No, but only because I'd rate BfA as the worst. SL comes pretty close to being as bad as BfA though.
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.
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.
SL wasn't the worst but only because Legion systems are still carrying the game
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"
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.
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
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.
Kupo.
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.
You're going to be a much happier person if you just accept that warcraft lore ended many years ago.
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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.
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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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.
Last edited by RobertMugabe; 2022-03-12 at 11:34 PM.
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.
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'
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.
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.
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.
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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.