Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Huntermyth]

i agree and raise with this : whoever designed castle nathria should get a salary raise because fights are extremely fun and challenging, plus the interior is just blast.

dungeons are engaging and as m+ dungeon crawler i really REALLY liked them.

pvp is same old same old but that is a minor issue for me because i don't engage in organized pvp, just casual bg here and there.

to sum it up, i've never enjoyed an expansion this much when it was this early in the expansion. so much to do, so much to do (read the last sentence with moroes' voice)

[WowIsDead64]

Damn...huge surprise here. According to your posting history (and username) on this forum since you joined in 2015...I'd say that is when you stopped playing...and didn't ever touch WoW.

Do you try to say, that things like this aren't true:

[Issalice]

It's alright, by far better than BfA and Legion, when I say legion solely due to the artifact aspect. I hated only having one weapon. I would have loved it if each raid tier had an artifact appearance but it felt so boring just chugging along and getting no new weapons.

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This is the internet. Where people have nothing better to do than search through their "enemy/target's" post history and throw it in their face randomly without any real motivation, thought process or cause.

Do you try to say, that things like this aren't true:

[Wild]

I know it is an unpopular opinion. But I think SL will ends up a worse expansion than BFA.

I have been pessimistic about SL since beta: there is Nothing new in SL, except covenant and Torghast. Covenant and Torghast are refreshing and new in lore and story. but in long term, they will do more harm than good to gameplay, because of the balance issue.

The biggest problem of SL is there is no new content. End game has been the same for last 3 expansions: M+, raid, pvp. They are good as usual, but also grow old and boring. I am not sure Torghast can even be qualified as a type of endgame, and it doesn't look impressive so far.

It is not enough for today's ever changing market and players. I predict players will get bored and quit SL faster than any previous expansions.

There will never be "new content" as you see it. This game is 15 years old. Seriously, have you ever experienced a 15 year old game that brings out all new content, like a new game within the game itself?
Blizzard has done a very, very good job with SL. One of the best expansions ever made. I would put it into top 3 xpacs with LK and BC and maybe Legion. This is all based on PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. However, calling this xpac bad and saying that it has no new content is just wrong by facts. The game has brought a lot of "new" stuff within the existing game that is a lot of fun for most of the people playing it.
If you are looking for a "new experience" within WoW, you will always be disappointed. This game cannot be re-invented after 15 years.

[Ermelloth]

I like SL so far much more than both Legion and BFA, and more than Cataclysm for sure.

Last time I had so much fun was MoP / WoD (I really liked WoD PvP). I was afraid, like so many others, that, once I get to 60, the game will become boring. But it's not.

Also - first time in many years, solo content is CHALLENGING. World quests are tougher, battle pet trainers nicely fight back, etc. Maw, higher Torghast levels, etc. - you can succumb to AI powers if you slack / aren't aware enough. And at the same time you aren't feeling hopeless like, for example, trying to fight an Elite mob in Darkwhisper Gorge in Classic Wow unless you're a tank (SL solo content's difficulty is just fine - not trivial and not over the board).

Covenants are also a great concept. They offer a lot of content, and, yes, its rather good that it's "gated", cause otherwise I'd feel absolutely overwhelmed with the amount of things to do. The activities are quite diverse, with a LOT of new stuff - mirror network, anima channeling, etc. And yet I only play my main character atm and explored Venthyr only, w/o even touching the other 3 yet. Ember Court is a thing of its own, with plenty of stuff I haven't even dealt with...

PvP system is also greatly improved with PvP vendor available.

Finally, no more TF / WF crap, and Blizz constantly hotfixes broken / OP specs and traits. For example, Sub Rogues in PvP enjoyed 1shotting others just about a week and got seriously nerfed shortly thereafter. Same with few overtuned Kyrian soulbind abilities - took them a few days only. In comparison to previous expansions when it took Blizzard months (!) to fix obviously broken abilities like bugged Stampede.

So, yes, my faith in Blizzard has returned, SL so far is very surprising in terms of quality. I haven't played so much since mid WoD.

[Zka]

Every expansion seems like the coolest shit ever in the first month. Let's get back to this topic after a few patches.

