I sincerely hope that every expansion going forward has a similar, if not identical, feature.
Threads of Fate has brought back a small taste of that feeling of just being an adventurer, wandering the world and helping out.
It’s so much more enjoyable to level alts in Shadowlands with Threads of Fate. For me personally, that is. I had seen many people say that playing through the story again was a much faster leveling experience, so I had avoided Threads of Fate entirely.
I leveled three alts through the story again and by the fourth alt I just couldn’t bring myself to do it another time. I said screw it, let’s see what Threads of Fate is like, and man am I glad I did.
It’s awesome to just be able to wander around and explore, do a random bonus objective, hit a couple world quests, do a side quest chain. Just take my time and enjoy myself. Leveling definitely takes longer but hey, if I’m having fun, who cares how long it takes?
Please Blizz, please continue with this feature! Please don’t let this be a Shadowlands exclusive!
I agree different options is good for levelling, I enjoyed it even when the objectives took time as I queued for dungeons while I did them but I’m pleased they made it shorter
ToF is nice but I feel it wouldn’t have been necessary if the structure for the SL questline wasn’t so on-the-rails. And even then, you still have to do SL content, so meh. I’m glad they made improvements.
But I’m hoping going forward that they never do zone and quest structure like SL ever, ever again.
They really do need to return to multiple huge zones, where you can do a few to reach level cap, and then complete the others ones on alts for a different leveling experience.
Rather than having to do every single story quest on every single all, every time.
The on-rails narrative allowed us to get stuff like the Sire Denatharius story arc, where we learned about the anima drought impacting the other three realms, then go to him knowing how truly desperate the situation is, being welcomed into his castle, only for him to betray us and realize that he has been responsible for the suffering we’ve seen in the Shadowlands.
It works so well, and you couldn’t do that without being on a forced path through the zones in the specific order they are.
I’ve got gripes with Shadowlands, but the narrative structure of your first playthrough is not among them.
I think it’s also important to point out why people DON’T want to level alts using the campaign.
I leveled Brewa here to 60 first, then a couple weeks later started on my first alt.
I took my alt through the Maw, no issues, and got to Oribos. And I had intended to play through the campaign again.
And then it started: The NPC’s talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And after what felt like an eternity, I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I was like, “Wait, where did that Threads of Fate guy say to go find him again??”
So I left the NPC’s - who were still talking - and went to the Threads of Fate guy and turned it on. “You can’t switch back!” the game yelled at me. Yeah, that’s fine.
Leveled several alts since and used Threads of Fate on every one of them.
WoW questing has just gotten too chatty these days. It’s like listening to an audio book instead of playing a game.
WoW questing isn’t chatty enough. We’re still getting major narrative elements in spin-off books.
Blizzard should let people skip the dialogue if they’re so inclined, but Shadowlands does a much better job than say BFA of letting you know why you’re actually doing what you’re doing.
Take a new player into BFA and ask them what is going on and they’ll have no idea.
I like the fact that they allow you to start earning renown right away at level 50… I like that you can use the level 40 renown boost as well. What they’ve changed it to in the here and now is what it should have been at launch.
But they are right redoing the questing is faster than just doing ToF… but ToF and spamming dungeons I do believe is even faster.
Which is a fair point. And for the first play through, that’s fine. But for me personally it didn’t make me care about the plot of SL. Personally I was excited for the Shadowlands and my disappointment of the reality vs. my expectations made it so that by the time I was done with the story, I was glad it was over. But that’s probably on me.
And I agree about the game lacking lore or story compared to how much lore comes from books and short stories. RP skip options are always nice and should be available from the get-go for those that don’t give a flip about the story. I always want more lore in-game, but I prefer quality over quantity. Some parts of the SL story were alright. Overall it’s been kind of a flop, but that’s my subjective opinion.
It has, but in some places it is good… for the RPG value… but I do agree that and cut scenes have gotten a little aggressive. and I don’t like the fact that I can’t ESC out of all cut scenes and it is annoying.
But… if you count out the “story” campaign from lately, we’ve always had a threads of fate while leveling. Even in bfa you weren’t forced to level in a linear path like SL. At least in bfa you could pick what zone you wanted to do, at least an illusion of a choice. The same applies to Legion.
It’s also a reason I very much dislike the campaign in SL it forces you to do the same thing over and over again. It gets old very fast so at least we had the option of threads. But then again it makes you wonder why they even bothered making it so linear in the first place? This has not been an issue before. Why make it a problem now?
Yes it has? WoWs storytelling massively lagged behind competitors. That’s why we got this system. Blizzard creates systems to solve problems - they often create new problems, but Blizzard does these things to address problems they perceive to exist.
Yeah I had to edit my previous comment since I forgot the campaign in bfa. But it wasn’t a set in stone progression to level. You could pick what zone you wanted to do, at least after the first max level character?
yeah…first time i did it, i wasnt overly happy with the choice. Now its the only one for me. I like hopping around doing different things instead of the mouse chasing the cheese thru the maze every time.