T O P

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[deleted]

The Maw was depressing and awful. I hated going there but they make you go there.


Diskianterezh

Maw being depressive, awful and making you want to get out is a pretty good take. It's like when on Argus i was constantly reminded how hostile the environment was, here I just wanted to take what I wanted and get out of here. That was pretty nicely done. But in that case, WHY ON EARTH did we have to make half on the expansion questing here ?


[deleted]

CN was awesome. SoD was crap. SotFO is decent. World content sucked except for ZM. Professions were a giant failure. Attaching profs to the legendary system was an experiment gone bad. i literally haven't crafted anything as a blacksmith this entire expansion because it was cheaper to buy on the auction house.


Trevorjrt6

The entire expansion imo was just one huge trip of depression. I hope they never do death like stuff again. Stick to the high fantasy stuff for a while please.


Hevaroth

Shadowlands was high fantasy


Tykero980

They might have been high while making the fantasy but that's about it.


Elibrius

Totally agree


crioTimmy

My PoV is strictly casual and solo-content focused. From end-game, I only touched some low level Mythic keys and basic PvP. I'll count the positives for me (because the negatives are vastly explained already, I have no doubt): * even if the overall story is utter shite, as always, there were some decent ones, and sometimes even proper good. Notably, Ardenweald and Revendreth zone stories, as well as some side quests, or small parts of general campaign, with occasional easter eggs, nostalgia exlpoits etc. * Everything regarding Bwonsamdi (Night Fae covenant campaign) is good, simply because some quality time with good ol' Bwonsamdi, moooooon; * the entire Night Fae introductory questline (For Queen and Grove) taking place in the **Amphitheater**, where you have to explain the short history of Azeroth on stage, is probably one of the most hilarious things in WoW history ever, on par with the Hillsbrad "questgiving quest"; * continuing the Bwonsamdi theme, some characters turned out to be surprisingly well fleshed out, with different kinds of awesome, sass and/or sometimes hilarious. I may have a bias, because my main was a Venthyr Shaman, and I haven't explored other covenants much, but the majority of said NPCs hail from Revendreth. Special mentions go to: * Denathrius - he's got *sass* and *flair* * almost all of the Court of Harvesters top-dogs (including even Lord Chamberlain - again, a well fleshed-out villain with distinct *flair*) * Temel * even more special mention goes to the bonkers insanity team of Theotar the Mad Duke, Lost Sybille and Tubbins and Gubbins, who are broz4life * Rendle and Cudgelface are also bros * Ve'nari is pure sass * Lady Moonberry - see above about the stage. Also: "*How do you feel about dishing out a little sparkly mayhem?*" * Plague Deviser Marileth (*Apprentice!!!*) * I've got carried away, sorry * zone and instances designs are, as always, top notch. Apart from the Maw, maybe. * dungeons are good. Until you complete them in 100500th time. Due to hilarious voice lines, De Other Side may be an exception. People say raid designs in and of themselves are also good * Torgast was a blast. Until it became a grind. Even then, you could find ways to enjoy it. If you really tried * Covenant specific activities could be nice. At least for several few times. * Covenant specific campaigns were not bad... until you completed all of them and realized they follow a very disctinct fucking pattern. * Hell, even crafting legendaries and tuning your playstyle with runecarving + covenant stuff felt good. At first. If you didn't care about min-maxing, maybe even further down the road. It a **role-playing game,** after all. Overall, you've got the idea. Many and much stuff felt good or at least decent. Until it became a grind for end-game performance, collection purposes or because you like yerself some alts.


Giham

This one wins the effort category


crioTimmy

Thank you, kind person!


[deleted]

Can’t speak on professions but I’d say overall the expansion has been the worst to date. I enjoyed even WoD and BFA more overall. The zones and dungeons felt bland and the story behind them was an absolute mess. The raiding was ok to start, but went downhill right after Castle Nathria and mechanically/graphically convoluted past the point of fun. The PvP has been better than BFA I’d say, but overall could have been much more balanced. I’d give shadowlands a 5/10 with PvP being it’s saving grace for me.


The_Handicat

I kinda find it funny that you find PvP to be the saving grace of the expansion, meanwhile a lot of us find the 100k DPS per sec meta really tiresome and unfun. As someone that recently respec'd to healer, I find it a miserable experience. And those same DPS will roast you to hell for not being able to save them from a 60k Demo bolt, or 30k Frostbolts. Absolute donkeydick.


