Sure BFA is bad, but...

[DemonDays]

How can you not grasp the concept that people may like current classes and HAVE FUN with them? How hard is to understand?

You are not sole arbiter of what is fun and what is not and WoD didnt have neither quantity nor quality.

For instance I fucking like island expeditions, azerite, raids and dungeons, nazjatar, assaults. LOVE mechagon. the only miss for me is warfronts.

So easy 8/10 expansion, warfronts are optional anyways.

Good thing even the development team doesn't agree with your assessment of liking this expansion since they NOPED the fuck out of it early and delivered the garbage that is 8.3

Good thing Ion doesn't agree with you on Class Design either. Since they're going back to the drawing board and making it a big focus for Shadowlands.

They must be doing something about it because they've seen a MAJORITY of negative feedback over class design hey?

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If you measure by what BfA has actually used as themes, it was worse.

BfA used four themes that were quite often thrown around as expansion idea.

1.Kul Tiras / Zandalar (A core of idea of the usual "South sea" expansion idea)
2.Nazjatar
3.Faction War
4.Black Empire / N'zoth

You could have taken two of those themes and built an expansion around it, but BfA just didn't take two, it took for those.
They've been hinted at for years and people did ask for these zones for over a freaking decade and look what Blizzard made of these.

Kul Tiras and Zandalar have become irrelevant after 8.1, as did the Faction war (at least in terms of actual content).
Both Nazjatar and Black Empire / N'zoth were wrapped up in a single patch.

WoD for all its faults didn't at least use themes (besides "Time travel") that were previously established in lore and dragged them down or made them unuseable for another expansion in the foreseeable future.

BfA was thematically set up as a great expansion, but they botched it so damn hard on so many levels, it's just damn unbelieveable.
BfA made me appreciate the call they made for WoD, because BfA is WoD on which the plug wasn't pulled, but they couldn't do a second time again because they already pulled the plug on an expansion not too long ago.

BfA WASTED four themes that were quite often thrown around as expansion idea.

[StyxzTheSage]

I think WoD was better than BFA. I say that sincerely without any hint of irony.

Firstly, WoD had quality content, it just didn't have a lot of it. What little content there was in Warlords of Draenor was unified and coherent. The player was taken on a journey from start to finish in a clear concise manner.

BFA, by contrast, has more content than WoD, but much of it is half baked and disparate. As an Alliance main I had no idea what the hell was going on towards the middle of the expansion. Who's MOTHER, for example? I had no incentive, lore-wise, or any quest chain for that matter that made me want to go to Uldir.

Also, while WoD had one compelling story (which, I admit, fell flat at the very end with Grom Hellscream turning good all of a sudden), BFA had a few stories that had tenuous connections at best. You had a faction war, which was supposed to be the main focus of the expansion, only for it to suddenly end in favour of N'zoth, and the ending leaves a whole lot to be desired. WoD at least had an ending that tied into Legion.

WoD didn't have much content, but what little it had was great. BFA had tons of half baked ideas.

(although yes, I agree that if you didn't raid in WoD, you didn't have much else to do. That said, the raids in WoD were great)

I disagree with your conclusion, but this is well reasoned and argued. Kudos.

[TheRevenantHero]

Good thing even the development team doesn't agree with your assessment of liking this expansion since they NOPED the fuck out of it early and delivered the garbage that is 8.3

Good thing Ion doesn't agree with you on Class Design either. Since they're going back to the drawing board and making it a big focus for Shadowlands.

They must be doing something about it because they've seen a MAJORITY of negative feedback over class design hey?

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BfA WASTED four themes that were quite often thrown around as expansion idea.

The only thing they've mentioned about classes changing for Shadowlands is bringing back spells that were removed and giving abilities to all specs. which is absolutely garbage. Ok so a mage can cast Fireball even in Frost spec but it does next to no damage because you're in Frost spec so people won't fucking use it. The extraordinarily loud people that love Classic screamed enough to annoy the devs into changing things and it's going to make the game WORSE rather than better.

[DemonDays]

The only thing they've mentioned about classes changing for Shadowlands is bringing back spells that were removed and giving abilities to all specs. which is absolutely garbage. Ok so a mage can cast Fireball even in Frost spec but it does next to no damage because you're in Frost spec so people won't fucking use it. The extraordinarily loud people that love Classic screamed enough to annoy the devs into changing things and it's going to make the game WORSE rather than better.

I'm as skeptical as you are because I don't think the current dev team is capable of delivering anything good.

But they at least said they are looking at Class Design and they acknowledged they've heard people hate it.


If they return abilities they need to completely re-design every single spec. Which they said they won't do. Which is worrying already.

