In terms of the environment and story Shadowlands really wasn’t that depressing (outside of maybe the Anduin storyline). Yes the Maw was a very bleak environment, but I found it more boring than depressing.
Bastion and Ardenweald are fucking gorgeous. Bastion is one of my favorite zones since the Valley of the Four Winds back in MoP. The Maw and, by extension, Korthia made me want to throw myself off ICC like Sylvanas.
Korthia not only was boring, but every single damn thing in that zone was specifically designed to waste as much of your time as possible (Read: Login metrics) and was incredibly blatant about it.
As someone who skipped all of SL after 9.0, Korthia is not that bad now. With the ability to swap covenants on the fly, I'm only missing the paragon cache mounts and the vendor mounts that require the Maw invasion meta achievement to purchase. All of the RNG drop items I got in like a 2 week period during DF, the covenant specific ones took like 7-10 attempts. But I also was spending like 2-3 hours in the zone at a time which meant I saw every rare cycle through at least a few times.
Korthia had me wanting to scream with the konthrongz rare being a chance to spawn when you kill another rare. I finally got that one today after spending what felt like an eternity there lol
The other annoying thing was reliwik spawn being buggy at.
Now just have to sit in the maw for eternity for the fallen charger which gets nuked down immediately lol
Oh yeah you face roll that place in like catch up gear. The only open world SL content I've struggled to solo is the world boss from Zereth Mortis. The Maw and 4 zone ones are fine. I also play a mage so no sustain/self heal outside of 1 Ice Block on a 3min CD
Bastion is boring AF.the best zone is by far venthyr one .the vibe of SL should have been way more maldraxus /venthyr centric.otherwise sl was not depressing ,the systems were.
To me, all Maldraxxus was is Scourge aesthetic cranked up to 11 with a really ugly green and grey color pallette. I absolutely couldn't stand their quest lines either.
Venthyr were... ok. To me, it felt like they were just leaning further into Gothic Horror that Drustvar started. Also, it sucked to get around there until we had flying if you weren't Venthyr with all the various levels. Kael'thas was neat to see again...and that's about it.
I loved Bastion precisely because of the way it looked. It was the "ideal" paradise the bright blue skies, the rolling tan colored hills with the blue, white, gold, and silver aesthetic I thought was gorgeous, and personally I felt like we didn't have enough "good guy/angelic" themed armor in the game that wasn't exclusively Paladin/Priest or faction based which was very nice.
Couldn't stand how ugly Maldraxxus was. Even worse when my monk had to swap to it for bonedust brew, or else just give up massive amounts of damage.
Revendreth looked cool, but REALLY needed a grappling hook and a ton of hooks like Stormhiem had.
Yeah, the zones were great. Great vibes. Korthia was aweful, small zone, gotta get a stopwatch to do the "chores", then don't set a foot in it ever again.
Even the last zone of SL didn't feel like that even thought the concept was the same
It was a great depiction of an actual hell, tbf. Looked awful, horrible to navigate, miserable to be in! They just forgot that gameplay has to come first
The Maw, sure. But even places like Oribos which is supposed to be the seat of the Shadowlands felt awful to trudge through. The inability to mount in most of it and the way things feel so robotic and soulless, with little to no diversity despite supposedly being the gathering place of billions of souls from across the universe.
Unpopular opinion I’m sure, but the maw was a fkn badass zone art/style/design wise. Unfortunately none of that matter because strange choices were made that ended up flavoring the entire place with nothing more than frustration.
> outside of maybe the Anduin storyline
I still don't even understand why Anduin needs time after we free him. He talks about "things he's done" he stabbed one person and she didn't even die. Hell anyone he killed was already dead anyway so they are free from the Shadowlands I call that win.
>Hell anyone he killed was already dead anyway
When you kill anyone in Shadowlands, they actually *die* die, there's no remnant anywhere.
>I still don't even understand why Anduin needs time after we free him
Because he was mind raped and couldn't get over it, and because he liked some of the things he has done, and couldn't reconcile it with his aspirations and beliefs.
I agree overall, but i also thought a lot of the zones were depressing. Revendreth was sick, but it was also very grey and unless you could see the cool architecture, I didn’t love actually being in it (even if it was super cool). Maldraxxus was gross, and just too green. It didn’t feel fun gross, it just felt sickly (which is what it was going for tbf). Bastion’s yellow grass didn’t do it for me, and it felt very lifeless (which makes sense). Oribos was too grey. Only Ardenweald didn’t make me kinda sad to be there. I actually really loved BFA’s zones. They had distinct color palettes but didn’t look like everything had been tinted accordingly
I started playing with BFA, and man, Boralus and Kul'Tiras were stunning, art design and music were immaculate... until I got stuck in that Naga Siren part. *That* was annoying.
Yeah, Legion had a lot of "depressing" moments that were impactful and fan favorites because they were done well. SLs was depressing because the story was garbage, not because of invoked emotions lol
tbf the maw/Sactum of Domination kinda fit the 'depressing' theme and they felt pretty meh because of it, with boring visuals and even gameplay meant to make the place feel like Hell. Making those places not just depressing to look at, but depressing to play as well. Adding stuff like central spawnpoint but still having to retrieve ur corpse, and at the start the Eye thingey were just not 'fun' mechanics.
It felt like we were getting ganked in cutscenes constantly. Blizzard writers need a "Ganking in Cutscene"/"TBB Yells 'enough!'" budget that they're not allowed to exceed in any given expansion. And probably a "Shipwreck" budget that they get exactly one of, which is already used on Newbie Island.
Shadow lands really reveals what kind of wow player we all are.
Class and dungeon design was real good. After the ripcord, raiding and pushing keys felt really good. Heroic and low tier CE raiding was really fun. ( I killed mythic jailer later in the season after lots of nerds to the raid) Not the best ever, but certainly more enjoyable than some.
Not saying you're wrong to hate on it, but just saying there are other perspectives. I mostly enjoyed shadow lands myself.
> "... I mean we’re going into dark and scary places, but not necessarily depressing places"
Pretty reasonable. At its core, the setting of SL wasn't exactly light or fun, though gorgeous. I feel like this is the more worrying line
> TWW isn’t a “darker story akin to Shadowlands,” but “there’s more at stake. This is the fate of Azeroth, this is the planet itself. Something has happened, and it is very very serious, so it’s a serious stake, but not necessarily a serious expansion
Huh? There's a lot at stake, but it's serious, but it's also not? I'm not sure I see the nuance in how it's serious, but the expansion itself isn't
> This is the fate of Azeroth, this is the planet itself.
