World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

GotNoRice

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jul 11, 2001
Messages
11,955
I'm curious who else here is going to be playing in the new expansion, and what your thoughts are. Shadowlands is going to be released on October 26th. The 9.0 patch will come a few weeks or a month before that, introducing all of the mechanical changes (both gameplay changes and changes to the game engine) before the new expansion content is actually released.

I'm excited that they are going to be using Ray Tracing now. I *almost* went with a 1080ti instead of a 2080 the last time I did a videocard upgrade, and now I'm really glad that I went with the 2080 since this is by far the game I sink the most time into. Many who aren't familiar with the game talk about how old it is, as if nothing has changed over the years. In reality, it's pretty amazing that the game has evolved from something that used to be able to run on a Voodoo3 or TNT2 into something that now uses DX12 and Ray Tracing. I've been playing on the Beta and the performance impact from enabling Ray Tracing is actually pretty small. They have also introduced dynamic video settings, where you can set a FPS target and some settings will automatically lower themselves if/when you fall below that FPS target. That is great because static settings don't make sense in all situations. The game can become quite bogged down in content with 25+ people when it's trying to display every single animation from every single spell/ability that every single person is using, as it typically would with all settings at maximum.

I'm not sold on some of the new talent and spell changes, as well as new systems like covenants. But that's pretty much always my reaction at the beginning of a new expansion.
 
Ive been playing wow since 2005, and have played every expansion on the same toon, my undead rogue. I am expecting a big meh this expansion as there are a ton of things they have already messed up like last exp, and sure to be more that are found as the expansion goes on. BFA pretty much killed my guild that I had been in since BC and I have pretty much gone full casual now. Hard to say if I will find anything interesting to do this expansion, or if my guild will come back....dont have high hopes for either.
 
I will be playing. Played since early BC and have always played each expansion, WOTLK is my personal favorite and the only time I seriously raided. Legion for me was the worst, I did not like artifact weapons and the grind for power. Legion was the only expansion where I didn't get every class to max level. BFA was a letdown because it was less battle for azeroth and more, Horde has a bad leader we have to crush, but oh wait, there are other bad guys... I wanted a real battle... Horde vs Alliance. Towards the end here I have every class at max level again, and several duos between Horde and Alliance, something I have never really done. 2 mages, 2 priests, 5 hunters, 3 shamans, 2 demon hunters cross factions. the rest of my max levels are Alliance. But I am looking forward to SL, always the optimist.
 
I am at least glad they pushed the launch back, as we can not have another disaster of the scale of BFA. Have to see if they are able to get the interlocked mess of SL systems working in a non broken way though. I have some moderate hope they can get this expansion working, as the game cant take another bad expansion tanking subs. At least my collectors edition will be early, so I wont need to buy a digital version like the last few launches.
 
I’ve been playing on and off since 2005. Played through Cata non-stop and have played a few months of every expansion since. I’ll probably end up buying SL, leveling to max level, run the first raid and then quit after a couple months. I did that with BFA. Classic WoW held my interest much longer, played it exactly for a year before quitting. Much more excited for TBC Classic.
 
Another old school player. Casual now.
Definitely going to start with the pre-patch. I have not played the beta. I know nothing about the zones, nothing about the lore. I have not played for the last year and besides a cinematic here and there, I don't know much about the story.
It will be fun to explore everything without being spoiled.
However I did check out before and after Ray Tracing and it's nothing special. Barely any difference.

BUT!
I am currently playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I think I sunk some €100 into that game a week ago. And it's actually quite fun. The visuals are better than WoW and I really need a good MMORPG with nice visuals. Tired of WoW stretched out textures and 2005 visuals in many places. Creds to the team keeping it good looking for so many years, but the game is slowly getting to a point where I won't tolerate it anymore.
I will buy Shadowlands and 6 month sub. New World should come out just around when my sub expires. I'm looking forward to it but I'm carefully optimistic.
 
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I joined back a few months back to level up all the characters. I think I'm ready to rock/roll. I'm having a lot more fun playing the game casually if anything.
 
So, to all the ex-WoW player, like me, they are having a free weekend for us if you want to scratch that itch.
 
So, to all the ex-WoW player, like me, they are having a free weekend for us if you want to scratch that itch.
So yea, that itch was scratched. Annnnnnnnd $15 later I have a sub again. Seems like every Fall I get back into it for a couple months. Guess I'll be buying the expansion too.

Rolled a priest to heal with. Because screw queue times. :D
 
not finding the pre-expansion very exciting, so far just killing Nathanos and getting a new geist pet in Northrend, the armor transmogs are very low effort
 
Yeah they put zero effort into this one, made it sound like it was going to be great...more like a yawn. I played the original scourge event and that was something I still remember, dead people everywhere, scourge rampant. This one, do dailies and wait for spwans in icecrown...meh
 
"Do dailies" has been the WoW goto since about 2/3 of the way through BC. Anyone who thinks thats going to change has 12 years of history to look at lol
 
So this whole Torghast thing has my full attention. Able to solo. Any class. Any build. No queues times? Sign me up! I haven't run a DPS class since 2004. I wanted a class that has high demand, so always tanked or healed. So now I'm looking at DPS classes. I may start a Fury Warrior tonight just for this feature.
 
