What is it with this expansion? No matter what I try, I just can’t get into it.
Last expansion (BFA) I was all about raiding and M+. I ran lfr, normal, and heroic raids every week, pugged Keystone master, got AoTC, ran horrific visions etc. Overall I just had a lot of fun
Shadowlands though? I can’t even make myself play for more than an hour. I get so bored, and just genuinely don’t care
The problem is I can’t figure out why. There’s no one specific thing I can blame it on 
There are a few small things I find annoying, but idk where the feeling of overall disinterest is coming from.
It kind of makes me sad that I don’t care because I really love wow. It’s such a fun game, with lots of memories tied to it, but lately I just don’t care.
What do you guys do when you feel this way? How do I find my wow spark again? I want to be happy playing wow, not sad and bored 
58 Likes
For me, it is the gloomy setting and how disconnected the zones are. They nerfed Torghast too hard, and it’s been a long wait for the new raid. Also, I don’t want to put in the effort to play alts like I used to. I just came back from a 4 month break (which I have never done at the start of an expansion before), but it really didn’t change the feeling of the expansion.
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I play old content to keep my spark alive.
The problem with Shadowlands is the theme/lore. People don’t realize how important these are to WoW, but when it isn’t good something feels off.
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I feel like Shadowlands was intended to be a departure from what we expect from WoW, but it was a bit too much. I feel like there is more of a disconnect between Shadowlands and the rest of the game/the universe of Azeroth than any other expansion. I just feel like the implementation was poor but can’t really put a finger on exactly how.
As far as the spark, I am mostly just leveling alts to 60 and gearing them up to the “casual soft cap” ilvl so I can work on older content more easily. I am working on backlogged achievements and doing more pet battles than ever before. I think this expansion I will finally get my safari hat and my Timeless Isle tournament pets.
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For me, it’s the lack of settings & cool character, the only cool character WOW has atm (for me) is Denathrius, the rest is just a bunch of uglies, mostly because it seems that the western has departed from fanservice type content.
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Lack of engagement which leads to lack of immersion, partly due to the disjointed set up of the zones, the dark and brooding/depressing themes, the noticeable gating which all games have but it’s usually not in your face as it is now and then chore-craft.
I had trouble getting into SLs when I first started, then I chose Ardenweald but mostly because it’s the least depressing thematically and when I joined, they did that play and that went a long way to redeeming some of it.
But now I’m doing world quests, trying to get anima and I just can’t get into it again.
So yeah, I hear you OP. I’ve never made a game so Idk what they could/couldn’t have done different, etc… but the engagement just isn’t there for me.
Maybe it will be later, Idk. Was thinking of doing some pvp but I’m too low geared.
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Playing with an active guild helps.
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Everything about it feels like it was designed for a single play through. It is not a good expansion to replay, IMO.
That, and echoing other comments, the story and characters aren’t anything that I care about. I don’t care about the jailer, or the first ones, or any of this stuff.
I was so excited to see N’zoth. They could’ve kept me invested by doing something with him for ages. I wanted more black empire stuff, and maybe we’re getting there, but this feels like a weird detour I didn’t want to take. So I’m not. Also, I doubt we’ll ever see any of these characters again once we leave the Shadowlands, so why should I try to get attached to them?
Oh, and professions still suck horribly, and everything feels unrewarding for the effort.
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The big theme has been the time sinks combined with feeling punished for wanting to play the game.
So many players feel like you do, and would rather go play anything else.
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To me, SL is just BFA but worse, and I wasn’t a fan of BFA. Soulbinds and conduits are basically Azerite traits, covenant abilities are major essences but worse because we can’t change them around, and Legendaries are minor essences but Torghast is worse than the stuff we had to do for essences.
The SL dungeons are far worse than BFA dungeons also.
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The barrier to entry is pretty high in SLs compared to early BfA. Late BfA if you started in 8.3 is a higher cliff to scale, but thats late expansion. In SLs to be taken seriously at this point you need a rank 4 legendary, 200+ conduit in fully unlocked soulbind trees (renown 34 I think). And on top of that you’re likely going to want to be on a meta class, since they’re kinda broken with the new capped AoE specs.
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Doesn’t feel like an MMORPG, all you really need to do is stand in one place and queue up to play the game. There’s no real exploration and discovery together (think Dungeons and Dragons), it’s just an FPS with fantasy makeup.
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I pretty much echo most of the opinions already stated. For me I was invested at first then some where after xmas it came upon me slowly. I thought it was me. I thought it’s too early to judge, give it time.
Unfortunately the more time I gave it the more the obvious pressed in. Not just time-gating, chores…that happens anyway.
At first I just tried to blame color schemes, but figured it was “death” how was it supposed to be bright and cheerful?
Noticing the travel time, really noticing that it wasn’t just stumbling around in a new expansion learning my way was the first clue I really was being nose-lead. That didn’t make me angry or hate it, but it slowed down my interest.
Other things I can’t define. But, every once in awhile I discover something unexpected and can’t believe how happy I get over one little thing in a game I’ve enjoyed so much.
/sigh silly maybe … just my two cents. There’s something missing and I don’t know what. And matter how many other things I find to do in game I still want to play the new expac with others
Enjoying running around doing the same things. But…
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I was actually just goofing on my cousin because I’ve literally never seen him outside of Oribos; just asks for M+ summons haha.
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SLs has some good stuff in it. I like the Night Fae story line, the characters they have there.
I kind of liked Bastion after awhile, even if it did skeeze me out with the cult theme but I have a hard time in Bastion because it’s so bright and the font is white, I have a hard time reading it but that’s me.
I did finally figure out why they all look alike. It’s because they’re supposed to be souls/spirits, starting out on a level playing field. Took me a bit to figure that out, wasn’t til I realized I was destroying the good memories of a tauren that I figured it but what the goal of destroying memories in Bastion is, isn’t a good thing to do at all.
So it’s a bright, almost cheerful place filled with well-meaning mean people with strong cult tendencies. hm.
I wonder what Blizzard was thinking when they made that zone.
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It has essentially nothing to do with Azeroth or the characters we care about.
The story is absolute trash.
The rpg elements are still barren.
There’s very little to actually do in the overworld.
So it fails to really create a sense of immersion, investment or agency. It’s just totally forgettable.
20 Likes
Ive been playing since Vanilla and this is by far the most disconnected xpac yet. Ive posed the question before “why should we even care about the Jailer or anything about shadowlands” and its the same answer of “cause hes gonna kill us all”… If Azeroth was really in that much danger couldn’t the Pantheon just come back in a combined effort and wreck baldboi with no effort?? Really am I missing something? Did they just forget about all of us when they yoinked Sargeras away?
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Active guild ? Are those still around ? I mean outside of classic (tbc) I feel if classic was never brought back and future old school content. And all we were left with was shadowland?!? It’s a doom’s day thought but the subscription numbers would go so low we would see the end.
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You’re comparing the final patch of an expansion to the launch of another expansion.
I’d say Shadowlands started out a lot better than BfA. But shadowlands has flopped because of how long it’s taking to drop content and how behind schedule they are.
We spend most of our time in Oribos which has almost no atmosphere as compared to BfA where we were treated with great music and zones
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Honestly haven’t logged in for a couple days now, guilds stopped raiding for the tier annoyingly. TBC is not my cup of tea to be frank, and overall the only thing I do in game is boost keys on my pally and log in for my weekly disappointment with trying to get a tuft.
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