World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

So with the HUGE news of Microsoft buying out Activision / Blizzard, do you think the next expansion gets delayed, due to Microsoft maybe wanting to put it on pause and review it to make it better? Or is it just on autopilot and still coming anyways nearly on time?

Also the release date for the 9th expansion, should be this Fall 2022, if it follows the path all previous 8 expansions took, which was always a 2 year release window like clockwork, all WoW expansions have a release date of 2 years between expansions, every one of them. Now maybe not exactly 24 months apart, but some being 22 months, others being 26 months, but in general every 2 years a new expansion released.

If things weren't rocky at Blizzard, and normal times, the 9th expansion would have had a release between Oct. 2022 - Jan. 2023. Do you think this still happens? or it gets delayed to like Spring 2023?
 
We will have to see, developpement sems to have slowed to a crawl, not sure they still have 2 teams alternating releases like they used to.
 

Shadowlands Patch 9.2 Eternity's End Releases on February 22nd (NA) / February 23rd (EU)​


https://www.wowhead.com/news/shadow...XEyYIT4KiUO-zp9WUJYPgtxQDvnSdvYpIT6MrhIkYn83I

Expansion news soon then hopefully. Every WoW expansion has been released like clockwork every 2 years, they've never missed that, sure maybe not exactly 24 months to the dot, but in that 22 to 26 months range between each expansion.

So that would put the next expansion release in the timeframe release between Sept 2022 to January 2023. Historically Alpha to release has been approx 6 to 7 months.
 
Patch 9.2 officially released today. I think this is the final big patch for Shadowlands.

Hopefully expansion announcement next month.
 
I'm actually into Lost Ark now, don't love it, but it's a fun time waster.

I'm so so on going back to WoW 9.2.
 
I subbed again last week for the 9.2 patch, after taking 6+ months off, and was very excited to come back to WoW, after taking time off. And at first I was pleasantly surprised how the new patch easily welcomed you into the game, literally a pop up as soon as you log in for the new 9.2 quest to get started. I really liked that, you couldn't miss it, the game gets you right into the new zone immediately, you didn't need to search around where to go or what to do like in some other big patches. I really appreciated this.

I get to the new zone, make my home Inn there, and start doing a bunch of quests and getting the i233 gear, etc... But then something hit me, I was bored pretty quick into it. Just whacking away at the mobs in the new zones for the questing story just felt kinda lame, and not fun. And I just wasn't interested, and felt more like a chore doing these quests. I played for a couple hours the first night, and logged off a underwhelmed.

Now, I have also been playing the Lost Ark the past several weeks, and that's a game at first I didn't think I'd like, to me it's sort of like a combo of Guild Wars 2 + Diablo 3 mixed together if that makes sense. But I am hooked, the fast attack combat is lovely and very exciting, but the questing is pretty lame LOL, but at least questing and leveling up is fast and pretty fun overall. Scenarios in Lost Ark are great, and dungeon runs with group is very fun.

So I go back to WoW again this weekend, and couldn't even play for 15 minutes, I was instantly bored, and just could not get into it, not sure why? I've LOVED WoW for the past 17+ years.

Back to Lost Ark, I play it every night now, for an hour or so, not saying LA is the best game ever, no way, it's just a fun game to play for now. We'll see how long this lasts?
 
I wouldnt expect any real changes to the game until the new expansion comes out. All the patches were already set in place and assets made, so only real changes they could do is to the story and small changes to gameplay. The story doesnt feel good due to them having to cut a few patches and trying to make it all kinda work together.

I myself stopped playing last summer after playing every day, when I felt my time was just being wasted acomplishing nothing. Add to that my server being beyond dead, my guild long dead, and my friends list not having any of them log in anymore...I just finally made a decision to take a break. Ive been a lot happier after playing other games in my backlog, and Ive been less frustrated banging my head against the wall in a game that wastes my time. Ill prob come back after last patch and try it out again, as I am sure there will be a huge space between shadowlands and whatever comes next.
 
WoW currently just isn't "fun" right now. It feels stale and like a chore or work for pretty much no gains.

Grabbing stupid quests to go out into the new zone to whack away at dumb mobs of enemies, for no real reason. Rinse and repeat times a hundred.

I'm tired of this type of gameplay. It gets old and repetitive.
 
ya I just canceled my sub.

I'm working on a second character in PoE, but may retry Lost Ark now that its been out for about a month.
 
April 19, expansion reveal;
 

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BfA and Legion, both end of expansion patches and new expansion release, the time between both was approx. 9 months.

So, we should see this new expansion released this Winter for sure, just when? Most likely Dec - Feb is the most accurate guess. It's never one full year between announcement and release, typically 6 to 9 months.

