World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

 PC
User Score
2.6

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 2560 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 561 out of 2560
  2. Mixed: 98 out of 2560
  3. Negative: 1,901 out of 2560

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  1. Rsllo
    Nov 8, 2021
    1
    Shame on Blizzard and their shady methods to keep players subscribed. Unfortunately there are still many players left, who fall for things like FOMO, probably out of nostalgia of better times.

    For those people, if you are reading this, get out of this toxic relationship. wow isn't the only mmo out there. There is a very prominent mmo, that is in many ways a lot better than wow in it's    Shame on Blizzard and their shady methods to keep players subscribed. Unfortunately there are still many players left, who fall for things like FOMO, probably out of nostalgia of better times.

    For those people, if you are reading this, get out of this toxic relationship. wow isn't the only mmo out there. There is a very prominent mmo, that is in many ways a lot better than wow in it's current state (bfa & sl).

    This comment however is not about other mmos, so here are the worst things about modern wow:
    FOMO (like the mage tower),
    racial segregation of playable races = no free faction choice,
    grindful meaningless systems,
    choregast,
    the lore... can't get any worse than it is now with Sylvanas and her Mary Sue arc,
    content droughts,
    no account wide reputation,
    faction imbalance,
    no cross faction raiding,
    class imbalance,
    extremely outdated world design, npcs, cutomization options and player models in general,
    still no player housing,
    no dyeable gear,
    removal of emotes and several other things nobody asked for but hilariously letting racism with their races stay in the game.    … Expand
  2. Awara
    Nov 9, 2021
    1
    Shadowlands, just like bfa, has bad lore (Sylvanas = yikes!), bad systems, imbalance problems and instead of removing the idiotic division of playable races (which clearly is based on a racist mindset = racial segregation) they rather remove emotes Imao.
    Such a clown party. Don't play wow as long as it continues to be on this terrible path.
  3. Lokaar
    Nov 10, 2021
    2
    Blizzard: Hey guys, look at us! We are removing emotes, because they are so toxic and not exclusive at all!

    Also Blizzard: Don't you dare question our racial segregation. We have you know that racism is the pillar of wow and playable races will keep their hive mind, instead of free will and free choice to what faction they want to be loyal to! If you look up hypocrisy in a dictionary    Blizzard: Hey guys, look at us! We are removing emotes, because they are so toxic and not exclusive at all!

    Also Blizzard: Don't you dare question our racial segregation. We have you know that racism is the pillar of wow and playable races will keep their hive mind, instead of free will and free choice to what faction they want to be loyal to!

    If you look up hypocrisy in a dictionary you will probably find Blizzard right beside it.

    Racism is just one of many problems wow faces. With Blizzard's changes in 9.1.5. this specific problem just is more apparent.

    Borrowed power systems, lore, still no cross faction raiding, FOMO and a lot of other things in this game need major changes too.

    I can't recommend wow as long as they ignore these obvious problems.    … Expand
  4. Henrylo
    Nov 15, 2021
    1
    Oof, I thought it couldn't get worse after bfa... I was wrong. With Shadowlands wow continues to be a painfully bad game.

    The story continues to be so bad... I just don't know what to say about it anymore to be honest. They ruined the factions, Azshara, N'Zoth and the night elves in bfa and now they ruined not only Elune, but also the lore of the titans and in general 17 years old    Oof, I thought it couldn't get worse after bfa... I was wrong. With Shadowlands wow continues to be a painfully bad game.

    The story continues to be so bad... I just don't know what to say about it anymore to be honest. They ruined the factions, Azshara, N'Zoth and the night elves in bfa and now they ruined not only Elune, but also the lore of the titans and in general 17 years old lore... it's just... really really sad.
    I think a big factor for all of this is the writer's never ending focus on Sylvanas. I really wish she would have died back then in wrath, so that all of this idotic writing we have since bfa would have never happened.

    Then there are the usual things like FOMO (mage tower for example... what a slap in the face),
    faction and class imbalance, especially faction imbalance, which the devs continue to make worse and worse with their decisions and still no cross faction play in sight,
    then the hypocrisy as mentioned by others already: They remove emotes, because they claim those would be toxic, yet holding on to racism with the racial segregation of the playable races instead of letting players choose their faction freely and not based on races... jeez,
    the content droughts... oh, the long content droughts,
    laughable customization options, not only too few in general but also extremly unfairly spread among the races.

    There is so much more, but in all honesty, I'm just exhausted by even talking about this game at this point. The devs aren't listening anyway. Instead they want to preach the players what they want, a la:
    "You think you do, but you don't", now shut up, give us your money and enjoy dozens of new repetitive borrowed power systems.    … Expand
  5. Bearoo
    Aug 18, 2021
    1
    Shadowlands is a dumpster fire. You can't sugarcoat it anymore.
    I could list a lot of things that need major changes, but since Blizzard keeps ignoring feedback or straight up corrupts their player's wishes... well, dunno, if there is any point in that.
    Guess I could list the main thing why my friends and I finally quit this game (probably for good, since we don't see any changes coming,    Shadowlands is a dumpster fire. You can't sugarcoat it anymore.
    I could list a lot of things that need major changes, but since Blizzard keeps ignoring feedback or straight up corrupts their player's wishes... well, dunno, if there is any point in that.
    Guess I could list the main thing why my friends and I finally quit this game (probably for good, since we don't see any changes coming, regarding this issue).

    1 of the 2 factions in this game is almost dead playerwise. It came to this because the Devs were actively pandering to the faction that is overpopulated ever since blood elves made their entrance. Giving the small faction overweight humans and junk gnomes, while giving the overpopulated faction an adorable new fox race and a better looking version of an old race in the last expansion didn't help either. Strange, right?! The overpopulated faction had one advantage after the other, one of them= op racials among other things.

    So me and my friends too had to play the overpopulated faction for the last couple of years in order to get anything done. Even though we prefer the small faction. Yeah, that sucks. The whole faction system in wow sucks. But Blizzard simply doesn't seem to care as long as their favorite faction has the upper hand.

    Players are asking for years now for a new faction system, that would allow us to play all races and with all players but everything in this game stays stale and outdated. No place for new and innovative ideas.

    Since bfa and Shadowlands are in general bad expansions our guild on the overpopulated faction died out now too and we have no desire to search for a new one. We never felt at home in the big faction anyway and when I logg on my alts on the small faction... well, there is almost nobody left to play with. Guess I just give up on this game. The outdated faction system is just... awful for the player experience.

    I much more prefer the faction system in Final Fantsy 14, that let's us play all races and with all players. Not to mention that ff14 has way more interesting features anyway.    … Expand
  6. Haarl
    May 9, 2021
    0
    This is undoubtedly the worst WoW expansion yet. The devs seem to be focused on making the game slow, annoying, and inconvenient, as if a game set in a kind of hell should be true hell for the players. I found I was simply unable to force myself to log in and keep playing, even with months left on my subscription. My sub finally did run out (I had not been playing) and 2 1/2 monthsThis is undoubtedly the worst WoW expansion yet. The devs seem to be focused on making the game slow, annoying, and inconvenient, as if a game set in a kind of hell should be true hell for the players. I found I was simply unable to force myself to log in and keep playing, even with months left on my subscription. My sub finally did run out (I had not been playing) and 2 1/2 months later nothing I have seen makes me want to return. If anything, it's looking even more dire as the devs double down on their unworkable conceits.… Expand
  7. Roto
    Mar 12, 2022
    0
    Everytime you think Blizzard couldn't mess up the lore of this game any further... surprise, sursprise! It get's worse. With the end of Legion to the end of Shdowlands... well, the lore is a dumpster fire. I'd love them to just retcon bfa and shadowlands entirely to fix this mess.
    Oh and while Blizzard is pretending to be more tolerant and open towards all minorities by removing some    Everytime you think Blizzard couldn't mess up the lore of this game any further... surprise, sursprise! It get's worse. With the end of Legion to the end of Shdowlands... well, the lore is a dumpster fire. I'd love them to just retcon bfa and shadowlands entirely to fix this mess.
    Oh and while Blizzard is pretending to be more tolerant and open towards all minorities by removing some emotes and changing an ingame painting of a woman to a bowl of fruits... yeah, they really did that, they are keeping strict racial segregation in their game, the only exception being Pandaren.
    Such hypocrisy xD
    Oh well, just don't play this messy game. Old graphics, class imbalance, faction imbalance, fomo, time gating, content droughts... it's just not worth anyone's time.    … Expand
  8. 5View
    Jan 15, 2021
    4
    Pros:

    Not many. On the margins, it's merely more of the same. This might be a pro if you like more of the same. The visual effects are pretty good. Depending on your taste, you are likely to find one or more zone in Shadowlands to be beautiful. Cons: More of the same. Seriously, not much new here and... You'll end up in endless repetition. Anima farming. Same handful of    Pros:

    Not many.

    On the margins, it's merely more of the same. This might be a pro if you like more of the same.

    The visual effects are pretty good. Depending on your taste, you are likely to find one or more zone in Shadowlands to be beautiful.

    Cons:

    More of the same. Seriously, not much new here and...

    You'll end up in endless repetition. Anima farming. Same handful of world quests over and over and over and over. Same old battlegrounds over and over and over. Basically, raiding and dungeons aren't many, and in any case you'll be doing them over and over and over because....

    Rewards? Aren't many. Everything is time gated to begin with. But RNG drop rates are almost non-existent, or might as well be. This expansion truly is a massive grind, where you find yourself mindlessly repeating the same activities week after week, even day after day, only for a few droplets of rain when you are dying of thirst already. The designers of the expansion appear to have devised a theory that gamers like being punished for spending huge chunks of their free time in the world of World of Warcraft. Simultaneously, they don't want you to progress in any noticeable way because you might feel you've "finished" something, maybe the game, and unsub.

    There's nothing new in this game. Borrowed powers? Done it before. New playable race or class? Nope. Useful professions? Hah, you gotta be kidding.

    Conclusion: There are players who have invested years in the game, and perhaps if repetition and long periods of busy work between raid or mythic times are what they like, then they'll stick around, and why not. You'll get to repeat (without the rinse first) over and over.

    Basically, the cost of subscription to WoW is way too high for the content provided. You can pay as much or even less for a large number of streaming services and find far more entertainment with any of those. Heck, you can save your subscription from WoW and spend it on other games for your PC or console and probably find games much more rewarding (entertaining!) than this slog fest. You'll notice a very obvious difference between the design team of WoW and the design team of other games. In WoW, the designers play YOU, by time gating so much and giving you so many hoops to jump through before you can have much fun with your character in Shadowlands. In other game, the designers try at least to find ways to make the minute to minute and hour to hour experience of playing them FUN. This is a huge and noticeable difference.    … Expand
  9. hungry_dingus
    Jan 15, 2021
    2
    4/10

    Time-gating and poor loot progression between PVE and PVP hinder replay value. The addition of a rogue-lite in the game was not at all innovative and has only become a vehicle for adding a time-sink with no real value. The final pin, the lack of effort in balancing classes. Ultimately it is an expansion that doesn’t respect the end user and panders largely to a smaller    4/10

    Time-gating and poor loot progression between PVE and PVP hinder replay value.

    The addition of a rogue-lite in the game was not at all innovative and has only become a vehicle for adding a time-sink with no real value.

    The final pin, the lack of effort in balancing classes.

    Ultimately it is an expansion that doesn’t respect the end user and panders largely to a smaller subsect of elite players.

    Honorable mention to the music and art department who did an awesome job setting the tone and atmosphere.    … Expand
  10. houjo2000
    Jun 28, 2021
    1
    The great levelling overhaul makes ShL seem very alt friendly at first- but once you hit max level the sheer amount of grindy, time wasting repetitive systems is at an all time high, you need a daily planner to keep track of it all.

    At the same time, they've made the game considerably less rewarding, reducing the loot from just about every type of content, reducing the value of the    The great levelling overhaul makes ShL seem very alt friendly at first- but once you hit max level the sheer amount of grindy, time wasting repetitive systems is at an all time high, you need a daily planner to keep track of it all.

    At the same time, they've made the game considerably less rewarding, reducing the loot from just about every type of content, reducing the value of the content that is done by the most players. This game might be fine for the hardcore players with premade groups, but it's unacceptable for just about everyone else after the initial chunk of content.

    At the moment, this feels worse than WoD, BfA and Cata- avoid it if you can, and if you're a new player pick another MMO. The easy leveling system may make this seem at first to be very welcoming to new players, but everything else makes that far from the truth.    … Expand
  11. Xsander
    Jan 16, 2021
    0
    Covenant system it's a big fail, can't play pve and pvp cuz of night fae ability for my hunter is the total trash in pvp but it's best covenant for pve. I don't like it when you need to choose only one direction pvp or pve.
  12. Archimond
    Jan 6, 2021
    0
    Это единственное из дополнений после выхода которого я удалил игру спустя три недели с начала его выхода, это рекорд. Даже в дреноре было интереснее сидеть в гарнизоне. Просто в какой то момент понимаешь что мысль о запуске игры вызывает у тебя отвращение. это при том что до окончания подписки еще месяц. Во всех дополнениях были хотя бы интересные квесты на прокачке персонажа а в энд геймЭто единственное из дополнений после выхода которого я удалил игру спустя три недели с начала его выхода, это рекорд. Даже в дреноре было интереснее сидеть в гарнизоне. Просто в какой то момент понимаешь что мысль о запуске игры вызывает у тебя отвращение. это при том что до окончания подписки еще месяц. Во всех дополнениях были хотя бы интересные квесты на прокачке персонажа а в энд гейм игре начинались проблемы, тут же даже задания скучны и не интересны, была надежда на Малдраксус и Ревендрет, но она не оправдалась. В итоге для меня WOW Shadowlands стал огромным разочарованием, и я уже не верю что близзард сможет выпустить чтото стоящее, надо посмотреть еще на диабло 4, но надежды мало.… Expand
  13. mihael447
    Dec 30, 2020
    0
    worst pvp balance i've ever seen in wow. i regret that i spend money on this
  14. worminsh
    Jan 13, 2021
    1
    Expansions sales point Thorgast, after 10th time doing it, its gets super boring.
    Nothing new invented, covenants its same talent trees, thats about it, nothing NEW in that game, what you seen 10 years ago its all the same, just different wallpaper.
    PVP the most unbalanced game what I seen so far, they have not tested their game, cos there are so many broken skills and 1 shoots. Bots    Expansions sales point Thorgast, after 10th time doing it, its gets super boring.
    Nothing new invented, covenants its same talent trees, thats about it, nothing NEW in that game, what you seen 10 years ago its all the same, just different wallpaper.
    PVP the most unbalanced game what I seen so far, they have not tested their game, cos there are so many broken skills and 1 shoots. Bots running wild and nothing has done about it,. they say they ban them each 6 months in waves, after 10 minutes those bots are back.
    I got a feeling that they are lacking workforce cos basic things has not been done.
    Art team are great, thats on positive note, but I came for gameplay not to look at pretty things.    … Expand
  15. Zunsjki
    Mar 18, 2022
    2
    The lore of this game... just oof... I can't even describe the amount of cringe Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands have in their story. Really, really bad storytelling.

