for clarification as it seemed like you were saying that even the worst of wow is still average or better, which in turn didn't seem to reflect your usual opinion (iirc) as I've observed it.

[Nayami]

SL wasn't the worst but only because Legion systems are still carrying the game

[Evaddon]

Right snug up with Shadowlands, but WoD still holds the cake for the Apex Crystal farming bullshit that made up most of the games "content"

[Fitsu]

Standalone? Maybe not, but it came off the back of BFA which was already pretty bad and usually Blizzard go one good/one bad. Cata was bad, MoP was good, WoD was bad, Legion was good, BFA was bad so everyone expected Shadowlands to be good.

Sadly with Shadowlands it feels like Blizzard gave up, they doubled down on their mechanics thats only reason to exist was to keep the player playing as opposed to making the game better/fun, busy work. That was so clearly implemented in ways that was obviously flawed (and reported in the beta) so that they could fix it mid-expansion and be like "hey guys don't worry we fixed that problem that we created!".

I feel it was this blatent development cycle of implement a bad system, "fix" it later to make it seems like we're improving the game without having to actually improve the game. This clear disregard and lack of respect for their playerbase that has led so many to quit. Shadowlands may not be the worst expansion ever, but it's certainly the most I've felt Blizzard don't even care, that they aren't even trying to make a good game there just trying to keep players busy, keep them logging in.

Shadowlands could have had half it's timegated, grindy, restrictive, pointless mechanics removed and replaced with nothing and it would have just been a straight up better game for it and this is telling by how as patches came out they did what everyone expected. They reduced the grind, removed the timegates, removed the restrictions, there "fix" for the mechanics they introduced was to make you not need to do them. It's maniuplative, using the goodwill they built up over the years and people are starting to see it.

[Armakus]

I kind of agree with you but then I keep thinking of how bad I find Shadowlands lore/story.

I honestly hated the WoD story just as much (I think the time traveling thing was unnecessary to move the story forward and butchered the story just as much as shadowlands) but the "normalcy" of the lore in Legion leaves me somewhat hopeful we can leave this behind us easily as well... please... just let me hope

[SNES-1990]

At least other expacs just had crappy lore. In SL, Danuser went out of his way to butcher everything the company had built up over 2 decades. SL is easily the worst for that reason alone.

[FossilFree]

Worst expansion? No. Second worst expansion? Yes.

Shadowlands at least didn't have the no-flying debacle that WoD had. Or the lack of a capital city. Nor did it leave out a zone that should have been there based on established lore in Outland, Farahlon.

[oplawlz]

What really worries me is I don't see them improving the writing for 10.0 and if its still successful because of the games mechanics and raids and shit I don't see them attempting to improve it for 11.

You're going to be a much happier person if you just accept that warcraft lore ended many years ago.

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IMHO SL is the worst exp so far.

One key metric I use is how many of my RL friends are playing? All but one have left.

That's kind of a tainted metric though. Many people have been getting further and further disenfranchised since Legion (longer for some of us), and had already basically divorced ourselves from the game.
Shadowlands committed the crime of being fantastically mediocre after the dumpster fire of BfA. I don't think it would have driven players away if it had launched while Bliz still had some goodwill, but that well is dry. They needed to full reverse course, and did not.

[RobertMugabe]

And yes, if you think a video game should require as much time as a literal job to maintain multiple characters to a reasonable degree - that is crazy

No, the person who actually thinks that SL requires you to treat it as a job is crazy (or doesn't play the game).

SL has a lot of very annoying grinds, but it's far away from a literal job. There are no weekly chores you have to do to get into m+, pvp or raiding. And playing alts is extremely easy now with the catch ups. You can pretty much get m+/raid ready in like a day, which wasn't even possible in WoD.

You get a shitton of the new currency you need for your BiS 291 lego (I had over 12k after a few days with playing casually, but you only needed 2k I believe) just when you get started in Zereth Mortis and you can easily purchase either 226 gear with anima or buy the new crafting gear on the AH. You also unlock ALL conduits just by getting the new faction to friendly. And after that you don't have to do any of that, no torghast, no callings, no zereth mortis if you wanted to do endgame content.

Heck if we even wanna go deeper, the rep grinds and currency grinds in both 6.0 and 6.2 were far more brutal they are now. I firmly remember having to farm for weeks to get the 300k apexis crystals to buy the fel arrakoa mount, meanwhile the most expensive rep mounts are 5k anima, which you can farm in like an hour or two in zereth mortis.

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I wasn't the guy originally quoted but as someone who would put Wotlk in my bottom 2, here's my reasoning for it:

Only one of the raid tiers was genuinely great IMO. Ulduar was fantastic but it did not make up for Naxx being a re-used raid (and a bad one at that) making the first tier painfully boring because of how easy it was, and Trial of the Crusader is down there with the worst of the worst as well. I also believe Icecrown Citadel to be an overrated raid. It's not bad, and it has a couple of great fights in it like Lich King and Putricide, but overall to me it felt a bit like Black Temple 2.0 but worse. (I guess that is very subjective and you might like ICC more than BT, but as someone who did raid BT when it was current, I felt ICC was a less enjoyable version of that)

Dungeons were too easy and too bland. Yeah there were plenty of them and that's definitely a problem with the last few expansions, SL having only 8 dungeons for so long, but the issue I have with the ICC dungeon pool is so many of them are bottom half of dungeons ever added to the game. I don't know if it had any dungeon I would call top tier. A big part of the activity of playing outside of raids seemed to boil down to doing these super easy 5-man dungeons for daily currency which wasn't really fun either. I know some people hate WQs or daily quests but I'll gladly do those over the 'daily HC for some currency' structure.