We could see the new expansion released as early as this Oct. 2022, or as late as Feb 2023, most likely somewhere in-between.
 
I've been enjoying 9.2 so far. It feels like they did a good job giving people different options as far as what content they want to do without making too much of it mandatory. Less grind, and the ability to mostly ignore content that you don't enjoy.

My main complaint right now is that the raid feels a bit over-tuned. I'm in a casual guild and just raiding normal feels a lot harder than it should right now. It's very punishing when making even small mistakes. In the past normal was always much more forgiving when it came to making mistakes on certain mechanics, giving you a chance to learn the fight and experience the content, and then the mechanics become harder when you progress to Heroic. Considering that the serious raiding occurs in Mythic and Normal is two difficulty tiers below that, it really should be the tier where you can go and have fun with less stress. Not a tier where every player has to play perfect or the raid wipes. They already nerfed a few fights this week, but I don't think they are quite there yet.

My other complaint is that the Mythic+ rating system is pretty obnoxious, and since it's part of the official game (unlike the previous raider.IO addon, etc), it's now directly tied to things like being able to upgrade gear using valor (can't upgrade gear beyond a certain ilvl unless you have a certain Mythic+ rating). It also really feeds the elitism where many players only pick players who have a very high rating. Every expansion I've usually had certain 5-man dungeons that I liked and certain 5-man dungeons that I avoided because they were obnoxious and/or annoying. If I'm looking for a group for one of the dungeons that I enjoy and I'm good at, it shouldn't matter what I have or haven't done in the other unrelated dungeons. Unfortunately the rating system requires you to basically do all of the dungeons to get a high rating. So even if I've timed a +15 on a specific dungeon 100 times, and I'm looking for a group for that same dungeon, some other guy who did a +8 or +10 of every dungeon would have a higher rating and likely get picked first.

I'll probably keep playing WoW for a long time. Mainly, I really enjoy the healer role, and I have not yet found another game that has anything completely similar. Many games don't have healers at all, or have healing as something you do on the side while you mainly focus on dealing damage. I don't care about dealing damage and I want to be able to focus on healing almost exclusively when doing group content.
 
I'll probably keep playing WoW for a long time. Mainly, I really enjoy the healer role, and I have not yet found another game that has anything completely similar. Many games don't have healers at all, or have healing as something you do on the side while you mainly focus on dealing damage. I don't care about dealing damage and I want to be able to focus on healing almost exclusively when doing group content.
This is where I'm stuck. Warcraft's healing is my most favorite thing to do. Hell, I must have two dozen healers across eight realms. Nothing comes close. I'll resub, level another two healers, reach end game where you get into the crud, then reroll.
 
So I'm curious, I just got my Warrior to Renown 80, which is in the Venthyr Covenant, and has the cool looking goth style plate gear.

Now can my other plate wearers that I have a Death Knight and Paladin also transmog that Venthyr Covenant style gear, but these two are in a different covenant the Necrolord.

I'm confused on how transmog works in regards to Covenant gear on different characters that are in different Covenant's.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/301080
 
No, as far as I remeber you can only use them on people in the same covenant. They may change this after shadowlands, but who knows.
 
So I'm curious, I just got my Warrior to Renown 80, which is in the Venthyr Covenant, and has the cool looking goth style plate gear.

Now can my other plate wearers that I have a Death Knight and Paladin also transmog that Venthyr Covenant style gear, but these two are in a different covenant the Necrolord.

I'm confused on how transmog works in regards to Covenant gear on different characters that are in different Covenant's.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/301080
You need to have the char you want to use it on reach renown 80 also
 
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/10462-Coming-Later-This-Year-Shadowlands-Season-4


Well this is bad news, in regards to the next expansion coming anytime soon. Ugh. Shittylands blows, and they need to move on and forget it existed, and give us a good expansion again. BfA sucked too, but not as bad as SL.

Only good expansions the last ten years, was MoP and Legion.

Expansion announcements to release date is typically 9 to 12 months, so we will see the next expansion anywhere from January to April next year.
 
Watched this bellular video the other day, if it is true it explains why this expansion is so trash. The story really makes no sense, and what they released is a bad mess. On top of supposedly abandoning the expansion to work on 10.0 after patch 9.1.

 
If true the next expansion won't be out till Feb / Match next year, this game will be dead, and lucky to get players coming back.

