My thoughts on ShadowLands

[CiccioBello]

I was thinking about whether or not to buy the new expansion and therefore whether to trust the bilzz (for the umpteenth time) or not.
So I went to the different sites to understand what will really be new in the next expansion based on the information read.

1) New level system, as far as I think a level squish is correct, I personally am not particularly excited about this new feature, also because all the characters I have are already at the highest level.

2) No new class / spec, although 9 classes x 36 spec start to be many I think that anyway an addition of a targeted and well thought out class / spec would have been a nice thing.

3) As there are no new / spec classes, I seem to have understood that there will not be an overhaul to the classes in general and that in essence they will be the same as those present in BFA. It is true that they have declared an UnPruning of the classes but at the same time Holinka also said that there will be no major changes to the classes which leaves me very perplexed. The two things do not go hand in hand, it is not possible to do an unPruning without necessarily reviewing the classes.
One of the elephants in the room (I say 1 because unfortunately there are more than one in the room) by BfA, was a class design not up to par, too poor and superficial and after reading that an Overhaul class is not a thing you can do during an expansion (Ion's words) but it is a job that is done between one expansion and another, now that we are told that basically there will be no overhaul .. interesting.

4) Covenant System. It is true that too little is known about this system and even if the idea is not badly frankly I'm afraid it will turn into the umpteenth wrong experiment from the blizz.
My fears are as follows: given the blizz's famous ability to balance its systems, the fact that changing Covenant will be something very expensive, especially in terms of time, it worries me a lot. It frightens me also how they will decide to create the various covenant perks, will it be another hell of proc as happened in BfA?

5) Tower of Damned, it seems to me a little like major expansion featur.

So in summary:
- new leveling system, ok
- unPruning ?????
- Covenant ??????
- Tower of the Damned
It seems to me the content of a major patch rather than an expansion.
I hope I'm wrong.

[Nnyco]

Why do yOu capiTalize ranDom leTters?

[CiccioBello]

Why do yOu capiTalize ranDom leTters?

because I like it?
I'm glad that of everything i wrote, your only comment was this. Nice!

[facefist]

Nice blog post

[Maljinwo]

Why don't you wait for the Alpha or Beta before signing this off?
We barely had footage of one zone

[Yuli]

because I like it?
I'm glad that of everything i wrote, your only comment was this. Nice!

It's annoying to read.
Other than that, I have to agree with facefist here, what could we add? It's just your opinion and we don't have more information to add.

[Orby]

"My thoughts on ShadowLands"

Awesome a time traveler, can you give me next weeks lottery numbers, I am really hard up right now.

[Nnyco]

because I like it?
I'm glad that of everything i wrote, your only comment was this. Nice!

Because everythin you wrote is mostly made up in your head. Wait until we have footage of the actual game and not just your made up nonsense.

[Monster Hunter]

3) As there are no new / spec classes, I seem to have understood that there will not be an overhaul to the classes in general and that in essence they will be the same as those present in BFA. It is true that they have declared an UnPruning of the classes but at the same time Holinka also said that there will be no major changes to the classes which leaves me very perplexed. The two things do not go hand in hand, it is not possible to do an unPruning without necessarily reviewing the classes.
One of the elephants in the room (I say 1 because unfortunately there are more than one in the room) by BfA, was a class design not up to par, too poor and superficial and after reading that an Overhaul class is not a thing you can do during an expansion (Ion's words) but it is a job that is done between one expansion and another, now that we are told that basically there will be no overhaul .. interesting.

This too also perplexed me.

No major class changes. But there gonna bring back stuff like auras for Palas, consecration base line, some other talents back base line e.t.c

So what gonna replace those abilities that are currently talents?

Isn't that thus gonna be some new and likely game changing options in there??

Were gonna move back to focus on class not spec but at the same time not make any major changes? Despite 5 expansions of spec focus and divergence that would need to be un done for the first statment to even been remotely true.....

The stamtnets on what's happening to class's just don't add up to me.

[CiccioBello]

This too also perplexed me.

No major class changes. But there gonna bring back stuff like auras for Palas, consecration base line, some other talents back base line e.t.c

So what gonna replace those abilities that are currently talents?

Isn't that thus gonna be some new and likely game changing options in there??

Were gonna move back to focus on class not spec but at the same time not make any major changes? Despite 5 expansions of spec focus and divergence that would need to be un done for the first statment to even been remotely true.....

The stamtnets on what's happening to class's just don't add up to me.

