And just before BfA, it was. Although I’ll give them that they did a lot of good work on Legion, and brought out a metric tonne of fan-service. But Legion set the pattern, breaking much of what we all believe WoW to be, BfA followed it downhill, and Shadowlands dropped off the cliff. It’s been steadily getting worse. Nothing inconsistent there.
People will discuss fine points about systems and builds and grinds, especially in their own areas of interest, but I think it starts with the story and the zones.
a) The story is frankly, truly, deeply crap, and nothing makes sense,
b) nobody gives a damn about any of the characters, and
c) the zones are dull and depressing.
This has an effect on everyone, even the most dedicated instance players.
Content is dull, repetitive, hamster wheel systems, frustrating gameplay on purpose, lore is messed up, boring, you are an observer not part of the story, characters are lifeless and forgettable. They killed torghast at launch making it mandatory. Korthia just time gated grind and small, 9.2 is korthia 2.0. The game has forgotten the value of fun. They create addiction to the game through useless daily list completion, the classes are lifeless and coveneants uninspired control. Crafting pointless. Fishing was ok i guess.
The borrowed power systems just filled me with empathy. I wanted to pick a covenant that I liked and not handicap myself. Turns out the one I liked was the worst one for my class. Legendary effects being lackluster (gameplay wise). Soulbinds and conduits being one of the most boring systems I have ever seen. All these things contributed to me just not caring, even now when I can actually min/max my character without losing the cosmetics I want, I still don’t care, SL had lost me.
Zones - In a vacuum I like the zones more than those of BfA aesthetically , but given context that this is supposed to be WoW they just don’t fit in. Also Blizzard lost something that made WoW stand out over most MMOs on the market, the world felt connected, now the zones are separated by a 3-5 min flight pat which feels exactly like a loading screen.
Story - It’s just terrible. It’s boring, we have no idea what the stakes are (or to be exact what do they mean, what does unmaking reality actually mean), the characters are extremely bland, and our villains are just… I mean c’mon how do you make KT boring ? Also Sylvanas having layers upon layers of plot armor and a character arc that doesn’t make any sense what so ever.
Timegating - It’s turned up to 11 this expansion. Campaigns- ~2 moths timegated feeding you 5 quest per week. Thorghast wings - timegated. But one of the things that really annoys me is that there is a meta achievement in the maw/Korthia that requires to complete certain assault quest multiple time, each assault comes up once per 2 weeks, these specific quests that you need to complete multiple times are rarely available when the associated assault is up, who the F though this was ok ? Look I do not mind spending time and working to earn my stuff, but waiting for X thing to happen because of timegating is not working or earning, I do not feel like achieved something, I feel like “Oh I survived 2 months for this thing to happen”.
Honestly I can go on about classes, cosmetic, all the issues with Torghast dungeons and raids being lackluster but I’m tired and this should give you the general idea why I don’t like this expansion
Not enough choices, too many chores. Too many capped treadmill grinds where if you get behind you stay behind. It’s exhausting, yet also means there’s no point having a day off work to play because you cap out in an hour anyway.
certain classes and specs haven’t been touched since the Legion pre-patch cough blood
storyline that could be written better by a random 13 year old on deviantart
Blizzard stretching out whatever content they have to last weeks when in realiy anything that isn’t instanced content can be done in an afternoon tops.
systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems on systems when they said they would only add systems at the start.
Squish clearly breaking legion legacy content and them failing to adress it, blaming it on the players and saying it’s a gear issue.
Mounts, revenge of the recolors.
m+ balance being a complete mess.
That’s what i could think off on the top of my head.
Story is based upon retcons and recycling, even worse than WoD
Zones are ugly and disconnected
Too much grind
PvP balance nonexistent
Billions of borrowed power
Blizzard came up with flawed design that players were not going to like and it’ll make their game experience worse.
Player’s became sceptical, but Blizzard doubled down and asked for trust, despite failing every time at doing stuff like this in past.
Players kept being sceptical and didn’t trust blizzard expecting it to be end up badly.
It ended up badly, Blizzard failed and them not listening backfired into their faces.
Zones feel disconnected but individually I like them.
Torghast was implemented poorly for an expansion defining feature, half finished
Covenants were implemented poorly, weirdly executed and just bleh.
I like the dungeons, they’ve got a flavour to them that is awesome
Tazavesh was an example that they still can design great stuff, but they blew the load re loot.
Raid was alright, it does the job
World content was lacking massively because of the lack of interconnected zones.
It was just all a bit meh, don’t get me wrong, BfA was all sort of awful to me and SL is just better but it’s like saying the turd sandwich is better than the crap bagette.