Personally I don't like it as much. Raid design is still retarded (unnecessary complexity and overdone awareness checks) and the same shit is infliltrating 5mans ever increasingly.
Removal of WF/TF and lowering m+ ilvl was a mistake from my pov, these make this kind of content much less replayable.
Grinds have changed in nature but they still will take the same amount of time as previous grinds.
Covenants are completely unnecessary and they should be spec-bound. It's annoying when I have to switch between dps and heal but cannot change my conduits to match. It's gonna feel the worse the more conduits we have.
I like the details added to the rare mobs and toys and so on. But these will not make an expansion any good. It's always about group pve content for me and that seems do be designed for teens.

[kaminaris]

Torghast has soul ash and leggo recipes and followers

The extra stuff through things like rep and anima are for catch up or to help players who don’t do things like m+ and raid or the anima conductor which gives the offering to help get more leggo powers

In 4 weeks even casuals will have 200ilvl

The rep grind right now is for profession items or items to help fight rng like 181 boots or a leggo recipe

The maw rep is a different story As the grind will always be a thing


BfA was a constant grind and it was a bad design which is factually backed up by the fact they had to remove the grind

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Players are undergoing culture shock from the fact we can be done with the grind

It’s like when you spend 4 years in an abusive relationship and don’t know how to react to a good one

You are not interested in leggo recepies, you just want bis. I already got my bis previous week for 2 specs so that chapter is closed.
Leggo is also crafted, now I will need couple of that shit more to upgrade and im done.
Funny enough most specs are like this.

200 ilvl is nothing, you can get that right now assuming you will grind your ass on M+ and get lucky or be a part of armor stacking.

181 is irrelevant, leggo recipies are irrelevant (again, those are somewhat deterministic and can be acquired pretty much already)

Followers are useless as whole "adventure" table is useless.

BfA had no grind, you got hefty amount of AP from any endgame content be it M+ or pvp or raids, as opposed to 35 anima from a hour long M+.
And hefty amount from weekly chest as opposed to zero from vault.

BfA profession at least had almost mythic quality gear to offer like alchemy trinket (which was really good) or legs or rings. SL profession are on par with M+ 2 rewards...
Which is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay below normal raid.

[Aleksej89]

Sylvanas hasn't, as far as I can recall, even made an appearance yet in Shadowlands.

She was in at least 3 SLands cinematics/videos, more than any other character probably.
You can bet your dps meters that we will be seeing her a loooooooooooot at some point.

[Aggrophobic]

Claiming this one will be worse than WoD shows how slanted and skewed your "opinion" is of this game.

It is alreay way worse than WoD.
WoD is not even the second worst on this list.

At least WoD had good raids. Same raid or don't get rewarded-system though.

[Eapoe]

It is alreay way worse than WoD.
WoD is not even the second worst on this list.

At least WoD had good raids. Same raid or don't get rewarded-system though.

Hahhahahahhahahahhahahahhahahhahahhahahahah.

[Drusin]

No post WoD pruning xpac will ever make it to #1 lol
That xpac would have to be so mind bogglingly good it's unrealistic

[ClassicPeon]

Casually looks through thread to see if some interesting counterpints are made.

ah wowdead and aggrophobic already here. Yep. Thread no longer has any relevant discussion going on.

/next

[Ludvig]

It's better than bfa but that's not saying much. Until classes are fun to play again the content doesn't really matter.

[JohnnyRockets]

It has already knocked TBC out of 2nd place

Stopped reading here.

[tru]

With limited play time I just feel my time is doing quests. Quest for anima for ashes for covenant. I've liked what story I've seen so far but damn by the time I get caught up doing all those tower floors and everything else I've not had time to actually try to gear my character and I'm tired of playing. It probably ranks 3rd for me. But legions class design and at least with what I played I had real fun time. If classic bc came out tomorrow I'd drop sl in a heartbeat.


Oh and anyone noticed botters? I've reported the same two players for over a week now in Arden. And they still there. By the time something's done the damage will have been done.

[Zarc]

1. Vanilla
2. TBC
3. WoTLK
4. Legion

Maybe Shadowlands can take the number 5 slot away from MoP, but it is too early to say.

