Now that we've seen Season 1, we can begin valid reviews of TWW

Community General Discussion
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Point of reference: Shadowlands- the most hated WoW Xpac of its time; yet mechanically it was doing better than Dragonflight and The War Within, and had more subscribers than DF, SoM, SoD, Cata, Era and Hardcore COMBINED. Subs have only gone down from there.
That’s how impressive the current modern/retail game is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1bmrpyb/updated_wow_population_chart_from_gdc_with_dates/

Poor decision-making specific to TWW launch aside (buffing XP during paid early access then nurfing XP when early access was over, deleting Brann XP during the week 3 content drought when the only content was Delves):

  1. Shadowlands was the last time Rep/Renown dropped from Raid, Dungeons and BGs; the 3 pillars, which created synergy. You played the content you subscribed for to progress your Rep/Renown, and it had the coolest rep rewards of the 3 xpacs.
    = SL > DF, TWW

  2. Covenants:
    No matter what your aesthetic, there was a Covenant for you.
    No matter what your content, there was a Covenant for you.
    No matter your skill level, there was a Covenant for you.
    DF - rep/renown? nobody cared, no attachment, a hollow grind.
    DF - Aesthetic: disney dragons/scalies. Everywhere.
    TWW Hero talents - less than half the options of Covenants/Conduits.
    TWW Hero talents - little to no aesthetic (psst, they’re just new talents).
    = SL > DF
    = SL > TWW

  3. Keystone Master mount
    = SL > DF > TWW

  4. TWW nurfs to Timewalking:
    Timewalking XP nurfed
    Timewalking Badges nurfed by 60%
    Timewalking scaling nurfs means leveling characters can be virtually ineffective, but level 11 warrs exist, gg
    SL was probably the best era for Timewalking, and re-added Mage Tower
    = SL > TWW

  5. Economy:
    SL - Reasonably priced serverwide AH
    DF/TWW - Regionwide AH for mass scale inflation/manipulation
    = SL > DF > TWW

  6. Professions vs Crafting Orders
    Up to and including SL- 100% self sufficient gold farming with reasonable time investment
    DF, TWW - Mobile game style grinds, RNG with an emphasis on making expensive mistakes and an unreasonable grind time investment and ‘ranks’ of… herbs.?
    = SL > DF, TWW

  7. Story/plot (if any)
    SL - Botched “split” souls retcon and Arthas’ “spark” snuffed out? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
    DF - “let’s talk about our feelings…” :joy:
    TWW - Baelgrim dies, Magni lives, Faerin Half-orcen :roll_eyes:
    = SL = DF = TWW?

  8. Fun Detected:
    TWW - Water Ele, MM Pets, Retr Aura, OS Moonkin form, 1600 PVP elite xmog token all yeeted from the game because,…?
    = SL > TWW

  9. Nobody memed on low effort login screens until the 10th xpac, TWW
    = SL > TWW

  10. Forbidden Reach and Siren Isle rings, *exist *
    SL > DF > TWW

  11. Prepatches:
    SL - Straightforward, had rare mount drops and common very large bag drop, high participation down to the last minutes and seconds it was live.
    DF - No mounts, no bag, only catchup gear, leveling trink, and glitches/bugs.
    TWW - Arbitrarily longer grind for catchup gear than DF, low participation after 2 weeks but it’s all group content, somehow even more glitches/bugs than DF.
    SL > DF > TWW

  12. Xpac features:
    SL - Many
    DF - Dragonriding, Dracthur/evoker, the least played/least liked class and race in the game. Cost many subscriptions.
    TWW - SL features 2.0, Dragonriding 2.0. Dwarves 3.0, BFA Islands 2.0, Annulet Ring 2.0
    = SL > DF > TWW

  13. SL - mobs in M+ silenced when interrupted :open_mouth:
    DF - some mobs in M+ cast from another tree when interrupted, too many casts
    TWW - more mobs in M+ cast from another tree when interrupted, even more casts!
    TWW - aoe stops no longer interrupt casts/stops nurfs
    = SL > DF > TWW

  14. M+ Nurfs
    SL - Tanks winning the day/key by avoiding wipes (fun detected again).
    SL - Healers had a chance to save off-script pull wipes if they tried.
    DF - Healer nurfs.
    TWW - Tanks / Healer nurfs.
    = SL > DF > TWW

