Shadowlands, the good the bad and the ok

Here are some of my thoughts about the newest expansion the Shadowlands and what I think about it.

THE GOOD: Here are some things I really liked about the Shadowlands

PVP vendors: FINALLY This is something PVPers have been asking for AGES. No longer are PVPers reliant on the need for RNG to get decent loot and instead are able to still progress even if they are getting bad RNG.

Gold aplenty: This is another thing I like About Shadowlands … one of the biggest issues in BFA was the lack of gold which means that some players could not afford raid mats and sometimes even repair, as such the fact Shadowlands gives plenty of gold makes it easier to afford what you need to raid.

Controlled Progression: One of the biggest fears of starting an expansion is getting too far behind the pack because if you do you will end up lagging behind their fellow players. This is not the case in Shadowlands as Content is purposely slowed by Blizzard thus creating a state where missing a day or two does not put you too far behind your fellow players.

Music and locations: Beautiful absolutely stunning blizzard knocked it out of the park here.

Roleplay Locations: There are actually a fair few of them to be found where there no mobs and very few NPCs where roleplayers can just hang out and relax.

Legendary effects: I have noticed a lot of the legendries bring back affects that were very popular in Legion and BFA thus allowing players to rebuild popular metas from those two expansions

THE BAD: Here are a few things that I think should be changed about Shaodwlands.

No PVE Tokens: Even though PVP has been fixed PVE still is at the at the mercy of RNG …a token system would be very useful here so that even if you are not getting loot in dungeons you are still progressing which leads to.

Torghast imbalance: this issue has been worked on a lot by blizzard so I will not get too into it but at first it felt like some classes and specs struggled in Torghast while some breezed through it.

Covenant imbalance: It seems that if you wish to get the most out of your specific class you are bound to a specific covenant. This is wrong as I have heard of M+ groups kicking players who join the wrong Covenant, blizzard needs to either rebalance the abilities or nerf them to a degree so that they are no longer a major factor in raiding.

RP guild unfriendly: While this expansion does offer a lot rp potential to players it can be difficult for most rp guilds to find reasons to enter the Shadowlands as such those communities end up being left out by the content and suffer for it.

Anima grinding: Now again this is not as big an issue due to the fact that A, you can’t do that much with Anima when it comes to non-comedic progression until Tuesday and 2 this is still early in the expansion but it feels to me that Anima farming can be a bit of a grind at times.

THE JUST OK: these are things I find good or bad depending on how you look at it.

Legndary items and professions: Now this is good for the lesser professions like blacksmithing as it allows them to become viable again however if you cannot make the legendary needed for your class or the enchantment you want you are forced to grind for the gold or buy a wow token.

Bad inns: Now I do get it fits in lore…this is the afterlife not much need to sleep there …but still something like some Leaf beds in Ardenweald or empty open Coffins in Revendreth would really help make inns a bit more fitting.

Easier raids: Now this is good in the sense that it will bring in a lot of the more casual players to see the end game content however it may drive away the hardcore raiders who enjoy the challenge.

THE FINAL VERDICT: Shadowlands has its flaws that is true but it is major improvement over BFA and possibly could be seen as Blizzard getting back on the right track.

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I did not think about this occurrence because I am not an RPer myself, but I can see how it can come about and I hope people will be able to find some clever solutions. Thanks for sharing.

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You forgot the Devs ignorance in PvP aspects, some of our complaints have gone ignored since WoD and not to mention ‘fixing’ the wrong things. Complaining about WW being too strong and Warrior utility too much, so they instead nerf Frost DK and increase Warrior Stam CD by 1 min.

That ontop of them taking 2 months until they started making changes to PvP turned my mouth sour for this expac. Since they took this long Rated PvP is in shambles with carries, gear disparity, and terrible systems preventing a player from enjoying PvP.

You have to do 3 months of grinding in order to get caught up in Conquest gear, but ilvl 200 doesn’t cut it. 220+ farming the lower brackets. This leads to people thinking ‘Once I get to the next rank I’ll have the gear to beat them’ except they can’t since they’re farmed by 226s so they think “i’ll buy a carry for 100k gold to 1400”. This has now inflated the rating system and this happened A LOT since the expac started.

Streamers are rolling around in gold from carrying people and Blizzard is getting a lot of WoW token sales from people buying them to buy carries. This terrible system, had to be forseen by blizzard when making it, a repeating cycle feeding them buckets of money.

This is why I unsubbed for the first time since nov 06. The game seems solely designed to boost token sales for carries.
I rolled a caster, so pvp is off the table unless I buy a carry. It seems pointless since the pvp hierarchy is already established for this expansion.
I liked the raid but the lack of loot and trying to raid heroic for better vault options didn’t work. Most of the guild quit playing.
Now pugging keys has been my only avenue to gear up. The problem with that is the keys I get accepted to drop gear below my item level, and then the vault which statistically should give me an upgrade seems coded to give unusable items. So buy a carry to get the IO and a better shot at an upgrade? no thanks

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The thing is the raids in Shadowlands from what I heard are a cakewalk. You don’t need that high a gear to do heroic or even mythic.