wow The Shadowlands User Metacritic Score Is... Problematic

[Grumar 188]

this was going to happen to any new expansion now that Classic Andys are around, every Facebook post wowhead makes same guy gets several likes for simply saying "classic is all that matters" on EVERY post and ALWAYS gets like, I'd rather deal with the most toxic retail player than even a semi-toxic classic player.

[Monlyth 75]

Yeah, a think a 0/10 should only be reserved for a game that barely works and has no positive qualities whatsoever. These reviews are taking it too far.

[Ragingwolf 310]

2 hours ago, durdyenglish said:

You're going to drop points on a score for a week one bug that they are actively working to squash?

Ease up.

I was being sarcastic.

[Ragingwolf 310]

4 hours ago, N3ilo said:

- well did it happen one time or more often 

-i suposse you mean the fog door riddle thing well its a riddle they want it to be a tiny challange

-its that way for i think ever if you realy need it that bad go ingi than you have one

-you really take a piont down for you making a player mad? i mean really?

Thought the last one would of given it away that I wasn't being serious lol.  *shrugs*  Guess not. My fault.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Ragingwolf

[Arcling 898]

40 minutes ago, Monlyth said:

Yeah, a think a 0/10 should only be reserved for a game that barely works and has no positive qualities whatsoever. These reviews are taking it too far.

It reminds me of the situation with Reforged. People have bombed it (sure, they've messed up a lot, yet 0 seemed like way too low), but a lot of these were probably given by people who are not even playing the game. Probably it's a similar case here. Many are bombing it, because it's a popular thing to do now.

[Ogerscherge 43]

I always thought that it is problematic to ask the average Joe to write a review and rate a game. I couldn't do that in good conscience. 

I much prefer Steam's user reviews, as everyone is able to genuinely answer the simple question of whether or not they like the game.

[Starym 3,800]

5 hours ago, Calorat said:

If you have the opinion that the game is complete garbage and deserves a Zero,  score the game a Zero, it's your opinion and yours alone.  Reviews are just opinions and you have a right to whatever opinion / score you want to give it.  Giving your opinion should never be "problematic"

You should yes. Your opinion is then also completely wrong - not because it's a great game or whatever, but because it absolutely categorically is NOT "complete garbage", there's no way to justify that opinion on any level. You can dislike it, you can hate it, you can do whatever, but saying it's the equivalent of a game that doesn't work at all on any level is simply childish. Like a 3 or 4 is about as bad as ANY of these reviews could get realistically, even if you believe them on all of their criticism (I don't personally).

[Starym 3,800]

1 hour ago, Grumar said:

this was going to happen to any new expansion now that Classic Andys are around, every Facebook post wowhead makes same guy gets several likes for simply saying "classic is all that matters" on EVERY post and ALWAYS gets like, I'd rather deal with the most toxic retail player than even a semi-toxic classic player.

Yea same thing happens with classic posts too (at least all of those where someone kills something fast). It's this RIDICULOUS growing divide/war between Classic and retail and it's the most pathetic thing I've ever seen in gaming. And I'm just sitting here having played Vanilla, Classic, Shadowlands and enjoyed most of it, and then (check this out) STOPPED PLAYING when I didn't enjoy it anymore.

Truly the Classic/retail war is the saddest this community has ever made me, legitimately lowered my opinion of WoW players by a tragic amount. Obv that's not the majority but man, I even try to talk to some of these people and... I always regret it (gotta love being accused of being a casual/newcomer by Classic people and a Classic lover by retail people in the same comment thread tho).

[Syridian 14]

This just goes to show how useless these arbitrary "value out of 5 / 10 / 100" metrics are though. For a lot of people, anything under a 9/10 gives them cause to think "oh wow what's wrong with it?" whilst still being well above the median score.

I think you get a lot more useful information about the game from of a binary thumbs up / thumbs down, if there's any use left to these scores amidst all the bombings anyway.

I'd be giving SL a solid "Not recommended / thumbs down" in either case. 

 

[Ulzorn 29]

10 hours ago, durdyenglish said:

tbh that they even got the game out this year WITH A GLOBAL PANDEMIC and it plays this well is astonishing. 

this is so underappreciated...somehow with how messed up the situation is (and it prolly contributing to more ppl being present for launch etc) they had the smoothest expansion launch ever

[Senou 40]

So many people who dislike Shadowlands.... an I am one more sadly.

I've grinded pretty hard and capped a warrior (venthyr) and a warlock (kyrian) now, both DPS spec. I geared both of them to about 165-170ish and now.... what.

