Shadowlands did nothing right from start to finish.
2 Likes
Continuing the mistake of Legion and BFA with the constant annoying must do systems in order to remain competitive or to even do more challenging content IE: Artifact Power, Azerite power, and the multiple layers of systems that were forced on the players in Shadowlands.
How they could have saved Shadowlands was:
Made Torghast it’s only mini game where the only rewards from it were purely cosmetic.
Dead stopped the borrowed power system that was built into Covenants.
Having to grind out constantly or fall behind massively frustrates players and makes them feel that once they fall behind they will never catch up. They did this in Legion and BFA and had to put in midexpansion catchup mechanics so that people wouldn’t leave (after the mass exodus of players had already left).
PvE should not be dependent on PvP and PvP should not be dependent on PvE.
They should be separate entities completely. (And before anyone starts, BiS PvE shouldn’t have a piece of PvP gear in it at any tier of the expansion. Same with PvP gearing shouldn’t have a single BiS piece of PvE gear.
Players should be able to login and have fun with their friends… not feel compelled/forced to do content they do not like/feel comfortable with in order to do content they do enjoy.
Would I like to see Solo content that COULD result in me Soloing to be on par with mythic+/Raid gear… Sure. Do I expect it in a game built around group game play? No and I don’t want to see it forced in.
3 Likes
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It strayed too far from WoW. Suddenly we were in the realms of death? With things that had almost no mention in any prior lore?
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Retcon on top of retcon. Rewriting the dreadlords, rewriting Elune, rewriting Arthas. Also why do we need the first ones? Didn’t we already have a creation myth?
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Stupid characters. Elune sent Night Elves to the Maw, even inadvertently? What? Winter Queen’s plot to hid the sigil was to . . . keep it in the center of her sanctum? Sylvanas will “never serve” after serving the Jailer for . . . reasons?
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Pointless big bad. Like . . . what was his plan? What were the stakes? What was he “protecting us” from by remaking reality? Also, nipples.
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Countless realms of death . . . and we saw 4 of them. And somehow those four were the most special of them all since they have direct connections to Oribos and none of the others were even mentioned.
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Covenants. You love Ardenweald and night fae and want their mog? TOO BAD! NERCROLORD IS BETTER FOR YOUR CLASS SCRUB.
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Conduits. Need I say more?
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Absurd restrictions on the maw to make it “feel like hell.” It felt like tedium and I felt like never going there.
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Torghast. Man what a good idea they completely ruined.
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Prideful. Know the route to a T and don’t mess one single thing up or you’re completely screwed having the prideful buff available for a boss.
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Legendaries. Buy a token or spend millions of gold just to stay caught up. Also, your legendary might be on a world boss or halfway into Castle Nathria or who knows where. Oh and have fun being a crafter, spending millions to craft thousands of base items to rank things up.
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Korthia. So you just got Tier 6 on your main? Have fun doing it ALL again on every single one of your alts if you ever want to upgrade your gear.
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Mog. Holy hell that dungeon plate is the worst set in the game. That horrible robot cyclops help. And everything else was this drab grey with spikes and more spikes. I mean I guess you’re going for a “Sauron’s Little Brother” look. Some sets were nice . . . you know if you wanted to do Path of Ascension 400 times . . .
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Covenant activites became very tedious very quickly. Path of Ascension is just . . . gross.
10 Likes
I dont think mortals should ever fight gods.
1 Like
The content drought between 9.0 and 9.1 killed the game immensely. Imagine sitting on a lack of content that early to be greeted by Korthia.
4 Likes
This is the reason it didn’t crash and burn the franchise.
It failed because of an over reliance on covenants. It relied on them for the story. It relied on them for the leveling. It relied on them for the dungeon content. It relied on them for world content. It relied on them for the key borrowed power system. And because they were so ingrained into every pore of this expansion, the attempts to escape them just made it worse.
1 Like
Honestly, I feel like SL was forced on us and Dragonflight was originally planed to be the next one after BFA. The inclusion of the black empire in bfa, Wrathion showing back up, Khadgar coming back after avoiding the war in his tower, the dragon aspects helping empower the heart of Azeroth. SL just felt like a sharp turn the wrong way story-wise. All of the elements of the story never felt like, for the land of death it was in a sense “sacred”. like just a bunch of murder hobos invade the land of death and do just the thing murder hobos do. We had a lot of unnecessary pot developments that could have been avoided and summarized in a single 400 page book. Covenants were a mess, and to this day im still hoping that The Primus is really the true jailer paying 4D chess with everyone. But the nightmare is over, and now I will only return to such a horrible place to pick up one of the few things I did like, and that is the transmog.
4 Likes
Story sucked, zones outside of Revendreth, were lackluster, systems sucked and the villains outside of, again, Revendeth, were ridiculously bad.