[Maquegyver]

Wrath was terrible during wrath, according to most of the playerbase that came from previous expansions simply because it made the game more accessible. Vanilla was held up as the paragon of what the game should be and everyone who disagreed was a "wrathbaby". I remember, for example, incredible outrage when they added the group finder because people suddenly had to play with "the retards" who otherwise never did group content at the tame, aka the majority of the playerbase. Catch up systems were a garbage idea, naxx revamp was a crime against humanity. ToC, multiple difficulties in raiding, achievements, there were no shortage of things that made wrath the worst expansion of all time during its' time.

Personally i loved wrath, and there is no arguing that the game probably was at it's greatest back then with hindsight in mind, but a ton of people hated wrath.

People don't like wrath because it was the clear beginning of the end for the game. Vanilla and BC saw rapid sub/player growth. Wotlk barely grew at all and implemented many of the systems that have now evolved to pure stupidity.

[StyxzTheSage]

BfA is overall objectively better. But, big BUT: WoD had still the MoP-style warlock, which was designed to be fun, not to be tedious. It did remove snapshotting though, so yeah... If I'm thinking about it, then WoD is the reason that every DoT-class in WoW sucks today. That makes it the absolute worst Expansion.

They gutted locks in WoD though. I hated all three specs, especially coming from MoP.

The lack of snapshotting was fresh in my mind and I hated aff for it, as well as the reworked soulburn haunt. Destro was traaaaasssshhhhh compared to MoP. They hard nerfed its aoe and Chaos Bolt. Demo was OK, but it got slapped with that 20 or 25% flat nerf and sat in the gutter for most of the expansion.

As a lock, WoD's best quality (raids) was completely lost on me since I hated actively playing the game at that point.

[dawkins321]

People don't like wrath because it was the clear beginning of the end for the game. Vanilla and BC saw rapid sub/player growth. Wotlk barely grew at all and implemented many of the systems that have now evolved to pure stupidity.

Population grew and peaked in WOTLK, then decreased from every expansion then on. Thoughts on being wrong?

[Sharein]

BfA has the worst PvP to date. You got all these fancy PvP talents, but in BGs you don't get to use them because you're dead in two globals. It's like they've thrown ten years of PvP development out of the window and just thought "ah, fuck it lol".

WoD's PvP gameplay and class design was boring, but at least it had vendors, gear scaling, no RNG and no PvE clown gear. WoD had by far the best PvP gearing system. Doing RBGs in WoD to get those three wins done was genuinely fun.

BfA's PvP gearing system is pure dogshit.

It should also be noted that BfA is killing RP servers because the lore is really bad. WoD's lore could be and was ignored by roleplayers. You can't ignore BfA's shitty lore.

Although I love Boralus as a RP area.

[Dolus]

This is like comparing a shit sandwich with mayo to a shit sandwich with mustard. It doesn't matter. They are both filled with shit. WoD and BFA were/are terrible. I expect Shadowlands to keep on this course.

[froschhure]

so WOD produced Ability pruning -

and current class system is using this. no wonder it feels like shit, because it was produced during wod.
i was shocked after i returned to wow. still mad about what they did to a fully functional game.

[Redsoldier06]

Really, the only bad part about WoD was the content drought. Otherwise the classes were rather pristine as a whole. Just lowered a bit from MoP. The raids were fantastic. Literally just the lack of content for months at a time is why it's considered the 'worst'. Or used to be the worst. I myself loved WoD, only thing that would rate it at a 6/10 was the drought. BFA is just shit as a whole. Left at the start, still no reason to come back even during my escapade on classic. Never logged into retail once. No nude mods either so wasn't appealing.

[Kalarm]

As much as WoD wasn't really good, I had a ton of fun levelling alts during it. I couldn't really repeat that now tho because... 1: I find it hard to level classes I already have at max level / no use for and 2: The levelling experience really sucks in BFA.

[ringpriest]

Speaking as someone who played almost entirely Horde and does not like trolls, I still found BfA to be solidly above both WoD and Cata (that said, I stopped playing it months ago, and, unlike classic, haven't missed it a bit); I'd put it as either the worst "good" expansion, or the best bad one.

[TheRevenantHero]

BfA has the worst PvP to date. You got all these fancy PvP talents, but in BGs you don't get to use them because you're dead in two globals. It's like they've thrown ten years of PvP development out of the window and just thought "ah, fuck it lol".

WoD's PvP gameplay and class design was boring, but at least it had vendors, gear scaling, no RNG and no PvE clown gear. WoD had by far the best PvP gearing system. Doing RBGs in WoD to get those three wins done was genuinely fun.

BfA's PvP gearing system is pure dogshit.

It should also be noted that BfA is killing RP servers because the lore is really bad. WoD's lore could be and was ignored by roleplayers. You can't ignore BfA's shitty lore.

