third worst? i would say it is the worst. i thought bfa was bad but shadowlands makes bfa actually look good. every other expansion was not as bad
20 Likes
They’re all good, but I’m not meta. Shadowlands just feels very alt unfriendly. I’m not happy about scaling, loom nerf, and the level squish is bad.
I like WM, but haven’t touched it since BFA. It felt better implemented there. Mostly because the PvP is absolutely broken. I get DESTROYED in PvP as if my ilvl is 120 not 222.
In BFA, it felt more balanced other than DHs. 9.1 seems promising
2 Likes
Shadowlands is hands down the worst expansion. Its really restrictive and if it wasn’t then there wouldnt be 9.1.5 trying to remove some of those restrictions.
At least with the azerite system you had freedom of what you wanted to use in terms of powers.
I would go back and play either WoD or BFA over shadowlands
17 Likes
I mean I don’t think I’d go so far as to say “third worse” – I think a lot of the things that the community rallied for to keep in the game are coming back full circle in a similar way (AKA set bonuses, etc - albeit in a much more frustrating manner. Didn’t get the piece you wanted, so you upgraded your 2nd or 3rd best set of gems - then you got your piece when they changed how the whole thing worked, so you started upgrading your proper gems - well screw you - NO REFUND FOR YOU, DEAL WITH IT, etc).
I remember when they first changed talent trees - because it was “too complicated” - but I mean look at it now. There are way more pitfalls along the way…and those pitfalls are, for the most part, non-reversible to anyone but people who feel like putting in serious farming time to “fix” their mistakes.
I think the ‘functionality’ team could stand to listen to its player base a bit more. And by that, I mean maybe have polls setup in game for players to optionally take part in where the outcome can influence future decisions - because we all know that a majority of the players don’t visit the forums or don’t play PTR or Beta, etc.
3 Likes
BFA was better than SL
13 Likes
Yes, you do. Cataclysm was entirely solid, save for an extended final patch (the length of which has been exceeded since). And you can’t blame Cataclysm for the developer’s reluctance to evolve the world beyond that point - it was the only expansion that actually revisited the Azeroth and progressed the narrative outside of a single thread, and I will always prop it up as one of the best.
Cataclysm’s greatest sin was following the Arthas expansion.
14 Likes
I’ve enjoyed all expansions, including Shadowlands. Sure there are something I’d rather change, but that’s true of every game I’ve played.
3 Likes
I’d argue that for the most part BFA was way better than SL.
3 Likes
I mean, FFXIV’s lead overtly told people that if they run out of things that they enjoy doing, they should unsubscribe and check in once they’ve added more of the content that they enjoy. Rather than WoW’s tactic of strongarming you into doing swathes of content that you don’t enjoy at all in order to be competitive in content you do enjoy to artificially extend your subscription.
11 Likes
This 100%.
Casuals didn’t know the pain of carrying three artifact armor sets for one spec as a pure dps.
To think this current system is worse is pure idiocy. Is it perfect? Of course not but even 9.0 was better than BFA 100%
1 Like
I would put it ahead of WoD and Cata. Probably in the same basket as MoP and BFA as the “average” expansion. With Legion being being “above average” and TBC and Wraith being “when they actually truly tried” expansions.
1 Like
I’d say this is probably my least favorite expansion, based on how I’ve been playing.
Most of my content is stuff I haven’t finished from previous expansions. Shadowlands doesn’t feel like it really added anything new for me to do other than a single story playthrough that I’m waiting to be continued and very few new cosmetic things to collect that require a lot more effort than I feel they’re worth.
Edit: Torghast is probably the feature I like the most about Shadowlands, but there is absolutely no reason for me to do it.
I’d probably be more interested if I knew stuff like soul shapes would be something I could use going forward into future expansions, but it just feels like another collection that’s going to be abandoned, like the essences were even when they told me they weren’t going to be.
But everything in Shadowlands feels like it was designed to be small and temporary.
8 Likes
I’m not going to go super in to detail but I think only BFA (so far) is worse than SL. The only thing I really hated about WoD was the last year of it spent in HFC. The raid was alright, a lot of people liked it but it just drug on and on. BRF and Highmaul were great. Leveling was great. I loved treasure hunting. Made a lot of gold off my garrison, and I really liked grinding out the statues for it even if I was the only one who saw them.
