Ding fourth level 60 and here are my thoughts

Community General Discussion
1

So over the week of launch , i have leveled up 4 characters.

I feel the biggest problem with Shadowlands leveling was good stories ruined by poor questing design. In brief they were so boring. Just kill , collect , kill collect.

I have only one really memorable questline and that was unlocking the tower in the Maldraxxus , where you had to interact with the stones , then play with the crystals to unlock the door to the tower. Then avoid traps to collect all the books. That was the only stand out quest for me.

It was hard to stay focused on the stories when you have to go through such tedium. I know leveling is fast and very very short part of the expansion. After all end content is what itā€™s all about.

But maybe throw in some mini games or puzzles between the kill and collect quests. Just to add some variety and stop us from going from A to B same thing different scenery. They donā€™t have be to " dark souls" difficulty in puzzle. But just a little terrain platforming , find a way to unlock a door etc.

I know youā€™re going to say " well itā€™s always been like that" True. But playing other mmos over the past 6 months have shown me a mmo doesnā€™t have to equate to just killing and collecting or filling a bar to 100% each zone.

What did you guys think of the leveling ? Did you find the stories good , questing awful ? Do you like to just kill and collect or do you feel indifferent as it only takes up 8 hours tops of your time in a expansion. Like to hear ideas how to make leveling fun. Cheers for the read.

6 Likes
2

Well my main issue right now is the reason you probably also leveled multiple characters to 60. There is not enough stuff to do once you hit 60.

The weekly caps are understandable to a degree but these first weeks are pretty boring so far. Iā€™m not even playing a lot of hours but I reach my cap really fast. 1 Daily in covenant hall, 1 mission for companions and 2 dailies in the Maw and Iā€™m done. WQ are fun but I rather not do the same missions for weeks because ā€œthere is nothing else to doā€.

Leveling is fun, campaign is a nice although I didnā€™t enjoy it as much a 2nd time and the other option with WQ feels extremely slow

3

I would point out the ā€œevery MMO is about killing and collectingā€, but you claim you saw otherwise.

Makes me wonder which game that would be though. Rift, GW2, FF14, ESO, SWTOR, LOTROā€¦i saw them all, and all of them are 99% ā€œkill, collect, completeā€. Itā€™s a MMO staple, right after killing 10 rats.

4

My main issue is that the zones do have some good stories but once you completed the chapter there are still a ton of quests left to do but they are soooo dull. Blizz went from 100 to 0 real quick!

I wish they would implement some Classic/TBC quests again where you need to fly over the entire continent to do stuff.

5

Iā€™ve levelled two chars to 60. I enjoyed it; didnā€™t take too long. Didnā€™t have to do the campaign the second time and just used twist just before hitting 60. Managed to watch many shows on my monitor and also skinned a lot.

As someone who despises levelling, I was happy.

6

I stuck at 59 lvl i didnt play WoW for 2 months,take a break still SL is boring to me,i just go inside leveling 20 min and got bored :confused:

7

Wellā€¦ I didnā€™t expect much from SL after how BfA went.
I was kinda surprised though when I traveled to the Shadowlands and felt how I got hyped. The story from there had a good start and stayed good till I reached something like the end of the first patch way too fast and was like ā€œWaitā€¦ this is it?ā€ and now it feels like mawing the lawn every day :sweat_smile:

1 Like
8

Some beautiful but very cramped zones, horrible questing on rails experience. and a ā€˜storyā€™ I couldnā€™t care less about. With a few exceptions, exactly the same cut n paste quests patterns in every zone. No one in chat and felt like a single player game. I donā€™t much like levelling in modern wow and prefer to find my own path rather than being led around by the nose.

1 Like
9

For me leveling will never be fun, no matter what they do. Itā€™s just a mandatory chore that I have to do in order to get to the max level where all the good stuff is.

If I want to experience the story, I can just do the quests at the max level when Iā€™m going for the Loremaster achievement. I donā€™t need leveling for that.

10

The side quest that irritated me most was the Bastion one ending with a choice between Larion or Phalynx. It both implies there will be a mount at the end of it or at least draws you to infer there will be but when you make your choiceā€¦nothing. There may be something from this in a future patch (looking at some Googled articles which were complete guesswork) but the way itā€™s left hanging feels like an unfinished chain.

I quite liked the variety of quest types in Nazjatar as there was a broad mix but we seem to have gone back a step with Shadowlands with just the occasional side quest thatā€™s different from kill x of this, loot y of that.

I try to do everything on one char then pick and choose on others. Only levelling when time permits and grouped with my other half but in a few hours free today Iā€™ve taken an alt to the exact same point just doing campaign quests. For me they would have done better to ditch such a strict linear approach to the campaign and let us start out in any one of the zones all converging to a conclusion.

11

Iā€™ve only levelled one character, brought another through the Maw, and havenā€™t really done anything. I have a great lack of enthusiasm so far.

They mostly fixed the scaling problems of BfA. By making each zone have a narrow range of levels, they removed most of the awful effects of getting weaker as we level that were all over the forums in BfA.

