Whats Wrong With Shadowlands?

Community General Discussion
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There is something i really don’t understand. What shadowlands did wrong that bfa did right? Its is literally better in every aspect compared to BFA.

I hated BFA. Silly worldquests, boring, soulless world bosses, most of the zones except few zones were ugly and tideous(specially zuldazar, i don’t even wanna remember that zone it makes me wanna puke), boring raids(except eternal palace) pain in the ars dungeons… And list can go on and on. And shadowlands did every of these things right. So far i don’t even understand all the hate towards shadowlands generally. I am having fun, and i think it is a great expansion, i don’t see anything extreme about it except few big plots in the storyline. Even the aesthetics and the looks of this expansion alone can top of bfa in a great way.

So there goes my question why everybody hated and quit the game while in shadowlands but stayed through bfa?

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BfA had a lockdown

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There are 2 major differences between BFA & SL:

  • Time SL is in > as you know, Activision Blizzard is under serious law issues. This is not a direct issue, but people are saying the game is bad due to the current situation in the company (for me personally, this is absurd, as we are throwing 95% of innocent staff members under the bus). I agree that there are massive content draughts (which is a huge issue, won’t negate that), but I feel that everything wrong with the game, is a result of the law issues they have.
  • Rise of so called influencers (or streamers if you will), that potrtay their opinion onto the clueless pack of sheep. A few months ago, it was a modern trend to quit wow (all the major streamers, content creators did it), make videos about it, grab as much money as you can from the views, clicks, and ofcourse the people watching followed. Then the majority left for FFXIV or something else, to shortly realize that other games are not so much better.

Other than that, nothing if you ask me. Both expansions had simillar flaws, which got corrected pretty much (azerite, essences, conduits, legendaries etc.).

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I would argue BFA was better because it simply had less convoluted systems in comparison but still too many. They basically doubled down on it.

I’d say the story was better up until Visions of N’Zoth.

Shadowlands has suffered from serious content drought and while some of that can be attributed to the pandemic, it’s not a feasible excuse now. In the background, Activision Blizzard’s skeletons have fallen out of the closet which has hampered development as well.

Overall I think they are both really bad expansions, BFA started off well and went into a mad descent (both in development and theme) but it did have the benefit of the first series of lockdowns so playtime for many increased.

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Do you really think that though? For alot of players (me included), BFA start was one of the worst things I have ever encountered. The class design was insanely bad if we compare it to the Legion’s playstyle. Azerite gear was incredibly difficult to obtain. Uldir was one of the worst raids introduced. The M+ affix was really bad. I would say it was one of the worst patches / launches ever.

8.1. and 8.2. on the other side, were phenomenal (atleast for me).

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I do, but when I say started off well, I’m referring all the way from 8.0 to 8.2, not just the initial months where balance and stability are all over the place until 8.0.5 or such patches.

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Same old same old got too old if I’m honest.

Also, the loss of all the small things like the flight masters whistle. It auto accepting emissaries if you flew to the area rather than having to do the commute are small but they add up over time. I’m sure theres a lot more of that type of thing.

That and Blizz’s propensity for breaking whats working. It’s the reason the fun detected fun removed memes abound.

I’m also tired of the “wheel”. Remove buffs “insert reason here”. Bring back buffs “insert exactly opposite reason here”. Remove items from the GCD “make up reason here”. Back pedal on it because it was a :poop: decsion and you were told.

People have had enough, it is an old game after all. Probably doesn’t help when it turns out most of the people whose polished PR images you admired turned out to be utter bastards.

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I miss the flight master whistle so much! It was one of the things which made not having flying from the start a bit more bearable.

And auto-accepted emissaries were great for forgetful people :sweat_smile: I do like the variety in Shadowlands callings (e.g. doing treasures or dungeons instead of just world quests), but I hate the method of picking them up.

World quests in BfA were generally a lot quicker to complete with a lot of “kill 1 guy” WQs for nice and fast completion, instead of the WQs we have now which have multiple stages and go on for too long.

Like Deja said, a lot of it is just small things, but each small thing builds up and wears away at you over time.

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A few things come to mind.

  1. Loot:
    While a lot of players didn’t like TF, it was a motivation to run more M+ dungeons. The typical 1 dungeon for the weekly is more comon, not enough people want to do 3 more dungeons just for an extra roll in the chest lottery. Because there is a point where dungeon loot becomes completely uninteresting, and it’s not to hard to reach.
    And less loot combined with domination gear just felt bad when people were missing a piece with socket for the bonus.

