Didn’t like the retcon stuff.
Didn’t like bastion at all, I’d rather end up in the mall than that place
But the mall, the nature area, vampire area, the undead area were all amazing storylines (nature place and vampires being my favorite the most)
There was a ton to do as a casual+solo player. There was a lot of content and always had something to do.
If I only did mythics and that was my whole life online, yeah probably wouldn’t have liked it. But it had a TON of content…granted DF has even more content for casual+solo, but shadowlands was a little better than legion for solo+casual content and vastly better than WoD. Though I loved the class halls in legion, and did kinda like the garrisons gave something to do.
The big bad reminded me of a certain baldy on youtube tbh, 95% they based the enemy of shadowlands off of him honestly. But that makes the big bad even better in my mind lol, though if it wasn’t based off of him, kinda was dumb having him retcon some past lore, if it wasn’t for that I think people would like it more.
Gameplay/content though, shadowlands was amazing. Though I find DF to overall be better in story AND content, I thought shadowlands was better than WoD and maybe on par with legion imo.
Legion had a better story, and didn’t think was a bad expansion by any means, just liked content in SL more is all found more to do. Granted like I said, if only mythic and do nothing else ever (or raid only same thing really) I can see how SL wouldn’t been seen as good. For everyone else it was great, outside bits of the story were lacking (but not all areas had a bad story)
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To each his or her own. I hated Shadowlands enough that I left in the middle of season 1 and didn’t start playing again until the end of season 1 in Dragonflight.
A lot of the lore was bleh with a couple decent moments, but I think it was the game play that killed it for me. I played during Shadowlands beta and even then thought that Blizzard had forgotten part of the game was to have fun
- Traveling anywhere was a pain since you had to fly to your covenant in one zone and then fly to do to the quests.
- Covenants being tied to skills meant there was limited player choice in choosing a covenant
And finally. . . I might have still kept playing if it wasn’t for
- The maw . No mounts, painful required daily quests to get rep up enough for gem slots, the stupid eye limiting the amount of stuff I could do per day. That place made me keep asking myself why I was still playing WoW.
I understand that no game can provide instant gratification all the time, but I think there has to be a balance with some conveniences and for me Shadowlands didn’t provide that balance.
Now having said that, since I started playing again there were some mogs I wanted so I’ve been going back to the Shadowlands area. With the changes they’ve made and overpowering everything at 70 it hasn’t been bad.
I also think the art department knocked it out of the park and personally I love the looks of all the zones (except the Maw - but Korthia makes up for the Maw). Unfortunately the design of the zones alone wasn’t enough to make me stay.
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I’m very happy for you.
But my opinion is that it was terrible. Arthas was done dirty. Also never forgetting him.
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I’ll give you that one. The arthas thing was a huge middle finger to the character, and actor behind the character. maybe the actor was a douche or did weird things in the office and the writers thought his character deserved it. OR maybe none of that happened, no idea who the actor even was. The point being literally thats the only thing I can think of that would give the writers a reason to do that to arthas in such a lackluster manner. Like the guy behind the character must have kicked the writers cat or something
That was by far the worst part of the whole shadowlands lol.
Like I said, I wasn’t a fan of most of the story (did have good parts), it was the gameplay and content I liked a lot though that kept me playing
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I also LOVED Shadowlands for the most part.
Vampire Land and Fairy land were my favorites too, lol.
I think the biggest negatives for people where that your power was LOCKED to your covenant, and the big content drought that came with the Korthia patch.
I got burned out at the content patch HARD core, and Korthia was not visually satisfying to me.
But like I loved how Covenants were thematically, and how we had a system with constant progression we saw in the world with our toons, and how we could get mogs and stuff through it.
Honestly had they made the Powers choose-able regardless of Covenant, and just made a new animation for them to match the color of the covenant you were in.
90% of the player base probably wouldn’t be so salty about Shadow Lands.
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Hated SL, personally…but I respect everyones right to have their own opinions.
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Shadowlands only got better after it ended and we could fly and power through most of the content solo.
To me, it was okay with a touch of bad, making it moderately mediocre in the end.
Revendreth to me was pretty enjoyable, a bit cliche and was a bit too on the nose with being what it was for a coven and zone experience.
Maldrax was entertaining. Was expecting to be all gloom and doom, but nice to see it was just Gangrene Valhalla.
Arden was a unique surprise with the fey actually being a subtle homage to Green Inferno.
Giant Smurf, was pretty bland to me, very cut and dry linear. Even despite memory wiping and deciding not to memory wipe thing felt very 80s Krull but not type of fantasy.
The Arthas, Garrosh and other story plot “twists” were… like CW Riverdale Teen level writing.
As a casual player, I legitimately hated shadowlands (all of it)
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Story aside, i enjoyed the covenants and zones and borrowed power.
Ive always focused on art and playstyle over the actual story
I would argue Riverdale was leagues better then what they did with Arthas, at least the first two seasons of Riverdale, lmao.
What do you mean by “too on the nose”? Because they were clearly like vampires, in the land of the dead, or?
I’m just trying to understand what you’re pointing out.
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Probably should of clarified, lol. It felt like it tried to be Blackthorne in design and concept but got taken over by clamato drinking Hot Topic mall rats with too much time and money on their hands.
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Ah ok, lol.
I didn’t know about Blackthorne. So to me it felt like they were capitalizing on the popularity of the Castlevania Anime on Netflix.
But I’ve noticed WoW will typically take other things or themes, and make them kind of cartoony/goofy to give them some WoW charm.
Blackthorne is Blizzard’s version of Castlevania, instead of whips its boomsticks, leather chaps and jackets.
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Wha the OP is touching on was the fact that SL was only seriously bad for those people who actually took it seriously. For everyone else who basically completely ignored all the borrowed power systems and therefore spent a total of about 3 hours during the entire expac in Torghast, it really wasn’t that bad. And frankly, I have to concur. The hatred for SL is overblown for anyone who had already written off soulbinds, conduits and all that palaver.
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I’m of the same opinion
The content droughts were pretty rough, it was definitely a low-point for the game
Just the sheer amount of players and even forum regulars that quit the game during SL and never came back speaks volumes
The general consensus definitely puts SL firmly in the “bad” category
Respect your opinion but I felt the opposite. Took a long break during and even when I was subbed I just didn’t feel like doing the content. It did have some cool looking zones tho.
To each their own opinion, I can see the appeal in some aspects of Shadowlands. But I’m also of the majority.
I believe it was sometime into 9.1 that I completely just dropped World of Warcraft and I didn’t really have any intentions of coming back. I’m only recently coming back after a wonderful nearly 4 years away. After playing semi-consistently for 14 - 15 years.
Whether it be, Oribos, Covenants, the continuous grinding systems. Or just overall Blizzard’s stubbornness and simply put stupidity to not listen to their playerbase. And only doing so when it was far too late, and majority of us had moved elsewhere.
WoD had potential. The worse part about it was that, it had NO* content.
Shadowlands simply had BAD content and that’s putting it lightly.
honestly i had fun until it was time to see more Jailer and Sylvanas stuff
like. Bro. Yall ain’t Sephiroth. You didn’t earn the right to just show up at random with cryptic messages
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