This expansion is a mess. Blaming COVID for delays on content is one thing, but COVID can’t explain some of the decisions that went into this expansion:
Conduit Energy. Why does this exist? All it seems to do is keep people from playing multiple specs effectively. Why does it feel like we are punished for trying to play multiple specs? The game has been against us in this area since Legion.
Torghast. What could have been a great way to make solo content that was also rewarding and could scale in difficulty is now just a chore to get soul ash. Yawn. Not everyone wants or can commit time to raiding or sitting in LFG looking for groups (and sorting through the boosters advertisements). What a waste of potential.
Boosting and paid carries. This is becoming a serious problem. (Yes I am aware boosting was available in 2005). This issue is driving me and my friends away from the game. There are people selling leveling, Torghast, Mythic+, Raids, and PvP rating. Blizzard seems to actually encourage this boosting and I don’t think this is sustainable long term. And let’s be honest: A LOT of this boosting is happening over Discord for RMT. Not WoW gold. Let’s be real.
Balancing. Ugh. Sorry Blizz you haven’t ever actually been good at this but SL is a new balancing low. How many months do we have to wait for actual balance fixes? DHs darkness and blur literally do not work. Throw glaive also does not put them or the target in combat. MWs and Warlocks basically need not apply for Mythic+, moonkins have sat at top of raid encounters for how long now? Same with Fire mages. Oh you play hunter? A class that only does dps? Welcome to all 3 specs being bottom 6 on the charts. I could go on forever but I won’t. This lack of balancing sucks and it isn’t fun.
So what is being done in 9.1 to fix all this? Because after 8 months and counting it better be doing an awful lot and I don’t think it is.
I don’t know if I would call Ion a sociopath. Out of touch? Yes. Arrogant? He certainly comes across that way to me. Raid or die? Yes. Absolutely. But sociopath is a stretch. And personally I don’t think Ion is making ALL these decisions.
This is…honestly such a good description of him and Shadowlands.
Ion designs expansions like encounters; very database focused, everything is on a timed schedule, the results are all RNG, and he controls everything the players do.
We’ve been playing the same game for 6 years. The locations are different, but the systems are the same. Was fresh in Legion, now, we can see it and it just isn’t attractive.
I don’t know why the posters at the start of the thread decided to get political but whatever.
They’re doing some improvements in 9.1. Some people like it, some people don’t. I think it’s actually pretty good, but baffling that it wasn’t implemented in 9.0.
I know next to nothing on this topic so I won’t speak on it.
Balancing is an issue for sure. Obviously it’s pretty impossible to reach perfect balance. Covenants are incredibly annoying to at least me personally. I’m playing Kyrian but really wish I could use the Night Fae abilities from time to time. I personally think covenants being easily swappable would’ve actually just enhanced the gameplay of Shadowlands.
I wish I could tell you man. It’s a dumb system.
I still personally like Shadowlands. What I don’t like about it is this content drought and what feels like a constant war over the direction of the game with these questionable systems being released half-baked, and when people ask for its outright removal or QoL changes, we only get met halfway and end up with a weird and unsatisfying system.
I hope things change. I am of the belief that the reason for this content drought comes down to Blizz working on two patches at once internally to catch-up on their content cycle. Rather than having 5 months wait between patches, I think they’re working on 9.1 and 9.2 at the same time so we can get a more consistent content cycle from here on out.
Honestly, I’d like to see the whole wow team go away and replaced with new blood. I have nothing against them personally, but their time has come. Writing is horrible, content is bad, everything is timegated, balance is horrible. Obviously, this comes down to bad leadership, bad budgets, and only a Skelton crew. Last time I heard there are only 2 class devs for all the classes. You see this when instead of publishing all the changes at once like they used too, they barely can get to 3-4 classes at a time, and it’s not alot of changes, it’s maybe 2-3 changes per class.
There is not much hope for the wow future.
Ah, I see. I haven’t done horrific visions honestly because I didn’t like BFA. Is current torgast a lot different from the alpha/beta? I remember a lot of people liking torgast back then.
People liked Torghast back then because it had very little restrictions like it does now, and also had a lot of potential. Current Torghast barely iterated on it and next to zero rewards were added, and then floors were divided into cell blocks.
If social credit ever becomes a thing, its the MMO player neckbeards who will min-max their way to the oligarchy. Has there ever really been a system we haven’t broken?