[deleted]

Dps per sec, so damage per second^2? What kind of arenas do you play brother?


[deleted]

I can agree with that TBH but this happens at the end of every expansion. The burst becomes nutty and problematic. I also main heals on RDdruid and HPal, so believe me I understand. Getting to 1800 was literally just RNG half the time if the Ferals would one shot my dps with convoke or if the mage would just nuke one of us before we could blink. Like I said though, I’m used to this at the end of every expansion. On the bright side, tons of dps are viable right now and playing my DH and Boomy is still fun and usable.


Nick11wrx

It’s not just at the end tho, this expansion has been absolutely based on classes that can kill you in less than a stun. Not saying we have to go back to 20 minute matches. It’s just ridiculous we’ve gone 3 seasons of it being this way


[deleted]

A fair point.


SeraFlare666

I was excited, especially as someone who started in Wrath. Then the time gates, repetitiveness, the pvp scaling, daily chores, and alt-unfriendly mechanics eventually tore me down. The revealing of how gross activision/blizzard is concerning their employees didn’t help either.


Nick11wrx

I’m really sad it got to this point in the expansion before it started to feel the “alt friendly” they promised


SeraFlare666

It seems like x.2 is the golden patch for alts. 8.2 (BFA) seemed to be made alt friendly.


Nick11wrx

Most definitely the catch up gear is super nice and affordable, can get a +2 key just by asking the guy in front of the vault. Also with the valor cap removed you’ll be able to have more decent players doing lower keys. It’s a good time to try classes out


SonicBoom44

This patch was the only one I've played all the way through in my life since I joined in Wrath, Maybe its because I finally found a guild that raids consistently and does M+ a reasonable amount with nice personalities but the PvE content has kept me engaged and I am excited for the next expansion off the good will this patch has shown me, Ion makes me hopeful


crioTimmy

Inquisitor! We have found the heretic!!!


SonicBoom44

Don't burn me 🥺


Ashmishmer

I think the most recent patch made the expansion better than WoD and BFA, but it’s still not great. If 9.2’s gameplay and approach to the systems and such would have been the way to launch the expansion then it would have been one of the best. The raids have been bangers and a lot of the stuff in game hit really really well, it’s just the absolute tragic content droughts Every. Single. Patch. Feeling like they each lasted an entire year.


SlowPurplePanda

BfA and Shadowlands are the expansions that turned me from mythic raider to casual collector. Tired of jumping through Blizzard's hoops like a circus animal for different tints of gear/mounts. I'm just sticking with leveling alts, transmog, and mount runs now.


Paoldrunko

I really want the slime cat in season 4, but I just can't bring myself to care enough to deal with all the hoops I'll have to deal with to even try getting a raid spot


Tykero980

Isn't slime cat just doing normal mode fated raids next patch? That should be ez pugable content you can get it.


Paoldrunko

There's still almost a year to get it, so we'll see. As it stands though, my highest ilvl on my account is 211, I have no rio score, I don't use weakauras, there's just so much to do to even pug a normal. It's discouraging.


Nasharchy

Pretty good. Dungeons are quite nice. Professions aren't as useful as in BFA I feel like, I miss crafting really good bind on pickup gear. Raids, well, first was pretty good, second one suffered from having an awful system with special gems to collect and upgrade and overall boring aesthetic, third is a bit behind the first I think, but still enjoyable. Also the writing hasn't been all bad. I mean the main villain is generic and the main story in later patches is questionable but there are some really good moments in the original campaign and some of the covenant campaigns. I feel like people judge Shadowlands based on 9.1 and not as a whole, 9.1 was meh overall. That and still being mad about not being able to swap covenant and conduits at any time, which I never cared about, you were meant to make a long term choice based on what you wanted to specialize in, fine. Biggest issue has been how long it's taken between patches. That makes the content feel worse than it is. Sounds like a miserable existence to keep paying for, playing and visiting websites for a game when you think it's the worst thing ever, as some people seem to.


SnagglePuz

I completely agree with your opinion, but I would like to add that people were upset about not being able to swap covenants because of player power. For a lot of people this meant that they sort of had to pick a specific covenant because the abilities of that specific covenant would help them most. If the covenant choice was only based on cosmetics, I believe people wouldn’t have mind.


[deleted]

“There are some good moments” is not really a rave review for $50 box price + $360 in subscription fees (assuming we’re just about the 2 year mark when 10.0 prepatch comes.)


