What makes the shadowlands leveling process so bad? Ive noticed so many people that say they hate going through shadowlands on alts but never went into detail why. I even see people that are alt addicts and they LOVE leveling new characters, still say they have fun until lvl 50 because they know they have to go through shadowlands.
What makes this process so bad?
Yup you got it!
It just gets repetitive. From 1-50 you have many options for where and how to level. For 51-60 the options are very limited. I leveled 6 toons from 51-60 in SL, and though I still have more toons that need to go from 50-60, I’d rather pluck all my nose hairs out than set foot in SL to level again.
Edit: After thinking a bit, I remembered there are actually things objectively worse about SL leveling. The linear story that forces you through zones in a certain order is not fun. While Threads of Fate leveling mode does let you go wherever you want, it takes away all the story quests and the rep you would get by doing the campaign. The non-contiguous zones are also annoying and immersion breaking. In the past I enjoyed going through the main story quests more than once, usually doing the zones in a different order than the first time. But in SL I only did the campaign once because it gives no freedom at all for doing it differently on alts.
I did it maybe 4 times and its just boring af.
Shadowlands makes everything bad. That’s why I’m still only 55 
It’s not bad. It’s the fact that you must do it exactly the same way every time if you want to level at a decent pace.
I enjoy Shadowlands content. I do not enjoy the 50 to 60 leveling though because it’s the same thing every time and I’ve done it far too many times. I’d much rather have the option to get to 60 somehow else.
Um … yes. Everything you said is exactly why it’s bad.
Doesn’t have good replay ability. I had enough of the story linear part after the first time.
I didn’t like 90% of the zones.
Doing threads of fate is meh to me since I don’t do dungeons much and getting little pittances of % from stuff and never ending world quests were annoying. Didn’t feel good. [the change to bonus objectives made it tolerable for me]
It’s just a mess for me of things that don’t feel good.
The first time through it’s actually pretty cool but after that it’s just bleh and boring. What attracted me to WoW in the first place was the huge open world with all these zones and options to level in with different stories and places.
Now it’s a straight shot linear snooze fest if you do it more than once. Luckily they buffed up Threads of Fate which makes leveling way faster and at 60 my toons level for more interesting older content.
The gear you get while questing and dungeons is not strong enough. The entire way to 60 is just miserable as you and your gear are so under powered to can only kill 1-2 things at a time, and some quest mobs are just horrible. Best way I’ve found is go Threads of Fate, level in dungeons, craft 233 gear.
Even though you gain levels, due to the crappy scaling, you never feel more powerful and it’s just a slow slog.
The zones were bland, the quest were bland and world quests (if you went the other route) are unrewarding for the amount of time they take. Everything just takes a lot longer while also being less fun.
No matter what it’s going to get stale if you do it often enough. I’d like it if you automatically got a 25% XP buff after two max level characters and 50% after five.
I liked having the Threads of Fate option, and done right it can be reasonably fast. It just gets boring after a few times because you run into too much repetition.
the zones are smaller with less content, which means less quests, which they make up for by just making the quests more time consuming, which means less time being engaged fighting things, less sense of accomplishment, and fewer rewards. also the campaign is completely on rails. it’s almost like a walking sim it’s so boring. it’s okay to experience once, but after that it’s insanely tedious.
also this is the first expansion where the two factions didn’t have their own campaigns and/or quest hubs. so switching to an alt on the opposite faction doesn’t give you anything new.
tldr: this entire expansion has been less content that’s more time consuming and less rewarding.
plus the zones just aren’t fun to explore.
I’m currently in the second area, Maldraxxus or somesuch, and it is just so many things to kill in the way of the quest objectives. This is my first time through, but I am not a fan. I liked the first area, Bastion, but this one is just not doing it for me. Maybe the next area will be better, but I am struggling even wanting to play through it. I keep finding myself going back to an alt and Chromie-leveling somewhere else.
Its the SL content.
I’ve leveled a dozen+ characters to 50 almost exclusively through the Cata zones because I still love them… but holy crap… SL zone leveling sucks.
On the rails forced progress, after 2 xpac of “level where you want”.
…OR you can choose threads of fate where the main story is just removed.
No covenant progress while leveling.
“You must be level 53 to continue to the next zone” if you skip even 2 side quests.
The story felt force fed to me. Like someone shoved a funnel down my throat, or I was playing ff14 or something’s.
shadowlands leveling is just incredibly drawn out and linear. in the past, we’ve had options…then shadowlands, the opposite.
tbh, the leveling story was interesting imo. i just don’t normally do every quest in every zone while leveling to max.
For me it’s the two main options which are both extremely limited.
Standard leveling route requires doing linear quests to move from zone to zone. They don’t scale with you so doing side quests ends up wasting a bunch of time and making your main quests less rewarding if you gain too much exp from them or other things like dungeons and pvp. You can easily push them into green or even grey territory if you get distracted with other content. Then you’re left to choose swap to Threads of Fate or push through quests with low or no exp reward.
Threads of Fate leveling removes all the story quests, leaving only side quests and world quests. The problem is quests in Shadowlands are often very tedious. Even the world quests will often be these annoying multi-step things.
Bonus objectives were sped up, but they don’t give a ton of exp and the selection of world quests for leveling is usually 3-4 per zone at most.
It gets really repetitive and you don’t get a ton of options and are pushed towards the fixed side quests(which I personally don’t enjoy) or instanced content to pick up the slack.
Also 50-60 just feels like the slowest 10 levels we’ve ever had since maybe TBC.
I don’t know if it is, but it feels that way.
Shadowlands just doesn’t have any good hooks when leveling and a huge bulk of player power is locked behind level 60.
I can’t honestly say for anyone else other than myself but, for me leveling from 50 to 60 in SL hasn’t bene too bad. I enjoy it for the most part, mostly because of the asthetics of Maldraxxus and Revendreth. They’re both just kinda of my vibe.
Not too fond of Arden but will go there and take a couple days if need be but Bastion, Bastion I just cannot stand that place for the life or undeath of me, go to Bastion and power way through and get going elsewhere lol
But honestly,what I consider the worst part is that last bit from 58 to 60.
For me it is the massive reliance on the campaign quest lines to open up features:
At least for legion and BfA, my alts leveled primarily from the invasion events. For SL, they leveled by holiday events over the past year, all of them reaching 60 at the end of last midsummer festival