[Battle for Azeroth] Who else is disappointed with the next expansion?

[beanman12345]

I ain't gonna lie i'm gonna play the shit outta this game like i always do. But there isn't anything cool and new features like past expansions so it's kind of disappointing in that regard.

But then again, since they changed how they are doing patches, patches are getting stuff that used to come with the box. I'm bit tepid and we'll see what the next couple of days brings us.

[Deleted]

Loving it so far. Pretty curious about the isles plunders scenari, especially the new AI they talked about behind them mobs. Hope it wont be some scripted shenanigans but true AI behavior but we'll see.

[Aevic]

I for one am loving all of this salt over the faction war being back. Jeez guys where were you back when vanilla was announced? Bitching about the H/A conflict after WCIII “but we just defeated the legion! Why are night elves in the alliance!?”, you fuckers want some dramatic shift from the blueprint of this franchise then go play something else FFS. This is like coming into a mortal Kombat game and getting mad that scorpion is still in the roster.

Except the faction war hasn't been the premise of Warcraft since WC2. WC3 was about the legion invading and the LK rise to power. Why do people always forget this? War is in the name would be a better argument. But even then Warcraft has never had the faction war at it's forefront because it's never been good for the story. It's always been a good thing to have in the background. Again, I'm not saying you are entirely wrong but let's not make the game out for something it isn't. I've been with Warcraft for a long time as well.

[Sky High]

Except the faction war hasn't been the premise of Warcraft since WC2. WC3 was about the legion invading and the LK rise to power. Why do people always forget this? War is in the name would be a better argument. But even then Warcraft has never had the faction war at it's forefront because it's never been good for the story. It's always been a good thing to have in the background. Again, I'm not saying you are entirely wrong but let's not make the game out for something it isn't. I've been with Warcraft for a long time as well.

the faction war as a plot to an MMO sure, even then it's Blizzards writing that leaves much to be desired. we only have one instance where the faction war sucked and that was the fault of [plot contrivance] to bring Gul'dan back. I'm not saying it doesn't have the potential to end like that again but I'll take it over going and fighting "Nega-Satan".

[Wildmoon]

I don't like what I have seen so far. It's not the story but the features. There's nothing new about customization whether it's appearance or gameplay. The new amulet is not really convincing. WoW is in dire need of more customization in every aspect imo. The only good thing I have seen is impressive cinematic.

WoW has been feeling more and more like like picking a template and then go with it.

[Aevic]

the faction war as a plot to an MMO sure, even then it's Blizzards writing that leaves much to be desired. we only have one instance where the faction war sucked and that was the fault of [plot contrivance] to bring Gul'dan back. I'm not saying it doesn't have the potential to end like that again but I'll take it over going and fighting "Nega-Satan".

Fair point I can understand the fatigue of fighting end of the world bosses. I'm more worried about the content then the story anymore. Blizzard doesn't seem to care much about he story as it is. They can write whatever at this point and people will sop it up. I stopped caring for lore recently because they don't seem to making ridiculous choices for characters, etc. Anyway back to the content, it's just severely lacking and that's worrisome. I hope we get more info soon of what will be in store otherwise as it is this expansion seems like a 'maybe' to buy.

[Boxilot]

I was REALLY disappointed when Legion was revealed but I have enjoyed that expansion a lot so I am holding out on any final judgement.

Certainly I am sick and tired of the horde vs alliance trope and find it to be really strained. It makes no sense anymore. That said I am still holding out hope that this is just the front for what might be revealed later in the expansion. Hopefully an Old God or Azshara.

I am happy we're camping with the Zandalar, and about time Jaina made a comeback. The subraces are... eh. I had hoped we'd just get more customisation for the already existing races but whatever. I guess we'll take what we can get. As for the rest: don't care.

