BFA is done. Time for your official review

[Raetary]

In terms of gameplay: 6/10

In terms of Lore: -5/10

[Softbottom]

BFA is worse than WoD and Cata IMO. I at least enjoyed playing WoD and Cata cause classes were fun and there was not dumb rental systems.

[LordVargK]

I'm surprised no one seems to remember all the massive amounts of "Legion is the worst expansion ever" whine at the start of 7.3. Somehow it ended up as one of the better expansions a year later.

I think BfA has been okay and that you "all" are a lot of negative nancies. It hasn't been a 10/10 hit but not nearly as bad as some of you say. Not to mention that you probably couldn't tell a good story from a bad since you'd lose attention and press escape before it even had time to develop in to an actual story anyway.

Until 7.3 Legion WAS the worst expansion ever. 7.3 redeemed it, because it polished the systems Legion introduced. I would go on record saying that Legion pre 7.3 (or maybe 7.2.5) has about the same quality as BfA and is strictly worse than WoD.

[Rendark]

From a story point of view i would say it's the second worst. Legion will always be the worst because it killed the way i liked to play wow but BfA is a close second.

[Houzasza]

I really thought the bad ending of Game of Thrones could not be topped. But blizzard showed me it could.

[Teph]

I never cared about story, so thats a whatever.

But bfa was hot garbage on arrival, because of the gameplay changes to most of the classes. Removal of abilities and gcd. Most classes still feel far inferior compared to legion. Quit once classic launched and never looked back. #

Lets hope they learned anything for shadowlands, but it seems really meh so far.

[Xisa]

Battle for Azeroth was a disaster, both for the company and the player base.

Blizzard is in the process of having its culture absorbed and taken over by its parent company. That's the largest part of what we're seeing here, unfortunately. The Old God ending patch here is a bit ironic, given that Activision is pretty much Ny'alotha.

The story was among the worst I've ever read, the Azerite system was a gross step down from artifact weapons, and PvP was an absolute joke for the entire expansion. The only redeeming qualities of the expansion were good raids, and Mythic+(which was from Legion, so it really doesn't count) which is still a downgrade from the last expansion, as Legion's dungeons were better than BfA's.

The end result is going to be that Shadowlands is going to get exactly ONE chance to be good. If it even smells like BfA, it's going to be immediately abandoned.

[Itori]

To be fair i tried giving bfa a legitimate shot, i enjoyed the alliance zones, hate the horde zones and because of that i feel forced to play alliance for aesthetics.

The story tried to be emotional, it tried to get you feeling something but for me i was kinda bored and this is coming from someone who nearly cried when tesleen in the new ffxiv expansion got turned, as fof side stories in zones those were far more interesting like the cthulhu and drustvar zones.

I enjoyed artifact weapons in legion, they felt stronger as time went on and got leveled up, bfa necklace, head chest and shoulders just felt meh, the special traits on them werent really impactful and hardly ever noticed them procing until hitting max level and getting some worth a damn

Ill be honest, i made it to max lvl, and i kinda just lost every bit of motivation to raid, pvp, or even do dailies, i think i got my warlock to 120 and immediately started a hunter and started lvling again because the bfa endgame just felt underwhelming.

Legion wasnt horrible, it was bad, but i had more fun and enjoyed the story more than bfa, and i enjoyed WoD more than i did legion if that says anything.

[Marxman]

It's the worst expansion, and I don't think it's particularly close.

For as bad as WoD was, it still did some things really well (raids, class design, "freedom" to not do chores every fucking day).

BfA did *nothing* well. Systems design sucked, class design sucked, the dungeons and raids were mediocre at best, the story sucked, and there is a never-ending laundry list of menial tedious chores to do to keep up. It was flat-out awful.

I know 8.3 is a rushed half-ass patch to keep us occupied while they work on SL, but I think it shows pretty well that they honestly haven't learned much over the course of this expansion. It's still just menial chores over and over again. It's still RNG loot that has wild swings in power (lol Infinite Stars). It's still arbitrarily punishing people who just want to raid and do dungeons, which I think is a large percentage of the playerbase.

[Dhrizzle]

Battle for Azeroth was a disaster, both for the company and the player base.

Blizzard is in the process of having its culture absorbed and taken over by its parent company. That's the largest part of what we're seeing here, unfortunately. The Old God ending patch here is a bit ironic, given that Activision is pretty much Ny'alotha.

The story was among the worst I've ever read, the Azerite system was a gross step down from artifact weapons, and PvP was an absolute joke for the entire expansion. The only redeeming qualities of the expansion were good raids, and Mythic+(which was from Legion, so it really doesn't count) which is still a downgrade from the last expansion, as Legion's dungeons were better than BfA's.

The end result is going to be that Shadowlands is going to get exactly ONE chance to be good. If it even smells like BfA, it's going to be immediately abandoned.

People have been saying that Blizz have been absorbed and taken over by Activision since WotLK released, if things have heated up recently it's more likely to do with the pressure of being relatively independent and no longer having the cushion of Vivendi behind them.

[Creek]

good story telling but saying that its worst is going bit far as well nothing will ever be as bad as warlords of Draenor !