9.2 this February, is the last content patch for Shittylands
 
Yeah likely it will be a year plus waiting after this patch, even if they started on the next expansion during the post 9.0 content drought, it will be a a long time before it is ready. Even if they were doing another system heavy paint by numbers expansion it would be barely enough time. They cant afford to rush the next expansion, but they also cant afford to take multiple years to do it well. I am going to wager durting the end of expansion drought they will make wow free to play to try and get people to play again, as they already make most of their profit from the store anyway. How this shakes out who knows, but I already decided I am not coming back to play unless they hit it out of the park next expansion.
 
sumbitch. SOme of the guys at work were talking about the game. Just general raiding from back in the day. YouTube feed has some random videos. Kind of in a lull in gaming. I'm getting an itch to heal.
 
If true the next expansion won't be out till Feb / Match next year, this game will be dead, and lucky to get players coming back.

9.2 this February, is the last content patch for Shittylands

It seems like you've already made up your mind about this expansion, but I'm really enjoying 9.2 so far, and I'm very interested to see how Season 4 plays out later this year.

I've never been a huge fan of the way only certain specific content is relevant at any given time. There is almost always a new raid with each patch, at which time the old raid from the previous patch instantly becomes irrelevant. It just feels bad that, even within the current expansion, there are already two "old" raid tiers of content that no longer matter. Almost like each patch is it's own self-contained mini-expansion. I've always felt that expansion content should remain relevant, at least to some extent, for the entire expansion. I started playing back in Vanilla and I remember how people were still doing Molten Core (Tier 1) even after later raids came out.

So I'm cautiously optimistic about Season 4, where we are finally going to have all 3 Shadowlands raids relevant at the same time. There will be dramatically more choices regarding gear, including mixing pieces from different raids that would have been pointless before due to the ilvl differences. Mythic+ 5-man dungeons have remained popular despite having pretty much the same set of 5-man dungeons for the entire expansion, so I don't think the game really needs a new raid for Season 4 given that we already have 3. Of course, they could still find a way to do it wrong.
 
It seems like you've already made up your mind about this expansion, but I'm really enjoying 9.2 so far, and I'm very interested to see how Season 4 plays out later this year.

I've never been a huge fan of the way only certain specific content is relevant at any given time. There is almost always a new raid with each patch, at which time the old raid from the previous patch instantly becomes irrelevant. It just feels bad that, even within the current expansion, there are already two "old" raid tiers of content that no longer matter. Almost like each patch is it's own self-contained mini-expansion. I've always felt that expansion content should remain relevant, at least to some extent, for the entire expansion. I started playing back in Vanilla and I remember how people were still doing Molten Core (Tier 1) even after later raids came out.

So I'm cautiously optimistic about Season 4, where we are finally going to have all 3 Shadowlands raids relevant at the same time. There will be dramatically more choices regarding gear, including mixing pieces from different raids that would have been pointless before due to the ilvl differences. Mythic+ 5-man dungeons have remained popular despite having pretty much the same set of 5-man dungeons for the entire expansion, so I don't think the game really needs a new raid for Season 4 given that we already have 3. Of course, they could still find a way to do it wrong.


Excellent points.

I'm actually liking 9.2 right now. Playing very casual style, just working on getting my Renown transmog sets on several characters, and some of the cool transmog weapons in ZM.

For once I'm not overly concerned about iLvl gear, my characters are anywhere from i225 - i240, and I'm just taking my sweet time, no big hurry.

I'll be happy enough to get to i250 gear eventually and I'm good.

But going for mounts and transmog gear is keeping me hooked for now.
 
But they can be in a different covenant i think. Its just the reknown part

Yes can confirm. I have a Renown 80 Warrior in the Venth covenant, and a Renown 80 Paladin on the Nec covenant.

Both can transmog each other's covenant gear now.
 
Well I got suckered back into this. Healing in this game is so much fun for me. I switched servers to a more populated one. I enjoy leveling so didn't transfer any characters. My last decently equipped character was a resto Druid, so I just hopped on an existing one that was 50something. Maybe I'll transfer the other one since its got it's legendaries and stuff.
 
Yes can confirm. I have a Renown 80 Warrior in the Venth covenant, and a Renown 80 Paladin on the Nec covenant.

Both can transmog each other's covenant gear now.
And hitting reknown 80 now is a cake walk conpared to launch
 
But for Renown gear to transmog between covenant's it has to be plate to plate not leather to plate.

I have 4 characters Renown 80, 3 are Nec and 1 is Riv.

But my Demon Hunter can't get the Renown transmog that my plate guy has. I know not the plate armor look but not even the dark leather Renown set. Ugh. Gotta start it fresh with thousands of Amima and Gathering's all over again.
 
Gotta start it fresh with thousands of Amima and Gathering's all over again.
I'm doing this again myself. I was raiding on a Druid. Think I had two legendarys. Was decently equipped for the time. Started on a new server. Level 58 right now. I'll see how it goes, but maybe I will transfer the other druid over. I forget how bad the grind was.
 
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