I can see the reason why blizzard removed the "chores" and filled in a few things which aren't tied to player power, but why in gods name, is it so little? I'm done in about 1 to 1/2 hours of playing my character, except if I decide to spam dungeons. I'm not interested in PvP but in Raiding and M+, still both features can only be run that often before your body burns out.
I wished for Torghast to be infinite in a purely fun mode. Maybe collect some resource which you can turn in into pets, transmog, maybe even a mount. Nope, 18 floors is now endless, can't wait to see that one open up.

The other thing is the story and Blizzard itself. The story is kinda nice, since it's something else than "Ehrmagerd, the XY- evil faction!" A potentially new enemy is at his brink of dawn, great, I like that. DO I need to see these pleb covenants who're basically like houses in game of thrones, backstabbing each other all day long? *filtered* no. Why do I as the Mawwalker need to choose? I am basically the chosen one, I am here to fix the entire problem, not just bits of it. I need all your backup, peeps of the covenants.

Now the main issue in my opinion: Blizzards design philosophy.

Ever since WoD blizzard began to slack when it came to building new content and new expansions. While we were in the middle of MoP e.g. they started building up WoD. Fine, sure. We had little content to play and by now every final patch of an expansion feels more like a drought than a *filtered* FINALE! Building an expansion around a system you think is good doesn't make the expansion. It should be vise versa. "Oh, forgeign world, me bust build base, to be safe from enemy, while gearing troops, yes yes." something like that. Make the world itself the feature you design things around.
The other thing is that blizzard began to slack off during testing. They should have seen that their ideas are not welcome, that the product they came up with was a problem on its own. People who play alpha and beta gave more than enough feedback, always. They hear the cries and pleas of their communities and yet the large company decided to turn a blind eye on that again. Surely they listened more, but this didn't stop them from doing what they thought was good. 

To me Activision was the pawn who sits behind the throne, sawing away until it all crumbles. Come up with new ideas, make a content patch which lasts a year due to the mass of stuff to do. Take your time to create content and to polish it. Release more and more dungeons not just 1 or 2 during the entire expac. DEVELOP A WORLD (of Warcraft), not just a continent or an isle.... And don't get my started on Covenants and Soulbinds.Crap's *filtered*.

[Yridaa 490]

It's pitiful to think that a 10 (60+ people have given it that as of writing this post) is perfectly OK in @Starym's eyes but then condemns 0's and 1's. Talk about confirmation bias news reports.

[Jenetikitty 2]

regarding 'no new races or classes' ... my statement is... what would have applied?  Like, if they slapped gizmowizard in there, people would be complaining about how it doesn't fit with the lore.  Maybe they're gonna surprise us with a mid-expansion class.  Or maybe they won't.  

but have people forgotten that we got TEN new races in BFA?  Okay, yeah, you can argue that some of them are basically other races, but a different color, but still. 

as for the reviews, several of them have some odd grammatical quirks, that make me suspect that they *could* have been written by one person.  They all feel suspicious over all though  Most people bashing something they didn't like don't focus on the pros.  All in all, suspicious, imo)

  

14 hours ago, Calorat said:

If you have the opinion that the game is complete garbage and deserves a Zero,  score the game a Zero, it's your opinion and yours alone.  Reviews are just opinions and you have a right to whatever opinion / score you want to give it.  Giving your opinion should never be "problematic"

This is incorrect.  A zero is supposed to be "Literally unplayable".  Not just "I'm upset that my cosmetic choices are covenant locked, and there's not a new race to play."  

This is the same problem with reviews on amazon.  people rate 1 star, they talk about how they wish they could rate 0 stars,  and their complaint is that they ignored the text of the listing and thought that a 15$ 2"x3" rug was somehow a 10x15" and it's "much smaller than I thought"  or how "The box was damaged when it arrived and the product was broken"  or "It was broken when it arrived, but I threw out the box so I can't return it, amazon stole my money."  Like... none of those are 1 star reviews.  Those are issues with your reading comprehension, and issues with shipping, all of which are certainly problems, but not products with the product itself in most cases.  All they do is lower the score because you gave a child's stuffed animal to a dog and got upset because it wasn't as durable as a dog toy.

Like, one of those reviews up there literally says "I didn't do research, my bad, 0 stars" -- that's not an opinion, that's using the system wrong.  Just like if I decided I like smaller numbers more than bigger numbers and rate my favorites with 1 star and the worst with 10 stars, that doesn't make my opinion valid, it means I'm doing it wrong.

People giving a zero score because they're not sure they like the new leveling experience --arguably not part of shadowlands at all--are also doing it wrong.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Jenetikitty
Didn't want to double post.

