Having been here since the beginning it def wasnt my favourite expansion…not by a long shot!
I think it made alot of mistakes with the Lore and how invested they thought people would be in it. It was just too far away from Azeroth to really be that engaging, also they threw alot of effort into The Maw and Torghast and it just didnt work for alot of people.
In its defense I think it will be a great addition to Chromie time though. I can see it as a nice change for altoholics to level through…when its faded from memory abit anyways!
Which is a mistake.
An entire expansion could have been dedicated to elven and naga lore, and naga swarming our shores, with Azshara being the ultimate final boss and her undoing triggering the release of N’zoth, which would also only be defeated by the end of his own expansion.
In its final state (ie 9.2/Season 4) it’s…okayish I guess. I would still rank it near the bottom but I would put it above BfA/WoD during their final patches. I thought 9.0 was awful though and 9.1 wasn’t much better.
I’m not sure the fandom has elected a spokesperson, so it’s hard to say.
That being said, I don’t think it will age very well. Expansions are typically viewed more favorably as time goes and the nostalgia kicks in, but I don’t think that will be the case with Shadowlands. For one because there are some story and lore consequences in Shadowlands that haven’t been viewed very favorably, but Blizzard can’t entirely ignore them going forward. And secondly because the gameplay content has been stretched and exhausted way past the typical replay value these past 2 years, so it’s hard to imagine that players will want to revisit it anytime soon. And thirdly, then I think it’s an expansion Blizzard themselves would like to put behind them and move on from, so I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of characters or storylines from Shadowlands continue in the future.
This is based more on my subjective enjoyment with each respective expansion than taking the expansion’s content in total isolation. As a result Wrath and TBC suffer from lack of QoL content or features while later expansions benefit sooo… Yeah. As for why vanilla is so high it honestly feels like a different game to any WoW expansion. It’s not really fair to even rank it as an expansion.
But yeah, Shadowlands was very mid. Would be higher if it was more alt friendly but eh. I prefered BfA’s gameplay, to my chagrin. (Plus you could use party sync to never touch Kul Tiras or Zandalar levelling. Can’t do that in Shadowlands because 50-60 exp sucks in party sync).
Sure sure. Those characters are like Superman and Batman in Justice League. Others can be rotated in and out of the spotlight, but Superman and Batman are staples and just about always present. It’s the same with WoW. Each expansion has a slew of new characters that we get introduced to, and then there are some staples that keep being around.
My point is mainly that I don’t think (m)any of the characters that Blizzard created within Shadowlands are going to have much story or content involvement beyond the confinements of Shadowlands. That’s unlike Bolvar and Talia who were “born” in previous expansions and brought into Shadowlands and will likely continue their storylines beyond it. But someone like Pelegos? Nah, I don’t think we’ll be spending a lot of time with him.
Well, the reason is different.
Obviously, Blizzard can’t do everything immediately, and neither should they. They pick and choose, and some things are continued, some things are postponed, and some things are discarded. That’s fair enough. Limited production is limited.
I think with Shadowlands they’ll cut their losses (they obviously already have since we’re a patch short), because the main desire is to move on and not to linger. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of desire for more Shadowlands among players or Blizzard. That’s unlike the sword in Silithus which I’m sure we’ll get around to eventually, because it’s intriguing for players and Blizzard alike.
Unfortunately I am not the one, keeping my fingers and toes crossed that Dragonflight purges the poor memories of the two previous expansions and takes us back to the heights of Legion!