Questing on Rails is BAD. Bad, bad, bad. I didnā€™t like having no choice the first time, and I dread doing the same quests, in the same order, again - but I hear that ToF is worse, so thatā€™s a problem. Need to investigate further.

XP tuning was pretty good. I had heard that the mandatory campaign was just enough to get you to 60. So I did no dungeons, hardly any side quests, and just a few herbs along the way, and completed the campaign in Revendreth half a level short of 60. Thatā€™s pretty well measured!

There is no Zone I want to be in. Ambiance is a big thing for me. I find Ardenweald and Revendreth tolerable, but Iā€™m not enchanted by them as I am by so many Warcraft zones. I actually had to turn the Gamma down to quest in Bastion, and yet Bastion has an inappropriately regretful, nostalgic feel. I have no idea how any team could have come up with that for the pinnacle of the afterlife. I would say the music was phoned in for everything but Revendreth, except that would be giving it too much credit; it has no conviction at all. Oribos is a bus station. :frowning:

The Maw intro was fine by me. I see a lot of complaints about it, and about having to go through it again. I get that, but it didnā€™t and wonā€™t bother me. Itā€™s not that long, and gives good XP. Itā€™s also kind of funny, having Thrall tank, Jaina DPS, and Anduin heal, in their escort quest of making sure you reach your destination. :stuck_out_tongue:

The story and the world doesnā€™t feel like WoW to me. First content in the game where I would say that. Iā€™m not sure that I can analyse it; maybe it will come to me later on.

The story didnā€™t make me care. So Baine and Tyrande are left behind. We have no need to worry about Tyrande in the Maw. Sheā€™s not locked in with them - theyā€™re locked in with her! We knew Baine was going to be OK, because story. There was no Runas the Shamed for us to relate to, and while they did have to pack 4 stories into those levels, they never approached the involvement of Suramar. It wasnā€™t outright bad, like the BfA pre-story, but it didnā€™t hook me. My impression is that they depended far too much on cinematics for effect, and thatā€™s not a good thing - like the writers said: ā€œGet players invested in the characters??? You what? Not my job, mate!ā€

Mob density around the zones was good. There are some denser and many open areas, nothing likle the grid-paper layout of the mobs at Ashhvane in BfA.

Danuser and his pronounts just will not go away. For those of you who didnā€™t notice, I will say no more. Once you do notice, you canā€™t un-notice. Not important, just a constant reminder of his personal need to virtue-signal while making the world a little worse.

Questing proper felt weak. Not outright bad, just a bit tedious. I do not like gimmick quests. Not Kirin Tor, not Turtles, not Mad Whoozis, not Bejeweled. Our job is to kill things and take their stuff, not play whatever favourite childhood phone or console game some rookie designer wants to force on the rest of the world. And, thankfully, there were few gimmicks. Several places where the quest was unclear. I miss being told where to go, and just looking for an arrow instead. Ratio of messy kill-and-collect to straight questboss-kill was too high, though. This seems to follow through into WQ, from what Iā€™ve seen.

I could go on, with good and bad points, but I already hear the piteous cries to stahp! :smiley:

2 Likes
12

Got to admit I didnt like the forced feeling of the questing storylines this expansion. I mean I enjoyed doing them but there didnt feel like there were quite as many side quests or bonus objectives.
Personally I like having more choice to explore and choose how I level (Threads of Fate is a step in the right direction but it still ties you in to just one type of progressionā€¦I would of liked the option to replay different zones main story on different characters).

Althoughā€¦4 level 60s already!!? Im quite happy taking it slow and stretching out my content!

1 Like
13

This was my thought as well. Almost nothing in Shadowlands feels like itā€™s part of Warcraft. Sure, we had some dead characters show up, but I donā€™t think that was enough to convince me. Remove those characters and Shadowlands couldā€™ve been a completely different MMO and franchise imo.

2 Likes
14

i felt like it was a good amount of content tbh.

8 M+0s.
Heroic Spam for left over spots
Clear the Maw every day
do all the avaliable torghast.
Reach Renown level 3
Daily Calling.

Kept me preocuppied for majority of the week. but then again im not a Player who booked time off, but the games content shouldnt be so great the game requires you to do that to keep up either.

15

Its their trademark no middle ground at all its always 0 or 100.

16

The leveling to me felt way faster then any of the other expansions to date. And then right on onto some forced grinding, oh joy. I could not care less about the story, they did not make me care about any of the charaters of feel a connection to the zones even. Extremely weak start to the expansion for sure.

17

I canā€™t believe some people would not have felt this when MoP launchedā€¦ that asian wannabe pandaria wibe was as un-warcrafty as it possibly could, and beyond boring zones.

18

Personally MOP is my favorite expansion, so canā€™t really say anything there. Great raids, great music and fun quests and zones.

2 Likes
19

I hate them the most, really disconnected from what wow feels to meā€¦ goes to show how much tastes can differ.

20

I was totally hooked on story and gameplay in Pandaria and had fun from start to finish this expansion though i just feel like i am still playing WoD/Legion because never ending WQā€™s and tedious power of the season grind that only thing which is different from wod/legion/bfa is the name of the crap i am grinding.

1 Like