Let me list my grievances with World of Warcraft: "Battle for Azeroth"
I really, really want to love this expansion. These are just my thoughts at the initial presentation.
1. The Name
Let's start with the most obvious one. "Battle for Azeroth". The funny thing is that when this name was trademarked I was pretty sure it was the expansion name, but the general opinion was that it was too stupid to be an actual expansion title. But it is.
2. The Lore
Have you heard of an idiot plot?
Click here to learn more. In essence, an idiot plot is a plot that only is possible because of the ignorance of the main characters. Azeroth was in a perfect position to be unified after facing their biggest enemy yet, but hostilities were reignited over a MISUNDERSTANDING. A literal MISUNDERSTANDING and no one bothered to send the Alliance a letter saying "hey, we didn't just abandon you at the Broken Shore, if we hadn't retreated the Legion would have wiped us all out and Sargeras would have won, we're sorry". Genn escalates this by taking the first hostile action against the Horde. This is stupid. Way worse than in Cata where the Twilight Cultists murdered the Druid envoy and blamed it on Garrosh, that was at least interesting and believable and tensions were already boiling.
Speaking of which, can I talk about Garrosh? He would be the perfect character for an expansion like this, and yet he died in a completely idiotic way in a stupid filler expansion. Talk about a waste of one of WoW's only good original characters.
This expansion sh*ts all over the core message WoW has had for the past decade. There was a time where people were disgusted by the idea that Jaina would say "dismantle the Horde". Varian believed in peace after long, arduous character development. Anduin always believed in it. They are BUTCHERING their characters. People who say this "puts the WAR back in WARCRAFT" are idiots. Warcraft, since Warcraft III, has always been about putting aside our differences to defend our homes against greater, more malicious threats. Why after over FIFTEEN YEARS of preaching this message are they going back on that? UUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
3. "New Features"
New dungeons, new raids, yadda yadda yadda. Except this time there's nothing truly creative. The subraces are just smoke and mirrors Blizzard is using to make people forget that they're ignoring things they actually should be doing like updating goblin and worgen models, etc. Scenarios are being rehashed and marketed as a new feature when they never should have been abandoned in the first place. Blizzard implemented loot from them improperly in MoP and assumed that because no one was playing them no one liked them. This was a reverse from what happened in Ashran, where Blizzard though that because so many people played it, it must have meant it was good, when in reality the rewards in Ashran were too good to pass up and it was a tedious grind and zergfest.
They did a horrible job of explaining what things like "warfronts" even are. And seriously? Three levelling zones for ten levels? Are you kidding me? This whole thing is like a nightmarish fever dream. The worst part is that Blizzard claims to have the largest team working on WoW that they've ever had, and they're releasing less content than a decade ago (TBC).
4. PvP and PvE
This may be one of their most idiotic moves ever. People who care deeply about minmaxing PvE will be forced to toggle PvP for the highest possible rewards. People who enjoy WPvP and natural random encounters will be segregated off into tiny instanced areas. It's an awful solution for all players and you get screwed no matter what you enjoy.
5. Classic Servers
Hurray! Legacy servers! Except this will demolish an already dwindling playerbase. Combined with the PvE/PvP sharding I can't wait for my realm to be populated by sharded ghosts from other realms that I'll never meet again. What's a community again? Hurr durr.
I want to write more but my fingers hurt.