Oh, and I really hope my character will stop being the "chosen one". It ruins my ~immersion~

[Echiyo]

I've always felt like the faction wars make for a good side story - like we have to tackle problems on Azeroth while also defending ground against the other faction. Whenever the game went full 'other faction' mode, it was always very boring and uninteresting to me.

My main beef with BfA is that it doesn't look like it's going to do anything really new and exciting with the game. I've already unsubbed a few months ago because I'm bored of the game, and frankly I don't see BfA doing anything that will make me want to resub. I feel like that as veteran player that has played since Vanilla I've pretty much experienced everything the game has to offer at this point.

So unless they announce any major sweeping changes to the gameplay I have trouble seeing myself playing again. Or maybe an entire old-god black empire focused expansion - that could be cool.

[FertsBlert]

My main problem is the faction war has always been a sideshow and the few times it's been pushed to the front it's always felt contrived and fake, I'm just hoping that the whole expansion doesn't suffer from that tone but I'm already feeling it might.

[Dalheim]

Indeed! Why are the alliance busting their guts farming rep with these turncoats for then!?

Talk to Tyrande. She was being a major dick towards them all the time. Only reason she came to ''help'' was because it was her birth place. Horde (blood elves) actually wanted to help them and they were very much alike.

[Mirishka]

I'm pretty disappointed. How "new" the new islands will be is anyone's guess. I imagine it will be a lot of reused assets just like the new races are just recolored versions of existing ones, the lightborn Draenei being the wrost offender. Just lighter draenei with yellow eyes instead of blue, wow! Zandalar will likely just be a bunch of troll architecture from Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub copy pasted onto an island. Same thing with Kul Tiras, just a bunch of Gilnean castles pasted on an island.

The theme is kinda tired and old. Just kinda seems like 'rawr lets go get the other faction because we got nothing better to do!' and as others have said you can't have a "winner" in this war. The whole expansion kinda feels like they gave the least they could get away with and call it an expansion. No new class or races. No big revamps or major changes. No real story or new interesting villain. The new zones look like Zul'Aman/Gilneas 2.0. Tell me what I'm supposed to be excited about? PVP? You mean that thing Blizzard has been trying to balanced for well over a decade and still can't get right? After WotLK and Pandaria with the rich lore/story, amazing atmosphere, new fun classes, and central themes that tied them together? Battle for Azeroth feels weak, it feels like this could've been a major update at best. Called me entitled if you wish but I've seen them do better, granted this was before Activision chased away Chris Metzen and all the other talent Blizzard had. Not surprised they can't come up with a story after letting go the guy who MADE warcraft.

The LF draenei have new voices, horns, hairstyles and will unique customization in BFA like lightrunes and markings.

Maybe try actually knowing what you're talking about before you whine about stuff.

[rda]

(Heh, I found the right thread for this post. Sorry if you saw this already.)

After watching yesterday sessions I am ready with the final verdict for the expansion. This is a big edit of a previous post I had. I don't expect my opinion to change much.

In one line:

BFA is low effort, unexciting WoD 3.0.

In a bit more detail:

PVP (this is the #1 issue for me, so I am putting it first)

There is this illusion that the expansion is "centered" on PVP. This is just an illusion. They are doing a couple of superficial things and no real changes. PVP has huge issues and needs a big rethinking, or at least going back to where it was in WoD / MoP, but they aren't planning on doing anything like that. They aren't planning to fix the huge issues, they keep rolling as if everything was fine and are adding a couple of traditional things which you add when things are fine: some arenas and a BG. There is no solo queue. No power cap. No catch-up for alts. No unpruning. No barrier for the PVE shit. I am not even talking about more advanced things such as attempts to tackle mobility vs range and CC vs anti-CC. We can't even dream of getting to that level. We can't even solve kindergarden-level issues, which they just created, which have known and proven solutions.

They are changing the rules of flagging, you will only be able to flag or unflag in a city. Frankly, it's laughable that they spent 15 minutes talking about that. It's completely tiny effort-wise. It's patch material, they could add it next Tuesday / Wednesday.

