I quit because I had mained Fistweaver for many years, and seeing the carcass of crane stance thrown on a crafted legendary made me finally lose it.
Half the people who buy every expansion quit the first month.
There doesn’t have to be a “reason” for it, it’s just something they always do.
2 Likes
I thought the Maw and Torghast did a great job artistically nailing the classic renaissance Hell. Many seemed to expect sunshine and lollipops, but I’d have been happier making it even more hellish.
3 Likes
Well here is a short list
- Covenants were atrocious
- Zones were disconnected and anti MMO (worst in history of the game)
- World Quest which I love were ruined in SL
- Devs lied constantly about what they were going to do
- Class design was terrible
- Time-gating is painful
- Too many Resource grinds
- Maw/Torghast was boring and lacked vision - rather watch paint dry
- PvP’s worst expansion and worst gearing
- Story was terrible
- Convoluted systems and hope whoever designed them got fired
Long story short it’s more fun to be waterboarded then play SL. That is why SL is the worst expansion ever made.
This is why the majority of the player base quit.
11 Likes
My issue with Shadowlands back in 2020/21 were:
- Restricting the expansion storyline into covenant choice wasn’t good. It left a lot of gaps in the story that made me feel disconnected with the overall narrative. There were certain zones with half the map that I had no idea what was happening.
- The weekly chapter unlock for the covenant storyline felt very inorganic. It would’ve been so much better (especially in terms of overall content consumed) to construct a narrative where you’re helping all 4 covenants. And most importantly, the dungeon unlocks should’ve happened a lot more sooner.
- Legendary and Conduits farming. Just… why… it’s not so much a problem of these external power systems, but the random nature of it. I’d be a lot more receptive if I could do trade-ins or buy them from a vendor.
- People leaving dungeons after the boss their legendary drops from didn’t drop it lol
- The Maw should’ve been a 9.1 daily zone + should’ve had more aesthetic variety. If you look at it on a strategic level, giving everyone access to all 4 covenants + their questlines + full zone would’ve been enough content to fill up their time. Then let players unlock mounts within a week or so that you can still preserve the sense of “the Maw is meant to be hell!!!” while giving people the sense that their efforts in the Maw is building up towards something
- Disconnected zones.
- Oribos is ugly.
5 Likes
I didn’t quit playing the game but I quit my Disc priest because of the Maw. Whenever I pulled aggro I entered temporary depression knowing what it was gonna take to kill the mob. Torghast was giga fun on priest however; I loved that - probably my favorite part of the entire expac tbh was Torghast on priest and shaman.
I don’t really get why people feel like they have to do everything all the time.
The Maw was always 100% optional from the start. The only meaningful unlock from participating was the gem sockets, which were never a big enough deal to justify spending months grinding something you hate.
Torghast was a bit more mandatory in terms of the difference it’d make in your power, since you had to do it for Legendary currency. But… Legendaries were incredibly frontloaded. Do your 2 Torghast runs for like 2-3 weeks and you could be done for the next 5-7 months, never needing to touch it again in that timeframe. I agree that it was an unfun chore for the most part, but I think it’s silly how worked up some people got over it.
2 Likes
I actually really like the maw, but good god the Eye of the Jailer mechanic made it unbearable. My first impression was being forcibly kicked out of the McDonald’s ball pit for having too much fun.
Torghast in its current state is also waaay better than launch as well. I’ve been enjoying my time in there currently. A great place to test the new talents.
1 Like
I quit sfter i hit level cap on one character. Didnt step foot in the maw. Didnt
step foot in Torghast. Didnt even choose a covenant.
For me, there were five contributing factors:
- I hated The Maw. In particular, I hated the mechanic that meant you couldn’t just explore the zone, you had to get everything done as quickly as possible and get back out again.
- I didn’t hate Torghast initially, but it soon became obvious that it was pretty repetitive, and I couldn’t see myself running it the number of times that the developers obviously expected me to.
- I felt no connection to the story. The premise for why we were in Shadowlands in the first place was pretty slender, and the setting and story did not feel particularly connected to previous lore. It felt like a brand new thing that could have been plugged into any other game, rather than an expansion of the Warcraft story.
- Mists of Tirna Scithe. Not a huge fan of mini-games within dungeons. Didn’t enjoy them in BfA, and certainly didn’t enjoy them here. Which isn’t to say you can’t do something different in dungeons at all. The opening strafing run in Grim Batol was amazing. Having to do the mini puzzle in Tirna Scithe more than once was not.
- Blizz’s inability to understand how de-motivating their gearing/borrowed power systems had become.
7 Likes
The Maw was the worst thing in any game that there has ever been.
5 Likes
Honestly the biggest change for me is just being able to skip to higher layers based on your other characters’ progress. That initial unlocking of layers 1 by 1 is probably what really screwed up peoples’ first impression of the place. If it was “run 2 a week” from week 1, people wouldn’t have burnt out on the concept immediately I don’t think.
1 Like
Eye of the Jailer should have had a numerical counter on it. If you used a weakaura to add one, things got a lot simpler since you could learn what gave jailer hate, and in what quantities.
You could get all the weeklies done, all of that day’s dailies done, and kill almost all of the rares in the Maw each day, if you managed the jailer hate properly. But without the information to do that… /shrug
1 Like
A lot of people left because of this.
Pair this with returning players (due to the bait n’ switch that was sylv and bolvar atop ICC…)… SL S1 was not what they were expecting or ever asked for.
1 Like
Definitely played a part in it. I was tired of the grind and just wanted to be a PvP only player who would log on and do BGs with friends for fun. And even that was stomped out because I was running around in Duelist gear beating the breaks off of people stuck at Challenger. To me that just leads to people quitting or not even trying anymore because the odds are double stacked against them the moment they engaged me.
Torghast was garbage but the Maw was fine. Never understood the complaints about the Maw, unless you were so bad at the game that basic trash kept killing you lol.
1 Like
Not being able to mount probably had a lot to do with the complaints. I don’t really remember people complaining about dying to “basic trash”. Mostly just traveling around the zone
2 Likes
idk about that but i do know after DF launch my sub will run out 4 days after raids open so ill unsub till February for Love rocket chances then unsub again until lord knows when.
I just cant do another SL expansion where old content scaling is borked.
1 Like
The Maw was incredibly small, though (you can exclude Beastwarrens since there was no reason to go there until after everyone could mount).
Between the teleports from venari’s refuge, the criss-cross flight paths deeper into the zone, the grappling hooks (ESPECIALLY THE GRAPPLING HOOKS), and goblin gliders from either the top of Crucible of the Damned or near Dartanos in Tremaculum, it was very very easy and quick to get anywhere in the Maw in 20 seconds or so.
I mean, I played an engineer who could use the gravity well to goblin glide anywhere. I still find it kinda annoying to go to daily.
I don’t think the “save maw souls” weekly helped it at all
3 Likes