Blizzard

To me, this is the greatest start to an expansion. The leveling experience was a great introduction to the shadowlands storyline, and a huge step up over BFA zones. Pvp is the funnest since MoP, and Castle Nathria has been amazing (admittedly a bit overtuned in normal at launch, but it's fine now). Mythic+ feels great as I like all the dungeons (except Necrotic Wake, fuck that place), with the only complaint being that they should make anima scale off of mythic tier (something like 150 anima for +10). Overall, the gear is amazing and feels rewarding to grind for. From the mount farming I've done, it feels more varied and a huge step up from BFA.

However, there are two aspects of this expansion which are subpar to me - the Maw and Torghast. I feel like the Maw is only in beta so I can't hate on it too much. Torghast, however, feels like it's going in the wrong direction. During the first week of the expansion, I found it extremely fun to go through the various layers on my enhancement shaman. The anima powers felt varied, it was fast and fun, and the final boss provided a decent challenge. Since then, you have increased and plan to increase the HP of mobs. What once took me roughly 30 action packed minutes (Layer 3), took me 1.5 sluggish, boring hours (Layer 6). Roguelikes are supposed to provide you a format where you can go crazy and give classes crazy, wacky abilities, instead Blizzard seems fixed on making the experience more grueling and boring. Blizzard isn't even making Torghast more difficult, they are simply making it take longer. Here are three things you can do to fix Torghast:

1. Give mobs and bosses more mechanics: Its obvious recent changes have been focused on making the experience more difficult. However, more hp doesn't do that, it just makes it into a DPS check. What would you rather face, a stat check fight like Patchwerk, or something with more mechanics (like the majority of Castle Nathria bosses)? Mechanics create faster paced and action-packed gameplay, more HP does the opposite.

2. Make wacky powers: Torgast isnt permanent. Any abilities you gain will disappear after the run ends. So why are the anima powers so boring; most provide damage increases or cooldown reduction. For shaman, give me something crazy that summons a gigantic thundercloud over their head and does ridiculous damage. The greatest roguelikes, like Binding of Issac, give insane powers the more you play. In this mode fun > balance.

3. Give us more than sou

It was an incredible first 2 weeks, torghast was actually fun. Now, this is patch is what you call super fun! The difficulty by just making bosses have significantly higher hp was the best thing you all could have done!! /s

Honestly it feels like the dev team doesnt even play their own game.

Imagine how much better Classic would've been without 400-MS batching, rampant bots fly hacking, and servers that didn't shit themselves whenever 30+ players engaged in World PvP.

######Batching "The community asked for batching" is an asinine scapegoat statement that keeps getting echoed for modern Blizzard's incompetence and sheer laziness, and they need to be outright called for it.

The community asked for 2 sheeps happening at the same time, vanishing a death coil, etc because they are vital in preserving Vanilla's PvP.

400-MS batching where interrupts aren't even prioritized like they were in Vanilla, paint brushed throughout the bloody whole game to the point that even looting and interacting with NPCs feel clunky and laggy isn't exactly what the community asked for.

Private Servers nailed this. They ensured PvP dynamics were preserved but also kept batching window low to accommodate for the overall better internet today. This resulted in far better gameplay and PvP than what was experienced on Classic.

Imagine landing a heal in arenas only to have your partner die thanks to batching. Kiting melee around pillars is going to be near impossible if leeway range is left as it is on Classic. The arena scene in TBC is going to suffer heavy if these don't get addressed.

######Server Instability

Server instability has killed one of Vanilla's highlight experiences and that is massive World PvP. If Classic Fresh is going to be a thing, this needs to be addressed.

Private Servers managed to host larger World PvP battles with way less lag than what was experienced on Classic. I don't fully comprehend what they did to mitigate this, but from what I've read, they reduced the draw distance whenever players engaged in World PvP. Why can't Blizzard do this?

It's 2021 and we still have potato servers with piss poor performance, it's quite embarrassing. Learn from your mistakes and make the next fresh better. Upgrade the servers.

######Bots

This reeks of "we don't care about the health of our game because greed wins so fuck you". I mean, I've seen tons of posts asking for this to get addressed nicely, so maybe this'll do:

Address the fucking swarm of fly hacking bots that has infested Classic, because it impacts everything from the economy to every player's experience. Implement an anti-cheat that's not laughable.

