It isn’t though.
Not really. That’s just the new car smell.
6 months from now, if we don’t have 10.1 by that point, we will all be saying DF is trash.
4 Likes
I distinctly remember pre-ordering Shadowlands playing for a week and dropping it.
Now this is just my personal experience, but I know I wasn’t alone.
8 Likes
It is. The disdain I saw around even a few weeks in was palpable. It wasn’t 'till like 9.2.5 things were calming down. From 9.0 , sure the wait was long but I saw enough people disliking a lot of what was delivered and people dropping off while others hating SL even more or growing tired of the stuff they needed to do and so on.
1 Like
Horrid story, horrid systems, horrid zones, 2/3 raid tiers were horrid, next to no content outside of instances, kothria was korrid, the salami drama was horrid, torghast is horrid, legendaries are horrid.
Just a generally horrid experience.
2 Likes
shadowlands started out with an anima draught. The ursus cinematic and all. it was about scarcity and adversity. the hostile maw, the anima shortage and decisions on how to use the little you have.
sadly, the casuals did their thing and … both the maw and anima were trivialized, leaving behind a soulless experience for everyone.
they actually had to make the reservoir bigger, because that much extra anima was dropping.
2 Likes
3 Likes
9.1 was a disaster. It ruined the Maw for people who had liked the Maw, but it didn’t change the haters opinion on the Maw. What a mess.
5 Likes
up. it’s one of those things that you cant fix mid-expansion. you either make it obsolete or leave it alone.
1 Like
The Covenants system was really restrictive.
The Soulbinding/Conduit system was done poorly.
The Writing was very bad and actively made me dislike older lore.
They literally thought making the player character toil in hell was good content.
The Zones where all limited in color palet and felt very small.
AP 3.0
And the Deves had this overall attitude that they knew more about what we enjoy then us.
18 Likes
hell belongs in a 90 minute movie…not a two year game environment.
Im sure this looked good on paper, but some things are better ON paper and not out there for public consumption
9 Likes
I liked the zones and the main questing story through the zones. I don’t think there’s been an xpac yet that they haven’t made a good main questing story to level with imo.
They retconned so much lore to fit the Jailer in as being the big bad who’s been behind the history of WoW since pretty much the beginning, gave him almost no real backstory other than he was once a being of great power sho went bad, then we learned he’s essentially a robot, then he dies. All that retcon and forced lore of major WoW history for someone who was barely around for an xpac and wasn’t really a good design or story to begin with.
That’s my major gripe with the xpac. The rest was fine imo.
8 Likes
Do you have any evidence that it did fail? Activision / Blizzard either made money on Shadowlands or they lost money on Shadowlands. The former is success, the latter is failure.
So what are you seeing for numbers on the P&L statement?
3 Likes
The zones were a mess. Far too many mobs too close together. It felt like you never got even more than a few seconds between fights. That was really tiring for me.
Grind grind grind was all I was ever doing for little reward for doing it.
It took me months to get everything done and then I fell short by a lot simply to brain fatigue. I had to stop.
Then I got real sick again.
Came back after a week or so and just could not bring myself to go back there. I was done.
I will never again quest in those zones.
7 Likes
Perhaps. But it wont be in Shadowlands asinine setting of the afterlife. That alone ensures I wont hate it as much.
3 Likes
it didn’t fail, it was okay
2 Likes
The doubling down on the grind on top of grind for borrowed power was what killed it most i think.
Imagine having to do chores just to remain competitive, at any moment you wanted to do any content, you stop and think to yourself: "ok, what’s the best, covenant, conduit, soulbind, Legendary, for what i want to do."
Then instead of doing the thing you originally want to do, you have to start doing the chores, it was toxic from the get go.
Can’t even begin to imagine that when it came to alts as well, the game essentially restricted your access to meaningful enjoyment of the other classes if you didn’t play this game like a career.
15 Likes
It had same problem like Legion and BFA. Borrowed power
2 Likes
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Covenants should not have been locked and should have been a purely cosmetic choice so you could actually pick the one you wanted, not the one that made you 30% better.
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The Maw on launch was horrendous and unfun because you had to crunch your playtime, could not explore, and had to travel on foot through packs of annoying mobs.
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The legendary system was annoying to farm ash for.
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Torghast was fun but I did not like that I had to spend minimum 1hr in there every week farming for a legendary.
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Conduits should have had one level that you farmed once, not again every patch.
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Soulbinds shouldn’t have existed and moreso shouldn’t have been locked behind renown.
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9.1 doubled down on the borrowed power and made it so you HAD to raid to get shards of domination, which were still powerful in M+ content
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Overall, the borrowed power systems were just incredibly unintuitive and weighed down the entire expansion with bloat.
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All of the work being put into borrowed power systems should have been put into creating a fun world to play through with tons of content. Once you had your borrowed power caught up, you found an empty husk of a world with nothing but rare mount drops to keep the hamsters (mount farmers: me) on the wheel.
M+ was the only fun part of this entire expansion minus Castle Nathria for me. Why do you think it caused the expansion to fail??
13 Likes
M+ kept WoW afloat during systemlands.
4 Likes
yeah cuz everyone that hated it left already
4 Likes