I just saw this - it’s not anxiety it’s knowing my Raise Ally might be on cooldown for the next ten minutes.
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I’m running around on my paladin slowly gaining anima for my Sanctum. I can now recruit a follower, but I don’t have the mission table open yet.
Everytime Draka speaks I hear “Come to Draka Draka Draka Draka Draka Bell!” in my head.
I haven’t looked up any guides at all. I have no clue what I’m doing. I love it.
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My hot take? It’s fun. It’s really fun.
I enjoyed every zone I played through, and as someone who typically favors dark and broody atmospheres (thanks Maldraxxus and Revendreth for giving me everything I could want and more), I loved Bastion and Ardenweald too. The stories are good and it felt great to play through a linear leveling narrative for the first time since WoD (and man, it is 1000 times better than WoD).
I’m surprised by how much pride I already feel in my covenant. I love my covenant sanctum, I love the characters I interact with there and throughout the covenant campaign, and even though I didn’t have a solid grasp on all of the new endgame systems despite reading several guides before expansion launch, being able to experience them for myself has dispelled a lot of that confusion.
Amazing how it works out like that. It’s almost like the systems were designed to be played through!
The dungeons have been great fun (my M+ team is clearing M0s each week until keystones and Nathria are available), and Torghast/the Maw have been enjoyable as well. They feel like actual forays into creating something never before seen in WoW, which (in my opinion) is a mindset and approach that made Legion such a success after the critical failure of WoD. Similarly, BFA more or less rehashed every system from Legion, but in a much less interesting and coherent way, which caused it to fall short in many ways.
What it boils down to for me is that there is a lot to do at the endgame, and even though that can sometimes feel overwhelming, it’s all content that I want to do. None of it feels boring or grindy or gives me that feeling of, “Wow, didn’t I just do this exact same thing in BFA?” Even the world quests and daily “callings” feel more involved and diverse. Most world quests require me to actually think about and pay attention to what I’m doing, and I like that.
TL;DR I know that the lore of “going to the afterlife” sounds weird on paper, but in practice, it’s off to an incredibly strong start in every way. Buy the game. You won’t be disappointed.
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Welp, this sure aged.
How do y’all feel now? Any regrets?
I have cause to reflect on my thoughts, since Shadowlands was the expansion that made me cancel my account. I said it wasn’t bad at first and I stand by that–the quests were capable enough, the story could have been worse (considering), and the mechanics were still improving.
In hindsight, though, perhaps that the best praise I could offer it was “I can completely check out” was damning in a way I didn’t realize.
I think I needed more than something that just wasn’t bad. And Shadowlands didn’t stay not bad, it just ended up getting worse. “Not Bad” is a surprisingly small amount of good will.
Ultimately, I think Shadowlands occupies a peculiar niche where it wasn’t necessarily the expansion that killed WoW, but it was the expansion that was around when WoW died–a symptom of a greater illness. And it feels oddly heartbreaking that a game that spanned a life like WoW has should be defeated not in an explosion of glory and beautiful, horrifying decisions but with a long, tired sigh of an unhappy people who are around mostly by habit.
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It wasn’t a story about the World of Warcraft, so that sucked. My original feeling that the zones were all extremely one-note and kinda…empty…just got worse and worse. Didn’t like any of the end game zones at all (I can’t even name the the two newer ones that were unlocked in later patches; I got super bored after a day or two in each).
I’ve only really set foot in SL to level characters in anticipation of the next expansion, and even then I mostly use the picture-in-picture Chrome extension to watch Netflix or YouTube while I do so. It’s so bland and has literally nothing to do with the game I’ve loved for so many years.
I still love Azeroth and the individual races so much it almost physically hurts; I just wish the overall story hadn’t sucked so damn hard and made them completely irrelevant for going on 2 years.
It’s funny, but the seed of worry was implanted at the very beginning of SL when I arrived in the expac hub (which is so generic the name escapes me) and saw how empty and devoid of character it was.That feeling sums up the expansion pretty well.
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i think it is incredibly, viscerally funny that there are two alliance dark ranger races and one horde one
the first positive alliance news in forever is getting more access to a horde hero class than they do. lmfao.
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I started playing a Shaman to change things up and it’s been fun.
Otherwise the new zones we got were fun to explore with plenty of mounts and pets to collect.
Zereth Mortis released some of my favorite transmog gear that’s come out in this game. I’m specifically referring to the Broker themed gear. The design and style of them remind me what Draenei could be if they had a 2022 upgrade. Clothing that has that nomadic but magical feel to them. Basically that old 2005 promo pic.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/6/6f/Playable_Draenei.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200618152517
I still think Torghast is fun with the silly builds you could do. They did try to spice it up with more vanity drops but it sucks the upgrades are character specific. So going from my monk to shaman was hard to adjust for and I eventually stopped doing it.