    Gameplay... another oof. This game is extremely unbalanced regarding classes and factions, yet they are still not allowing cross faction guilds and free faction choice for all races instead of archaic racial segregation    The lore of this game... just oof... I can't even describe the amount of cringe Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands have in their story. Really, really bad storytelling.

    Gameplay... another oof. This game is extremely unbalanced regarding classes and factions, yet they are still not allowing cross faction guilds and free faction choice for all races instead of archaic racial segregation that should have no place in a modern game, there is still no cross faction lfr & lfd and no cross faction alt mailing.

    There is a also lot, A LOT of time gating and FOMO in this game.

    2 points for the nice looking enviroment in the new zones, though technically I should take these points away considering that most zones in this game look like they are stuck in 2004. Really old graphics...    … Expand
  16. diralark
    Mar 7, 2022
    0
    Nothing interesting in this game.
    PVP is non existent !
    The quest and the PVE is so boring omfg :/
    worst addon ever !
  17. TonyMcTonyJimmy
    Dec 16, 2020
    3
    Blizzard seems to have bent over backward to appease so-called "difficulty fetishists" who thrive on masked tedium disguised as "challenge" with Shadowlands. A lot of the fun is crushed by tedium, chores, and scaling mobs that remove all sense of progress. Got some gear? Mobs hit you harder and take longer to kill now, grats. PVE sees nerfs because of PVP. Classes see heavy nerfs becauseBlizzard seems to have bent over backward to appease so-called "difficulty fetishists" who thrive on masked tedium disguised as "challenge" with Shadowlands. A lot of the fun is crushed by tedium, chores, and scaling mobs that remove all sense of progress. Got some gear? Mobs hit you harder and take longer to kill now, grats. PVE sees nerfs because of PVP. Classes see heavy nerfs because they perform well. I'm not kidding. Poor performing/designed classes will often be left to rot until the next expansion, because Blizzard is against working on a class during an expansion. Unless it's to nerf it into oblivion.

    The game looks good and sometimes works well. But the pile of other stuff just wears you down until you can't remember what fun felt like.

    Thanks to this a lot of players spend more time going at each other on the forums than actually playing the game. It amazes me Blizzard is cool with the "like it all without question or get out" crowd but they've never stepped in to stop it. They actively pit us against each other by stoking competition at every angle, even inside your own faction.

    If you like to have fun. If you play games for enjoyment. If you like story, player housing, collections, crafting, gear appearances, or community you'll probably be disappointed. You're no longer rewarded for doing something. Like a proper casino you only have a chance to be rewarded. This supposedly makes gear "meaningful." The reality of it is by the time you get the gear you either no longer need it or can't use it. Some rewards ignore your class specialization and gives you whatever's laying around. Hunter has two ranged specs and one melee; your chances of getting a weapon not for your spec is surprisingly high. repeat gear is very common as well. So, a hard fought "reward" goes in the trash.

    Gear is no longer seen as a tool, like a saw or hammer. The common anti-gripe is that you don't need the gear if you're not doing high-end raids and so forth. Well, if you did it without that gear, to get that gear, then you didn't need it either. Blizzard is telling a carpenter to build a deck for the chance to receive a saw or hammer as compensation. If they don't get a tool after building 12 decks? Well, maybe next time. Blizzard tells us this is "exciting."

    The only people left who can really enjoy all of this are suffering from severe Stockholm Syndrome. It makes me sad but I guess that's what happens when time-played and e-sports take over your passion for making a game. I'm sorry. I just can't pretend I don't feel like Blizzard hasn't abandoned all but a small contingent of players.    … Expand
  18. vlecp
    Dec 20, 2021
    2
    Updated review

    Lore: cringe, makes no sense and boring. With genocidal Sylvanas as an "enemy" since 2 expansions. Now she gets redeemed because Danuser has an obsession with her. Retcons on every corner, ruining old stories. New lore does not work with the old lore or straight up makes no sense. Do not waste money on any book. Gameplay to lore (Portals to Draenor despite being closed    Updated review

    Lore: cringe, makes no sense and boring. With genocidal Sylvanas as an "enemy" since 2 expansions. Now she gets redeemed because Danuser has an obsession with her. Retcons on every corner, ruining old stories.
    New lore does not work with the old lore or straight up makes no sense. Do not waste money on any book. Gameplay to lore (Portals to Draenor despite being closed off) make no sense. The jailer is probably the most boring villain in media ever.

    Systems: more and more messy. With each expansion every system from the last expansion are disregarded causing massive issues due to borrowed power to then repeat the same mistake next expansion.

    Class/Faction/Transmog restrictions: make no sense. Race bound to factions is terrible and does not work. Transmog restriction make no sense. Faction imbalance is ignored by the developers.

    Customisations: massive imbalance. Some races have a lot, others have the bare minimum.

    Balance: choose the right class or else you get 1 shot in PvP. Choose the right class for PvE or else you will fall behind, even by making your our groups. This "balance" would make even Riot blush.

    Leveling: 1-50 is great and very fun, the true "WORLD of Warcraft"-experience. Hitting 50 puts you onto rails and you have no choices anymore what so ever where to level. Threads of fate only counts for SL places.

    Developer behavior: law suit and the developers/authors can't take any form of critique, going as far as to tell you to "play another game if you don't like it" (Madeleine Roux) and "You can't critique our work if you haven't published a game/book yourself!" (Christie Golden). Roux then is rewarded with an ingame NPC. PTR feedback is completely ignored. The developers remove content (Sylvanas B word quest) from the game because 1 developer felt like it. Can they also make their main class OP because "they feel like it"?

    Content updates: about 2 in 10 months and the second one brought a re-hatched Mage Tower for 2 weeks that had its scaling messed up completely. The first patch brought us a tiny island. No release date for 9,2 yet.

    Playerbase: elitists run rampant. Developers create content for only 5% of the playerbase. Toxicity happens because toxicity does not get punished.

    Customer Support: ingame report feature is stack based (means an entire guild can ban other people easily). Reports are not reviewed by GMs. Players are abusing the report system and the ticket system is 90% bots. The forum moderators are complete trash.

    The RPG experience: is completely missing. This game has zero right to call itself a RPG. No choices (and if there are any they are meaningless) and talent choices are usually more of a "take X talent the other two are useless".

    Cutscenes and art: the cutscenes are GMOD levels, so not very "good". The art has been fine except in recent times. SL has just a grey and green filter everywhere, once you notice it you can not unsee it. The announced tier sets look awful.

    Player population: has tanked massively. I play on Argent Dawn EU. Roleplay hubs (Redridge, Duskwood, Stranglethorn) that were active before SL are all dead. Orgrimmar is dead. Stormwind has taken a massive hit too.

    Promised content/Fear of missing out: heritage armors and worgen being able to not auto-shift into worgen form are just 2 examples of the past that were said "to be done" and yet never have been. Half the races are still missing their heritage armors. Promised features are not delivered or underdelivered. Blizzard constantly plays on the fear of missing out.

    The community council situation: completely useless. Reddit, Metacritic, a million other review sites, YouTube, the WoW forums and many other social media platforms give you enough insight. Why you need a "community council" is beyond me. Especially since Blizzard ignores PTR feedback.

    Personal opinion: it seems the only thing Blizzard does not half-ass is mistreating their employees. Everything else though is halfly done. The developers have seemingly no clue what the game should be about and mix the Warcraft universe with real life. I give Shadowlands a 2 because the 1-50 leveling is still very much worth it and lovely. Just the newest content is awful and not worth playing.

    If you are a player: 1 to 50 is worth playing. Anything after 50 (Shadowlands) is not.

    If you are a Blizzard developer/writer: please quit your job to make space for new people.    … Expand
  19. Vanos
    Mar 6, 2021
    0
    A really bad game! The story is garbage,
    The classes are unbalanced,
    The gameplay are heavily time gated,
    The torgasht is garbage,
    The lore as become garbage as well....
    The Devs responss are bad...
  20. Nacasatu
    Dec 15, 2020
    1
    Very shallow expansion.
    No new races, no new classes, no new battlegrounds. Time gated content, awful decision by Blizzard. They got the pvp gearing and upgrading right, almost perfect, but then ruined it by tying it behind more time gated trash AND then they also will not allow you to upgrade the Conquest gear you buy, unless you play and rank highly in their stupid and awful rated pvp    Very shallow expansion.
    No new races, no new classes, no new battlegrounds. Time gated content, awful decision by Blizzard. They got the pvp gearing and upgrading right, almost perfect, but then ruined it by tying it behind more time gated trash AND then they also will not allow you to upgrade the Conquest gear you buy, unless you play and rank highly in their stupid and awful rated pvp game mode. Terrible decision again. Now, you login, do your daily quest, and logout. That's it, once the weekly stuff is done, you've nothing else to do because of the time gating. What a ridiculous load of tripe. The rated pvp and mythic dungeons are absolutely destroyed and laughable due to the boosting and gold sellers selling services, the lfg custom tool is riddled with adverts and spammers, making it worthless. Huge hopes for this expansion but already bored with nothing to do and no way to gear because its locked behind time gated content or worse, locked behind forced game modes like rated battlegrounds which are a joke.

    Such a shame. Such a lost opportunity. Most guildmates have already just stopped playing and server is losing so many players. Blizzard seem to cater more toward streamers and the 5% who raid and run boosting mythic dungeons plus the win trading in pvp, than they do the vast majority of others players. Way to go, killing your own game with stupid decisions and lacking any real content.

    Seriously, not even one new class, race or battleground, what a load of trash this expansion is.    … Expand
  21. Tercano
    Jan 14, 2021
    1
    Плюсы:
    1. Интересный сюжет и в целом идея.
    2. Множество отсылок на давних персонажей и сюжет, возможность узнать о судьбе знакомых персонажей (не только первого плана). Минусы: 1.Утроба. Представляет из себя локацию по которой вы будете очень медленно продвигаться через постоянно агрящихся мобов и самостоятельно искать и справляться с редкими монстрами ради очень-очень маленькой    Плюсы:
    1. Интересный сюжет и в целом идея.
    2. Множество отсылок на давних персонажей и сюжет, возможность узнать о судьбе знакомых персонажей (не только первого плана).
    Минусы:
    1.Утроба. Представляет из себя локацию по которой вы будете очень медленно продвигаться через постоянно агрящихся мобов и самостоятельно искать и справляться с редкими монстрами ради очень-очень маленькой награды в виде репутации. За довольно большое количество репутации вы сможете покупать себе некоторые усиления. На деле это просто монотонная локация с огромным количеством безликих мобов которых вам нужно будет ежедневно фармить передвигаясь через все это пешком (что еще сильней растягивает и без того унылый процесс). А так же это обязательно делать на каждом вашем персонаже, потому если их у вас больше 1 то F.
    2. Торгаст. Вам предоставляют 6 обязательных для прохождения этажей, на 6 вас ждет босс, за победу над которым дают ресурсы для создания легендарок. На деле это такой же монотонный контент как и Утроба. Коридоры однообразные как впрочем и враги. Просто пройти мимо врагов к боссу за получением профита вам может и дадут, но с противников падают усиления без которых финального босса можно банально не убить и потерять море времени (а ведь он еще и получает процентное увеличение урона каждые секунд 10, так что если не убили быстро то может быть не убьете совсем). Единственным плюсом является то что проходить его нужно всего два раза в неделю на каждом персонаже.
    3. PvE. Стало бесперспективным избиением болванчиков. Контент в целом интересный, яркий, со своим челленджем, но без наград. Близзард сильно урезали шанс получения награды из рейда и м+. По сути вы можете пройти большое количество подземелий и никак не усилить персонажа.
    4. PvP. Ужасно. Вероятно на высоком уровне игры в нем и есть что-то захватывающее. Но если вы начинающий игрок, или же просто решили попробовать получить экипировку для PvE с помощью PvP то скорее всего все что вы получите это контроль на 4-6 секунд и смерть без возможности сделать хоть что-то. Полагаю единственная альтренатива - игра в пвп в заранее собранной в PvE (хаха) качественной экипировке. Все мои попытки заниматься пвп в среднем гире (190-200) заканчивались ваншотами в большинстве случаев.
    5. Новые недельные награды. В целом идея хорошая и очень удобная, возможность выбирать нужный вам лут из недельного сундука или дополнительные ролы если вам не нужно ничего из предложенного. Но возможность усиления себя лишь раз в неделю удручает.
    Итог: Shadowlands понравится тем кому интересно развитие истории вселенной Warcraft, но не понравится всем кто собирается играть в нее дальше сюжетных квестов.. Крайне не рекомендую играть если вы не готовы к огромному количеству пустого времяпровождения вне сюжета.    … Expand
  22. rmxpvl
    Jan 14, 2021
    2
    Game is unbalanced as hell, game design is bad. 0 loots the game is unrewarding and doesnt respect the player game time. You can run 3 raids and loot nothing, mythic+ are ruined loot is overnerfed. The great vault is a big joke badly designed, you can receive the same item multiple times. Idont know how this game made it through beta its unfinished and there is clearly not enough content
  23. Leshgorn
    Jan 7, 2021
    4
    В первые дни после выхода дополнения Shadowlands казался невероятно крутым - классное погружение в Утробу и Тёмные земли, графика, интересные персонажи и сюжет. Но это ощущение очень быстро прошло, а именно на моменте вступления в ковенант. Сразу возникло сомнение - к кому именно присоединиться? а что, если потрачу время и пойму, что надо было идти в другой ковенант? В итоге так и сделалВ первые дни после выхода дополнения Shadowlands казался невероятно крутым - классное погружение в Утробу и Тёмные земли, графика, интересные персонажи и сюжет. Но это ощущение очень быстро прошло, а именно на моменте вступления в ковенант. Сразу возникло сомнение - к кому именно присоединиться? а что, если потрачу время и пойму, что надо было идти в другой ковенант? В итоге так и сделал неверный выбор :(
    После ещё пары недель игры, пришло осознание, что эта самая игра стала отнимать гораздо больше времени, чем раньше, но и давать тоже стала меньше: нудные локалки стали гораздо более времязатратными, мобы стали крепче, появилась большая Утроба, где нельзя призывать транспорт и приходится бегать ножками. И отдельного внимания заслуживает Торгаст. Перед выходом дополнения, его рекламировали, как некую вечно меняющуюся локацию с отличными наградами, причём, чем выше этаж, тем лучше награда. В итоге, наград никаких нет, сама локация невероятно унылая, скучная, бесячая, прохождение ее отнимает много времени и зависит от случайно полученных абилок. И все это нужно только для прохождения сюжета, либо для создания/улучшения легендарки! Каждый раз после прохождения Торгаста возникает дикое желание выйти из игры и не заходить в неё больше никогда. После мучений с основным своим персонажем, я даже не представляю, сколько ещё нужно будет потратить нервов и времени для развития твинков. Сейчас делать этого совсем не хочется, а ведь даже в том же БФА я играл почти одновременно сразу за нескольких персонажей.
    Не знаю, как будет развиваться дополнение дальше, но на текущий момент, это для меня самое большое разочарование. Даже БФА нравился гораздо больше.    … Expand
  24. slisbad
    Jan 6, 2021
    0
    PvP is totaly trash like allways 85% of the classes are completely over-tuned.
    But there are ONLY 2 devs for everything(LOL) and those 2 guys have absulutly no clue about the game.

