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Shadowlands 9.0, 9.1, 9.1.5 and the Future: Why is the Expansion feeling emptier and less content rich while being very similar to Legion and Battle for Azeroth?
Despite the very similar systems and game activities, this version of the game has received increasingly negative feedback for seemingly the same content that was tolerated in previous Expansions.
Negative Bias? Game Systems Fatigue? Legitimately Worse?
Let’s take a look at why:
00:00 Legion, BfA and Shadowlands are very similar…
02:38 …Yet they are perceived differently: Why?
04:19 The “Blackmail” Game Systems: AP….
08:07 Pinnacle of Blackmail: Titanforging
10:13 More Blackmail: Legion Legendaries & Benthic Gear
11:14 The Complicated Situation
13:10 More Freedom Ironically Meant Less Content
14:20 “WHAT IF” These Manipulative Systems were still here?
17:07 And this is where we are now
18:33 Your thoughts on this
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I like the way you are trying to come up with this theory, but alas, it is actually just YOUR theory. Far from the truth. Look as a pvpr i don't give a fuck about their damn systems, never liked them. I just want ONE set of honor gear and ONE set of conquest, without all the fucking DUMB AS FUCK RANKS MAN. Give a plentiful amount of conquest per win so i can cap in 5-10 games a week like things used to fucking be…
A lot of people that PvP couldn't give a FUCK about the damn systems. Remember that there are a LOT of players that don't care about mythics and raids, and wouldn't do them if they didn't have to (for leggos conduits etc.).
The game is fucking GRINDY AF. It's work away from your IRL work, sorry i don't play the game to log in and fucking work, just to get to a point where I can have fun, after like 500 hours per character. FUCK THAT. WoW is done while blizz keeps it the way it is. Your whole perspective is so norrow minded its crazy…
I feel that a reason we were so okay with farming world quests in legion was largely due to the fact that it was new. It was exciting that I could go get stuff from the world regularly. World quests are now a very old feature and isn’t fun to waste my time running around grabbing stuff anymore. I do agree that applying character power to world quests would make me so them, but I would hate them whereas back then I thought they were a fun idea. As of now, I don’t mind them being there and am glad I don’t have to do them
world quests does not equal infinite content. The quest can be fun a few times but after that its boring. Its like mowing the lawn the first few times as a kid its fun to do with your dad or brother, but soon its just a chore and not fun. Tying World quests to power increases like what was done in legion and bfa is not only boring but frustrating and generates frustration towards the game. Your question of should we have kept these boring and punishing systems to force engagement in the world, and the answer is no. Instead we should have more content. put the story out into the world quests and have the world quests change over time.
The gear items from world quests in this expansion have been absolutely worthless you had to get your renown up for it to drop any "halfway decent gear" by that time you have already gotten better gear from dungeons. they only reason i did world gear quests this expansion was to sell it for gold or to de it for enchants. Now that i have a stockpile of materials for enchants i don't care about doing them because they are boring. In fact I only do daily's now to complete the callings, and then only if can actually earn valor off it if I'm capped I don't do them. I don't need the gold off of them (sure it doesn't hurt but I don't need it) Once I finish upgrading the few last pieces of gear from valor I doubt I will be doing that anymore either.
wow dev's need to add new fun daily's if they want players to stay engaged with doing them. We also should get more dungeons sooner. More content = more player engagement. Sorry but M+ dungeons with annoying affixes does not equal infinite content . Forcing player power through world content is equally boring as hanging out in borealis or what ever center you have, and that forced engagement does not equal fun and it brings about resentment and dislike.
What is happening is that by not doing those enforced things we are being shown the lack of content in the game. Korthia is just a repeat of daily quests the only reason I'm doing them and torgast right now is for the conduit upgrades and I have even stopped doing them for the most part because its boring, so the problem again lack of content. With M+ for a lot of people they aren't fun (yes I know for some people it is but not all and I would say for most its not), So again it becomes a forced content type of thing which also builds up resentment and dislike of the system for a large amount of players. The M+ dungeons are also getting old, you can only do the same dungeon so many times before your like meh.