  2. long, unrewarding grinds.
    First you needed too much Anima for most things that they seemed out of reach and it’s not worth farming. But now you can get so much that it doesn’t feel worth doing something just for a few points extra Anima.
    Venaris rep and Korthia research felt like out of a mobile game: you progress pretty fast at first, especially with all the one-time rep items, and then it takes weeks of farming to get something new. It doesn’t help that Maw and Korthia weren’t great zones.

  3. The expansion grind.
    As bad as AP is, at least it gave you a goal. You could farm like a maniac to get to a specific lvl, or take it slow and benefit from the catch-up. With the convenant points you can never be ahead, just behind.
    Also it felt more rewarding to see the progress bar fill up for the next power lvl.
    And nearly 2/3 of the rewards for renown were completely uninteresting (wow, I can now upgrade honour gear to be only 40ilvl below my raid gear, how satisfying).

But if I had to make it short I would say:
Compared to previous expansion many things like doing WQs, dungeons, farming mats, or rep grinds feel less rewarding.

Everything instanced is still fun, but most things you normally do solo aren’t.

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Wow you’re a real fanboy. A lot of people quit early on because of the loot scarcity. After that the content drought kicked in. Covenants swapping was a no go after months of complaining. Legendary costs are too high. Torghast was gutted into a garbage fiesta. Maw is a dull region without a reason to go. Time gating renown was stupid. 15 min boss fights with high fail rate. Oh boy I can’t stop HOLD ME!

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For me, I liked the concept of Azerite Armor. Yes, I said it, I thought it was a good idea and enjoyed it.

Then, I enjoyed the WQ’s, I enjoyed the Assaults in Kul’Tiras and Zul’dazar. I enjoyed the drop chests. I liked how I could earn Conquest without having to do PVP and get the basic PVP transmog.

I loved the Dungeons. The enjoyed the theme of the expansion. I enjoyed being able to quest through each zone at my own choosing, and having in-depth storylines to get lost in.

Nazjatar was a really enjoyable zone to work my way through with the Meta Achievement Undersea Usurper, with a cool mount reward, something worth working towards.

I enjoyed having split horde and alliance quest lines and even more so I loved that it was built to be a Horde vs Alliance expansion. I enjoyed doing Island expeditions because they were somewhat reward (transmog and mounts).

The design of the Transmog was actually some of the best for a while.

Oh and Battle of Da’zaralor is probably one of the most fun World of Warcraft experiences I have ever had. They nailed the war between Horde alliance perfectly, and playing it through both side is a great experience.

Over all everything about the expansion felt fun.

The only real bad part of BFA was 8.3 and the introduction of Corruption and Visions.

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Shadowlands on the other side, is an overcomplicated, badly tuned mess of systems. Covenants are a mess pointless. Covenant Abilities, Soulbinds, Legendaries, Conduits are all things which would be better off either not in the game or put back in the talent tree where they belong. And it all has a huge grind attached to it.

Thread of Fate is single hand the worst idea Blizz has ever come up with. Mainly because they didn’t bother to write any quest lines that people can do on the side. Leveling 50-60 on an alt is the most boring experience for people who don’t want to run Dungeons all the way.

Oh wait… I forgot about Torghast. Sure it’s a good idea in concept, but FORCING everyone to run it once a week was what killed it. Torghast should have been optional and rewarding Content, kind of like how islands worked. But no, you needed to have your legendary and the only way to get it was to run 6 layers of Torghast for a little bit of Soul Ash and no other kind of reward.

oh and then you run Dungeons and only 2 players get any loot? everyone else gets 35 anima (until the buffed it far too late down the line). No respect for the time player put into the game.

The World Bosses cause the zone to lag out and is really annoying. Ardenweald is an absolute joke.

Most of the transmog is ugly. The only decent transmog came from Castle Nathria and they forgot to put matching Weapon transmogs in.

The only part I prefer over BFA is the Dungeons and that’s probably because I have played the Shadowlands dungeons more, but the BFA dungeons were still absolutely ACE. Also Maldraxxus is a pretty cool zone and theme.

I have already written a wall of text, and I could really carry on for 2 or 3 times what I have written here.

The expansion just doesn’t have any fun element to it.

I am very sorry we have polar opposite opinions. But everyone is entitled to opinions.

One mans trash is another mans treasure.

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I’ll tell you. Problem with the Shadowlands is, that the people there have another way of thinking. For example, the Paragon of Purity wears no pants! Yes, the paragon of Purity!

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For me, everything in Shadowlands feels like a chore; a mandatory chore that has been designed to take longer than necessary to complete. I did not get that feeling from BFA, despite it also being filled with chores.