Fix your fucking game.

We are paying $15/month for a 16 year old MMORPG. We deserve better.

I've noticed the last few days it's all back to highlights, pack openings and memes. There is nothing wrong with this but it's a far cry from the daily protest of the new Hearthstone rewards system.

And for what? A balance patch and a few packs thrown our way. Blizzard won. They waited till the cycle died down, threw a token "correction" to the rewards track and it's back to business as usual.

It happened with Hong Kong, what happened to "never forget"? It's happened now with the outrage to the game economy.

And hey, if you're happy with the game great, more power to you. And if you're not, it better be reflected in your pre-order next time. Maybe you've already left the game and you're not here to read this.

It's faux outrage and whining. Blizzard has learned time and time again that don't have to do anything about it.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and comments on here complaining that loot is too rare. If people keep saying this we will be right back where we were with BFA. Loot feels special right now and it feels earned. In BFA you were Showered with loot at every corner.

I don’t know how many of you are new to WoW but this isn’t Destiny you aren’t supposed to be able to fully gear out a character with Best in slot in 2 weeks. If people keep bitching about themselves being entitled to gear Blizzard will listen and they will come up with some Titan-Forging esque system and inflate the gear system again with too much nonsense and the cycle will repeat itself.

I don’t care if you did Mythics for 2 hours and didn’t get anything. I don’t care that you killed 5 raid bosses and only got anima. This is how the game should be. Because at the end of the day when you see someone with Full best in slot gear you know they have put in the time. That’s how the game was in vanilla and that’s how it is in Shadowlands. So unless you want gear bloat again for the love of god stop complaining about “a gear drought”.

Edit-To clarify I don’t think that People should be guaranteed loot for every activity they do. It can be frustrating to spend hours doing content to not get anything but imo it’s an necessary evil so people don’t get fully geared in 2 weeks and quit. Bringing back additional loot systems like master loot to raids would definitely make the loot system less painful for those who don’t get anything. At the end of the day it comes down to time invested and those who invest more time should have the more rare gear. I also think that bosses should drop wayyy more than 35 anima.

Legion was 2 expansions ago and it's impossible to solo most of the raids. Why is it taking so long to make it easier for level 60 characters to solo old content? In Legion I was able to easily solo MoP raids and in BFA I was able to easily solo WoD raids.

I also remember that in BFA after the first raid (Uldir) was released I was able to go and clear Antorus with a group of people. Where on the other hand, Nya'lotha is still impossible to do due to it being way to difficult and bosses one shotting people.

Why is it so different this time?

All in the title. Normal person would think that way: "Well, tanks and healers seem good in Torghast. We need to make it more fun for DPS specs too".

But Blizzard seems to usually go against the logic, and Torghast wasnt an exception. I liked it till this week as a tank. Now i simply dont want to put my foot there. Congratulations.

I mean the entire premise of the expansion was bringing Sylvanas to justice. She didn't hesitate commiting genocide in Teldrassil and sending all of those souls to the maw and she didn't hesitate with all of her other crimes.

Since BfA had a severe lack of a resolution for Teldrassil and the justice that was promised, I thought that Shadowlands would be the expansion where we would finally bring Sylvanas to justice.

Now though, after seeing that latest cinematic, it leaves a really bad taste that Sylvanas is about to be redeemed or vindicated. It's almost like they completely ignore what Sylvanas did in BfA, and this happened right after Legion.

There's also Tyrande who wanted to bring Sylvanas to justice, but the only way for her story to end is to just be cleansed from the Night Warrior powers and be brought out of the maw, or to die. Both of those are lacking justice, and I was hoping that atleast Sylvanas would be brought to justice after the Night Elves got basically nothing out of BfA. They were the victims of genocide and their souls were tortured, many of them even obliterated, I thought it was natural to assume that Shadowlands, the expansion that I thought was meant to bring Sylvanas to justice, would not end up vindicating Sylvanas or redeeming her.

I have a complicated relationship with Torghast. I play a lot of Roguelites and Roguelikes, and there is no question about it...Torghast is a really soggy, undercooked, unexciting Rougelike experience.

