there is a major flaw in your logic. why is that i hear you ask?
I 100% agree with all your points except for one major fact. I love questing and I love exploring on the ground.
major weaknesses in this expansion are the lack of freedom to choose.
i don’t like being forced to do a specific line of quests before i can do anything else. questing is something I CHOOSE to do in azeroth and i CHOOSE to skip some or leave them til later etc.
i can’t choose anything in this situation. i either do ALL the quests in order or i do NONE of them.
although we should not forget your very good point that the story SUCKS.
i’ve unsubscribed and the only reason i will play again is to do old content.
adding flying won’t fix the fundamental issues. you still won’t be able to fly from one zone to another. the WQ will still be lame. the story will still suck.
this will still be the same dead world with no character, no humour and no reason to care.
In all previous expansions, I levelled to max by killing and farming. (except where there were opening quests). Only then at max level would I take up the quests at my leisure. Since the first pathfinder, until BfA, I did not fly, as I refused to do a mass chain of quests to “earn the right to fly” only for the next patch to take that away with new zones which did not allow flying.
I did pathfinder for BfA so that nobody could say “but you didn’t even do the quests so you cannot argue.” As they had said before when I refused to grind my teeth. I did the pathfinder, and I still disagreed with it even being in the game.
I accept that some people love questing. I like your post. Thanks.
Just curious how YOU unlocked the Argent Tournament and the Molten Front stuff in Cata?
Edit. Ignore that - i’ve read further down your posts.
I do find it odd though that you’ll “grind/farm” mobs to level up, when you’re basically grinding the same mobs/areas that you’ll be using to do any quests and rewards. It’s very much like you’re cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
Other than that, I’ve very much come to agree with @Cerwen - I enjoyed my first week or two in SL because it was new; but now it’s just the same formula of the past 10 years or so and it’s quite uninteresting now. I’ve switched back again to Classic because I feel more engaged with my new ‘old’ characters that my old ‘new’ ones.
Well I have Enchanting and Tailoring to level on my Warlock (main character). So I hit mostly humanoid mobs, which drop a good amount of cloth and green items. I make cloth armours (which never sell) then disenchant all of the armours gathered and crafted so that I have the materials to level Enchanting. When I get Enchanting to max, then I only use Tailoring to make bags.
Questing leads me to having to kill needless mobs which do not profit in any way except for the extra XP from turning the quest in.
Find me one person that really minds Quests this much that he doesnt even want to play through the Mainquest once.
There was never a time where this was true. Even in Classic you had to Quest in order to enter dungeons and Raids. Remember Keys?
What I dont like about your post is that youre trying to convince people this opinion of yours is shared by a lot of people. It seems to me like the opinion of a very small part of players, maybe even just you.
What a load of bullcrap you didn’t always fly. Questing has always been a part of the game. And after lvl 15 i believe you can do whatever the hell yoy want dungeons or pvp
Well it also gives you up to date gear and rep which are useful.
Don’t get me wrong, i have a certain amount of empathy for you, but I do thing its balanced around what you enjoy from the story too. I really enjoyed Legion; so much infact I got nearly 25 toons to max level and got all the class halls finished and mounts etc. But there was an element of choice. What I don’t like about SL (same as you) is that I have the exact same story to follow in the exact same way. Why didn’t they make it a bit like Legion or BfA where you could do the story but mix up the zones? Yes I know ToF is there, but that doesnt help much if you like the story.
Thus far ive done my ally pally, this toon and my horde shammy through the story + I have a few mid 50’s through threads of fate. I can’t bring myself to do the story again because its the exact same path
Edit: should add, that this obviously revolves around alts. First time play through should be a story, following quests etc
How did you level at any other point then?
Dungeons never were a true option ever since Legions nerfs to xp gained from said dungeon.
Questing always was the fastest way to lvl no matter what, be that classic or Shadowlands.
And tbh, i never ever have seen such a smooth lvling arc in WoW until now, no loose ends in quests and always a follow up quest directing you to a new quest hub or area to go to.
You clearly didnt listen to any reasons given for said level squish and why it has been done.
But it comes down to this: WoW is about the endgame and lvling is a really small part of it.
Leveling from 1 to 130 sounds a lot longer than lvl 1 to 60 even if the xp gains and leveling speed would be exactly the same.
Not too mention we needed a reset on our numbers anyway, gear inflation etc was getting insane.
How did this change at all? You can still do all of this in terms of old raids etc.
You can herb and mine on a lvl 51.
You can farm fast spawns on a lvl 50 if you want.
Etc etc.
And if you mean at max level, how does Shadowlands differ from BFA? Didnt you need to slice your way through quests aswell to hit lvl 120?
You want a full set of all classes and race combos in full 226 ilvl gear aswell with that request?
And gold cap on each character?
How did you even manage to play this game for years then?
Literally everything we did ever since Vanilla required quests in some shape or form.
To level up
To gain access to raids or dungeons
To gain reputation
To progress our character for pieces of gear (cloak from MoP and ring from WoD)
To unlock certain areas
Etc etc.
I am baffled how you even managed to play this game and it took you so long to realize its full of quests.
And you are a well respected game reviewer working for some site or magazine?
And can review a game objectively?
Doesnt look like you are any of the above, so your “review” holds 0 value for me and i wouldnt even call it a review if you only bring to light the negative points.
Without ever touching on the general state of the game, the good and the bad and the points to be improved.
I just remember getting a quest for 1000 anima, I did not even bother, its so lazy and happens so early, maybe its best to play this game at the end of each expansion when they cut a lot of that crap.
Not only that, they also silently nerfed WQ anima rewards from 35 x (4 or 5) from early week to a recent weeks of 35 x ( 1 to 3 ) reward and reduced numbers of high anima reward WQs.
The time measure is obviously more important than QoL for players
Questing and doing the same quests over and over are very two different concept.
That is part of the reason why early WoW expansions are more successful than later ones. Maybe even why Legion is populater than BFA and SL.
SL is BFA 2.0 at best. Nothing new but reskined systems to pretend to be new and cool thing.
SL is also Diablo Online trying to live in the WoW universe, but failed to remember at least getting loot and progressing your char is what makes Diablo fun