Here be a sign of me favour. Hek hek hek hek!

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I too enjoy shadowlands alot more than bfa. But then again, I didn’t have much time to play in bfa.

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These guys have been around for years though. Sure not since the dawn of WoW, but streamers and influencers were around long before BFA, and Legion.

The problem is with these guys is:

  1. You don’t know if someone is paying them behind the scenes to say something :wink:
  2. They produce content which gets the most views, which is usually shock content, which is part of the reason why Blizzard Bashing has been a big thing (because they deserve it). Views convert into Revenue Potential.
  3. They’re very good at Influencing people to follow their own beliefs rather than encourage others to decide for themselves.
  4. Just because someone has a loud voice, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right or speaking for the majority.
  5. People who do follow their beliefs tend to spam this opinion around like it’s gospel. I suppose its almost a little cultish.

The Good things about influencers:

  1. You don’t have to tune in if you don’t like them.
  2. They do produce good content to help with the game.
  3. Their communites are a good place to meet like minded players.

Sure above is a huge generalisation of a lot of more popularity driven content creators. I am sure there are plenty out there who don’t chase views and enjoy doing what they do.

But my advice with these is to just take everything they say with a pinch of salt. These people are entitled to their opinion as much as you or I are entitled to our own… but that’s just what they are. they’re just another player who plays the game. They’re not huge celebrities, they’re not super educated on what’s right and wrong. They’re just other people.

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On the balance of things, I would put them pretty much equal- not great,.but not the complete pile of dog dirt that a lot of people think.

BFA dungeons are better than SL (with the exception of Tol Dagor which was a buggy mess), but I prefer SL open world content to BFA.

Island Expedition and Choreghast are both equally annoying so a draw there.

Assaults- SL takes it here, far better than the mandatory BFA ones which you had to do for the Visions currency, whereas SL at least has 4 different ones with a slight variation in quests here and there.

Can’t comment on raiding as I don’t do it.

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I agree as ideas, graphics ,environmetns, questline shadowlands if way better than Legion.

But pushes ppl away cause:

a) at first release engine graphics was very heavy and many players had the feeling they must buy a new pc, when after so many patches game runs with 100 fps in graphics level say middle in an i5 2400 with an rx 290 and 8 gb ram. at start that pc outputed 20- 30 fps in same detail level. Not all ppl after covid and world ressesion have ability to upgrade pcs

b) Grind for legendarie was to tiring, was easier for some classes (tanks example) and took too much time like running solo a dungeon with 4 bosses. Also ilvl at start was too lwo for tower giving problems at palyers to defeat end bosses and get the farm essence. Iamgine a druid or pala having to farm 3 for his alts psecs or a player with 3 alts…(enslaves player)

c) Boss raid dificulty goes exponential up when going to last bosses of SOD especailly for healers. Many healers left guilds or stopped logging cause damage was too high and couldnt cope up with in many cases or went out of mana before boss was dead. Maybe designers wanted so to delay progress…but breaking palyers nerves in that manner isnt entertainment.

d) You get very easily basic gear but example korthia upgrades require to get exalted and that means a lot of daily grind, add mythic dungeon for vault and raids and torghast tower game made players crazy for demanding so much time in a week.

e) The core players that have series of years sub or went casual due to RL and not having the time to do so many things per week and the remaining ones went elitistik, since i play i want maximum result on my time. So wow community was broken to small elitisk groups and other players. That means its not easy to do a mythic or random raid cause players especially tanks and healers that are required must be elitistik in some degree for a smooth run in a dungeon or a raid boss. casual players dont know tacs or need time to train themselves but other players in group say you take my time for nothing and group disbands,

f) dungeons especially mythic+ are timed…so people are stressed out to do on time. if for whatever reason that doesnt happen they start accusing other in group making them leaving or not queing in the random m+ system anymore.

g) furhtermore in random groups people who have the key search for rambo or superman players with end game ilvl so to be sure their key will be in time declining all other casuals. So after taking some basic gear as a casual player you cant find people or groups to get better one. you are declined all time. so you dont play game.

h) Pvp is worst than ever. Random players are posed against premade geared groups and you loose your time to get silly rewards that wont upgrade your gear and you cant kill anything casue other grp has healers and yours no healer at all.

i) AH rpices are rediculus high pushing players to buy wow token. blizzard holds the keys when an item says on it “sell vendor price 170g” why AH machine lets you put it in AH for 250.000 gold; So players understand soon they cant buy anything usefull from AH. Only sell some items to have repair / enchant money and a small deposit

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I wouldn’t say I’m a fanboy. I’m just capable enough of thinking with my own head, and not being a whinebaby. People cried for 4 years (yes 4 years, 2 expansions) that gear is thrown at them, that TF and WF should be removed. They listened, they reduced the loot and you actually (god forbid) had to work for it. What do the same people do? Cry more and quit.

