Read more about Shadowlands ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.gg
There’s no deny that WoW Shadowlands turned out to be a controversial expansion launched in the middle of a VERY rough patch for the WoW and Activision Blizzard team.
But what good things came from Shadowlands? I sat down to talk about it.
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0:00 Got my copium ready
1:16 What they’re listening to
4:55 The account-wide shift
9:01 Great Vault
10:55 More for solo players
16:57 Keystone Dungeon updates
17:51 Accessibility, diversity
20:17 Start of a regime change
21:52 Renown
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a new video!
I remain hopeful that the listening continues into 10.0
after the fact listening to feedback 1-2 patches in is not new.
A lot of the problems in Shadowlands were pointed out in alpha and were ignored.
The "we know better attitude" was obnoxious.
I can't unthink of the possibility the runecarver is the true jailer and if they planned to extend his storyline despite the shadowlands ending, would that save the game?
Thanks for the video Soul !
Lets be real soul, the only good thing thats come from this is that Blizzard have been utterly destroyed, and hopefully any sense of knowing better than the players is finally gone. It offers them the opportunity to rebuild, sure, but only in the same way that you COULD consider having your house burnt down a wonderful de-cluttering opportunity lol!
Some people recently have been so negative lately. To the point where people that disagree, are having fun, or acknowledge any good get labeled with "toxic positivity" meanwhile they are being straight up toxic.
Thanks for good vibes.
Two factions divided will not survive what is to come 🤣🤣
Good, I need some positivity today.
3 tanks and still no tier!!-__- I really wanna quit
Shadowblands good things:
+Pretty as hell
+Dungeons were fun and gearing was fun
+Raids had high points
+Cool flail mace
I agree. Additionally I think if they continue this trend of listening to players 10.0 might be a fun expansion. The writing could be terrible and as long as its fun to play and feels rewarding it will be well received, and I love story.
Soul, I only speak for myself, because I really can claim knowing myself, I really enjoy your take on stuff. You see the positive, you look at stuff from just about every angle there is, you try not to dwell on the negative, you take stuff apart and then put it back together in a kinder way. Don't ever change. As a single player, there are many things in this expansion that I am not able to do alone. Thank you for your thoughts on that aspect.
My list of Good things from the Shadowlands:
+ Great Visuals.
+ Great Music.
+ Encounter Design in Raids and Dungeons was solid.
+ Leveling Revamp worked out pretty well.
+ Return of the Mage Tower.
Renown, as a concept, could work well in the future. It just needs to be divorced from Character Power and Profession progression. In many ways, it could be a great way to both tell the Campaign Story, offer nice Non-Combat rewards, and it could be the new model for how Reputations feel more involved. Gaining Renown with a Faction opening up different places in the Zone, showing our progress in the story, being a way to stagger things mechanically, but without feeling unnatural from the experience… Renown has a lot of potential, if those issues are looked at.
3:45 you see, they still failed to get the message: players weren't against the Covenant thing, they were against the segregation of player power that came with it. So, ultimately, even the ability to freely switch Covenant is but a cheap patch to the issue because players were ultimately on board with the RPG lore/flavor coming from Covenants' choice. Players simply asked for Covenants' powers to be put in a new Talent row of sort. As simple as that.
As a casual pvper the best thing Blizz did was bring back PvP vendors. They system with upgrading gear isn't perfect but having those vendors back was a huge improvement for me and my guild.
I have a some issues with a few things you brought up Soul:
1) Renown. Whilst, yes, it CAN work, for me it didn't. Because the rewards were almost never interesting to me. That's a big problem with such a system: It's only going to be worthwhile if you actually want what they're rewarding. And in the case of Shadowlands… Most of what they were offering was ugly to me. Stuff I'd never use anyway.
2) Which brings me to a similar issue. You say Blizzard did more for solo/casual players than ever before, but that's just not true if you look at what I'm saying above. It's only going to be worth doing if you want that stuff. And for the most part: I didn't want much in Shadowlands because I hate almost all of its aesthetic and designs. So for me Shadowlands has been an expansion where I had much, much, much less to do and played a WHOLE lot less than Legion and even BfA.