  15. No Nascent Crest style mats dump.
    = SL > DF, TWW

  16. SL Mythic gear - 13ilvls > Heroic, no Crests!
    DF Mythic gear - 6ilvls > Heroic (pssst, it’s the same gear)
    TWW Mythic gear - arbitrarily added ilvl breakpoints, which means your myth track from vault is always lower/requires currencies to upgrade to the Heroic track you’re already wearing before you can actually upgrade it to better quality than what you’re wearing. A waste of two currencies, Valorstones and Gilded Crests, requires even more grind than DF version.
    More ilvl tiers = another waste of two currencies, Valorstones and Gilded Crests, requires even more grind than DF version, again!
    = SL > DF > TWW

  17. Valor > Crests + flightstones
    Crests + Stones = more obnoxious than any gear upgrade system needs to be in any game. Again, there was no Crest system in SL.
    = SL > DF > TWW

Conclusion?

You don’t have to love or even like Shadowlands to see that every system, currency, and the economy we’ve had since Shadowlands has been developed to be worse than what came before.
These are the objective, marketed, decisive systems we’ve all experienced that show modern Xpacs are getting worse over time with the benchmark being Shadowlands, what we all hoped would be the worst xpac.

Objectively, SL > DF > TWW

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I have the OP on ignore so I have no idea what he said, but from past history I can guarantee that no review he’s ever done is valid in any way, shape, or form.

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It’s not, they claim SL was better than DF and TWW, then provide a link that shows that at the time SL was plummeting, DF has GROWTH in sub retention…

In fact, if the char continues in any shape or form into TWW, SL lost us subs and DF/TWW regained them.

In fact, none of the Post-Legion expansions look good according to this chart, they all drop off after S1 for engagement outside of when a major classic rendition launches, so… really I’d say TWW is actually depicted to be righting the ship from a 4 something expansion slump.

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Yeah, that sounds about right.

The usual doomer nonsense, just looking for attention.

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Blind or lying?
I think I know which onneee

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You can give your review any time you want even the day after the expansion is released , a review is based upon what is the state of hte game at the time of review - is it playable , is there enough content , is it boring e.t.c . I don’t think you have to play the game for one patch for it to be called a fair review. I would just call that a summary of the first patch

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My guy… YOU gave us the chart that cuts off with TWW on an UPTURN…
Post-Legion sub chart

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There’s a lot not to like about TWW but if you’re comparing it unfavorably to Shadowlands, that’s a big uphill battle for you. I don’t think my goggles get that level of rose tint.

It’s worth pointing out I don’t actually think that’s on DF or TWW - that was caused by Shadowlands (especially being on the heels of another absolute garbage expac in BFA).

It was such a bad expansion people who stopped playing SL actually stopped playing WoW all together - they have not yet or will not return. It’s far easier to lose trust than rebuild it - it’s going to take more than one AMAZING expansion to get back even a large % of folks who called in quit in SL, and I think it’s safe to say DF & TWW are OK, but not amazing expacs.

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Dude has a sub solely to be on the forums and hates this game. We don’t expect much. I think half the forums has him on ignore. lol

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OP you triggered my non-existent SL PTSD.

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So…technically he GAVE you PTSD?

Also I’d like to note that BFA and DF/TWW are all three saved by Classic releases some time into them, and that at least partly some of their “growth” or stability can be contributed to those according to this chart as a whole, SL also had a Classic release, but not only was the uptick INSIGNIFICANT compared to the other three launches, but it immediately precedes such a plunge as to actually rather impressively even surpass BFA’s down turn before Vanilla Classic released.

And it had TBC Classic, arguably THE expansion on the original charts that earned WoW most of its original subs, as WotLK and beyond at best only kept the TBC sub count and didn’t add to it.
https://www.sggaminginfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wow-sub-numbers-1024x342.jpg

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Why didn’t you make a new comment? You garnered 4 likes from the PTSD comment, then added 2 paragraphs to explain 1 bad take…? /eyeroll
edit: then keep editing it…

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The problem is that for many players, the answer to these 3 questions was different. For players in which 2 or 3 of these questions were different, you had to prioritize what was more important to you. That’s quite a bit of friction for a core system of the entire expansion.

It feels very disingenuous to talk about TWW hero talents yet left off one of the most significant change going into DF with the talent rework.

The price to craft legendary base items was not reasonable at all, and those were absolutely required for players to have. Outside of DF S1, crafting is purely optional in both DF and TWW. Also the cost to build up legendary base items for crafters was also significant.