Torgast could have been a lot better by having more types of and more quantity of anima powers drop, it also should be able to adjust better to solo play for each class. some classes and specs are really horrible and some are ok . There isn't really any reason to do torgast once you have you legendries you don't do it for fun because for the most part it just isn't fun. Fun can be its own reward but you actually have to make it fun for that to work.
So really it comes down to content. If devs where not redesigning broken systems each expansion maybe would could have that content.
Within 2 months of Shadowlands, I'm bored and I don't want to play anymore.
I mean, if you're making transmog sets that are a 1% different hue than the other 4 sets in your covenant? If you're making farmable mounts the same exact mount as the one you farmed yesterday but a slightly different colour? If you're making "legendary" items, 90% of which never get crafted because there is one that is leagues better than them? Then why the fuck should anyone play the game? It's boring. It's lazy. And most egregiously of all—it's a waste of precious dev time, adding stuff to the game that means nothing and entertains no one.
I disagree. I feel like you are looking at the FACT that shadowlands is hated more than the past 2 and coming up with the OPINION that it must be because we are not doing world quests and endless grinds. We still have many grinds you have to do daily. People still do world quests leveling or causals for cosmetics or gold. There were plenty of actual problems with shadowlands. It was always going down hill and when things didn't change people gave up and slowly lost the joy and commitment to play.
But I loved all the things you say people didn't like…
Battered hilt dropping for me in wotlk was peak wow for me. I hate grinding for borrowed powers.
Never thought warforging was bad, even titanforging to a point wasn't bad. What was bad was that you could get highest ilevel from any content and some of the items were utterly broken if you got said titanforge. Like my Mage in legion got max ilevel Arcanocrystal, it was utterly broken and my guildies were mad. Though we were raiding mythic pretty hc so they eventually got to the same level and even better as did I, just for the most of the expansion I totally skipped the need to progress my 2nd trinket slot purely because I was lucky of a world boss.
Now what I think the system should be. Is that titan forging is fine, with limits. You shouldn't be able to get Mythic ilevel piece from a WQ, but what about M+, I grinded shitloads of M+ when it came out and they unlocked the ilevels in BFA and got 3 or 4 max ilevel titanforges inside a week. Super fucking lucky, but the amount I played made that all pretty deserved in my mind. What the system missed in both Legion and BFA was that you couldn't work yourself to highest ilevel without luck. Why cant we just have ranks like we used to have with TF. You could proc a max ilevel TF, but you also could upgrade said gear with valor(or whatever currency that is basically valor) to max rank within time(that isn't obnoxiously long). That would be a quite nice baseline in my mind, it would make M+ worth it again for Mythic raiders and you don't feel like you are pressured to do up to 10 * M+ in a week like you are in the start of the patch and then it instantly drops of doing actual M+ gives you 0 chance of an upgrade inside the dungeon atm.
I guess what am saying, embrace the slot machine, but limit the retardness of it and let people work for upgrades to cover for their bad luck with TF. What I do think, AP grinding can stay dead. At least with current slower world quests. In BFA AP was somewhat fine after the start, when they realised working weeks to unlock your gear was retarded. But at least once you got your research it was easy to grind the AP as you could complete a WQ in seconds instead of minutes.
I guess this kinda shows the game lacks content, just look at FF, you can do pretty much anything for days. The Gold Saucer is what DMF should've been but never got there, there is 0 reason to do any of what DMF contains, but still people flock to the saucer in FF. FF devs played WoW to figure out what was wrong with their game, maybe WoW devs should play FF now. But I guess that's not going to happen when they don't even play their own game. Also every piece of old content if instantly killed once the new one comes out, so they need to roll out new systems constantly to keep us engaged. Instead of embracing the old and building on top of it.