I think renown is as good a system for managing timegating as anything (I don't use timegating as a pejorative, it's simply a mechanic to manage player behavior). I wholly dislike Revendreth and Maldraxxus and love Night Fae and Bastion. The fact that each covenant has distinctive asthetics and are able to evoke like or dislike is pretty great – the whole point of art is to evoke emotions. Um… the quality of life stuff is nice, cross faction will be grand. Um…
It's genuinely hard to come up with positives for shadowlands. So much of it has been exercises in aggravation and frustration… gearing, the failure of the great vault, the story telling, the dungeons, class balance, all the way down to longer world quests.
I think shadowlands will be remembered as utterly despised on many, many levels.
Alliance players can finally be high elves
I really hope we never get account wide gear, that would be awful
Blizzard will only create the illusion that they learned from their mistakes, they'll give a few little things to give the false impression they'll listened, just to they can up the numbers and then by the start of next expansion or next major patch, they go back to being their lazy greedy s**mmy selves.
Blizzard will all their games last few years have been "maximum profit for minimum effort," and its shown but they don't care and if it does up vexing players they'll just use their P.R to spout B.s.
Some people are so easily led round believing anything by Blizzard.
And this is why the numbers will remain low low as they are now.
No matter if Microsoft are taking over, it won't make any difference if staff have no creativity passion drive and ability to want to make wow great again.
Don't expect anything but another lacklustre expansion.
People may not agree and that's fine, but the huge dip in subscribers speaks for themselves.
I got the catch up on my steam library. Best thing about SL
The problem with Shadowlands, for me, is that what was available to me as a casual player just never felt 'fun'. Covenant campaign gear was very nice, but the world that I used it in just wasn't that enjoyable so it was kind of a wash. I'd have loved that gear during MoP, excepting the fact that I enjoyed LFR at that time. And that's another thing … for me, the raids, even in LFR, just aren't fun any more. I don't know if it's something to do with the design now, but they just feel tedious and boring. Back in MoP, and even up to Legion, raids felt enjoyable and exciting.
And that's what it all comes down to for me. There may be improvement in QoL and some design ideas like the campaign gear, but the activities themselves are just not fun, to me, any longer.
Soulbinds and conduits are REALLY cool…the 9.1.5 conduit catchup item makes it into an actual GOOD system
Another great round of dungeons and raids (Nathria and Sanctum are both REALLY good raids, Sanctum was above average)
Zereth Mortis is the best endgame playground zone we've had
Being ok with mediocrity like this is why WoW will probably continue to fail. If you compare SL to any other expansion (which you didn't) it fails in every aspect PvP was worse than Wrath/Cata/MoP/WoD/Even BFA honestly. M+ was by far worse than BFA and legion (also you saying there is more to celebrate about the score change shows you know nothing about M+, it hurt the casual key community, and it is more of a headache for the high end communi
ty). Raids were just meh, mostly because they are designed to be completed by the top 1% of the community. Covenant abilities and Soulbinds were trash if you compare them to the talent+glyph system along with getting multiple new permanent skills as you lvl up. Legendaries requiring you to do boreghast every week and pay an extortiante amount of gold was awful. If anything casuals were the biggest losers of SL. Leggos were a pain in the ass for them, the M+ score changes only hurt casuals who want KSM, casuals don't really heroic/mythic raid. PvP was a nightmare for them because of the 2400+ glad in the 1400-2200 bracket boosting. They can't farm mythic content from 2 xpacs ago solo. Like who cares about mediocore SL collectables and cosmetics when you want the cool ass tier from legion. Also there was no content designed for casuals, there is no real story questlines like we had in BFA, there was no actual solo content made this xpac that wasn't mandatory (they literally had to bring back the MT because they are so bereft of ideas). Literally look at the solo content in 14 we have deep dungeon, we had ishgard restoration, we have crafting that actually is engaging, we are gonna have the island farm simulator, we're getting another deep dungeon, we are getting more housing in 6.1, we have eureka and bozja (which are group, but you can play solo just fine), gold saucer, old relic grinds, beast tribes, etc… that is content for a solo player not whatever the fuck WoW is doing.
Let’s goooo
Ion was Associate Game Director for Legion – Just a note that SL isn't the first time.
First thing I think about, and this is even from prepatch, are the back transmogs