The highlight of the whole expansion was the cameo by Garrosh, where he stuck to his guns, and yolo’d himself out of existence
6 Likes
For my specific issues:
- The Vault should have included Torghast floor difficulty. Keeping it for M+, Raiding and Rated PvP was a serious elitist move, and shows that Blizzard never learns.
- Once Covenant leveling was done, Torghast was primarily for Legendary grinding, and M+ was the only thing getting attention. Korthia and Zereth Mortis melted into the background pretty quickly.
- The Maw shouldn’t have gone with time gating through the Jailer’s Eye, but it should have allowed mounts, while scaling lethality.
- Unpopular opinion: I loved the locked in choice we had for Covenants. Borrowed powers WITH the Covenants was the terrible mistake.
- The Art and Quest team deserves way, WAY more than they’re getting right now. The entirety of Revendreth, from Old Blanchy to the fact that it rained blood, was AMAZINGLY cool. I’d love to see them take the directional reins for a bit, and spin up a few dungeons or open world content similar to Torghast all on their own.
It was one of the reasons, for people that weren’t interested in M+ (like myself).
Agreed.
I mean, I’m glad that M+ means more content for some players. The thing is, M+ should not have such a heavy focus of the game. And before you, or anyone else, disagrees, please consider the following:
I have at least 1000+ Valor JUST from doing Callings…yet they can only be spent on Mythic gear. That is zero respect for the open world players. Could you imagine if Valor was earned in Mythic and PvP, but only usable on PvP gear? M+ players would have rioted. So, why did they do it to open world players? That’s disrespectful.
4 Likes
I really hate zones that I can’t fly in, like Korthia. It’s big enough.
3 Likes
I feel like if Threads of Fate had been available in it’s later incarnation as soon as you enter Oribos, the story is fine. What I didn’t like about normal leveling was how boring the quests were. And the game insists that you stay and watch annoyingly stiff npc’s role play. And later in the expansion dialogue started cutting out, and you couldn’t be sure when you can go and play the game.
I feel like Covenants were a good idea, but how they were tied to a time gated story was very frustrating. I dropped my sub when they were just letting us get to renown 40. I didn’t want to pay them to make me wait until they wanted to let me progress.
1 Like
because it wasnt on azeroth. and it cut a raid tier
1 Like
The maw
TG
Lack of pvp balance
Carrys and boosts in arena
Lack of open world pvp
Absolutely terrible main hub
Classes terribly designed and unbalanced
Way too much money spent on raids for the 1%
2 Likes
SL failed the same way most bad WoW expansions (Cata, WOD, bad parts of Legion, BFA) failed.
Organized Group Git Gud or Die paired with no other avenues of good gear for open world or queue-only players.
5 Likes
This right here.
1 Like
I started out liking it, but the repetitive nature of Torghast and Covenant filler got old pretty fast.
2 Likes
They took too long to make changes. Right now they seem to almost frantically be making some changes I wonder why.
Still not enough changes but it’s pre-launch.
2 Likes
I couldn’t say. I didn’t play it. 
1 Like
Nothing Im saying really hasnt been said already.
As much as I disliked SL, I think it had a LOT of good things going for it. The zones were beautiful, the score was peaceful and impactful. The Covenant stories were interesting, the maw was intriguing, the story HAD potential to be good but it was just the execution of all its components that really dragged it down. Like many others before me said, the timegating, soulbinds, vault rng, maw limitations, story holes and jailer retcon, overall pacing of content etc etc was the dethknell. By the time they got most of it right (towards the end of the expac), I was already unsubbed for 8 months.
It was nice coming back after almost a whole year and getting caught up on the story, gear, zones, etc etc without having it drip fed to me or gatted over months of mindless farming m+ keys as the only real content progression and filler. coming back towards the end of the expansion was the best decision I made, I was able to absorb everything SL had to offer without all the headaches I suffered for the first year and was able to truly enjoy the experience. Its a shame for all of us that had to deal with all the pains for the first 1.5 years.
2 Likes
Zones were one the biggest things for me. The Maw sucked. Maw squared sucked. Korthia, felt like more maw, and sucked. Zereth Mortis was alright, but then it was too late
Sanctum was not a good raid. For an expansion with only three raids, it really needed to be. Also, in a general sense, raids typically feel better and better into the expac, but Castle Nathria felt like the highlight of the whole expansion.
Content doughts. Were too long. The expansion was already delayed due to covid, but everything felt like a slog.
Finally, the dang covenant system like who designed this??? It was awful, and “pull the ripcord” should’ve been done from the get, and the vain disgusting defense Blizzard made for it means even less now that they finally did just pull it. Conduit energy? Made specs awful to play since one soulbind was typically Bis. The insanely long timegating on campaign made it feel worthless. They were allies from start to finish, so why did they feel like enemies?
5 Likes