Shadowlands' first year was so disappointing I've given up on WoW | PC Gamer - hallplis1986
Shadowlands' first year was so disappointing I've surrendered au fait WoW
When Shadowlands first launched a year ago, it felt like World of Warcraft was on a retort streak. Combat for Azeroth, the preceding expansion, had been peerless of the most contentious in the MMO's history—straight-grained if Snowstorm did improve about of the features that players hated. But Shadowlands was a clean slate. A chance to press reset and push WoW into a spick-and-span geological era, altogether while tearing the veil off of one of Azeroth's most fascinating realms: the afterlife. There were new zones to explore, untried gear to obtain, and a whole smattering of new progression systems to learn and tinker with. It was an exciting time.
Fast forward one year, though, and I couldn't feel more differently about World of Warcraft.
With distressingly large gaps between its underwhelming updates, Activision Blizzard's many secernment and unisexual molestation lawsuits and investigations, and a creative sight that feels altogether divorced from what players actually want, I have never mat up so disenfranchised with World of Warcraft and so uncertain of its future. In fact, I've stopped playacting altogether and have no plans on return. But to understand why, we have to look bet on over the good, the bad, and the ugly Reality of Warcraft: Shadowlands' first year.
Launch day
Playing World of Warcraft these past fewer long time has felt like organism trapped in a perpetual explorative test.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands held a shell out of promise at launch. It was biggish and beautiful, and the five untested zones—each themed after a different fantasy afterlife—were gorgeous and full of entertaining surprises. In my review, I said Shadowlands "is the best World of Warcraft has been in a long while." If entirely I had noted.
What I liked or so Shadowlands at the fourth dimension was how ambitious Blizzard had been with trying new things. Torghast, for example, was a randomly-generated roguelike dungeon where you accrued funny and wild temporary powers ended the course of your flow from. Like any effective roguelike, sometimes I'd get a hodge-podge of random abilities, and other multiplication I'd luck into a synergy that was so powerful I'd thin out through Torghast's enemies like room temperature butter.
Shadowlands had also successful several smart adjustments based connected the negative receipt to Battle for Azeroth. Randomness played a much littler role in getting new gearing, and a other Known equipment system LET you track down ad hoc recipes and craft powerful Legendary items instead of just praying to RNGesus the right one would arbitrarily swing.
But, just like Combat for Azeroth, Shadowlands divided the community over a handful of features that players scorned. The biggest was Covenants, a sort of gang up you'd join once hit max level and beating the story. Each Covenant had their own base that could live leveled up, along with special story quests, specific abilities, and redoubtable cosmetic armor pieces. It was meant to equal a choice Eastern Samoa important as choosing what class you cherished to play as, simply not everyone was convinced it would act.
Starting from A early as Shadowland's alpha tests, players pointed out how imbalanced Covenant special abilities would credible strength players to blame matchless solely supported whatever gave them a slightly better edge, rather than which one they thought was cooler. Along with a secondary talent tree system called Soulbinds that was similarly restrictive, many players were concerned that Shadowlands' endgame would palpate limiting and frustrating. And time ultimately evidenced them right.
The long drought
Ordinarily, an expansion's first major update hits a a couple of months after launch—once players take up a chance to level up and are get-go to tire of the repetitive endgame drudge. But whether collectible to the pandemic or something else, Shadowlands' 9.1 update finished up shipping untold later. It took 218 days before the handout of the first John Roy Major spell, the longest disruption between an expansion let go and its first major update in WoW's 17-year-history. It sucked.
This drouth sapped all impulse Shadowlands had sledding for it and exacerbated player's complaints. Covenants, for representative, began to feel much more discretionary and restrictive than consequential. Choosing one was meant to be permanent (switching came with big setbacks), but it ended upfield feeling like Shadowlands was an enlargement you salaried chockful price for and sole received a billet of. If you wanted to receive new Covenant storylines OR earn their gear, you had to start a untried character and grind for it.
Even Torghast began to irk me. There just wasn't enough diversity compared to proper roguelikes to sustain how often I needed to complete it for resources to power up my Legendary items. Merely because of the mode rewards were distributed, information technology was possible to pass up of 40 minutes on a run only to die and get nothing. I've never had a more preventative experience in World of Warcraft in the years I've been playing it.