It is true that the current information on SL is very few to express an objective judgment, I recognize it, we are not even in the Alpha phase but the premises do not seem exceptional to me, certainly not at the Legion level. Coming from an expansion like the current one that is BFA (in my opinion one of the ugliest that the blizz has ever done) having another expansion on the same level as the previous one would be really sad.

[Onikaroshi]

This too also perplexed me.

No major class changes. But there gonna bring back stuff like auras for Palas, consecration base line, some other talents back base line e.t.c

So what gonna replace those abilities that are currently talents?

Isn't that thus gonna be some new and likely game changing options in there??

Were gonna move back to focus on class not spec but at the same time not make any major changes? Despite 5 expansions of spec focus and divergence that would need to be un done for the first statment to even been remotely true.....

The stamtnets on what's happening to class's just don't add up to me.

They didn't say "no major class changes" they said no Legion level class changes, no overhauls. Obviously they will need to create new talents and rebalance/add to the leveling experience.

[Paperfox]

1) New level system: Long, long overdue. If you start a new toon that isn't a DK or DH, then leveling it is painful IMHO, ymmv.

2) No new class / spec: Good. At this point there is only niche class/spec left. I'm hoping they'll introduce hybrid specs, like a dark ranger - a hunter that uses shadow and lock spells.

3) ...UnPruning of the classes....: It might be nice to get some of the classic spells back.

4) Covenant System. Blizz is pretty good at fixing systems that didn't pan out how they thought they would.

5) Tower of Damned: Could be another Mage Tower....

[StillMcfuu]

This too also perplexed me.

No major class changes. But there gonna bring back stuff like auras for Palas, consecration base line, some other talents back base line e.t.c

So what gonna replace those abilities that are currently talents?

Isn't that thus gonna be some new and likely game changing options in there??

Were gonna move back to focus on class not spec but at the same time not make any major changes? Despite 5 expansions of spec focus and divergence that would need to be un done for the first statment to even been remotely true.....

The stamtnets on what's happening to class's just don't add up to me.

There will be pretty major changes back end for a lot of classes if the "unpruning" actually comes to pass.

We didn't lose abilities, they were just baked into other abilities or were added in a different way.
IE: Slice N Dice for Rogue. It was taken away from Assassination and Sub, and made a baseline haste increase instead, the remaining haste that wasn't added comes in the form of Alacrity. If they were to add back SnD to those 2 specs, thats a talent tier and a baseline haste increase lost. Which they will need to adjust the rest of the spec so it doesn't play poorly.

This will happen many times over with every class, so there will be major class overhauls, just not like Legion. You won't wake up on Day 1 and have a radically different playing class, but for the devs there will be a lot of changes to be made to jigsaw some of these pieces back in.

[CiccioBello]

They didn't say "no major class changes" they said no Legion level class changes, no overhauls. Obviously they will need to create new talents and rebalance/add to the leveling experience.

Sorry but what's the difference? There are classes / specs that need an overhaul it is undeniable as subRogue, survHunter etc ... take for example the shaman, you cannot call an unPruning putting the whole game of totems back and not reviewing the whole class, it is not enough that you change some talent, put back some spell, base line and call it the day, you have to do a review in the concept of the 3 specs of the shaman otherwise you make the same identical mistake made in the transition from legion to bfa and it is under everyone's eye how it ended.
For this reason, saying unpruning and no overhaul is only a way to generate hype, but in fact there will be very little.

[Onikaroshi]

Sorry but what's the difference? There are classes / specs that need an overhaul it is undeniable as subRogue, survHunter etc ... take for example the shaman, you cannot call an unPruning putting the whole game of totems back and not reviewing the whole class, it is not enough that you change some talent, put back some spell, base line and call it the day, you have to do a review in the concept of the 3 specs of the shaman otherwise you make the same identical mistake made in the transition from legion to bfa and it is under everyone's eye how it ended.
For this reason, saying unpruning and no overhaul is only a way to generate hype, but in fact there will be very little.

Nothing is in need of a legion level overhaul, as in changing the whole playstyle of the spec (survival hunter, fury warrior, and demo lock for example). The most needed is some look at the rotation and figure out what's missing or what doesn't work. That's a major change, not an overhaul.

[jzhbee]

Okay, but what is the point of this post? It's all stuff that's already been said. This is also just your opinion.
Are you aware forums are supposed to be for discussion? Not for a blog post.

[taishar68]

It seems to me the content of a major patch rather than an expansion.
I hope I'm wrong.

