Since we got an expansion announcement coming. The preasure to repeat Shadowbringers.

[Puremallace]

Not sure about you guys but for me Shadowbringers ranks in my Top 3 all time with experience going all the way back to 2000. One constant mistake I see MMO devs do and especially Blizzard is forget what made an expansion popular and do a poor attempt at a repeat.

The most recent example is trying to retcon Lich King lore so they can LITERALLY drag Arthas out of the grave.

What made Shadowbringers special was the 7 year payoff! An evolving storyline with character building and story resolution and not being scared to go dark. So tell the Square Enix suits to back off if this next expansion is "not as popular" or whatever.

Stick to a vision and do not deviate because some depers want another Shadowbringers every expansion. It is easy to ignore it now and I saw Blizzard do it during Wrath. They had systems that worked and were popular but needed minor increases in difficulty and they obviously went to far with multiple things.

People clearly like what you are doing now. Just focus on content and fixing minor gripes.

[KageTokage]

The writers for WoW admitted they've been making up the story as they go along, unlike XIV that already had its story planned out past the conclusion of 6.x even before ShB dropped.

Regardless, I'm still a touch concerned the finale of the current story arc isn't going live up to the expectations.

[Grimr]

The writers for WoW admitted they've been making up the story as they go along, unlike XIV that already had its story planned out past the conclusion of 6.x even before ShB dropped.

Regardless, I'm still a touch concerned the finale of the current story arc isn't going live up to the expectations.

Before chris metzen left blizzard, the story was accurate. Sure Cata and pandaria had issues but it was ok. Then WOD hit and it went to shit. Not playing a game that shits it's lore.

[Anienai]

The story will be great if Alphinaud, Tataru, Lyse, Ryne, and Nanamo Ul Namo take a one way trip to the Guillotine.

[Sathona]

The story will be great if Alphinaud, Tataru, Lyse, Ryne, and Nanamo Ul Namo take a one way trip to the Guillotine.

[Lauront]

The story will be great if Alphinaud, Tataru, Lyse, Ryne, and Nanamo Ul Namo take a one way trip to the Guillotine.

Now you've gotten me looking forward to it.

For me shadowbringers has been the worst expansion so far, the story and the ascians part was really great but the whole warrior of darkness thing end being just a question of semantics to make silly jokes like "we are the bad guys now right?" Was really poor for me, would have been a lot better if they call us the shadowbringers instead of the choosen ones to wield the power of darkness to fight the light, zenos still being around don't help either but that's just me.

The other thing I don't like about the expansion is combat content and how badly they did with tanks and healers with all the simplification and reduction of the roles and jobs identities to the minimum expression like DRK, AST and SCH, the reduction of combat content in terms of quantity, durability and difficulty has been a total step back and being forced to play DPS to have a minimum of fun outside of my savage progression it's not fun at all.

Other questions like how bad the development of viera and rofhtgar has been are in my mind too, so idk if the combat changes are just a step for a transition to big changes but I consider they did really poorly for tanks and healers, so I hope they do a lot better for 6.0, SHB have some nice stuff but have the most amount of flaws for me.

I've got similar sentiments towards it, especially the thing you mention about the title just being semantics.

shadowbringer just had a good story and art direction
but thats pretty much it
I would take another SB or HW over ShB

And for me at least, that's heavily weighted towards base 5.0. 5.3 had some good story elements to complement 5.0, but I'm still not really that pleased with how they handled Elidibus, and the other patches just bored me story-wise. Still, it wasn't the worst conceivable way they could've done it, so I'll just wait and see how they take the story forward from here.

So I see level 80 the same way I see level 50, it's just a starting point for what they have planned and I feel we shouldn't be so quick to judge; or worry, until we see exactly what it is that have planned for the jobs in 6.0. My only hope is that they do the same as what they did in 5.0 and not just isolate the newer skills to the 80+ levels, as the lower leveled additions to the jobs that received them gave us new things to play with out the gate and felt really fresh.

I'm still hoping they're planning to re-design some of the 70-80 stuff that could've been introduced at lower levels (e.g. Aspect Mastery for BLM) and actually shift them to lower levels, since in some cases they are dramatic improvements on existing abilities. Beyond that, I'm hoping for some new twists to the existing jobs I play.

The writers for WoW admitted they've been making up the story as they go along, unlike XIV that already had its story planned out past the conclusion of 6.x even before ShB dropped.

Regardless, I'm still a touch concerned the finale of the current story arc isn't going live up to the expectations.

They may have a grand overarching vision for where things are headed, but at a patch level they certainly do seem to leave their options open. For example, here. They mentioned similar things regarding their plans for the Exarch in one of the Japanese 5.4 interviews, if memory serves. But yeah, it's less ad hoc than what Blizzard does, which can include rather blatant retcons. At least they go to the effort of making things seem to have been intended all along.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

At least they go to the effort of making things seem to have been intended all along.

This is probably due to the fact that Yoshida, Ishikawa and Oda have all gone on record saying that before penning 5.0 and 5.X's story, they all three individually replayed the entire MSQ from ARR to 4.5. So that everything would be fresh on their minds when working on Shadowbringers. I'd say from the critical acclaims 5.0's base story received and the overall quality of the MSQ's narrative taking a massive leap this expansion, that the "things were planned all along" feeling is due to the fact they actually went back and refreshed themselves on their own work before continuing.

This also explains why so much foreshadowing towards Shadowbringers and 5.X has been discovered in the Steppe, as Ishikawa wrote the 5.0 MSQ, 5.3 and the entirety of the Azim Steppe—so it was all things she was very familiar with and could easily expand upon.

[ReynTime]

I'm more concerned with what the dungeon, job and boss design will be. Shadowbringers has a really awesome story, but I was pretty disappointed by what it did to most jobs and dungeon design. ARR had a really meh story until 2 major patches away from Heavensward and I find its areas, dungeon and job design vastly more interesting. Not so much the boss design, that honor goes to HW, and every other expansion does boss fights better than ARR anyway.

So even if the finale of this current saga doesn't meet my expectations at least it's just a MSQ issue, which is something that I only go through once per character.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

I'm more concerned with what the dungeon, job and boss design will be. Shadowbringers has a really awesome story, but I was pretty disappointed by what it did to most jobs and dungeon design.

I felt this way as well until a few weeks ago when I decided to take a step back and look at what all they changed with 5.0's initial release.

Taking into account the total abolition of TP, the simplification of MP, the rebalancing of stats, damage and healing algorithims among crafting, gathering and many other reworks... I realized that one would be hard-pressed to not call the sweeping changes done in Shadowbringers a hard reboot of gameplay direction, balancing and job design on a universal scale.

Further, the more I've contemplated why they've done so, I feel it was done in an effort to facilitate the ease of balancing when they add more to the jobs in 6.0 and beyond. The guages in 4.0 were a "test" to see if they could reinvent the wheel, 5.0 was them digging their heels in with the new direction and functions as a new "base" for the game to build upon, more or less.

So I see level 80 the same way I see level 50, it's just a starting point for what they have planned and I feel we shouldn't be so quick to judge; or worry, until we see exactly what it is that have planned for the jobs in 6.0. My only hope is that they do the same as what they did in 5.0 and not just isolate the newer skills to the 80+ levels, as the lower leveled additions to the jobs that received them gave us new things to play with out the gate and felt really fresh.