Legendary crafting was unequivocally not farmable in a reasonable amount of time with all the ranks that were required. Everything else with the crafting system was just as minimally helpful as any other expansion prior to SL.

I’m with you on the ranks of mats, that’s ridiculous. But what on Azeroth is a “mobile game style grind?” How is the grind any different than the material grind that players have needed to do in WoW for any profession at any point of time?

Because there were no unpopular design decisions with any classes from SL? But sure, we can just cherry pick the bad ones from the expansion you dislike to pretend like SL was perfect.

Is it really a benefit when nearly every expansion-wide feature was hated so much that Blizzard had to make a big song and dance about the existence of a ripcord to pull if it they couldn’t turn it around? And then having to actually pull said ripcord going into S3 because they couldn’t turn it around?

So wait a second, “costing many subscriptions” is an expansion feature? Also, in the chart you linked yourself, are we not going to talk about how shortly after Shadowlands launched (during a global pandemic no less), subscribers fell off a cliff? Dragonflight saw no where near the drop in subscribers during its lifespan as Shadowlands. Dragonflight never reached the lows Shadowlands did during its entire run, and recorded “record post-launch stability and growth” per that same chard.

What does SL features 2.0 even mean? What does BFA Islands 2.0 even mean?

So tanks being made of paper for the first 2 seasons of SL isn’t going to make the list, eh? Shocker.

Both of these are responses to the massive gains of power players gained from the talent systems. You think tanks being much sturdier in DF weren’t able to “win the day?”

There is no way in good faith anyone can tell me the SL legendary system mat dump rivals anything we’ve ever seen in WoW.

Having the optimal play for mythic geared characters be farming +2 keys for a currency to upgrade gear was a colossal disaster. I’m not a huge fan of valor stones myself, but having a singular upgrade currency dropping from all content creates degenerate gameplay loops.

First, the vast majority of the items you listed are purely your opinion. You’re welcome to have that opinion, but it’s not objective. Your overall conclusion, even if most of your points were objective, equally cannot be objective.

Second, you cherry picked nearly the entire list to leave out the most derided parts of SL while pulling out the most disliked parts of DF and TWW. It’s honestly impressive just how disingenuous your comparisons are as a result.

Third, even the points you listed above that are objective, you’ve objectively gotten wrong.

The chart OP himself linked shows that Shadowlands was when subscribers nose dived to their lowest point since BFA while Dragonflight saw one of the smallest subscriber drops from launch to the S1 lull, and then steady growth until the chart data ends. The available data the OP provided himself shows this statement to be a straight lie.

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I didn’t play Shadowlands or Dragonflight and only played a month of Battle for Azeroth.

But The War Within is hot garbage.

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I completely agree they need to delete the game

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Gee, I wonder what he means by this

I think I hear some dogs barking, like a whistle just went off

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That only really applies to Court of Harvesters. Which you could get rep from your first run of Castle Nathria on that character per week along with choosing said rep from the weekly dungeon quests. Death’s Advance and The Enlighted only had their respective raids as an alternative method of rep.

I wouldn’t consider only one rep having this as something Shadowlands greatly achieved.

And most of the time it was a choice between aesthetics and performance when it came to Covenants. Don’t you remember the ‘pull the ripcord movement’?

Why are you claiming that Faerin is a half orc? Making stuff up and being mad about it. Typical.

I’ll take those rings over spending another day grinding out stuff in Korthia and the Maw thank you. Especially pre 9.1 maw.

That was present in Dragonflight as well starting with Season 2. However hero track only went up to 5 upgrade ranks, equaling the first track of mythic gear. Now hero track has 6, capping at the equilivant of 2/6 myth. However in both cases you needed the highest quality crests (Aspect and gilded respectively) to even get your hero track gear into the mythic ilvl bracket and still do. So what exactly is your point? Also upgrading gear to the same ilvl as your highest equipped piece in that slot only costs flight / valorstones at a 50% discount. So not that much of a “grind” to get a mythic 1/6 piece to 2/6 = hero track 6/6. This was also present in Dragonflight.

So again, making stuff up and being mad about it.

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You’re right, the talent rework sucked. Baseline abilities now costing a “talent point”. No merit. No thanks.
PS; tonnes of talents in the game right now are abilties and conduits from SL.

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same. probably still yelling at everyone to stop having fun or whatever, mixed with some garden-variety racism towards Faerin Lothar.

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I am not a shadowlands hater. But the shadowlands economy was truly horrendous

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