• Far, FAR too samey. Same levels with same layouts, same bosses, same mobs. Every time. 6 "different" themes (all of which are different flavors of "Oops all Mawsworn") isn't nearly enough variety for the amount of time you can spend in there. For a game with such a vast swath of previous content and art assets at their disposal, that this is the best they could come up with is disappointing.
• Too few powers, and too few of those powers meaningfully change gameplay. This hits some classes particularly hard, whereas others (Druids, as usual) bask in the limitless love of developer attention.
• Too many level specific maluses put a timer on the content. We already have Mythic + for this nonsense. Find a different way to cultivate challenge other than "Go fast!".
• Too unrewarding. Soul Ash is nice and all, but should be drip fed per floor instead of stacked on the end boss. Why are cosmetic rewards restricted to Twisting Corridors? And why ON EARTH are there only FOUR OF THEM for 144 potential Torghast floors? What kind of sad drip feed is that? We've got anima vendors all over the game practically vomiting mounts, pets and weapon skins at us. Why is farming anima off world quests so much more rewarding than this? How does that make sense?

So why do I like it, and think it's the most important/fun thing Blizzard has done since this game was shiny and new? It's meaningfully challenging solo content. Yes, I'm aware you can absolutely break the challenge by lucking into a broken combo, but that's half the joy of Roguelikes, and why they're such a persistent and widely loved genre. Mage Tower was great, but Mage Tower wasn't sticky content...it was one and done. MMO players expect their play modes to be evergreen, but Raiding, Dungeons and Battlegrounds are all mandatory group activities, and the only thing solo players have received is World Quests (Dailies with a false nose and sunglasses on) and...drumroll...the widely neglected Pet Battles.

Now, I don't want to get into it with the whole "SHOW ME WHERE IT SAYS MASSIVELY SINGLE PLAYER GAME" portion of the audience, I like group content sometimes. Sometimes. Part of what made WoW such a frustration post early Vanilla and eventually drives a large portion of the audience away until the next expansion pac

Don't forget the 20% extra XP was described as COMPENSATION FOR THE EVENTS, the events they said we would get and we didn't.

We don't even know when Winterveil starts, last year we got the annoucement Dec. 3 for the event to start on Dec. 11. They want to make the event as short as they can so we get the least possible amount of rewards.

EDIT: OH! 100 gold, wasn't it?

Why can my 191-geared level 60 not clear something that my old ~120-geared lvl 50 has no issues doing? Why are Legion raids not soloable? People have been doing content in this fashion since Cataclysm. Sort your shit, Blizz.

EDIT:

Since this got a little more traction than I thought it would, and it's not quite time for Day 2, I'll post some follow-up information here.

On today's reset, I took my 194-ilvl, legendary-having Shadow Priest into Mythic Tomb of Sargeras. I was able to kill the first boss, but it was a close thing that required all my defensive CDs to survive mechanics, and took ALMOST THREE MINUTES to accomplish (~22k DPS).

Over the course of the fight, I took over 279k damage, with the increased damage from Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch providing the healing that kept me alive.

Upon death, the boss dropped 2 Artifact relics, making 2/5 drops worthless towards any transmog chances.

2nd boss wasn't terrible, just tedious with the mechanics. Harjatan will kill anyone who can't meet the DPS check before his stacking damage buff + your debuff just 1-shots you.

I stopped after that because I was annoyed and had other things to do. Yes, I'm doing roughly 8x more damage in the raid. It doesn't matter. I should be 3-shotting these bosses. I can kill things in Mythic HFC with a Shadow Word: Pain. This is one of two things: A change in design philosophy which flies in the face of almost 10 years of game-play evolution, or an oversight. Neither are acceptable.

Edit: Pack it up boys, Day 3 was removed by Mods. Gotta' love it.

The leavers are insane.

Because why did the chicken cross the road?

It has been a month of shadowlands, and still not a single word on the unbalanced dumpsterfire shitshow that is adventure mission tables.

On my Kyrian & Venthyr, I need to be 15-20+ levels higher than most campaign bosses + maw.

On necrolord & fae, I can be 10-20 levels below the mission and completely faceroll it.

...-Why the almighty flying duck hasn't there been a single change or mention of this?