[Eirereb 1]

Could not disagree with the reviews more, and I was a cynical asshole going into this. BFA was the lowest point in WoW for me. I didn't quit in WoD because classes were actually fun, BFA though, ye that was a mess.

No new class is disappointing, I'll concede that. No new race is laughable considering the amount of new customisation we got. Borrowed power I get, they've been at that since Legion and it does feel bad at the end of the xpac. UI is a non-issue when the game supports addons. I won't comment on server problems, I play on a low pop server and haven't been dc'd once or had to queue. Levelling feels fantastic this time around imo. Then given the levelling revamp, not really sure what the issue is for people here.

Not many features? That's just a straight up lie. Covenants, Torghast, Soulbinds/conduits, legendary crafting, Classic has raid logging, that's about it. Launch did have issues for some, for me it's been smooth as butter. A *filtered* load of content was added, again see features above.

As to Covenants, choice and balance. I was a cynical POS going into this, I picked my Covenant based on power. I'm part of a pretty regular group. We have members that went BIS Covenant and members who went worst because it was one they liked. We have yet to notice any real difference in terms of player power. I'm sure it's there, but it's negligible. This'll probably change a bit once the raid comes out and people start logging. At the very least that'll change community perception towards the "worst" choices. But honestly, I'm fine with it having played it now, it's not nearly the big issue we thought it would be. Currently my biggest concerns are aimed towards soulbinds and changing between them with different specs.

So ye, I'll leave it there as a lot of the other reasons listed are either incomprehensible due to spelling and grammar errors, or just repeating ones already addressed.

TLDR: I honestly think this is at least Legion levels of good. I had zero expectations going into this because of Blizzard over the last number of years but I'm pleasantly surprised. If they can address some of the problems that exist, this could be a very, very good expansion. I look forward to what we have to come. And I have one piece of advice. If you're enjoying yourself and think it's good, stay off forums for a few weeks (including Reddit). People will taint your own opinion with their bitching and reading half of these reviews, they're left by people I can only conclude haven't actually bothered playing the game to end game.

[Starseed 113]

10 hours ago, Ragingwolf said:

Thought the last one would of given it away that I wasn't being serious lol.  *shrugs*  Guess not. My fault.

oh boy im sorry i realy didnt got it. 

you would not belief what some people say in there reviews let me quote my self:

11 hours ago, N3ilo said:

i dont know why but some of these reminded me of the review for a dna test kit i found last week were a young woman complaind and gave one star cause she had just german dna like its not the test fault 

 

[huldu 3]

Let's be honest this is pretty bad and this is from someone who came in to this with extremely low expectations. The only redeeming aspect of this expansion so far was Ardenweald(which felt like something from Rift/Everquest). Most other things are just same old stuff with a new coat of paint. The world quests are abysmal, the progress bar filling has been turned into a complete *chore* just to drag them out. No flying and worst of all no whistle and the wqs are pretty spread out depending on the zone you're in so you'll be travelling a lot. 

Not even going to talk about the "borrowed" powers because you all already know how bad it is and it's the same thing again. Fill some bar up do this and do that to unlock whatever. It's boring. The Maw design is atrocious I can't believe the team thought this design was good. Torghast just feels like a weirder version of the visions except this time they are entirely gear based checks on the bosses. They said no timers that's true except if you look at the bosses which of course have a "enrage" timer effect on them. The longer you take killing them the harder they become(ie a gear check). There are no real mechanics like in the visions just a straight up dps race. 

[durdyenglish 298]

37 minutes ago, huldu said:

Let's be honest this is pretty bad and this is from someone who came in to this with extremely low expectations. The only redeeming aspect of this expansion so far was Ardenweald(which felt like something from Rift/Everquest). Most other things are just same old stuff with a new coat of paint. The world quests are abysmal, the progress bar filling has been turned into a complete *chore* just to drag them out. No flying and worst of all no whistle and the wqs are pretty spread out depending on the zone you're in so you'll be travelling a lot. 

Not even going to talk about the "borrowed" powers because you all already know how bad it is and it's the same thing again. Fill some bar up do this and do that to unlock whatever. It's boring. The Maw design is atrocious I can't believe the team thought this design was good. Torghast just feels like a weirder version of the visions except this time they are entirely gear based checks on the bosses. They said no timers that's true except if you look at the bosses which of course have a "enrage" timer effect on them. The longer you take killing them the harder they become(ie a gear check). There are no real mechanics like in the visions just a straight up dps race. 

Honestly it sounds like you are bored of the game format - which is not really Blizzard's fault.