This I agree.

I don’t like the visions/torghast style aswell, but I don’t really mind it, especially how easy it is.

So don’t go? After finishing Ve’nari and getting the mount, I don’t recall being there. It’s not mandatory by any means.

Renown is mainly cosmetic only, with the exception of a few conduits you can get anyways.

I know they have, but let me tell you how reality works. And I’m not gonna call any names or whatever, but the fact is, that once you become a ‘influencer’ or a streamer in that case, you have to defend what society thinks and wants, in order to be a righteous knight. I’m obviously not defending Blizzard for what happened during they work hours, but is it gonna stop me from playing the game? No. I know the owner of the bakery I buy all my pastry, cheats on his wife. Is it wrong? Yes it is. Do I care? Not really. Am I gonna stop buying pastry there? Absolutely not, since I like it.

What I’m trying to say, is the fact that the so called influencers took the ‘right approach’. They all quit, saying how the scandals have been the last nail. They gained alot more support for that action, even if it wasn’t 100% truthful. Think of it like this, you own a bar. There are probably 10-15 guests that you would kill, spit in their coffe, but guess what, they bring you the money, meaning you have to be nice to them. Same is with the streamers. They are businessmen & businesswomen, and nothing else. Do you think any of them give a f*** about what happened? They don’t. But it increases the ratings, views etc once they publicly defend and talk against such things.

Also don’t forget, that the majority of people watching these (and I’m not insulting anyone), is probably young, inexperienced, and without strong opinions. There is nothing wrong with that, since I was once a child aswell. But now, I have a career, a job, my own place etc. and I’m capable of thinking with my own head. I watch the streams purely for entertainment, and nothing else. Once it shuts down, I will still stick to my opinion no matter what.

The group I mentioned though, won’t. It’s obviously impossible to know, but I would bet that alot of the quits were associated to the streamer’s opinions.

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But what you’re saying is that people left Shadowlands because of the the Scandal… which yes, that was a reason why people stopped playing and moved on.

What the OP has asked is what is wrong with Shadowlands. And well, the Rise of the influencer wasn’t what was wrong with Shadowlands.

Everything was wrong with Shadowlands already. It’s just that a scandal happened to make things even worse. Influencers were already talking about moving to FF14 because of the content draught, the poor tuning of SL among pretty much everything SL had to offer. The scandal was the nail in the coffin.

Why FF14 was the chosen game for the influencers to all head to? Who knows, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some kind of under the table financial incentive.

For me, I was AFK while the scandal happened, and arrived back to the game in October, enjoyed it for a month, farmed gold for the next month, stuck around for Legion Mage Tower and then just realised that the game doesn’t work for me anymore.

I’m not moving onto another game, I’m going into real life, going to sit out 9.2 and then give 10 a chance in hope that the P2W philosophy of game is over and I can come back and play casually still being able to make progress.

BFA was a really fun and enjoyable expansion that I felt I could dip in and out of and just have a lot of fun. Shadowlands doesn’t really have the same kind of hold to it.

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What you said is 100% true and I agree. In my above’s response, I just went into details, but the TLDR version is the fact, that SL failed and is so bad, just because the community perception is so bad.

Does SL have a bunch of problems? Ofcourse, alot of them. Is the game really so bad and worth quitting? For me personally, no. And I belive that, just because I don’t care about anyone else’s opinions. And this is what I’m constantly telling people. WOW is a game, start taking it as such.

TBC had alot of issues (it even got delayed), and it’s still in eyes of some the best expansion ever. Same for wotlk, cata and so on.

What is the TLDR even of this, is the fact that SL failed even harder than BFA just because people are so negative about it (mainly because of the influencers).

Since I saw you edit your response, I’m editing mine and answering your responses.

Exactly. I agree with this 100%. These are the things I’m always mentioning.

But that’s 100% fine, and the adult way to handle it. If you find out the game just doesn’t work for you, thats ok. There are countless other options (other games as such, or just taking a break and focusing on the real life). I feel that people who grew of the game, just constantly blame the systems, the devs, the game etc, but not themselves. And this is the core problem. 10% of the threads are actually useful and constructive (and as mentioned countless times, I agree with the fact that content draughts are insane, covenant swapping should be on launch, too many currencies etc.), but the rest 90% is ‘i did 3 LFR bosses how am I not 250 ilvl yet game sux give TF/WF back’.

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