PC User Reviews

Retrospective Review: Shadowlands is too much. There are a lot of cool things they added in this expansion, but man is it just all too much. For instance one new thing is Torghast, these roguelike dungeons you could solo or group up for and they were really unique and fun. But, you had to do them ALOT and there were so many of them you could do. They were also not very quick, as some could last up to an hour +. You stack that upon the top of all your other world quests and whatnot, it takes awhile to do everything and quickly starts to feel like Mists all over again. The story people didn’t care for with the Jailer and that whole thing, but I did like the characters and Sylvanas ’ arc. This expansion also seemed to go on forever and they kept adding zones like Zereth Mortis, which seemed unnecessary. I did like the raids, they were cool, but very long and if you were in a legit raid group, doing those all had to be brutal as far as just a time sync, even if you had the bosses on lock. The Maw stuff was another thing that was there and since you could never mount up there until very late in the expansion, it was just slow and a bit boring. They also added covenants which were a cool idea, but I didn’t like how much farming and stuff it required to just max out a single covenant for all the rewards. These were fun to go back to later on in future expansions and max out much faster. They definitely went overboard with content in a few places here, but it still had lots to do if this was the only game you were playing.

It manages to **** on, retcon and ruin 30 years of story and lore it's a masterclass of its own in that regard. The gameplay was overly grindy and not friendly for people with real-life commitments. This is the expansion that killed the story of WoW in such a way that only a full retcon of the entire story of Shadowlands and anything leading up to it can fix it. Sadly Blizzard is too prideful even of this turd so that retcon likely never happens.

good and bad at same time ....................................................

Es ist ein wirklich wunderschönes Spiel️. Ich liebe alles daran und ich spiele schon seit Jahren. Es ist einfach ein Kunstwerk.

This good wow my favorite story and sungeon and raid mechanic is to po## GOODBYE

While initially promising, the fatigue began to set in quickly. With issues from system and class design, to story flaws, retcons, and character assassination, Shadowlands is an expansion a lot of people would not mind never being mentioned or revisited again in the narrative. I enjoyed it when it came out. The level design and music is, as always, beautiful. The art department of World of Warcraft is by far its strongest asset. However, covenants. This single feature ruined this expansion in a way a lot of people saw coming, provided feedback for, and then saw implemented with none of that feedback considered. Each Covenant of the Shadowlands provided unique powers if you were a member. There were four to choose from: -The noble Kyrian of Bastion, angels that ferried souls to the afterlives. -The wicked fleshcrafters and undead Necrolords of Maldraxxus, where warrior souls battled eternally. -The Night Fae of Ardenweald, where animal souls are nurtured and regrown to be send back to the world. -The vampiric Venthyr of Revendreth, who re-educated the most cruel of souls and extracted their anima. Initially, these all sound quite cool! But tying player power into these factions in an ever shifting meta and imposing restrictions upon changing them was a choice that would see most of the playerbase quit within months of the expansion launching. I personally played a Druid, so of course I wanted to be a Night Fae! They were perfect thematically, and fortunately for me, their covenant power “Convoke the Spirits” was so good for the class it actually got baked into the current talent trees we have in Dragonflight. Some other classes were not so lucky. It would feel extremely odd for a Holy Priest to be a member of the Venthyr rather than the angelic Kyrian but sometimes the meta demanded that particular ability. Another example would be for tanking. Tanking was SO bad early on that most groups only accepted Vengeance Demon Hunter as they could hop about to actually ignore damage rather than tanking it. The Kyrian offered an ability to drink a Phial of liquid that cleansed negative affects. This phial was so powerful that tanks essentially NEEDED it during necrotic affix weeks for mythic. Soulbinds were another feature. It was a secondary skill tree in the players chosen covenant hall which could have skills slotted into and upgraded. Sometimes these were very simple things like “5% increased movement speed after casting door of shadows” which is fine! Other times you had “x ability deals 50% more damage” which is very much not fine. There was not really any player choice in the player choice feature of the expansion. I personally enjoyed Torghast, but for people that did not, that feature was a mandatory roguelike tower ascension to obtain soul ash to create their legendary items. These were so powerful that without them your class would be doing a fraction of the damage. Now, for many, the worst feature of this expansion, th story. Of course, spoilers ahead. Sylvanas Windrunner, famously morally grey character securing a future for her people, committed genocide the previous expansion, killing hundreds of thousands of Night Elves. They continually tried to justify this, to redeem her, to the detriment of everyone. You cannot redeem someone committing such a horrific act. Eventually, they realise this and did a complete 180 on her story. Restoring her “fractured soul” when she was killed by Frostmourne. The sword NEVER did this, but for this expansion they decided it can split souls in half purely to save her. After obtaining her soul back, she decides that perhaps she was doing bad things, and was sentenced to save every night elf soul she doomed to the Maw by Tyrande. Not to mention the Jailer. What a one note nonsense villain. He is so absolutely one dimensional and forgettable that I forgot about him entirely while writing this review. Overall, I enjoyed it initially but I would never, ever go back there.

