Haven't Logged In For Days: Has Blizzard Finally Crushed The Soul Out Of Its Game?

Community General Discussion
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Let me start by saying this post is coming from a weird place for me. I genuinely think Shadowlands is a decent expac. I can’t find any one single glaring fault with it… and I don’t have anything resembling the visceral dislike I had for it that I did with BFA. BFA was the worst thing Blizzard has ever done… and yet, I find myself losing interest in SL already.

I find myself only dragging myself on to do Raids, because they’re the last bit of content I enjoy. I find myself not even caring about trying Mythic+ anymore this expac. I’ve all together stopped with the daily chores. I still do 2 Torghasts a week, I find them fun… I do them alone though, because they’re harder to do with others and reward nothing for the added effort. I still collect my 3 renown to stay ontop of my soulbinds, but literally nothing else is worth logging in for.

I feel like they tried to force a bit of Classic back into WoW by removing convenience. Cool, we’re back to level 60. Cool, loots now hard to get. Cool, we now step into dungeons and more than likely leave with nothing (or sorry… 35 anima). Cool, the worlds no longer super convenient to navigate - no flight whistles, flying… Revendreth exists… Cool, the dailies now take too long and reward too little. Nerf convenience. Cool, the Maw sucks to die in - death has consequence! Cool, even the Normal version of the raid isn’t a pushover now. Cool, Classes now have silly gimmick abilities added back into them that had been pruned for reasons. Cool, between covenants, soulbinds and the numbers themselves, classes are no longer even closed to balanced… just like Classic wasn’t even close to balanced, so its good, right?

Yet, they forgot the good parts of Classic - the choices players could make, having 50 talents to throw at whatever they liked. The trust the game had with you, where if you wanted to be a Warrior in Leather for more damage, you could be. Master Looter, where guilds could decide where the fruit of their labor went. On the social level… the community and local servers games had, where you could get to recognize similar names, form rivalries. On PvP servers, forcing players to stick with one faction created community.

To make matters worse, they kept some of their most recent bad habits… like timegating. Not trusting the content to be good enough to keep your interest without needing to stall it out.

It feels like Shadowlands is literally an Abomination straight from WoW itself… with pieces of Classic, BFA and “Activision Choices” stitched together.

I feel like they took all the wrong lessons from Classic’s relative success and somehow created a game that dares players to lose interest… while taking no steps to actually make this MMO feel like an MMO again. I feel like all the magic that kept me wanting to log-in is gone, replaced by soulless, timegated chores that keep trying to insist upon my time, when the truth is, I don’t even know what I’m hoping to accomplish anymore.

I hope this makes sense. Part of this post comes from frustration at myself, for not even being able to understand in a concrete way what is driving me away from WoW. That was one problem BFA absolutely did not have. Or hell maybe everything above is just pure speculation and the truth is BFA was so bad, it actually ruined WoW for me. I don’t know.

Anyone else having this issue or anything like it?

EDIT: Fun fact - I just went to my Vault today, found a trinket I already had, gloves ilvls 7 lower and a lower ilvl chest. To top it all off, my guild’s changing one of their raid nights to a day I cannot make. I think the universe is sending me a message here.

421 Likes
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I logged in to get my winterveil pet and it was the first time in 2 weeks. I have no idea what Blizzard could do to turn this around. This is a month old xpac and people have been getting burnt out on it weeks ago.

So I played WoD, Legion, and BfA 100% without taking any sizable break. I stopped Shadowlands 2 weeks into it.

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Same havent played any shadowlands all week.

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They just absolutely refuse to stop with the excessive time-gating to extend the horrid designs they are so incessant about implementing while trying to cover up the lack of SL content. They have even gone as far as refusing to turn on the Legacy/demoralizing buff to purposefully not allow level 60 toons to farm legacy content. If they keep making decisions like this many will stop playing altogether, unsub and move on.