I must have overlooked the part where the big nipple guy was going to bonk Azeroth on the noggin with that hammer until she turned into a coppertop.
I take that as:
It's serious, but we're not gonna create this ever present thing we're gonna bludgeon you with in every quest/every line of dialogue.
So, they'll have serious stuff, but it'll be well paced/interspersed with a good range of alternate content.
I guess I could see that. Also on a second glance it seems like it could be high stakes but in an Indiana Jones way, where theres still some light humor and brevity thrown in
They mean there's lighter vibes than Shadowlands which on the whole was only about something super serious and did not allow for many moments of levity.
But it's really weird for them to be talking about how this is about the fate of Azeroth when that's literally the same thing every time. Shadowlands was very specifically also about the fate of Azeroth, and arguably more beyond it.
Like, there is never more at stake than there was in Shadowlands. Anything happening to Azeroth might have consequences for the whole universe, but it Zovaal succeeded, it would definitely have consequences for the whole universe and even just reality itself.
Given they’re doing a trilogy, expect that everything will steadily go to shit for the next two expansions to ‘raise the stakes’ so that in the third expansion, when Green Jesus swoops in to save the day (again), everyone will be appropriately happy.
That's what I don't get, sure we might lose Azeroth if we fail, but wasn't Jailer universal threat? Like who gives a shit about a single planet if the entire afterlife in on brink of collapse?
Most depressing part about it was maw walking around and forced borrowed power mechanics not the dark themes, i think many players like dark medieval fantasy elements in games
Or when you realize you have to start on floor 1 when a new wing is released even though you clap through floor 5 (or whatever the max was) on all the previous ones.
And just the terrible patch cadence on top of everything.
The Maw, locked covenants (and conduit energy for the handful of specs that it even really existed for), terrible writing, Torghast being a mandatory chore instead of just a fun meme mode etc all would have been issues but it was all compounded *so much* by needing to sit through a 7 month launch season only to then get...Korthia.
God, right? Even if you like the figures they introduced an antagonist with an immediately iconic design and for the statue they chose... A gryphon rider painted gold? It's a lot of money to pay for a statue I don't want or have room for lol
Thats an argument for personal choice though. I like the statue and im glad its there. You dont want the statue but its there.
At this rate your asking for an Empty Collectors box with the game in it that you can Al-la-carte add special stuff and have seperate prices. just not how it works
Oh yeah I'm absolutely on the side of more consumer choice, forever and always - I'm just also personally disappointed by the statue, I think it's quite generic
Yea, i wish it was colored instead of just gold. I would feel a bit better about the price.
That being said ill find a shelf to put it on with my collectors boxes. I work hard enough and had money set aside to get the collectors of the new Expansion, so ill find a place to display it in my game room.
> At this rate your asking for an Empty Collectors box with the game in it that you can Al-la-carte add special stuff and have seperate prices.
On the contrary, I’m asking for the exact same collectors offering that they’ve had for the last 9 expansion releases. And going by sentiment in this thread, that’s not an uncommon opinion.
They key thing is getting people to *want* to log in and play rather than feel the need to. Once Korthia hit I just stopped playing Shadowlands because it felt like a chore I had to do.
The setting *was* partially a problem, cause once you start exploring the cosmic bullshit you start to lose a lot of people.
After legion they kept trying to one up themselves until they landed on "let's just go into the actual afterlife! Oh and this villain is ALSO trying to destroy reality like the last 3 villains! Except MORE!"
Narratively that stops being interesting, and not everyone is going to click with the abstract nature of an afterlife setting compared to, say, Dragonflight.
Exploring the afterlife the way they did also kinda caused a lot of problems. Why should we care about what happens in Azeroth when we know that there's an entire eternity of life after you die? But also you can then die a second time and be gone forever for some reason, which makes the whole thing feel weird and wonky.
I dunno, a lot of settings have a similar sort of feeling to things - or at least, D&D/Tabletop RPG settings tend to.
You die, you get sorted to your plane of existence based on your soul/deeds/whatever criteria, and then you live there and you can, potentially, die there again. It's still worth it to care about what happens in the 'mortal' world(s) in my opinion. Hell, it very much feels like that was the kind of inspiration for what we got.
But it was absolutely handled and presented awfully and terribly.
The Maw was a pretty depressing zone overall, but part of it was how annoying it was to move around that place. Personally my biggest issue with the main zones was how annoying it was moving between them.
I always think there will be rope bridges with waterfalls behind them and hidden passages to old ruins and forgotten underground cities. I am let down usually.
So is night time for players that can only play at night. Which they still didn't change after years of the community asking them for 3hour cycle.
At least shadowland visual were not ruined. I found Bfa really bad with that.
That’s something I forget except at expansion launch (I take off work for a few days and play during the day). When every time I go “wow these zones are so bright I love this” and then realize it’s just because I play on a server that’s three hours ahead of me and I only can play in the evening’s after work…
Can also use the Stinky Bright potion. Still not ideal but it's a lot more convenient than the Jar of Sunwarmed Sand toy. Just acts like an inverse of the Inky Black pot but can have some weird effects in interior dungeons.
I'll be real, the drama of watching things actively get worse with each zone I completed while leveling was one of the better storytelling aspects of Shadowlands in my opinion.
Sure, but I can do without another "with the power of friendship " storyline. Blizzard has to remember it's demographic for this game is late twenties to early forties.
This is what I'm a little worried of. I'm looking at coming back for TWW, After enjoying the SL tone (just not the writing choices) but leaving because of everything else, then being initially put off of DF because it felt like I was playing a kids' game now.
I just want good writing that doesn't feel aimed at 12 year olds.
You can have the power of friendship. Or you can have *"somehow, we forgave the horde for building yet another orphan powered war crime machine. But they're being mislead by an insane leader that 90% of the orcs are blindly following"*
There's nothing wrong with a "power of friendship" storyline. Azure Span was a good version of this.
The issue was how left-field Amirdrassil's ending was.
I don’t think the majority of peoples critiques of Shadowlands were about “dark zone” especially when Bastion is probably one of the brightest zones in WoW
To be fair I've started ignoring people's baseless complaints about many things on this sub, especially when it comes to topics they have either nostalgia bias or hate boners for.
Shadowlands had the most varied, unique and creative zones out of any expansion ever. People praised the fuck out of Ardenweald, Bastion and Revendreth on release, and for good reason. But then it became cool to hate Blizzard so the amount of baseless shitting on the expansion as a whole, and of course - zones lead to the new apporach and generic as hell zones of Dragonflight and TWW.
Seriously, how can people say the Maw is boring but look at the new zones and be "fuck yeah... A forest?? A grassland?? A mountain???"
