I know , I really do know that there is a LOT of hate towards SL. Almost everyone seems to hate that expansion and even those who never played it, hate it, by associating with the popular hating trend. And some of the reasons are solid, there were a lot of things that werent great in SL and on top of that, the Blizzard scandal. Add a bit of covid that stopped raid developing and extended release days, and you get a lot of resentment towards the game resulting in people quitting
I, however, didnt hate Shadowlands. And I came to the conclusion that, I didnt join the hate wagon, because I am a WoW player only. I do not play other games, I only played WoW since 2006
For somebody like myself, having something to do in the game everyday , things that people called āchoresā, was very rewarding. I didnt think of them as chores, I loved player power progression.
A lot of people wanted a more casual game, without dailies and even a fewer weeklies, and my suspicion is that those players are either casuals or hard core players who just wanna dwell in m+ dungeons and mythic raids. Blizzard made their request a reality in DF and somehow , DF ended up a souless game without any personality. A lot of people dont hate it or love it, they are indiferent towards it. It feels like a pallet cleanser expansion, like a neutral woke ānot to much to do, so you dont miss outā people pleaser expansion
I personally dont like these things, for a WoW player, grinding is natural. People forget what WoW really is, in vanilla you needed almost a month to just reach lvl 60. Everything was a grind. Why do we resent borrowed power now? It was entertaining to see nice numbers , once you have put in the work
Now everything feels blund , tastless, casualā¦a game that lost its soul.
Im curious about genuine opinions, surely theres a lot of one liner trolls trying to derive superiority out of their hate of Shadowlands , but thats not the point.
I believe the removal of power player progression systems was detrimental to the games health and it should be brought back
Pretty much.
This game has been out for decades now, Iāve figured out what I like and what I want to do in it. Being forced to complete Torghast and other campaign related annoyances was not something I enjoyed.
Itās fine for those things to exist. But Iām not interested in them, just like plenty of players arenāt interested in PvP.
Let it exist, and make cool cosmetic rewards for it, but donāt make me do it if I want to remain competitive in the other game modes that Iām actually interested in.
I did like Shadowlands for two things though:
- First expansion in 6 years to add new spells instead of removing a bunch of them
- It brought back PvP vendors
Nice.
In DF other than running the campaign once, you are ready to go. Your character can just gear.
With borrowed powed your character isnt ready to go and has to do all the necessary to catch up first.
I believe SL had some things done right, as well as some really bad decisions. I loved Zereth Mortis, it had so much content that it kept me busy til the end
Korthia was so so, a lot of things to do there from a collectors point of view but a bad design of the area
I also think that player power is a bit dependent to borrowed power systems and I believe that they should be brought back, with a better management of these systems towards alts. That would do it.
Shadowlands was superb imo.
Paladins got Holy Power and Divine Toll.
Affliction got Soul Rot and nice burst windows.
M+ Dungeons were the best and most fun especially compared to DF ones.
Castle Nathria was great, so was Sylvanas.
The flying over the portals was bad, but the zones and its content were less dead than DF. For this I miss Legion though, the WQ felt rewarding and good to do.
As a Collector I loathe Shadowlands due to stuff being locked behind Covenantsā¦ not just within the Covenants themselves with activities and the mission table, but with drops off Rares too which is beyond ridiculous.
Yea, I really miss being stuck with a single covenant, forced to play an offspec suboptimally because a good covenant for it differed from my mainspec.
Peak game design.
I kinda liked the zones, storylines and covenant feature TBH.
What I didnt like was The Maw, Torghast and Korthia. They all just made me depressed to play them!
To the point where my alts all just fizzled out because I didnt want to spend anymore time there then I had to!
Im in a rough spot when it comes to this my self. On one hand I miss having more to do when i am not doing m+ and raiding. I miss Khortia and Zereth mortis. Nazjatar and mechagon and that stuff.
On the other hand. I am now working on gearing my third character this season.
One thing I really like about Dragonflight is that you can change your main character whenever you like. Without getting stuck to a choice you might regret deeper in the season
It happend often to me before that Id spend the start of a season gearing up a character only to find out when im deep in it, That I actually donāt enjoy my rogue for example and iād like to play my mage or warrior. But id be weeks and months behind in grinding. And getting into keys would be very daunting and slow.
