BfA is not a major expansion?

[Thraps]

I been around, ever since Vanilla, and I been watching Blizzard do all kinds of
promotional stuff for each expansion and I been wondering why they have not done
very much for the BfA, anyone else feel like this is just a middle expansion awaiting something
grand like Argus and the storyline of Illidan etc?

I feel this expansion is targeted for the PVP player, even the premise of this expansion
being finally horde vs alliance again after all the soft cuddly stuff. But as far as storyline goes
I doubt this expansion will push it forward anything, UNLESS, there is a major shift and perhaps
it is the shadowed enemy that strikes just when both factions are busy fighting eachother.

But then leads me back to my first question why Blizzard has not pushed this with ad campaings etc
cause I seen nothing that would make me even raise an eyebrow.

Just me that think thats odd?

I think your being very short sighted if im honest, most of the PvE systems are already in place since blizzard are happy with the raiding format of LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic. With mythic being 20 man for a long while now Blizzard are happy with that for encounter design and does require change. M+ has been a huge success and again doesn't require change only refinement.

Now Blizzard are introducing Warfronts which is a PvE mode in the game.

There is PvP changes with Battlegrounds been taken away and new ones added etc but nothing major.

The point is theres nothing major going on in this expansion as most of the systems are being refined with exceptions of a few things like Warfronts. This is neither a PVE or PVP expansion, its more of a extension to existent systems in place. Ive played like yourself right from vanilla and a expansion doesnt have to have a complete redesign to make a expansion, a expansion is just new story new content to explore etc.

Obviously with a expansion comes changes to classes etc but thats always a ongoing process.

The only thing im disappointed with for the expansion is that its Battle for Azeroth not Battle of 6 islands. I think blizzard are massively under utilising the existing continents of Azeroth and massive opportunity wasted, keeping the content mainly to the 6 islands.

[nazrakin]

It had as many zones as Cataclysm and Legion. It had 9 dungeons, which was more than WoD, and the same as Cataclysm. And it at least had new capital cities. Cataclysm didn't, and the one in Legion was only revamped. The ones in WoD weren't that great either.

Cataclsym overhauled the entire vanilla world while also having the same number of new zones. Wod's cities sucked too but it had the garrison to compliment it. Likewise, Dalaran was revamped but complimented by 12 unique class halls, many of which are not much smaller than Shrine.

[Jotunhammer]

Those saying it is as well promoted as any other expansion.
Wrath of the Lich King - had statues, had promotional videos, had all kinds of stuff added.
Cataclysm - whole new world, really impacted on a world scale, oh and did I mention statues?
Mists of Pandaria - chines expansion, with lore that fits that side of the world, dragons, nothing major statues, but this I consider a major, umm, what
do I explain that with, it really did not fit with WOW lore and was not followed up any, it was more like the wow and expansion hit the chinese servers.
Warlords of Draenor - puke inc except the one single combat
Legion - combined with the movie, this was pushed really hard with in game items etc.
Battle for Azeroth - right...umm...sniffling prince that does not his place in society vs a brooding more dead than alive villain and they go head to head.
I am actually rooting that there is an outside influence that kicks both their collective arses and gets the boll rolling to it actually has some meaning.

[Sencha]

BfA is WoD 2.0.

BfA is Legion 2.0 + islands expedition grinding.

[Metallourlante]

I noticed too, way less promotion than before even though it's only 2 months away. imho Blizzard finally realized that ads for World of Warcraft are a waste of money, since WoW will hardly get new players at this point and everyone who knows or cares about the game already know everything about BfA, release date, features etc.

[Mafic]

It is heavily advertised on youtube, but yea promotional advertisement outside of that is not as strong as it was for WoD and MOP.

BFA is heavily reliant on allied races as selling feature.

[Deleted]

BFA is the old gods expansion. It's gonna be pretty big. Read around a bit.

There is only one Old God left. So more like loose strings expansion, finishing off Azshara and N'Zoth and ridding Azeroth of the last domestic threats.

This is probably the prologue to a Void Lords and/or Light expansion.

So calling BfA a filler expansion could very well be justified, we'll have to wait and see. But the lack of content in beta and many classes that are still not finished or feel right is not a good sign.

