I was on the FFXIV side during this time, watching our Novice Network channels become overfilled with “WoW refugees” who specifically left because of Shadowlands and spent significant time in the FFXIV chats and discords complaining about how bad Shadowlands was and how Shadowlands made them quit WoW.
Amusingly this “no longer current” change benefited BFA a lot more than SL. BFA is actually pretty good when you don’t have to deal with grinding azerite.
Wasn’t WoW already heading towards the downward descent that was SL? And then a lawsuit + players leaving in droves made them rethink their design with DF? And now we have TWW with uphill progression rather than downhill?
So then yes, SL was trash? All because it’s core premise was to gatekeep players whereas DF flipped that around?
Should we judge SL so harshly based on how Blizzard had clear intentions vs DF’s new philosophies? Didn’t SL take a massive L so DF could fly home?
My thoughts on Shadowlands, summarized:
Man I hate all these SL apologists… SL was the worst expansion to date. Full stop. Only expansion that blizzard fully admits they fd up. Had as few subscribers as WOD despite being fluffed by all the classic versions of the game.
WOD story was basically just a time travel to see a cool but of history of the game in detail. It didn’t have a ton of actual impact on the story.
SL BUTCHERED the story. The covenants were fine story wise but the main story and the whole afterlife had huge massive implications on all of wows history. Dreadlords working for the jailor?!
TLDR: shadow lands worst expansion of all time.
SL was full of systems, conduits , leggos, renown abilities it was just bad
Hate me? Oh well. I don’t think about you at all.
Honestly, the real hate was towards the length of seasons. This made people very tired of the bosses and main characters. And the jailer’s plan is never really told to us.
You in particular? No… Just the general theme that’s showed up recently with the doomers lol
there’s still no flying allowed in the maw and the increased anima gain from hitting rank 3 on all 4 of your covenants things is still character specific and not account wide. i do not see the harm in changing these things when its old and dusty content. of course its not as bad farming anima now but doing this stuff on-content was pretty miserable
I don’t think it’s as well-known, but the Shadowlands exodus even managed to pull Guild Wars 2 out of maintenance mode and back into making expansions again.
Because the actual content itself is kind of fine. Where covenants ended up was a good place, disregarding how they started.
The dungeons themselves were pretty good. The m+ scene (after the first season) was very fun and even kind of balanced until Gavels got out.
Raiding was really the only sore spot, content wise. Nathria was a fantastic raid, S tier for sure, but it lasted way too long. The maw raid was just a heaping spoonful too much after the forced maw grind of season 1 and 2. (Btw, this was the dark, gritty world all those edgelords keep asking for). But the sepulcher was super weird and oddly difficult. Like they knew they wanted that tier to be able to last for a long, long time while they cooked Dragonflight.
If you take out the context of the Me Too movement, the streamer exodus, the unseemly difficulty dial up, and the forced torghast grind, the jump-the-shark-back-flipping-on-laser-skates story, the rest of it was kinda cool.
right? and they hated it.
but something something disney now all of a sudden.
People who say this are sock puppets. They’re unable to explain in words what it is that they don’t like, so they just puke up a few buzzwords that a streamer uses.
No it wasn’t. The INITIAL LEVELING content was fine. Good even. The cracks don’t show up until later.
When you rely on soulbinds for power gains. Later covenant-specific stories, especially the unforgivably braindead Kyrian quest that sees you throw a guy into the Maw and shrugs. All the First Ones are too dumb to exist, we should have slaughtered them all for their criminal neglect. Everything that involves the Jailer is awful writing when that’s the only part they had to nail. Korthia sucked bigtime. 12 minute Sylvanas fight where only the last 3 minutes mattered at all. “i WiLl NeVeR sErV!!!” Zereth Mortis was better, but so alien and weird that it didn’t have a great reception. Sylvanas’ “redemption” that wasn’t really, but so poorly explained that most players just thought she’s magically good now.
The Uther questline was legit good but that was too little and too late. And then ruined because he had ONE SENTENCE to say when Arthas got disenchanted.
I think you’ve answered your own question here.
Personally while I understand the dislike for it, I did like it in general but felt it was a lot of work but maybe I was just burnt out from Legion (which was my return to WOW being my Full time game)
That’s covered under my caveat. I think we meant different things by “content”.
It was ok if you can overlook it character assassinating Sylvanas to set up shadowlands and squandering two expansion-worthy villains on individual patches I guess.
The entire time gating problem is not really a problem at all. If there was no time gating, the people who play 24/7 would finish an entire season in two weeks then cry about how there was nothing to do.
It’s like saying they shouldn’t have taken 20 years to do Vanilla and all the expansions and seasons, they should have released them all on the same day.
I liked SL (except the Maw, the Maw was always annoying), but “more than TWW”? I wouldn’t go that far.