    DONT BUY OR PLAY IF YOU LIKE PVP

    lets hope Riot is bringing out there new game soon so we can finally stop playing that trash game
  25. Elendil11
    Nov 28, 2020
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Me: Played since just after launch and almost all the time since

    Review: As I was running through the Zones (I have seen all of them now) I was thinking "Man the sky boxes and some of the terrain is nice" but I found nothing else to remark about that was new or amazing. I cleared Torghast to layer 3 right away and while it was interesting, I do not thing there is any way it will hold my attention for a whole expac.

    Pros:
    It has wonderful artwork. Can' t find much else :/

    Cons:
    I see nothing new other than some peripherals that shouldn't have an expac based around them (i.e. Torghast and Covenants).

    There was a major revamp to the lore that has essentially wiped out a good chunk of what made the better expacs and games function. That's not a good idea.

    Bland world quests and a slightly upgraded command table are underwhelming and don't make me want to do them.

    More borrowed power systems that will be entirely useless in 2 years. This stuff doesn't feel good even when it is current, please don't do it anymore after this.

    Class redesign (I am a prot paladin) made healing myself and protecting myself an extra chore above the GCD. Now I have to spend either on SoR or WoG. That was a poor idea for blizz to institute, however i understand that is a personal issue.

    How to fix it: Not sure about the borrowed power, but they need to find a way to get players back interested in the fabric of WoW again. MANY players came to WoW because they loved Warcraft and the story telling of especially the Warcraft 3's. As WoW has moved past these stories the lore has gone outside that firm story telling. The proof of this is in Legion when we moved back into it with a great story and a tying up of a story-line akin to Wraths. It was well done and people liked that aspect far more than in the last 2-3 expacs. Place yourselves back into the un-redesigned lore that exists or come out with Warcraft 4-5 and make more good lore to work with.    … Expand
  26. LukeSR
    Nov 29, 2020
    3
    Disappointing, buggy.

    First you have to complete the linear questline/campaign to get level 60 and to unlock the covenants. The questline contains many cinematics and a lot of talking and following NPCs. When you hit level 60 and you like to level up a twink you can choose to do the same again or skip it (Threads of fate), the campaign will be marked as completed and you can already    Disappointing, buggy.

    First you have to complete the linear questline/campaign to get level 60 and to unlock the covenants. The questline contains many cinematics and a lot of talking and following NPCs.
    When you hit level 60 and you like to level up a twink you can choose to do the same again or skip it (Threads of fate), the campaign will be marked as completed and you can already choose your covenant at the start.
    Well now you can choose your first destiny for yourself. They are some Quests in every area, you can already do world quests by leveling and few bonus objectives.

    I like the idea, but not the implementation. The bonus objectives are very boring, you have to kill mobs and click on items, you will get 1-3 % for each on your progress bar, it can take up to 20 minutes to complete one and you will get ~18k EXP, thats ~5% on you progress bar.
    I tried to combine it with normal Quests, but only in a few cases the area of the bonus objectives and normal quests matches,

    The other problem that disturbs me is, that all areas in Shadowlands are full of enemys. If you want to go from A to B, there is almost no safe way, you nearly find a horde of enemys on every place and you can't avoid them. They unmount you, you kill them, you mount and after few meters you possibly get unmounted again.

    There are not many normal quests, you can see the start point of every possible questline on the map. Some of the quests are very bad designed, for example. I saw a quest on a hill, I tried to get there and had to run through a place full of enemys.
    I was unmounted few times and always had to fight against 4-8 enemys (not super easy for a non healing class) and as I get there I get a quest and had to kill 12 more of them and use a spell on the dead bodies that could go wrong and you had to kill them again. Of course you had to kill other enemys by doing this quest that were not relevant for this quest, as I finally completed the quest, I got 8k EXP (~2,5% for level progress bar) and no other quest...

    And sorry for my bad english, I had to deal with some buggy quests and decided to write the review to
    free from my anger.    … Expand
  27. ilya1334400
    Jan 15, 2021
    0
    Если у БФА 3 бала, то тут я должен поставить 0. Геймплейно ничего не изменилось, все тоже самое что и в бфа, ничего глобально нового. Помимо этого, фарма обещали меньше, но по факту, его стало еще больше в 10 раз, для того что бы полностью одеть персонажа уходит в раза 3-5 больше времени. Раньше что бы получить максимальный профит за неделю надо было закрыть одно 15ое подземелье, теперьЕсли у БФА 3 бала, то тут я должен поставить 0. Геймплейно ничего не изменилось, все тоже самое что и в бфа, ничего глобально нового. Помимо этого, фарма обещали меньше, но по факту, его стало еще больше в 10 раз, для того что бы полностью одеть персонажа уходит в раза 3-5 больше времени. Раньше что бы получить максимальный профит за неделю надо было закрыть одно 15ое подземелье, теперь ДЕСЯТЬ. Туда же ежедневный фарм стигий, еженедельный фарм торгаста, постоянный фарм анимы. Шмота с рейдов стало в раза 2-3 меньше, убрали монетки 2ой шанс на дроп. Все что бы заставить вас дольше сидеть в этой игре, когда контента уже нет. Они решили взять системы из успешного вов классика, но не учли что если сравнивать шл с первоначальным вов классик... то это совсем другая игра, сессионка, а не твое личное приключение в огромном рпг мире. Локации стали в раз 5 меньше чем в ваниле, мобы подстраиваются под твою силу. Считаю что Близарды свернули не туда и искусственно удерживают народ в игре отсутствием шмота.… Expand
  28. Rizaun
    Nov 29, 2020
    4
    Another big disappointment.

    One of the worst parts of this expansion is that Blizzard intentionally made players weaker with the pre-patch, making old content more difficult to complete or downright impossible, expecting players to clear the new raids so that they could finally do the content that they were doing at Lv120. The leveling is pointless since you get nothing out of it, no    Another big disappointment.

    One of the worst parts of this expansion is that Blizzard intentionally made players weaker with the pre-patch, making old content more difficult to complete or downright impossible, expecting players to clear the new raids so that they could finally do the content that they were doing at Lv120. The leveling is pointless since you get nothing out of it, no new abilities or talents, it exists only to take your time and when you hit Lv60, you will be just as weak as you were at Lv50, it's the illusion of progression.

    No new class and no new race, instead they focused on improving the character creation feature and yet the new additions are barebones. Races that had a lot of options got a few more and the ones that had a few got almost nothing new that they didn't copy and paste from another race and all the new changes only bring WoW's character creation to the standards of the year 2010.

    Mediocre story but that is nothing new, Blizzard hasn't written anything good after Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. All male characters are stupid and incompetent, all women are queens and Mary Sues and Sylvanas is probably playing 10-D Chess and will be the true hero and save everyone... just like Kerrigan did in Starcraft. Blizzard's writers should take a look at how FFXIV writers create their world and characters and learn from them, they are actually good.

    World Quests take longer for no other reason than to take more of your time, just like everything else now, with the Maw not allowing you to use mounts for reasons so you have to walk everywhere, no Flight Whistle for Shadowlands areas, can't ride in many parts of Oribos, flying from one SL area into another always has to go through Oribos, etc. Everything about this expansion is designed to take as much time as possible.

    The new number of transmog appearances is laughable, there's about 8 new transmog appearances per armor type (Recolors don't count, they don't take any effort to make), with a few pieces here and there that don't belong to a particular set, but you have to choose 1 of the 4 covenant sets, leaving you with 5 choices. It's no wonder people get mad when Blizzard adds paid transmog to their store.

    Thank god we can buy the expansion, pay a sub and everything else in the Blizzard store with gold, Call of Duty operator bundles have more worth than this trash expansion. I'm only giving it a 4 because the Art and Sound teams did a good job, it's always everyone else who fails, specially the director.    … Expand
  29. Kadyr777
    Jan 25, 2021
    3
    Originally this review started out as neutral as I was having fun in the beginning, but the longer I played..the more this expansion has made me angry. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually miss BfA.

    Pros: -Solo instanced content can be played with friends! I was able to enjoy nearly everything with my wife through the story including having her in cut scenes with me, which    Originally this review started out as neutral as I was having fun in the beginning, but the longer I played..the more this expansion has made me angry. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually miss BfA.

    Pros:
    -Solo instanced content can be played with friends! I was able to enjoy nearly everything with my wife through the story including having her in cut scenes with me, which is a huge deal for me.
    -Classes feel much more fluid in comparison to BfA, even though some are performing very poorly.
    -Story can be completed without needing to enter a dungeon

    Cons:
    -The balancing of certain classes makes them unplayable and even yeeted or not invited to groups. At the time of writing this my wife's havoc Demon Hunter and my arms warrior are in a meh spot, my warrior as protection gets absolutely deleted in high keystones. Balance of classes has been slow and underwhelming two months into Shadowlands.
    -High level keystones need to be kited as a tank, that's not tanking. You must play a vengeance Demon Hunter as a tank, or a fotm DPS if you want to progress stones.
    -Some important features are locked behind MSQ (this was a bad thing about FFXIV, not a good thing Blizzard).
    -No new classes or races, allied races still haven't received the love they deserve
    -The storytelling feels unengaging to me, as somebody who loves RPGs and a great story. I was ready to just be done halfway through Ardenweald.
    -Classes that were incredibly broken and fotm especially in pvp during prepatch are still running around melting. Tuning wasn't a priority and I'm not sure how long I'll have to endure some of these broken classes until they're fixed.
    -The new main city hub is literally just a circle, two floors of a circle........
    -Torghast (a huge portion of this expansion) is a direct copy of Final Fantasy XIV's Palace of the Dead / Heaven on High.
    -Yet again, more borrowed power with a very boring, unengaging and restrictive covenant system.    … Expand
  30. BaeoWulf
    Nov 28, 2020
    0
    Storytelling has some plot holes. Character rewrites, and breaks previous canon frequently. Cutscenes are nice, some zones are nice. Quality of life improvements, but otherwise no features as many have commented.

    Tower + Covenant = Expansion?
  31. sijjvravisz
    Feb 8, 2021
    1
    This is likely to tank HARD. Already, the general forum is half "I love it" and half "this is boring garbage". Usually (and yeah, I've played this game on and off for 16 years so I do know what I'm talking about white knights) the first few weeks of any expansion, the forums are a love-fest. Even WOD and BFA were received with initial glowing reviews from players and critics.

    This one?    This is likely to tank HARD. Already, the general forum is half "I love it" and half "this is boring garbage". Usually (and yeah, I've played this game on and off for 16 years so I do know what I'm talking about white knights) the first few weeks of any expansion, the forums are a love-fest. Even WOD and BFA were received with initial glowing reviews from players and critics.

    This one? Is just horrifically boring, grindy right off the bat, gated right away, linear, and poorly written. And that's it for WoW for me, too. I skipped a few expacs before because they were garbage (WOD, BFA, and MOP because the theme was just...lol no). But y'know, when I start disliking more expacs in a game that I like? It's time to drop that game for good. And I'm not alone in that regard, either.    … Expand
  32. Rrohg
    Nov 27, 2020
    0
    Not feeling the forced linear path and the poor, cringe storytelling. The convoluted systems make character progression a nightmare and the covenant I wasn’t to play is a terrible option for my main spec and is terrible for the areas of the game I want to excel in. Additionally Torghast is not as impressive as I was expecting and it is inferior to many other older roguelike games. NotNot feeling the forced linear path and the poor, cringe storytelling. The convoluted systems make character progression a nightmare and the covenant I wasn’t to play is a terrible option for my main spec and is terrible for the areas of the game I want to excel in. Additionally Torghast is not as impressive as I was expecting and it is inferior to many other older roguelike games. Not looking forward to the rest of my sub time.… Expand
  33. Axeface
    Nov 26, 2020
    2
    A lesson is drudgery. It seems blizzard made a decision before starting to 'design' this expansion... "Lets waste peoples time". The drudgery here is palpable. Huge areas where you can only walk, high enemy health pools and constant overlapping patrol paths make getting around anywhere an absolute slog, they even removed the flight masters whistle... Everything is gated to the point whereA lesson is drudgery. It seems blizzard made a decision before starting to 'design' this expansion... "Lets waste peoples time". The drudgery here is palpable. Huge areas where you can only walk, high enemy health pools and constant overlapping patrol paths make getting around anywhere an absolute slog, they even removed the flight masters whistle... Everything is gated to the point where you are constantly forced to do things you dont want to like 'Torghast, the tower of drudgery' or world quests just to get to the things you actually want to do. I just cant help but feel like I'm totally wasting my time here. I give it 2 points for the nice visuals, story and world building seem cool at first but its done in a way to force you through it, its 'on rails' and makes everything feel forced, there is no free will here -you have to do the zones in the order offered for example. The prospect of leveling an alt after doing all this drudgery on my main is frankly daunting.… Expand
  34. Papaoso
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    Played since vanilla and all expansions at their start. This is the worst, by far, it is a patch, not an expansion. It's simply a BFA storyline extension and nothing beyond that. No new classes, no new talent/spec system, just a grab in the dark to continue the franchise. It's honestly pathetic. They've introduced all these new systems that will need to be balanced each patch, but havePlayed since vanilla and all expansions at their start. This is the worst, by far, it is a patch, not an expansion. It's simply a BFA storyline extension and nothing beyond that. No new classes, no new talent/spec system, just a grab in the dark to continue the franchise. It's honestly pathetic. They've introduced all these new systems that will need to be balanced each patch, but have continued to take away player choice. Their talent system and PvP system are trash. They need a specific PvP trait and more customization of characters (aka unholy dk or frost dk MUST be dps, they can't tank despite wearing plate, monks must choose 1 of 3 specs and either heal, dps, or "tank" based off that). Activision needs a management shake up because this lack of player customization is suffocating.