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BFA is heavily reliant on allied races as selling feature.

Could be. But coupled with the huge nerf to XP it seems like an easy cashgrab to keep people subscribed.

[Xorzor]

There is only one Old God left.

Let's hope so. I have a theory that Xalatath (the sentient Spriest dagger) wants the last of its brethren taken care of it both for revenge (for what the four of them may have done to it eons ago) and so it can rise to power unchallenged.

This is probably the prologue to a Void Lords and/or Light expansion.

Maybe both? One to deal with the Void Lords, and one to deal with the fanatical Light-worshipers of AU Draenor; a Radiant Crusade perhaps!

[Viikkis]

Storywise yeah kinda. Allies & Horde fighting until a new bigger threat emerges from the background and we deal with it together in the next expansion. Content wise they should be similiar excluding WoD that is.

[Nyel]

BfA is Legion 2.0 + islands expedition grinding.

At best it's Legion 0.5 (no artifacts, no new class, no new skills/talent rows, no legendaries, no order hall etc.). It looks like a watered down Legion with the same amount of grinding. Sounds like fun, right?

[Dekkers]

Filler xpac.

[Nyel]

Could be. But coupled with the huge nerf to XP it seems like an easy cashgrab to keep people subscribed.

This would work with one or two new classes. At this point of time most players have already tackled every class and are hardly creating a bunch of new characters and playing them to max (or better: enjoying to level them to max).

Allied races are nice fluff but nothing else. They don't have any longevity attached to them because they're just a cosmetic feature.

[Deleted]

Cataclsym overhauled the entire vanilla world while also having the same number of new zones. Wod's cities sucked too but it had the garrison to compliment it. Likewise, Dalaran was revamped but complimented by 12 unique class halls, many of which are not much smaller than Shrine.

We were strictly comparing zones, dungeons and main cities. Revamped zones are not new zones, revamped cities are not new cities and class halls are not cities.

Did Blizzard put in effort into the game beyond just dungeons and zones and cities? Sure. So why not mention the multitude of daily quests that MoP had? The scenarios? The legendary quest chain?

[Mellrod]

I feel this expansion is targeted for the PVP player, even the premise of this expansion
being finally horde vs alliance again after all the soft cuddly stuff. But as far as storyline goes
I doubt this expansion will push it forward anything, UNLESS, there is a major shift and perhaps
it is the shadowed enemy that strikes just when both factions are busy fighting eachother.

I don't understand why some see this change in themes as something new. You've been around since vanilla so you must've noticed the pattern by now, right?

Vanilla - Alliance vs Horde themes with [a rogue's gallery of villains] as a backdrop.
BC - Both factions have to unite against ["Da Big Bad"] to save the world and find the true meaning of friendship.
WotLK - Both factions have to unite against ["Da Big Bad"] to save the world and find the true meaning of friendship, but with Alliance vs Horde themes as a backdrop.
Cata - Alliance vs Horde themes with ["Da Big Bad"] as a backdrop.
MoP - Alliance vs Horde themes with [a rogue's gallery of villains] as a backdrop.
WoD - Both factions have to unite against [a rogue's gallery of villains] to save the world and find the true meaning of friendship, but with Alliance vs Horde themes as a backdrop.
Legion - Both factions have to unite against ["Da Big Bad"] to save the world and find the true meaning of friendship, but with Alliance vs Horde themes as a backdrop.
BfA - Alliance vs Horde themes with [a rogue's gallery of villains] as a backdrop.

It's like 4 for 4 between alliance vs horde or uniting against evil as the main course. They tend to alternate with the themes of their story, but it always tends to come back to A v H after a grandiose campaign.

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We were strictly comparing zones, dungeons and main cities. Revamped zones are not new zones, revamped cities are not new cities and class halls are not cities.

Did Blizzard put in effort into the game beyond just dungeons and zones and cities? Sure. So why not mention the multitude of daily quests that MoP had? The scenarios? The legendary quest chain?

Keep in mind there's a vast difference here between "revamping" and "remastering". The vanilla world was changed so drastically that (and practically done from scratch according to Blizzard iirc but don't quote me on that) the same amount of work as creating a new zone was put into each one. With that in mind, They essentially created two new continents the size of EK and Kali with all the work they did on revamping. Not to mention they didn't just do it to look cool either. Every single zone in the old world has had virtually all of it's quests changed; new stories and questlines were created for all of these zones, with some questlines branching out to other areas as well.