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I legitimately hate the covenant system. I am just playing less content as a result. Combined with the gearing it’s starting to lose its luster. Keeping up two characters I have to choose between picking the covenant 95%+ of all people on the ladder pick for pvp or the option that’s better for pve. The only meaningful choice seems like taking a break until they decide it’s time to loosen some of these pointless restrictions.

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Sums up my feeling rather well.

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Ya’ll still on the forums tho, please. SL is great.

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I don’t think that’s why they time gated.

Time gated is so you don’t feel like you have a laundry list of chores to do every week or your behind.

Time gated are an unfortunate bi-product of content that is directly tied to player power.

Time gates in all honestly have been worse in previous expansions. Sure you could progress farther each week… but you’d also be farther behind if you didn’t.

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You may very well be right in its intent. I definitely don’t have all the answers. Whether it’s that, or my more pessimistic take of Blizzard trying to keep your subscription longer through artificial means… maybe it’s subjective. Maybe it’s just another reminder that everything… including the story… is just another system in this game that has become systems ontop of systems ontop of systems… every bit designed to make me want to do something on schedule, yet the result for me is making me write subjective posts like this saying “the soul of this game is dead.”

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Title: Don’t want to log in

Post: I think about this game a considerable amount…

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That’s not entirely unfair. I’ve played this game for a very long time… and I have spent probably more time this week wondering why I don’t play it anymore than actually logging in to play it.

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Do what I did in Legion and BFA and take a break. I’m loving the expansion myself, if I didn’t I wouldn’t be subbed.

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the devs have the right idea wow needs to be made harder we need a return to the old days with hard content that takes a full group to do. dungeons, raids and pvp need to be the main end game content. and we need more of it asap.

what we need less of are p2w microtransaction systems. casual content. and the like. we need this game to be like dark souls not failout 4 or cyberfail 2077

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The problem with people wanting retail how it was back in the day is Blizz is never going to do that, they may do more things like Classic, but that is it. What Blizz is doing with their xpacs is like what teen popstars do when they are 20+, they try to make a new image for themselves and do not want to go back to their beginnings. But the new image is just a mess and you can never tell who their target audience is.

If you want SL to feel different from how it is now, best advice would be to come back for the last patch. By then catch up mechanics will be implemented and they may have the game slightly balanced.

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Bravo, well-said.

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Personally I think the motivation behind most of the end game design has been about minimizing development effort without losing subs. I just came back from a year break and looking at SL guides and the forums it appears that things haven’t really changed. So I am looking at it differently than I have before. I’ll sub up for a month and level some characters to max and if the treadmill at end game doesn’t seem appealing I’ll probably step away or level some more.

I find the leveling to be the least repetitious part of the game at this point with the variety of choice in where to go and what to do until 50.

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Some people talk about the things they lament losing. Its kinda a human thing

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Harder doesn’t have to be boring. The devs have made something boring, not harder.

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The only serious issue with the game that cant really be easily fixed is that Blizzard needs to stop the borrowed power systems that we’ve seen especially over the last few xpacs.

You level from 50-60 and only get a few minor upgrades for leveling. The elaborate borrowed power system starts and you grind that the entire xpac. Then the next xpac comes and all that work is basically useless. Nothing follows you to the next expansion.

I dont really have a problem with Legions class halls and legendary weapons, BFA’s azerite stuff, or Shadowlands covenants for what they are, but characters themselves need more powers and things that can follow us from xpac to xpac. I miss the old skill trees because at least you had more choice and leveling up felt like a bigger deal.

In Legion I enjoyed doing the content, then I was annoyed when BFA started and my legendary weapon was useless. Now I’m in Shadowlands and I’m even more annoyed that everything from BFA is useless. The problem isn’t so much the borrowed power systems as much as theres nothing outside of those systems that connects you to your characters more and follows you through each expansion.

44 Likes
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Post makes no sense…either that or you have never felt loss over something cared for dearly.

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