I am willing to admit the story needs work. However, what can they add to the game that would make casuals and solo players happy? At the core of the game is a multiplayer journey. At least for current content.
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Take a look at the difference in the amount of content between ZM and Broken Shore. It’s the same type of content, the amount is different.
And while Broken Shore gated the storyline, it didn’t gate being able to get places and to things. It also had a new dungeon. And we also had Legion Assaults. Maw Assaults were horrendous. No one wanted to do them. They were locked to max level only in a terrible zone.
Less gating and systems, more quests and story.
MMORPGs absolutely have a group element. And we have a lot of that. See: PvP, M+, dungeons (that we should’ve had more of this patch, as well), raids, rares in open world, and we should’ve had better Assaults.
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Maybe they can bring back scenarios for easier gearing?
Just another venue. The only problem with systems, is that they were added in because players complained there wasn’t enough to do. WoD cemented that. Problem is, the pendulum swung to far the other way.
Now it’s not bad. Just the three daily quests are needed. However, if you’re not a raider, I will admit this patch is on the light side of things to accomplish.
At this point, I think blizzard just pulled the plug and will put their resources to the next expansion.
I actually feel bad for blizzard. You can’t please everyone all the time. They are a business, so they will put in systems to pad your subscriptions. However, the raid design, music and art teams nailed it.
I do my quests, cycle through the named that are up for the day and grab whatever treasures I can find. But otherwise, there’s nothing really compelling in ZM to make me feel like I need to be there. Though I did spend a bit of time yesterday trying to figure out what the ‘cosmic power’ bar was for. Got myself about 3 levels up according to the glyphs on the bar before I hit a seemingly dead end.
This is a big part of the problem for me. The rewards are so low I can’t get motivated. The weekly is a long grind and 1% for looting something that requires a jumping puzzle just tells me the devs still think we have infinite patience for their obvious slow down mechanisms.
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Without a raid team, I wouldn’t care about the new zone at all.
If I wanted to play a platformer, I would play Mario odyssey on my switch.
It’s beautiful, but world content just isn’t fun.
I’m having a hard time getting into it. Mostly I just think I’m tired of this zone model.
Probably get a lot of push back on this but I hate puzzles and that treasure chests are such a big thing again. I don’t care that they exist for people who like them but I pretty much always avoid them. I’ll do the 5 for flying most likely but to me they just aren’t WoW.
The zone isn’t all bad but it just hasn’t gotten me interested.
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Same. I’m gonna give the game another break.
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I won’t be able to see WoW same anymore after what they did to Arthas in latest cinematic
It would have been better not to touch him at all rather then bringing him back like this
And on top of that Banshee queen ranting at him felt so insulting.
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Credit where credit is due… the new zone is better than I thought it would be.
Now is it going to be a year worth of content? Of course not.
But it feels a lot more like World of Warcraft than the rest of Shadowlands has so far. It’s also launched a lot more smoothly than the disaster of Korthia.
Got most of the first cyphers unlocked. Honestly once you get them the zone has more stuff to do which is nice.
Again the thing that sucks is the timegating part, fast travel can use some work.
And probably add more cypher levels eventually for more ilvl rewards.
I don’t understand how soloing all these rares can feel so unrewarding, vs just getting a group going for a dungeon.
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And the 2016-2017 dev team slapped together Broken Shore in like 4-5 months back then… in between releasing a rehashed/remastered Karazhan dungeon and while juggling 2 different/full-sized raids (Nighthold/Tomb of Sargeras) 
Meanwhile, this current 2021-2022 dev team took 8-9 months to put together Zereth Mortis, but it doesn’t really “show” with just how content-light the zone seems to be. Also, only 2 WQs unless you research the Pocopoc console/table thingie to unlock a 3rd, whereas Broken Shore shipped with like 6-7 WQs “right out of the box”…
Oh and of course, Pocopoc somehow got released in a bugged state despite those 8-9 months of development time (plenty of time to do some basic bug testing) lol
EDIT: just checked wowhead out of curiosity, and there’s a whopping 8 WQs active on Broken Shore as of this post 
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How is that even possible? I’m still stuck with 3 and have a ton of research unlocked.
In fact rep is so bad I’m about to go buy the item that I can get a tiny bit of rep from other wq’s.
Nevermind: brain fart. You said broken shore…
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Not true.’
Actually it was every 3 days to start off with and changed it to a weekly with the Tuesday reset . THing is they made the change but for got to adjust how fast people filled the bar and went back and hot fixed it .
Yeah it sucked having the percentage go down but it won’t take a full week to fill up . I finished up last night.
Yeah I’m there.
It’s insane to say that Nazjatar was a better experience and I didn’t really like that zone.
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Right now I do my weekly , the current chapter , the dailies and maybe a rare or 2 along with weekly raid then when all is said and done I hop over to ESO to complete zone story lines , do some Delves and explore the zone map for their version of Lore Master/Explorer.
I’ll like ZM and want to engage with it for mounts once I have my double legendary and 4 set from there and can choose to go to ZM because I want to, not because I have to for player power
having to do non pvp content instead of choosing to want to do it always ruins it for me
The zone is filled with things to do, if you take the time to look around and do a little research. Not everything is going to slap you in the face. Explore and take advantage of wowhead, YouTube, etc.
I like the side quests where I am working with the brokers and doing stuff around Zereth Mortis. Those quests offer a bit more context to the zone for me. That being said, I am not interested in the main story line, I have mentally checked out on that front.
The zone itself is nice, but I think Shadowlands as a whole is such a departure from the usual, a lot of my criticisms from the beginning of the expansion remain the same. I will be glad when we get back to Azeroth.
I didn’t do my daily stuff in ZM yesterday because much like you, I arrived, picked up my quests, and then went and did something else because I just didn’t feel like it, and also didn’t HAVE to. That’s the good thing about ZM, it’s optional.
But unless you’re like me and keep a list of things to do, that isn’t really that great because what are you gonna do?
Me, I am working on fisher friends rep (I am maxed out with Corbyn) and I plan on finally getting Well Read achievement, field photographer achievement, and the remaining critters achievements.