    I've played several hours of this "expac" and I'm looking to request a refund and unsub already. In performing one of the new covenant campaign quests, I was brought to a Legion load screen... Legion came out 3+ years ago. Why am I in a game that utilizes load screens from over 3 years ago? This is supposed to be a polished expac release? You must be kidding me. Please re-consider if you want to get into this game/franchise. The developers are NOT listening to the player community. Risk of Rain has more replay value and player engagement than this expac/patch note trash    … Expand
  35. JainaSent
    Nov 24, 2020
    1
    Pros:
    There are many optimizations included with this expansion.
    Art (Graphics/Sound) are excellent.

    Cons:
    No Major Features
    Covenant issues present
    Unfinished classes
    Launch Issues

    If they would have delayed for another 2 months, it may have launched better? Will change rating as the expansion evolves.
  36. AdamM88
    Nov 26, 2020
    0
    Shadowlands is the next disgusting disappointment from Blizzard.
    If you hated BFA, you'll hate this even more.
    Firstly, all the content is time gated and weekly capped. Did you take a week vacation from work to play the new expansion? Well, too bad. Leveling up 50-60 takes 6-10 hours even if you idled by and petted at the squirrels. Spend a few more hours on the mandatory campaign    Shadowlands is the next disgusting disappointment from Blizzard.
    If you hated BFA, you'll hate this even more.

    Firstly, all the content is time gated and weekly capped.
    Did you take a week vacation from work to play the new expansion? Well, too bad. Leveling up 50-60 takes 6-10 hours even if you idled by and petted at the squirrels. Spend a few more hours on the mandatory campaign quests and whatnot, and at the start of the first day you will literally have nothing to do. I don't mean to exaggerate. You literally can't do anything that has any reward you would find useful. Once you clear the mythic dungeons (pugged it easily in ilvl120 gear), torghast and the daily covenant quests and maw quests you are looking forward to maybe 20-30 hours of gameplay on the first week, and on the following weeks you'll have about 10 hours of gameplay per week outside raiding.

    Okay, quantity is pathetic, as everything is time-gated and capped. How about the quality?
    I'm sorry to say that the quality of the game is even worse than for BFA.
    Everything is just unimaginative and boring:

    Dungeons:
    Only 8 really small dungeons with ridiculously dumb mechanics, layout, mobs, bosses. Deadmines is more complex, and many times larger than any dungeon in the expansion. This will not be fun in Mythic+.
    Then again... Why would you run dungeons? It's a waste of time. You need to do 1x +15 Mythic+ dungeon per week, which takes about 20 minutes, and you are done with all the 5man content for the week. The itemization is so bad, the rewards are so pathetic that anything more is pointless.

    Torghast:
    Oh wow, our cool new dungeon crawler roguelite, right? While the somewhat lackluster and mostly unimaginative abilities unique to this mode are fun for a while, I'm afraid this too is timegated, and the rewards are horrible. Blizzard promised us a randomized dungeon that's always different! No. It's pretty much the same run over and over again, enemies and anima powers are just randomly placed, but it gets old after a few runs, especially how the rewards are nonexistent. Once you make your legendary, you won't step into this place ever again.

    Maw:
    This is the most annoying place to grace the game for many, many years. Firstly, your presence here is again, unrewarding, and meaningless. But to add insult to injury, there is a daily cap to how much Stygia you may collect, and it is done in such a dumb and frustrating way too! Every action you take give you a certain amount of naughty points. Once it reached a level, the game will kill you and you no longer can gain Stygia.

    Classes:
    While the classes are certainly improved over BFA, most of them are still boring, clunky, unimaginative, unbalanced, not fun.

    Legendaries:
    Almost all legendaries are useless noobtraps you should never touch. The ones that you need to craft are mostly boring and unimaginative.

    Covenants:
    The system is sadly closely tied to how effective you will be in the game due to the various buffs and abilities you derive from it. Let's say you are class X. You need to pick Covenant Y, otherwise you are just garbage. Wait, wait a minute. That's only if you are tank spec... Damn it, if you want to DPS for some reason you are useless... Wait... Wait... it turns out that you need different covenant for tanking if you are tanking Mythic+ and another one if you are tanking raids... Wait, wait WAIT! Every greatly patch adjusts the strength of the covnents. **** you are screwed!

    The world:
    Is small. Most of the map you see is outside the map boundaries. The map you can set foot in is mostly empty. So take a look at the map, and maybe less than half of it is meaningful. Also, the game is designed in a way that you waste a LOT of time traveling. Blizzard thinks running on your mount is precious and fun content you are happy to pay for. The flight masters are also placed in a dumb way that you would rather run than fly.

    The story:
    While the story had some good points, most of it is boring, short, unimaginative, and is told in a really bad way.

    Now some positive points:
    The art team did a decent job. The music and the world is aesthetic, except for Maldraxxus, the second area, which is objectively ugly and awfully designed. And that's all the nice stuff I had to say about Shadowlands.    … Expand
  37. Kamui22
    Nov 24, 2020
    0
    -No new classes
    -No new races
    -Only temporary new abilities/traits to be wiped at the end of the expansion
    -Still nothing done to fix UI/server/faction problems
    -Leveling basically deleted instead of fixed.
  38. Operativ
    Nov 24, 2020
    0
    World of Warcraft, including the most recent Shadowlands expansion, is a 2004 game that is today's biggest example of an outdated game that is not underdeveloped for the amount of financial income gained by Activision Blizzard from it.

    Shadowlands does not do help much, as it is a similar experience to Legion - and while the score would have not been lower than 5/10 - the 0/10 comes for    World of Warcraft, including the most recent Shadowlands expansion, is a 2004 game that is today's biggest example of an outdated game that is not underdeveloped for the amount of financial income gained by Activision Blizzard from it.

    Shadowlands does not do help much, as it is a similar experience to Legion - and while the score would have not been lower than 5/10 - the 0/10 comes for the price that comes with this game.

    74,99€ for the "Epic" version, which includes every digital extra & 30 days of game time; and 54,99€ for most of the diigtal extras alone & 39,99€ for the base game.

    I won't even start by saying that the middle & base editions don't have the 30 days of game time. I will rather conclude, that this game does not deserve to run a buy-to-play (single-time, bigger price) combined with a pay-to-play (monthly, subscription-based payments) model.
    No game deserves that. You either run B2P or P2P. (eg. RuneScape, Guild Wars 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, etc.).

    Verdict? Average game with over the top price tag for the quality provided and amount of content that does not feel repetitive (because killing 30 NPCs over and over, or doing a mediocre instance (dungeon or raid) over and over for items to be able to farm for more items is in my opinion not enjoyable to a sane, working person).

    If you're a new player considering this game, do yourself a favour and pick another title that's not a combined B2P+P2P hoax.
    Your invested time into this game will eventually end up made irrelevant as level cap is always raised +10 (or +5) & previous items are made obsolete, no matter how hard you've "farmed" for them. Endless grind for items with the pretty excuse of "achievement obtaining" for a continuous price out of proportions that mentally 'forces' you to play to justify the value of the purchase.    … Expand
  39. roman620
    Nov 25, 2020
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Стабильность признак мастерства.Как всегда говно,игра 2010 года в 2020 году… Expand
  40. BetaReviews
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    Just another attempt of Activision-Blizzard’s cash grab. More of the same. Don’t buy it.
  41. djpravda
    Nov 24, 2020
    0
    Feels like a solo game, way too much cut scenes and 0 combat. Skills and talents are meanless gear system is bad and once again they've ruined pvp. This game is no longer an mmo game. The world feels empty, servers are empty.
  42. Slob
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    Theme 10/10
    Soundtrack 10/10
    Leveling experience 9/10 Dungeon design 9/10 Covenant design 8/10 This is based on first-impressions, time will tell if the Covenant-system will truly work in the meta in the long run or that Blizzard may need to allow players faster abillity to change it, concerning PvP and PvE balance. The Zones are the most incredible zones I have ever seen in the    Theme 10/10
    Soundtrack 10/10
    Leveling experience 9/10
    Dungeon design 9/10
    Covenant design 8/10

    This is based on first-impressions, time will tell if the Covenant-system will truly work in the meta in the long run or that Blizzard may need to allow players faster abillity to change it, concerning PvP and PvE balance.

    The Zones are the most incredible zones I have ever seen in the World of Warcraft, there's a lot of the old kill x, or loot x amount of garbage quests but they're presented in a more flashy way that breaks up the flow in a more interesting way, also there are a few more innovative quests with flashier mechanics that caught my attention such as a room in Revendreth where you need to stand in as many diminishing circles before objects fall down and you need to catch as many as quickly as you can to do the quest efficiently.

    The PvE content seems to be as good as ever, still need to do the dungeons on mythic + to get a great feel for them and the Raid has yet to come out. So far seems great!

    The expansion overall seems like a much bigger, better deal than Battle for Azeroth and I feel like Blizzard put a lot of heart and soul into the making of this! Thank you for self quarantining people, stay safe!

    I have played for about 24 hrs during the time of writing this review, and while I do not think it's fair to judge a WoW expansion after such a short time it still doesn't make this less credible than the baseless review bombing.    … Expand
  43. bookhound
    Nov 25, 2020
    1
    its pretty, but extremely boring. No engagement of the characters, could care less about them. Nothing new here, same boring grind to get useless items. The gear they are giving for rewards isnt even as good as what i have, so still wind up using previous expansions gear. I'm sorry i bought it in advance and am just glad i only paid for a month of time. I came back after a coupleits pretty, but extremely boring. No engagement of the characters, could care less about them. Nothing new here, same boring grind to get useless items. The gear they are giving for rewards isnt even as good as what i have, so still wind up using previous expansions gear. I'm sorry i bought it in advance and am just glad i only paid for a month of time. I came back after a couple months away and am not gonna bother. I would wait till they decide they want to make it fun, rather than just a chance to make some easy money. If you are thinking of coming back, dont. If you are new and thinking of joining, dont. Legion was more engaging than this, at least it gave something new.… Expand
  44. SonicFan2
    Nov 24, 2020
    0
    Doesnt look like much was added. Will give it another month and re rate. People giving it a 10.. crazy.
  45. Shander8
    Nov 24, 2020
    0
    Not many features. Compare to any expansion or classic, has lowest feature set.. just the tower and covenant. Not liking the covenant system so far.

    Launch has had issues, but not as bad as most expansions.
  46. Winston2
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    Feels like BFA all over again. This expansion has the lowest hype, and quickest fallout. Wish there was a new class.
  47. iammrstinky
    Nov 25, 2020
    1
    so ive played all expansions where from cactalysm it went down the drain more and more, and this expansion is just another blizzard cash grab. i actually needed support a few days before the release waited for over 24 hours on a simple answer for a ticket and never got it. i dont know how the end game is but leveling until 60 is just an other grind with stupid quests so far and a very badso ive played all expansions where from cactalysm it went down the drain more and more, and this expansion is just another blizzard cash grab. i actually needed support a few days before the release waited for over 24 hours on a simple answer for a ticket and never got it. i dont know how the end game is but leveling until 60 is just an other grind with stupid quests so far and a very bad story. If you think of coming back i would reconsider spending my money on this release...… Expand
  48. Hildegard
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    Too Sleepy.
    Too boring.
    is this Diablo 3?
    It's just a sleeping pill
    Zzzzzzz.....
  49. SolarSun
    Nov 24, 2020
    0
    Not sure if this game is worth the price that is being charged. They need to finish the classes also.
  50. Irapuruj
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    The reason why I just hate this game is because of how they are stepping away from the original gameplay that we all once loved. The thing is, in dungeons and open world content you get these unique abilities which is ok but you have to do all of the quest in order to unlock more in the game. So you cannot dungeon grind your way to max level or do battlegrounds, you have to QUEST. YouThe reason why I just hate this game is because of how they are stepping away from the original gameplay that we all once loved. The thing is, in dungeons and open world content you get these unique abilities which is ok but you have to do all of the quest in order to unlock more in the game. So you cannot dungeon grind your way to max level or do battlegrounds, you have to QUEST. You cannot just get to level 60 how you want, its just too much.… Expand
  51. WesleySnipes
    Nov 25, 2020
    2
    Gather 15 of these, kill 20 of these, rinse and repeat. This expansion really shows a dark future for the World of Warcraft.
  52. WilsonX
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    Game has much to improve on. Some zones are nice, some are boring. No new class or major feature. Didnt research game ahead of time, was my mistake.
  53. audehdqls
    Nov 25, 2020
    0
    this game is trash it's bfa season 2. why we play this game again? it very horrible
  54. Lawc
    Nov 28, 2020
    0
    trash expansion wow will never be as good as it was in vanilla/BC/WOTLK. Classes are way too unbalanced and the overall content is just too boring
  55. Ysgradude
    Jan 23, 2021
    0
    After the longest expansion ever, Battle for Azeroth, me as a player thought the game couldn't get worse from what it was, and how naive I was. The players in BfA were promissed a less grindy experience in the casual level, such as being viable the creation of alts and experience most of the game's worth in $$ by different classes, and since we are made to pay money for each expac and aAfter the longest expansion ever, Battle for Azeroth, me as a player thought the game couldn't get worse from what it was, and how naive I was. The players in BfA were promissed a less grindy experience in the casual level, such as being viable the creation of alts and experience most of the game's worth in $$ by different classes, and since we are made to pay money for each expac and a monthly fee, I'm pretty disappointed and convinced World of Warcraft: Shadowlands does not make up to its price. I'll list the pros and cons in this expac:

    PROS (some of these are to be expected since we're in 2020):
    - The grapphics are good keeping in mind that this is a 16 yold game, the color pallets are great and to be expected from the arts team that have been carrying the franchise since BfA
    - The Devs didn't manage to destroy the social profile that is raiding yet, one of the few pleasures in the game is to gather up to 10 or more players to do raids and talk and share memes, this is one of the core essentials of World of Warcraft that made it go boom since 2005. They didn't kill it yet, but they've definetly are trying with drop loots reduced in Shadowlands and the Death of Masterloot in BfA
    - The lore isn't so bad, we all know that the old World of Warcraft lore is pretty much spent and that's ok.

