So, what's with this forum's hatred of Shadowlands?

[Mad_Murdock]

You haven't done the Kyrian storyline, I see

Pelagos is one of your two buddies during the quests. He does the more stealthy stuff and goes to meet the other factions. He basically fulfils the same general role that General Draven does for Revendreth, or Morgraine for Necrolords

I played it a couple of times. My complaint with him is like Auduin. He just comes off he weak, full of doubt, fragile. Could just come down to the voice actor, as Pelgoas doesn't talk with confidence. This is nothing new, sometimes in games\TV\movies they make a character that is supposed to be cool and badass and they aren't and sometimes the badass characte proves to be the funnier than their comedian lead. I can see what they were trying to do with him, just a swing and a miss

Pelagos is pretty much all of the shadowlands for me, Not sure what they were aiming for, but none of it worked for me. Pretty much every aspect seemed off, except the MAW which achieved it's goal of being a dreary miserable place which mad sense as it was effectively hell.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I would describe SL as a systems upon systems upon systems quagmire. It happens every 3-4 expansions when they carry forward what worked in pervious expansions and things start to layer up. Then the systems start to interlock thus making the game in a sense a chore list. Granted this is all MMOs in a sense but in SL the curtain was pulled all the way open and it became very obvious to even the more casual novice players.

Top that off with a story that was I'm the man behind the man that was behind the man villian.. the core "masses" of players were simply not entertaining it.

If you just did end game the pick a faction boxed you in. Pick which of the big 3 you want to be optimized in and accept in the other 2 you're going to be at a disadvantage in wasn't hyper fun. But, if you just liked pvp, m+, or raiding the content was mostly fine. Encounter and design overall was OK.

The arms race the devs tried to fight with world first raiders got a little out of hand. WAs got totally out of control. Although if you are a pretty cutting edge player you probably had a good enough time. But it again cut into the "masses" of average players as difficulty and addon/wa "requirements" skyrocketed.

Overall SL just got to bloated. DF pulled a lot of that back in a lot of ways in a "soft" resetting. Which happens in WOW every few expansions. SL was just one of the more highlighted examples of it spinning a little more out of control then normal. At least that's my take on why it's mostly dispised by many.

[Aucald]

I would love to hear how Pelagos is a nuanced, interesting character.

He has all the personality of a brown paper bag. But tbf, he's hardly the only offender. So many new WoW characters are written to be overly agreeable and leaves them the same blandness as a litany of other characters.

Pelagos is a natural outsider, someone who can't seem to integrate themselves into any social circle, always kept outside the group by some aspect of themselves or some inability to bridge the gap that keeps them separated. He's able to forge a strong friendship with Kleia herself on a personal level and begins to do so with the Maw Walker during the Kyrian campaign as well. Beyond his views on his gender as a character, Pelagos also seems to be haunted by strong traumas from his former life - so much so that he's unable to complete the Kyrian rites to purge himself of said memories, and has been unable to for quite some time.

Throughout the campaign and the extended campaigns for Korthia, SoD, and ZM he comes to understand more of his role in terms of his destiny and sacrifices himself to become the new Arbiter. As an individual uniquely affected by their past traumas, and understanding the capacity for selfdom to ultimately change over time, Pelagos and the rest of the Eternal Ones feel that as a new Arbiter, he'll have a better grasp of how the afterlife and assignment of souls to said afterlife should take place. One of Pelagos' first acts as the new Arbiter is to retire the Maw entirely - souls will no longer be sent there directly, and presumably only arrive after Revendreth truly judges them irredeemable, if at all.

[Zoneseek]

Shadowlands was soured for me because it was when I officially got bored of the game and the expansion cycles. I bought it, played for 6 weeks and just asked why am I doing this cycle again. I haven't played wow since. Given no other xpacs did that to me, it leaves me to believe that it was the worst - but maybe it was just my time to be done with it!