This should be the fun " cool down" part of WoW. I love being able to AFK in Torg, while still being on. Sometimes I have stuff to do IRL and can only play in increments, and Torg is perfect for that. Please don't ruin it by over buffing. This is your only chance to make this solo rogue like dungeon. Don't make it a chore like you already are.

There's so much easy untapped potential in cosmetic glyphs and it would add a great deal to the game in terms of customization. They could even be as simple as color swaps for spells and we could really use stuff like more ghost wolf forms to make the spell more appropriate for races other than orc/troll. There are also some existing glyphs that have been bugged for years: glyph of shadow or glyph of shadowy fiends break void form's vfx since legion and glyph of wrathguard hasn't been able to dual wield properly for several years, just off the top of my head.

It's as if blizz has just decided to ignore glyphs and hope we forget about them entirely.

We've brought up our concerns with scaling issues with old raid content since pre-patch. Initially, we were told it would get better when we hit level cap, but it didn't. It actually got worse for certain raids where a level 50 character can do more damage than a 60.

I hope Blizzard can take as quick of action on this scaling issue as they did with Torghast's recent difficulty issues. Running old raids is fun for solo purposes and some of best transmog is from Legion.

I know bliz isn't purposefully ruining one of the three pillars of endgame, but it sure feels like the are. In the very least, they have no clue what the fuck they are doing.

I should preface this by saying the way I play WoW is tanking M+. I don't have time to raid, and PvP isn't something I enjoy. I get others play the game differently, but for others who mostly M+ the game is a train wreck.

The loot is awful. I understand the removal of titan forging, but having no way to get heroic raid quality loot+ from running dungeons -- outside the vault -- is nonsense. This is where I get my loot, and ilvl has become a useless way to tell if I should bring someone for my key. Sure, dps can do 7/10 heroic... but it doesn't mean they are competent. I swear, some don't even have interrupt bound. They don't understand how to help a tank kite with their cc and they can't seem to avoid mechanics to save their life. They aren't good at the game, but their ilvl tells me they are. They did what bliz considers harder content, so they have better loot.

There is fucking one mount for 8 dungeons. Outside of loot, there is next to no reason to M+ unless you're going for the leaderboards... Which you can't reasonably top without the loot from Mythic raids.

The affixes are not thought out. What the FUCK is going on this week? You literally have to kite to make some of these timers. Especially in dungeons like DoS. To drop necrotic, you have to kite. Except this week, you literally can't in a lot of cases! CC straight can't happen, and you can't face tank for more than 5 seconds(With Meta popped as a VDH) before wiping. Lets not forget the bosses that literally don't let you drop necrotic stacks. What is this? There is no way to play around it.

Bad affixes, shit loot, and no aesthetic rewards are ruining my favorite way to play the game. I just don't understand what bliz is doing here. I can't reasonably progress when loot is trash and affixes are nonsense. The way I play the game is miserable, and I'm a few weeks away from unsubbing. I do not care if some high end guilds abused the mythic loot system in the past, your changes to address are ruining the game for FAR more players. Please, just fix the way I play the game. The race to world first is over....I just want to enjoy playing WoW after work.

Man, people were so nice early on, now people just que to a dungeon, kill the boss they need and leave the dungeon. No consequences what so ever.

It's not happening once or twice it is literally every single run 1 or 2 people leave upon killing the boss that drops the item they need.

Fucking sick of it honestly, so annoying.

/rant

Excerpts/highlights from the previous thread found here

• u/LaNCL It's not only a Legion problem but ALL content. You do less dmg in every kind of content.

At prepatch I ran blacktemple hitting above 6 figures or even 7 figures at 110 item level, I know it doesnt matter but today I'm hitting at only 5 figures with 170 iLevel. Then I went to Mogu Vault and when I was 1shooting every boss before, now they survive a full rotation.

• u/Xtrm Blizzard wants specific examples, Slootbag had an interview with Ion last night and here's what they said.

  Any plans to fix old raid tuning?

  They're curious to hear specific examples. There was a bug in the first week of Shadowlands where the scaling benefit against Legion content went down as you leveled. That should be working as intended. Players who compared themselves at the end of the last expansion and the beginning of this expansion and find that it's talking longer is an unfortunate thing about leveling up in WoW and the way combat ratings work.

Edit: Sorry folks, that's all she wrote. Day 3 got deleted by mods. Gotta' love it..