My thoughts on Shadowlands

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[aboythrowingrocks]

I relate so much to your experience of connecting to and deeply missing a zone like Ardenweald. For me, I have that experience with Zandalar. Music, aesthetic, characters, everything there just clicked for me & I don't know if I'll ever connect to a place in WoW like that again. I miss it.

[MountainKing]

Oh man, as a warrior, I loved Maldraxxus. The very first intro was jumping into the pit of the arena and going to battle. The constant power rankings of glory through battle just connected with me.

Also had to give Plague Advisor Marileth a hug whenever I passed him in the covenant hall.

[jewishjojo]

In honest reflection, most of the things I didn’t like about shadowlands weren’t even unique to the expansion. Friction between covenant swapping and legendary crafting costs existed in legion legendary RNG and bfa azerite armor/corruption acquisition. My biggest turn off was the 9.1 raid shard system which ended up causing me to take a break until season 4, since I was only raiding at that point, which I ended up adoring.
Overall, I think the largest hits to my tone was disappointment in the scope of korthia and theme/story. When I’m not playing the game, I think about the world and story, and when I’m playing the game, I think about the content drought (which again wasn’t just a shadowlands issue).
I do think the new m+ dungeon rotations going forward will help alleviate the monotony of each seasons keys at the expense of higher mastery over the dungeons, and I’m curious how fated raids will be implemented, if at all, in DF.

[tangerino]

I am another DK who stuck with Night Fae all through Shadowlands. I take the RPG part of MMORPG seriously and as a night elf player the fusion of life and death magic as well as stuff like the Tyrande/Elune focus made it perfect for my main. I really do wish that Death's Due was kept in the talent tree somewhere as I had a ton of fun building around it for the expansion.

[RalphEvangelista]

The moment the revealed the covenants and i saw the Kyrian and the bastion zone, i knew my priest had to be in that covenant. I signed up day one and never looked back. performance wise it was dog for priest season one and even two for holy, but god was it the most connected i felt to the game in a very long time.

Shadowlands for me was an important expansion because its the first expansion i actually got to play all the way through from start to finish. normally i miss multiple patches and take long breaks but the group i was playing with i really needed at the time emotionally. The game kept me together emotionally, i was going through some really rough stuff at the time. As rough as it was, i still loved it, and i kind of feel like its the same situation with WoD. It was by far by everyone's metric the worst expansion but all the time you hear stories about WoD and how much fun people still had playing it, i think years on we'll think the same for SL.

now for the hot take. Im going to ABSOLUTELY miss torghast. I LOVED that piece of content from start to finish, it was BUSTED and FUN, and i got a lot of hate for liking it. If you take Torghast for what it is, its a great piece of content. people just hate it because it was required at the start of the expac. if you didn't NEED it for soul ash at the start it wouldn't have been hated as much, money back guarantee.

[vearheart]

Okay I'll leverage a few complaints at SL, starting with the lowest hanging branch.

Torghast went from being a power trippy Roguelike akin to Hades in the beta to a resource grind mode akin to Island Expeditions on live. IT got incredible rave reviews on beta and honestly it should have leant into what people were saying they liked. I agree with the criticism that putting a major resource behind it was the issue. They couldn't have it be wacky fun if it also needed to be challenging. If it was TOO easy then there was no purpose in it existing. So thats what they did, they made it nearly impossible for some classes and others were so strong on the first patch people could sell carries. Torghast should have simply been where we went to have a power trippy good time and receive evergreen rewards like mounts and transmog more in line with the mage tower.

Also it needed some additional palette changes. The assets in Torghast really never changed that much and that was due to it being well a Tower we could all see all over the marketing. I would have loved to see a second or even third torghast-like open up in the Vault area of Korthia as well as somewhere in Zerith Mortis.

All of this fails to mention that they nerfed it so that every class could solo it, but that failed to address the real issues. Torghast truly deserved better. The under performing classes should have been buffed and their powers were the exact avenue to achieve that. What we were left with was it being made a joke from the nerfs. This compounding in my last issue that it just had no real longevity. It didn't have stretch goals for incredible transmog or really cool mounts. People want the CE mount, people WANT the KSM mount, why can't people WANT a stretch goal mount for torghast. No we got a mawrats which don't really matter because they made Torghast a joke.

There's so much potential in this system and Blizz seemed to fail at almost every turn. The Jailer Gambit is really good, and the speedrun esque mechanics with the score were a major improvement. But by the time those hit live the majority of people had made up their mind about Torghast and probably already quit. The biggest loss from Torghast failure though isn't on this expansion but in the fact we will likely never see that attempted again. IT will go the way of the Garrison, the warfront, the island expedition. You can't make a grill cheese with Cardboard and parmesan so why try to make Hades with out anything that made Hades good?

[vearheart]

One of the biggest complaints I had about BFA was that we hit max level and we had nothing to show for it. Azerite armor taking the place of what should have been a new spell or two as we would have gotten in previous expansions.