Blizzard is the worst company in the gaming industry currently. They give no **** about their playerbase. Bots run rampant while blizzard hands out permabans to players without warning and with no explanation for the ban.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Shadowlands was basically in my mind mechanically the cream of the crop of the bad Ion hizzikostas led expansions following the legion redesign where every class suffered permanent damage/change in the attempt to turn every specialization into its own mini class. Thematically it looks more like something out of the diablo universe in some areas vs wow. It definitely had a different vibe which reminded me of Burning crusade being so different from the vanilla areas of the game. Legendaries were fun but should have been disabled in Arena. Effort to balance legendaries was minimal and slow. Some specializations had too few good choices of legendaries. Legendaries were originally farmed up purely in torghast so torghast was mandatory and some people didnt like doing it. My major complaint was the time it took, and initial difficulty to SOLO it vs not liking it. Pvp was fun in shadowlands even if it was unbalanced. Participation was very high in the first 3 seasons. I go off of participation. Every time pvp was overall great the game population swelled and participation in rated pvp was always seemingly high. Right now in dragonflight participation has plummetted. It also plumetted after 8.3 BFA due to the corrupted pve gear nonsense, and participation plummetted during legion because there essentially was no pvp gearing path only static stat templates. SL pvp was great because of the restoration of a basic feature. This propped up the positive response by the pvp community, in that the pvp gear vendors were back in the game. With a caveat. Your rating and rank determined the quality of the gear. The issue here is people with better gear can face you at lower rating if they wish to and destroy you. This is now fixed in DF yet class balance is just as bad if not worse.

It is on the second place in the list of my favorite expansions after the BfA, which in my view was the best expansion in the history of WoW. Shadowlands has perfectly ended the arc of the BfA as well as it has resolved many sharp problems of the past, especially problems in the life of many WoW main characters, including those which were connected to gaps in the plot of the game. The death of Garrosh was very impressive. Sylvanas has finally found herself. All who worked on this have done a very nice job. At the same time, it was the most philosophic expansion of the WoW and this was beautiful.

ıt wasnt best expansion in wow but it wasnt bad i think. I loved raids, dungeons. Shadowlands added best back transmogs too wow, still many players using shadowlands back transmogs. Also mounts and toys were cool. The game's atmosphere was good. you could feel like in otherside in warcraft universe...

Полный провал близов по всем фронтам. 6 лет подряд закрывать дейлики и м+ уже просто не смешно

I enjoyed just about EVERY minute of this expansion! It started well, ended well, the story was excellent, the gear looked gorgeous, and it ran incredibly well on a full range of PCs. What else is needed?

Don't waste your money and time, is not worth it too many systems, endless grinding, boring lore, bad loot shadowlands is bad and good at the same time, but I just can't get just with one side. The leveling is pretty good, but the gameplay on this expansion is garbage, you run and run and run over and over again, through quests and some of them are just there to be, without a story or certain line that connects with the actual main story. Not worth it at all, for a 40 dollar expansion and you get this bad, boring and stupid lore, is not very far from a SCAM. just don't buy it, but if you are really curious just go and watch the lore on youtube for free, and done, you've finished Shadowlands, nothing more.

The baddest addon of all time. All touch of Shadowlands is maximum garbage and horrible to players. I think the Blizzard should be restructuring their team from inclusive to professional if this company want to have community in the future. Now this game is lost.

Stop support russian propaganda! Blizzard blocks players based on Russian propaganda!

Punto medio entre mal y bien. Curias inecesarias. No tan mal com Bfa pero igual de floja.