your fucking crazy, player power is the issue, me and my friends played wow for mythic+, and we all spent 6 hours a week raiding, something we didnt want to do and around 7-8 hours a week doing dailys and weeklys, something we didnt want to do, just to run mythic plus around 6 hours a week. and all this play time still didnt get us bis, it just got us good gear, the best time in wow was months after a patch would come out and your character was done and you could just do what u wanted. people quit wow because after 9.0 everyone had gone threw withdraw and didnt want to go threw that hell again. iv been playing since legion, my group was running 24+ keys in 9.0 and we all stopped a month b4 9.1 came out
Well, you didnt want tthe content to be in the leveling so now they have to add shitty point grinds at cap to give you something to do. Whats unethical is you asking to shorten leveling and skip leveling because you WANNA get to the max level. Its equal to saying "i demand you skip the game to the end because i wanna finish the game"
I actually miss titanforging let me play the game without having the feeling forced to raid
I think it's because you hardly feel your upgrades. In bfa you felt a damage increase when getting and maxing out your essences, a damage increase when getting corruptions. Now 95% of dps after legendary and the initial covenant is purely a weekly ilvl increase
I feel like you have certainly honed in on why the game feels bad. However maybe missing some key details. At no fault of your own, being a 1%er in wow gives you a certain perspective. The game feels hollow and lacks that charm and passion. This is bittersweet as that charm and passion is now linked to a history of abuse behind blizzard's top talents. While the game feels cleaner now, they are gone, it's just that, cleaner. The original vision is all but gone. The way the game is designed, around boosting and thus wow token consumption gives it this almost pay to win mobile game feel. The top players provide a service for anyone without enough time to become a top player.
This is exacerbated by the fact that solo casual content no longer exists in the game. A casual player now partakes in mythic plus and heroic raiding through the veneer of the boosted experience. This is that hollow feeling that players get. EVEN IF you choose to not partake in this game destroying cycle, nothing but pain awaits you. Just try to form your own mythic plus groups or keep a guild together for a raid experience. It's a lot of work, meanwhile, you could just either buy a wow token, or collect the consumes for mythic raiders to sell. It is a much more efficient to grind 250k gold for a mythic plus boost, than to take a fresh character, of truly any spec, and gear it out for the content. With some specs being impossible to do this with. Think off meta specs that players will not take along in their groups.
Now for an anecdote.(longwinded story about why I stopped playing, nothing more nothing else.) This was what broke the camels back for me in wow.
Well, lets say you wanna just do it for the fun right. Like fundamentally, it's fun to take a character and watch it progress in power. Lets say you go hard for a couple weeks, you run your own keys, during an upcycle of a patch. You do this nearly solo with the help of a few friends every so often and a guild mate or two. You get to +15s and you have gotten so good at your class, lets say outlaw rogue, that you essentially come within 85-95% of your raidbots parse of overrall dps during most mythic dungeon runs should everything go okay. This feels great, you get your first couple of 15 keys done and you think to yourself, well This isn't too bad. Lets say you snag a MOS +15 and a SOA +15. It's been a long journey and you have spent about 40 hours of play time. Thats about 4 hours a average day. This second week was a decent affix week and even though challenging you got it done. Now the next week is coming up, Let's say it's necrotic, teeming, tyranical. This is pretty much the nightmare scenario that comes around every so often.
You post your shiny new DOS +16 as a DOS +15, knowing that players will brick your key without a second thought, however after being grouped and locked in, don't really notice or care that the key is a 16, the difficulty is slightly higher, but your only taking elite players anyways at this point. Very few players at this level can run a 15 but not a 16, it's just less convient for them, but gives you a 1 life fail cushion. The group you manage to hobble together, because no one wants to play this affix week, but you know you have to less, your key resets, bricks your key. One player gets mad at another for some inane reason despite the key being timeable, the egos explode and they punish YOU the key holder, because, reasons I guess and drop the key. No worries, you still have a +15 dos. You decide to way until closer to the end of the day, hoping some ADULTS will log on and play this increasingly unfair game with you. You can't join anyone elses key at your pre +15 IO due to being a melee dps mostly known for good cleave. This spot is usually held by the individual running the key. You wouldn't ever take a second outlaw rogue unless you had to. Melee dps tends to be a liability anyways.