The volume of Update 9.1 was a disappointingly tiny new zone to explore called Korthia and some more insistent weekly activities where you'd fight aboard the different Covenants. One big ray of go for was that 9.1 would push the story forward and ultimately let players duke it out with long-time baddie Sylvanas in the new raid. Only the cutscene that we had waited so long to see—one that I hoped would finally make the story interesting—was indeed unbelievably terrible the WoW subreddit instantly filled with bemock and scorn. There was atomic number 102 blockage and none emotional proceeds, retributive another stilted plot twist and some new macguffins to chase.
Since beta, players have complained about these exact issues and Blizzard didn't listen.
That's where World of Warcraft has been for the past five months. In that time, Activision Blizzard's culture of sexual harassment and discrimination was also exposed through lawsuits and investigative reports. Players responded by cancelling their subscriptions nut masse and staging protests in-game with their remaining game time, while employees staged their own walkouts to demand more answerability.
Around that clock time, Blizzard began devising small updates to World of Warcraft, to remove dialogue, characters, and references—all but of them decades old—that it considered offensive. It was something that should've happened long ago, but Blizzard's decisiveness to only follow up on it now irritated many players who were do-or-die for bigger changes to problems they felt were more relevant, like Shadowlands' stagnant endgame.
Those changes did come, though. Earlier this month, Blizzard released a surprise patch 9.1.5 that enclosed a ton of the virtually-requested quality-of-life features. Players can finally switch between Covenants freely and level them up individually along one grapheme, for exemplar, and there's a host of modern view up systems that make it easier than always to get cracking on the endgame grind.
But those changes are far insufficient too late. Since beta, players have complained about these exact issues and Blizzard didn't listen. Even during those 218 days, WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas asserted that Blizzard was not going to elevator the restrictions on Covenants (even afterward hinting that it might). Then, all of a choppy the growing team pulls a 180 and does exactly what information technology said information technology wouldn't. Thus, what denaturised?
The resolution isn't clear-thinking, but you tail end guess that the bouffant Exodus of WoW streamers going to play Final Fantasy 14 instead—followed by a huge swathe of players—definitely had something to do with it. During the summer months, close to of WoW's biggest YouTubers and streamers instantaneously drop out the mettlesome, including Advocate and MadSeason, two of WoW's oldest and most recognizable faces.
Just even if Rash in time caved, there's no cause for celebration. While many of these issues facing the game feel relatively small connected their own, together they fix World of Warcraft feel like it's in the midst of its worst identity crisis ever. As someone that's been writing about information technology for over quintet years, I've lost whatsoever hope in its future. I've unsubscribed and birth no intention of playing it again.
Freehanded awake
There's just no literal indication Blizzard is any closer to having a consistent vision for World of Warcraft.
Shadowlands has highlighted exactly how unsustainable Human race of Warcraft has become. It's locked in an displeasing cycle of Blizzard swinging big happening manque expansions and past doing very little to address player feedback until remote too late. Just like Fight for Azeroth, Shadowlands had forebode simply launched with extraordinary clear issues that were left to suppurating sore unacknowledged for months until the community became sol irate that Blizzard had to respond. But now that some of these meaningful changes are actually implemented, we're already nearing the end of the expansion, and the cycles/second repeats. Playing Worldwide of Warcraft these past few years has felt like-minded being trapped in a perpetual beta test, which alone makes its premium-priced expansions, subscription fee, and account services even more scurrilous.
MMOs are games in motion. They penury momentum, but Reality of Warcraft feels like IT's cragfast in a hamster wheel: a bike of forebode, repentance, and action that ne'er actually improves the game in whatever touchable way because each radical enlargement wipes the slate immaculate even as the last one was protrusive to improve. It makes it impossible to be anything only cynical about new announcements and next yr's new elaboration because on that point's just no very indication Snowstorm is any finisher to having a consistent imaginativeness for World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was supposed to be a retort story after Battle for Azeroth's many controversies, but instead it just remixed them in new and preventative ways. It's carried almost entirely on the force of its world and raid design, while everything else—story, activities, progression—have slowly turned into a mess of conflicting ideas and promises that next time things will represent better. Simply after Shadowlands, I'm through with fond.
With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether IT's stupendous in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers WHO turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest much stories. His enjoy of PC gaming started extremely other. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for leastwise a one hundred hours. Information technology was a good demonstrate.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/shadowlands-first-year-was-so-disappointing-ive-given-up-on-wow/
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