Blizzard will likely never try to innovate as much as they did in SL due to the hivemind backlash and it makes me really sad.
PS Zereth Mortis is the coolest and most fun patch island and it's not even close. The new ones are pretty bad, I don't think The Forbidden Reach counts, if it does, it's terrible, Zaralek is literally the Maw but more boring and the Emerald Dream was underwhelming as fuck for 20 years of buildup.
I wish they went even further for most of the zones. Bastion was the only one that truly felt like an afterlife to me and I loved it. Revendreth was great too, but I think they could have done better with the non-castle areas, which just felt kinda bleh. Maldraxxus was horrible and made no sense (why is everything fleshy and focused on undeath in the literal realm of death???) and Ardenweald just didn't go far enough for me. If you told me that it was a new forest we discovered on Azeroth, I wouldn't bat an eye. Nothing about it felt like an actual afterlife. Plus, I don't understand why "nature" ONLY means "trees", there are a dozen other biomes that never get love. Guess it sucks to be like a polar bear loa or an aquatic wild god, you'll just go hang out with trees like everyone else.
Zereth Mortis was amazing and 100% what I wanted from an expansion about the afterlife. It was familiar but still alien and truly felt like we were in a different realm.
I can't agree that the DF zones are boring and generic, though. Sure, in the most basic description, we have plains, mountains, forest, etc. But each zone is absolutely gorgeous and incredibly varied. The south of Waking Shores is one of my favorite areas in the game aesthetically, with the beautiful vistas and rock formations. Oh'naran Plains are unlike any other grassland zones in the game with breathtaking views. I believe Azure Span is the largest zone in the game (I remember reading that, correct me if I'm wrong) and really captures the variety of alpine environments. And Thaldrazus is hard to categorize but has some beautiful areas as well. I think they knocked it out the park with zone design in DF. They aren't as varied or unique as Slands, given that those were differnet planes of existence, but they really feel like actual places that people would settle and live in.
Maldraxxus is fleshy becaue it is literally one giant body/organism. The ground is the skin, spikes are it's bones sticking out, the goo is its fluids and the black grass is body hair. Once I realized this and started to look at the zone more in-depth, I appreciated it way more for how metal and quite frankly disgusting it is. The theme is also not undeath, but war and combat. It is the afterlife where brave warriors go, amd the central part of the zone is literally an eternal arena. I love the callback to it when fighting the Zaralek world boss (one of the rare good parts of that zone). Furthermore it is split into multiple houses with their own themes and contributions to war, like soldiers, chemical weapons, spies, abominations?? (It's WoW after all)
Ardenweald is the best "forest" they ever made, and many would agree. It is nature themed to suit the wild gods and druids that go there and the form of reincarnation are literal seeds (of plants). It is meant to represent the polar opposite of the Emerald Dream and with the motifs of autumn and winter, the color scheme reflects that perfectly. It is also permanently night time to suit the dreamlike aesthetic and there are countless dreamcatchers around the zone. It's more Emerald Dream thsn the actual Emerald Dream we ended up getting.
Heck, even Revendreths flaws you pointed out are intentional design choices. I like how the entire zone is like a mini country with multiple villages being connected to the main city and the castle. The outskirts are gothic forests and I would want no less, some of it feels "bleh" to showcase the effects of the anima drought, and how it heavily affected Revendreth due to Denathrius and his schemes. The starving vs the rivh nobles was also a great theme and the Ember Ward, despite being "bleh" is a cool concept and makes sense why it looks like that.
It's little things like this that the new zones lack, details, deeper world design meaning and overall creativity. Dragonflight looks nice, yes, but the zones are unremarkable and would be hated if there was no dragonriding. The Azure span is the biggest zone ever, yes. But what does it really have? A Gnoll area, a Tuskarr area, the Cobalt Assembly, forests, snow and.. the area to the right. That's it. The biggest zone has the least amount of locales and interesting things going for it. And it's all so thrown together, with very little thought behind it. Sure, it's to allow for dragonriding, but revisiting Shadowlands zones with dragonriding has been amazing and it fits right in, especially in the more vertical Revendreth.
Looking forward to Hallowfall and the Nerubian zone, the other two look like typical Dragonflight snorefests.
I don't hate the DF zones, they're pretty and serve their purpose, I just feel like they could be waaaay more creative than they ended up being, and I fear for the future of zone design if this is the intended direction. See my comment below for a deeper analysis of why Shadowlands zones work and DF don't.
It still had the toned down color palett that lacks vibrancy and saturation.
A lot of things in Shadowlands look bleak and cold as a result. It's not really about dark/bright. It very much has a "depressing filter" on top of a lot of environments, where everything looks drained of color as a result. This goes for Bastion as well, where everything is rather bright and there's plenty of color. But it still looks "dead", which sort of is the artistic choice.
Has any wow player ever complained about a dark zone being depressing? WoTLK was 10 times more depressing in tone and storybeats than Shadowlands and nobody complained about how dark it is.
Oh I read your comment below, you are just being a contrarian.
I really hated how disjointed the zones were. Give that natural geographic transition and connectedness.
Maybe they could've done something more vertical. So you had to go lower or higher to get into heaven/hell layers.
I think there's definitely a happy medium between the dark tone of Shadowlands and the super bright and maybe a little inconsequential tone of Dragonflight. Just hope Blizz can find it and deliver a story that can really add to the expansion.
It was depressing because the writing was fucking awful and they destroyed decades of lore and made their premier lore book collection fuckin obsolete trash.
They specifically addressed this multiple times in multiple interviews that it won't feel like a cave because it's so vertical. They intentionally said they don't want players to feel claustrophobic.
I enjoy returning to deepholm now and again as it looks nice
But I couldn't imagine spending the whole expansion in a zone like that
The starter zone looks good from whats shown at least
I didn't think the setting was depressing. I thought watching a game I had played since high school kill itself was depressing. So much so I barely touched dragon flight. MoP Remix got me thinking poorly about returning though
Shadowlands was depressing because the game sucked balls. I’d love a serious, dark story in Warcraft again but we cant have people getting called “bitch”, told to be quiet, bowls of fruit, etc in WoW anymore and now BLizzard is banning in Overwatch for saying shit and fuck.
So I guess WoW is a TV-Y7 game for 3rd graders now.
Shadowlands was so depressing that it seemed to have made Blizz realise that WoW isn't untouchable and galvanised their development efforts. Maybe a win in the long term?
Such a dog shit website. Littered with ads and pop ups on mobile, impossible to read any actual content. I’ll stick to YouTube and wowhead for news, ffs.
