Rails…This whole expansion is on rails.
There is no feeling of playing a mmorpg. there no sense of wonderment about whats around the corner or over the next rise.
This expansion is exactly the wrong direction this genre needs to head.
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I don’t know why they are so many people disliking the Pandaria questing, or is it you on the forums that I’m seeing a lot 
I really loved it, it was really simple and gave me an ability to explore, especially Jade Forest, it was so huge and beautiful truly a masterpiece in my opinion
Also Valley of Four Winds was beautiful and adorable characters, story in the valley wasn’t just KILL KILL
WOD & BFA. But yeah, pandaria was a little testing too.
Bfa alliance side is being told by 3 stories with a main one where all the 3 converge to, even between all those stories you never really follow them in linear way, you can find side quests in between.
That story telling style you said was used in bfa and people didn’t like because it was confuse and more often than not people get lost in the story.
People wanted a linear story for you to follow and they deliver exactly that, you’re just being told where to go.
They should build more upon their existing world: Azeroth and Kalimdor. Not send us into weird dimensions of time travel, aliens, titans and angels vs demons. Hard to relate to those
Also modern WoW is way too fast and flashy. Barely enough time to look at another players or interract with them.
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What was bad with pandaria?
Only part I didn’t like about pandaria was dread wastes, such a depressing looking zone. Valley of the four winds was my most liked zone up until nagrand in WoD. Now the zone that’s my favorite is ardenweald, closely followed by bastion.
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the questing in classic is fun as far as just blindly gallivanting around the world, but ‘‘world building’’? Half the time you just dart around the world changing zones every 2 levels because the developers didnt put enough quests to level you up in, so the story becomes all scattered and you’re simultaenously doing 18 different storylines because they all cover random assortments of levels haphazardly
90% of the story of classic is hidden in in game books and quest text almost no one bothers to read
I can : For me Classic quests are worse but I’m willing to go through it for nostalgia or just because I acknowledge thzt classic is the way it is and just deal with it. Bonus perks for being more challenging but seeing as the best way to level in classic is to outlevel quests until they are in the green range it doesn’t really count
As for Shadowlands… Better format, but different incentives. You’re leveling in SL to get to max level first and foremost, which makes everything else bland in comparison.
That said a lot more effort was put in the world and that’s something I appreciate. If you go out of your way to experience the side quests you’ll find some really interesting things in SL, especially in Maldraxxus which I really appreciated
It’s interesting that you mention that because that’s something I’d attribute to SL instead. Each zone has a different culture, architecture, theme, encounters ect. Even your abilities and gear change from one zone to another.
Classic did great for a 2004 game, but it pales in comparison when you think about these world building elements (humans & orcs share the same building models from Eastern kingdom, kalimdor, outland and norfrend for example. Saved ressources for what truly mattered sure but still something in SL’s favour)
I was leveling as a hunter mostly from orange and red mobs because I enjoyed the challenge, but as mentioned earlier it was a waste of time. Classic leveling is only as challenging as you will it to be, I died a few times in SL by over pulling and I don’t quite see the difference beside perhaps that you can’t make SL easier but that the bar is lower than classic.
I actually enjoyed most of it. Because a video game story should be explained in the video game and not some book, and it did an excellent job at setting the tone for each zone.
Each covenant behaves differently based on their values and culture and it is clearly shown in these npc interactions you seemingly don’t care about. Makes me wonder what you actually appreciate in classic world building if you don’t care about npc interactions tbh.
Beg to differ. The maldraxxus folks felt distinct from the kyrian folks and I really appreciated the mad one from the house of plagues.
I gotta admit I fail to see your point. What you just explained in classic is just a storyline spawning a few zones, that’s hardly the best classic has to offer or even counts as being “told the storyline first hand through exploring and interacting with the world”, you just follow the storyline through a few zones, two dungeons and a raid…
A nice storyline perhaps but it’s far from being exceptional or even being superior to the modern storytelling imo.
You are invested in that story and appreciate more than modern questlines, fair enough. Hope you’ll enjoy yourself but you gotta admit you have a fairly biased opinion on the subject. Perhaps so is mine but I feel like I’m looking at things as they are instead of how I feel about them
It was iritating as all heck running around between tiny questhubs most of which never felt relevant to what i was doing.
Some of the individual quests were good. Yes. The small excursion northwest in 4valley, play-training with a monk living in the forest.
The farm was quite well done too.
But overall it was the start of you feeling like a chore-boy for the different NPC. Instead of playing the story of your character you are just someone who happened to be there, at their convenience, as a witness of something more interesting then what you are doing and as a replaceable someone.
Its been happening since Mop and has been building up over the expansions.
With your characters awesome only being acknowledged cutscences and a few select main quests.
As of right now my final straw was the start of Ardenweald.