That said it’s proven to be the least alt friendly expansion despite efforts to make the game more alt friendly. They’ve added things to make it better but switching from two characters with fully upgraded sanctums to one that has nothing is rough.
Anyway I got what I want out of the expansion. Collected the transmog and mounts I want. I’ll likely come back at some point to do more but I been playing other games with friends which has kept me away.
Otherwise story still bad, if not worse but at least the jokes and memes are on point.
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This kind of turned into a “with the benefit of hindsight” rant that was way bigger than I intended so I’ve formatted this a little more neatly than I intended lol. Been subbed most of the expansion, and I’ve tried my darndest to engage with everything and find some fun out of it, so I think I have a balanced experience to provide some analysis on. Enjoy.
I didn’t chime in on this thread when it was up back then, but I do remember a few of the thoughts I had for Shadowlands at that time. I tried pretty hard to keep things positive and go in with an open mind.
Leveling
I thought the first two zones we leveled through weren’t anything to write home about. It was boring and didn’t feel like WoW but it wasn’t atrocious like N’zoth’s end, which we’d all just come off the back of. I was very emotional about saving Ysera in Ardenweald for the first time. I liked Revendreth but immediately picked up on the fact it was just Suramar but for Nosferatu people instead.
Content
I really liked the unpruning and the return to having class spells. It was a kind of immersive thing I enjoyed and the great thing about “useless” abilities is that I can have and use them if I want and others can just not put them on their action bars and continue on with their lives. Arcane explosion on all mage specs makes running old content amazing, as an example.
I thought Torghast was super awesome but needed more additions to keep the momentum going. I didn’t mind having to do it for legendaries as I was having fun in the process but I could see why people didn’t like being forced to do it. I also didn’t really like that that was the ONLY reason to do Torghast.
I even kind of liked being able to mount up in the Maw. If I aggroed something I could just stun/slow it and keep going without having to wait for combat to drop to mount up. There was a lot of grindiness but I don’t mind that and it was something to do.
Story
I also thought the story was going places and with the Maw outro custscene I was super impressed with the quality of in-game cutscenes and what it meant for telling a story later on. Didn’t like Sylvanas’ story in BfA and I was just praying Shadowlands would reveal things but even then I knew it would take a miracle.
And now, with hindsight?
Story
We didn’t get a miracle. It felt like they chose literally every worst possible outcome for a story at every turn. Useless, nay, detrimentally stupid gods. Titan copycats. Cosmology once set in stone tossed out the window for SICK REVEALS. The entire universe bent completely for the sake of showing off how cool and smart and powerful Sylvanas is while also clinging to any reason why she shouldn’t be destroyed.
All of us being optimistic about the story didn’t really have much of the “main” story in 9.0. We had the world building stories, and those are generally better. We knew stuff revolving around Sylvanas and Anduin were stupid but we also had mainly Denathrius to wash that away. After that? It was nothing but Sylvanas and Anduin crap.
9.0 was showing us the Shadowlands and how it worked. Which I found endearing until the honeymoon phase ended and I leveled through the zones a few more times and realized how absolutely terrible the system is, both on an in-universe level and world building level. The future patches were just stories of how incompetent everyone was and Sylvanas just accidentally failing upwards because the plot decided she had to.
And worst of all? It just dragged on. It’s been two years of nothing related to Warcraft or Azeroth besides watching puppets of Warcraft III characters dance around this unrelated space theme park. I really, really miss Azeroth.
I never really cared much about any main character in the game outside Arthas. I cared more about the world. Knights in silver and blue fighting orcish brutes over resources because they both have families at home counting on them. Elves slaving away over magic collection so that their friends and family won’t fall into addictive madness. Undead desperately fighting to keep living in this world because of an unnatural curse that was forced upon them against their will.
I’m doing that thing again where I reminisce about the world of Azeroth. My apologies. Point is, not being on Azeroth for two years with very little mentioning of Azeroth and Azeroth related things sucked and really took a toll that wasn’t immediate when we dove in at the start.
Content
As far as content went, the grindiness got worse and worse. It was starting to feel less like they were giving us things to occupy ourselves with and more like they were intentionally slowing us down to keep us subbed. Basically the illusion of busywork actually being for gameplay reasons was shattered.