What I will say, is of Shadowlands launched in the state it currently is now, it would have been positively received, and 9.2 could have been 9.1 with some good content to keep the ball rolling, like Legion, alas they screwed the pooch on that one.
Covenant and conduit balance takes the focus away from our boring classes.
bad story.
depressing low loot drop.
long boring dungeons.
I sadly grew up playing wow and put much effort into it, I do not like wow anymore and hate the company more every day. im just hella addicted because of silly emotions.
Stop while u can, dont waste your time like I have lol
No you are not at all i have seen you and your comments about how bad this game can be so never think you are that or accept being called one because whoever has called you that is a liar and does not know you.
Unfortunately, there is nothing I could say that I like about SL. Shallowlands. Saddolands.
Negative opinions - Don’t read if you don’t want to know.
The entire concept of it being the afterlife doesn’t work for me. Is that what I would imagine the afterlife of Azeroth to look like? No, it’s not.
The zones are bland. They might look ok, when compared with a Playstation 2 game.
The Maw is a travesty. It feels like its half-finished.
Sadly, Torghast was far less interesting than I had hoped for. Although, I found it bearable to do the recently added daily quest for Torghast while levelling a character.
The story seems too vague and not in an interesting way. Not sure I even know what it’s supposed to be about.
Characters like Zovaal, Anduin, Jaina and Sylvanas don’t appeal to me, personally.
The only one I do like is actually Thrall.
Fancypants cinematics but same old, tired gameplay. Increasingly tiresome these days. I honestly had more fun going back to Guild Wars 1 recently, at a time when I really couldn’t bear playing WoW anymore.
Being put up against ever more incredible Godlike enemies just feels increasingly ridiculous and WoW “jumping the shark”.
It’s particularly implausible when we have to go back to fighting spiders etc. afterwards.
Reliance on grinding and systems instead of giving us a decent amount of actual game content.
The first expansion since I started in TBC that I do not enjoy PvP. It feels gimmicky and fights are often or almost always very one-sided.
A pronounced faction imbalance that I feel Blizzard could have done more to address.
Warmode. What is really the point of it??
Covenant abilities in general. Some are too strong and some are complete carp. They have too much of an impact in PvP and are too easy to use as an instant kill button.
Rushing around like a homicidal maniac on a violent killing spree across Azeroth and beyond, but having certain emotes and other inconsequential things removed from the game because they “might” offend someone. Hypocrisy, I call it.
I was looking at an old screenshot of mine showing my human fire mage sitting on her Talbuk mount wearing her spellcloth gear and waiting on a packed harbor for the first boat out of Stormwind to Northrend. The anticipation was intense and the chat pane was full of optimistic banter as we waited to start the new expansion Wrath of the Lich King. I have to say by that time I felt like a hardened experienced player who had been to hell and back and couldn’t imagine what challenges the game could provide.
Sadly by the time I got to Cata I lost interest in expansions. Nothing was going to beat Wrath or TBC or even the Classic game in terms of the level and depth of game. Sadly with each expansion since I just have felt like I’m a nothing… so I just became one. I did try, Cata, Mist, WoD, Legion and BFA but found them less than fun and interesting.
So maybe its cus of that lack of anticipation that I ventured into Shadowlands with more of an open mind. It must be because of that lack of expectation that I actually enjoyed Shadowlands. I’ve levelled a number to 60 and continue to do so. Its just typical WoW to be honest and from my perspective is well made and generally very entertaining. I like the zones for the most part and its well ordered and solid.
I know a lot are complaining right now but in truth I have heard it all before. These guys gobble up content faster than a Hoover on heat. So if you do dip in the pond I would take your time and soak up the content in a more controlled way. You will regret not at least trying and its quite reasonably priced right now I am told.
Anyhoo… I liked it, and I’m not easily pleased given the words of my first paragraph above. That image of me waiting for the boat to Northrend kinda brought a tear to my eye in truth. But then I have a soft spot for the game. I would be lost without her, and I’m troubled by the comments of some here. Its not deserved for the most part. I love World of Warcraft and so supporting the game is very important… to me.
play the game, it’s fun, i played the entire year, make your own opinion about it
bfa was so much worse and people didn’t quit it , but they quit shadowlands because mr streamer said so
and also because of the lawsuit
most of the complaints have been adressed already, the game is in a good state now but the cringelords are angry
The majority of dislikers i read since release. 90% of the complains is ‘‘boohooo can’t play my Alt number 5000, just because i like doing the same umpteen thing Number ZEEEEEE for the umpteen time’’. And thats basically why.
No lifers can’t no life crying.
Literally. Thats 90% of the complains. They disliked SL EXACTLY because they can’t stop playing 500 characters.