Shadowlands is boring. I’m gonna take an extended break. Here’s your tl;dr, feel free to duck out now if you agree.
Number one reason is that we don’t have flight. I’m tired of waiting for it. Pathfinder needs to be axed. I would much prefer we return to the BC, Wrath and MoP model where flight is available at expansion launch. 2500 gold for a flight license on some rando NPC at the new level cap.
Let me make this clear for you, developers and others at Acti-Blizz: I want flight when content is most relevant, not the exact opposite, i.e. Pathfinder. Stop cheaping out on open world content.
In no particular order, I’ll run through what else feels awful about this unfinished expansion.
Zones are disconnected, making SL feel like a worse version of Argus. I don’t know why you guys even bothered having us fly to separate places except to drive up time played metrics. Constantly flying through Oribos is not interesting and not fun. Travel time on flight points is a massive turn off.
Covenants are dull and you can only be part of one covenant at any time. If you guys wanted longevity of content, why are we not allowed to simply progress through all four one at a time? I suspect you guys didn’t want us fast traveling through all four zones at will, looping back to the aforementioned zone problem and also conveniently driving up time played again.
Covenant abilities should’ve been a new talent row.
The Maw is by far and away the worst zone you guys have ever made. Another reason I’m stepping aside is that you’ve confirmed you’re developing more content for this awful flightless nightmare that nobody likes going to or being in.
Torghast is dull and frighteningly underdeveloped, particularly at the conceptual level. Perhaps if there were some sort of real reward structure or sense of progression it would be worth playing around in. That you tied Torghast upgrades to a place that clearly isn’t Torghast (The Maw) is, to put it bluntly, idiotic.
Class balance at launch and to this day is hilariously bad.
Legendary balance and acquisition is similarly woeful and ties into the sorry state that professions are in.
So a solo player, to craft their own legendaries, is expected to have one of the primary crafting professions maxed, enchanting maxed and inscription at 40/100. The only recourse is to spend an absurd amount of gold to other players to get a legendary that has another person’s name on it. Completely genius that the developers can’t create a simple crafted item to remove or alter flavor text on crafted items, AFTER OVER A DECADE.
That calls into question the serious lack of customization in a game as big as WoW. That was only one example. Think no new customization options for the foreseeable future doesn’t matter? It matters, whether it was promised or not.
Too great a focus on Mythic plus. Casuals matter too, and mythic plus is NOT casual content. Not when you’re forced to keep up a virtual credit score, waste hours cherry picking your own groups and physically travel to the instance. Oh, and the dungeon is also a race filled with overtuned mobs and Diablo affixes.
Stop making Mythic only dungeons. Content should be available for everybody, that’s why five man normal and heroic exists.
Here at the end, I’d like to mention that 9.1 is likely months off and will almost certainly have flying timegated by a nine week or so covenant campaign. I suspect that we won’t be flying until August or so. This expansion launched in November. For me personally, this is insulting and unacceptable.
I’m sure there are other things about this expansion that are profoundly irritating that I’m forgetting at the moment, but this is what stands out. This expansion is bad and I honestly think it’s irresponsible to not acknowledge it as such.
Thanks for reading.