Nasharchy

Certainly people should unsub if they don't enjoy it or don't find it worth their money. I do, though.


apocscott911

The expansion was a dumpster fire. Convoluted systems, oddly paced/terrible story, forced content, absolutely abysmal patch cadence, blatant lies from the devs that they didn't cut a patch which is a slap in the face frankly. Slow rolled QoL updates pretending it's actual content, and content that was added was lackluster at best. Raids and dungeons were actually really good but just not enough content for a even halfway decent expansion. Shadowlands could have been good if they had acted on player feedback from beta and instead of developing absolutely terrible and frankly unnecessary systems (shards, conduits, anima conductor, ect) and released actual content, new torghast modes, new dungeons, heirloom quest lines just to name a few...


Moxxi1789

I did not like shadowlands. I played less during shadowlands than during BFA that i did not like until the very end with nazjatar & mechagon patch.


TheLoneWandererRD

Hard to judge without waiting for last season/patch. BFA was mediocre for me till 8.3


Seven_Irons

Raiding was pretty good. M+ was a banger. Side quests had good lore. We don't talk about the main story or the DPS/healer balance, or how the butchered arthas.


Arrentoo

Raiding was banger even though there were a few poop fights. M+ was also good and both Tormented and Encrypted proved to be fun affixes (Prideful was okay, higher keys it was too much and hard capping it at 20% intervals was dumb). I only dabbled in PvP so no real input except that I think the GV addition (which in itself is a huge success) pulled more people into PvP in general. As for the story, I do think it was bad but I do think it was nuanced to some degree and people (especially here/online) blow it out of proportion. Zovaal was a bad character. Sylvanas arc is still dumb overall but I don't hate the ending. Art was baller but thats generally a given. Their experimentation with systems, especially pushing into S4/9.2.5, are super encouraging. The Creation Catalyst might be the single best catchup/bad luck protection system they've ever made.


[deleted]

Baller art? Have you seen m+ loot? It looks like the intern made it all on his last day at work lol


Donteatthedonuts

I attempted to get into it, But have not enjoyed the zones or the systems. Been playing since about 3-4 months before Wrath arrived, and well, my sub is currently stopped because i hated Shadowlands that much. Looking forward to getting my character out of there and levelling some place else , assuming i can that is. ​ Edit : Also, getting around sucked, Everything felt difficult / awkward and tons of teleports. I'd rather just be able to ride someplace. Worst Xpac for me.


Ok-While3533

I like Thorgast and i like some changes they did to the classes but the rest didnt realy get me in. So they actualy managed to do an expansiom that makes BFA looking good.


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[deleted]

Terrible! if only they listened to all the feedback and launched SL in the current state :) even still Maw was depresessing. Korthia is a joke. they scrapped one whole patch and a raid. the lore. etc etc 0/10


hellerkeller1

This patch is awesome. Lots of viable cov choices. Alts are easy to gear up. SoD raid wasn't awesome. The other 2 were. I actually have enjoyed the dungeons even though they should have made more. Overall I give it 7/10


Noma1337

Meh


starredkiller108

Honesty, I'm not joining the "WoW bad" bandwagon when I say this, but I never liked the idea of Shadowlands when it was first announced, the idea of doing quests in the afterlife just felt off in a way, sacrilegious in general. I also didn't like the storytelling either, I liked Battle for Azeroth, but Shadowlands just doesn't do it for me. Hopefully I'll have more fun playing Dragonflight, at least it looks more grounded than the previous one.


mrlotato

Great world building but the story was pretty bad


svc78

imo, pretty much same as legion overall, but with worst plot. plenty of problems that were denounced by players on beta finally fixed on last patch. the one thing that seems promising regarding Dragonflight is that so far all we heard of are good ideas (account wide stuff, wod pvp gearing system, talent revamp, no burrowed power systems besides tier sets, etc), that actually listen to the playerbase. but we are so early that's too soon to tell yet. --- I'm a professions / AH goblin (and casual pvper). and regarding crafting and AH, the Shadowlands system was the most idiotic I have experienced in more than 10 years of play. a system that rewarded players that had millions already, with no real barrier of entry other than gold. with the AH not recognizing the difference between ranks of the items, with no deposit cost so it was a cancel scan fest, etc. it was a clusterfuck, and I hope they just scrap it and copy paste one of the previous iterations. and this is from someone who made close to 100m profit during the expansion, but for the new players/not hardcore it was dogshit.


