Currently completing covenant quests for the Venthyr in Revendreth.
I think it’s been pretty cool so far. I really like a lot of the characters and Ardenweald is pretty trippy and psychedelic kinda like the Emerald dream.
I also completely missed several expansions up until Dragon Flight so maybe I’m not able to understand what was so bad about this one.
Sorry I’m not trying to be ignorant or piss anyone off I’ve just heard from a massive percent of the player base how this exp was very bad. I don’t really get any clear examples of why though.
Shadowlands biggest issues were the gatekeeping of content due to system design.
Much of that was nerfed post Shadowlands.
EG:
For the first patch, to get your mandatory legendary, it took 5 weeks of Torghast. That’s 2 months of play time.
everything was done this way. Every “system” required you to play specific content in a grind of borrowed power escalation.
if you missed weeks, you were notably behind everyone else and unable to group up.
in addition, the Anima rewards were so paltry compared to the cost of anything that it often took weeks if not months of grinding the same content over and over again.
the content itself wasn’t great either. There were clear indications (From Ion himself) that it was designed around time gating everything.
Then you ran into issues with the Maw itself. It wasn’t a place you wanted to be, yet it was mandatory. They wanted a zone that was depressing, hard, and that you didn’t want to be there. But didn’t really grasp that by designing it that way, We truly didn’t want to go there.
Then there were issues with unbalanced covenants that you got locked into. Changing them would basically reset your anima and progress.
it was a bad expansion from a systems/gameplay system, with too little reward for the amount of effort they were demanding from the players. There’s a reason that Torghast got nicknamed “Choregast” because it was a chore you had to grind weekly just to stay relevant in the game, with almost zero rewards for the run itself.
over-all, it was just bad game design and was absolutely player hostile.
Well, first off, happy you’re enjoying it! Don’t let my take on it, or the takes of others, take away from your enjoyment.
Even Shadowlands has positives. I think some of the zones look real neat, Torghast was a fun game mode, and some individual stories were pretty good.
A lot of the problems were tied to the lore, the covenant systems (that were eventually fixed with time) and the legendary system, and the fact you had to not just grind but do well in Torghast in order to get what you needed for said legendaries.
I’m still wrapping my mind around how going around in WoW’s afterlife felt like choosing what video game level you wanted to play next. And I know that sounds real weird from a player perspective, but if you’re trying to get immersed into things it’s kinda hard when you go to the portal of choice, Mario 64 style, and jump through the portal to Bastion 1-1.
It managed to just make everyone unhappy, both the gameplay folks and the lore folks.
I am a shadowlands enjoyer, the only reason why ppl hate it is due to the lack of content, they released everything at a slow pace and it happen during a pandemic at lot of ppl was at home and got bored really quick. The storyline with the covenants are very nice and the raid castle nathria was one of the best raids ive ever played. I started playing in legion so i am a relatively not a noobie but still a noob to some. It wasnt perfect but to me, it worked. Way better than legions random lego drop.
Shadowlands was one of my favorite expansions. There were different reasons people didn’t like it, here are a few.
People said it was a retcon. Yes, if you are into Trekie level minor details mostly given out of game in background material you could find changes. In fact those kinds of changes are all over the place, it’s nothing unique to Shadowlands.
People didn’t like the villain Zovaal the Jailer. But they had no problem with the DF villains like Raszageth who were flame breathing bags of hot air that did nothing but scream? Zovaal was 100 times better.
People were upset because they want death to be a mystery. Why? Mysteries exist for one and only one reason, to be solved.
People didn’t like borrowed power being placed in different covenants. It was advertised as an alt release and “Threads of Fate” made it super easy to level alts.
The Maw was a horrible place. It was suppose to be a horrible place.
Anyway I loved the expansion, mostly because it was a Sylvanas story and I’m a big Sylvanas fan.
“Dark lady watch over you.”.
SL’s design was definitely a case of ‘you had to be there’ to understand the complaints, as far as the day-to-day gameplay goes. Going back now when it’s legacy content and it’s had all of the QoL updates isn’t the same experience as it was when it was current.
But at the same time, even as legacy content, aspects of it still suck. So much of it is designed in a way to waste as much of your time as possible. Even with a lot of the timegating removed, anima and artifacts in Korthia are still a headache to deal with, and questing is often dealing with clunky mechanics that have cooldowns way longer than they have any right to be.
Retcons aren’t new to WoW. But Shadowlands took a sledgehammer to major established plot points that were already established. This alone wouldn’t likely have been the killer, but these retcons replaced the story with stuff that made even less sense. after 16 or so years of certain story points, going back and taking a sledgehammer to the history isn’t seen as good writing.
