It was the longest expac, wasn’t it?
If Shadowlands didn’t have abilities tied to the Covenants, the Conduit System didn’t exist and they just Told A Better Story it probably would have been received as one of the greatest expansions of all time.
Unfortunately, Alex Asferabi was actively sabotaging WoW on his way out and Steven Dansuer was a vocal fan of the Game of Thrones ending
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But the water - it was unlike any other water in Warcraft - you could walk on it!
(actually PR talking point for SL)
Edit - here it is:
https://youtu.be/IRWIW2VxgGs?t=170
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Responding more to the topic itself than the AI slop:
Shadowlands had a lot of potential but it just fell massively short. The afterlives themselves were paper-thin and woefully lacking, the borrowed power from covenants was worse than it’s ever been in WoW’s history by locking not just specific classes but specific specs into a single covenant choice to get anywhere near optimal throughput, and the opportunity to see famous dead characters from WoW’s past was completely missed (e.g. Garrosh was just set dressing in the background of a raid, Varian and Cairne were nowhere to be found, no Daelin Proudmoore or Garithos, almost nothing from the Ebon Blade after getting us there, the new Lich King being a worfed failure etc.) And the First Ones, especially the Jailer, were woefully undercooked.
There were other major problems too. Oribos is one of the most hostile hub cities we’ve ever had in WoW when it came to basic traversal and quality of life. The Maw fulfilled its narrative goal of being torture to get around, but Blizzard leaned so hard into that that they forgot this is supposed to be a game and games are ultimately supposed to be fun. Choreghast combined the worst parts of other solo content like Horrific Visions and Scenarios. The convenant cosmetics (mogs, hearthstones etc), while beautiful to look at, are a chore to acquire and use even to this day.
But the worst part by far was Sylvanas. I’m not even going to waste time writing about her “arc.”
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Shouldn’t chatbot be handling the responses since it wrote the thread?
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You didn’t feel warm in the cockles of your heart when Sylvanas got to say the goodbye to Arthas?
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As a paladin, I enjoyed each covenant ability for different reasons. And for most of the classes the bestest abilities became hardboiled into the class itself (divine tole)
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Systemlands buckled under its own weight.
- Rental system overload
- Half baked, ret con story
- Pointless gating of covenants
- Maps being separated and only reachable via flight paths
- The MAW no mount policy early on
- A lot of things with endgame that were supposed to be optional were not!
- Long wait for patches
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I lived it. It was not.
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i put it in and it spit out what i was trying to say. replies are simple
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Battle for Azeroth has the longest runn time iirc. 2 years 4 months
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Oh. I thought it was SL because it felt like it lasted 5 years.
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The maw was still terrible even after mounts were allowed, and after the terrible eye of the jailer mechanic was removed. It was the worst zone Blizzard had ever made at the time. Only Zalarek Caverns is arguable in matching it in that sense.
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The story was not great, but I remember it being connected throughout the campaign and easy to follow. TWW story. I dunno, we crashed on a rock dwarf island overrun by spiders, oh and there is a group of paladins that has lived here for eternity.
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The art team was A+ for systemlands.
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on scale of 1 to 10 this is about a
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You just reminded me of the maw GTA style wanted system where if you had too much fun for the day the ghosts came down to kidnap you.
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Even if you were having fun in the MAW that was time gated too.
LMAO.
WORST. ZONE. EVER.
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I found the jailers eye mechanic to be interesting. It put a difficulty curve onto open world and I enjoyed seeing how long I can last after maxing it out.
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I will admit, there was one good thing that came out of SL:
A customisable mount that could aid you in combat and was mountable in-doors.
Also I think it was mountable in combat as well.
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