You time that 15+DOS, by some miracle with less than a second left on the clock. You relax. Knowing it's gunna be okay. However, you get sanquine depths. The weeks go by and you have all but PlagueFall and HOA left to complete. The key seems to cycle between DOS and SD frequently. Unlucky. Eventually, a team bricks your key during a 15, the healer just disconnects, who knows power outage, life, what ever. You get a +14 DOS. Multiple weeks since you started, most players have either gotten the +15 chieve or not. You can find no one to fill your +14 key. You lose your key, and must start over.
At this point I unsubbed, faced with either reroll my class to a tank and maybe scrounge up some straggling dps/healers. Or simply pay for a boost. Both options completely defeat the purpose of what I was trying to do. Play a class and spec I Wanted to play, and complete high end content for admirable achieves. My story mostly mirrors my season 1 experience, however the finer details have since left me. I thought maybe I could just wait for a push week, and resubb for that, and I did, I believe I just never rolled the keys I needed to complete the achievement. Maybe you have your own team, maybe your better at this than me. All easily true. But the user experience for the average player attempting to get into harder content is dreadful and poorly designed.
Make loot rain from the skies again like in legion, bring back randomness with some limitations (everthing can titanforge but cant go pass mythic ilvl) loot just being loot is boring as hell, when i finish a m+ now there is no "uuu whats in the box" feeling its just "oh yes garbage nice" i dont even loot the damm thing anymore raidio score is the only thing that makes m+ fun at this point
I completely disagree with this take. I think the extremely long patches, lawsuits, other systems that were broken and frustrating, along with new competitor games that has brought the large decline to wow. Not because we're lacking a mandatory crappy grind LUL
You're so out of touch obviously
even if shadowlands world quests awarded mythic gear i wouldnt do them they are not world quests they are more like quest lines
Does anyone remember the time when you were getting fixed stats and gear in pvp, and it was just a contest of skill? Do you know why we don't have that? Cause while it sounds an amazing idea in theory, and people will praise it, in reality they REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to give away the edge they might get from gear. Lack of time and most importantly, gear, is always the reason why people can't win in bgs, get +20s timed or anything competitive in the game. Cause it can't be lack of skill or willingness to improve right? That can't be it. The next x,y,z loot will definately make the difference. Which in the past,it could. And now,it doesn't . And people realised that maybe, they just aren't that good in the game without their twilight devastations. And this just feels shit for most players. They want the feeling that they are getting stronger, that they are "winning" . The challenge is optional in this process . If not, everyone would be a dark souls pro at this point…
It's worst sd, cuz people were already tired from bfa, it's not the bfa was better. It feels you tunnel Vision. I enjoy your content anyways
I love your videos dude, but this is the first time I’m big time against your opinion. Those WQ systems were terrible and I’m glad they are gone. They need to make WQ rewards better for catch ups on alts to make them valuable not make my main do them for no reason
Very much disagree. Removing systems that artificially increase playtime like for example grinding for essences was the worst. Playing alts was made severely harder, because you had 1-2 months of grinding before entering m+ at a decent Ilvl. In Shadowlands many grinds have been removed, but playing alts or even offspecing is really tedious. You still have to farm renown and torghast every week on every char. Additionally gearing feels extremely bad even on a single character.
As a m+ only player, I didn't play 9.1 because of raid exclusive borrowed power which works in dungeons as well and the extreme content draught. Staying half a year in an expension with only 8 dungeons to offer and only one piece of loot a week is hardly worth paying a monthly fee for.
The only world quest I do is for the bell. I haven’t done torghast since I crafted my rank 6
I agree that it is time to reconsider what to do in the world quests. I personally believe it is always about the ratio between effort and rewards and last patch of BfA had nice ratio.