All that and they still had the time to create several entirely new leveling zones for us. Plus two new races. Plus several dungeons and raids. Cataclysm probably had one of the most successful launches. Even though it lacked new capital city, it didn't necessarily need one (although making portals to everywhere in SW and Org might've been a mistake). Only real downside to the xpac was it's final patch. Cata was a pretty damn good expansion in my books.

If any one of them had the poorest launch content, it'd have to be WoD. Questing was good and whatnot, but other than maybe raids, the immediate endgame content was rather weak, and there was so much content that was originally planned for launch that was just cut (i.e. the missing ogre continent and Farahlon, Trial of the Gladiator, extra Garrison content like trading between neighboring garrisons, missing pieces of Draenor's story, etc.). It didn't even survive patches, with only the final patch containing any new playable content.

[Deleted]

Those revamped zones were 'revamped' so drastically that (and practically done from scratch according to Blizzard iirc but don't quote me on that) the same amount of work as creating a new zone was put into each one. They essentially created two new continents with all the work they did on revamping. All that and they still had the time to create several entirely new leveling zones for us. Plus two new races. Plus several dungeons and raids.

Blizzard may claim that, but that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I don't think there is a single zone that was redone entirely, and if there are, there can't be many. Most zones may have some new quests here and there, but the landscape remains mostly unchanged. There are even some that remain almost completely untouched (Arathi, Elwynn, Silithus, Duskwood). On top of that, old Vanilla zones were tiny compared to expansion zones, both in size and in number of quests there were. Some zones had like 30-50 quests, while later expansion zones had 100-150 on average.

Also, just some food for thought, but if Blizzard really did create 2 continents worth of new content, in addition to having 5 new zones, why don't they manage to do that with every expansion? Why does Legion only have 5 new zones?

[Deleted]

I kinda get that Cataclysm and WoD feeling from BfA.

It's a hard feeling to shake tbh. and I hear it from more people I play(ed) with. Going to keep an eye on the final state of the game before launch and then decide if I will re-sub or not.

[nazrakin]

We were strictly comparing zones, dungeons and main cities. Revamped zones are not new zones, revamped cities are not new cities and class halls are not cities.

Did Blizzard put in effort into the game beyond just dungeons and zones and cities? Sure. So why not mention the multitude of daily quests that MoP had? The scenarios? The legendary quest chain?

No, you might not consider revamped zones to be noteworthy but I absolutely do. In fact, my original post was in agreement with someone basically saying that Cata doesnt get enough credit for its revamp... so Im not sure when it was decided we were "strictly" discussing new zones. I don't mention scenarios because they were kinda dogshit and Wod/Legion are full of them anyway, they're just used to better effect as off quests rather than being leveraged as repeatable content.

You seem to be missing the point regardless. I actually think MoP is a brilliant expansion in retrospect, my personal favorite... thanks to its post launch support. However, "on paper" its launch content was not impressive.

[Deleted]

No, you might not consider revamped zones to be noteworthy but I absolutely do.

I never said they aren't, I said the claim that

Those revamped zones were 'revamped' so drastically that (and practically done from scratch according to Blizzard iirc but don't quote me on that) the same amount of work as creating a new zone was put into each one.

doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

A revamped zone with 30-50 quests doesn't take as much work as a completely new zone with 100-150 quests.

[nazrakin]

I never said they aren't, I said the claim that



doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

A revamped zone with 30-50 quests doesn't take as much work as a completely new zone with 100-150 quests.

I didn't make that claim, so I'm not sure what you want from me?

I agree that a revamped vanilla zone is not equal to a brand new one. However, that doesn't mean that it still didnt require a great deal of effort and resources to do. Based on what Blizzard has said just enabling flight in those zones was a heavy task, which is why they're not willing to bother updating Silvermoon/Azuremyst.

[Deleted]

I agree that a revamped vanilla zone is not equal to a brand new one. However, that doesn't mean that it still didnt require a great deal of effort and resources to do.

I don't think it did.