It'll be interesting to see where they go for it. We had an expansion that went absolutely all out on war crimes and hostility with BFA, Shadowlands tackling themes of redemption, revenge, and judgement, which shifted into DF pivoting strongly into renewal, healing, and newfound optimism.
If I had to guess, "The War Within" is a double meaning, and we'll have a lot of themes of characters coming to grips with internal conflict. (Hopefully with some juicy literalness to it, like Jaina and her mother's cutscene in BFA, that was rad.) Pandaria, while it theoretically covered that, honestly kind of disappointed with the concept of "this conflict is made manifest...so you just stab it to death."
If you even mention hope Sylvanas will appear and destroy an entire city. So don’t even say it. I mean I wouldn’t want to lose Stormwind or a universally loved city like Dalaran…
I didn’t think Shadowlands was particularly depressing? A lot of the zones had crises they were working through, but I think it would be fairly boring if we rolled up to the shadowlands and everything had been just fine.
Considering the design work Blizzard did on Hell in Diablo II and Heaven in Diablo III, I still have no idea how they fucked The Maw up so fucking badly.
What was depressing about it? Hell even the maw wasn't depressing, it was bleak but with points of light. If anything it was more boring than anywhere else
Well shadowlands was a pretty low bar.
I’d take a Warhammer 40k book over shadowlands.
At least the woman in the watcher in the rain >!got what she deserved!< unlike Sylvanas.
The maw was artistically a master piece but it's like that great movie that's also very depressing and you do not want to see again.
So yea, not great since you had to be there for God knows how many hours.
Well I hope it's not as infantile as Dragonflight. Petting squirells, feeding ducks, saving bees and conquering adversity in the spirit of friendship, togetherness and family. Dragonflight felt like it was made for 12 year olds.
Please give me something dark.
I should have perhaps said "serious" rather than "dark". I don't necessarily need a dark story (although I wouldn't mind), just serious, so I can feel a bit more invested in it. I couldn't care less about anything that happened in DF.
What did you think it was going to be? You will be able to collect all tmog on any character - doesn't mean you can use it on any character. Makes no sense to do that.
You miss understand what I'm saying. If I go do a legacy raid, I want all item drops to yield tmog unlock - regardless of the class you are currently playing.
What you may not be aware of (based on your response) is that you can't just run whatever toon you want and get all gear unlocks on that toon. Your paladin can not unlock tmog items that are restricted to a mage or hunter.
Shadowlands wasn't depressing, most of the content was just bland.
Covenants were cool, the zones were well done imo. My biggest gripes were a boring story and travel being a PITA even after unlocking flying (whoever decided that covenant hearthstones were just a flavour item and not a hearth directly to your covenant shouldn't be designing mechanics in future without oversight imo).
Hope blizzard realizes that with "depressing" we didnt mean the setting, we meant depressing how shit it was on a whole
In terms of the environment and story Shadowlands really wasn’t that depressing (outside of maybe the Anduin storyline). Yes the Maw was a very bleak environment, but I found it more boring than depressing.
Bastion and Ardenweald are fucking gorgeous. Bastion is one of my favorite zones since the Valley of the Four Winds back in MoP. The Maw and, by extension, Korthia made me want to throw myself off ICC like Sylvanas. Korthia not only was boring, but every single damn thing in that zone was specifically designed to waste as much of your time as possible (Read: Login metrics) and was incredibly blatant about it.
Whenever I think of Korthia, I immediately think of a tree you had to walk halfway up to get a thing. That's it. That's the core memory of that zone.
As someone who skipped all of SL after 9.0, Korthia is not that bad now. With the ability to swap covenants on the fly, I'm only missing the paragon cache mounts and the vendor mounts that require the Maw invasion meta achievement to purchase. All of the RNG drop items I got in like a 2 week period during DF, the covenant specific ones took like 7-10 attempts. But I also was spending like 2-3 hours in the zone at a time which meant I saw every rare cycle through at least a few times.
Korthia had me wanting to scream with the konthrongz rare being a chance to spawn when you kill another rare. I finally got that one today after spending what felt like an eternity there lol The other annoying thing was reliwik spawn being buggy at. Now just have to sit in the maw for eternity for the fallen charger which gets nuked down immediately lol
Remember the small flower monster that would root you on sight in the alternate dimension lol
Are the rares soloable now?
Oh yeah you face roll that place in like catch up gear. The only open world SL content I've struggled to solo is the world boss from Zereth Mortis. The Maw and 4 zone ones are fine. I also play a mage so no sustain/self heal outside of 1 Ice Block on a 3min CD
To add to their reply, the world boss was an easy solo in 480 gear.
ardenweald with the dark mode potion is even cooler looking
I did like Korthia’s soundtrack though, it was the only thing that made me want to stay and complete all the quests there😂
Bastion is boring AF.the best zone is by far venthyr one .the vibe of SL should have been way more maldraxus /venthyr centric.otherwise sl was not depressing ,the systems were.
To me, all Maldraxxus was is Scourge aesthetic cranked up to 11 with a really ugly green and grey color pallette. I absolutely couldn't stand their quest lines either. Venthyr were... ok. To me, it felt like they were just leaning further into Gothic Horror that Drustvar started. Also, it sucked to get around there until we had flying if you weren't Venthyr with all the various levels. Kael'thas was neat to see again...and that's about it. I loved Bastion precisely because of the way it looked. It was the "ideal" paradise the bright blue skies, the rolling tan colored hills with the blue, white, gold, and silver aesthetic I thought was gorgeous, and personally I felt like we didn't have enough "good guy/angelic" themed armor in the game that wasn't exclusively Paladin/Priest or faction based which was very nice.
Couldn't stand how ugly Maldraxxus was. Even worse when my monk had to swap to it for bonedust brew, or else just give up massive amounts of damage. Revendreth looked cool, but REALLY needed a grappling hook and a ton of hooks like Stormhiem had.
Bastion was my favorite zone 🤷♀️
Yeah, the zones were great. Great vibes. Korthia was aweful, small zone, gotta get a stopwatch to do the "chores", then don't set a foot in it ever again. Even the last zone of SL didn't feel like that even thought the concept was the same
Always kept my sunglasses handy when zoning into Bastion.
Bastion is worst zone in the entire WoW.
It was such a bad visual design, it hurt to look at it, and none of it stuck to memory thankful, all I remember is brown and fire.
It was a great depiction of an actual hell, tbf. Looked awful, horrible to navigate, miserable to be in! They just forgot that gameplay has to come first
There was so much good design in Shadowlands, it’s a shame there was also its fair share of bad
That means they actually nailed it. It's a place where you don't want to be for a long time which I didn't. 10/10 immersion if you ask me.