I think they should have something like the BFA necklace that is infinitely up-gradable. The most you play the stronger it gets.
I agree people didn't want to grind, so now everything is time gated. People also said they loved doing visions in BFA, so SL gave them Torghast. The game feels bad, because even if you wanted to grind something you cant because its time gated. This is what the players wanted………
When they removed Titan Forging, they didn't implement a deterministic system to replace it. FFXIV achieves this through Tomestones that drop from just about all endgame content, including their version of WQs, and can be traded in for BiS gear. Unfortunately, Blizzard caters to the 1% and anyone who can't "git gud" can get lost.
I really miss Titan forging. Felt like a little present when you got lucky.
Well… First we have to understand why ppl pay for playing the game. It's not about grinding some powers. Raiders pay for raiding aswell mythicers for mythics etc. If ppl were seen that they need to grind anima for some power system again in the start of the shadowlands… What u think would happen? I believe ppl would had end playing much earlier. Why? Because they have got enought of this system. What this means is blizzard has copy paste legion now 2 times. bfa systems was just legion copy. Now SL would be same if they would keep doing it… For collectors it still feels like we playing legion type game 3rd time. And that's a problem in this game right now. In legion this all was new and interesting. That's 1 reason ppl did those chores. They even enjoy them. Bfa was just a copy of that with differend flayvor. Second reason ppl was more engaget in legion was new patches came faster so there was new things to do more often. Players need something new things to engage. Something that they can enjoy. Not continuing doing same things. Same goes with pets, mounts, toys etc… having over 1000 pets in the game makes em feel all just same. Nothing special. Same goes for all items. There is too much grinding and less fun thing to do. Game have to change alot. Having patch and changes ones in 8month doesn't help at all and thats the second reason why ppl go to play other games and end playing this one. After all I don't think blackmailing players has anything to do with engaging em. They might play more but if u are raider or mythicer or even pvper… Those chores is not why you pay. If you are collector… even you would stop in some point when there is too much things you are bushed to do and they are basically same and even if you got some rare drop (0.1 drop rate) it doesn't feel anything anymore. Even me, as a hardcore collector will end playing when my gametime end, if game doesn't change (4month left).
The only thing genuinely fun for me is raiding. Even doing 4 or 10 +15 M+ per week was a drag that was only lessened if guildies were running them with me. I don't find repeating "cleared" content 100x enjoyable. The covenant campaigns also sucked imo. Just bad story and the timegatedness of the storytelling left me not caring about them even more.
BFA was bad and titanforging was ultra bad same with corruption
No amount of copium filled rant is gonna make me change my mind on that
Blizzard listened to raid loggers who were mad they had to play the rest of the game and thus literally gutting all forms of casual content rewards, then players are wondering why casuals are fucking off since they cant get any decent reward from most of the game outside high end. And raid loggers still moan about torghast, the one singular thing they need to do and not even for more than a month.
Of course titanforging was great for the casual playerbase even for more high end people, not only it made all content WORTH DOING cuz you might get lucky, it made reclearing heroic actually useful cuz maybe you could get an upgrade, unlike now where the only upgrade is one piece you are not gonna get and instead you are gonna get a few pieces with trash stat that at least back then had a chance of being good due to pure ilvl titanforging, now anything below mythic raid/vault is irrelevant unless you are catching up on a new main/alt by spamming m+. I like to do most forms of content in wow yet the only ones that arent a waste of time because they have relevant rewards are mythic and m+ vault, so there rly is nothing worth doing these days cuz nothing outside of those is actually REWARDING.
The moaners were the bis whores who were obsessed over muh bis as if they will die if they dont have what some person they have no idea about told them is "da best" even though with sims these days you can have many sets close to that performance and stat ratios, but "muh bis degenerates" moaned more and blizzard listened.