Why i'm giving this 8, -2 for removing the possibility of achieving Champion of Naaaru and HoAD. Just in time when i came back to this game, and found out original quest lines in my old character log. Fair review out here. Guys let's face it, compared to BFA this isn't that bad. 8/10 from and old WoW Player ( since april 2007 ). It has great zones (except bastion), nice raids, finally some level squishing but it didn't turned out greatly. Solid PvP.. Yeah it has a lot of farming problems which i hope will be solved in the future, but overall, Shadowlands > BFA. Bfa was a total failure, let's admit it.

A lot of timegated content made so you stay subscribed. I absolutely hate the money-hungry approach that Blizzard is taking with this game. Unfortunately this approach probably won't change until the game dies

Ой, что это случилось? Топящие за равенство лгбт бляди, уверяющие, что они вне политики, забанили доступ всем игрокам из России? Ну ничего, им можно, ведь это они делают с благой целью. Пусть глиномесы и дальше убивают интересную вселенную равенством и толерастией Кста, огромное кол-во людей ноет о том, что наличие уникальных расс в каждой фракцией является расизмом (чего блять??). По этим комментариям можно понять аудиторию, которой Близзард пытаются угодить.

The lore is still bad, the old world looks still bad, the faction imbalance is still bad, the class imbalance is still bad, the borrowed power system is still bad the racial segregation is still there so it's also still bad, the customization options are still too few and with that bad. If you didn't like Battle for Azeroth, you won't like Shadowlands.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

So firstly about the expansion: Its the same as BfA except the story reached a new low and it has significantly less content for the same price. At this point even a common evening tale makes more sense and tbh is more enjoyable even with semi-adult mind. Sad. Apart from this Blizzard seemingly could not learn anything from the failure of 8.0 and then the additional mess that was caused by the system-on-system design. SL repeated all of the errors and just like BfA, it was playable only by 9.1.5 when the Covenant system got fixed. Then in 9.2 they again felt like: the game is too playable and we should break it somehow: lets add more and way more powerful stuff on the top of what we already have and see how it works with barely any testing, instead of presenting a sensible storyline and more actual content. That is 9.2 SL S3. BfA at least had better story and very nice open world zones stuffed with way way way more content for the same price. SL cuts on both the amount content and on the quality of the game too. Secondly however: I see this critic that wow promotes racism because it forces certain races to certain parties. Yes this is almost by definition racism, but pls observe this game again, play with it, honestly, its enough if you just do the Zuldazar quests till lvl 20, that's free. Can you honestly say that what this game presents to you resembles to what our current world is? Basically every single quest requires you to KILL something or STEAL something, DESTROTY something. Also you are allowed to KILL PLAYERS of the opposite faction, hell even players of your faction under certain circumstances. And lets not even talk about certain, more difficult (to analyze) story lines(which includes mass murders, genocides, tortures and many more). This world is nothing like what we live in. It however is similar to older, simpler periods of humanity where things actually worked quite similarly. So this is why I think this critic, that wow promotes racism is not really justified. No one should compare what they see here to our reality, that would be like saying that a film which takes place in the 1800s is relevant to our current society and promotes something unacceptable. It DOES NOT. Thats the point. All it does is just presenting things objectively, as they were, not as they are today and especially not how it should be. That being said I too would be happy if each race would be like Pandaren and were given a choice on lvl 10, but I can see why is this something that Blizzard can hardly help with. The existing stories(both written and in-game), the playable content and the entire setting is built differently. Therefore I do not think that its fair to call WoW or Blizzard racist because at this point we should have a look at quite a lot of other ****. History should be respected and we all should learn from it, instead of trying to change it so it looks better for us.

Shadowlands is generally good but has many major problems that people tend to focus on. Lore was bland/bad, class balance is non-existent, and the initially released content is always designed to be grindy, time-gated, and obnoxious. There are still some good strengths though (raid design, mythic keystone design, etc).