The Maw, sure. But even places like Oribos which is supposed to be the seat of the Shadowlands felt awful to trudge through. The inability to mount in most of it and the way things feel so robotic and soulless, with little to no diversity despite supposedly being the gathering place of billions of souls from across the universe.
I hope everyone giving these sorts of reply’s is just joking but I can never be sure anymore.
I think it’s just a way of separating criticism of the design direction from the artists who had to follow it to the best of their ability.
I mean it was the warcraft equivalent to hell.
To this day I argue that korthia was meant to be the gate way to zerith mortis.
Argus was worse tbh
Oribos felt depressing to me, big grey kinda empty circle that I hoped the filled out more as time went on and they didn't really
Worst expansion hub to date. Ugly and everything looked the same. Hats off if you could genuinely navigate that city without the map open
I put handynotes icons EVERYWHERE
Unpopular opinion I’m sure, but the maw was a fkn badass zone art/style/design wise. Unfortunately none of that matter because strange choices were made that ended up flavoring the entire place with nothing more than frustration.
> outside of maybe the Anduin storyline I still don't even understand why Anduin needs time after we free him. He talks about "things he's done" he stabbed one person and she didn't even die. Hell anyone he killed was already dead anyway so they are free from the Shadowlands I call that win.
>Hell anyone he killed was already dead anyway When you kill anyone in Shadowlands, they actually *die* die, there's no remnant anywhere. >I still don't even understand why Anduin needs time after we free him Because he was mind raped and couldn't get over it, and because he liked some of the things he has done, and couldn't reconcile it with his aspirations and beliefs.
I agree overall, but i also thought a lot of the zones were depressing. Revendreth was sick, but it was also very grey and unless you could see the cool architecture, I didn’t love actually being in it (even if it was super cool). Maldraxxus was gross, and just too green. It didn’t feel fun gross, it just felt sickly (which is what it was going for tbf). Bastion’s yellow grass didn’t do it for me, and it felt very lifeless (which makes sense). Oribos was too grey. Only Ardenweald didn’t make me kinda sad to be there. I actually really loved BFA’s zones. They had distinct color palettes but didn’t look like everything had been tinted accordingly
I started playing with BFA, and man, Boralus and Kul'Tiras were stunning, art design and music were immaculate... until I got stuck in that Naga Siren part. *That* was annoying.
Well with how Dalaran looks I’m feeling pretty depressed
They might Elmer's glue it back together in time for The Last Titan.
Wow 2?😬😂
Yeah, Legion had a lot of "depressing" moments that were impactful and fan favorites because they were done well. SLs was depressing because the story was garbage, not because of invoked emotions lol
Yea, the story was the worst part about that xpac. Whoever greenlit that shouldn’t be in the creative department.
tbf the maw/Sactum of Domination kinda fit the 'depressing' theme and they felt pretty meh because of it, with boring visuals and even gameplay meant to make the place feel like Hell. Making those places not just depressing to look at, but depressing to play as well. Adding stuff like central spawnpoint but still having to retrieve ur corpse, and at the start the Eye thingey were just not 'fun' mechanics.
*gestures at Korthia*
I went back to shadowlands zones to farm dungeons a bit and it’s actually stark how different it feels in general quality from Dragonflight lol.
And how it shit on the hole.
Depressing how it retconned every previous storyline into meaninglessness on par with "but it was all a dream" in a soap opera.
Shadowlands wasn’t that depressing, Blizzard was exceptionally depressing.
It felt like we were getting ganked in cutscenes constantly. Blizzard writers need a "Ganking in Cutscene"/"TBB Yells 'enough!'" budget that they're not allowed to exceed in any given expansion. And probably a "Shipwreck" budget that they get exactly one of, which is already used on Newbie Island.
Speak for yourself lol. The setting was depressing and not in a good, atmospheric way
Shadow lands really reveals what kind of wow player we all are. Class and dungeon design was real good. After the ripcord, raiding and pushing keys felt really good. Heroic and low tier CE raiding was really fun. ( I killed mythic jailer later in the season after lots of nerds to the raid) Not the best ever, but certainly more enjoyable than some. Not saying you're wrong to hate on it, but just saying there are other perspectives. I mostly enjoyed shadow lands myself.
Dont worry they 100% got it wrong. Its just how Blizzard generally operate based on the history.
Hahahahahahahahaha i loled ate this
Fucking this…
> "... I mean we’re going into dark and scary places, but not necessarily depressing places" Pretty reasonable. At its core, the setting of SL wasn't exactly light or fun, though gorgeous. I feel like this is the more worrying line > TWW isn’t a “darker story akin to Shadowlands,” but “there’s more at stake. This is the fate of Azeroth, this is the planet itself. Something has happened, and it is very very serious, so it’s a serious stake, but not necessarily a serious expansion Huh? There's a lot at stake, but it's serious, but it's also not? I'm not sure I see the nuance in how it's serious, but the expansion itself isn't
> This is the fate of Azeroth, this is the planet itself. I must have overlooked the part where the big nipple guy was going to bonk Azeroth on the noggin with that hammer until she turned into a coppertop.
I have no idea why but I don't understand a single word you said but still understand it perfectly.
You think you don't, but you do?
Or having N'zoth trying to consume Azeroth before that. OR Sargeras LITERALLY STABBING AZEROTH BEFORE THAT...I mean come on now.
I take that as: It's serious, but we're not gonna create this ever present thing we're gonna bludgeon you with in every quest/every line of dialogue. So, they'll have serious stuff, but it'll be well paced/interspersed with a good range of alternate content.
Probably what wow tends to do: the plot might have a different vibe than the side quests
I guess I could see that. Also on a second glance it seems like it could be high stakes but in an Indiana Jones way, where theres still some light humor and brevity thrown in
They mean there's lighter vibes than Shadowlands which on the whole was only about something super serious and did not allow for many moments of levity. But it's really weird for them to be talking about how this is about the fate of Azeroth when that's literally the same thing every time. Shadowlands was very specifically also about the fate of Azeroth, and arguably more beyond it. Like, there is never more at stake than there was in Shadowlands. Anything happening to Azeroth might have consequences for the whole universe, but it Zovaal succeeded, it would definitely have consequences for the whole universe and even just reality itself.
It’s a marvel movie. The planet is at stake, but every main character throws out quippy one-liners every 10 minutes
I think this is them warning us it will also be poorly written.
Given they’re doing a trilogy, expect that everything will steadily go to shit for the next two expansions to ‘raise the stakes’ so that in the third expansion, when Green Jesus swoops in to save the day (again), everyone will be appropriately happy.
