Is Shadowlands Bad?

Community General Discussion
21

100% agree, which is why I added that bit about 90% of these forums being absolute trash posts/hot takes.

Community opinion still matters to an extent though. Personally, I know several friends and guildies that have stopped playing due to completing content they wanted. This is totally anecdotal, but I have no doubt it’s happening to others as well. I’m not saying WoW is dying or anything remotely close to that, just that having bad planning can ruin a good expansion for a lot of people who originally liked it

22

It’s not a good expansion so far.

Anima grind is ridiculous.

The loot drought has caused many people to just give up.

The story is fine if it’s just focused on Shadowlands but when you start trying to make it fit in the overall Warcraft lore it just doesn’t work.

Pvp consists of sets of walls of high geared and high ranking people selling carries that prevents people that aren’t at that gear level from pushing through.

Covenants are okay but with the tweaks in 9.05 and more sure the come already showing the balancing issues present.

I already stopped playing shadowlands content 3-4 weeks ago and am just playing around in chromie time until my sub runs out.

23

It’s not a bad expansion. It’s also not a great one either. I would say it’s better then WoD and BFA but worse then Legion and MoP.

  • The story is all over the place and doesn’t really make much sense. Sylvanas siding with her long time enemies who made the Lich King
  • World Quests are tedious and boring with multiple assignments to go defeat 10 mobs, then 1 of this specific mob, then 1 of that specific mob.
  • The Zones are decent visually but getting around them is clunky
  • The Maw is dull and disliked by a large portion of the playerbase
  • Torghast is hit and miss depending on what class you play it as. It’s easily doable by all once geared but some classes have a much easier time then others.
  • PvP is to spikey and people can be 1 shot in a second if stunned/CCed

On the bright side though. Castle Nathria has fun and solid raid encounters and the M+ dungeons have been designed well and feel smoother then BFA ones.

1 Like
24

Sure, but I don’t see that as a problem. Content is finite, and eventually you’ll hit a wall where you finish everything you can do or want to do. I don’t think it’s necessarily healthy to stay subbed to WoW just for the sake of it. We should normalize the process of taking breaks or subbing on a month-to-month basis.

It seems totally legitimate to me that someone would have burned themselves out with the content that launched with 9.0 at this point. I’m not there yet, but I’m a comparatively casual player.

The real question is; are the players that have unsubbed after finishing 9.0 swearing off WoW entirely to the extent that they won’t even come back for 9.1?

Honestly, I don’t think there’s much of a concern there. If you’re the kind of person that has done everything you want to do and you’re on a break because of it, then cool! That should be treated as a totally normal thing to do. The only reason you wouldn’t come back for 9.1 is if 9.0’s offerings were so bad they turned you off to WoW, and I don’t think that’s the case.

9.0 seems like a good patch, to me at least. And I expect 9.1 will be just as good.

1 Like
25

It’s bad because there are so many blatantly obvious missteps for which no excuse can be made.

The implementation of the Maw, the insistence on the Covenant ability locking, obvious problems with Torhgast, arbitrary AoE Cap, hyper-throttled rewards, belligerent amounts of padding to formerly fast and easy content, gearing issues…

The problems with Shadowlands are infuriating because they’re neither obscure nor novel. They beg the question, “how did any of this get out of the design phase?” Scratch that, how did a lot of this get out of the “should I really suggest this outloud?” or “oh dear god they thought I was serious, I better clarify,” stage?

Something being bad in a specific, implementation way like Azerite Armor is bad, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t speak of malice, contempt, or incompetence. The problems with Shadowlands, sadly, do. They’re founded on either blinding hubris, Mr. Bean-esque idiocy, or belligerent disregard for the value of the player’s time.

Every expansion has its problems, but Shadowlands’ problems are particularly bad for all that they imply about the developers in their thought processes, priorities, view of the player, and general sense.

14 Likes
26

Try playing the game solo and hating what players have turned group content into the last two expansions…the game is MISERABLE from that perspective at this point.
Running group content was a blast in Legion. Something happened in BFA and the vote kick was being overused and ruined it. It just got worse in SLs. Half the dungeons I did run saw a vote kick for idiotic reasons, other than one single time a tank was obviously trolling us all.

Id run BGs instead but that gets just as bad as dungeons when some kid starts foaming/screaming/cursing because the other team is just better than our team is.
Its like, its ok to lose sometimes guy…get a grip. Losing is half the fun of playing PvP. lmao.

27

I think it’s being made to appear that way, she could very well be playing the jailer. She’s all about getting revenge no matter the cost, she’s doing just that.

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28

If pretty great, until the problems start to show themselves.