Shadowlands seemed to change that with the covenants. We hit max and picked out covenant and got two no spells for it. But placing people who wanted to perform well and to also play a character they wanted to be are two conflicting ideas in this system. And while I enjoyed how it worked out for me I would never discount someone else who was frustrated by it. I have the empathy enough to understand why the covenant system wasnt the greatest for them. Imo we should have been able to pick our covenant and then pick which of the spells/soulbinds we wanted. The changes they made to quickly switch were not damaging to the game and it lowered a lot friction within the system. Like it(conceptually) or not I think that was a good change.

Dragonflight seems to be trying to improve this idea and I'm all for it. I loved the covenants and I made many characters this expansion and had fun in all 4. So I'm excited for dragonflight. Being able to progress them all seems like a good change and it's kinda how I played in season 3 and 4 anyway. My one take away from this is that they seem like they are taking feedback to heart with df which is in stark contrast from what blizz was for decades.

[casualandy]

Im just starting wow and play Shadowlands and i just enjoy my time with questing normal dungeons leveling and exploring so far

[vearheart]

The funny thing I learned this expansion is that people seemed to not mind some bad things but really hated others(even if they were a lot smaller impact).

For example everyone hated balance between covenants but they didn't hate tier sets in season three blowing balance completely out of wack. If you weren't a Bdk, Destro, survival, or holy priest then you were undesirable even at key levels that it truly did not matter. It kinda baffled me. Now I was the benefactor of the tier sets so I had fun, but let's say I was a ret paladin I would not be having a great time trying to push higher keys. Even running your own you get less applications on the off meta classes.

[jambothenerd]

Least favorite thing for me in SL, ONE disbanding right when I was about to have the open schedule to raid

[mlong]

In Legion when they killed Ysera, it stung. I was pretty upset and playing through Val'sharah even now fills me with dread and the end just makes me sad. The tension with her seed was unsettling and I was prepared to be furious especially as a druid main for so long losing Ursoc. Any story that can evoke that kind of feeling keeps me keep coming back. This is a world I want to live in and I'm excited going forward.

[GriffinAmongOceans]

I always say old xpacs are seen with rose tinted glasses. People forget the buggy mess some of them were at launch and only compare current stuff to the very peak of an old xpac

[bynamscott]

I just wish I started collecting things earlier because there is so much stuff to collect and explore and its such a shame that it does not get much attention from player base or that is maybe just my opinion. I enjoyed Shadowlands very much, it was fun expansion for me . I never felt that there is something I MUST do and that helped me a lot to enjoy expansion. Sanctum of Domination was my favorite raid, I liked the bosses and I did that raid so many times on many of my alts so it grew on me . Sanctum is when I have started to raid in a new guild and met some great people but I have also met one really special person and raid by raid, dungeon by dungeon and we are dating now.

[booradley]

"A real dark cloud over the expansion for me"

So you'd be in the Shadowed-Lands? Sorry.

I'm really glad you loved Ardenweald, its so good when a zone connects with you. I probably have less strong feelings overall but I have a few places that make me genuinely feel good. Mulgore, because it feels like the true "small town, simple background" for an rpg character that will go on to fight the biggest threats in the world. Most of Outlands-everything but Shadowmoon Valley and Blades Edge Mountains- because it all feels so different, the ecology was so alien and TBC was wonderful (people were not complaining during TBC about it being bad as far as I remember), Mount Hyjal from Cata and a few others. Connecting with nature and the environment is definitely something I like to do as well.

Shadowlands did surprise me in how well it ironed out, as the early going did not feel very good, so they deserve a lot of credit there. Art and music of course absolutely carried the atmosphere of the game, as they always do. The strides forward were good too but its hard for me to not notice the obvious flaws and wonder why they arent fixing them? As far as the development pipeline, Blizzard still has a lot to learn. They had too few devs doing too much class design work, too late to be truly worked out.
I think they turned to the public when they realized they needed several cycles of iteration done immediately. Some of them literally just watched people like Max from Liquid to get feedback, since as a mythic world first raid leader he has a high end understanding of composition and value. Releasing them like they did meant he did nothing but talk about them with his stream nonstop, so they effectively created a microcosm of the purest focus on each they could to get that feedback quickly. A lot of the community is pretty sketchy but they do know who to listen to.
The amount of developer feedback was really great in alpha/beta but only from a select few devs. Some class devs absolutely do not want to interact with anyone outside the company at all, even in private consultations with respected players. This created a massive disparity. Classes like shaman get a talent tree that is amazing, even if they're tuning them badly. Classes like druid and priest got stuck with someone who believes multi-point throwaway nodes to gate off valuable skills are "meaningful choice" on top of getting shafted on bear iteration. Even when they "fixed" bear it ended up being a very weird and sort of ineffectual tree from my point of view, but you would know better than me how it turned out. Even if those classes are being tuned to the higher end with poorer design, and the classes with good design are being tuned for the lower end, they're setting themselves up for nobody to be happy once again as everyone will have to deal with something that just feels bad.

