Shadowlands world design is the worst part of the expansion

Community General Discussion
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I’ve been trying to figure out for some time why browsing forums is more fun than logging in and it always comes back to world design for me. There are lot of other issues too like the loot drought killing the motivation to grind but the world itself and how it’s structured is the worst it’s ever been I feel.

This was a red flag as soon as they announced that zones would be all separate and it turned out exactly how it seemed like it would. The game literally feels like Destiny right now or other MMOs with maps divided by load screens like FF14 and ESO. That’s the thing I hated most in those games and WoW was the only one immune from that for so long but here we are. It doesn’t matter that the zones are all on the same map, in fact that makes it even worse.

If you’re trying to get from the rightmost point of Revendreath to the leftmost point in Ardenweald, it would take you less than a minute if you flew straight on, but instead, you go through Oribos, the worst city ever made, and waste more and more time, or more likely, alt-tab. It’s not even only about having to go through Oribos, there is no fixing this system even if they allow direct travel as the zones will still feel isolated and dead.

I feel like this whole concept was made up so they could kill flying which they’ve wanted to for years now, as flying mounts are literally useless now except for godawful parts of some zones where mob density is off the charts.

The zones themselves look fantastic and have a huge amount of variety among them but almost no variety within them. They have one major aesthetic that covers 90% of the zone, and there’s maybe a smaller slightly different area like Tirna Scithe and Citadel of Loyalty etc.

Compare this to Suramar that has like 5 different biomes one of which is a giant amazing city. Look around you and you can see Highmountain, the world tree in Val’sharah, Dalaran floating above, and ToS firing up into the sky. It was a great ecosystem that made the world feel alive, now wherever you look you see empty space.

I’m not saying they messed up, they achieved want they were trying to perfectly, but I think that the initial idea is simply bad for a game like WoW. What are the patch zones gonna be? More random floating islands completely separate from all the others too? I know that artists wanted a bit of leeway to make fantastical otherworldly designs but they have killed immersion in the process.

It feels kinda lazy just stringing isolated zones together by open space and wormholes and not even trying to fit them together in a sensical way. This combined with the half of the zones barely feeling like Warcraft results in a lonely and a boring experience IMO.

22 Likes
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Exact same feelings.

Shadowlands feels like one “huge” Zone that got seperated into its Biomes for no reason.

The different “biomes” are fine if looked at together but boring if look at them alone and be forced into them for different things and oribos sucks.

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I can take Barrens - stonetalon - desolace - thousand needles x1000 times than cringe shadowlands “afterlive world” zones

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Have to agree, separating the zones was horrible. I flew from bastion to a point in revendreth earlier and I literally had time to go the bathroom, then make a cup of coffee then get back and I’m still flying… Dire game design. It’s hard to conclude this wasn’t done just to stretch out time logged.

10 Likes
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The blatant detours through Oribos or even the extra little FP’s along the way is really starting to piss me off.

They didn’t even try to hide it, just in-yer-face micro-timegating lol literally no other reason why anyone should have to go through Oribos, every. single. time.

I’d love to see numbers of how long players have spent in these first couple of months alone on these flight routes. I’m almost 100% certain the numbers would be rediculous already.

Pathetic game design.

I don’t play any other games, like at all, WoW was it for me, for so long, but seeing how they handled classes and loot and anima and covenants, I am slowly but surely losing all interest.
Downloaded Final Fantasy 14 the other night there and tbh, it’s a breath of fresh air. I’m on a free trial atm and the amount of content available to me would make Blizzard devs have a fcukng heart attack lol
Trying out new classes and gearing them slightly is the biggest thing keeping me around WoW atm, that and my guilld.

Gut BM Hunters and then throw a 5% dmg buff in our face and call it tuning ? Honestly, if any devs ever read this, you people really, really wana start making some different decisions, and start showing some love back to this game an its playerbase before it’s too late.

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BFA definitely had more charm. As soon as I saw Boralus and visited zones like Stormsong Valley and Zuldazar I was hooked.

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Yes the zones are very badly designed.

The zones are to small and you can really feel that the only reason you are having zones at this point is being logged online i.e do some kind of wq/farming.

5 Likes
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I leveled my alt in Legion and I agree that the zones there are 20 times better than in SL.

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I recall a post-mortem with Tom Chilton (former Game Director) about Cataclysm, where he said that one lesson Blizzard had learned was that having a single continent be the focus of an expansion was very important, because it helped instill a sense of cohesion and belonging that was hard to get when you have zones in Cataclysm that are separated from each other and with little story glue to tie them together.