“Oh, our queen is real busy. And btw im too. So go there and help random people do random crap until i can be bothered to keep you company again.”
“How about no? I have a universe to save. Again btw. I dont have time for your random nonsense. Your queen will meet me NOW. Go and tell her to not keep me waiting. I dont CARE how busy she is.”
The way our character just stands there nodding yesman-style to everything is disgusting.
Well duh. They better. Thats the expectation. Not something to be praised.
The main problems i had with the Mald story was the lol-sword that only existed in cutscences and the random setup that just lends itself to being resolved in the first 5 minutes. I just decimated an entire arena full of every houses finest.
Why exactly are we running shortly after? Why cant i just beat up the main dude form the construct house and call the zone done?
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I can praise for the execution altho the end result is expected isn’t it ?( If it wasn’t already obvious from my post I really liked that zone 
)
Exactly. That’s a big let down, I really expected something cool to come out of it but… That’s just a fancy key =\
Something something “not all the enemies are shown on screen” I guess ?
Also wondered how the construct found enough troops to destroy the house of the chosen after we infiltrated them but guess they needed to kill the margrave one way or another.
Has to be something like that, yes. Some plot-armor or somesuch.
We are being presented with a situation as-is but how it came to be is getting handwaved alot.
Are the houses allied as Mald proper? If so why do we suddenly have a 5-way-FFA.
Are they usualy at odds with each other? Then surely theyd have spies having 5-way-FFAs all the time and theyd know what each other is doing.
Or is the house of the choosen somehow the only naive group there? With them unable to see a s-storm coming?
I think there is a game for you. Only if i could remember the name. No but seriously…i think qursts now are way more fun than in the original game.
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people usually think that is lazy devs reusing content. At least that’s what they said about nyalotha.
I’m enjoying it first time through, not finished yet (I’m slow).
Not sure I’ll enjoy it on alts but we have the threads of fate system for that.
I enjoyed the BFA questing / leveling the first time also but by the third time through I was rather intediated…
that sword nonsence holding it aloft gaining another green light on the wall. Even looked for the sword in my bags but no,just added for why?
If that’s the only thing you got out of my post maybe you’re the one that’s fixated on classic.
I have to agree. Well, there’s a reason why Classic questing feels "better’ when it comes to storytelling and world-building: Lack of quest markers. You HAVE to read the quest description in order to know what to do, therefore they put a lot more effort into wording those lines than per se in SL where it’s really basic and practically just there so you can look at something…
About the RP parts, I’m only bothered by them because most of the time it feels like it got bugged or something, taking way too long to load the next sentence and stuff. It happened with me on multiple occasion that I finished the quest, waited to see if there’s RP. Nothing, ok, I’m about to leave, already running toward the next objective when suddenly: CHAMPION THIS IS DIRE NEWSSSSS!!!444four - really…
And yes, being on rail 24/7 isn’t fun. I remember Legion levelling, I think it was very well done. First, I got to chose where to start and in which order to do the zones. Here? You have to start at Bastion. Oh, you’re more interested in the evil vampires? Too bad, you get to go there LAST sucker! In Legion the main quests felt more important than side quests and I only had to do 4 chapters before the chapter was “done” and I could move on and come back later to finish the rest if I wanted to. In SL? Most of the Story Quests are pure time wastes! Like in Ardenweald where I have to do the chores of stupid fairies, learning almost nothing about them or the zone and the story goes at a snail’s pace. Really…
Oh and the most important: You can’t participate in end game content until you finished THE WHOLE cursed story! You hit lv 60? Good for you! Now, go back and do some bird mating dance, lul. Torghast? Hahaha, silly goose, forget that, you still have two zones before you!
At least if the story were interesting, but it isn’t… Bastion was pretty basic and done million times in fiction, Maldraxxus was only saved by Lad… Sorry, Baronesse Vashj for me, because the plot twist was so obvious that a brain dead person could see it coming miles away. Ardenweald as I said, mostly time waste so far. So yeah, I think this is one of the worst lvl-ing experience so far for me. The other one was WoD.
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I don’t know why people need their opinion reinforced, especially in a place where people would whine about even an objectively 10/10 expansion.
You didn’t like it, many other did. You like Classic leveling more, many other can’t stand it.
Personally i loved it and wouldn’t trade it for some Classic like leveling experience.
I liked it a lot. That’s the good part about WoW - the story line. Storytelling has just keeps getting better.
No, it’s not just you, feeling the same with it myself, so much that I can level up a bit on alts in only 5-10 minute spells and then calling it a day.
Not that it’s a bad expansion, it’s not that so not going to make this another. “This is a bad expansion.” The factions or covenants, whatever just don’t influence me in any way honestly.
But that doesn’t make it a bad expansion, just that it doesn’t fit in with what I like to see in the game on the looks, story level.