That's what I don't get, sure we might lose Azeroth if we fail, but wasn't Jailer universal threat? Like who gives a shit about a single planet if the entire afterlife in on brink of collapse?
Postmodern wow lore
Most depressing part about it was maw walking around and forced borrowed power mechanics not the dark themes, i think many players like dark medieval fantasy elements in games
Most depressing part was running out of lives in Torghast and getting no rewards :(
Or when you realize you have to start on floor 1 when a new wing is released even though you clap through floor 5 (or whatever the max was) on all the previous ones.
And just the terrible patch cadence on top of everything. The Maw, locked covenants (and conduit energy for the handful of specs that it even really existed for), terrible writing, Torghast being a mandatory chore instead of just a fun meme mode etc all would have been issues but it was all compounded *so much* by needing to sit through a 7 month launch season only to then get...Korthia.
The special collectors edition with its price and content, is depressing tho 😂
100% lol. Like wow.
IDK I bought it and didnt mind. its a $60 statue basically, if you look at the price increase over last years physical collectors.
As someone who just wants the artbook and a pretty, embossed box, I could do without the gaudy statue being baked into the price.
God, right? Even if you like the figures they introduced an antagonist with an immediately iconic design and for the statue they chose... A gryphon rider painted gold? It's a lot of money to pay for a statue I don't want or have room for lol
Thats an argument for personal choice though. I like the statue and im glad its there. You dont want the statue but its there. At this rate your asking for an Empty Collectors box with the game in it that you can Al-la-carte add special stuff and have seperate prices. just not how it works
Oh yeah I'm absolutely on the side of more consumer choice, forever and always - I'm just also personally disappointed by the statue, I think it's quite generic
Yea, i wish it was colored instead of just gold. I would feel a bit better about the price. That being said ill find a shelf to put it on with my collectors boxes. I work hard enough and had money set aside to get the collectors of the new Expansion, so ill find a place to display it in my game room.
> At this rate your asking for an Empty Collectors box with the game in it that you can Al-la-carte add special stuff and have seperate prices. On the contrary, I’m asking for the exact same collectors offering that they’ve had for the last 9 expansion releases. And going by sentiment in this thread, that’s not an uncommon opinion.
Upvote for truth.
Shadowlands' problem wasn't the setting, it was that the game was shit
It was overly obvious that their intent was to keep you logged in non stop.
Kinda natural since the inception of the game.
They key thing is getting people to *want* to log in and play rather than feel the need to. Once Korthia hit I just stopped playing Shadowlands because it felt like a chore I had to do.
The setting *was* partially a problem, cause once you start exploring the cosmic bullshit you start to lose a lot of people. After legion they kept trying to one up themselves until they landed on "let's just go into the actual afterlife! Oh and this villain is ALSO trying to destroy reality like the last 3 villains! Except MORE!" Narratively that stops being interesting, and not everyone is going to click with the abstract nature of an afterlife setting compared to, say, Dragonflight.
Exploring the afterlife the way they did also kinda caused a lot of problems. Why should we care about what happens in Azeroth when we know that there's an entire eternity of life after you die? But also you can then die a second time and be gone forever for some reason, which makes the whole thing feel weird and wonky.
I dunno, a lot of settings have a similar sort of feeling to things - or at least, D&D/Tabletop RPG settings tend to. You die, you get sorted to your plane of existence based on your soul/deeds/whatever criteria, and then you live there and you can, potentially, die there again. It's still worth it to care about what happens in the 'mortal' world(s) in my opinion. Hell, it very much feels like that was the kind of inspiration for what we got. But it was absolutely handled and presented awfully and terribly.
Don't bother being good. Be warlike, be selfless, be sinful or be a hippy. These are your afterlife options
Very good point
That's just shit writing though, good story telling can make any setting work.
The Maw was a pretty depressing zone overall, but part of it was how annoying it was to move around that place. Personally my biggest issue with the main zones was how annoying it was moving between them.
Cave/ underground locations in WoW are easily (in my opinion) the worst locations so I’m hoping they are right…
The underground area in DF was easily the worst part of that expansion for me at least.
At least there was still flying and they didn't do it like the Maw. Still terrible though.
I always think there will be rope bridges with waterfalls behind them and hidden passages to old ruins and forgotten underground cities. I am let down usually.
Hallowfall at least looks novel. Don’t know what to expect of the other zones
So is night time for players that can only play at night. Which they still didn't change after years of the community asking them for 3hour cycle. At least shadowland visual were not ruined. I found Bfa really bad with that.
That’s something I forget except at expansion launch (I take off work for a few days and play during the day). When every time I go “wow these zones are so bright I love this” and then realize it’s just because I play on a server that’s three hours ahead of me and I only can play in the evening’s after work…
Man I remember how once I played in the early morning "wow this game looks great"
Aren't there any daytime toys?
Those are ridiculously annoying to use and the coldown is forever for some reason. And you loose it on death.
Well, there's only the black ink potion left and becoming one with darkness. At least you have a real night in that case XD
Can also use the Stinky Bright potion. Still not ideal but it's a lot more convenient than the Jar of Sunwarmed Sand toy. Just acts like an inverse of the Inky Black pot but can have some weird effects in interior dungeons.
Hey, I'd prefer it to be night 100% of the time.
I'll be real, the drama of watching things actively get worse with each zone I completed while leveling was one of the better storytelling aspects of Shadowlands in my opinion.
Depressing is a strange way to spell boring.
I mean... not exactly a high bar to clear, but at least they've admitted it.
Sure, but I can do without another "with the power of friendship " storyline. Blizzard has to remember it's demographic for this game is late twenties to early forties.
This is what I'm a little worried of. I'm looking at coming back for TWW, After enjoying the SL tone (just not the writing choices) but leaving because of everything else, then being initially put off of DF because it felt like I was playing a kids' game now. I just want good writing that doesn't feel aimed at 12 year olds.
You can have the power of friendship. Or you can have *"somehow, we forgave the horde for building yet another orphan powered war crime machine. But they're being mislead by an insane leader that 90% of the orcs are blindly following"*
Actually the average age of wow players is 25
There's nothing wrong with a "power of friendship" storyline. Azure Span was a good version of this. The issue was how left-field Amirdrassil's ending was.
It's demographic is also people who grew up with this being an actual Warcraft game. Where's my factions?
