The problem is that the developers built a game of needless gimmicks, systems, and complexities that realistically required one being a committed player. Getting anything done in the game required one or more of the systems, keys, raid scores of a certain level, and so on. Those who liked building those may have liked the expansion. Those who play for story or regions or simple fun (as distinguished from the very real fun that the highly skilled developed) had nowhere to go except to other games.
2 Likes
Manufactured consent
2 Likes
The covenant restrictions were the problem.
Covenants had a humongous amount of content (esp. Venthyr & Necrolord) but it was invisible to you unless you happened to belong to that covenant.
So in an expansion that had more open-world content than any expansion except maybe Legion, people didn’t think there was any content, because it was invisible to them.
We should have belonged to all 4 covenants and once, and unlocked abilities and content features with Renown in whatever order we chose.
Where the whole “the covenants hate each other” thing came from, I really have no idea. From DAY ONE the covenants in Shadowlands were asking us to help the other covenants.
6 Likes
SL is a good expansion in the same way MOP is a good expansion. (I don’t think SL is as good as MOP, but early MOP was brutal at times.)
Blizzard fixed a lot of issues, but the initial systems design wasn’t suitable for a fun experience.
Like the Maw is fundamentally a terrible experience, but a fantastic zone. It was literally WoW Hell, right? We meme about Sylvanas doing Maw dailies now.
It’s not that SL failed, SL is a good “now.” But the game stagnated in an “early MOP state” for too long. SL in 9.0 started strong and just sat around too long. 9.1 was miserable for many players. Once the issues were fixed with SL, in 9.1.5, the game felt decent. 9.2 is legitimately a great patch. 9.2.5 is legitimate a great patch to end the expansion.
2 Likes
M+?
m+ has hard saved wow, literally what keeps this game going for the majority of players.
SL sucked due to systems, they repeated the same garbage gameplay loop from legion/BFA with a different coat of paint.
Alt unfriendly
Gated stuff everywhere
Legendaries
Covenants
Renown
CHOREGHAST
etc.
Im so glad the “feature” of DF is just flying around in a dragon mount.
i hope it stays that way and player power never relies on anything other than running keys, raiding or doing pvp
1 Like
For me it was two things: Covenants and Legendaries.
Covenants shouldn’t have been tied to player power and instead should have been strictly cosmetic choices with some narrative locked behind them that was easy to swap between the four as you pleased. By tying your characters progression to your covenant AND making it difficult to swap, coupled with how long it took for them to allow us to swap freely, left a very bitter taste in my own mouth as well as the mouths of other players.
I’m almost certain if they had made it so we could freely swap as we needed to, it would have been better received even with player power tied to it but making it a multi-week process for a long length of time made the system dead on arrival for many players.
As for legendary items the biggest mistake, to me, was tying player power to the economy in the way they did. Legendaries got to be CRAZY expensive and for the longest time were locked behind RNG, so you could have had horrible luck and had to shell out hundreds of thousands of gold unless your guild had designated crafters or you knew a guy that would be willing to cut you a deal.
if I had to pick between RNG legendaries like we had in Legion and crafted legendaries sold on the auction house, I’d rather leave it up to chance personally. It was completely stupid putting such massive pieces of player power on the auction house rather than just a simple way for people to get it.
3 Likes
But Shadowlands wasn’t a failure.
I loved diving into the lore behind Sylvanas and her motivations, but also exploring the mysteries of the afterlife.
I could talk about theories about the afterlife for hours, and what I really liked about it was how zones like Korthia embodied ancient concepts of the afterlife, it was very Sumerian in its view, and what’s particularly interesting is that early human civilization had a similar concept of the afterlife being a grey and dull place, and I think Korhia resembled that,
It’s really exposed me to this FANTASTIC idea, that what if all of our beliefs about the after-life ARE in fact true, and that the afterlife…like life itself…evolves as human civilization evolves? To me that’s been a wonderful journey, and something I never even thought about before Shadowlands happened…
But if you think about it, early human thought of afterlife, was similar to a place like Korthia, where you could get devoured and so on, but after Sumeria there were the Ancient Egyptians that believed in multiple Gods, at least until the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten that tried to change the Egyptian religion to believe in one God-which coincidentally, was in the same era Moses was supposed to have lived which was the precursor to Judaism/Christianity,
Anyway the point is the Shadowlands story if you dived into the lore seemed to follow a similar structure, that the after life a long time ago was this dark scary place, and there was a Hell (the Maw), but then Hell was emptied (which I think a lot of Christians say will happen at some point) so if you think about it it’s really fascinating lore,
And while it might be in a side story, I don’t believe Sylvanas story is completely finished yet, she will be back, and it will be glorious
1 Like
Well this is akward…
1 Like
They intentionally designed the endgame zone to feel like Hell (for players, not just characters).
They wrote a story so absurd that even people who don’t normally care about lore were mocking it, and then they kept doubling down on it.