They really should be scooping up players who arent competing at the high levels anymore, youtubers and streamers, signing them to NDAs and letting them work on testing design, attempting to manipulate or exploint and then suggesting iteration of mechanics months before it even becomes clear what its for-i.e. 2 expansions in advance, like some of the other work they do. There would almost certainly be a line to do the job for absolutely nothing as the amount of hype and clout that comes with that would make all the compulsive "tier list" readers zero in on those people immediately. The idea that Blizzard does not use unpaid, highly knowledgeable labor that is also a great focus group of their customer base who are volunteering to do it(they have in the past) is insane to me. I know who Bobby is, and this idea sounds like something that would give him an erection that would make him have to spend months in the hospital because it will not go down. Better product, less complaints, probably larger customer base, for no extra cost? Maybe they think its too good to be true.

I know these arent purely about shadowlands but they're the development going on concurrent to Shadowlands, so there is definitely overlap.The early patches of the next expansion do reflect the lessons of the last expansion, I completely agree with you there, especially the last patches of the previous expansion because its being tuned at the same time. I just feel like their ability to budget time, allocate resources and plan ahead is woefully short for a company that has been at this for nearly 20 years with this game.

Sorry for the length I just have lots of opinions, lol. I hope to get a channel off the ground soon so I can do them in video form and stop bothering people with several page long comments.

[vearheart]

I had plenty of guilds die while I was raiding with them. It was a little jarring but I picked up the pieces and kept the friends I made close. We will see how this goes into df. I have higher hopes for the population going forward. All the negative press with blizz and Activision really drove people away in droves. Also the raids were ridiculously hard and yeah recruiting was a nightmare.

[nexigram]

As a warlock (Night Fae bis the entire expansion), I will deeply miss Ardenweald too. It’s not just having a blink as the least mobile class in the game, either. The music and ambiance is something that will always stick with me, despite all the memeing it received from the hands of edgy warlocks in the discord.

[theoriginalzinng]

Early on I think the things I hated the most was the restrictions set on covenants and in particular conduits and early legendary acquisition. There was far too much timegating and rng behind getting and applying conduits. Some classes had very good and easy to get legendary patterns, some came from final bosses in the raid which just felt bad.

The 4 main shadowlands zones were awesome, raids awesome, dungeons for the most part awesome. The maw was awful and forever felt unfinished. Torghast went from a cool tower in beta to an awful timegated requirement.

Season 2 the thing I hate the most was the rng on top of rng for raid loot and I can see why sanctum broke so many guilds. Korthea while being better than the maw, was still not perfect imo.

Season 3 was fantastic to the point where I tried and sometimes failed to get friends to come back to the game. Tons of qol adds, gear you could get in any form of content, catch-up systems, and even a bit of alt friendliness. It was my turning point after taking a fairly long break from the game in season 2.

[MrSilvershane]

I largely enjoyed most of SL. My only issues were accessibility when coming back after a mini break and some of the constraints on changing talents/conduits on the fly. I am really optimistic for DF and I feel the team are making positive steps to make the game even better.

[Lichmerc]

Your connection to Night Fae is admirable and the determination with PUGs even more so. SL for me will be tied to following your channel, the good days, and the bad 👍
SL is my top as well out of the ones I've played - vanilla, BC, Wrath and SL.
Cons -
Toxic players
Necrotic affix
Roster boss
Bugs
Torghast
Poor balance (covenants, tier sets, legendaries, gear acquisition, classes themselves)

Pros-
M+ - love this system ❤️
Raids - all good quality IMHO
Level squish with other SL QoL stuff
BDK ❤️

Mixed -
Covenants. Great as a concept but tying power to them was to ruin it.
Alts. Having none before SL and heaps now is good and bad. Friends, and myself, having so many toons to play and gear, it's becoming exhausting. But not being able to have any is also terrible in its own way.

My only wish for DF is for them to change their stance on mythic raiding to go from rigid 20 people to scale 20-22 at least. The roster boss is OP, I've given up trying to find a decent m raiding guild after searching all of season 3. My s2 9/10m guild switched servers (i stayed) and every guild since cannot get a group going EVER.
Otherwise DF is looking good 👍

Keep on trucking Metro!

[amandarinorange]

I almost always love the expansion I'm in. Sure I might be a little bored with it at the end but I don't fault the expansion for it most the time. This expansion did have some terrible patch cadence but most of them do lol what upset me was trying to do 3s with my friends. We tried so hard to get to 1800 the first season, but we'd get to 1780 and then suddenly everyone had freaking 20 ilvls on us because they got carried to the rating and were able to upgrade gear. We quit for a long time because of it. I absolutely loved s4 m+, though! That was a blast. (Also feel the same about adrenweald!! I could almost cry thinking about leaving it.)