9.0: -Covenant system: this system literally meant that you are not allowed to play more than 1 of your specs optimally -Maps are ok, but the idea that none of them are connected, so you cant go anywhere without going first back to Oribos is rubbish. -Max lvl zone, The Maw: I liked its appearance, but: it had 0 chapters. it had a precious little amount of lore quests and the Eye of Jailer mechanic which literally forced you out of the map if you did too much activities. How dare I play their game? -Affix changes: necrotic still not removed, but at least on death affixes no longer trigger from minor mobs. If only this was a thing in BfA, shrine of the storm could have been so much better. -First seasonal affix prideful: even worse than infested was. It meant that you either plan your route very precisely and do exactly that or rip keystone. Also if you wiped any of the more challenging bosses on tyrannical week then you were also free to leave since there was no way to do it without both bl and prideful, provided you didnt overgear the content ofc. (note: 9.1 and later version of these dungeons are not even comparable to their 9.0 version). -Torghast: this was in fact nice, BUT blizzard seems to be obsessed with telling ppl how to play. Making it a mandatory and timegated grind for everyone who wanted to make use of the legendary system is idiotic at best and made ppl dislike it in general. -World quests: There were some fun world quests like bastion's flight school quests or revendreth's go kart quest and umbrella quest, so you know these minigame like quests. However most of the WQs were more like this: go kill 20 of that, loot 12 of that and 3 of this, then complete the bar (this 1 quest, not 3, in case you arent sure). Also a strictly wq callings required 3 wqs and most of the time only 2-4 quests were active in a given zone while legion and bfa had almost always 8 or more. -Revamped lvling: This is very nice and tbh this one of the reasons why I didnt give 0 points. 1-50 leveling is actually a fun activity in 9.0 and 50-60 is also acceptable in 9.1.5 9.1: -Shard of domination: fortunately I did not raid so I didnt have as much exposure to this "feature" as raiders. Tho set bonuses did not work on m+/pvp, the shard effects DID. On high keys this meant that no matter what, you will never be able to compete with someone in raid gear. In pvp it was somewhat offseted by the pvp gear scaling but still it was quite unfair. I wonder why do raids always need some unfair advantage over other endgames just to make ppl play them? - Korthia, Desmotaeron +Maw updates: Lore quests were again timegated and imo really boring after the 4th chapter. But apart from lore, the content and the mechanics were OK except the Archivists' Codex repu which was required for conduit and socket upgrades. I stopped caring about it after the first months as it was evident that it takes way more time to reach rank 6 than I am willing to commit. -Seasonal affix Tormented: its actually really good, straight forward, non-intrusive yet made a notable difference. It felt good to play m+ during season 2. Tbh this was the best time of my SL experience, I miss it. We did not have insane power creeps, the content was tuned properly. We were not overloaded with systems and covenants got fixed in 9.1.5: multispec gameplay again became a thing! -Tazavesh: Honestly its a really nice, fun and unique dungeon, but it was mythic only and even m10/normal raids gave better loot than this so it was mostly ignored in 9.1, I only did it during the last months of the 9.1 drought, because I had nothing better to doxD, but I did not regret. Streets of Wonder is one of my favorite keystones in 9.2. 9.2: rip-rop -Zereth Mortis: Story is getting even more disneylandsish, I just cba paying attention anymore. But zone mechanics are somewhat fine. Overall an OK map tho mount crafting is severly overtuned, but we have flying and almost fine WQs at least. -Tier system: its is only obtainable from raids or weekly and is based entirely on RNG. Unless you won the lottery 4 times, you were out if you were playing for m+/pvp. An 246 lfr tier gear was better than a 278 m+ non-tier gear. Later catalyst system came which allowed us to transform non-tier gear into tier, but by the time it came I've already finished keystone hero without tier and over the time I've grew to hate it so much that I was no longer interested in neither acquiring it nor playing retail any further. -Class balance: This term was abolished by 9.2. If you are not a lock/hunter then dont even bother with dmging. They do 2x as much dps as the worst classes. This is mostly due to tier+double leggo. They clearly didnt care about the synergies and their effect on the class balance Imo 9.2 is god awful, 9.2.5 is a bit less horrendous. 9.1 was simple and fun. I hope that tier will get back to where it belongs to (classic)

WoW is dying? Yes, he's dying. And a long time ago. Blizzard just has enough resources to support his agony on artificial life support for many years. Games outside politics

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I've never rated WoW on any platform, as someone who's been playing the game for 17 years without a major break, I have to say I've never been more disappointed with an expansion than Shadowlands. By far the worst expansion ever released. The devs are so desperate that they're like, "We don't know what to do anymore, so we're going to give our all to the player base." The only positive thing you can get from Shadowlands is the high quality of raids. The rest especially the variety/class design in PvP is so bad I would give a minus rating if it existed. The content you get is also done quickly and the fun outside of raiding is also very limited. As a passionate WoW player, this is an expansion that cannot be recommended under any circumstances.

