Good list.
I actually sort of didnt mind the anime system. It actually managed to get me to step foot into LFR and not have a horrible time. (Doing dungeons sucked tho).
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I think the gameplay was better because SL didnt have flying at release or these god awful new talent trees.
But the TWW is slightly less horrible. Still very mid tho.
Very well said. That’s exactly what I felt. Probably many others too whom were driven away.
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To me this was part of the issue.
We fight the puppet master of reality… and win?? A few days ago I died to a Goat.
But Covenants and Torghast really sapped a lot of the energy from the game.
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Is suddenly giving you quests in Japanese while performing Jojo poses
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Flying at release was great. I actually loved flying around the Dragon Isles at breakneck speed, taking in the world, and actually feeling like I was living in it.
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You like doing quests where youre constantly getting on and off your mount to go 2 inches?
I like living in the world and experiencing something beautiful. The Dragon Isles was all that and more.
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Ok so you dont care how flying effects questing or the leveling experience.
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No, I don’t. 
I think Shadowlands was my left plaid expansion. Just really didn’t care about the pew pew.
The margins in many cases were not tight. In some cases, it was an effective DPS loss to be a certain covenant, both because of the ability and the soulbind.
By and large the initial issue was locked covenants. You picked one and if you wanted to change, you had to fill the bar for two weeks then you could switch. It was not top end players only who were unhappy about this. It by and large was the majority of players. Certain abilities were just fun and felt good to play. Other abilities were extremely strong but boring. And yet others were thematically cool, but were not strong or fun. And the other issue, was that in many cases, the most powerful covenant for your dps spec, was not the most powerful for your healing or tanking spec.
All of this held true for soulbinds. There were some soulbinds that were far better than others. But, at the start you couldnt swap soulbinds freely. So yout MS, got the best one, while your offspec got a sub par one.
It limited players and forced them to make a decision. And what the data showed was that the bulk of players just picked the most powerful covenant ability for their spec. It also made it less rewarding to play offspecs.
It also was, in many cases thematically off. Being a Necrolord Priest, Shaman or Paladin, thematically felt off. Just like being and Ardenweld Warlock.
Whether or not you call it retcon’ing, they took a lot of established storylines, and a lot of lore and said… Well the Jailer is the mastermind all along. This character who you have never heard anything about, was behind it all with the master plan to unmake reality. Taking Sylvanas as one of the big bads of the past two expansions, then just having her to a 180 turn, on the Jailer because he says “All shall serve.” They brought Arthas back, for just a tiny clip where he is an anima orb.
They just butchered a lot of previous stories on a throw away villain, who we had no time to really care about.
Not really this. It was that at the end, the realm of death was ruled over by robots created by the titans. We literally find out that these powerful beings, akin to greek gods that are the heads of the realms of the afterlife are nothing more than robot constructs made by titans. Even the all powerful Jailer, who almost unmade reality… was a robot. That when defeated… became a small robot husk.
On top of that, they pitched the Shadowlands as almost infinite realms of death. Hundreds and thousands of realms for the afterlife, that all beings are sorted into. And we were relegated to 5. The 4 that we can choose from and The Maw. As well as the whole Shadowland version of the afterlife and death, didnt really line up to the lore of WoW. They really just basically said…No. This is ACTUALLY how death works in the Warcraft Universe. The other stuff wasnt really how it worked.
These explanations also do not touch on Torghast, The Maw, Currency Grinds, Legendary Creation, Korthia, Shards of Domination and other aspects of the Shadowlands that people generally didnt like.
I am not saying people should like or dislike Shadowlands. But, if we are going to list reasons, we should at least be genuine about them. There are also a absolutely aspects of Shadowlands that people enjoyed. And for all intents and purposes, I played through Shadowlands and while it is one of my least favorite expansions, WoW is like Pizza. Even when its bad, its still fine.
I left after one season. Not a fan.
EDIT: It was because of the grindiness.
The talent trees are much better for the classes in general than the way things ran before, because there are actually choices now, lol.
TWW’s been great so far, imo.
I think having interactive flight integrated from the opening of an expansion is better. It certainly feels better than spending a year or more waiting to fly in zones I don’t need to fly in anymore.