WoDs content was really high quality, there just wasn’t a lot of it.
BFA had a lot of “content” that was really bad/boring. So does SL but the reason SL ranks higher is because Korthia grinding realistically is optional, those conduits and sockets aren’t going to make or break you. Nazjatar was not optional if you needed any of the essences from there and I’m pretty sure almost every spec used at least a minor of lucid or the other one (can’t recall name).
This is a comparison of the two xpacs on a similar timeline because I believe we were just now entering Nazj in BFA if we went by SL launch to now time frame.
I found Legion to just be all around good. Forgiving catch up mechanics as the expac progressed with the stacking artifact knowledge even if the char didn’t even exist at launch… pvp templates making pvp basically plug and play, m+, cool mini games like mage tower, farming arti appearances, suramar quest line was some of the best questing the game has seen in a long time.
We will see how seasons 3 and 4 of SL turn out, and it very well could end up worse than BFA overall, but for now I have to rank SL higher than BFA but both lower than WoD.
5 Likes
To this day, I have the most fun leveling through WoD and building my Garrison up on alts that I know I’ll keep around. Their really shoddy/abandoned attempt at housing is one feature I love the most.
7 Likes
I didn’t play WoD. Only BFA, very small bit fo cata. and SL.
SL is easily one of the worst games I’ve ever played. Easily. I was shocked at how poor grouping and community building tools are in the game that’s so focused on it.
BFA I was mostly leveling. SL is where I tried to do endgame and was flabbergasted at how poor the systems are.
4 Likes
BfA revealed the man behind the curtain and SL has just been watching him flail around.
Legion gave us a couple novel experiences and established a pattern that we were not yet aware of. BfA followed that pattern and floundered a bit - my belief is that players were simply burned out on the Legion experience, and nothing they could do while following that template would ever “cure” that burnout.
Enter SL - another entry into Legion template that many, if not most, players had burned out on during Legion. I would make the argument that, on a technical and systems level, SL is superior to Legion in every way that matters. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t always align with what is developed on paper.
People play MMOs for a world that changes and evolves, offering new experiences as time marches on. SL does none of that. The setting is completely disjointed from the world we actually care about which is only threatened on an academic level. The narrative is the culmination of a storyline that most players never cared about in the first place, and those that did are themselves tired of the shoddy delivery. The gameplay is cut and paste from Legion. And the “new” feature with Torghast? Completely neutered of anything compelling because they tied it into player power and had to make it tolerable for the lowest common denominator.
I’ve played Legion and enjoyed it.
I played Legion again and tolerated it.
I don’t have the will or energy to force myself to enjoy it a third time, no matter how refined the experience is.
6 Likes
Players are never happy in the present. People complained about classic all the time, but skip past it 15 years later, and people considered it a masterpiece.
You can’t rate an expansion while you’re in the middle of it. You have to wait until its all finished up.
1 Like
1st worst: vanilla
2nd worst: BFA
3rd worst: Shadowlands
4th worst: BC
1st best: lich king
2nd best: cata
3rd best: panda
4th best: legion
This type of logic would defy almost every type of market research under the sun.
You have a product. Product was sold with a lot of success. The product now needs to keep retention numbers high and that did not happen so now they’re fixing a lot of things.
This product has been a failure. That’s why they’re trying to install as much QoL items as possible because of how poorly they did this go around.
Ion has no vision for how to make a good game. Their team has no vision for what players want, because they aren’t talking to players who aren’t pushing hardcore content.
3 Likes
This.
Legion was one of the few points in the game where Blizzard basically reinvented it, so it was new and shiny and people overlooked the flaws.
But the model of temporary systems and infinite grinds is not one that’s gunna keep people happy for several expansions in a row. Even if Shadowlands is friendlier to players and better on a technical level, it’s not new and people are sick of the model.
The changes in 9.1.5 are good, but Blizzard needs to do something different next expansion, even if it’s just a return to a pre-Legion model with M+ tacked on.
5 Likes