Torghast is fun, till it isn’t.
Leveling is quick and the story is worth it. Lvling Alts is super easy
Grind out Azarite, I mean Anima is fine at first - but starts to become an annoying chore after a while.
The Maw is frustrating, unless you’re a druid. If you go in to do dailies and question you’re going to have to leave in about 30 minutes.

The biggest problem (in my opinion) is the god awful, terrible loot system for everyone but people who like PVP. Blizzard completely F’d up loot, you can go a long time before you get a piece of gear that you actually want.

2 Likes
29

I am fairly new so not much to go on, yet.

I will say the long loading screen to get from one land to another is ridiculous. ( yes I know it’s not actually a loading screen, might as well be )

1 Like
30

I’ve always been a PVE only player in WoW, so I can only speak through that prism…

TL;DR: Rewards in M+, Torghast and Maw, being denied a ground mount in the Maw, having to PvP to get PvE gear at a decent rate caused a ruckus between the 2 communities.

-Torghast
Was really cool the first few times… but nowadays it’s just a alt chore. There are NO meaningful rewards after the first legendary.
From launch we could possibly have farmed 17000-20000 Ash, enough for 3 max iLvl (or a lot of low iLvl) Legendaries… which brings me to the next point:

-Legendaries are disappointing.
We have so many different powers to choose from, yet, there’s always one that’s MUCH superior to the others in EVERY aspect, Single DPS and AoE alike… that’s my experience from playing on a Warrior (prot and fury), Shaman (enhancement and resto) and rogue (Outlaw and Assassination).

Every spec has a NUMBER ONE Legendary… the others either would work well with a second one or are simply worse… and we can only use one at a time. There’s no reason at all to build a second legendary, since we can’t we even Transmog the Legendary skins… for some reason.

With that, Torghast became Altland… and people hate having to farm torghast with their alts.

-The Maw is a horrible zone!
Maps being overly vertical without flying are a problem for a long time (Nazja’tar, Frostfire… every Legion zone except Suramar), albeit a resource for the Devs to crunch more content into less space… but being denied a ground mount was the worst experience I had in Shadowlands.
I didn’t even finish Ve’nari’s questline in the Maw… I dropped it on week 2. I got the Torghast Mount, since I still enjoyed it at the time… but I don’t think I’d do anything on the Maw, even if I could Fly/Teleport everywhere.

-M+ drops are VERY BAD
I heard that they lowered the drops so that raiders wouldn’t farm M+ like crazy before their World First attempts, and also that in BFA M+ trivialized Raiding gear.
If that was the case… why haven’t the drops been raised again? The Mythic competition is done already and the drops still suck.
The Chests are supposed to balance it out and help the player “Target” which slot they want for gear, but they are weekly and drop gear on the slots you have a Legendary… don’t check for doubles (Rings are still Unique-Equipped too)… The last two points are things people complain since the start of BFA.

-PvPing so you can PvE
Pretty much what people have been complaining for years, but instead of Top Arena players having to farm Raids for BiS Trinkets, on Shadowlands you have PvE players (mostly M+ Players) rushing into the PvP world for more consistent gearing.

Bring the player, not the class was the old motto, but in M+ it’s all about Bring the iLvl and IO.

To get IO you need Gear… and if M+ drops are bad, while PVP gearing is better, you got that influx of M+ players to PvP alright.

I get the idea. Getting people to experience all of WoW’s content before facing the drought, before they get bored… but this wasn’t a good answer.

People coming from PvE tend to optimize farming. Bring that concept to Honor/Conquest and mix them with people that want to genuinely face other players in combat and you have a big problem: PVErs quit as soon as they think they can’t pull a 5 minute win with that attitude

"Drop this game ASAP, it’s faster honor that way"

And it might be… but what about the people who were there to… you know… pvp? To have fun? One group sabotages the other’s objectives and all that’s left is flaming.

3 Likes
31

It’s pretty bad. They wanted to re-make legion but with better ideas. Instead they re-made legion with okay-ish ideas, half the content, and it’s behind a bad grind to keep players from exhausting what little content there was.

3 Likes
32

I think the expansion so far has been poorly executed. Basic content like questing is locked behind factions and anima, and picking a faction locks you out of 75% of covenant content unless you roll 3 other alts to do that content. Covenants seem bare bones and uninspired until you grind enough anima to actually unlock them… it just doesn’t make sense unless you subscribe to the school of thought that Blizzard is artificially extending content by implementing these ridiculous grinds.

Torghast was cool in concept but in my opinion it is boring, yields awful rewards, and is boring. The Maw is the Maw. Also cool in concept but it adds a pain element to the chore element that is the Maw. I don’t think “Play in this zone until you cannot, then leave and come back tomorrow” is a bad design philosophy. I hear they are doing away with that in a future patch. We will see!

