Pros
-Gameplay ie classes play well, look good (recommend giving us a fourth spec)
-Graphics, game looks good.
-The idea of Torghast, when you just want to solo play and learn class unbothered (zero rewards for doing it though)
Cons
-PvP is brutal especially for Alliance like I’m talking your losing subs over it brutal
-Not a big fan of Heaven, Dracula, space setting actually hated it
-Professions didn’t even bother (was there anything cool to create?)
-Legendary system is cool overall but a lot of the Legendary’s were useless like one useful legendary per class
-The Gear looked awful except for some Convenant gear and some Gladiator stuff you can do way better
-Gearing, RNG, Mythics, Raiding The current system you have is really bad like I can’t advance farther because I don’t want to participate in Mythic 5000s and 2v2 sweaty tryhard Arenas (I’m not casual I play a crap ton let me grind the way you could in classic)
-And finally your new system the Convenants, Conduits and special Convenant skills (ie Convoke the Spirits) needs to be rolled up, thrown in the trash and burned
I dunno. Same way one can apparently list professions as a negative, then follow it up with " I didnt even do professions, was there anything good to make?"
I didn’t say it was Trash I said I can’t compete especially when it comes to PVP ie Random BGS. It would be nice if I had a catch up mechanic but there’s not. You hit a stone wall gear wise which turns playing Random BGs into a nightmare. In Classic you can compete even in greens and you have a way to catch up eventually.
IMO Shadowlands was one of the worst expansions WoW has put out, but it was still a solid game.
I came in with a high bar after BFA, expecting this to be the next “Legion after WoD” or “MoP after Cata” experience. I was disappointed.
I liked Torghast as a feature. If it had a decent reward structure I’d probably have been active the entire expansion for that feature alone. But it didn’t…
I liked the amount of mounts and other collectibles, but they were either far too easy to obtain (practically handed to me), they were based heavily on luck and RNG, or they were ridiculous grinds (genesis motes).
The biggest enemy of this expansion was its reward structure. That’s something I’ll stand by. It just felt like I had few reasons to log in. I seriously wish they’d stop trying to tie so many collectibles to once-a-day rare kills.
It sounds like Dragonflight addresses this. I just got the beta so I’ll make sure to provide a heavy amount of feedback.
Edit: One thing I really liked about Shadowlands was the initial playthroughs of everything. I have never felt like the game wasn’t worth the box price.
But, man, would I have loved to have not had to do those 10 levels in Shadowlands on every alt.
Shadowlands had tons of little things to do. DF doesn’t. DF is basically just the three big end-game pillars and some renown grinds. If you don’t enjoy raidi-logging, PvP’ing, or slamming out tons of M+ you’re going to hate it.
I think covenants were the big elephant in the room for Shadowlands, in particular Blizzard’s asinine decision to make the covenants “at war” for some bizarre reason.
We should have belonged to all 4 covenants from day 1 and used renown to unlock abilities and features in a gigantic tech tree to work through all expansion.
The biggest problem with covenants is that so much content this expansion is locked behind them, and people don’t even know it’s there if they’re the “wrong” covenant.
I know a lot of folks doing other covenant stuff for the first time to get the Veilstrider achievement/title, and people are shocked at the huge amount of content that Venthyr & Necrolord have that they had no idea about.
“Oh, THAT’S what Infused Rubies are for!” is a common thing I’ve been hearing.
Folks who are Kyrian or Night Fae - which have very little content - are amazed at the deep amount of stuff there is to do as Necrolord or Venthyr. And sadly, there isn’t enough time left in the expansion to even do much of it, since it’s all gated weekly.
If Blizzard had let everybody see all this stuff there is to do in 9.0, instead of going with their stupid, idiotic, absolutely ridiculous “you have to pick just one” crap…
Zone design for player movement is a C. If you are going to restrict flight don’t make it hard to travel and quest as it disrupts the flow and fun of game play. Which leads to the next point…
Disconnected zones is a double FF aka Incomplete as far as I am concerned. Many times I simply logged out when I was on a flight path waiting to reach another zone just to finish ONE quest.
Gearing is a C- as it was a knee jerk reaction to BFA gearing. Gearing needs to be reasonable for progression for all players casual and hardcore. Systemlands went too hardcore even for the hardcore players.
Quest design and rewards is a D+ because it wasn’t bad enough that traveling through the zones was like pulling splinters from your fingers. But the world quest rewards were a huge downgrade from BFA and Legion.
Mission table was supposed to be optional but it was the primary way for people to make gold especially with alts. Questing for gold out in the zones was a joke in comparison which is mistake they made in WoD. F
Covenant restrictions is easily a D+ and should have not used the ripcord as a rentention mechanic. Holding something like the covenant ripcord or flight as a fail safe is bad game design. Start with it day 1 so you can focus on adding depth to the game instead of making the game its base form late in the expansion when it is too late and player apathy grows.
Prepatch transmog and chromie leveling easily an A for me. It held me over for a long time since systemlands was so bad.
Multiple rental systems that were introduced after launch when they said they would not? F.
Extended beta testing to fix bugs and pushing back release is an A for me. Some respect earned right there.
Cutting the expansion short like WoD to work on a mini expansion like DF? D-
Professions were an afterthought in systemlands too.
It felt like it was a sharp turn to just focus on gearing and instanced endgame content for systemlands expansion. In the past for us players that do not focus exclusively on instanced content we lost a lot.
Professions neglected, world quests neglected, PVP gearing busted, PVE gearing busted, legendaries that made no sense, etc.
IDK what else is in the pipeline, but these and the professions systems sound interesting to me.
Oh, and the renown system for the various reps sounds neat. I did like renown better than the old school rep grind. I just think the covenants ruined the vibe of it.
-Gearing, RNG, Mythics, Raiding The current system you have is really bad like I can’t advance farther because I don’t want to participate in Mythic 5000s and 2v2 sweaty tryhard Arenas (I’m not casual I play a crap ton let me grind the way you could in classic)
What the heck can you do in classic?
Vanilla had like nothing for people who wanted to play solo.
-And finally your new system the Convenants, Conduits and special Convenant skills (ie Convoke the Spirits) needs to be rolled up, thrown in the trash and burned