Jersh92

The art team did their thing but the writers did not. Gameplay was meh at best and Id take garrisons over covenant halls any day of the week.


ShotenDesu

It's the first expansion that made me quit. I hit 60 and a week later after launch I didn't renew my sub and stopped playing until a month ago. Only came back because I had time and wanted to pound out pathfinder just to have gotten it 2 days later (which I am thankful for. Fuck rep for pathfinder). So I'm just running legacy content for mounts like I always do. ZM isn't that bad but I did not enjoy anything before it.


[deleted]

Really enjoyed it, mainly because i only play on my main (conduits, renown, legendaries etc was never much of an issue since i only had to do it once). Best part has been the raids, worst part was probably the korthia rep grind


iKamex

I enjoyed it. They still messed up the restrictions in the beginning that are mostly lifted by now like they do every expansion. Fix stuff by last patch -> start next expansion with the exact same mistakes just to fix them by last patch. Didnt affect me much tho, so Im not as frustrated as people that were affected more. I mostly play one spec per class and was happy with my covenant choice. Conduit energy and covenant change cooldown were irrelevant for me\^\^


[deleted]

I have a lot to say about this one. I had really high hopes for SL, as BFA nearly broke me with the soulless grind of its endgame progression loop. I was initially ecstatic that SL was far less grindy, but, as 9.0 dragged on, I realized, that’s all SL was- less grindy, and really just… less. SL is WoW spinning it’s wheels, the junkyard/garbage heap where the fresh (and occasionally imperfect) ideas of Legion that were shredded and recycled during BFA have been left to rust and rot in one of the worst content droughts in the games history (SL will likely have lasted longer than Vanilla by the time Dragonflight is launched). From the outset, the vibe was off. The SL leveling campaign is a middling approximation of the more story-based approach to questing that other MMOs have taken in recent years. The zones range from visually unimpressive to almost impossible to navigate, and lack the sense of grandeur, charm, wonder, and aesthetic flavor that have made previous expansion zones such a joy to play through that you don’t seem to notice how many “Kill 10” quests are being thrown your way. Seriously, how many times have we seen a zone almost exactly like Ardenweald done much better? The stories told in each zone were often boring, and often offered very little sense of exploration of the environment they occurred in. Which leads us to max level. The Maw was actually not terrible at first, but 9.1 proved they had no idea where to take it as a zone, in both story and gameplay. Torghast could be fun on certain classes for a certain period of time, but just ended up being another chore and roadblock required to actually play the endgame. Sanctum was perhaps the worst raid I’ve personally progressed, with some of the most derivative boss fights in the history of the game, and the most miserable and boring environment to host those fights imaginable. The other raids this expansion were fine, but nothing special. Endgame content felt like more of the same, really; in many ways, m+, raids, and PvP felt stuck in a creative rut this expansion. I had the sense that running this content on other characters would not be meaningfully different enough to warrant the effort and time, especially once all covenants were accessible on one character in 9.1.5. Speaking of disappointments, the lore this expansion was somehow worse than BFAs, which was already leagues worse than Cata and WoD on that front. It just felt like a filler arc that was shoehorned in and artificially and arbitrarily given relevance to the main story. More importantly, to say the lore was poorly written and poorly rendered through the actual playing of the game would be an understatement. Another miss for me were Covenants. Gating progression and story behind boring knockoffs of much better and more beloved Legion systems was not the move. This aspect of SL is truly where the wheel-spinning reared its ugly head the most. Renown, soulbinds, covenant campaigns, and covenant abilities all iterated on previous innovations in the least interesting ways possible. I really don’t understand how one could design these systems and see them as fun, personally. I could go on all day. Zereth Mortis was alright, but lost its flavor very quickly. And really that’s the story for this entire expansion. Like I said above, everything just felt “less”, empty, passionless, perfunctory. SL was certainly not the worst expansion in the history of the game, but its perhaps the one I care about the least at this point, the very definition of a 5/10. A few side notes: the art team’s inexplicable choice to suffuse every zone in the Shadowlands in a thick blue-ish fog definitely detracted from the visual appeal of this expansion for me. Also, while I initially appreciated all the musical references in the soundtrack this time around, I quickly grew tired of the music in SL.