This is a personal gripe but I hate that the cosmetics are not account wide at the moment. Being locked into a covenants aesthetic when it doesn’t really fit my characters is going to be lame for an entire expansion. Fortunately I have enough mounts and transmogs from PAST content to deal with that.

As far as leveling goes, the quests are the most uninspired and boring, standard quests I have seen in a new expansion to date. None of the stories or characters are interesting or memorable to me.

Hopefully the new patch offers substantial changes and a robust amount of content. We will see!

1 Like
33

Shadowlands started out better than most other X.0 expansions, at least to me. Honestly I’d go as far as to say it’s one of the best launches we’ve had in years.

However, what really causes issues now is the fact that there have been no updates. 9.0.5 didn’t add anything new, so we’re currently playing the same patch that we have been since November of 2020. If the projected release date of 9.1 is in fact July, then it will have been the longest opening patch of any WoW expansion ever. And that’s where it’s currently failing. By now, we would be in 8.1, close to 7.2, and even close to 5.3. While perhaps Blizzard released patches too soon before, it gave variety to the game to play, which meant more content and better ways to farm currencies.

Shadowlands lacks this. 9.0.5 should have at least come with an additional or improved source of anima, that would’ve helped in the long run. But 9.0 didn’t launch with enough content to keep players busy, so even the best expansion Blizzard has ever done wouldn’t be surviving this. People would hate it if we were still stuck in 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, etc. No matter the expansion, over 200 days of a single patch isn’t good for anything.

1 Like
34

A solid meh. I enjoyed the content will it latest as a keystone player who has a ton of alts.

Anima is ridiculous and takes to long to get anything

Covenant gear is too high which hurts those casuals out there

Pvp is so insanely based off gear

There has been very little class balancing except nerfing some and never buffing the truly lower specs

I hate covenants being tied to power and transmog. Those are 2 of my favorite things and the choice sucks.

Torghast should have some sort of reward besides ash. Like transmogs, mounts, toys, ect.

Twisting corridor was fun for me but I haven’t touched it in months when I completed it.

Maw is okay but not as cool as they made it sound.

The flight paths are terrible, takes so much longer to do anything than any expansion in open world and engieering is a must.

Crafting wasn’t fixed at all.

Raid and dungeons drop rate feels bad. I don’t even raid because how unrewarding it is.

And I will close with saying anima sucks again.

I have enjoyed plenty about this expansion it’s not all negative but I feel like it’s content drought at this point.

1 Like
35

I mean, once again I’m saying 9.0 is good. I’m not arguing against that lol…

There’s a difference between wanting to play but having nothing to do, and just taking a break from the game because you want to focus on other things. Sure content is finite, but with proper planning, that content can feel more consistent and enjoyable.

As I’ve said many times, I think 9.0 is one of the best launches of any modern WoW expansion. I just don’t understand defending the longest starting patch I can think of. It does nothing but cause negative feelings toward an expansion. I’m not saying Blizz has no reason at all for postponing, but postponing this much is usually due to bad planning (even with covid)

36

Same [quote=“Eschá-moon-guard, post:19, topic:929646, full:true”]
Just about everything for me, tbh.
I wish the story was better because this is terrible. I’m so sick of Sylvanas.
[/quote]

The story, characters and writing are so terrible it straight up feels I’m playing a ps2 game every time I pay attention to the details

37

I think it depends on what type of player you are.
M+: the usual, but crappy loot
Raid: Cool raid. crappy loot
Rated PvP: everything handed to them on a silver plater
normal PvP: thrown to the wolves.
Casual solo player: very unrewarding

Overall, shadowlands has turned me from someone who played 4 or 5 hours a day(more on weekends) into a raid logger.
/shrug

5 Likes
38

Borrowed power again. Bad class balance, especially in PVP. Reliance on terrible systems like the “Great Vault” to gear up, yet getting absolutely nothing useful (Or duplicates of gear you have).

The Maw. (They have all sorts of RP reasons why it is the way it is, but game design wise its meant to pad out content and make everything take longer. Its a really light content game)

Extremely slow patch cadence, there has been no meaningful content dropped. Balance patches are poorly done, see how they do things like nerf resto shaman damage then immediately revert the change. (Poor testing, changing mechanics at random, lack of clear direction from leadership, over abundance of interns and new people at the studio.)

39

That is exactly what it is. Bellular goes on huge rants about the lack of content and blames the games systems. But the teams creating the systems and the teams creating the content should be separate. Why are we having to choose between the two? Hire more people? 200 million CEO bonus and we’re 9 months in with no patch

40

Everything

4 Likes