People who completed most of the grind and then quit. They’re done with the grind. It’s behind them.
People will put up with a lot of weird lore if the game is fun. One heck of a lot of people found it not fun.
3 Likes
:uncomfortable/concerned face:
6 Likes
Lol@the obviously biased person who told everyone they are wearing nostalgia goggles defending Shadowlands purely because of sentiment, that’s hilarious.
I dodged a bullet getting out of Shadowlands. I gave it a try, didn’t like what was happening, so I instantly moved over to Classic. My opinion on Shadowlands ends at the raid and the actual good BiS legendary being locked behind a world boss (LOL) that didn’t come out til weeks later.
The time gating on stuff that didn’t even matter was turned up to 11 in Doodoolands.
That’s the model now. When Retail sucks, you just go play one of the 200 versions of Classic. Then when it’s good you go back, rinse and repeat.
3 Likes
SL was miles ahead of DF which offered non raiders/non m+ nothing to do. TWW offers delves which is better but nowhere near as rich as torghast.
6 Likes
I guess that’s fair… and DF was no great expac, but I comfortably put it middle of the pack. Below MoP, but above Cata for me. I can list a few things I didn’t like about DF, but I have to think really hard about the few things I liked about SL… I think it caps at me for one single side quest (the Bastian one with the farmer) and 1-2 of the Dungeons (ironically Necrotic wake and Mists)… though mists annoys me at times.
2 Likes
You didn’t like Revendreth, Sire Denathrius, or the Castle Nathria raid?
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This is pretty much what’s wrong with Retail right now. Hermits driving solo play.
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The story sucked
the systems were bad
no mounting in the maw was iconically dumb
it never made sense
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Spicy take: I liked it. Finally got some mileage out of running wild on my Worgen Warrior, made travel form feel like a big perk, made stealing mounts from the Mawsworn feel worthwhile, and made Corridor Creeper insanely valuable.
Your mileage may vary of course.
2 Likes
it was a needless change, and by that logic hearthstones should never have worked there too
4 Likes
I came back to shadowlands late in the last season and actually had a lot of fun doing none of the end-game zone stuff. It was just me, myself, and being an over-geared WW in +6 Mythic+ runs.
I was also exploring the factions finally and having a good time with all the silliness.
I don’t hate DF or TWW by any means but the whole story really killed my passion for things. It’s all my personal take so I won’t go into the details.
SL was my first genuine time back and I had fun. DF and TWW were my continued time back and I keep asking myself where the WoW-factor is? I don’t dislike what’s happening but it doesn’t feel like the old game I loved.
3 Likes
World of Warcraft is an RPG. Is it needless that only Herbalists can revive the plants in Kara Crypts, that Mages can decipher the Arcane tomes using their knowledge, that Hunters can learn Enchanted Flare, etc?
It adds flavor to the game. Unfortunately it seems the lesson Blizzard was forced to learn was “open world Retail Andies hate RPG mechanics” and you only see fun stuff like that inside dungeons/raids or in Classic/Season of Discovery.
4 Likes
I did not like Revendreth at all - it was so unfun to navigate without flying. Yes, Sire Denathrius - as a character - was great though (add that to the list yep)… but CN kinda burned me out due to how damn technical and unforgiving the H Sire fight was. The second we got him down, I literally logged out in his boss room and didn’t return until around 10.0
To be fair, this is one of the criticisms I still have with DF & TWW: rather than make efforts to have Mythic Raiding be something Heroic raiders can transition into easily, they just jack up the difficulty of the last Heroic fight to an absurd degree vs. every other fight in the Heroic raid. It buys them an extra 2-3 weeks of progression from most guilds, in exchange for the rest of the season as guilds fall apart and/or go inactive after getting AOTC… since no one wants to bother dealing with these last bosses that refuse to go on farm after having AOTC… because if 1 person messes up, it’s still a wipe and that’s not fun.
2 Likes
Making the gameplay tedious for “lore reasons” was a bad move.
3 Likes
Shadowlands was cool. It was just plagued with bad systems that were vastly improved over time. If it had come out likr 9.2 would have been way cooler.
The story sucks though, sparing sylvanas life was insulting
3 Likes
As someone who didn’t touch SL pretty much at all until after 11.0, this really bears repeating.
You can’t overgear or outlevel timegates, and SL is still chock-full of them.
Anima and the Archivists’ Codex is still horribly designed. Why do anima and artifacts take up inventory space and have to be taken to specific locations to be used when we’ve had things like artifact power and some sort of supply/resource currency in expansions both before and after SL?
Many quests make use of items or actions that have needlessly long cooldowns. Lemme just stand next to this quest objective while I wait 15-20 seconds for the ability I just used to be available again, and repeat until I use it 10 or more times.
Then there’s the fact that you have to use teleports or flight paths to travel between zones because of SL’s unique layout. Which isn’t too awful on its own, but it’s just another cut that adds to the rest.
One ‘positive’ thing though…holy crap does SL have a lot of collectibles. Sure, the majority of them are locked behind either RNG drops or specific covenants and all of their timegating, but these can kinda be mitigated by alt use and of course any combat-based gating is essentially irrelevant at 80.
9 Likes
The only thing I disliked about SL was the fact that it made us solo players feel like such second class citizens. Everything was based around hardcore three pillars content and if you weren’t in there, there was really nothing for you.
Fortunately DF and TWW have taken steps to resolve that, and I feel like I have a place here again.
4 Likes
I really think Torghast was done dirty. Even if we include the “timer” as a critique, Torghast was a decently fun mode all things considered. Like most rogue like games, it started off a bit hard and gradually became a mob steamroller. With more variations on level aesthetics (not grey on black grey, in agreeable grey) and either gear/cosmetics early on, Torghast might have been a better fan favorite.
Much like the Maw, I think Torghast suffered in popularity due to being 100% required for legendaries and for its aesthetics, even if the aesthetics were in line with what that whole godforsaken area was supposed to be.
6 Likes
It sounds petty to say, but I’ll always have a bitter feeling towards SL. It was the first time in the game where I actually didn’t have fun. The game felt more like a chore. Friends I’d played with for years quit and never came back (and still have no interest to) and my guild that has been around since Vanilla got absolutely massacred and the numbers still haven’t recovered. They’ve removed a chunk of the systems to make it more tolerable now but every time I open my friends list or guild tab it reminds me of the damage that expansion did to the game and to my playing experience. Except for the occasional transmog run I still tend to avoid the content. Weird expansion PTSD I guess.
3 Likes
You’re free to enjoy whatever content you like. I too remember Shadowlands fondly. I’m a dungeons-first player, and mythic plus in Shadowlands had bangers for dungeons. And we haven’t gotten a better raid than Castle Nathria since.
The questline in Bastion brought all kinds of feels. That farmer in Redridge Mountains that died to the Scourge. Uther learning the rest of the story with respect to Arthas. And Devos did nothing wrong- she was 100% correct that the Path was flawed.
Then Ardenweald. Oh boy. The Ysera questline was unforgettable.
3 Likes