With 9.1 coming, I kind of want to take stock of where we are, since if nothing else, Shadowlands has brought out some strong emotions, pro and con, from the player base.
Given that I tend not to do PvP unless I have no other choice, this is just about PvE, and really is just my opinions. Feel free to differ using your own. Also, if you’re one to fish for achievements before reading, I switched mains this xpac.
STORY
The Good: Got us away from Void and Legion stuff, which was getting repetitive; also got us away from Team Red/Team Blue that BfA rode all the way down into the dirt.
The Bad: Sylvanas’ plot armor appears to have been fortified, the Jailer was basically dropped in without any build-up (and isn’t particularly striking as the villain to carry an xpac); the whole concept of the Shadowlands has plot holes all over.
The Verdict: Feels half-baked, especially the walking plot hole known as Bastion/the Kyrians, but may yet make more sense than BfA did.
RAIDS
The Good: Venthyr were the most interesting covenant and Denathrius a perfect guy to hate; nice thought behind trinket design, well-told story with a payoff at the end.
The Bad: Overtuned on Heroic difficulty (and arguably Normal as well given the ilvl of gear at the beginning of the xpac); cheaped-out cutscene that ended it; bad encounter design on Sire fight for some ranged classes (i.e., BM hunters and Demo locks in P2).
The Verdict: Could have held up as an end-of-xpac raid had Denathrius been given a bigger role in the story, but Blizzard needs to redo both Normal and Heroic difficulty levels so every level of the game isn’t a wannabe esport.
DUNGEONS
The Good: Leveling dungeons appropriately tuned for the purpose, M+ had clear difficulty breakpoints
The Bad: Prideful turned high keys into World of Routequest, some timers were (and are) too tight depending on the affix
The Verdict: Someone made the decision to turn WoW into an esports hub and the dungeon experience will never be the same for it – but is that good or bad?
SYSTEMS/BORROWED POWER
The Good: Better than BfA, where we all had to enroll in a 12-step program called Azerite Anonymous; covenant flavor actually hit the mark.
The Bad: The ripcord might not have been needed, but we skydivers needed a pilot chute of some kind – unbalanced powers wrought havoc on multi-spec classes, and some borrowed powers were just unfun to use.
The Verdict: Valiant effort at trying something different, but was probably a 2 on a scale of 1-5.
GENERAL CLASS/SPEC DESIGN
The Good: A cursory attempt was made at unpruning.
The Bad: Lack of attention to output balance rendered half the DPS classes kick-able from higher-level groups; attempt at unpruning usually only added abilities that led to suboptimal output and thus went unused; design felt generally rushed and ignored feedback from players (or, developers simply didn’t know how to fix what they’d broken).
The Verdict: Two xpacs in a row now where baseline class/spec design and balance has been questionable.
TORGHAST
The Good: Good-faith attempt to deliver challenging solo content, concept of “powering up” led to some fun experiences at later floors.
The Bad: When solo’ed, it was overtuned for some specs and trivial for others; zones were too homogenized and forgettable; Soul Ash should have never been capped, especially given there were no other rewards.
The Verdict: Delivered a decent experience for groups, but the reward mechanism was a failure that undercut the whole idea significantly.
QoL/other
The Good: Zones certainly felt unique to one another, art team hit another home run, flying addition looks (for now) fairly straightforward and quick.
The Bad: Not enough flight paths; removal of flight whistle made no sense; Oribos makes the Exodar look like a ergonomic masterpiece; the entirety of the Maw; snarky voice lines given to Ve’nari makes me want to punch her/it; extreme three-dimensional ground pathing (Revendreth, Bastion) is the equivalent of developers trolling the players.
The Verdict: Everything feels like it was built to artificially keep players stuck in various spots and increase the time-played metric, which is insulting. (Note: I would also say the post-Pathfinder inter-zone flying experience looks like a cluster forming, but that’s in 9.1, not 9.0.x.)