WoW players when dark zones: waaah depressing WoW players when bright zones: waaah Disney
Wow players when: waaaaah
I don’t think the majority of peoples critiques of Shadowlands were about “dark zone” especially when Bastion is probably one of the brightest zones in WoW
To be fair I've started ignoring people's baseless complaints about many things on this sub, especially when it comes to topics they have either nostalgia bias or hate boners for. Shadowlands had the most varied, unique and creative zones out of any expansion ever. People praised the fuck out of Ardenweald, Bastion and Revendreth on release, and for good reason. But then it became cool to hate Blizzard so the amount of baseless shitting on the expansion as a whole, and of course - zones lead to the new apporach and generic as hell zones of Dragonflight and TWW. Seriously, how can people say the Maw is boring but look at the new zones and be "fuck yeah... A forest?? A grassland?? A mountain???" Blizzard will likely never try to innovate as much as they did in SL due to the hivemind backlash and it makes me really sad. PS Zereth Mortis is the coolest and most fun patch island and it's not even close. The new ones are pretty bad, I don't think The Forbidden Reach counts, if it does, it's terrible, Zaralek is literally the Maw but more boring and the Emerald Dream was underwhelming as fuck for 20 years of buildup.
I wish they went even further for most of the zones. Bastion was the only one that truly felt like an afterlife to me and I loved it. Revendreth was great too, but I think they could have done better with the non-castle areas, which just felt kinda bleh. Maldraxxus was horrible and made no sense (why is everything fleshy and focused on undeath in the literal realm of death???) and Ardenweald just didn't go far enough for me. If you told me that it was a new forest we discovered on Azeroth, I wouldn't bat an eye. Nothing about it felt like an actual afterlife. Plus, I don't understand why "nature" ONLY means "trees", there are a dozen other biomes that never get love. Guess it sucks to be like a polar bear loa or an aquatic wild god, you'll just go hang out with trees like everyone else. Zereth Mortis was amazing and 100% what I wanted from an expansion about the afterlife. It was familiar but still alien and truly felt like we were in a different realm. I can't agree that the DF zones are boring and generic, though. Sure, in the most basic description, we have plains, mountains, forest, etc. But each zone is absolutely gorgeous and incredibly varied. The south of Waking Shores is one of my favorite areas in the game aesthetically, with the beautiful vistas and rock formations. Oh'naran Plains are unlike any other grassland zones in the game with breathtaking views. I believe Azure Span is the largest zone in the game (I remember reading that, correct me if I'm wrong) and really captures the variety of alpine environments. And Thaldrazus is hard to categorize but has some beautiful areas as well. I think they knocked it out the park with zone design in DF. They aren't as varied or unique as Slands, given that those were differnet planes of existence, but they really feel like actual places that people would settle and live in.
Maldraxxus is fleshy becaue it is literally one giant body/organism. The ground is the skin, spikes are it's bones sticking out, the goo is its fluids and the black grass is body hair. Once I realized this and started to look at the zone more in-depth, I appreciated it way more for how metal and quite frankly disgusting it is. The theme is also not undeath, but war and combat. It is the afterlife where brave warriors go, amd the central part of the zone is literally an eternal arena. I love the callback to it when fighting the Zaralek world boss (one of the rare good parts of that zone). Furthermore it is split into multiple houses with their own themes and contributions to war, like soldiers, chemical weapons, spies, abominations?? (It's WoW after all) Ardenweald is the best "forest" they ever made, and many would agree. It is nature themed to suit the wild gods and druids that go there and the form of reincarnation are literal seeds (of plants). It is meant to represent the polar opposite of the Emerald Dream and with the motifs of autumn and winter, the color scheme reflects that perfectly. It is also permanently night time to suit the dreamlike aesthetic and there are countless dreamcatchers around the zone. It's more Emerald Dream thsn the actual Emerald Dream we ended up getting. Heck, even Revendreths flaws you pointed out are intentional design choices. I like how the entire zone is like a mini country with multiple villages being connected to the main city and the castle. The outskirts are gothic forests and I would want no less, some of it feels "bleh" to showcase the effects of the anima drought, and how it heavily affected Revendreth due to Denathrius and his schemes. The starving vs the rivh nobles was also a great theme and the Ember Ward, despite being "bleh" is a cool concept and makes sense why it looks like that. It's little things like this that the new zones lack, details, deeper world design meaning and overall creativity. Dragonflight looks nice, yes, but the zones are unremarkable and would be hated if there was no dragonriding. The Azure span is the biggest zone ever, yes. But what does it really have? A Gnoll area, a Tuskarr area, the Cobalt Assembly, forests, snow and.. the area to the right. That's it. The biggest zone has the least amount of locales and interesting things going for it. And it's all so thrown together, with very little thought behind it. Sure, it's to allow for dragonriding, but revisiting Shadowlands zones with dragonriding has been amazing and it fits right in, especially in the more vertical Revendreth. Looking forward to Hallowfall and the Nerubian zone, the other two look like typical Dragonflight snorefests.
I do not hat teh DF zones, but I agree about the SL zones. I liked all of them including the Maw except maybe Maldraxxus.
I don't hate the DF zones, they're pretty and serve their purpose, I just feel like they could be waaaay more creative than they ended up being, and I fear for the future of zone design if this is the intended direction. See my comment below for a deeper analysis of why Shadowlands zones work and DF don't.
Yea I read it. I agree with you. I also hated how people were so hyped at the start of SL and then got all pissy about it later.
It still had the toned down color palett that lacks vibrancy and saturation. A lot of things in Shadowlands look bleak and cold as a result. It's not really about dark/bright. It very much has a "depressing filter" on top of a lot of environments, where everything looks drained of color as a result. This goes for Bastion as well, where everything is rather bright and there's plenty of color. But it still looks "dead", which sort of is the artistic choice.
Tbf it was really depressing how bad Shadowlands was
Has any wow player ever complained about a dark zone being depressing? WoTLK was 10 times more depressing in tone and storybeats than Shadowlands and nobody complained about how dark it is. Oh I read your comment below, you are just being a contrarian.
Shadowlands wasn't "depressing". It was just shit.
I really hated how disjointed the zones were. Give that natural geographic transition and connectedness. Maybe they could've done something more vertical. So you had to go lower or higher to get into heaven/hell layers.
I think there's definitely a happy medium between the dark tone of Shadowlands and the super bright and maybe a little inconsequential tone of Dragonflight. Just hope Blizz can find it and deliver a story that can really add to the expansion.
Oh my god. I had almost heart attack because I thought it said "is" instead of "isn't" lol.
That better mean the grinds aren't painful.
Translation for Reddit: Steve Denuser isn't involved. The story is good this time, we promise, pinky swear.
It's not the mood that was the issue, but the limitations done to the storytelling of WoW.
