Hot Take: Shadowlands was the last memorable expansion

Community General Discussion
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Edit: TL;DR I am not praising the gameplay or main story of SL. I am providing my perspective on the atmosphere and zone design of the expansion, and how I feel DF and TWW are kind of lacking in this regard.

PS: Feel free to disagree, but dont comment saying “Its memorable because of how bad it was” or “I quit because of [insert reason here]” because im not trying to argue that at all lol and it just shows you didnt read the post

First off, I know most people will not agree with me and thats okay. This is 100% my opinion, and I welcome everyone to share their own perspective even if they do not agree with me.

You read that right, I think Shadowlands was the last expansion Blizzard took risks and tried to innovate the game. It was also the last expansion that had a memorable theme and art direction. I find myself frequently visiting Revendreth, Bastion, and Ardenweald just to take in how beautiful these zones were and their unique storylines. I go back and explore zones in varying expansions, but something about the Shadowlands has a weird draw for me.

Shadowlands had tons of problems, and its absolutely not my favorite expansion, but I miss the idea of covenants, the varied themes of the afterlife, the goofy but memorable voicelines from the dungeons and raids.

Here are some of my favorite dungeon lines:

“My house WEEPS with blight!” - Plaguefall

“BLIGHTBONE RIP YOU APART!” - Necrotic Wake

“GIMME DEM SOULS BWONSAMDI!” - De Other Side

“MASTER BE SO HAPPY!” - Sludgefist, Castle Nathria

Speaking of raids, Castle Nathria was such a good first raid. Yeah it was overtuned at first, but the fights were so fun, the music was phenomenal, and the gothic architecture just tickles my dark edgy heart. Plus we got a dance mechanic in a boss fight :smiley:

So why am I making this post? Well, I realized for both DF and TWW I dont feel that same level of attachment to the dungeons and zones. They are just really…bland and dull.

Nerub’ar Palace is cool, has a dark somber vibe to it with some interesting bosses and music, but the dungeons are so bland and forgettable. My favorite zone is definitely hallowfall for the elden ring vibe, but in my opinion nothing comes close to the zone atmospheres they had in Shadowlands.

Its really sad how badly they messed up the story and the endgame systems for it, because Shadowlands could have been one of the coolest expansions theyve ever done.

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In SL 50% of players quit and i can say it was memorable

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true

the non tier gear design was peak

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SL was one of the worse expansions if not THE worse expansion in my eyes just in terms of the lore alone… let alone including we had only TWO PATCHES in two years.

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Part of that drop was because of borrowed power and covenants but that only impacted the top players.

Part was because of COVID, part was because of all the buzz over Final Fantasy XIV and a paper from an investors meeting said they lost Chinese players around that time.

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SL subs where down to about 4 mill, right now its over 8 mill

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I constantly have a gap in my mind when I think of xpacs and I hit SL. Like I can remember things, but it’s so disjointed from WoW’s story I never remember it unless I’m trying to.

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Only memorable thing about it is how much it butchered the established lore

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Where are you getting those numbers? I promise you SL did not have 4 mil, the most accurate source at the time im pretty sure said it hit an all time low of 1 mil before classic wow came out. Game hasn’t had 8 million subs since peak wrath.

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It was in a blue post, maybe you should find it

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I’d unfortunately would never find it because Blizzard hasn’t released their subscription count in years.

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Yea they released it this year, lol

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Sure, Shadowlands was pretty memorable, but not for the reasons it should have been

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I found it, you were pretty close. I’ll apologize for that. They just released that this year though that’s why I never saw that because they never did release the numbers for awhile… That’s crazy to me.

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Don’t make me laugh

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Borrowed powers and a mission table weren’t innovations. They were what we’d had since WoD. And people had always complained about them.

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Which lore did it butcher?

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You would be correct. For me, it would be Wrath > Legion > TWW > Cata > TBC > all the rest.

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The whole Shadowlands being “you’re dead and now you’re a ghost that can still die for real” was just horrible. They also wanted to make the Jailer a big threat, but couldn’t figure out any way to do that, so they just made him retroactively responsible for stuff like the Lich King. Sylvanas being all “I will never serve” while working for a dude named The Jailer who used domination magic to force others to serve him was just some icing on the whole dumb writing attempt.

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This expansion has barely started and it’s already more memorable than Shadowlands, that being said it being memorable is because of the story beats from Shadowlands playing a big part in Anduin’s character arc having lasting repercussions is very good storytelling and a lot of what WoW needed to have a more in depth and nuanced campaign. I don’t like Shadowlands, but it existing gave us a better narrative for some key characters that we’re seeing now.