They tied fun cosmetic/lore choices to unbalanced gameplay/power choices.
The dungeon and raid content was pretty uninspired, but I think that could have been forgiven if it weren’t for everything else.
2 Likes
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but M+ is likely the major factor that kept WoW afloat during Systemlands. While there are some who don’t like the gogogo mentality, it offers a unique and scalable experience with enough weekly variation to keep it interesting for many.
2 Likes
- Covenants
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Covenant abilities should have been universal in their own talent tree and had their effects change to match the theme of the Covenant you selected. Want Necrolord Slappy Hands but you like the Venthyr more? Have some red slappy hands instead!
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Conduits should have never been a thing to begin with. All they did was make tuning more difficult. They added very little power to your character overall, but it was enough to make a difference.
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Since player power was tied to your Covenant and was time gated with no way to really catch back up effectively, you had to farm anima and souls every week to stay competitive.
- Torghast
- Running this constantly was 100% required if you wanted to stay competitive. On top of that, it could actually get very difficult to solo if you were right around the recommended item level. RNG anima powers could dumpster a run right out of the gate. Some classes had it easier than others as well. I remember Rogues having a really tough time with Torghast at the very start of the xpac.
Covenants and Torghast combined made WoW feel like a chore. Log in Tuesday after work, go do my weekly quest, run Torghast for my Soul Ash, etc.
Its why I quit the second I got my AOTC for Castle Nathria. I wanted to come back for 9.1 but with the Domination Gear forcing you to recraft your legendaries if they happen to be in that slot nipped that in the bud real quick. So here I am. I came back for the pre-patch after not having played since March of last year. Shadowlands sucked which really disappointed me because unlike BFA or WoD, I was super interested in the story and lore expansion for Shadowlands. And then they dumpstered that too.
4 Likes
Due to false promises during Systemlands pre-launch like being alt friendly when people were already burnt out from the systems in BFA prior.
3 Likes
Too many chores, toghast, maw, anima, renown. Way too many grinds
8 Likes
Good opportunity for more lore enriching content with Garrosh , Arthas , e.t.c …lost 
2 Likes
lots of reasons, but many of the same mistakes as the past like content being cut and taking too long to listen to the players about things. (pull the ripcord bs etc). Otherwise the story was weird and disjointing, covenant systems and renown and the legendary system were terrible for alts, making people feel trapped in a certain class if you couldn’t spend 100’s of thousands of gold for upgrades.
For me personally i agree about keys, it felt like they shifted the end game from rich story driven raids to farming 5 man dungeons over and over, if never see these dungeons again ill be happy. That being said the raids were uninspired fight wise, nathria was great, SoD was terrible and ZM was cool but boring. The story cut too many corners leaving threads unfinished or just plain rushed (like ve’nari)
6 Likes
Huge maw death penalty
Trash mobs everywhere.
Low loot drop rates.
Alt Unfriendly
No archeology
Just to name a few others
9 Likes
Take away the weekly vault and see how popular it is.
2 Likes
I wouldn’t say “fail” entirely, so much as “whelmed”.
I enjoyed most of the actual gameplay, and it got better for alts. I can tolerate a lot for a good story. But Devos, Uther, and Pelagos all deserved a more in-depth storyline in Bastion. The Afterlives trailer was awesome, but that kind of writing didn’t happen in the game itself, imo. There was some good stuff, but not enough. And I still can’t believe it took the Kyrian THAT long to finally think their methods are a bit messed up. Just a bit.
The zone was gorgeous, but I need to know and care about these characters or it doesn’t hook me.
The other zones were stronger, but so many missed opportunities to see dead characters again. I wanted to see Runas in Ardenweald, and have him call me friend again. 
I also kept waiting for delivery on that promise that we would find Zovaal sympathetic. Did I miss something?
I appreciate that Sylvanas directly recognized her crimes were unforgivable, but the Elune thing was all over the place, and I found the resolution flat.
Not enough Ve’nari, but there’s never enough Ve’nari.
3 Likes
Shadowlands was the best expansion until 10.0. Now they are taking a step backwards by removing systems and reintroducing talent trees. Hopefully we get a mandatory torghast like instance in 10.1 along with some sort of system involving collecting dragon power to give us cool abilities like BFA. Other than that, we need a gold crunch where 1 million gold becomes 1g to get rid of inflation and make the BMAH great again.
The nipple man contributed nothing to the overall story of the game, all he did was latch on like a parasite to old lore.
gameplay was passable. I don’t think covenants were as horrible as some other systems we’ve had in the past. Definitely not great, but not the absolute worst.
zones felt like video game levels. Never before has the world felt so disconnected and game-y.
Torghast was a great proof of concept, but they never properly expanded on it. What we got at the start was in essence what the expansion ended with. The perk tree was a good addition but that’s the only notable change I can actually think of. As a result the system quickly became boring since it was the same runs over and over and over and over.
3 Likes