It also exposed a character flaw I have: whenever I have a subscription for something, no matter how little or trivial, I am constantly nagged in my head to take advantage of it. All I would do is play wow, because I didn't want to waste the sub. I have been enjoying gaming so much more with variety, and I know if I ever sub to a game again I will likely just go back to playing nothing but that - so I won't do it. Wow will have to go on game pass or something for me to ever play again, subscriptions to one single game is dead tech to me. I check this forum out a few times a year to see whats new and exciting with the game, but thats it.

With ALL THAT SAID I hope everyone else found some enjoyment out of it, even though it was the escape hatch for me!

[TheRevenantHero]

It was a dumpster fire of an expansion with boring content and an obscene amount of lore retcons.

[Doffen]

Start of Shadowlands was pretty good, but the long content drought midway tanked the expansion.

[WowIsDead64]

It also exposed a character flaw I have: whenever I have a subscription for something, no matter how little or trivial, I am constantly nagged in my head to take advantage of it. All I would do is play wow, because I didn't want to waste the sub. I have been enjoying gaming so much more with variety, and I know if I ever sub to a game again I will likely just go back to playing nothing but that - so I won't do it. Wow will have to go on game pass or something for me to ever play again, subscriptions to one single game is dead tech to me. I check this forum out a few times a year to see whats new and exciting with the game, but thats it.

It's not your fault. It's called FOMO and all modern games are built around triggering it. Via things like battle pass.

I don't know. SL should have been conclusion of epic story. Not just WotLK story ark, but whole Wow's story. Because, as we know now, even Vanilla Wow had runes of domination on it's box. But something went wrong. What? May be further cliffhanging? That SL isn't the end. It's part of even bigger thing. Just another titan machine or something like that. It was too much. Cliffhanging, that leads to nowhere. Cliffhanging just for sake of cliffhanging. Plus lots of retcons of course. It just looked like really bad and cheap series.

[thottstation]

you didn't play the Kyrian Campaign.

Neither did nearly 50% of the playerbase.

Tell us whose fault that is.

[Nymrohd]

As an individual uniquely affected by their past traumas, and understanding the capacity for selfdom to ultimately change over time, Pelagos and the rest of the Eternal Ones feel that as a new Arbiter, he'll have a better grasp of how the afterlife and assignment of souls to said afterlife should take place.

Did anyone decide that? He was just the only soul available and willing to fill the vessel. I mean it was Saezurah, Kleia, Pelagos and the Mawwalker present and one of them had to give it up, made sense for it to be Pelagos. And it's not like there was a cost. So he was not chosen, just available.

One of Pelagos' first acts as the new Arbiter is to retire the Maw entirely - souls will no longer be sent there directly, and presumably only arrive after Revendreth truly judges them irredeemable, if at all.

Which barely ever happened. We have examples of truly abominable people being send to Revendreth after all. Do we have any examples of people ending directly to the Maw by the Arbiter without intervention? The idea was that the only people who went to the Maw directly was those who threatened the very structure of the Shadowlands.

[Fitsu]

Let me get this out of the way up front: I'm not defending SL, and I'm not starting this thread to try to white-knight the expansion.

So, notably in a thread or two discussing DF, it's been coming up in comments a lot that SL was just the shits and I've been curious about why people hate it so much, just because to me it was a serviceable expansion that wasn't that great overall, just kind of faded into the background of the years-long blur of my history playing WoW.

I get the folks who hate it due to lore and due to Sylvanas, and I get that there is a particular strain of player that hated Legion/BFA/SL because their only metric for self-gratification in life is the color of their parse of warcraftlogs.com, and those 3 expansions required those people to spend more than 17 seconds doing something that wasn't raidlogging in order to have the bestest color that they wanted their parse to be, but are those really the only two things that make SL seemingly the MMO-C community's most hated expansion?

I'm curious about opinions and stories and perspectives here, again not to defend SL or try to argue with anyone, I just don't get it and would love hear some explanations about it.

