For me it's Diablo II. Granted I've played my fair share of D2 since launch, and also recently on a private server with a comrade from hexbear, but I still feel like years later the game didn't grab me as much as D1 did.
Granted I don't hate D2, but for a game that I keep coming back to, D1 takes the prize.
Shadowlands was utterly banal slop, especially compared to at-the-same-time FFXIV's Shadowbringers which is still arguably the best overall expansion that game ever received.
I always found the "hot corrupted and maybe crazy waifu" cliches from Blizzard, such as Sylvanas, to be lowkey misogynistic (don't get me started about Kerrigan especially in Starcraft 2) and the female characters in FFXIV were so much better.
Agreed. And the visceral hate for Sylvanas that was very clear at least in the gamer dudes I was around was also always very sus.
I did try to play in Shadowlands for a bit. What an utter bore it was.
I didn't hate Sylvanas as much as I wished she was written better and wasn't just presented as yet another "corrupted" victim with "corrupted" victim motivations.
Especially funny since in the original Warcraft 3 campaign she gets killed and revived as a ghost-like Banshee. Then in the expansion for the game she plays a bigger role in the story, so naturally the devs decided they had to retcon her to be a "sexy" undead elf after all. They were so close to accidentally having a non-sexualised female main character lol
I hate that too.
Kerrigan, for a time, almost worked as a "corrupted but willingly owning it" villain in Starcraft Brood War, but nooooooo it's time for DudeBro McManPain to rescue his waifu, ignoring his promise to put a bullet in her at the end of Brood War in the process.