[StyxzTheSage]

About on par with Cata, or slightly better, overall.

It's one of the "bad" expacs, but it's probably the best of them (BfA -> Cata -> WoD).

The raiding, art, music, zones, and leveling are the best features. Each of the raids comfortably sits in the upper echelon of WoW raids. The questing is good to great, with Drsutvar being one of (if not the) best zones/questing experiences in the game. Boralus joins Suramar as one of the best urban/city/zones in the game, and has one of WoW's best zone themes. Creature design is top notch across the board. Encounters are interesting. Mythic plus continues to be one of the best features added to the game since launch. And the QoL changes made to "the grind" in 8.3 are healthy for the game, the devs, and the playerbase imo. Solid stuff.

The expansion can't get out of its own way though. For every good or great thing here, there is some hair brained feature or system, or extremely poor balancing to ruin the experience.

Azurite is the worst player progression system in the game's history. Not necessarily because of how broken it was on launch, or how badly balanced some traits are/were, or how odd acquiring essences is in some cases. But because of what the system replaces. Instead of new abilities or talents (or even balance in the talent tree) we get this convoluted mess that entangles gear and player power in the most absurd, extreme way possible. We shouldn't be holding gear that is 15-20 ilevels behind because of good traits. Why are traits more or as important than talents? Why (as a lock) does it seem like change my traits more than my talents because talent balance has been abysmal all expansion (Drain Soul just got buffed, after spending the whole of BfA as a DPS LOSS over taking no talent on the row at all. That shouldn't be a thing for any class in any game).

The essences are really cool, but considered alongside the armor (and considering how silly it is to farm last tier's end boss for ranks, account-wide essences, etc), the systems together are just way too much.

Broadly, the systems and features got way out of hand in BfA and that sucks enough, but seeing no new talents - and coming into BfA LOSING gameplay from tier sets, artifacts and legiondaries - feels terrible when the consolation is Azurite armor and essences.

Class design and balance as a whole has been a weakness for BfA. Coming in losing the artifacts and everything, the classes here feel gutted. Most got little in the way of replacements, and again, the balance in the talent trees has been awful, so you're stuck playing fairly static specs. And Blizz thinks the issue lies in focusing on specs over classes? A completely false dichotomy, and it has me very concerned going into Shlands.

And this is getting long, so I won't go into the beta, AP, Warfronts, Warmode balance, Islands, PvP, some of the writing, etc. Suffice to say, these areas of the game were lacking at best, or were directly antagonistic to players (AP) at worst. Very disappointing.

TLDR: The best parts of BfA are some of the highest achievements in the game's history. The worst parts are some of the worst developments in the game's history. It is an experience that is at war with itself.

5/10

[Laerrus]

Too many missed opportunities, not as bad as WoD, but bad enough.

Legion = TBC = WoTLK > MoP > Cata > BfA > WoD

[Yarathir]

In some ways, prolly a fever dream of an expansion come to life with some of the worst disappointments on a personal level.

-A bunch of Sylvanas nonsense and a war that starts with a genocide with absolutely no consequences other than Tyrande being mad.

-Oh, and Tyrande of course being made into a joke who, together with the world's greatest archdruid can kill 1(one) val'kyr.

-Tyrande not being around in Nazjatar to, you know, deal with a nemesis of hers for 10.000 years, but Thalyssra, Lor'themar, Genn and Jaina are.

-Wrathion just waltzing up after being part of causing WoD and Legion and being self-important again. No real consequences for his betrayal.

-Nazjatar conveniently rid of water and having few real cool deep sea Old God elements.

-Ny'alotha isn't even a world zone. Just a single raid.

-N'Zoth being tossed in the trash so we can focus on more Sylvanas crap.

-Allied race system, something I was very hyped for being, imo, an utter waste of potential.

-Class-based tier sets gone because "trust me guys, having just 4 sets per raid tier will mean the sets are cooler" and then having most of the raid sets in BfA be meh.

The only good part is that Azshara hasn't been totally screwed over and can still return at some point. I'm frankly hopeful for Shadowlands for all the wrong reasons, which are that at its worst, some of these points above cannot happen because they have already happened. It has to be better by sheer virtue of that alone.

[Kyphael]

In some ways, prolly a fever dream of an expansion come to life with some of the worst disappointments on a personal level.

-A bunch of Sylvanas nonsense and a war that starts with a genocide with absolutely no consequences other than Tyrande being mad.

-Oh, and Tyrande of course being made into a joke who, together with the world's greatest archdruid can kill 1(one) val'kyr.

-Tyrande not being around in Nazjatar to, you know, deal with a nemesis of hers for 10.000 years, but Thalyssra, Lor'themar, Genn and Jaina are.

-Wrathion just waltzing up after being part of causing WoD and Legion and being self-important again. No real consequences for his betrayal.

-Nazjatar conveniently rid of water and having few real cool deep sea Old God elements.

-Ny'alotha isn't even a world zone. Just a single raid.

-N'Zoth being tossed in the trash so we can focus on more Sylvanas crap.

-Allied race system, something I was very hyped for being, imo, an utter waste of potential.

