I feel like everyone I’ve personally talked to about Shadowlands all give me the same reason that they quit at the same time at the start: because they really didn’t like doing The Maw and/or Torghast.
I genuinely wonder if this was a big reason why so many people quit in Shadowlands and why it’s considered a really bad expansion, and then if those people also never came back, either.
This is also personally why I quit Shadowlands at the start too, and why I never came back until the end of the expansion.
Torghast in 9.0 was infinitely worse, in that it affected everyone that even wanted to be barely competent at the game, whereas heroic raiders or lower could easily skip grinding random conduit upgrades or at least some sockets so the Maw stuff felt (slightly) less mandatory. Less Choreghast.
Both were bad. Blizz can’t afford to hold players hostage to un-fun content like that. WoW doesn’t have the “stick-to-it” factor it used to with players’ attention. They do leave and many don’t come back now. Worse yet for Blizz is developers are starting to realize the king is bleeding deeply and the $$$ is there for new MMOs.
Yeah so many people I know never even bothered to come back to the game after disliking The Maw/Torghast, even though they did maybe kinda make it better, or there was a new end game zone. It’s crazy to me that they didn’t even bother after the bad experience they had with The Maw/Torghast. In my experience, in the past, if people didn’t like something in WoW, they’d always at least come back later when it was fixed or not as relevant.
The maw was designed to be a zone catering to those anti flyers and world PvP crowds. I’m not surprised it flopped because a majority of players don’t like those two things
Neither, I took a couple of long breaks because of the horrible raid design. This was probably my least favorite WoW x-pack in regards to raid design. It was truly horrible.
Feels like there were 2 mass-unsub waves; the first one near the start (like OP mentioned), and the second one right around the time 9.1 went live
9.1 basically “doubled-down” on the already-unpopular Maw/Torghast content, on top of very little content versus the wait time (teenie-tiny Korthia zone), so lots of folks got pushed over the edge and unsubbed during the following months
It should be noted that the familiar names/posters/regulars that unsubbed due to 9.1 still haven’t come back even with a new expansion announced
I’d say that’s fair. WoW was always touted for its raid content but besides Castle Nathria, I think you have to call the other 2 raids in Shadowlands Ls, just judging by how 50-60% literally dropped out each patch (from the prior patch) and you could fit the people that killed mythic Jailer in season 3 in a socially-distanced IHOP. I didn’t want to deal with any of this after CN and re-rolled and went casual.
Fights like ping-ponging between Jaina and Thrall (with each of them sounding particularly pathetic) with insta-wipe interrupt, like what the hell? That torture fight with spikes and fire on the set of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or something? Like, everything about Halondrus. Jesus. Who are they designing this game for?
These fights aren’t fun and playful or even satisfying in a story sense, unlike Denathrius… they’re depicting literal torture in a humorless way and the mechanics make it feel like grinding torture.
I’m pretty sure, no one. They want to appeal to everyone, and therefore appeal to no one. It’s a decent game, not a great game. It will continue down the path of mediocrity until they pick a direction and demographic to focus on.
Hmm some quit, but some actively avoided anything to do with the maw - and the fact that you couldn’t skip the maw parts of your covenant stuff on alts was awful - even to the point of no mount for alts until you reach a certain point was awful.
So far, it’s probably the worst designed zone in WoW both art wise and playing through it feels so awful.
I know I did. Out of the 5 characters I had ready for SL, when I got to Torghast and saw that 4 of them were really boring to play while only one was fun, I immediately thought “This is what’s tied to my legendary? Nope.”
Sure they changed it later, but I had already somewhat moved on to other games like Hades and what not.
The maw was such a ballache that I kinda fluffed off for a long while and didn’t even touch it until that questline in Korinth that let you ride normal mounts in there. Torghast was either really fun with awesome abilities or "nope Nope NOPE! as some characters just had a much harder time with one enemy let alone suddenly an entire room on them. The only reason I even came back was to RP with friends and older content, but if I was forced to pick one nice thing it was the Night Fae ability for druids was cool.
I think I could have dealt with the Covenant grind and being locked to one if I just didn’t have to do The Maw or Torghast. The Covenant stuff was kinda meh, but The Maw/Torghast was just awful, it truly made the game not worth playing in favor of other games for me. I actually think I could have stuck around and played Shadowlands and it would have been alright if The Maw/Torghast never existed.
I quit after I was forced to waste every tuesday of my playtime playing 40mins of torghast content I did not want to do… then one week i played 40 minutes on my melee main, and the boss had a stacking buff that just killed me and I couldnt outplay it cause i wasnt ranged.
So after that, I literally just gave up and quit shadowlands.
I enjoyed the leveling and raiding, but choreghast was terrible and ruined the entire game for me.
I disagree. They design it only for themselves. This is the game they want players to have to play. They’re still convinced that players have no choice in the matter.