I don't get the condescending tone, as if people are wrong for not liking a game that makes them do things they don't want to do.

In Shadowlands I spent more time doing things I didn't want to do than things I did want to do. Much of the content, was by design there to keep retention high rather than make the game fun, and I for one prefer my games to be fun.

Perhaps you found all that grind fun, but many didn't. For me personally, Dragonflight is the best WoW has been, maybe ever.

[WowIsDead64]

Man. Poor new players. Is there some way to completely skip story mode leveling on newly created account, if character is already 60lvl? This s**t is something new. Back in old xpacks player could level via dungeons and jump straight to endgame, i.e. skip story completely. Looks like SL doesn't allow it. There is no option to avoid "Go to Bastion" quest for new player.

[Dhrizzle]

Neither did nearly 50% of the playerbase.

Tell us whose fault that is.

Why does it have to be anyone's fault? Lots of players don't really care about the story/campaign and only like multiplayer aspects of the game, and plenty of those who do like the story only play through casually and might not want to do multiple covenants.

[Aucald]

Did anyone decide that? He was just the only soul available and willing to fill the vessel. I mean it was Saezurah, Kleia, Pelagos and the Mawwalker present and one of them had to give it up, made sense for it to be Pelagos. And it's not like there was a cost. So he was not chosen, just available.

Saezurah decides that - remarking that Pelagos is "A worthy soul, pure and unburdened." Although in point of fact, Pelagos is less "chosen" and more offers himself as a sacrifice, the cost of creating the Arbiter being a soul freely offered, and one capable of becoming it. He also went into the process unaware that he would continue to exist as himself, albeit as the Arbiter. All present assumed that his sacrifice would be tantamount to his destruction, as well.

Which barely ever happened. We have examples of truly abominable people being send to Revendreth after all. Do we have any examples of people ending directly to the Maw by the Arbiter without intervention? The idea was that the only people who went to the Maw directly was those who threatened the very structure of the Shadowlands.

There were a *lot* of recognizable souls in the Maw that predate Argus' death in Legion, although it's unknown how many were sent there directly vs. how many were sent by the corrupt Venthyr under Sire Denathrius in Revendreth and so on. Regardless, it seems as if Pelagos desires the Maw to no longer even be an option, viewing every soul as redeemable in time and with patience.

[RobertMugabe]

90% of all issues people had with Shadowlands were either because of or directly related to the mid-expansion content drought. The expansion came out and honestly, it was initially one of the best times I ever had playing WoW, but then nothing changed in months and things got too repetitive and all the issues the tryhards disliked started to reach most of the playerbase.

Then they finally got to releasing 9.1 and it was just a meh patch, especially considering how long it took it to release and so people didn't really come back for it. Shadowlands picked up again then in 9.1.5 and then 9.2 was actually a really big and awesome patch, which fixed most of the issues with the systems, gameplay etc. and it added a lot of great content.

Besides the content drought, I think that as with every other expansion, some people (it's often the same people who have been complaining about the game since TBC) just like to blow up things out of proportion. There were some legitimate issues, like the talent tree being neglected, the story being pretty nonsensical (it was a trainwreck, but it was at least fun to watch it), raiding being too hard and inaccessible, torghast only rewarding stuff for your legendary which made it a chore, since you had to get the legendary, but it also then became useless quickly once you got it. But I don't think any of these issues can be compared to a content drought; it's always the content that makes most people play or quit this game.

[Ghostile]

Man. Poor new players. Is there some way to completely skip story mode leveling on newly created account, if character is already 60lvl? This s**t is something new. Back in old xpacks player could level via dungeons and jump straight to endgame, i.e. skip story completely. Looks like SL doesn't allow it. There is no option to avoid "Go to Bastion" quest for new player.

Everyone besides you is playing DF.

[Shadowferal]

Everyone besides you is playing DF.

You're not speaking for everyone...

[Ghostile]

You're not speaking for everyone...