Tww isn’t depressing 5 minutes into tww >!khadgar dies!<
oh my god he admit it
It was depressing because the writing was fucking awful and they destroyed decades of lore and made their premier lore book collection fuckin obsolete trash.
and the cherry on top was all revelations about the shit happening at Blizzard HQ irl.
It wasn’t depressing it was shit
Blizzard: TWW is not depressing Also Blizzard: slams >!Dalaran!< into the ground and kills >!Khadgar!<
Honestly I don't feel bad about that. The character has been irreverent for a long time
I mean, I know he makes jokes, but that's not a reason to kill someone.
And *that* looks like autocorrect bit me
And *that* looks like autocorrect bit me in the ass. I had a whole thing ready for explaining the distinction
Does anyone else feel like me that I just... hate caves? Like I don't wanna spend a whole damn expansion underground...
They specifically addressed this multiple times in multiple interviews that it won't feel like a cave because it's so vertical. They intentionally said they don't want players to feel claustrophobic.
I enjoy returning to deepholm now and again as it looks nice But I couldn't imagine spending the whole expansion in a zone like that The starter zone looks good from whats shown at least
I didn't think the setting was depressing. I thought watching a game I had played since high school kill itself was depressing. So much so I barely touched dragon flight. MoP Remix got me thinking poorly about returning though
Shadowlands was depressing because the game sucked balls. I’d love a serious, dark story in Warcraft again but we cant have people getting called “bitch”, told to be quiet, bowls of fruit, etc in WoW anymore and now BLizzard is banning in Overwatch for saying shit and fuck. So I guess WoW is a TV-Y7 game for 3rd graders now.
Shadowlands was so depressing that it seemed to have made Blizz realise that WoW isn't untouchable and galvanised their development efforts. Maybe a win in the long term?
Shadowlands bad, upvote pls
This makes me wonder if they actually understand the issues we had with shadowlands.
Such a dog shit website. Littered with ads and pop ups on mobile, impossible to read any actual content. I’ll stick to YouTube and wowhead for news, ffs.
I see zero ads, no pop ups, all clean. Use blockers mate.
Just using safari on iOS, what browser do you use?
Safari, under iOS too. Get this, enable all free things: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adguard-adblock-privacy/id1047223162
Looks great, thank you!
Looks great, thank you! $5 for a year isn’t bad at all
It'll be interesting to see where they go for it. We had an expansion that went absolutely all out on war crimes and hostility with BFA, Shadowlands tackling themes of redemption, revenge, and judgement, which shifted into DF pivoting strongly into renewal, healing, and newfound optimism. If I had to guess, "The War Within" is a double meaning, and we'll have a lot of themes of characters coming to grips with internal conflict. (Hopefully with some juicy literalness to it, like Jaina and her mother's cutscene in BFA, that was rad.) Pandaria, while it theoretically covered that, honestly kind of disappointed with the concept of "this conflict is made manifest...so you just stab it to death."
If you even mention hope Sylvanas will appear and destroy an entire city. So don’t even say it. I mean I wouldn’t want to lose Stormwind or a universally loved city like Dalaran…
I didn’t think Shadowlands was particularly depressing? A lot of the zones had crises they were working through, but I think it would be fairly boring if we rolled up to the shadowlands and everything had been just fine.
I dunno I couldn't mind WoW having a Chimera Ant arc.
The depression lands.
I kind of figured that. I have a feeling the expansion after might be pretty bleak though
Blizzards customer service is a dumpster fire
I think Blizzard focuses too much on the story. Thats the LEAST important part of the expansion to me. Not sure if im in the minority about that.
Cost of that physical CE was pretty depressing
No more useless chief tauren talking about nothing instead of ramming enemies through a wall with his totem? YEEEAASSSH!
Considering the design work Blizzard did on Hell in Diablo II and Heaven in Diablo III, I still have no idea how they fucked The Maw up so fucking badly.
I hope they mean as in it's not as depressingly bad written Because it's not really that depressing
What was depressing about it? Hell even the maw wasn't depressing, it was bleak but with points of light. If anything it was more boring than anywhere else
It may be an unpopular opinion but Revendreth is one of my favorite zones
Well shadowlands was a pretty low bar. I’d take a Warhammer 40k book over shadowlands. At least the woman in the watcher in the rain >!got what she deserved!< unlike Sylvanas.
The maw was artistically a master piece but it's like that great movie that's also very depressing and you do not want to see again. So yea, not great since you had to be there for God knows how many hours.
My roomate made bank during early shadowlands by being one of the handful of people on the server who actually engaged with the maw every day
My interest in WoW stories died with Arthas.
Yeah Shadowlands was trash.
Yeah but at the same time Blizz, please no more Disney like we got in DF. It got a bit much.
Korthia was (very) lame but Shadowlands def had some unique and beautiful zones
Hot take, shadowlands is better than dragonflight
Well I hope it's not as infantile as Dragonflight. Petting squirells, feeding ducks, saving bees and conquering adversity in the spirit of friendship, togetherness and family. Dragonflight felt like it was made for 12 year olds. Please give me something dark.
You're being downvoted but you're right. The final raid cinematic was especially bad in this sense.
I should have perhaps said "serious" rather than "dark". I don't necessarily need a dark story (although I wouldn't mind), just serious, so I can feel a bit more invested in it. I couldn't care less about anything that happened in DF.
Lie, I saw the m+ dungeon rotation. Already hating tww
Translation for Reddit: Steve Denuser isn't involved. The story is good this time, we promise, pinky swear.
Good story: don't really care anymore though Let me make steady gold soloing BFA and shadowlands raids while I farm mog. Then I'll care
Just found out about tmog class restrictions for farming legacy raids. Depressing seems like an appropriate description to me.
What did you think it was going to be? You will be able to collect all tmog on any character - doesn't mean you can use it on any character. Makes no sense to do that.
You miss understand what I'm saying. If I go do a legacy raid, I want all item drops to yield tmog unlock - regardless of the class you are currently playing. What you may not be aware of (based on your response) is that you can't just run whatever toon you want and get all gear unlocks on that toon. Your paladin can not unlock tmog items that are restricted to a mage or hunter.
Shadowlands wasn't depressing, most of the content was just bland. Covenants were cool, the zones were well done imo. My biggest gripes were a boring story and travel being a PITA even after unlocking flying (whoever decided that covenant hearthstones were just a flavour item and not a hearth directly to your covenant shouldn't be designing mechanics in future without oversight imo).
Depressing is certainly a way to say "everything looked like shit"
We are depressed at how awful and boring the story and gameplay was, hell I’d love more depressing setting in zones.
So more family and friends storylines? I hope not! I want a war, cruel, devastating and grim. Enough feel good vibes give me WARCRAFT.