[Starseed 113]

The one thing that bugs me is that your covanent story is bound to renown and that has a limit I get why you have a limit on earning it but bounding my story behind it don't feel so great I dont have to rush gear cause me and my guild are pretty casual so I hit a point where I can't do story so all I can do is grinding gear that's a bummer

[Bobbis 208]

17 hours ago, Nakzul said:

A score of 0 should only be given to games that doesn't work at all.. The idea that because there aren't any new classes / abilities or that the game isn't entirely finished is one thing - but giving the game a score of 0 when there's tons of stuff to do and the game is more than playable is something else entirely.

So everyone who couldn't log on due to ques is fair game to give it a 0.

[durdyenglish 298]

7 minutes ago, Bobbis said:

So everyone who couldn't log on due to ques is fair game to give it a 0.

No. Stop being obtuse. A server queue for an online game ON LAUNCH is not a reason to give a 0.

Queues have been apart of WoW since WoW. They usually disappear a week into the expansion, at which point you have about two years to enjoy the content without them.

Stop being a child.

[durdyenglish 298]

 

1 hour ago, huldu said:

Let's be honest this is pretty bad and this is from someone who came in to this with extremely low expectations. The only redeeming aspect of this expansion so far was Ardenweald(which felt like something from Rift/Everquest). Most other things are just same old stuff with a new coat of paint. The world quests are abysmal, the progress bar filling has been turned into a complete *chore* just to drag them out. No flying and worst of all no whistle and the wqs are pretty spread out depending on the zone you're in so you'll be travelling a lot. 

Not even going to talk about the "borrowed" powers because you all already know how bad it is and it's the same thing again. Fill some bar up do this and do that to unlock whatever. It's boring. The Maw design is atrocious I can't believe the team thought this design was good. Torghast just feels like a weirder version of the visions except this time they are entirely gear based checks on the bosses. They said no timers that's true except if you look at the bosses which of course have a "enrage" timer effect on them. The longer you take killing them the harder they become(ie a gear check). There are no real mechanics like in the visions just a straight up dps race. 

Just quit man, you don't like WOW. It's not a Shadowlands problem, you don't like the game format.

Edited November 28, 2020 by durdyenglish

[Migol 433]

13 hours ago, Arcling said:

It reminds me of the situation with Reforged. People have bombed it (sure, they've messed up a lot, yet 0 seemed like way too low), but a lot of these were probably given by people who are not even playing the game. Probably it's a similar case here. Many are bombing it, because it's a popular thing to do now.

Well, in the case of Reforged, they took a product from ~20 years ago...and somehow made it worse by removing key components (like Clans for example) and having all kinds of bugs/issues.    After promising a lot of stuff like improved story cinematography and later scrapping it all.

I still don't get why the advertised "Glad you could make it, Uther" scene wasn't in the game.   It was a finished product, still on their website even!    All they had to do was insert it into the game at the appropriate point!

Edited November 28, 2020 by Migol

[Baharok 234]

26 minutes ago, Migol said:

I still don't get why the advertised "Glad you could make it, Uther" scene wasn't in the game.   It was a finished product, still on their website even!    All they had to do was insert it into the game at the appropriate point!

Maybe we did not reach this appropriate point yet? I mean there could be a scene later when Nathria is cleared or something. We dont know that for now and i dont think they scrapped it, just safed it for a "memory" scene or something.

 

Anyway.... imho people need to calm down and think before they judge to fast...

[RavenFeare 1]

20 hours ago, Calorat said:

If you have the opinion that the game is complete garbage and deserves a Zero,  score the game a Zero, it's your opinion and yours alone.  Reviews are just opinions and you have a right to whatever opinion / score you want to give it.  Giving your opinion should never be "problematic"

There are definitely such things as problematic opinions. Racism and any other form of discrimination would like to have a word with you.

Aside from that there are worlds called subjective and objective. A subjective opinion is what these people are giving based on emotion and personal feelings. An objective opinion is based on facts.

If you are not capable of giving an objective review then you should now be giving your input. It helps no one to score a game 0 because you don't like it versus giving it something for it's merits. Some of these reviews literally say there is stuff they like but give it a 0 anyway so they are being openly salty and dishonest. Review bombing is basically fraud in the same way that giving favorable reviews to mislead people into purchases is.

These review scores are supposed to be for OBJECTIVE opinions, for the rest of the public to get an accurate idea of how good the game is, you can use subjective comments to determine if it is your type of game or not. You give it a fair objective score then use the input box for your subjective criticisms.

I'm sorry but people giving it 0s are absolutely misusing the rating and are problematic.

[GBeast 33]

I'll be the first to admit classic is still better, but these reviews are absolutely insane *filtered*