I apologize to the 3 guys who are grinding wow but not the latest expansion.

[Aelwe]

My main problem with Shadowlands was the concept itself.
I mean, the expansion had its problems, like any other expansion. Too many different systems, gimmicks, currencies, lack of updates, etc. no surprise here. I can live with that.
The zones were cool.
However, my main problem is the idea itself: Death is supposed to be something unknown and foreign to mortals. It needs to be mysterious. It was something that was managed relatively well until then, with everything related to death and undeath being kept vague and appropiately mysterious. We knew for example that necromancers and the Lich King had some power or control over death, we knew that the Light probably played a role and we knew that the Shadowlands *existed* as a sort of reflection, we knew that undead existed in a sorry state and that most considered it a curse, but that was it...and it worked.
But the moment we crossed into the Shadowlands it destroys all the mysticism, completely. It didn't help the facto that all the zones -even if beautiful- were quite mundane. I mean, they were cool, but they lacked imagination; for a place that is supposed to be the afterlife for the entire universe and everything boiled down to nice forest, gothic castles, nice fields, heavy metal album cover zone and barren rocky hellscape. Oh, and Oribos, which was the blandest of all. This is bad enough, but the entire plot of the Jailer and the First Ones made everything even worse, it was just so generic...
And yes, there's supposed to be infinite afterlives that we haven't seen, but the expansion to me ruined the entire mysticism of death and undeath in the Warcraft universe.
Doing an expansion in the afterlife was a bad idea to start with, but it's possible to pull it off successfully if done right. It was not done right.

[Orby]

My hatred for Shadowlands is just default. Cos its the expansion that got me to quit playing WoW and I been playing since 2005, and now I haven't went back. There have been expansions that have caused me to take long breaks (like Cataclysm), there were expansions that ended my run as a hardcore raider (WoD) but to make me ultimately leave and never return, shadowlands tops the list. So by default for me that's why Shadowlands is the worst. :P

It could be Shadowlands itself, or it could be the fact that overtime Shadowlands was the fine bit of string on a once very strong thjick rope that had become unwound over the past 10 years that made me quit, I don't know, probably.

I don;t remember ever loving shadowlands, the story never interested me from the get go, even from announcement, The game itself would give me anxiety, no video game has ever caused m,e to have an anxiety attack. Shadowlands was the first, there was this point wher eI logged on and looked at what I had to do and my map was flooded with icons and dots and WQ, and events, I came to the realisation that it never used to be like this.

I mean people complain there isnt enough to do in WoW meanwhile I am like, NO THERE'S TOO MUCH! I remember in TBC and WoTLk all I had to do was farm some consumables and do dailies that would take about 30 minutes to an hour, and then I had spare time to either play another game or try some PVP. WoiW became so overbearing with just throwing more stuff at you, I felt like I was at a desk with piles of paper. It wasnt fun. And this was something that had been slowly growing since WoD, but the realisation hit me in Shadowlands so I bowed out.

Maybe I should like Shadowlands for waking me up lol.

[WowIsDead64]

Pocopoc charging is bugged. It charges while offline on some characters and it doesn't charge on some others. Characters have exactly the same 0 progress: 1) No quests completed 2) Same amount of cyphers collected 3) Haven't got out of "intro" phase (i.e. only some specific "intro" treasures are visible) 4) Only two first cypher talents are taken - to be able to complete treasure WQ. Does anybody know, what it depends on? This problem seems to be completely random.

P.S. It would be great idea to try to beat system this way. As trinkets don't depend on cypher level, "grind-ahead" strategy is applicable to them, i.e. I don't need to grind cyphers and other c**p before starting to grind trinkets. Therefore I could do it on characters with 0 ZM progress. Their WF/TF rate is insane. For example today's rate is 4%. Their droprate from rares is also insane. It's just total BS to gate so c**ppy rewards behind such insane RNG. They aren't legendaries. They're s**tty trinkets 10ilvls below BIS. This tells everything about SL.