There is just nothing good and promising about PVP. The ladder crashed 4x since WoD (the participation is ~25% of that it was in the last season of WoD - the "dead" addon) and they are doing nothing at all to fix it. It will just stay dead then, it doesn't take an Einstein to understand that.

The rest of it

There are tons of issues with the rest of the game. Or rather, there is one big issue in that there is just very little worth talking about. Again.

There are just two new features and they aren't really large and aren't terribly interesting. On a closer look, they are just reshuffling of existing things. The island three-man thing is a small-size mix of instances / invasions, and the warfronts is a large-size mix of the same things. That's it.

Let's take the islands. There is very little novelty. You are being put into a random location with random mobs and random rewards, woohoo. How novel. The only novel thing is that, yes, you have the timer, but it is not a traditional timer, it is a set of competing NPCs. And this could be potentially good, but, first off, it is a small novelty, nothing too exciting. You will figure out what this supposedly smart AI will do very fast, especially because that's a group mode (you'd stay interested far longer if that was solo because it'd took you longer to figure out all tricks, the group divides the amount of things you will figure out yourself dramatically). And second, they showed nothing of it and they couldn't say much about it either (the example of rogue hypothetically sapping the healer was all there was), and it is patently clear that they just didn't do much or any of it yet and don't know themselves what they will have. Meh.

Let's take the warfronts. For those who are reading "sieges" and going "woohoo, cool", let me show you what this will look like from what they have described. You queue for a warfront. You get the invite. You zone in. Then you are essentially in a random battleground (or a smaller version of Ashran, if you like), just (a) the other side is mobs instead of players, and (b) you can collect some leaves or rocks to "fortify" your defenses or summon your own NPCs. So, you collect rocks for 10 minutes, then there is some BS invasion at the door, you defeat it, then you push the enemy into their fort, then you take it and kill their general. The entire experience is like, say, Isle of Conquest, just with the defenders being NPCs. Yeah, so much fun. There won't be much in the way of strategy. There won't be much in the way of cooperation, you will just silently collect your rocks with some guys doing nothing and spamming some nonsense into chat, the usual. Meh.

And that's all that is new. No new profession. No things like trade routes. No extending transmog to your mounts. No big changes in classes, no significant adjustments / additions to class roles, no mixing of specs, no custom spells, no effing nothing.

Some folks argue that it is fine to have few new things because the new expansion carries a lot of what Legion "did right" and this somehow compensates. This is missing the picture completely. The systems that Legion "did right" - taking the commonly mentioned world quests and mythic+ - do not require ANY additional development effort. They were doing quests like dailies before, they switched to doing them like world quests, there were some changes they had to do to switch, once they switched over, there is no need to develop anything, you just fill the existing frame with bits of content. Adding bits of content does take time, but that's much less time than to perform the switch / make adjustments and that's not the time of the developers, it's 5x cheaper. Same for mythic+ - once you develop the system of scaling modes, you are done. You don't have to do anything, every instance that comes automatically gets mythic+ modes with a very minor cost of reviewing a small set of numbers / maybe toggling some checkboxes / adding a few triggers in places of choice. So, the systems that Legion "got right" are nearly free to "carry over" for BFA. It takes very little effort to do this.

Tons of gates again. "We won't let you see content X until you play Y months to do Z." The allied races with having to level separate characters from 20 to max to unlock stuff are obviously there simply to try to make you level three times instead of one. Or even six, to get both sides. Or actually more, because they are saying that's just the beginning and they will add more. The new artifact serves the usual purpose of making you log in every week for years (or you are going to miss out on power, you want it? you want it? login then). Gates and treadmill hooks.

The verdict:

Boring, low-effort BS. Not interested.

I don't think I will be on the forum much longer, honestly. Things are dying.

[GorkAndMork]

Yes. What is the problem with that? They should be able to remain competitive at the content they are playing by sucessfully completing the content they are playing.