-Class-based tier sets gone because "trust me guys, having just 4 sets per raid tier will mean the sets are cooler" and then having most of the raid sets in BfA be meh.

The only good part is that Azshara hasn't been totally screwed over and can still return at some point. I'm frankly hopeful for Shadowlands for all the wrong reasons, which are that at its worst, some of these points above cannot happen because they have already happened. It has to be better by sheer virtue of that alone.

Oh, there'll be more Sylvanas crap, Shadowlands will be littered with it. It's a guarantee. In fact, they might turn the dial up to 11 on the Sylvanas shit we'll have to eat. This is just the beginning.

I agree, the ONE SOLITARY silver lining is Azshara didn't get loot pinata'd.

[Yamuri]

It had its moments, overall was a pretty bad expansion and the amount of people that haven't logged in in a while on my friends list proves it to me. I enjoyed some of the questing, I actually enjoyed all the raids. The rest was pretty awful in my opinion.

M+ becoming the focus was one of the worst things

Island expedition was good on paper, but pretty awful

AP grinds, I don't need to elaborate

Allied races were fine, I enjoyed earning them even though most people didn't like how it was rep locked

The storyline was amazingly bad. I love WoW lore but holy crap "Not Garrosh 2.0" is a complete lie. Even at the end, she turns against her own faction, runs away and opens a larger threat to us. WTF is this rewritten garbage.

The last patch was pretty garbage, visions and the raid are cool but the maintenance and the amount of broken things in the world is bad. People not getting their gold from the AH, people getting banned for a mistake Blizz made with the visions reward.

And the most underlining disappointment thing for me was how fast we dealt with an old god. It should have been an expansion worth of content. I hope they go back to it after shadowlands.

[Aresk]

Seems premature to evaluate it since I haven't even had a chance to step into the last raid yet, but here goes:

The overall story arc was fine. Lots of details had issues, particularly surrounding Sylvanas throughout and some elements of the Alliance war strategy. In general, the War Campaign failed compared to the other stories told throughout. The early lack of agency Horde-side was problematic, and the implementation of agency halfway through was similarly problematic.

Island expeditions never recovered from their initial disastrous state.

Warfronts were a lot more satisfying once they made heroic adaptations, but ultimately they fell short of the advertised "WC3" experience.

Azerite armor has been a disaster in terms of acquisition, balance, and (early on) upgrades. This is one system I really hope dies with this expansion.

Class changes were okay for the classes I play (mostly monk, druid, shaman, demonology). Demo feels a lot better. Mistweaver was a lot more enjoyable than Legion. The guardian changes took some getting used to. Most of the others feel a little weaker than Legion but not unplayable.

World PvP had a good attempt made, but I think it fell short, particularly compared to the PvP WQs of Legion. I went back and forth as to whether or not to play with World PVP on or not, which led to some fun experiences, but I generally haven't been opting into it.

Raids in general were fine from a challenge/boss mechanic point of view. I really was sick of Uldir by the end, but I enjoyed the other raids throughout, and I thought they had a much better aesthetic, but aesthetic is a matter of opinion. I didn't miss tier sets.

Mythic+ continues to be as annoying as it was back when it was called Challenge Mode in MoP. I feel like timed content isn't the best metric for challenge, but that's a matter of opinion. The disparity of difficulty between mythic dungeons, however, is less a matter of opinion, and I feel like they should have made more effort to get things a bit more even throughout.

GCD Changes didn't bother me too much. They made DPS a lot more annoying, but I mainly tank/heal, so I didn't care.

Visions have been a lot of fun, and I like the implementation to prevent them from being too punishing if one fails. Definitely happy with this so far.

They brought back some of the prettiest zones in previous expansions (Uldum, Vale) and made them interesting to play in, so huge props for this.

Allied races were for the most part fun but not very impactful.

Magni finally stopped being a whiny layabout and decided to actually do something. Big improvement to the character, and the first time I've actually had some amount of respect for him. Still felt odd for him to be standing in the same room as one of his brothers and not even acknowledge his existence in Vale.

Overall, I would say BfA was a bigger success than Cata, BC, and Classic, with generally MoP levels of quality. I would still put it behind Legion, WoD, and WotLK.

[Flower Milk]

The amazing art and music were wasted on an awful expansion, probably the worst WoW expansion I've ever played. At least my only gripe with WoD was the garrison and removing flight, but I literally don't like anything in BfA but the art and music and that's it.

[barrsftw]

I can't articulate why, but I had significantly less fun in this expansion compared to all others. There's nothing in particular that I would say was 'bad', but there's also nothing that comes to mind that I remember being 'good' or 'great'. All of the other expansions, even WoD, had elements that I remember being great, expansion defining elements... can't say the same for BfA.

One thing that comes to mind is the story. This expansion's war campaign was supposed to be that defining element IMO, it just fell pretty flat for me. They had a lot of systems in place to make the story telling experience amazing (tons of cinematics, story specific quests, impactful decisions, etc.), but it just fell flat. Not to mention a lot of people just don't care about story.

[Sencha]

I am thinking about canceling my subscription

As long as you don't do it, nothing will change. So keep complaining or do it.