There was literally nothing I liked about it. I didn’t like BFA either, so I skipped the bulk of that and SL. SL was worse though because of all the systems and grinds. I got to level cap and just NOPED right out for the rest of the expac. Logged in a few times to see if things got better but just hated the whole theme, story, gameplay, systems, grinds.
Having more fun just grinding the world bosses/elemental bosses than I have had since Legion (which I really liked after the first patch or two).
In certain areas I appreciated the multi-level parts of zones, such as revendreth because it made sense visually, but in other zones it didn’t work well. it was such a pita to get around before flying. The disjointed zones didn’t help either. I also thought that of all the places in the afterlife these were the most insipid. Stories were boring. Jailer was boring. Content was boring. The covenants were totally unbalanced.
IMHO, it was the amount of systems you had to participate in in order to remain power relevant, only for them to make said systems much, much easier to access, too late into the expansion.
Anima should have been as easy to obtain as it is in ZM/Korthia from the start.
Return Lost Souls should have been a repeatable thing from the start.
Switching Covenants should have been as easy as it is now, from the start.
BOA Anima, Conduits, and the level 60 Renown item should have been available from the start.
…
Etc.
Things like that are why I personally believe Shadowlands wasn’t very fun per say, and I’ve heard these things from other players/friends as well.
They waited too long to make the game as accessible or simply FUN as it is now, basically.
That may describe why you and some others didn’t like it but it still does not answer the obvious question, what proof is there that shdowlands failed?
In business a product or service fails if it costs more to produce than it brings in through revenue. Has anyone seen Blizzard’s P&L statements to see if that in fact is the case?
And if WOW is failing financially, why would the FTC be stepping in to block the Microsoft purchase?
You’re asking the wrong person because I don’t know, and I also don’t care to find any proof that it ‘failed.’ It’s a moot point anyhow, since I played the entirety of Shadowlands, so I disagree that it was a failure of an expansion. I was just simply pointing out a few things that I didn’t enjoy or find fun, as well as things that I felt could have been different in the expansion lol. Was just responding/commenting on the thread, I don’t necessarily agree with OP that Shadowlands failed.
The only reason I asked is that in the note to which I responded you answered the question “why did shadowlands fail?”.
Your not alone, lots of people answered that question which means they all accepted the premise that it did fail so I’ve been asking why people assume that premise to be true.
Now maybe some of them meant to say “Well I don’t know if it did or did not fail but I didn’t like it and here’s why” but it’s hard to say. No one actually said that before giving their reasons.
The art direction looks like cheap plastic. The writing and storylines were so forgettable, I genuinely can’t remember what the stories for each zone were. The overarching story didn’t fare much better and the entire storyline concludes with a wet fart and an indifferent shrug.
Yeah, those big bad guys we already knew about? They’re still coming, I guess.
Borrowed power making its return again wasn’t great, not having tier sets until the last raid tier was dumb, and making legendaries was a massive pain in the beginning. World quests and optional objectives were the grindiest they’d ever been and in the beginning of the expac, players were the weakest they’d ever been, even eclipsing vanilla.
There were a LOT of reasons why Shadowlands was a terrible expansion, I don’t think you can really pin it on one thing. Dragonflight is already shaping up pretty decently, though. We’ll see how it fares, after BFA and Shadowlands, hopes are high.
Coming up with 4 abilities for each class when they were only going to use one was moronic. Worse yet, because covenants had a bis at all times, characters often had to go against what they would have naturally chosen for best performance reasons.
Like on my warrior, I wanted to go Necrolord from the start, but due to the Banner being worthless for the first 2 patches, I was basically nerfing myself in order to do it. Worse yet, they didn’t make any of the rewards account wide so I couldn’t even use what I would unlocked on Necrolord if I were to unlock it and then go back to my pve covenant. Or play something like DK where I could have unlocked Necrolord mounts for both classes at once. An Orc warrior as Venthyr just felt wrong at the beginning of SL and that wrongness just made me want to play less and less.
Blizz has mentioned it but they forget about the RPG part of MMORPG more than any past xpac in the games history. It did get a little better but really that was it for me.
That and I wanted my Necromancer Healer
I’ll add one more thing, based on the beta the one other thing I was definitely going to focus on at the beginning of SL was getting the Deathbringer title from the zone pvp achievement…and they removed that for absolutely no reason. An expansion’s success is determined based on how the player base enjoys the first patch, and SL had the worst first patch of any expansion so far. And that was with Castle Nathria being really good from everything I saw.
They sacrificed their casual player base and steady subs in an effort to turn WoW into a hardcore game in hopes of milking token sales from whales.
Rated PVP gear was suddenly required to be anything more than fodder in random BGs. PVP in general became a clown show of gimmicks with so little room for reaction or counterplay (1-shots, Sleeper, Craven, Grip of Everlasting)
The Maw was introduced as a stingy slog that enticed players to gamble with their haul to push their progression rate beyond a pitiful crawl. The zone also upped the pathfinder ante by removing ground mounts in addition to flying mounts.
Torghast could have been a worthy successor to BFA Visions, but they left it as little more than a currency farm for Legendary items. This turned it into a weekly requirement that players grew to despise instead of an alternate avenue to competitive gear that players could enjoy at their leisure.
Players were forced to choose between aesthetics / theme and power with Covenants and Covenant Powers.
Loot was deemed too plentiful and droprates were nerfed so content could have a higher replay value.
And then there was the story…
Established lore and some of the most prominent characters in the game’s history were retconned and rendered as unwitting pawns in the grand scheme of a new villain that no one cares about.
Well I mean, I didn’t find this expac to be the most fun one ever (by far), but from a business/marketing/company standpoint, it absolutely did not fail. Numerically speaking.