People have jobs, have children and have chores. They don't have time to be forced into constantly doing content they don't enjoy to remain competitive at the game.

Guess what? People just say "Nope" and quit. It's not worth it. As it also doesn't make sense to empower those that do have time to play 24/7. Theres other ways to reward them, be it perks for their alts or beeing able to sell their spare AP/Azerite in the AH. Theres ways to do this that can work, but infinite grinds do not work.

Again, why they felt they need to farm AP to stay competitive? I mean I hope they ran some numbers before going on a grind spree.

Also if you want to stay competitive playing only 4-6 hours a week maybe you need to adjust your expectations, not demand change of the game. Run some normal raids, heroic is fine too, you just don't to get stuff first or for free.

PVP... or at least going back to where it was in WoD

LOL, no thanks.

[rda]

LOL, no thanks.

WoD PVP wasn't great and had ample problems, but it was miles above Legion PVP. Legion PVP is rock bottom.

Ask others or look at participation numbers.

[Phuongvi]

It's the first time I am not excited after an new expansion announcement and it's almost a confirmastion that WoW has nothing more to offer
And for the cinematic, Anduin part was so fucking cheesy

[Dmitro]

ONLY CARE ONCE I SEE CLASS DESIGNS AND NEW PVP TALENTS.

if designs are good but pvp talents are trash = decent

if both trash = unsub.

I wont survive another pruning thats for sure

[GorkAndMork]

I quit because of it too. First expansion I ever quit. They ruined one of my dps specs, so I had to basically start grinding over for the AP for my second weapon. Then that one would get ahead, just for it to get ruined. After the third time of having to change weapons, I got tired of the grinding and left.

I tried to come back once on my prot paladin. The grind defeated me again. The power those weapons give with the grind behind them is nuts. GL competing without them and gl catching up.

- - - Updated - - -

I had to grind since one of my dps specs got nerfed. So I had to try to quickly catch my other spec up to par with my previous main spec. That is one reason someone would have to grind. Especially if they didn't bother to keep up with two weapons because they were already behind in power.

I agree that split progress between specs with no respec option is worse than character-level progress.

[Deleted]

Lol at people with their "FINAL VERDICT" nonsense less than 24 hours after the announcement.

The salt is unreal and while I agree there have been a LOT of negative things throughout Legion (specifically pertaining to class design), the people writing off this expansion in such a short amount of time without any ACTUAL info other than gut feeling is laughably moronic.

I get that being an edgelord hater is popular in 2017 but come the fuck on.

Official forums is hilarious too - people pulling "lore expertise" out of their asses to claim that Nightborne have zero reason to join the Horde...really...

[Deletedaccount1]

Like I said in another thread, this expansion doesn't seem to do much to advance the lore. Making an Alliance vs Horde themed expansion just seems bizarre when the relations between the two generally seemed to be improving for a while. That cinematic trailer seems just bizarre when it feels like only a year or two ago the Legion cinematic showed both factions working together as allies.

[rda]

Lol at people with their "FINAL VERDICT" nonsense less than 24 hours after the announcement.

The salt is unreal and while I agree there have been a LOT of negative things throughout Legion (specifically pertaining to class design), the people writing off this expansion in such a short amount of time without any ACTUAL info other than gut feeling is laughably moronic.

I get that being an edgelord hater is popular in 2017 but come the fuck on.

Official forums is hilarious too - people pulling "lore expertise" out of their asses to claim that Nightborne have zero reason to join the Horde...really...

I heard this when people were saying bad things about WoD as well.

It's always the same:

* Oh, it's just the announcement.
* Oh, it's just the beta.
* Oh, it's just the first patch, have some patience.
* Oh, it's not the final patch yet.
* Oh, they are fixing it all in the next addon.

No, dear. Maybe you can't process what you are seeing and can't see what's the state of things, but some of us can do so.