Don't forget about the Covenant choice disaster - and if you managed to get over it, the limited charges on changing your conduits because flexibility isn't a thing in 2021 gaming.
- unbalanced - WHERE? there are balance hot fixes every other week. They are investing more into balance then the last 3 xpacs combined. If your class is 10% behind a top dog spec, you can still perform 100% on it and be better than the majority of the fotm playersThe game is terribly balanced (as always). Some specs do almost half the dmg of others, what are you talking about 10% lul. They are more responsive now than before, I'll give you/them that. But that doesn't make it any less true.
Lot's of number issues that COULD make the expansion at least a lot better. Sadly they don't seem to care too much about that.
I'm glad Shadowlands is outperforming expectations, I've been in love with this in a way I haven't loved the game since MoP or WotLK. It definitely needs some work and the Devs agree, but it's nice to finally feel like wow is on it's way out of this funk rather than on it's way in.
People saying that those drop-offs are normal for expansions probably started playing during MoP. I thought that SL started off pretty well but it simply didn't last very long. Once you've completed Torghast a couple times, cleared CN once, finished the campaign... there's simply nothing enjoyable left to do for the casual player. The entire gear treadmill is irrelevant for me because I couldn't care less about doing the same raid on heroic. After getting the Maw mount from TC I felt like I never wanted to step into Torghast again and a bit later they announce that you can use any mount in the maw in 9.1. If I knew that I wouldn't have done a single layer in TC. Maybe Thorgast is fun for some specs, it certainly isn't for mine. The story is something I actively try to avoid because of how bad it is. That's why I quit a couple weeks ago.
Pretty much how myself and most of the people in my guild seem to feel. It's just log in and do you 'systems'. It seemed very promising back in November, but I've never felt like a WoW xpac was work and this one feels like the worst parts of a job.Smart move Blizz - repeatable content that only needs maintenance - the Callings, the daily/weeklies, the same WQs, play your Sanctum systems - other than the Constructs...bleah. If you aren't doing high keys offer nothing as far as gear progression. PvP isn't balanced but at least you can get gear and it's sometimes fun. And since there's a drought in SL - grind grind grind for anima!Good for their bottomline but a huge loss for players imho.
pog
I can't speak for anyone else, but I've played since vanilla and this is the first expansion I've ever given up on. It felt like every system in Shadowlands was designed to keep me playing as long as possible, not by making it so fun I couldn't put it down, but by making it harder to get what I want out of the game and requiring more grinding to progress than I can remember since the earliest days of WoW. Sure most games have a drop-off after the first several months, but I'm at least one case of a dedicated long term player who has never quit on a previous expansion but couldn't stomach this one.
I just don't understand why everyone always talks about gear. I wish gear didn't even exist or was largely replaced with a more interesting character growth mechanism.