Zovaal was also frustrating. There was no real backstory without blowing away much of established lore (Re-writing the entire wow history to be Zovaal’s doing was just nonsense) In addition, he wasn’t ever really present in the expansion other than a few cutscenes, which didn’t help sell him. For the entire expac his motivations were basically opaque. Only to have us finally kill him with the lamest “But I was trying to help you, bigger badder is coming!”. that’s a cop out for the writers. He was a 1 dimensional enemy with an absolutely convoluted and contrived forced story.
It’s not that “death is a mystery”. it’s that the “death” and afterlife realm didn’t make any sense for the player characters. it was poorly explained, and poorly executed. and again, countered historical and established lore.
Threads of fate was a added much later in Shadowlands and wasn’t a core feature until the community complained, and ultimately saw the largest drop off of players in WoW’s history. Indicating that Shadowlands itself was just not good gameplay.
The maw intentionally being designed as a horrible place is hilarious. They made a zone intentionally that nobody wanted to go to, and then were shocked when nobody wanted to go there. They literally designed bad gameplay on purpose and were besides themselves when players rightfully avoided it. that’s a massive failure of Blizz development. Something they continued to double down on with Korthia to the same result.
I’m happy you enjoyed it, But Shadowlands is the worst expansion, with some of the least amount of content, most timegating, and most controversial story telling in WoW’s history. And that says a lot. Especially since they took the opportunity to absolutely obliterate fan favourites in some absolutely asanine story telling. Arthas’ end, and Garrosh’s end are notable examples.
Everything in SL was designed with a “tedium first” mindset. The WQs were deceptive nested slogs and once you’re finished you get a middle finger 35 anima when you literally need tens of thousands to unlock everything. The maw is still a slog to this day and for the longest time they didn’t even allow mounts at all. What a trash zone. God I hate SL so much.
SL took one of Wow’s establishing storylines from the RTS and handed it to Zovaal to give him “instant street cred” because the devs needed the general player base to be invested in the story.
I love how all the major events of Warcraft, all of them, over all the games, was orchestrated by this shirtless blue robot dude. Just out of nowhere. No build up, no explanation, just “I did this I did all of this it was all me, get dominated, idiots”
I’m going to bet he won’t be mentioned ever again.
Ion during Shadowlands, while being asked about the slog that was WQ’s and why there were so few and far between admitted that the WQ were designed around time and engagement.
they wanted the WQ to take 5-10 minutes mininum, AND in addition, if it took 5 minutes to complete, it should take you 5-10 minutes to get there. Pathing and flight paths were intentionally set up for you to waste time getting between them so that your playtime was used for travel.
There are good reasons why Shadowlands has been mostly universally panned as bad gameplay and was the largest single drop in player subscriptions.
I honestly do not understand how Ion has managed to keep his job for so long after Shadowlands.
I honestly and legitimately thought I was done with wow for good if that was the direction of the game. It FELT awful to play. I’m so glad it blew up in their face. The massive backlash and loss of subs led them to make wow so much better. TWW is shaping up to be one of my favorite expansions in terms of gameplay.
Talking about the Dreadlords? Where, in the game, did it rule out the Dreadlords being created by Sire Denathrius or Frostmourne and the Helm being created by the Rune Carver. There was hardly any mention, in the game, of where the Dreadlords or these items originated. It’s a minor point in background material.
So what “major established plot points” changed?
“Threads of Fate” was there very early. By the time I finished the campaign it was already there.
I had no problem with the Maw. Yes it’s ugly, it’s suppose to be ugly but I had no problem going every week to collect my 20 souls. As for Torghast, it was something new and while it was not great it lead to Delves which are great. Leading edge technology always has its bumps and grinds.
As for time gating, I’m convinced that the people who cry most about time gating are the same ones that complain “Now what, there’s nothing else to do” when time gating is not in the content.
Shadowlands wasn’t a bad expansion as far as concept and ingenuity. Shadowlands was a bad expansion because of how Blizzard implemented various “features” within it.
You couldn’t willy-nilly swap covenants without losing progress on the previous covenant and if I remember when they were first implemented, there was a cool-down on swapping. - They didn’t want players swapping to a different covenant because it was better for raiding, then another one because it was better for a specific dungeon, and then a different one because it was better for overworld.
The Torghast that we got was not the Torghast that was originally envisioned. It became a slog to run through. Honestly between the M+ dungeons and Torghast, my buddy and I burned ourselves out so badly with the grind, we both “took a break”. Mine lasted until Dragonflight launch, and his lasted until War Within launch.
There’s more, but this shouldn’t be a post about how terrible it was to go through.
I regularly farm the content now. The zones are beautiful, the content is really good, and since I’m way overgeared for the content, everything melts, which takes out a lot of that grindy repetitive feeling.
Glad you are enjoying it! I too now have been enjoying it!
I did all of this it was all me, get dominated, idiots”