2021 will probably not go down as the most successful year in WoW history, but it will be an exciting one – and it’s not just the scandals surrounding Blizzard that are to blame. A lot happened in the game as well. From completely ignoring all feedback to the founding of the Player Council, from the hyped Shadowlands to Waiting for the End of Eternity – let’s review the year.
Among other things, we take a look at what moved you and us. From time to time, we also cast an eye beyond the WoW cosmos, for example, when it comes to the scandals of the summer, which are inextricably linked to WoW by Blizzard and have had and will continue to have a major impact on our favorite MMO.
In January, the WoW world was still in order. The latest expansion Shadowlands had been on the live servers for just over a month and most players were still happily fighting their way through Castle Nathria or the new and thoroughly well-done Mythic-Plus dungeons. Annoying things that existed even then, however, were swept aside by the generally positive basic mood, you could also say hype, and displaced by positive content – at least for the most part.
Castle Nathria was the first raid in WoW Shadowlands.
Source: Blizzard
Because the maw was already very annoying back then, and so many players were happy that the newly unlocked Sinuous Corridors on the server offered a mount as a reward that could ride in the maw.
The maw could not excite many players.
Source: Blizzard
Apart from that, the most pressing problem at the time was the question of which Legendary to make first and how to get enough Anima for all the important things. Not only were there a lot of guides on the internet, but players were also giving each other tips. If the poor devils had known back then what would happen with patch 9.1.
And we already got the first glimpses of the twink-friendliness that would increase over the course of Shadowlands. First timgates of the campaign were dropped and Torghast levels became available account-wide.
But there was also sad news. At the beginning of the year Jarod Nandin, better known as “South Park Guy”, died of a Covid disease. A small preview of how Covid should continue to rage in 2021 and influence all our lives.
The shortest month of the year was dominated by BlizzConline, which was supposed to replace the cancelled BlizzCon and took place purely digitally. The main topics were Patch 9.1 and the future of WoW. (buy now ). The developers talked about the upcoming raid, the new area Korthia or the mega dungeon Tazavesh.
What many remember most, however, is how the developers repeatedly thanked everyone for all the feedback on the Shadowlands beta servers, saying that it had helped them incredibly to improve the game. And of course the laughing fit that many beta testers then suffered, since all their reported bugs were still in the game and none of the suggestions from the players were implemented. Well, everything is better now – isn’t it?
Especially the flight quests in Bastion got on the nerves of many players.
Source: Blizzard
In the game itself, the hype slowly subsided and flaws that were previously ignored became more and more annoying. Unskippable quest lines for twinks in the maw, the anime scarcity, and extremely extensive and annoying world quests are just a few of them. But especially the amount of loot to get from raids or dungeons annoyed some players – also because it made equipping the twinks take so long.
Well, at least we finally got the first really well-functioning addons for the adventurer’s table in February and Blizzard hit us with the nerf club in view of our disastrous performance in the raid. And one more thing regarding Raid: At BlizzConline, Ion Hazzikostas hinted for the first time that faction boundaries might be coming down soon. At that time it was only about the possibility to raid together. His statement at that time in short form: “We know there is a very real problem. […] it is a top priority for us.” – But nothing has happened since then. I don’t want to know how long things take that are further down on the priority list.
In the third month of the year, the first “patch” of the Shadowlands expansion awaits us with 9.0.5. However, these were almost exclusively balancing adjustments. However, there were so many of them that the list brought the storage space of the Internet to its limit. A spoiler at this point: The balancing got worse rather than better due to all the adjustments. But who takes that so exactly.
The bravery points celebrated their comeback in Shadowlands.
Source: buffed
Much more important was the big content of the patch – the return of bravery points. With this, the Mythic-Plus dungeons were upgraded a bit and gaps in the equipment can be filled better since then. Admittedly, this doesn’t really knock anyone’s socks off. But it’s still better than a Twitter connection and a selfie camera.
Also, the Hall of Fame of Castle Nathria was finally full. It took the Alliance just about twice as long as the Horde – even with the support of Chinese boosters. They had been hopping around the guilds with their chars to quickly get the buyer guilds another mythic Denathrius kill. When Blizzard caught wind of this, they were immediately kicked out of the Hall of Fame. However, cross-realm riding remained available.
The Horde Hall of Fame was quickly filled. The Alliance hall of fame took much longer.
Source: Blizzard
It was a good thing, too, because Blizzard already had bad PR in March anyway, due to the abolition of purchasable 30 days of game time. That you now have to buy at least two months of game time, angered the players and let them rant vigorously in the forums. Of course, we’re using the “before the scandal” scale here. Half a year later, the developers would have been happy if these were the most negative headlines of a month.
In general, negative statements increased in March, as Shadowlands divided the opinions of players. Whether it was grind, maw, torghast, the little loot or the telling of a stringent main story instead of many smaller ones – everything was hotly debated, with both arguments and counter-arguments being found for each side. Whether Shadowlands was going in the right or wrong direction at the time depended on who you asked.
April was a rather quiet month around WoW. The launch of Shadowlands was slowly but surely worn out, and new releases were still a long time coming. But at least patch 9.1 came on the PTR in the meantime – even if with only a fraction of the planned content. Korthia was there, but quite empty and the new systems were not yet implemented.
The splinters of dominion were designed to be unnecessarily confusing.
Source: buffed
This included, among other things, the Shards of Domination system, which is still current today. These were unearthed by the dataminers at the time. Together with the first statements of the developers, the information caused more confusion than clarification. Nobody could really imagine anything about it. By the way, this confusion continues to this day. Even months after patch 9.1, you regularly have to explain to returners or newcomers why they want three of five splitters first and which ones they have to upgrade so that a completely different effect suddenly becomes stronger.
A new Weruntgssystem should make Torghast more exciting.
Source: buffed
Also not yet on the PTR, by the way, were the new scoring systems introduced with 9.1 – both in Torghast and Mythic-Plus dungeons.
In addition, it was first hinted at what we know today: Shadowlands will probably not get a big, third patch. At that time, smart people calculated this based on the waiting time for patch 9.1, but now the developers have confirmed that 9.2 will be the end of the story around the dungeon master and Sylvanas.
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