    Cons:
    - The grind is outworldly: You're the type that likes to play with your main and have some casual fun with your 2 alts? I'm sorry for you, it will take you many gameplay hours, layers, questing and weeks for you to put your alt at an acceptable efficiency, drop loots have been reduced DRASTICALLY in dungeons and raids, there are reputations that needs to be grinded so that you'll have nice upgrades as well as your covenant level that unlocks powerful traits to your class, so it all falls into grind-grind-grind-grind... so you really need to have that friendly party in your guild that will lend you a hand, if not... well, be prepared to spend $$ to play about 1/10 of the game with one class.
    - The PvP issue is still unsolved, and even worst: the PvP scalling introduced in BfA was bad, and the removal of it turned even worse. Gear ilvl matters in PvP and it is an advantage, either you have it or you'll be rekt. The problem is that this is an avalanche problem, since only ilvl matters now and PvP vendors are out, the amount of low geared toons queing into PvP to get their raiding gear is astronomical, Battegrounds are now most of the time decided by the team who has most ilvl, the games that there is a "struggle for a victory" are rare, and most are resumed by farming the enemy team or being afk dead because your team do not have the strength to fight. This makes casual PvP dead for most classes, and casual pvp is a player holder and keeps the game from decaying in the absence of new content.
    - Related to the issue above, gear loot is scarce, obliging PvErs to do PvP and PvPers to do PvE, you shouldn't be made to do something you don't like, that's why this is a game and not real life.
    - There is 4 covenants, if you're in a class that has one covenant for eachsituation (Venthyr for Raid, Night Fae for M+, Kyrean for PvP) you're basically fd, you must choose only one, and if doesn't fit your roleplay or tastes, too bad. And if you wan't to switch covenants, that's a shame, you'll have to farm everything back on your new covenant and there goes about 2 weeks of gameplay's worth... it makes me miss Azerite system, and I hated it.

    So if you're willing to waste your money on this, I'll give you an advice: role rogue or druid, mostly rogue, Blizzard is still trying to ruin the fun of stealth for about 4 years and they still didn't manage, so I think its more on the incompetence level on their part.    … Expand
  56. Tsirche
    Jan 7, 2021
    0
    Leveling System: not good, too long and repetitive quests
    Instances: good, well balanced amount of trashes and bosses, nice fights, m+ system is cool again
    Raids: No. Just no. Don't do it. terrible Alts: NOT alt friendly. The main feature (Torghast tower) is a JOKE. Long, boring (sorry, BORING) and you have to do it twice a week (or more) with all your chars. Possibly the second worst    Leveling System: not good, too long and repetitive quests
    Instances: good, well balanced amount of trashes and bosses, nice fights, m+ system is cool again
    Raids: No. Just no. Don't do it. terrible
    Alts: NOT alt friendly.
    The main feature (Torghast tower) is a JOKE. Long, boring (sorry, BORING) and you have to do it twice a week (or more) with all your chars.
    Possibly the second worst expansion after BfA.    … Expand
  57. scabior1359
    Jan 25, 2021
    3
    As a World of Warcraft fanatic, it pains me to say how much I dislike this expansion. The storytelling is bad, the covenants are bad, the class balance is bad in both pvp and pve, the rewards for playing are non-existent. Very disappointed, for all of Battle for Azeroth's problems, it had noticeably more polish than Shadowlands. I hope that many of these problems will be fixed in the 9.1As a World of Warcraft fanatic, it pains me to say how much I dislike this expansion. The storytelling is bad, the covenants are bad, the class balance is bad in both pvp and pve, the rewards for playing are non-existent. Very disappointed, for all of Battle for Azeroth's problems, it had noticeably more polish than Shadowlands. I hope that many of these problems will be fixed in the 9.1 patch because as of right now I am unsubscribing.… Expand
  58. Babe1973
    Dec 16, 2020
    0
    If you enjoy a second job with no compensation, this is your game. The rewards are non existent and it’s all just chores in a daily basis. The lead designer clearly is in over his head. This game was the golden standard once. Now it’s a labor farm.
  59. gw2
    Jan 23, 2021
    0
    the expansion becomes boring very quickly .better then bfa but still alot of stupid story holes and bad writing .
  60. Schuld
    Jan 25, 2021
    1
    i dont know where to start...

    First Positve: -great Artwork -good looking Maps -The Classes have slightly more skills Neutral: -no real Cinematics anymore more Artworks (can be Pro and Con) -Levelsquish so the leveling doesnt take an eternity -you can take any old expansion to level Cons: -MANY Bugs, played 2 weeks and encounterd so many not working quests/perks/ or    i dont know where to start...

    First

    Positve:
    -great Artwork
    -good looking Maps
    -The Classes have slightly more skills

    Neutral:
    -no real Cinematics anymore more Artworks (can be Pro and Con)
    -Levelsquish so the leveling doesnt take an eternity
    -you can take any old expansion to level

    Cons:
    -MANY Bugs,
    played 2 weeks and encounterd so many not working quests/perks/ or even dungeons. Some dungeons are impossible to do because the scaling hurts so much. Best moment Maurodon Boss Immorthal hitting the tank with 3 hits out of existence. Tank 7k HP Boss 250k HP Hits with 3 K non crits and has a nondispellable Buff with 60% atk spd. GG

    -Scaling overall ->
    The strongest you are on lvl 1-10 after that with each level up you will get weaker. Only the numbers change up nothing more. Monsters take longer/more skills to kill them and so on. When you hit level 60 in continues the HP/DMG/Armor of the enemies increase as you gear up... thats a bad joke.after Itemlevel 170+ you slowy become stronger then the HP/armor stops but the dmg increases still. i did several testing and its frustrating... the best part i was rogue lvl 28 my finisher did 250 dmg then i leveld up and the same skill did now 246.
    lv28 - 250 dmg
    lv29 - 244 dmg
    ye.... makes sense to me
    Playing as heal is the same. your HP 5k - Tank HP 900, you heal him for a 4,5k healkrit and he only gets 10% hp back. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    -extremly time consuming (no rewards for what you are doing)

    -all equipment and rewards are the same set. only slightly diffrent colour
    Mainquest for the covenant give you 197 EQ in Gold/Silver, you rewards for several activities are the same set without setefffect without stats onyl "cosmetic" in teh same fuking colour, AND only you can wear it in the transmog, not your twink characters.

    -no balance in classes and in PVE/PVP
    so really non at all. getting deleted by the convenant skills..
    DH onehits you with the fae covenant skill. He turns blue and spins and runs you over. yes you get killed by sonic the hedgehog

    you wanna play pvp? cool start with playing pve do all the quest and get your free 197 PVE gear and if you wanna kill everything then do raiding and mythic+

    then you can start with the pvp 158 gear... ye right you start with 158. but dont worry you can upgrade it!
    only 1k-5k Honor per part and upgrade

    first upgrade
    PVP: 1000 Honor
    PVE: 50 Anima
    Now the best part is this. World quests gives you 50 Honor and 70 Anima.

    -all new zones have "mini"loadscreen not a single zone is connected to each other.
    you can NOT run/jump/fly or swim to another zone. "Lore" yes yes i know.

    -the new job system. getting old expansion smithing up? no chance

    you can feel the greed in the game. They want you to subs for a long time... and i have the feeling they dont even try to listen or fix things anymore.
    now im tired and the game will be deleted after the test playtime. "I am not angry with you, i only sad that you lost your way", Blizzard/Activision. - Uncle Iroh    … Expand
  61. velyref
    Feb 5, 2021
    3
    Nearly every aspect of this expansion is disappointing. Story narrative is weak. No new gameplay mechanics, it is the same expansion we've seen like 4 times already?

    High-level content is disastrously boring: they make you do more quests after you've done a **** ton of them already. Also weekly cooldown for the story questline is ridiculous. World quests are boring. Dungeons are    Nearly every aspect of this expansion is disappointing. Story narrative is weak. No new gameplay mechanics, it is the same expansion we've seen like 4 times already?

    High-level content is disastrously boring: they make you do more quests after you've done a **** ton of them already. Also weekly cooldown for the story questline is ridiculous.

    World quests are boring. Dungeons are boring. Artwork is boring. Game design is boring. The game IS BORING.    … Expand
  62. kalimarah
    Feb 7, 2021
    3
    I am a jaded, but devoted WoW player. Shadowlands, simply put is not one of their better expansions. Gameplay has been discuss extensively by other reviews, so I'll mention somethign different: metaphysics.

    Normally, you don't need to pay much attention to game metaphysics. However, if you are going to create an expansion about the afterlife, I would expect at minimum a committee    I am a jaded, but devoted WoW player. Shadowlands, simply put is not one of their better expansions. Gameplay has been discuss extensively by other reviews, so I'll mention somethign different: metaphysics.

    Normally, you don't need to pay much attention to game metaphysics. However, if you are going to create an expansion about the afterlife, I would expect at minimum a committee meeting to decide how the afterlife works. Is the Shadowlands where dead people's souls go for eternity, like in Christian and Greek mythos? Can the dead die in the Shadowlands? What happens if they die? If they are dead already, shouldn't they just reform after a while? If not and they truly disipate into nothing, then it is not really the land of the dead - its a second life. Can you harvest them for anima? I have no idea what the Shadowlands is supposed to be. I'm pretty sure the developers don't either.

    Then there is anima. In Oribos, we are told deserving souls used to go to their rightful place (ala Christian mythos), but then something bad happened and now all souls go to the Maw. Was a developer watching, "The Good Place"? Then we find out there is an anima drought. A what? Turns out the entire afterlife is powered by the souls of dead people. When a buddy of yours dies on Azeroth, they go through the death funnel and are ground-up into anima. Soulent Green is people!

    I hate to say this, but traveling the zones hearing each complain about their anima drought left a bad taste in my mouth. The next 10 levels you just run from one place to another watching it fall apart, because they don't have enough ground-up souls to power their magic. How is this different than the warlock Guldan using souls for his foul magics? I kept thinking that this whole place is evil and needs to be burned to the ground. I'm pretty sure this not what the developers intended, but they should have taken a moment to think through their world.    … Expand
  63. Klenoni
    Sep 5, 2021
    2
    Shadowlands is such a disappointment.
    Where are all the promised character customisation options Blizzard promised us at the beginning of this expansion? Your average 10 hair colors & skin tones in wow are a complete joke. It's 2021. There is something called color palettes, that is supposed to be in every modern mmo, that gives you over 50 hair & skin tones. Not to mention height sliders    Shadowlands is such a disappointment.
    Where are all the promised character customisation options Blizzard promised us at the beginning of this expansion? Your average 10 hair colors & skin tones in wow are a complete joke. It's 2021. There is something called color palettes, that is supposed to be in every modern mmo, that gives you over 50 hair & skin tones. Not to mention height sliders and so on. Nothing of that is found in world of warcraft. You would think you are still stuck in 2011 with this game.

    Why do the players and races are still split into two? Is it too much to ask to let your players actually play the faction they prefer with all the races they prefer instead of dividing the races? Is it too much to ask to give us the ability to cross faction raid like in every other mmo, because, you know, mmos are usually games that motivate you to play TOGETHER WITH ALL PLAYERS instead of making everyone frustrated with A TON OF RESTRICTIONS, like racial segregation and the division of players. Just look at the gigantic faction imbalance and Blizzard keeps ignoring it for years now. How Fun! Not.

    And don't even get me started with all the time consuming grindy systems and the crappy lore ever since the end of Legion.    … Expand
  64. ZakkirX
    Nov 28, 2021
    0
    What an unbelievable bad story this game has. Like seriously, who came up with that cringe wirting?
    Man, what I would give to return to Legion...
    I agree with most of what others here wrote before me. This game became such a joke.
  65. MarMap
    Jan 30, 2022
    1
    1/10, one for nice graphics in the new zones... and that's pretty much it. Unfortunately this game is in such a bad state, that I can't give it a higher rating.

    bfa was already very slow with content, but shadowlands is even worse. The content is paper thin and through long time gating they try to stretch their content as long as possible and if that wasn't bad enough they still want    1/10, one for nice graphics in the new zones... and that's pretty much it. Unfortunately this game is in such a bad state, that I can't give it a higher rating.

    bfa was already very slow with content, but shadowlands is even worse. The content is paper thin and through long time gating they try to stretch their content as long as possible and if that wasn't bad enough they still want money from you for each and every month and of course for all the microtransactions.

    Now I would be ok with the ingame store, if this game would actually be good... but it's not. It really isn't.

    One of the two playable factions is essentially dead, when it comes to pve and pvp.
    Yes, for solo players it's not a big issue, but this is a mmo and I find it quite toxic of the developers to actively cater to the overpopulated faction and downgrade the dying faction by various acts like racials, playable races, focus of the story, destroyed zones and cities and so on.
    Because seriously, with that kind of behavior there shouldn't be 2 factions in the first place. These devs are certainly not capable of acting neutral.
    And then there are phrases like: "Oh yeah, we're listening." or "We're working on it." and so on... seriously? For almost two decades they are repeating themselves. Who in their right mind would believe them anymore?

    It's long overdue to make all races neutral, so that both factions can play with all racials and of course with their preferred races instead of making compromises to actually do some content and with that they should of course also give players the option to participate in cross faction pve and pvp.
    This way factions can stay, but not racism will matter, your loyalty, regardless of race will matter. This way war mode can also stay. It works for Pandaren and it will certainly work for all races.

    While this is probably the biggest problem this game faces, it also has a lot of others.

    I for one really hate pretty much everything that has happened with the lore since the end of Legion. It feels forced, it feels ridiculous... it's just really, really bad story writing and ruined several zones, cities, characters, the factions and even gods in this universe.
    One can only hope they will retcon this mess... like seriously...