If I had a dollar for every time someone has looked at an upcoming expansion and said "it looks like a major patch", I'd have enough to keep two strippers attention for at least one really bad song.

SL will launch with 4 leveling zones plus an End game zone (Maw), Torghast, the usual bevy of dungeons and raids, revamped starting experience and leveling experience, the 4 covenants with their specific abilities and soul binds, and whatever class changes they're cooking up. I'm curious as to which major patches have had that much content in the past.

As to the quality of said content, that remains to be seen. But SL appears to have as much content to launch with as most of the expansions. Now it does lack a new class or race, but, I think we've had way too much bloat in that department as it is.

[Wangming]

Okay, OP, here is my blog post on the subject.

I freakin hate current retail WoW. It does 80% of what I like about MMOs wrong. Maybe 90%.

But it is too early to hate on Shadowlands. Remember Mop? A lot of people were skeptical. Hell, I was one of them.

Fresh after Cataclysm and the waste of space that was Uldum I was sure we would just get a stupid meme continent with Luce Bree and Chakie Jan doing nonsense for two years. I was super wrong and I am glad I was wrong.

[Stardrift]

Nice blog post

Isn't that what this whole website is meant for?

Most redundant overused comment award goes to...

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, OP, here is my blog post on the subject.

I freakin hate current retail WoW. It does 80% of what I like about MMOs wrong. Maybe 90%.

But it is too early to hate on Shadowlands. Remember Mop? A lot of people were skeptical. Hell, I was one of them.

Fresh after Cataclysm and the waste of space that was Uldum I was sure we would just get a stupid meme continent with Luce Bree and Chakie Jan doing nonsense for two years. I was super wrong and I am glad I was wrong.

Look at that. A "blogpost" incited conversation out of you.

[Mirishka]

I was thinking about whether or not to buy the new expansion and therefore whether to trust the bilzz (for the umpteenth time) or not.
So I went to the different sites to understand what will really be new in the next expansion based on the information read.

1) New level system, as far as I think a level squish is correct, I personally am not particularly excited about this new feature, also because all the characters I have are already at the highest level.

2) No new class / spec, although 9 classes x 36 spec start to be many I think that anyway an addition of a targeted and well thought out class / spec would have been a nice thing.

3) As there are no new / spec classes, I seem to have understood that there will not be an overhaul to the classes in general and that in essence they will be the same as those present in BFA. It is true that they have declared an UnPruning of the classes but at the same time Holinka also said that there will be no major changes to the classes which leaves me very perplexed. The two things do not go hand in hand, it is not possible to do an unPruning without necessarily reviewing the classes.
One of the elephants in the room (I say 1 because unfortunately there are more than one in the room) by BfA, was a class design not up to par, too poor and superficial and after reading that an Overhaul class is not a thing you can do during an expansion (Ion's words) but it is a job that is done between one expansion and another, now that we are told that basically there will be no overhaul .. interesting.

4) Covenant System. It is true that too little is known about this system and even if the idea is not badly frankly I'm afraid it will turn into the umpteenth wrong experiment from the blizz.
My fears are as follows: given the blizz's famous ability to balance its systems, the fact that changing Covenant will be something very expensive, especially in terms of time, it worries me a lot. It frightens me also how they will decide to create the various covenant perks, will it be another hell of proc as happened in BfA?

5) Tower of Damned, it seems to me a little like major expansion featur.

I agree with some of your points but the simple truth is we don't have enough info (not nearly enough) to judge at this point.

Level squish by itself would have been jarring, but they're also redoing the leveling experience so that each expansion can effectively function like vanilla (level all the way to cap, then move onto the SL content) so I'm actually pretty excited about it. Level 60 is kind of the 'iconic' level cap in the game, so IMO it'll be kind of neat to go back to that. And we probably won't even notice a few weeks in, it'll feel normal.

No new class sucks, I was really hoping we would finally get Tinkers given the amount of gnome content in BFA.

I don't think unpruning will be a huge thing... some specs will get 1 or 2 iconic abilities back (for instance all rogues will poison again, and hunters get Kill Shot/Eyes of the Beast) and that's likely the bulk of it. I don't think a huge overhaul of the classes will be necessary, just some minor adjustments so that e.g. poisons isn't just a straight buff for Outlaw/Sub.

We don't know enough about Covenants to really know how they will turn out.

Tower of the Damned sounds fun, but I'm not a big rogue-like type gamer so I fully expect that I won't enjoy it nearly as much as some do.