| Shadowlands 9.0 | Shadowlands 9.1 (including changes implemented in 9.0.5) |
|---|---|
| Torghast, a major feature of the expansion, provides no gear rewards yet requires a decent power level in order to succeed; legendary items may be crafted from currency rewards, but only one may be equipped at a time and crafting them at a high level requires weeks of Torghast clears and costs a significant amount of gold and/or crafting materials. | Torghast will continue to lack gear rewards even though it will require an even greater power level due to the 4 additional layers with higher difficulties and multiple punishing torments; simple completion will be not be enough, as players will need sufficient gear to defeat enemies quickly so that they can maintain the new “streak” buff and obtain a sufficient score to unlock the next layer. |
| The Mythic+ system has a difficult barrier to entry due to punishing dungeon mechanics and affixes, a toxic community that encourages overgeared (fast) clears, and third-party addons that discriminate against players based on prior experience. | The Mythic+ system benefits from the added feature of Valor points (with notable lack of gear vendor), but still retains a timer feature to penalize slower clears, and will become further inaccessible due to the addition of an in-game rating system and an influx of overgeared teams looking to clear low-level keys quickly for Valor point rewards. |
| Raids require organized teams that commit to challenging gameplay for hours at a time, yet gear drop rates are so low that players must commit to raiding for weeks or months in order to obtain a full gearset; group leaders discriminate based on item level, class/spec, and prior experience. | Raids will continue to require premade groups, and will further increase the power gap between competitive and non-competitive players by introducing specific items with unique, power-related rewards in addition to the high base stats of the items; such items are not likely to be guaranteed to drop, and will require consistent raiding in an organized group to obtain reliably. |
| Casual (unrated) PvP gameplay is a way to obtain a full set of iLvl 197 (iLvl 200 with an extreme time commitment) gear, but typically requires competition against (humiliation and nearly instantaneous defeat at the hands of) enemy players in significantly more powerful PvE and PvP gear. | Players looking for a way to gear up through PvP will be at an even further disadvantage, as any gear they earn will be half a difficulty (6 item levels) below equivalent PvE gear when not in PvP content, and with fewer PvEers gearing up through PvP, unrated casual PvPers will be more likely to be humiliated by rated PvPers farming Honor to upgrade their gear. |
| Players looking to gear up through open world content or non-competitive PvE content may only reach a maximum of iLvl 197 in 9 slots (covenant gear fully upgraded) and iLvl 194 in other slots through world quests; Callings award iLvl 203 gear only very rarely, reputations may award iLvl 200 gear in only a few select slots, and World Bosses drop iLvl 207 gear only very rarely and only for a few select slots. | Korthia daily/weekly open world content was announced to be awarding some sort of currency for gear upgrades, but such a system is not available on the 9.1 PTR yet, and Shadowlands game developers have demonstrated a clear policy of not allowing any rewards from open world content or soloable content to compete with rewards from competitive PvE. Note: To be updated once more information is available. |
270 Likes
Yes more WQs can’t wait to play them on top of all others!!
i’ll just do M+ runs i give up WQs lol
2 Likes
Upvote for the formatting alone. Content is spot on too.
123 Likes
Stopped reading here. IO = achievements , it doesn’t have anything to do with rating.
12 Likes
Kind of sounds like WoW’s going the way of Wildstar at the moment.
Can’t wait to see how that turns out, makes me wonder how Wildstar’s do-
Oh wait.
95 Likes
Classic will keep retail alive enough for the competitive base. Wildstar didn’t have the wonderful crutch of an earlier, better version of the game under the same subscription model.
Let’s see what sales look like for the expansion after Shadowlands. If they keep this design direction, I know of at least three fewer sales. Not that it amounts to much, but I’m interested to see if Shadowlands is really the “last chance” expansion that a lot of us said it would be.
16 Likes
This seems like a lot of drama and hyperbole just to further some victimized narrative that I’ve never experienced in current Shadowlands.
Not sure why there’s emphasis on “only one legendary.” It’s been like that for a long time. Or did we forget Legion?
It’s not difficult to get into M+ and find yourself a static group. M+ has always been timer based. Don’t know why this is emphasized as a problem.