    Another big minus is the way this game looks... because it looks old, very, very old. The graphics in so many zones, even in the capitals are really outdated and it also shows in the very limited amount of customization options.

    I could go on with FOMO like the mage tower or with the ridiculous amount of systems... well, wow is not what I would consider a decent game anymore.    … Expand
  66. Pokito
    May 22, 2022
    1
    This game is full of FOMO -fear of missing out-, borrowed power systems, which don't respect your time at all... speaking of time, huge amount of time gating, enormous faction imbalance, because the devs cram all mainstream races in the Horde and didn't even bother during bfa to give the Alliance a new race, but I guess fat ogre sized humans and gnomes without arms and legs count as a newThis game is full of FOMO -fear of missing out-, borrowed power systems, which don't respect your time at all... speaking of time, huge amount of time gating, enormous faction imbalance, because the devs cram all mainstream races in the Horde and didn't even bother during bfa to give the Alliance a new race, but I guess fat ogre sized humans and gnomes without arms and legs count as a new race right? Right? lol xD
    Crappy story full of retcons that turns one character after the other in to idiots, game is full of microtransactions and outdated graphics and classes aren't balanced. Despite the faction imbalance they still keep the races strictly separated, aswell as the players instead of just making most stuff cross faction.

    Well and all these things turn this game to a toxic cesspool full of frustrated players -the few, who are still playing despite all the toxic stuff in this game.    … Expand
  67. Urigi
    Jun 27, 2022
    2
    Second worst expansion of this very outdated game. Worst would probably be Battle for Azeroth.

    On top of a ridiculous amount of borrowed power systems, timegating, fomo, outdated graphics, unbalanced classes and factions, laughable bad lore and content droughts despite the monthy sub costs, -it is also worth mentioning that Blizzard is still holding on to racism as this game's pillar.    Second worst expansion of this very outdated game. Worst would probably be Battle for Azeroth.

    On top of a ridiculous amount of borrowed power systems, timegating, fomo, outdated graphics, unbalanced classes and factions, laughable bad lore and content droughts despite the monthy sub costs,
    -it is also worth mentioning that Blizzard is still holding on to racism as this game's pillar.
    Like others already criticised, racial segregation of playable races is the very first thing players of world of warcraft have to participate in.
    If they don't accept the racist faction system they simply can't play this game.

    Can't get more disgusting than that really, but I'll admit that I still had some fun during Legion despite such an archaic mindset, which the developers of this game force upon their players.
    Battle For Azeroth and Shadowlands however are in almost every aspect extremely bad and not enjoyable in the slightest.    … Expand
  68. Grizzler
    Jan 10, 2021
    0
    A boring slog introducing nothing new. Using cut and paste assets its like they made an entire game from left over scraps. Not to mention it is beyond frustratingly slow. They want your subs and to play as little as possible. Avoid it even on sale.
  69. Yigzatoth
    Dec 5, 2020
    0
    Quests are nothing new or engaging, zones are interesting but they also feel quite small, in terms of content Torghast and the Maw seem to me gated to prevent a fast content drought.
    The price tag and content available at launch for a pay to play game is disappointing and too expensive.
    There are a lot of other things that don't work for me, but that would be a essay instead of a small    Quests are nothing new or engaging, zones are interesting but they also feel quite small, in terms of content Torghast and the Maw seem to me gated to prevent a fast content drought.
    The price tag and content available at launch for a pay to play game is disappointing and too expensive.
    There are a lot of other things that don't work for me, but that would be a essay instead of a small review.
    All in all I think its time for the game director (Ion Hazzikostas) to move or quit video game industry. Even with Legion being a average expansion, WoD and BfA should have got him fired, let alone allow him to make a 4th expansion under his direction.    … Expand
  70. Brucecampbell
    Dec 15, 2020
    2
    The professional reviews and influencers are LYING to you!
    So you are wondering is it a good time to come back to WoW. Can you play with friends again and enjoy the game, maybe do some battlegrounds, wpvp and some raiding? The answer is a firm NO. This is not a MMO anymore, it's a few failed esports that target mentally ill people who live with a caregiver to use as slave labor. They sell    The professional reviews and influencers are LYING to you!
    So you are wondering is it a good time to come back to WoW. Can you play with friends again and enjoy the game, maybe do some battlegrounds, wpvp and some raiding? The answer is a firm NO. This is not a MMO anymore, it's a few failed esports that target mentally ill people who live with a caregiver to use as slave labor. They sell carries and boosts through content for gear and mounts, which people buy with tokens. Those jobless people turn the gold into RL money against the TOS to fund their gameplay or to fuel an endless number of microtranactions to race change, class change depending on what is flavor of the month for raids too tightly tuned.

    In old WoW anyone could raid and you could bring family or friends. The game was time and effort gated to a point and not trying to be a failed esport. WoW still wants you to invest that time but the rewards differ depending on how many friends you want to leave behind, how toxic the community you are willing to put up with and the debt you are willing to incur as you lose your job to mythic raid or be a high end arena player where you will need a Razer Naga for arena focus macros that is a paperweight on your desk in everything but WoW.

    When Cata brought on esport difficulty for raids Blizzard created systems so that players who didn't want to engage in that could still engage in other aspects of the game and have fun. This was through pvp gear with pvp stats, scaling or instanced pvp limiting item level. Those systems are now all gone to push token sales and min/mx microtransactions. The influencers tell you this is a good thing because without the failed esports they lose content and prestige, but the influeners are an increasingly shrinking, insular bubble of delusion.

    If you want to know just how bad the disparity is to fund MT's, daily quests and initial pvp gear that you grind give item level 150. Heroics gives 180. Unranked pvp gear 200 that takes months to get and it needs to be supplemented by raiding gear. Normal raiding which is about the same as old WoW pre cata is 200. Heroic is like 220. Mythic 230. Mythic + which is a timed dungeon event with the most toxic player base in the world is like 213. This is in just the first tier of raiding and you already have an insane gear disparity where you will get steamrolled in PvP and be locked out of Mythic + because of gear and raider io score, even if that is the mode you are interested in.

    In addition to a gear treadwell that never ends, allows no breaks and allows no time to help friends learn how to even get to at least mythic plus difficulty, you also have an endless amount of systems you have to grind to get more power levels. Keep in mind if you want to Mythic raid you are REQUIRED to have geared alts as they do sales (carries through Heroic and Mythic) non stop to fund their gameplay and mythic raiding is so tightly tuned that it requires you to play flavor of the month in the raid just to clear it.

    Summary. Blizzard expects 99 percent of the player base to spend as much time gearing characters as the 1 percent while having gear that is MUCH worse unless they engage in the failed esports or purchase carries to keep their item level up. This worse gear means you can't even engage and have fun in any PvP. This is the only MMO where you are required to leave friends and family and loved ones behind to progress, WHICH WERE THE CORE OF GOOD GUILDS IN THE PAST. You now play with a revolving door of people who get burnt out, who are not friends and who who really don't even like playing with eachother. The ranked PVP and mythic communities in this game are among the most toxic in video game history. This is the worst WoW has ever been by far, while the art and animations is probably at an all time high to sell MT's and mounts to naive people or people who just want to play dress up Barbie.

    As a MMO this game deserves the 2 I am giving it. It fails in every single aspect as a MMO, is everything bad about game publisher greed and modern MMO's wrapped into 1 package and the 2 is only because it's BAD as a single player RPG for the story, but at least they put some effort there by ripping off Ori and the Blind Forest for the one zone that is in any way interesting. I feel bad for the artists at Blizzard because they are the only people earning a paycheck or that haven't sold out to Bobby Kotick now the real CEO of Blizzard was pushed out.    … Expand
  71. Ballsy
    Dec 13, 2020
    1
    DO NOT waste your money. Ive been playing since 2004 and this expansion is by far the worst. On top of the usual bugs, the gameplay is boring and a considerable time suck. You put in a lot of work for very minimal rewards. Most of the new features are confusing. The dungeons leave a lot to be desired. On top of this, the WoW community in game are unhelpful, childish and elitist. BUYDO NOT waste your money. Ive been playing since 2004 and this expansion is by far the worst. On top of the usual bugs, the gameplay is boring and a considerable time suck. You put in a lot of work for very minimal rewards. Most of the new features are confusing. The dungeons leave a lot to be desired. On top of this, the WoW community in game are unhelpful, childish and elitist. BUY SOMETHING ELSE!… Expand
  72. Zpaa
    Dec 13, 2020
    1
    I played all previous expansions, been playing since vanilla. On every expansion I came back to check it out, but since the last few I just cant get my self to stick around very long. This time I had high hopes, since Classic was such a huge success, I figured blizzard learned that people did not want a cakewalk for a leveling experience. But it still is :( My gear was super dated, butI played all previous expansions, been playing since vanilla. On every expansion I came back to check it out, but since the last few I just cant get my self to stick around very long. This time I had high hopes, since Classic was such a huge success, I figured blizzard learned that people did not want a cakewalk for a leveling experience. But it still is :( My gear was super dated, but still I had no problem pulling everything at the same time and felt like a god. I kinda like the focus on the story telling, but I just which the world would feel more dangerous. There is just no challenge in leveling anymore. Its just something you have to put yourself through to get to max level. Then probably grind a lot of easy stuff, to finally get to participate in a last couple of really hard things you can do in WoW these days.
    After I unlocked the first dungeon, I used the dungeon finder to do it, got into a group, they killed the first boss (barely, only 1 guy survived). I though, ow cool, we might actually need to step it up to clear this! But nothing happened in chat, no one said a word, ran on, wiped on trash and left the party instantly after the first wipe... I was left speechless. This would not happen in Classic. I did not finish my playthrough, because clearly, some fundamental stuff that went downhill since vanilla, are still just as broken as the ever were. No need for community. No challenge in leveling or walking out in the world. No commitment to dungeons. I feel really disappointed. Specially since Classic showed how these things are fixed. or rather, were not broken yet... But since I know blizzard is not crazy, they probably intended it to be this way :(    … Expand
  73. TheSpookMeister
    Mar 9, 2021
    3
    Beautiful.

    Tedious. From the (unskippable) almost hour-long intro to the constant NPCs commenting on everything as they stand on what you're trying to loot, it's a slog. World Quests now take 10-20 minutes and no flight master's whistle. The story is cool. But making the option to level without the story take much longer is not. You have to do EVERYTHING (Covenant, Torghast,    Beautiful.

    Tedious.

    From the (unskippable) almost hour-long intro to the constant NPCs commenting on everything as they stand on what you're trying to loot, it's a slog. World Quests now take 10-20 minutes and no flight master's whistle. The story is cool. But making the option to level without the story take much longer is not.

    You have to do EVERYTHING (Covenant, Torghast, Mythic+, and World Quests) to progress.

    CHORES.

    Torghast is awesome. The rewards are not.

    Don't even know what to say about dungeons, since almost every group I've been in has fallen apart after the first boss (since that's where the most desirable loot drops come from). Gear drops are almost nonexistant. Got two upgrades in World Quests the first day, nothing else for a month.

    Stepping away at least until I see what they're doing with 9.1.    … Expand
  74. Mahts
    Dec 30, 2020
    2
    This game has nothing new, and is just a time gated waste of time. I wanted another Wraith of the Lich King, and didn't get it. Even Torghast, which held so much promise turned out to be just another part of a grind for crafting, it isn't aimed at solo players at all, as the other materials come from raids, etc.
  75. yicori7525
    Dec 31, 2020
    0
    Whoever invented the maw should be hunted down, and killed brutally IRL with no remorse or mercy.
  76. almightythor
    Jan 8, 2021
    3
    Personally, very disappointed with the expansion.
    The artwork is great however the gameplay feels dull and playing has become a chore, were every reset you have a mental check list of things you need to get done before the next reset, once you've completed the content you just sit there twiddling your thumbs for the rest of the week or if you have alts, do the same thing on them.    Personally, very disappointed with the expansion.
    The artwork is great however the gameplay feels dull and playing has become a chore, were every reset you have a mental check list of things you need to get done before the next reset, once you've completed the content you just sit there twiddling your thumbs for the rest of the week or if you have alts, do the same thing on them.

    Everything is just repetition and honestly for me, it took all the fun out of the game. Once you have ran the content, nothing feels exciting that you would want to do it again such as the dungeons etc

    Leveling through the main story line is alright, expect for the fact that the game feels like you have no choice in terms of which zones to go to and the quests to do. Threads of fate is absolutely horrible    … Expand
  77. jinchuanad
    Jan 10, 2021
    0
    Boring and a waste of time. Level up is easy but, getting equipment is extremely hard. I do now know why, but everything is forced to be slow. Only a few things to do each week, even if you did everything, you may still not able to have any significant improvement. I tired raid PVP and everything, all I got was the same different item for the same slot, which I already have, and that hasBoring and a waste of time. Level up is easy but, getting equipment is extremely hard. I do now know why, but everything is forced to be slow. Only a few things to do each week, even if you did everything, you may still not able to have any significant improvement. I tired raid PVP and everything, all I got was the same different item for the same slot, which I already have, and that has happened twice in the last few weeks, I feel like its a total waste of time.… Expand
  78. Nihl
    Mar 2, 2021
    2
    Covenant system is terrible. A good oportunity to diversify characters narrative and aesthetically completely wasted. Because let's face it: very few people want to sacrifice their PvE/PvP performance for the sake of role playing and everyone will be inevitably pigeonholed into their best Covenant.
    Content and loot being stretched and/or drip fed to us. Wait a week for everything. What's    Covenant system is terrible. A good oportunity to diversify characters narrative and aesthetically completely wasted. Because let's face it: very few people want to sacrifice their PvE/PvP performance for the sake of role playing and everyone will be inevitably pigeonholed into their best Covenant.
    Content and loot being stretched and/or drip fed to us. Wait a week for everything. What's the next step? Making us buy crystals on the store to advance faster?
    Torghast gets stale really fast.
    Visual design and music are really good, as always. Dungeons and raids are decent.

    Still better than BfA at launch.
    I really hope some things get better for 9.1.