SL did a lot of things wrong, but it still felt more āWarcraftā despite the Ancient Greece and Victorian England theme parks. DF feels very alien to me - too soft, subdued, safe, with lousy toothless dragon characters and bland patch zones.
I think SL started really bad, but ended strong overall. Zereth Mortis was a masterpiece IMO and I enjoyed it every day for months.
DF started very strong, the 4 zones were fantastic, but then patch after patch became weaker and more boring, ending with Emerald dream which is IMO the worst major patch zone to date.
DF however modernized most game systems, and in the end fell victim to it. The quality of the expansion was sacrificed for the long-term good of the game, because these things needed to be done (talents, gear, professions, etc.) sooner or later.
I think TWW will be a great expansion though, as the game has a stable foundation now, and they can finally focus on the content and not on fixing major game systems
Itās called Stockholm syndrome my friend.
Itās because of this https://youtu.be/ZyhrYis509A ā this is what wow is in this expack and try to tell me otherwise just proves it.
Youre saying ppl are casuals whilst u say u love to just do your chores all day.
Mate SL was made for casual open world enjoyers, as you may are.
Not everything about SL was bad
-class design was mostly good, Iāve enjoyed nearly every class at some point
-pvp vendor
-some classes had different ability from the sanctuary to use and actually get different gameplay
-first raid were super nice imo
-mega dungeon was nice
But on the other hand:
-pvp vendor was nice, but trash as u could only get upgrades with rating what isnt the spirit of a fair competition
-most classes were fun but you couldnt play them because insane dumb grind on every alt who has time for that? Quit work then for sl i guess
-most classes had 1 ability from the sanctuary to play all day long and it werenāt fun with no different playstyles
-u gotta do so much things to be viable
e.g.
Getting conduits
Getting legendaries which were neatly p2w as some pieces cost about 300k gold lmao
Torghast for legendary
Open world thingies
-Story felt absolute garbage, i mean the jailer could have been such a powerful enemy with not only bad intentions but in the end he just got made āevilā and just died
Thats just the things that came up in my mind.
I mean i needed to run 60x Plaguefall on my druid for the conduit. If u want to waste your time feel free to play classic and grind as much as u want.
I donāt.
I hate Shadowlands especially S3 because the developers ruined the banner for Warriors.
Every new expansion since Cataclysm, has made me nostalgic for the previous one. Shadowlands has been an amazing experience. I know I wonāt say the same for DF though.
what i think of the plot line of dragonflight https://youtu.be/Wo-Ma3zc-Oo ā
Iām a little confused by your post.
I donāt miss Shadowlands, but I do agree with pretty much everything else you say. Did you join in Shadowlands, or rejoin after many years?
The world content in Shadowlands was based on the same pattern used in Legion and BfA - lots of World Quests with an overarching quest to do 3 or 4 of them in a given zone. And Legion and BfA did it better.
Going back further, Draenor had the worst world content I had played through until Dragonflight. Before that, Mists and Cata had nice daily questing zones or routes.
In all of them, there was something worth doing for non-instance players.
In Dragonflight, they simply pretty much removed the game outside of instances. and in that sense, on that one narrow point, I do miss even Shadowlands.
I donāt miss SL , killed my Alliance Guild I had been in for over 10 years !
All my irl friends quit , never came back , no longer interested in WoW
SL was just negativity 24/7 , forums , gchat , video game sites , youtube , twitch. Just negativity.
If you said you play wow during SL ā¦ all I got was why ?
The only person I remember liking SL was Punyelf , but Puny likes anything Iāve come to conclude , good for Puny.
Exactly my thoughts, I also miss SL due to its outdoor content keeping me engaged with the game. ZERETH MORTIS was a great last zone with a lot to do.
Dragonflight is meh. Nothing exciting about opening the game. Unrewarding world quests, seeds that give you up to 2-3 gold in materials (?) , a world event where you afk again after you afk 3 mins on a seed
Thats not it blizz,do better