My assessment so far:

Dungeons is good. Mythic+ is the best part of the game at the moment.

Torghast was incredibly boring the first week when I played it solo, then last week we had a blast 3-manning it, including screwing up and having to start over at one point, but unfortunately they massively nerfed it this week and made it a complete snooze fest. Too easy now. Boring. So mixed on this one.

PvP is a lot better than BfA, I do enjoy it quite a bit but at the same time everyone is too squishy at the moment, I want to have to work harder to get somebody down, and I don't want anyone to be able to stun lock me to death in a duel. So mixed here too.

Leveling was really bad. Clearly the worst part of the expansion. I did not feel like I was playing an MMO at all. The world felt desolate. There was no launch feeling of "this is it, everybody is here, this is an event that happens now and will never be recreated". All of that atmosphere was missing. For all I knew I might as well have been leveling one month into the new expansion. It was all too comfortable, too smooth, too instantiated, players too separated. I did not substantially feel the presence of other players in the world for an equal degree of enjoyment and annoyance, the same feelings you get from being with people in the real world. The leveling was too streamlined, too short, too easy. The MMO experience has been completely butchered and forgone in the name of polishing.

[Osmeric]

Shadowlands has given me the feeling it's better to be not playing it than to be playing it. The personal cost and annoyance exceeds perceived benefits, to an extent I have never seen in any WoW expansion.

Not surprisingly, I have stopped playing it, even though my sub runs through February. And now that I'm falling behind, the "not playing" feeling can only get stronger.

The only time I have ever felt this way -- stopping playing with little regret -- is in other MMOs when I stopped playing one for good.

[NineSpine]

Casually looks through thread to see if some interesting counterpints are made.

ah wowdead and aggrophobic already here. Yep. Thread no longer has any relevant discussion going on.

/next

The problem with shadowlands is that it’s a new coat of paint on the same series of problems. These problems center around one central design flaw: the game is not an MMO anymore. It’s been turned into a multiplayer action rpg looter. The open world is at-best a trivial side activity.

Classic has made this problem seem much greater. If you aren’t into grinding out multiple difficulty levels of content, this game isn’t for you anymore. If you like a feeling of being in a persistent online world, this game isn’t for you anymore. If you want to experiment with weird builds and character concepts, this game isn’t for you anymore.

The sandbox-y mmo elements that a great number of us fell in love with wow for are long gone, and have been replaced by transparent systems management and relentless instanced content grinds. We are now three expansions into a doubling down on the “what if wow was a looter rather than an mmo” design and it’s just exhausting for those of us who want to play an mmo.

[Osmeric]

I know it is an unpopular opinion. But I think SL will ends up a worse expansion than BFA.

I have been pessimistic about SL since beta: there is Nothing new in SL, except covenant and Torghast. Covenant and Torghast are refreshing and new in lore and story. but in long term, they will do more harm than good to gameplay, because of the balance issue.

The biggest problem of SL is there is no new content. End game has been the same for last 3 expansions: M+, raid, pvp. They are good as usual, but also grow old and boring. I am not sure Torghast can even be qualified as a type of endgame, and it doesn't look impressive so far.

It is not enough for today's ever changing market and players. I predict players will get bored and quit SL faster than any previous expansions.

I almost completely agree, except for the Covenant and Torghast lore/story being "refreshing".

Although it's by no means certain, I could see SL ending the WoW franchise, or at least converting it to a F2P/P2W game. I could even see Kotick selling Blizzard to someone like Tencent.

[ashblond]

There will never be "new content" as you see it. This game is 15 years old. Seriously, have you ever experienced a 15 year old game that brings out all new content, like a new game within the game itself?
Blizzard has done a very, very good job with SL. One of the best expansions ever made. I would put it into top 3 xpacs with LK and BC and maybe Legion. This is all based on PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. However, calling this xpac bad and saying that it has no new content is just wrong by facts. The game has brought a lot of "new" stuff within the existing game that is a lot of fun for most of the people playing it.
If you are looking for a "new experience" within WoW, you will always be disappointed. This game cannot be re-invented after 15 years.

It is only the 1st month. Any expansion has been praised by players as good/great during its 1st month. It doesn't mean much.

Check it again in 2 months.