This expansion is a complete failure. We lost 8.3.5 and this exp launched a month late and it’s obvious it wasn’t ready.
Class Design: We have been complaining about class design for over 6 years since WoD. And you gave a minimum effort. You gave most specs one or two abilities back and it looks like you just randomly picked them out of a hat. A lot of the “unpruning” was just maintenance buffs that add very little to game play.
Covenants: There is no way you can balance them. You lied about “pulling the ripcord” and decided to just nerf some of the covenant abilities to the point where they just don’t matter (Echoing reprimand was nerfed 75%) . Others are massively OP.
Conduits: After spending Legion and BFA being unable to swap specs around without massive grinding or penalties you decide to “ADD FRICTION” to conduit swapping by designing one of your dumbest systems to date. Pathetic.
Torghast: Could have been really awesome if it had any reward at all besides soul ash and a maw mount. I dont even run it anymore because I dont care about it. At all. I dont think it’s fun.
Maw: Mostly empty. Our “endgame” zone is an empty boring wasteland where the point is doing your bare minimum chores as fast as possible and then leaving for the week.
Content: “Callings” are bad. They seriously suck. The 4th version of the “mission table” is arguably your worst, and the dungeons are meh. No new battleground, and one meh arena. Castle Nathria is ok. Not great but ok.
Class Balance: Awful. You can’t even make half the specs VIABLE. Not optimal, they are just flat not viable. How many buffs does assassination need before it is out of the bottom 5? Or Fury? Or Surv? BM? I feel like an ape could have done better.
This is why we keep complaining you are out of touch. Because you aren’t getting it.
Callings giving nothing but grey items and the occasional outdated piece of armor is rather disappointing. Can we at least get profession materials or something?
Eh, Ill wait to say its bad until we see what comes next. It just reminds me at this moment of 7.0 Legion which I found very meh.
Just replace endless grinding for endless downtime. I think there needs to be some significant changes (systems wise, not looking at balance) moving into 9.1
This does somewhat annoy me… Today, my rare/blue calling chest gave more valuable grays than the epic/purple chest from the day before. I mean really… just have the reward be gold.
Ehh, I dunno. I’d call BFA or WoD a failure. Those expansions just sucked from start to finish and WoD arguably got worse as time passed.
It seems extremely premature to say this expansion is a failure when this first patch is probably one of the better first patches. It sure beats out BFA’s launch and it utterly crushes Legion’s and MoP’s launches.
Plus, I’m quite enjoying myself even though I have some very big issues with some specific systems (Legion raids being impossible, the Covenant system being every bit as awful as everyone said it would be, and the loot system being EXTREMELY bad outside of PvP). I’d definitely consider this one of the better expansions.
Its better than BFA but the bar was low. Arguably the lowest it’s been. I only played HFC in WoD so can’t really compare.
Legion did some things better than Slands but also some things worse. I’d say overall Legion was better.
Can’t believe that I’m looking forward to Classic TBC more than wanting to log on and play retail.
It was announced there would be an 8.3.5. Then they canned it to make sure Systemslands got more design time so they could add “friction” to your choices.
They could turn it around, but given the radio silence towards complaints… sweeping the issues under the rug in interviews… and just general disdain for all us; I don’t think anyone is coming back for SLs even if they did manage to pull it off.
If anything, we’ll be looking towards patch 10.0 with a massive shakeup in the development team at the top end. Perhaps then, wow can get back to being wow instead of trying to lure in people who don’t like wow or mmos.
Game play and content matter most of all. The two areas the devs are flat ignoring or putting in minimum effort. Its been almost 7 years since we had a new talent row. Lol.
I got conduits from them. Actually just got my second best conduit upgraded through a calling. But yea, only getting greys most of the time is still somewhat underwhelming.
It’s not average. Bfa was average. WoD was bad, and shadowlands is worse right now. They have to make drastic changes by 9.1 to make it better than WoD.