Obviously the problem Blizzard has is that the Warcraft universe doesn’t always present itself in nice expansion-sized island packages. And to some degree getting the same expansion layout each time is a problem as well. So they’ve done the double islands with Battle for Azeroth, and now the separated zones with a shared backstory for Shadowlands.

I think Shadowlands is far better in terms of cohesion and story than Cataclysm. But it’s definitely not as strongly tied together as Pandaria for example. But I think it works nonetheless.

And most importantly, I think Blizzard should be commended and encouraged to actually experiment with new ways of making expansions. Trying out new ideas is a good thing. And there’s some excitement – as a player – about experiencing something as new and unknown as flying through a wormhole to get to a new zone, rather than simply flying across water on a gryphon like you’ve done for the past decade.

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I genuinely want to do all my quests and chores in Ardenweald and I dread it when I have to:

  • Hearth to Oribos
  • Fly to Ardenweald
  • Get my Callings
  • Go to the calling region and complete the calling
  • Fly back to Ardenweald and turn in calling
  • Fly back to Oribos to put smth in AH
  • (Optional) Take portal to Orgrimmar and use the AH from there cuz there’s no long boi, or there is but tjey are running in circles in Oribos
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I think the zones are great looking and thematically but they’re so small and locked by chokepoints. Except The Maw, that’s just someone trying to be Dark Souls or something.

World of Flightpaths is tedious as hell. I go off and do something else while off on a flight now. Sometimes I forget to come back and get logged out.

I only have a small amount of game time so FF and GW2 are the games I play most now because I know my time will be spent actually playing.

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And if you avoid that by hearthing or teleporting to Dala / SW it simply kills the mood; it’s so silly that traveling to a different world and back is more effective than traveling from one zone of the same world to another…

(An option to trade the Dala hearthstone for an Oribos hearthstone - in case the devs are simply “afraid” to give us an additional city teleport - could at least partially solve that problem, but no…)

6 Likes
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Oribos is a garbage city, its getting tiring to always have to take the teleporter up to fly. It looks like but why make another floor?!

And the zones except Maldraxxus feels so tiny with towers and obstacles everywhere.

Maldraxxus in the other hand is awesome. More open area… thats what I want.

The Maw looks nice but its absolutely garbage and a failure with the giants aoe bleed, nothing to do, phasing ruining group quests… sigh

Damn I love the Maws skybox and setting but I wish it had more of a Tanaan vibe.

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What irks me about it is the NPC chitchats that they blurt out as you walk by. Because they are in-universe, canon, and make it blatantly obvious that the afterlives interact with each other on a regular basis. They are all part of the same system, interacting and protecting/maintaining/processing the factory that is death in the WoW universe.
Why do I need to make a travel network, and go out of my way to enter the point closest to Oribos to cut out about 5 minutes of travel time every time I go somewhere? Especially since the travel gates also cause a loading screen.

It’s a very cool idea, but in this case you guys are absolutely right, it’s taking away one of the core things WoW’s always had going for it. Open world, vast, connected, few loading screens. Heck, I’m pretty sure it was even a major advertising point back in the day.

1 Like
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Agree, I have my stone in Ardenweald, so I find myself getting the daily call and/or weeklies, using Dala stone to go to Orgri do my bussiness if I have to, then take the portal to Oribos go to the Maw do the calling/weekly, back to Oribos and lastly go to the zone of the calling if it wasn’t in the Maw. Hearth back to Ardenweald, and call it a day.

If I want to do some WQs sometimes, depending on where I am at it’s still faster to Dala stone again and go through Orgri and Oribos, than just flying to Oribos.

I guess they could, AT LEAST, cut “the middle man” and avoid the Oribos trip, once you get in the wormhole you just get out of the wormhole already on the other zone and that’s it, it’s that simple.

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Love how engineering fixes all issues.

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I did transportation network lvl 3 so I can heartstone to Covenant sanctum and have a portal directly to Orobos . That feels much more natural.

And engineering - to port directly into zones. The downside is that i do not want to even ouch my alts that do not have that quality of life.

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We need a Neutral zone like Shattrath again, now THAT was a city/zone that felt epic!

This whole expansion feels rushed to me.

BC is still my fav expansion.

1 Like
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Meh, it’s better than nothing but for every single zone they chose to absolute least convenient location to teleport you to with the wormhole. The Bastion and Maw are my favorites in this regard.

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