Korthia was the worst patch I’ve ever played. Ugly as heck, dailies were convoluted and time consuming, I was tired of the stories before I even did them once. Domination sockets were the worst designed power systems I’ve ever encountered.
Zereth Mortis has been a huge upgrade as far as not holding you in tar for progression. But it’s just boring. Rare/treasure hunting while you do dailies has been done a million times and cyphers don’t change gameplay enough to actually make Zereth Mortis feel like anything but a robot Star Wars skinned version of PATCH_TEMPLATE_ZONE_TIMELESS_ISLE number 8.
Torghast was just… such a wasted opportunity. Instead of just going wide and adding more powers, expansive rewards, and stuff, they just scaled it up and added a few scraps and more convoluted legendary grinds. It could have been island expeditions+. They could have taken all of the lessons learned from islands and made a unique dungeon crawler as an alternative way of playing outside raids and mythics. But they didn’t and it will forever be a missed opportunity in my eyes.
That said? I’ve been doing mythics and raids with my guild every patch (aside from Sepulcher, we couldn’t field a raid team for that) and I enjoyed it from 9.0 to 9.2. Mythic+ is a lot of fun, especially when you have friends to do it with. Seasonal affixes keep things fresh and any time I get bored I’ll start running keys on new classes for a new experience. It’s great content and between that and RP the only reason I’ve stuck around.
Leveling
It’s hard to say if I don’t like leveling because of the story or because of the way it’s designed but it got old fast. I actually just… can’t level characters through Shadowlands anymore. If I hit 50 I just wait until timewalking.
I tried threads of fate and it felt like I was just leveling via the most boring of endgame activities. And regular leveling takes me through the increasingly unappealing stories of watching 3/4 gods fail because they’re incompetent and full of unearned arrogance.
Maybe it all comes down to a theming issue and I’d be more inclined to enjoy it if it was just set on Azeroth, helping relatable people eat or protect themselves instead of cosmic force space laser ghost robots because they need space cosmic force electricity to do undefined things with.
Overall, I’d say mythics are the only strong part of the game right now, with raids kind of being alright but mired down with overly complicated mechanics. Everything else offered by the game; quests, plots, grinds, leveling, roleplay, etc., has all been poisoned by its absolute catastrophe of a story/theme.
Dragonflight looks like it might address these things, at least, with things being on Azeroth. But I won’t rest easy knowing the people who produced “I will never serve!” and the Helm of Domination becoming a Burger King crown are still writing for it.
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I swear 3/4 of the people here quit the game lmao. Including me. Once the forum story optimist lol.
I could list off 1000 gripes but this is the big one. It was more detatched from everything we players know and have been invested in than any expansion in WoW history. I’ve never quit WoW for so long in my life. I’ve never felt so jaded and pessimistic about the game in all my life. And to be honest, it’s not a fun feeling to have. To fall out of love so very hard with my favourite fantasy universe has been awful, really. I hope I can reclaim some part of that enthusiasm one day. 9.2.5 has helped a little I guess. It’s something.
Well technically there’s two Horde ones. Baseline Forsaken can have red eyes and can be Dark Rangers (Nathanos trains a whole bunch of regular human Forsaken as Dark Rangers in Legion). But I see your point. Not arguing with the two ally races that got it though. I can see a lot of undead Night Elves trying to return home - they’ve got no real loyalty to Lordaeron OR the Forsaken really. Furthermore I can see Cult of the Forgotten Shadow types VERY interested in the scholarly void elves and their fascinating study. Like the Void Elves themselves, former Rangers who value knowledge over the Horde might well find a convincing home there.
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9.2.5 Spoilers
It was actually hilarious how I was loving the Forsaken lore in Tirisfal Glades until second I set foot in the Shadowlands. It was like flicking a switch, Shadowlands just can't help screwing over lore even in just 5 quests. Sin'dane just *had* to tell us necromancy is animating unliving flesh with or without the use of 'Death' magic.Is death magic not just magic pertaining to the dead? What is it without NECROmancy then? What is it??? Is it just arcane magic but in death land? WHAT DOES IT DO?
I’d also like to add on the extremely slim chance that people are reading critique and taking it seriously right now that me liking mythic+ doesn’t mean all focus should be on mythic+ but rather it’s in a good state and other aspects of the game need to be brought up to that level of enjoyment.
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My original post stands.
Shadowlands = I got a party hat and a lightbulb backpack.
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Eh, like most expansions there’s stuff I didn’t care for an’ there’s stuff I’ll always remember fondly - what’s important is that the world still revolves around me an’ now the afterlife does too, heh!
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I got over every positive feeling I had and unsub-ed. I enjoyed it just that much.
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