    Update: Blizzconline gave no signs of improvement.    … Expand
  79. Ploto38
    Oct 13, 2021
    1
    Shadowlands is a garbage expansion. Don't waste your time with it.
    The story continues to be on an incredibly cringe level. Seriously, who there at Blizzard thought this would be a good direction? Same level of cringe writing like in battle for Azeroth.
    Faction imbalance... yeah, Blizzard continues to ignore it completly and to cater to the overpopulated faction. Racism... apparently    Shadowlands is a garbage expansion. Don't waste your time with it.
    The story continues to be on an incredibly cringe level. Seriously, who there at Blizzard thought this would be a good direction? Same level of cringe writing like in battle for Azeroth.
    Faction imbalance... yeah, Blizzard continues to ignore it completly and to cater to the overpopulated faction.
    Racism... apparently Blizzard continues to see it as a the foundation of their game. Racial segregation of the playable races stays and every race has the same mindset like those in the USA, who thought it would be neat to separate black and white people back then.
    FOMO... has been critized enough. Just a terrible thing Blizzard does.
    Lazy and unbalanced character customization options between the races and the ignored old world design... just oof.
    Content droughts, very, very long content droughts and yet they squeeze money out of the players for every single month.    … Expand
  80. Grenna
    Feb 12, 2021
    4
    With Shadowlands, at first it's quite enjoyable. Then after some time, you get the feeling that all of WoW's past issues have come to a head. The problems with systems in BFA, and how much they have succeeded slowing the game down to artificially increase play time to get players to that next month of their subscription, is really noticeable at this point. In one area you can't mountWith Shadowlands, at first it's quite enjoyable. Then after some time, you get the feeling that all of WoW's past issues have come to a head. The problems with systems in BFA, and how much they have succeeded slowing the game down to artificially increase play time to get players to that next month of their subscription, is really noticeable at this point. In one area you can't mount anymore at all, not even with a ground mount. I doubt it will be long before they extend this idea to other new zones, slowing everything down even more and making it a frustrating experience for the player. Of course there is the longer GCD issue still remaining an issue for some specs. And they have lowered haste quite a bit as well. Even with purchasable gear for PVP, the haste on that gear is quite low. High haste makes for fun gameplay. Long cast times makes for dull and sluggish gameplay.

    The entire endgame story is timegated over a period of several months which is ridiculous.

    Then there are the serious and most frustrating issues with the endgame. In WoW's endgame, you have three options for the most part. Mythic dungeon plus, PVP with arenas or rated battlegrounds, or raiding. For raiding and mythic plus, you have to have a third party addon score now called Raider IO in order to get invited to most groups of varying levels. If you haven't done any of the content, your score will be low, and you most likely won't get invited to groups. This leaves new players stuck in a position where they can't try any new content for them because they haven't already done the content they're trying to do for the first time.

    PVP is even more of a mess right now. Blizzard awards the higher rated players with better gear. And the increments between entry level and say, 1800+ rated arena gear is massive to the point where even a player who has a full honor set will be 25% behind both health-wise and an even larger percentage damage-wise. PVP is also quite bursty right now. I have a friend who has always been a casual PVPer in the game, and that has kept her subscribed since 2005. Now even with all of the rewards she has received in PVP from running hundreds of battlegrounds this expansion, since she isn't rated, a higher rated player can one shot her in a third of a second from full health. This issue has led to an increase in boosting services where people pay lots of gold to high ranked players to carry them to higher ranks for better rewards, so they no longer get one shot. And of course Blizzard profits off this as well because people buy their token for gold to pay for this. The issue with this is that it has caused higher rated boosting players to fall lower and lower in rank because now they're all competing with each other instead of the normal players at that rank. So now for a new player, they are seeing very high geared and skilled players at very low brackets, hundreds of points away from any low reward. And they then get stuck there and quit the game in frustration.

    Long story short, these problems are mostly caused by greed. Most of us on here have loved WoW as a hobby for so long. But how can we keep paying for this nonsense in good conscience? I have unsubscribed along with many other people I know in game. I guess we can only hope that Blizzard undoes these awful choices at some point so we can go back to the game we used to love.    … Expand
  81. tahana
    Dec 13, 2020
    3
    The story itself seems uninspired, and while they have different names it is the same old rehash of borrowed powers, and grinds of the last two expansions. More buttons =/= inspired game play, when in fact a lot of the added buttons are simply garbage abilities that you have to maintain.

    The art and music team hit it out of the park once again which is why I'm not giving it a complete    The story itself seems uninspired, and while they have different names it is the same old rehash of borrowed powers, and grinds of the last two expansions. More buttons =/= inspired game play, when in fact a lot of the added buttons are simply garbage abilities that you have to maintain.

    The art and music team hit it out of the park once again which is why I'm not giving it a complete zero, but that only takes a game so far.

    Nothing in my mind is worse than WoD, but this expansion is in a hard place to tie with it.    … Expand
  82. mambomambonia
    Dec 13, 2020
    2
    The worst addition I've played, in this game literally everything is bad now, from locations and quests to balance and mechanics. Blizzards killed my favorite class, they killed the mages, turning them into a support class in all three specs. Don't buy this **** you will waste money and time. Better buy Cyberpunk 2077, which really deserves its money, not this SHADOWLANDS piece of ****.The worst addition I've played, in this game literally everything is bad now, from locations and quests to balance and mechanics. Blizzards killed my favorite class, they killed the mages, turning them into a support class in all three specs. Don't buy this **** you will waste money and time. Better buy Cyberpunk 2077, which really deserves its money, not this SHADOWLANDS piece of ****.
    2/10. Worst addition.
    Sorry for my language. Greetings from Russia.    … Expand
  83. hansmueller
    Dec 16, 2020
    4
    (played since TBC, did alpha & beta test on SL)

    Pros: - more customizations für chars - chromie time being a good idea (but does not work properly - group synch does not work, very annoying / almost impossible to lvl/quest with friends) - graphics/landscapes/new zones/ new models etc. are ok but only mediocre compared to other expansions (TBC was much more creative/innovative at it's    (played since TBC, did alpha & beta test on SL)

    Pros:
    - more customizations für chars
    - chromie time being a good idea (but does not work properly - group synch does not work, very annoying / almost impossible to lvl/quest with friends)
    - graphics/landscapes/new zones/ new models etc. are ok but only mediocre compared to other expansions (TBC was much more creative/innovative at it's time)
    - PvP vendors
    - mostly targetable loot with less RNG

    cons:
    - really bad class design due to oversystemification and borrowed powers
    - bad class balance (frustrating in pve and makes pvp pointless)
    - forced content (oversystemification)
    - time gating
    - torghast aka choreghast (is very generic, pointless, "random" aka generic random generated content similar to warfronts and island expeditions just in a darker more monotonous environment)
    - pointless limitation of playable content due to covenant choice
    - extreme linear storytelling (if you like being a puppet on strings then you will like it)
    - does not feel like a MMORPG world to explore but like you are reenacting a linear story in a given pace and a given way. you don't have agency over your char / YOUR story in the world. it's just an interactive story - like reading a book but in 3D and you are allowed to press some buttons from time to time.
    - no competitive PvP possible due to bad class design and balance

    all in all: compared to other expansions it's mediocre. if you don't care about anything and just stumble around from time to time, collect a few pets and mounts and do some quests then you can somewhat enjoy Shadowlands. The best thing about Shadowlands is that it's not BfA. If THAT is the best thing you can say about an expansion it's probably not worth playing much.

    The really bad thing is that due to all the systemifications that are linkt to eachother you can't really skip/ ignore all the "awesome" features you don't enjoy.    … Expand
  84. whobdobub
    Dec 16, 2020
    0
    Honestly if your bored and looking for something to do, wow is not that game anymore, bored people don't intentionally try to frustrate themselves to keep busy. Torghast is a OVERTUNED playground for the elitist. The maw is an awful zone that just chews you up and makes you feel worthless and undergeared.

    Gearing up is awful and requires 100's of hours of team play. Way too much    Honestly if your bored and looking for something to do, wow is not that game anymore, bored people don't intentionally try to frustrate themselves to keep busy. Torghast is a OVERTUNED playground for the elitist. The maw is an awful zone that just chews you up and makes you feel worthless and undergeared.

    Gearing up is awful and requires 100's of hours of team play.

    Way too much RP, Way too much timegating, way to much favortism for raiders.

    Everything in the game is a chore now ?

    Professions in this expansion where designed to make you spend your real life money in the wow shop to buy tokens for gold so you can level your professions.

    They did a good job selling the hype, they did a good job making a certain crowd of players content with the expac, but the people that carried this game and stayed subbed through all the crappy **** and settled for the casual experience are now being shunned this expansion.

    Don't give them your money. Unless you want a second part time job, I would wait for a more friendly expansion that welcomes all types of players rather then the one type of player.    … Expand
  85. Emed1
    Dec 31, 2020
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Game is not what I expected.
    Screams desperation by trying to add content that makes zero sense.
    Story line and questing is mind numbing bable.
    They added skills that are completely useless to any build that most likely will never be used. You can tell the guys working on this game don't even play it. They ruined every class imo.
    I've played wow for 15 years and I am extremely disappointed but to each there own.    … Expand
  86. Frostbriar
    Jan 2, 2021
    2
    More of the same... that would be my brief summary of this expansion. I have tried to like it, in fact I have really wanted to like it, but honestly Shadowlands is just boring.

    If you liked Legion and BfA then you will almost certainly like Shadowlands. But there is nothing new or ground breaking about this expansion, it just feels like the final act of BfA. And whilst classes have    More of the same... that would be my brief summary of this expansion. I have tried to like it, in fact I have really wanted to like it, but honestly Shadowlands is just boring.

    If you liked Legion and BfA then you will almost certainly like Shadowlands. But there is nothing new or ground breaking about this expansion, it just feels like the final act of BfA. And whilst classes have had some abilities returned to them, there's little there to make your class feel interesting or engaging. I have one of every class, and honestly they all feel much the same in a lot of respects.

    The good: Comes in the form of Blizzard trying a new approach on alt levelling (giving you an option to count all the main story as complete on your alts; but this comes with it's own issues in that you have limited content to level up with and it gets tedious very quickly. Especially as the things you will be doing to level, are the same things you do for world quest dailies on your main).

    As always the world creation is superb, as the art team have done their usual fantastic job in realising the game world.

    We have lost some of the dross from Legion and BfA (like Titanforging et al.), but unfortunately retained the drip fed reputation grind, and the dependency on rep for a lot of things (including some crafting patterns).

    The bad: We have a new artefact power in the form of anima (an essential (dripfed) grind to power up your covenant sanctum and achieve any measure of progress with regards to the story. Artefact power by a new name is also evident in the form of Soul Ash, which you need to craft legendaries, and means you have to grind out Torghast each week. And as per usual, it is heavily and egregiously time-gated to retain that 'played metric' for the shareholder meetings.

    The story is a continuation from BfA, which was some of the absolute worst writing I have seen in a game (especially an MMORPG) in my life. Resulting in a story that you either miss, or don't really care about.

    The end game content is a take on the old Mages Tower from Legion, in the form of Torghast. Which, heavily depending on class/spec, you will either find a breeze or almost impossible by all accounts. Personally I played a blood DK as my main, so nothing in there was a challenge, but it took forever to slog your way through. And then there is the Maw...

    The Maw has to be one of the single worst things I have experienced in WoW in a long time, and yes that includes the 'dps no matter what your spec is' challenges from the Mage Tower, snorefronts and island expeditions.

    You have no mount in there, so if you're not playing a mobile class then it's pure hell getting from one side to the other. Even after you unlock the various quality of life options like bonus teleports and grappling hooks it's still an absolutely awful experience. Coupled with the mob density and the constant harassment from the Jailer, it is simply not an enjoyable experience. Once again it feels like a deliberate time sink.

    This is made worse by both the story and weekly progression forcing you back in there time and time again, making it pretty unavoidable (unlike the Mages Tower, expeditions and snorefronts), which just slowly erodes your desire to keep playing. More than anything else, the Maw is the one thing that made me cancel my sub.

    The raid is so-so. Some good fights, but it mostly just feels like 'same old raiding experience, with a new skin', and it's the same with the dungeons. I suppose that if your class doesn't feel engaging, then this has a knock-on effect for every other bit of content, unfortunately.

    And every time you want to start a new character in Shadowlands, you have to play through the unskippable (absolutely awful) timesink that is the intro mission; which takes about an hour to do. It's mind-numbingly tedious.

    Ultimately WoD was a terrible expansion due to lack of anything to do for a huge period of time. Legion only seemed good due to how bad WoD was and BfA was arguably (definitely in my mind) the worst expansion ever released for WoW by a huge margin; so I am not surprised that I am not enjoying Shadowlands.

    Shadowlands is simply not enough of a breakaway from the previous three awful expansions and their unengaging mechanics for me to enjoy it. Although I might be biased in that regard, as I never intended to come back for Shadowlands in the first place, and only did due to IRL friends.

    I don't wish WoW ill, and I hope it manages to pick itself up and carry on. But in its current state, especially with the awful story writing over the past few years, it feels more like the game is limping on towards its eventual death, rather than being reinvigorated with a new lease of life.