A lot of people seem to put a huge amount of focus on lore and story though which I've never really done with WoW. I think Warcraft has a cool world but the stories have never been that amazing to me. Personally I care more about the actual content like the dungeons and raids being fun (as that is the main repeat content you do) and that's why Wotlk would place in my bottom 2 and expansions like SL and BFA would be a few places higher up - not because they were amazing but because they had IMO better raid quality overall and better dungeons / content outside raids.

Yeah been playing Wotlk a lot on private servers and tbh the raiding overall isn't that great, although I did like ICC and even the argent dawn raid to some extent.
I think that Wotlk raiding is highly regarded, because it was so accessible for everyone. It was when raiding became "mainstream" and you could clear them with basically just your rl friends (10man). You'd suddenly see a lot of people raid who never raided before or only did karazhan/za.

Compared to TBC and all the other expansions except maybe Cata, Wrath's raiding was quite bad and lackluster in comparison.

[baseballfan]

It is tough to say which is the worst between BFA and Shadowlands. I'd say BFA is still worse though. They have got to drop this garbage class design in my opinion though. Legion class design was fine and then it was butchered in BFA and they kept a similar design in Shadowlands. The borrowed power in BFA or Shadowlands did not feel good enough to make up for what was lost in Legion. Also WHERE is another talent row? Desperately need some new flavor. I want to see some cool NEW abilities, not rehashed ones in 10.0.

[Th3Scourge]

Shadowlands is so far and away the worst expansion it's not even close

At least in WoD you could comfortably play multiple alts effortlessly
At least in WoD you just leveled to 100 and jumped straight into the end game
At least in WoD I didn't have to engage with a ton of different temporary systems to make my character worth playing.


The biggest lie of this entire expansion is that it was ever going to be 'Alt friendly'

[Volardelis]

Anyone forgetting the disaster WoD was should be ashamed. Selfie patch alone is the worst patch they ever done in WoW history and has yet to be beaten.

I would say the ingame voice chat patch which was patch 2.2 is the worst. At least people USE the selfie cam.

[Chilela]

I would say the ingame voice chat patch which was patch 2.2 is the worst. At least people USE the selfie cam.

Agreed. And the Selfie cam patch at least added extra garrison stuff as well. 2.2 was literally just voice chat and various game tweaks. 6.1 is definitely in second place, though.

[Therougetitan]

People who think Shadowlands is the worst either quit in 9.1 and haven't played 9.2 or have red tinted glasses on or in most cases both. You cannot compare Shadowlands to the finalized version of other expansions because that is the version of the most fixed game that people remember the most. Everyone in my guild is having fun playing and excited for double legendaries that will make the game even more fun.

People forget that the first year of WoD had no content outside of raids. There was no reason to do dungeons since only heroic existed until 6.2.5. Apexis dailies sucked. Everyone stayed in their garrisons. Farahlon/Shatthrath raid cut. It got polished in 6.2.5 but the game was shit before that if you did not raid.

Shadowlands is so far and away the worst expansion it's not even close

At least in WoD you could comfortably play multiple alts effortlessly
At least in WoD you just leveled to 100 and jumped straight into the end game
At least in WoD I didn't have to engage with a ton of different temporary systems to make my character worth playing.


The biggest lie of this entire expansion is that it was ever going to be 'Alt friendly'

In WoD you had to do HM and BRF and then HFC in order to get the super powerful legendary ring for raiding which made getting alts to speed shitty.

[rpdrichard]

Shadowlands is so far and away the worst expansion it's not even close

At least in WoD you could comfortably play multiple alts effortlessly
At least in WoD you just leveled to 100 and jumped straight into the end game
At least in WoD I didn't have to engage with a ton of different temporary systems to make my character worth playing.


The biggest lie of this entire expansion is that it was ever going to be 'Alt friendly'

I'll give you a bonus one. WoD felt like Warcraft. SL doesn't and its final patch shits on many years of lore

[Th3Scourge]

I'll give you a bonus one. WoD felt like Warcraft. SL doesn't and its final patch shits on many years of lore

That's actually my biggest problem with SL. It does not feel like Warcraft. It does not look like Warcraft.

[LilSaihah]

WoD had problems but I don't think it had the absolutely overwhelming problems that Shadowlands has had.
I think probably the only thing that Shadowlands has done better is letting you fly earlier in the expansion.

[Culex]

Not THE worst, for it is not alone there, WoD is there too.

People dog on WoD alot but it was not that bad imo, I have been subbed for a total of 6 months during this entire expansion, I just can't keep myself playing.

[Chickat]

5 would usually imply average, 6 slightly above average on a x/10 scale, which is why I asked for clarification as it seemed like you were saying that even the worst of wow is still average or better, which in turn didn't seem to reflect your usual opinion (iirc) as I've observed it.

To be fair compared to some other mmos a 5 would be averageish. WoD isnt bad compared to a lot of other games. Hence the middling score. I don't think it's fair to rate something like WoD below that. All its features work. What was there was decent, there was just a lack of content. WoD absolutely was worth the box price. No wow xpac has truly been "bad" as in unplayable rage worthy. Just dissapointing.