Raids have always required organization to an extent, especially the beginning of an expansion. No, people are not automatically toxic for raids. Stop trying to pug Heroic on low ilevel characters and you won’t get declined.
PvP has been like this the majority of its life. Welcome to PvP. Don’t do it if you don’t like it. Casual PvE players already get their own gear set. Low keys aren’t difficult to run to get to 200+. Valor is thrown at you left and right and you can use it on pieces to get to 200 if you want.
And expecting to get Heroic or Mythic raid level gear from a WQ is hilarious. BfA set a piss poor precedent and no, there’s a gearing path. Don’t want to do group content? Then you’re in a perfect spot to do world content at that ilevel, complete with your very own open world set bonus.
54 Likes
for real. didn’t even know that could be done on these forums
8 Likes
Yeah, the Syntax and Features pinned post goes through some of it.
7 Likes
That’s a whole lot of words, just to say that you don’t understand or care about the issues with the game for a lot of people.
53 Likes
That might be the least objective review of systems that I’ve read all day.
18 Likes
OP pretty much spelled out several of the issues with the game, and how 9.1 is doing nothing to fix them. Great post.
52 Likes
I love the formatting of your post!
I wish these forums could get some of the “easy” formatting tools that the newer Reddit has.
4 Likes
It’s not a problem to pressure people into doing better over time, it only becomes a problem when you place a timer on there and expecting people to beat it in record time. M0s have been completely forgotten since the ilevel bumps from M+ are too good to ignore for its comparability to raid gear.
I think it would be ideal to make M0 gear not that irrelevant and able to reach M15 ilevels with enough valor grinding.
Besides that, the time investment into getting an M+ group together as DPS can be pretty steep overall. I can hunt ~5-6 monsters in Monster Hunter compared to getting 1 M+ group together. Even then there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to finish the run on time.
Not true.
While there has been some meshing of raid trinkets and sets in the past with PvP gear, the ilvl difference wasn’t really present to someone that was in full resilience gear or PvP Power/Defense. The former being more unfavored since resilience gear hogged a secondary stat spot.
19 Likes
This just in: non-competitive players can’t compete against competitive players
In other news, scientists discover water is indeed wet
20 Likes
The only thing i don’t understand is the argument that somehow M+ is absolutely inacessible to casuals.
The system is split in 25+ difficulty settings specifically to try to accommodate as many as possible. If all you want is a casual run, running a +5 will help with your gearing. You even get gear and vault rewards without timing the key, making it irrelevant to anyone not trying to push higher tiers.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of issues with the M+ system, but these mostly pop up when trying to pug 15+ keys, extrapolating these to lower keys is falacious.
Same logic applies to raiding to a lesser degree.
Literally the only way the game alienates anyone at the moment is if they absolutely never want to interact with other players under any circumstances… What’s the point of playing an MMO then?
18 Likes
The weirdest part is that all these non-competitive folks who we’re constantly being told are vast majority can’t manage to find each other in game to play with. It addresses all of their problems.
11 Likes
There was always a pretty solid solo gearing path in WoW. Maybe these people don’t want to do that?
I mainly enjoyed doing crafting, low mythic plus, and world quests to gear up on alts. Now that gearing path is completely shot.
And with it gone, it won’t magically make me a more competitive player who wants to push all my alts in group content. It will just make me not play. You can’t force players into content they don’t want to do.
29 Likes
Compared to the crap we see in GD, this formatting is refreshing 
1 Like
The other day me and some people in my guild decided to pop out a quick heroic to get a quest done for a few of us for the Queen’s conservatory.
I made the comment about 3/4 the way through “You know. This is fun. I am actually having fun!”
They didn’t get what I meant. It was just 5 friends who all met in game, going through a dungeon with a shared goal in mind. No timers, no annoying affixes, no instant one shot mechanics, no frantic pulling, not a night spent trying a boss over and over again because everything is tuned so high, not needing 5 weakauras just to get through a fight, no need to plan an optimal route - Just having a good conversation and playing the game.
Anyway, no point here I guess.
29 Likes