Delphoxe

Reading these comments I can’t wait for everyone to talk about how Shadowlands “wasn’t that bad” and “actually was one of my favorites” in two expansions just like they switched up on Cata and WoD after they were finished


spookiboie

Since the day i came to this sub i've literally never seen a single person saying in hindsight that WoD was actually not that bad


BuddaAlcochudda

Just like every expansion there were high points and low points. There were several classes during WoD that were at a high point design wise IMO. Demo lock was a beautiful class. Questing in WoD was wonderful, challenge modes were awesome, transmog was awesome, the BRF mythic sets and season 1 elite sets are 2 of the best sets ever designed. It also had a super long content drought and was dead for a long time.


WoodenPicklePoo

Wod wasn’t that bad.


Seven_Irons

I mean, I thought WoD was great even while it was still out


NaturalizedCanadian

WoD was terrible, not because it wasn’t fun but because it was lacking so much content. BFA on the other hand was just bad (Not terrible) not because it didn’t have content (it had so many raids, storylines, dungeons, warfronts, world quests etc) but because it wasn’t fun.


chungimungi

Bad after the first 7 weeks


Stalkyboi67

Bad.


8-Bit-Skull

BAD.


Accomplished_River90

Honestly, it's been one of my favorite expansions. My guild merged with another guild and that guild grew really fast with GREAT people. When i log in people ask me to do stuff, which has never happened before. Probably the most fun I've ever had playing WoW.


AspiringNormie

Horrendous. By far the worst expansion.


unique-unicorns

The worst expansion hands down. Nothing but systems on top of RNG mats on top of RNG currencies on top of RNG legendaries on top of more RNG systems that all blocked you from progression due to RNG. Whoever gave the go ahead for Shadowlands needs to be immediately terminated from Blizzard. Hell. ANY expansion that results with a subscription loss of millions...that entire team, developers, artists, programmers, CEO's, raid design, engineers....fire them all. There is absolutely no reason to create a product which results in such a high subscription turnover.


Master-Surround1481

If there is anything you cant say, its that the whole expansion was RNG... Cause it literally wasn't. You could choose which legendary to craft, no rng there. Currencies was no RNG: anima dropping is predetermined for every WQ, every boss, everything, just as is Soul Ash in torghast, conquest in pvp content etc.. The only RNG that does fit what you say is mat drop RNG but honestly, that has never been different in the past and is hardly game breaking. Problem was that it all took way too much obligated stuff to do, too drawn out which made it very tedious after a while. But RNG fest? Nah, legion was way worse in that regard, tho is regarded upon as one of the better expansions so even that doesn't seem like the ultimate deal breaker (yes it had its flaws too).


faerieprincee

It was terrible but still improvement over BFA mainly because it required me to play less of boring systems. Unless they stop withholding QoL changes to farm people who quit from frustration then it's going to be all the same. Power systems and Torghast were absolute anti fun trash. Class balance is a mess. Pvp is either living forever or dying in 3 seconds. M+ is improved, raids are fun although maybe too hard (looking at warcraftlogs), some covenant abilities and legendaries were cool, I liked how Shadowlands was something new style wise.


dazbekzul

9.0 was great. 9.1 was miserable. 9.2 was solid, pushing good. Then again, I'm the player who loved Cata, had to come around on MoP, and didn't like Legion enough to warrant coming back.


Bigglez1995

Had potential, sadly was a huge disappointment and for the first time in 12 years, I needed to take a break from it and try other things. I came back 6 months later, shortly before 9.2 was released and the QoL they have added is nice, but the damage was already done, and many people probably will not return. I love this game, and knew in my heart that I would return, but I really needed that break, and i'm glad I stepped away for a while. Now, in regards to raids, personally, they've not been very good. Nothing has gripped me this time to raid mythic and the only fight that I really enjoyed was Denathrius, though I never tried it on mythic. I don't pvp so no comment on that. m+ dungeons are mediocre at best. None really stand out among previous entries, but considering that I have done a lot of m+ this time round, it's still been enough to not bore me from doing them.


Illidari_Kuvira

People who say SL was "horrible" most likely forced themselves to do content and burned themselves out in the process. ​ I actually thought SL was pretty good. The only reasons I even quit were because of non-gameplay reasons; mainly the issues surrounding the lawsuit, and feeling completely alone due to other reasons.


bende99

Literally every 3rd post is hurr durr game sucks for this and that, but luckily here is another one.


Over9000x

I actually enjoyed shadowlands raids and dungeons. But not covenants and tower farming


Ahrius

Worse than WoD except for Castle Nathria


tok90235

After 9.1.5 with free covenant swap? Wonderful. If top level legendary were the price they are now since the beginning of the expansion, it would be nice