How is the ray-tracing and other new tech in the expansion?


Honestly, I redid my rig to be able to play on max settings. Now that everything is at 10 and ray tracing enabled and on the highest setting, it looks good but not game changing, lol. I am now playing on a 34" UW at 144hz. The engine is old and I think the dev team is doing all they can to get the most out of it.
 
So this whole Torghast thing has my full attention. Able to solo. Any class. Any build. No queues times? Sign me up! I haven't run a DPS class since 2004. I wanted a class that has high demand, so always tanked or healed. So now I'm looking at DPS classes. I may start a Fury Warrior tonight just for this feature.
I was reading about this and in my mind, I'm thinking Diablo style WoW gameplay, which I am all in for. I am unsure of reality, lol. I got 4-5 classes that I'll be taking to max level casually so I'm kind of amped for it.
 
Got my happy ass outside the SW castle waiting for the drop in 50 minutes. Going to get my original character from vanilla to max level first! :)
 
Anyone manage to do anything yet? I was logged in 30 minutes early, got kicked out twice, was eventually able to go through the Stormwind portal and then to the questgiver at ICC and got kicked out again. Haven't been able to do anything at all in the hour since then.

The last couple launches were smooth (from memory) so it's a shame they bungled this one.

Edit: I'm in now. I guess I just had to complain about it to fix it. :)

Edit 2: Spoke too soon; got kicked out again and can't get back in. Might just be my server.
 
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This is the first expansion launch I haven't had to wait in a 6 hour queue to play. I'm not super excited about another expansion revolving around a gimmicky mechanic, but here I am trying it again.
 
Another old school player. Casual now.
Definitely going to start with the pre-patch. I have not played the beta. I know nothing about the zones, nothing about the lore. I have not played for the last year and besides a cinematic here and there, I don't know much about the story.
It will be fun to explore everything without being spoiled.
However I did check out before and after Ray Tracing and it's nothing special. Barely any difference.

BUT!
I am currently playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I think I sunk some €100 into that game a week ago. And it's actually quite fun. The visuals are better than WoW and I really need a good MMORPG with nice visuals. Tired of WoW stretched out textures and 2005 visuals in many places. Creds to the team keeping it good looking for so many years, but the game is slowly getting to a point where I won't tolerate it anymore.
I will buy Shadowlands and 6 month sub. New World should come out just around when my sub expires. I'm looking forward to it but I'm carefully optimistic.

I'm replying to myself here.
I finished the story on my Jedi Knight in SWTOR and was gonna do some PvE, but noticed almost everyone is playing Jedi Knight lol. I don't feel like replaying the same quests and planets on a new class so putting that on break. The game is prettier than WoW but I dislike the animations.

I just bought Shadowlands and 6 months of game time. Also joined a guild that's planning to do some raids. I do not intend to do any serious raiding. Maybe touch hc a bit. The problem is I'm always poor in this goddamn game. In fact I'm poor in every game, but at least in SWTOR I could buy milions of credits for next to nothing.
 
I'm replying to myself here.
I finished the story on my Jedi Knight in SWTOR and was gonna do some PvE, but noticed almost everyone is playing Jedi Knight lol. I don't feel like replaying the same quests and planets on a new class so putting that on break. The game is prettier than WoW but I dislike the animations.

I just bought Shadowlands and 6 months of game time. Also joined a guild that's planning to do some raids. I do not intend to do any serious raiding. Maybe touch hc a bit. The problem is I'm always poor in this goddamn game. In fact I'm poor in every game, but at least in SWTOR I could buy milions of credits for next to nothing.


You can convert real money into gold using WoW Tokens. I'm not sure if the current rate is a good value for dollar, but you can do it.
 
I didn't realize the expansion released today. I leveled a warlock to 50 over the past week. Was fine I guess, but I can tell I'm going to get bored. I'll wait on getting this expansion. I installed Fallout 4 last night. Going to give that a go.
 
I thought the expansion is releasing today. Logged in yesterday around 5PM PST to hearth all my characters only to notice that the expac was live, lol. It didn't feel like an expac tho, I was able to log in and play just fine. Leveled to 51 before logging off.
 
If I had the time I wouldn't mind trying this game again but just looks dated. I couldn't force myself to play it for 1 hour at launch in 2004.
 
If I had the time I wouldn't mind trying this game again but just looks dated. I couldn't force myself to play it for 1 hour at launch in 2004.
I think it's worth a try. Their trial period is slightly improved and it's free. Personally, I've been playing on/off since launch and it's definitely more polished this time around. With settings on max and every graphic options enabled, the game looks way different compared to vanilla.
 
If I had the time I wouldn't mind trying this game again but just looks dated. I couldn't force myself to play it for 1 hour at launch in 2004.