    I saw my (hopefully) final Christmas out in Orgrimar, my sub ends in 5 days time and I have absolutely no intention of renewing, as there is simply not enough engaging content to make £10 a month good value for money    … Expand
  87. Rogar
    Aug 14, 2021
    1
    No king rules forever... World of warcraft truley has fallen from grace. Battle for Azeroth was bad and Shadowlands is... still bad. I don't know what has happened during the last patch of Legion (which already was a bit weaker than the patches before that) and the beginning of Battle for Azeroth, but ever since then the game has become nearly unplayable. Both because of the gameplay andNo king rules forever... World of warcraft truley has fallen from grace. Battle for Azeroth was bad and Shadowlands is... still bad. I don't know what has happened during the last patch of Legion (which already was a bit weaker than the patches before that) and the beginning of Battle for Azeroth, but ever since then the game has become nearly unplayable. Both because of the gameplay and beacuse of the cringe writing reagarding the lore.
    What is it with this weird obsession with that awful written banshee queen? Ever since she is the focus of the story the lore went from mediocre to an absolutely cringe show.
    The writers ruined one major character after the other, they ruined the factions with yet another brainless faction war in bfa and continue to potrait everyone around that banshee like an idiot, while pretending she's so smart and everything, while the only thing she truly is, is a hypocrite. A mass murderer, a sadist and a coward, who only cares for herself. Yet through several retcons the writers forcefully want to push a redemption arc in our throats.
    I've read so many people suggest they should just retcon bfa and Shadowlands and blame N'Zoth for it and normally I'm not a fan of the trope "It was just a dream" or in this case a vision, but in this case I would gladly accept it. Because there is no repairing of the lore, if they decide to continue on this route.
    I would gladly return to Legion, to our order halls and to a time before the war. Like so many others I truly hate the meaningless back and forth between the factions. Let us play together. The devs created a huge faction imbalace, that you can't really fix anymore. Let all races have free choice like Pandaren. That would make the game so much better and let us choose, if we want to play in raids and battlegrounds together with the other faction with optional cross faction groups. And DO NOT corrupt something like that again. Don't make it half baked. Let us truly play together and with all races we want in the faction we want.    … Expand
  88. Enorb
    Sep 20, 2021
    1
    Really gotta hate the development of this game.
    Especially from a rp perspective wow has become unbearable.
    There is still no player housing, Blizzard is still holding on to racism and strictly split the playable races instead of making all of them playable on both factions, the lore is so idotic, that it ruins the rp (unless you completly ignore everything that happened after Legion),    Really gotta hate the development of this game.
    Especially from a rp perspective wow has become unbearable.
    There is still no player housing, Blizzard is still holding on to racism and strictly split the playable races instead of making all of them playable on both factions, the lore is so idotic, that it ruins the rp (unless you completly ignore everything that happened after Legion), the world still uses outdated graphic.    … Expand
  89. Iisko
    Apr 28, 2022
    3
    After the bad story in sl and bfa and all the repetitive systems and content droughts they announced some good changes for Dragonflight. However there wasn't a single word about removing racism in wow, which really gives a bitter taste to the part where they are saying they would be more progressive from now on.
    It's just sad, that we still have such huge limitations after all these    After the bad story in sl and bfa and all the repetitive systems and content droughts they announced some good changes for Dragonflight. However there wasn't a single word about removing racism in wow, which really gives a bitter taste to the part where they are saying they would be more progressive from now on.
    It's just sad, that we still have such huge limitations after all these years. After all these years playable races are still strictly separated between the Alliance and Horde and it's wrong on so many levels.
    I really wish they would remove such bothersome restrictions. Would finally give me a reason to return to this game.    … Expand
  90. Sponger
    May 25, 2022
    0
    World Of Warcraft is a game full of dubious stuff like racial segregation, which is forced upon the players, meaning that your race is what defines to what team you are allowed to go.
    No, not your values are what is important, solely the race is and they kept this division for almost 2 decades.
    This however is not suprising, considering that there is an open lawsuit against Blizzard,    World Of Warcraft is a game full of dubious stuff like racial segregation, which is forced upon the players, meaning that your race is what defines to what team you are allowed to go.
    No, not your values are what is important, solely the race is and they kept this division for almost 2 decades.
    This however is not suprising, considering that there is an open lawsuit against Blizzard, because of the yukky stuff the devs did...

    Anyways, back to wow and it's toxic aspects.
    As if racial segregation in 2022 wasn't bad enough the devs do not care, that one of the two playable factions is essentially dead playerwise. An issue, that the devs caused through multiple acts, such as playable races, racials, constantly destroying zones of that faction, allowing open mockery on interviews against the faction and so on.
    That surely tells you a whole lot about the mindset these devs have.

    Then there are cheap tactics like FOMO and borrowed power systems in order to trick their players to stay subscribed (since you have to pay for each month) without giving actually new content. The best example here would be the mage tower.
    Shadowlands had no real content for months, so they announced to bring back the mage tower from Legion. While at first that would be a nice (old) feature, they did not allow us to get the original rewards for fighting in the mage tower. So another case of FOMO. Because if you want certain items in this game, you will have to make sure to play without taking breaks or you will miss out.
    Sadly there are players, who fell for such cheap methods.

    The lore is another case that shows the clear disconnect to their players.
    There are no consequences for anything in this game. You can commit genocide, burn down entire zones, use the blight, tortue and at the end of the day you get rewarded for it.
    And I want to be clear here, I am not against violence in video games, but the way it is used in wow ist straight up disgusting.
    The abuser gets awesome new stuff, while the victims are basically told they should just forgive and forget... and are allowed to watch, while the abuser gets away. Like wtf is this kind of mindset the devs are putting in this game?

    There are just so many questionable things in wow...

    Oh and also... this is an mmo and despite of that the devs didn't want their players to actually play together. Only recently they said, they would be open an extremely small part of gameplay for cross faction, but the main part (neutral races, lfr, lfd, guilds etc.) remains strictly separated.

    The devs fuel so much toxicity and tribalism with the systems in this game...
    There are better games out there. Do not play wow at the moment. This game needs major changes.    … Expand
  91. Okara
    Sep 25, 2022
    0
    This game is garbage.
    Blizzard is incredible hypocritical.
    After the lawsuit against them became public they started putting a ton of lgbtq+ stuff in wow, so that people forget about the horrible things the devs did. As if... But you know what they didn't change? Racism. After almost 20 years they are still keeping racial segregation as the foundation of their game. How disgusting can    This game is garbage.
    Blizzard is incredible hypocritical.
    After the lawsuit against them became public they started putting a ton of lgbtq+ stuff in wow, so that people forget about the horrible things the devs did. As if...
    But you know what they didn't change? Racism. After almost 20 years they are still keeping racial segregation as the foundation of their game. How disgusting can you be?

    In order to be part of the toxic, biased, outdated and unbalanced faction system, which makes the game pretty much unplayble for one side because of the developer's bias, you have to participate in an outdated and racist system, that makes you choose a faction solely based on race, not in what you believe in.

    There is certainly a ton of other stuff in wow, like the cringe lore and outdated graphic for example, but racism and the toxic faction system is pretty much the biggest issue of this soulless game.    … Expand
  92. Nottmexpress
    Dec 18, 2020
    1
    Expansion has been over sold by you tube liars. Its for the 12 hour a day player (lifes loosers ). They want the casuals to pay for their habit but provide nothing but toxicity to you as a casual ( Person with an actual life) for being apart of it . The added mechics to compete in Raids mythic plus are not gone but growing and growing . This requires a multitude of add ons loaded to adaptExpansion has been over sold by you tube liars. Its for the 12 hour a day player (lifes loosers ). They want the casuals to pay for their habit but provide nothing but toxicity to you as a casual ( Person with an actual life) for being apart of it . The added mechics to compete in Raids mythic plus are not gone but growing and growing . This requires a multitude of add ons loaded to adapt interrupt the endless growing mechanics. The borrowed power system has left content limited and they have reduced gear drops in a desperate ploy to hide the fact. Torghast was meant to be the fun no bars highlight Its not. Its a RNG power drop which has to be in your favor to kill the floor 6 over difficult end bosses. For certain class specs not balanced at all DPS was impossible at times tank no issue . Its launched with way way to hard leaving a very un happy community which has caused them to reduce the time gated difficulty. Getting into groups for even mythic dungeon runs takes hours with lack of tanks and healers. I have item level 189 and getting refused from groups as I refuse to use raider IO .ranking add on. The warcraft forums are filled with Paid police. they individuals who try to make any negative post the players fault and not the game designers .Content is so dragged out even the daily covenant zone quests are filled with run here run back run here time gated fun ! Bugs ohhh my god. dcd and lagged so much this expansion This has nothing for a player with a life as well. Avoid it . Leave it to the no life losers who have nothing but this in their lives .… Expand
  93. supercriticguy
    Mar 5, 2021
    4
    Whether you're a casual or hardcore player (and I consider myself both), SHADOWLANDS is one of the most polished and yet boring games I've ever played.

    Do you like doing three fetch quests, receiving a crumb of the most boring and uninspired story ever written, and then doing three more fetch quests to receive the next crumb? Because that's what SHADOWLANDS is--without exaggeration.    Whether you're a casual or hardcore player (and I consider myself both), SHADOWLANDS is one of the most polished and yet boring games I've ever played.

    Do you like doing three fetch quests, receiving a crumb of the most boring and uninspired story ever written, and then doing three more fetch quests to receive the next crumb? Because that's what SHADOWLANDS is--without exaggeration. While previous WoW expansions have had (admittedly few) off-the-beaten-path pacing mechanisms, SHADOWLANDS has none. Even the Archaeology profession has been removed! SHADOWLANDS is plainly and unapologetically bare-bones, and with uneventful combat (whether questing or dungeoneering) it is unable to challenge players of any skill level--and that begs the question: Why is this a game and not a (bad) novel?

    Theoretically there may be a glint of fun at SHADOWLANDS' endgame, but why must players wait until then? Leveling in SHADOWLANDS and even experiencing its main quest for the very first time is an absolute slog. Whether you meticulously read every quest or rush through the zones, players will be insulted by the lack of imagination on the part of both the story and the gameplay. It's as if the developers of SHADOWLANDS had never before read a book, watched a movie, or played a video game. There are zero attempts to raise any bar or intrigue the player at any level. Unless you've been part of an underground bunker-cult for two decades, nothing in this game is new or going to surprise you.

    Though the graphics are at times gorgeous (but always unmistakably outdated), I would rather look at a painting than "play" SHADOWLANDS. In an attempt to mix up the gameplay I actually unequipped all of my gear (except for my weapon), and horrifyingly it didn't change anything! I was still able to kill enemies without issue and the gameplay was unchanged. Unfortunately, there is just no way to make SHADOWLANDS a mechanically interesting experience without investing an inexcusable amount of time to reach deep into its endgame.

    With combat this meaningless, with a tired story and characters that will entertain no one, and with easily the worst and least exciting leveling experience of any World of Warcraft expansion, I give SHADOWLANDS a "4": technically playable, but void of any unique experiences or fun.    … Expand
  94. Floofies
    Jan 6, 2021
    0
    Very poor expansion, first expansion including BFA for me to lose interest within the first week alone. Completely stopped playing within 3 weeks, the first time ever. Casual content is the worst it's ever been, world quests/dailies take forever and are not rewarding. Heroic/regular dungeons give basically nothing, PvP is still awful with one-shots from covenants and PvE items.. So bad.
  95. Kezian
    Sep 24, 2021
    0
    Shadowlands is even worst than BFA ! World of Chores with bots everywhere !
  96. Makakdu
    Dec 16, 2020
    0
    Dont bye blizzard games , this corporation is so greede . Thanks Activision for bad games.
  97. Leather_Moose
    Dec 27, 2020
    1
    I have no idea how the hell not a single reputable blogger/youtuber haven't mentioned how grindy this expansion is. At the end of BFA, blizzard said that shadowlands will have less grind, because every one was tired of farming azerite dust. Shadowlands rolled out, and expansion is unplayable unless you can play 40 hours a week, EVERY week. this was not the case with BFA. Currently youI have no idea how the hell not a single reputable blogger/youtuber haven't mentioned how grindy this expansion is. At the end of BFA, blizzard said that shadowlands will have less grind, because every one was tired of farming azerite dust. Shadowlands rolled out, and expansion is unplayable unless you can play 40 hours a week, EVERY week. this was not the case with BFA. Currently you have farm stygia, anima, renown, do the mandatory campaign, ashes from torgast. this is just to stay relevant in game, this is on TOP regular gear grind. this is too much. Also most of that grind is also locked behind reputation and covenant campaign. The catch up mechanics are also much worse than in other expansions. like i play warrior, i can play 10-15 hours a week and not every week. I'm so far behind in renown, and yet there are no way to just knock out some easy quests in one day and make up those 20 renown im missing in one day. Renown is way too important to have such a crappy catch up mechanic. I'll be skipping this expansion altogether because i simply can't play the game 40 hours a week just to stay relevant in game. Last thing to mention, what's the point of gear and levels when blizzard made content to scale to your level and gear? like you can't overpower the content, this is MMO lol, not call of duty, or moba, why are you trying to make a cyber sports out of it.....? what a bs.… Expand
  98. Striege
    Nov 30, 2020
    0
    Just a ****

    nothing new in this game. just old stuff in a new setting (And i dont mean some "old" guys we meet)
    I loved the bugs in the night of the release. waiting up to 30 minutes for a mob that instant despawned. Balancing is **** in this game. Last 2 day just lags the whole day in this game. better deinstall and refund!
  99. Feylexi
    Dec 15, 2020
    0
    The worst expansion so far. Is not alt friendly, mandatory game time of minimum 20+ hours per week, mandatory zones and a lot of repetitive boring chores. Not to mention the zones are disabilities unfriendly. Good luck trying to play the game if you have conditions or if you have challenges with bright colors and identifying 5 shades of red in a split of a second.
  100. Subjektivity
    Dec 16, 2020
    1
    I've played Warcraft since Vanilla and I don't think I've ever regretted spending money on an expansion. Yet here we are, 2 weeks into Shadowlands and I already don't want to play this game anymore. They added frustrating after frustrating mechanic: can't mount in the Maw, if you die you lose items, if you want to change specs and your covenant doesn't match you have to start all over onI've played Warcraft since Vanilla and I don't think I've ever regretted spending money on an expansion. Yet here we are, 2 weeks into Shadowlands and I already don't want to play this game anymore. They added frustrating after frustrating mechanic: can't mount in the Maw, if you die you lose items, if you want to change specs and your covenant doesn't match you have to start all over on leveling your covenant. Then Torghast is crazy overtuned and just depressing to play as a mage main, you have to return to the hub to resync groups for LFG in the maw. If you are a mage thinking of coming back just save yourself the regret and don't. Some of the zones are pretty althpugh its obvious that they are recycling art assets. The lore was what got me interested in coming back and leveling was OK but slogging through the Maw and Torghast to get more story is just not going to happen. Im definitely not resubbing and want a damn refund at this point.… Expand
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Awards & Rankings

34
#34 Best PC Game of 2020
8
#8 Most Discussed PC Game of 2020

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 32 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 31 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 32
  3. Negative: 0 out of 32
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Apr 12, 2021
    80
    Blizzard finally comes with an alt-friendly expansion that brings back the best features of the previous ones. The patch that WoW desperately needed. [Issue#309]
  2. Shacknews
    Jan 29, 2021
    90
    World of Warcraft: Shadowlands certainly manages to capture the same feelings we’ve had since first started playing the game. The leveling experience overhaul, constant sense of progress with rewards, and new campaign stories make Shadowlands a must-have for any avid player.
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  3. GamingTrend
    Jan 27, 2021
    90
    World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is a return to greatness for the franchise. The content is both accessible and fun for all types of players, and the story actually makes you feel like everything you’re doing is helping to save the Shadowlands. Torghast is one of the best features ever added and makes each experience unique and fun. While there are some issues which can slow down the time it takes to get everything you want, the journey there is still enjoyable.
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