Here’s the thing; Blizz had the numbers.
And they did almost a complete 180 from SL.
Make of that what you will.
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Thank you!
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May I ask why exactly you believe this? Please don’t mistake my asking as being contentious. I’m honestly curious how you’ve come to the conclusion that most people loved Shadowlands.
I began playing in Wrath, and in all the years from that time to the present, I can recall no other expansion receiving anywhere near the extent of unprecedented disapproval from the player base that Shadowlands received.
The hatred wasn’t just in the bubble of our beloved GD here, either, as the disdain was seemingly universal. With few and rare exceptions, every mention of Shadowlands I ever observed online from multiple sources had something negative to say about Shadowlands. No matter where you looked, be it Wowhead or Youtube or Reddit or practically anywhere else online, you’d find a chorus of voices sharing negative sentiments about Shadowlands.
Both here and elsewhere, the chief complaints involved the story and lore. Never before have I ever observed so many, many people taking serious notice of the story and lore. People were commenting on the story and lore with extreme displeasure. I even observed how that many of the negative comments here locally on the forums were from people who never previously seemed to bother giving an opinion on the story either way. People who never seemed to care about the lore at all were suddenly joining a chorus of voices crying out in unison about how awful it is.
The sheer amount of anger towards the writers and devs responsible for the story and lore in Shadowlands rivals the worst of the worst outcries in the game’s history. People were absolutely disgusted, and they were more than a little vocal about it.
But these are just my observations and recollections. Yours clearly are different.
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I will say the story in SL (minus the weird jailer ending) was so much better than DF. I followed along with everything that happened and enjoyed it. I can’t even tell you what the DF story has to do with the Aspects, or why Fyrakk cares about the emerald dream. The story is so boring now. Hopefully they pick it up with War Within.
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I agree that the hatred people had for the game during sl was big in places like forums, reddit, yt, ect. Funnily enough most people i talked to who didn’t engage in these things enjoyed shadowlands. Regardless of peoples opinions, i still enjoyed the game and found it engaging to play on a day to day basis. I do think alot of the hate for the story / gameplay was horribly overblown because i recall reading a ton of feedback about how people were forced to grind multiple torghast wings every week for…uh reasons? Or how you needed to grind maw dailies and anima just to do mythic plus or pvp.
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I miss hanging out in Faery land and my glitter DnD.
Otherwise shadowlands can stay in the corner right next to WoD.
It felt more Diablo to me than ever before.
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It really has. I wouldnt be upset if they deleted all 3 and rolled everyone back. Start over and dont screw it up this time.
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I missed getting cosmetics for my undead friends but I’m not missing the shadowlands experience…
Specially what they did to arthas.
Ok…I will.
SLs sucked.
no redeeming qualities at all. Revendreth was cool to look at, and then you found out those gothic vampires you were expecting were actually tea sipping socialites lmao.
Ruined vampires for me forever. lol
anima. Dear god, the anima.
pure vomit.
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The story was like the worst bad fanfic you’ve ever read in your life too.
Zovaal is a combination of 3 tropes. Generic Doomsday Villain. Villain Sue. And Black Hole Sue.
Oh and the afterlife is all robots. Everything is a robot, lol. I’ve read some bad fanfiction before. But very few are on that level of bad.
It didn’t even feel like a legitimate WOW expansion. It felt like the kind of generic asset flip you’d see on some mobile game trying to copy WOW. It didn’t feel like any of this fit into the Warcraft universe at all.
Oh but “it was planned since Warcraft 3” lol. Pardon me while I do the Naked Gun facepalm.
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oh no no, you should wait for at least 2 more expansions. Then let the nostalgia sink in.
but now, no no no no.
Death and the afterlife in the Warcraft universe was better when it was a mystery.
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This. So much this. They de-mystified everything. Now we know death and afterlife is all robots. I’m hoping they retcon this mess. And say the Shadowlands we saw isn’t the real deal and was some artificial construct that we have to take down.
They seem to (mostly) be doing “let us never speak of this again” and only ever mentioning events in broad strokes.
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I did like Revendreth. The other zones were meh (though as much as I hated having to go there, the Maw was, in retrospect, kind of interesting in a Dante Inferno kind of way).
I mean, there are elements of Shadowlands that could be taken and reworked into something good. But many changes would be required.
Did I wander into the Twilight Zone…?
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Revendreth was cool, and 9.0 and 9.2 were pretty great.
Go spend some time in the maw and then tell me you still miss SL.
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You are in the minority. I was there, and the game was never in a worse state than it was during SL. If you don’t believe me pull up any youtube video from that time.
And if that isn’t enough, look how much Blizzard has moved away from it the past few years.
The story was complete and utter garbage. The jailer was a retcon devise that had no real backstory and was a stupid villain. No one liked having to fly thru oribos just to get to the next zone, Torghast was incredibly boring and dull plus people hated being forced to do it just to progress their character, which made us hate it even worse. SL was nicknamed Systemlands because of the numerous systems that fought with you and made the game unfun. Every new patch introduced a new system that I had to fight with just to progress. Renown was a timegated metric that they used to drip feed content and kept you from progressing further each week. This should NEVER be in any MMO design because it forces players to just log on, do that weeks renown, and then log off to play something else.
The only good parts IMO was the first raid and the zones were well done(the art team always knocks it out of the park). But everything else I just mentioned killed it for me and I quit after Sire Raid. I remember logging into Oribos about midway thru just to see how the game was doing and it was DEAD. You could say the big scandal had something to do with that, but for many it was just the final straw. BFA and SL almost killed the game and Blizzard is still working to gain player’s trust back after those debacles.
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