Blizzard listened to them, and shadowlands is the result, I just hope they learned their lesson for 10.0 and dont repeat the same thing where the only rewarding content is mythic but let's not kid ourselves, their did the same thing in WoD so they never learn, that is what happens when you put all decent rewards behind high end content, people arent gonna stay to pick up the inferior trash blizzard thought to give to "non mythic raid logging peasants"
Again, nobody forced many of us who enjoyed titanforging to do content we didn’t like, we had time and did content cuz we enjoyed and we had a chance for a reward, now even if you enjoy some content if there's no reward it is a waste of time, heroic was fun back then cuz you also had a chance for a decent reward, now you are wasting your time fix 9/10 bosses don’t give you anything worthwhile, even if something is fun, if there’s no reward. It doesn’t feel fun because any kind of repeatable content gets stale after a while, only thing that helps it, is actually good rewards.
I also doubt they changed all that cuz they cared about ethics, a lot more stuff would be gone if that were the case, they simply removed titanforging cuz idiots moaned, and now we see the result even though for us who enjoyed titanforging, we knew the result.
I see what your saying but I feel totally different. Mmos are changing along with all video games. If they made world quests tide to power or titanforging in this expac I would have quit faster than I did. My complaints this expac have nothing to do with prior expacs. I feel the loot is crap, the vault is crap, the lego acquisition is crap, torghast is crap.
The only solution for wow. Get rid of legos. Get rid of shards. Let gear bring gear. Every six months a great raid. No sooner no later. Every three months 3-5 new dungeons with new loot. Or even like a Tick tock. Three months after release of expac new dungeons. Three months later new raid and so on. With the change to mmos if wow wants to survive it will have to put development into content players want to do. With a three month system there is always something to do and what made legion so successful.
Yes, I agree, but how about instead of all of these systems you make all of the story available on the first day of each patch, but instead making it paper thin and really cheesy (like good pizza 🍕🤤) by condensing it into 4-6 hours of "gameplay", you could make it last 20 or even 40 hours (including cutscenes, single player instances like we had in Legion, minibosses, doing a completely new dungeon on m0 difficulty etc. instead of just doing "go to this part of the world, kill some mobs, do some RP, gz here's 1 renown). By making longer could Blizzard not only provide some meaningful depth to their character, but also give players better rewards, like any one mythic quality item of their choice from the current raid tier, maybe excluding the last 2 Bosses.
They could then introduce a power grind that's not completely random and has a fixed cap per week, just like Valor Points, so people would still have to do something every week that isn't "do some shit in korthia for like 1 hour or so idk, maybe you'll even get some research lul".
I've only started playing in Legion, so I don't know what kept people going in Wrath or MoP, so if anyone could give me insight on that it would be really appreciated.
What have they given us to make heroic worth doing in 8.1? Embers which thanks to set bonuses have a ridiculous power advantage behind them, so now an alt not only needs gear, it needs a MONTH of embers to get to a decent DPS level to be allowed to join high end raiding, you can easily call that unethical too, but it was not designed for that purpose, they tried to give heroic some value and reward but they ended up accidentally creating an even bigger grind and gate to alts/new mains, at least back then alts were actually easier since you only needed gear and AP, which YOU COULD FARM SOLO WITH WORLD QUESTS instead of being dependent on other people cuz all the relevant power rewards are locked high end group content.
It wasnt a surprise that the removal of titanforging and le evil RNG that muh bis degenerates cry about killed most of the content in the game for casuals, it was the only thing making the game worth doing, and let's not delude ourselves, mmorpgs are about grind and repeatable content, they cant create new content fast enough to ever satisfy the playerbase so the only approach is making REPEATABLE content REWARDING, those rewards got gutted cuz raidloggers moaned.
Imo, the problem isn't that that sort of power grind was removed, it's that it wasn't replaced by anything just as/more engaging + rewarding and less draining/frustating.
They can give people the choice by giving more enticing rewards from world quests but i personally was tired of doing them from other expansions..im much happier running m+ on multiple characters. What i hated this time was having to do torghsst for so long. We just need enticing options, but the ability to get what we need from whatever we want to play.