I played mostly at first launch. I fell off with the launch of Burning Crusade. I try the trial every few years and it just all comes back since it looks and plays mostly the same. I never make it past the trial. I was excited back when WoW2 was being worked on, but with that dead I don't see me ever going back to WoW.

Sure the game looks better than it did at launch and they have streamlined some things. I just am ready for a completely new game from the ground up.
 
I'v been enjoying the expansion so far. The campaign was one of the most enjoyable for me, the questing went very smooth with few 'annoying' quests. I like that there are weekly caps on a lot of the new systems so you don't feel like you need to spend every single second grinding so you don't feel like you are falling behind. Currently playing a druid which is a first for me having that as a main.
 
bored already...cancelled until probably the end of expansion.
 
Fired this up again. Bought the standard expansion. Before the release date, I made a few characters on Area 52. After the expansion, I've been hit with login queues. So, rerolled again. I don't mind leveling. Its the end game grind for ilvl that I get sick of.

Everyone kept saying Resto Shaman for healing. Haven't played one since LK. Got to 53 or something. Its not clicking for me. I came from a Holy Priest and the priest just seems far more fluid. The shaman has all the interrupts, AOE stuns, fear totem, and cooldowns. But I really just want to heal. So, made another priest. I get this one to level cap, it'll be something like my twelve priest I've gotten to cap. Whatever. XD

Leveling Disc. I've played it a few times as a switch from holy, but never really got into it. Going to see how I do. If it gets to be to much, I'll swap to holy I guess.
 
Really enjoying it still. Matter of fact, I had done no research on the expansion, didnt know any details, didnt read anything, didnt do anything. So I reached 60, and was sitting happily. And then I realized that was not actually the end, with the whole entire faction choice thing and the addition talents and other stuff... Yeah....

Maybe I should go back to looking at information of major updates and expansions in the future... lol
 
Been loving this expansion. Made a Resto Shaman to help the guild with raids, Been running mythics the 2 last and I am already up to 186 :). Crafted my first legendary as well.

Really loving what blizzard did. I love how each zone is totally different, except for fairy land.....they all can die in a fire.

This blows away the last expansion which a TON of people freakin hated. Looking forward to the raid next week :)
 
Really enjoying it still. Matter of fact, I had done no research on the expansion, didnt know any details, didnt read anything, didnt do anything. So I reached 60, and was sitting happily. And then I realized that was not actually the end, with the whole entire faction choice thing and the addition talents and other stuff... Yeah....

Maybe I should go back to looking at information of major updates and expansions in the future... lol

Oh god...

I am teetering on the edge of purchasing it. I am in the same boat as you, as I have done zero research but I really don't think I'll enjoy faction choices and additional talents. I want simple.. wrong game these days I guess.
 
Oh god...

I am teetering on the edge of purchasing it. I am in the same boat as you, as I have done zero research but I really don't think I'll enjoy faction choices and additional talents. I want simple.. wrong game these days I guess.

Ehhh its not complicated, and it really isnt difficult. You just... pick one, and call it good. It gives you two additional spells, and for me, one of those spells is just a shield that I can make around myself, so its not something you use all the time. The talents arent difficult, and just augment your spells. Like I have one selected that increases my Immolate damage by xx% the closer it gets to the end of its effect on a target. It doesnt take anything from me to have it work, it just works.

Id give it a try, its honestly VERY enjoyable for me so far, and I havent felt this enjoyment with WoW since WOTLK almost a decade ago. Past many expansions Ive only played to reach max level and call it a day. Now Im enjoying end game stuff again.
 
Anyone know of any guilds open to invites? Wife an I are looking

Quick question about realms. I'm on a low pop server and I see population is dwindling... Does it matter ?
 
I've been playing since Vanilla. I've tried all expansions and honestly the leveling was the worse part for me. With the level squish and the way the campaign story is being told on this expac, I actually enjoyed this expansion. Something about it felt fresh and that's hard to do for this old of a game. Sure, we're doing the same thing, but the way the campaign is being told is very Final Fantasy Online like, which is a plus imo. I'm a casual so maybe that's why I enjoy it as much as I do.
 
Anyone know of any guilds open to invites? Wife an I are looking

Quick question about realms. I'm on a low pop server and I see population is dwindling... Does it matter ?

pop honestly doesnt matter anymore since a ton of servers all mesh together. Youll rarely see people from your realm, but you can guild and group with people on other realms now, so it really doesnt matter. You can message/mail/etc anyone whos in your servers cluster. They started doing it a while ago in low level zones so that they had players in them, and its slowly expanded to be the entire game and all zones being meshed.
 
pop honestly doesnt matter anymore since a ton of servers all mesh together. Youll rarely see people from your realm, but you can guild and group with people on other realms now, so it really doesnt matter. You can message/mail/etc anyone whos in your servers cluster. They started doing it a while ago in low level zones so that they had players in them, and its slowly expanded to be the entire game and all zones being meshed.

Thank you for the detail in your response
 
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