I absolutely loved it, but I can understand why others didn’t.
Pluses:
- Great zones. Not always esthetically pleasing, but they weren’t supposed to be. They conveyed the image they were required to.
- Some of my favourite NPCs. Stewards especially. Whoever designed them is brilliant.
- There was little in the way of side stories to flesh out the overall story of the Shadowlands. For artsy nerds who love writing their own stories it was perfect.
Minuses:
- Legendaries were more common than greens.
- The big bad of the expansion was some emo brodude who was apparently the ultimate four dimensional chess player until we showed up and beat him to death with sticks.
- Stubbornness from the devs about making changes. Once they relented it was too late and players had already soured on the expansion.
- There was little in the way of side stories to flesh out the overall story of the Shadowlands. If you weren’t an artsy nerd who loved writing your own story, it kind of felt unfinished and an afterthought.
This whole post right here does a better job than I ever could hope to summarizing the ills of Shadowlands. Bravo, and I wish I could upvote that several more times.
For the record, I generally enjoyed Shadowlands, although it felt like a step down from BFA for sure.
The Maw was actually something I enjoyed, but I was on a stealth class, so I got to pick and choose my battles down there in a way that a warrior, for example, couldn’t.
Torghast was great, and I wish they’d done even more with it, and I wish we could get it back again.
Bastion was good, Ardenwald was good, Nathria was amazing.
There were a TON of collectables and achievements available right on expansion release. It was truly impressive, with some genuinely cool mini-quests for some of them (dreamcatcher, unicorn maze, etc.)
But the grinding…so, so much grinding. Endless things with weekly lockouts and no catchup mechanics for things that granted genuine player power. Back then, I had the time to do them all, and it was still too much despite all my free time.
Shadowlands was the worst expansion in the game. Worse than WOD and BFA combined.
It had the worst of all the borrowed power systems, on top of destroying the story and beloved characters like arthas.
Just want to comment on this.
As with all things related to character power, “it depends”.
My SL experience was doing a covenant campaign, the table missions, and the world quests. Later, it was doing the dailies in the end zones (Korthia and Zereth Mortis). I also frequented M+.
Outside of Korthia, which actually had a back door I wasn’t really aware of, I never “grinded” anything. Korthia was a bit stingy on its currency, and even after we started I stopped really caring much about it.
By that I mean I didn’t go out and focus on any particular thing (perhaps not true, I may have done a bit of focusing on Anima at one point). But in general, I did not chase currency in Torghast. I did not chase renown. I did not chase Covenant powers. I looked up on Wowhead, or whereever, got my “best” Legendary, once, and that was that.
However, I am not a min-max player. I don’t care. I find that if you play the game, you get Stuff, and with Stuff, you can kill things easier. I did low hanging fruit, as appropriate, for quick gear upgrades, but never really paid attention to it.
I just looked at the map for things to do, some scheduled weekly (like WQs and such), and checked them off each week. I played Torghast to play Torghast, I liked Torghast. I did Twisting Corridors to get the mount for the Maw (I like the Maw too).
When Piddy here plateaued, I went and leveled 3 more toons through the different covenants. And that was fun. It was good to run different toons through the different zones. I felt it offered a lot of replayability that was lacking in DF and even now in WW (where I really had little motivation to level other toons, honestly).
So, I’m not going to say its not grindy, I’m sure it is. But it wasn’t for me, because I mostly just let that stuff happen, and not fixate on it. Thankfully I pretty much enjoy just playing the game to play the game, and the rewards and currencies and what not just happen.
I pay just enough attention to note when I may be near something that perhaps if I zero in on whatever that aspect is, I’ll get a shiny. But that’s about it.
Covenants in the beginning were pretty restrictive and you had to regrind renown to catch up to your old choice. All it took was a buff or a nerf to another covenant and you were expected to swap before you were viable again.
Also, this is just me but I felt like nothing ever gave enough anima.
The zones were pretty nice looking, though I could have done with out those weird moth fairy creatures in Ardenweld.
Covenant system was better than the legendsry system and everybody gives legion a pass.