I stopped wow after years of playing because of this lazy xpack. It's a shame to ask to suscribe for this.

I don't want to dwell on the gameplay and the overall engagement, because as an expansion it is definitely the worst ever, but I would like to speak about the lore. The original idea of digging up the Scourge, the undead and the world beyond to expand the lore further might have been really fine if done properly, but the whole story of Shadowlands is just plain CRAP. To justify its own narration this expansion distorts that lore masterpiece created by Metzen and create a new figure even more powerful, machiavellian and insidious than Sargeras himself, but the result is mediocre and embarrassing, I hope, and I'm not ironic about this, that people like Steve Danuser get fired after writing this ****

Trash lore, killed the greatest villain in gaming history by making helm of domination into a disgrace

So after **** Shadowlands, u decide to make 4 season without any new content to focus on next expansion... With one new race/class with **** model? Well done

absolute garbage! Just as bad as the rest of the expansions starting with Cataclysm

Dont play this game, go to FFXIV, MUCH BETTER. SL brings the same content of BfA, eternal grind, no challenge, no horizontal progression, only if you are hardcore player it worth, but for us. the marjority, casuals, forget it.

The worst expansion ever! :( - The “””””story””””””” writing is BIG **** Retcon and destroy the lore. - Gamplay just meh. - Covenant system is **** - PvP full unbalanced. - The whole after-life is uninteresting and boring Please remove Christie Golden and his team.

**** game for **** by the worst company ever existed, which even can not repear its **** broken launcher.

It turns out that the biggest WoW killer is WoW itself. How ironic, there is no hope for this game anymore.

The game is meant to be played, not to hurt users by not being born there. After all, gamers are not to blame. They just want to play their favorite game, they don't support this whole crisis.

Worst plot twist ever. Jailer is dead and we have no idea who he was. They ruined Arthas story as well....

This addition wasn't so bad until the Blizzard started to promote the things modern society is trying to get rid of. Things like racism, xenophobia, dislike of groups of people and other things. With your policy, you are not only killing the game, but also provoking hatred between groups of people in your community. You, like many other companies, must keep the peace, because in the game worlds we don’t care who you are, what race you are, what gender and religion you are, I play with people because they fulfill their roles well and I enjoy communicating with them. You have to unite people, but you do the opposite: you divide and play off.

just pathetic, bad lore, useless final boss, awful game mechanics, terrible covenant system, a total rip-off for so much development time a lot of problems

я виноват в том что я русский? ну тогда привет вам от детей бомбасса

Еще одна лицемерная компания, которая топит за толерантность, а по факту таковой не является! В чем мы собственно все убедились в свете последних событий. Поступаете как нацисты! Гнобите простой русский народ, который не имеет никакого отношения к происходящему. Позор вам и таким же компаниям как вы!

games out of politics, juegos fuera de la politica, jogos fora da política

За последние несколько дней произошло многое, особенно за время существования данного обновления. Хочу сказать, какое негативное отношение к Русским пользователям. Какое отношение компании Blizzard к нам. Никто не может, ни продлить подписку, ни поменять регион своего аккаунта. В чем разница между нами и людей с Запада? Я не вижу никакой разницы между нами. Когда на нас простых людей, которые работают в своих профессиях, платят так же налоги, образно говоря живут. НО за что нам перекрывать доступ к оплате ?! Не мы виноваты, т.е простые люди. А виновата политика! Из-за которых всё и началось! Очень разочарован что так поступают с RU-регионом. Почти 10 лет своей жизни отдал этой компании, и одним взмахом всё разваливается.

Blizzard became a breeding ground for russophobia, which was later joined by the entire leadership. It is disgusting that in 2022 there may still be oppression along ethnic lines.

Thanks for expansión Blizzard 0/10... nice end game.. and $Hųk hazzicostas

Мой отзыв из-за того что я не могу продлить себе подписку. Вы же продвигаете равенство между всеми, но в то же время угнетаете игроков из-за того что они из стран, которые вам не нравятся. Что же будет дальше? Какие ещё страны вы заблокируете без весомой причины? Угнетатели.... Я больше не могу вам доверять...

Nothing interesting in this game. PVP is non existent ! The quest and the PVE is so boring omfg :/ worst addon ever !

Blocking payment for Russia and other countries is a betrayal from Blizzard