Thanks, but I’m done. WoW hasn’t produced a good story in years, and in fact things have been comically bad for the past two expansions. Legion was a bright spot in terms of lore and payoff, but that was clearly the last hurrah of the stories originally started by the old guard (Metzen and the like) before the ‘new’ folks completely took over and desecrated everything.
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Whatever good moments I had were brief. I just found it overall kinda unfitting for WoW and generally uninspired.
First raid tier was just a rehash of Suramar, Kel’thuzad’s (MY FAVORITE VILLAIN) motives are entirely rewritten and it just never felt like I was playing WoW.
You finish playing Warcraft 3 or Vanilla, I jump out of a time machine and grab you, you are forced to play Shadowlands from the intro onwards, do you make a single connection to Warcraft? Probably not.
This expansion is just weird and out of place, just like the people who wrote and designed the systems for it.
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I’ll second this.
I actually really enjoyed the initial campaign storyline, the first time I played through it.
Most of the 9.0 Covenant Campaigns were pretty good, too.
9.1 was where it started to really feel like they were pulling a Game of Thrones Season 8. That was when a lot of things happened that could’ve added up to a good story, but didn’t–largely because they were trying to cram too many plot points and character arcs into too short a timeframe, resulting in almost all of it feeling hollow and unearned.
Also, while I like the Shadowlands zones in the abstract, I didn’t like the fact that aside from Ardenweald they didn’t feel like they were in any way connected to the actual established religious lore and beliefs of the cultures of Azeroth. This was a great chance for us to actually meet An’she and Elune and the tribal ancestors of the Horde, for example, and give characters of different races and classes a chance to actually react to meeting their divine patrons in person–all meaningful RPG elements that were completely ignored so we could have Covenants and Conduits!
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the leveling story was fine. It’s the overarching big plot stuff that is horrendous
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Seems anyone who thoroughly enjoys FF, anime, or manga can find a lot of value in the FF14 MSQ. Makes sense given it sort of fits those niches.
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The storyline is fine. The fact that they MAKE us do the storyline is not.
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I’ve never watched anime or read manga. At least not since DBZ and pokemon as a little kid.
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It’s good that you did enjoy the story, but from my perspective no, and a hard no at that.
I love the lore well up to shadowlands anyway. Seeing characters I loved butcherd either visually or story wise was just depressing. Seeing uther as bluther just bummed me out, especially after seeing the epic new Uther the light ringer model, that armor and look is Soo amazing but no our Uther now is a lame blue Smurf.
Lady vash was essentially rewarded for her evilness in life, and poor prince Kael.
The covenants just feel off to me, these concepts would have fit so much better as alien worlds/societies then as rewards/punishments in the afterlife.
To any that enjoyed the bulk of the story good for you a game should be fun and the story should suck you in like a good book.
But for me this story has been a total miss. If it wasn’t for the awesome thrall and Uther the lightbringer models (not bluther) there would be zero redeaming things in this expansion
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I dont hate him either…but he failed to pick my interest ^^
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Honestly Zovaal is probably the most nonsensical part of the Shadowlands, we do all realize that if Primus can just “make” new sigils, Zovaal probably could have this whole time too right? I mean he brain drained the Primus of his memories and used the Eternal one to make a Legion-rivalling army and Mourneblades and such…
I thought the leveling was pretty good - Bastion drags on for a while at the end (it would have flowed better IMO if you didn’t have to hit 54 to hit the last bit of the quest chain) and having done it 2-3 times before just switching to Threads was a bit repetitive. I’ve been revisiting it with my wife now, it’s her first time through, and I gotta say, it is quite enjoyable. And she’s loving it too.
The bit of the story that I’m not super jazzed about is the larger arc. I’m kind of done with the Sylvanas saga now, I’d like to move on to other characters.
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I don’t mind saving the universe. I thought the Argus campaign was epic af. The problem with SL is that it doesn’t even feel like our universe. Cosmic storylines are fine, but SL just feels so completely removed from what we’ve grown accustomed to.
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lol, that just makes the jailer even more lame, he could have had primus as his runecarver just make counterfeit sigils.
the jailer isnt just the lamest character in WOW, but possibly in all stories/media in general
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This is why the game is slowly atrophying players. The old guard villains were interesting. We knew who they were and their motivation.
Blizzard’s new writing team is too inept to use them properly.
- N’zoth and Nyalotha done in a single raid.
- Ashara and Naz’jatar used up in a SINGLE PATCH.
- Devos killed in a dungeon. A dungeon!
- Sargeras and the Burning Legion undone in a patch.
They’re too inept to introduce new villains and make us care. (See Zovaal)
It’s been a wild ride, but Danuser really screwed the game.
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Cairne died off-scene in a book before Cata.
Just, y’know, wanted to point out that the old guard absolutely was guilty of this same thing too.
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Most complaints are end game related.
The balance is often questionable.
The loot rules don’t make a lot of sense in a lot of cases.
The systems are obnoxious and having so many of them and seemingly another one or two extra per expansion is really driving people away. I have never heard anyone praise the systems and ask for more.
Gear disparity is a little out of hand. They make new difficulties, so that you end up with mythic raiders or gladiator geared players “competing” against lfr heros in random BGs and deleting them. That’s fun for the geared guy. No fun for anyone else.
The leveling was fine, but it felt like I was on rails the entire time which made it feel significantly worse. Other games do that too are often stricter. It sucks in those games too.
A bit more of a sandbox approach to leveling would be much appreciated. Like the option you get with threads of fate. Leveling was way more fun with that.
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for someone that has leveled maybe 4 toons now through the story via SL not taking threads of fate at all it’s HELL.
i legit hate leveling through SL story i mean it’s THAT bad imo. i don’t think it’s bad in the sense of story wise but when it’s done repetitive wise it gets bad/boring af especially when it’s linear. other then that i mean base story is alright. i think BfA horde side story was worse tbh. i was playing through the alli side of just the first zone never done it before and felt like it was better then the horde side. ontop of that we get the damn aztec pyramid bs which is hell if you don’t have flying. i understand lore/concept wise it fits but idk its just kind bleh to navigate without flying.
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Definitely. They churned through so many named characters in TBC alone it was insane.
But that was largely because they didn’t think WoW would last so long. What we saw with Legion and BfA was the new writers rushing through the Legion and Old God stories which were set up for more than a decade to jump into this Cosmic Forces nonsense.
Both were terrible decisions, just for different reasons.
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Kleia was the star of the Kyrian story. She is the first NPC you meet when you fly into Bastion and then she gets thrown to the side for Pelagos. Even the first soulbinding scene snubs her for Pelagos. I think her reaction is something along the lines of, “Wait, with Pelagos?” Could almost hear the next unspoken words, “But what about me?”
That said…yeah. The stories were really bad. You are either being rushed through them or padded out with fluff. One of the things that compounded the badness is that half of them are locked behind the covenant quests at max level. I went for over a year wondering why Bwonsamdi was in Ardenweald and expecting a Drust story / conclusion only to find that they were both locked behind the Night Fae covenant.
A better solution would have been to play your 50-60 game with more polish and then have the level 60 story not locked behind covenants and be completely optional stories for loremaster. For people who want to see the story and do quests.
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Maldraxxi and Venthyr are MVPs of the expansion.
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