Although I love Boralus as a RP area.

As someone from an RP server, people absolutely DID NOT ignore WoD. As a matter of fact, countless time traveling characters in the form of "chronomancers" started cropping up that ignored the fact that we were only able to travel to Draenor using stupidly powerful artifacts.

[chaoticcrono]

I actually wanted to play in wod and most of my classes were atleast decently fun to play...

BFA is so bad that i dont want to play even for free...

[Zarithras]

No matter which way you look at it the gameplay in WoD was way fucking better than what we have now.

No I agree with you, WoD gameplay was way better than BfA. I'm just pointing out that WoD absolutely did gut classes, and a lot of people were unhappy. I absolutely do agree with you on the Legion point too. Many people point to Legion as having fun classes, but they were simply propped up my artifacts and legendaries. Without all of those tertiary effects, class gameplay suuuuuucks, as we've seen in BfA.

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Paladins still had their auras, seals, and HOW.

We got a new tier row.

We got perks, which was mostly passive, but something to look forward to when we level.

Some classes had abilities that were rarely used removed, no big deal. Some classes had 1-2 spells merged together, feral druid is a big example.

My only problem with WOD was arms warriors, their rotation got completely destroyed and was only good in execute phase, that's it. We had to wait until HFC to get our tier sets and class trinket so it could "fix" arms warriors.

On the plus side, execute hit like a truck, you saw a player at 20%.... BAM instant kill, if they lived, that's retarded.

Overall, if WOD had content, easily top 3 on my list.

I agree with you. Just calling attention to how gutted classes actually were in WoD. Gameplay in WoD was drastically better than BfA.

[DemonDays]

No I agree with you, WoD gameplay was way better than BfA. I'm just pointing out that WoD absolutely did gut classes, and a lot of people were unhappy. I absolutely do agree with you on the Legion point too. Many people point to Legion as having fun classes, but they were simply propped up my artifacts and legendaries. Without all of those tertiary effects, class gameplay suuuuuucks, as we've seen in BfA.

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I agree with you. Just calling attention to how gutted classes actually were in WoD. Gameplay in WoD was drastically better than BfA.

Legion class design is a sinking ship with the holes in the hull plugged by Legendaries and Artifacts, NLC, Tier Sets etc.

BfA is the same sinking ship but they pulled all the patches off plugging the holes and tried to use one "patch" to plug them all - Azerite. That failed so the ship sunk.

[Alvito]

WoD was mostly bad due to lack of meaningful content. BfA is bad due to an abundance of poor content blocking the way to meaningful character growth. WoD at least rewarded those that played it with years of free game time via the garrison and token combination.

[Autoriot]

...have you already forgotten WoD? I think it's ridiculous people are saying BFA is the worst expansion ever. It is bad. No doubt about that. Maybe the 2nd worst. But just to refresh your memory here:

Top 3 points to remember about Warlords of Draenor vs Battle for Azeroth

1. Only had a .1 and .2 patch, 6.1's primary features being the Twitter integration and Selfie Camera. Compare that 8.1, 8.2, 8.3. Not even close.

2. WoD's primary feature was the Garrison. No new races, no new classes, just updated player models. BFA at least introduced Allied Races each with their own Heritage armor. It also did have a simplified mission table.

3. If you didn't raid in WoD, you had nothing to do. BFA benefited from the systems added in Legion: WQs so the outdoor world was still relevant much longer. Mythic+ Dungeons vs in WoD after you did heroic dungeons and capped that ilevel, there was 0 reason to go back and do them unless you were doing Challenge Modes.

4. (Bonus) Ashran LOL


I'll gladly accept any challengers arguing the contrary.

I'll gladly provide other opinions.
WoD was one of the worst expansions, but I don't fully agree with you.

1) Patch cycle. 100% agree with you there, it was a hot mess.

2) Garrisons COULD have been good. You were supposed to be able to pick the zone, and customize them a lot more (as shown at Blizzcon). Budget/time restraints and/or idiot Devs decided one location and fixed buildings (limited small/medium/large plots) were a good idea. Also, the PvE garrison invasions were lackluster and a pain to trigger.

That being said, I got more time and enjoyment out of even a gutted Garrison system than I did Allied Races. Allied races were done instead of race customization because Blizz gets $$$$ from race changes, whether it be for cosmetic reasons or min/maxers wanting strong racial abilities, people buy these. Sure, you can level them as alts, but BfA is NOT alt friendly.

3) If you did raid in WoD, you got to experience some awesome raids. If you didn't, you were likely leveling alts and making tons of gold in garrisons or doing collection type things, plenty of time to do all of that with only 1 "required" daily. Not saying 1 daily is great, but neither is 30 WQ's.

In regards to M+, Legion M+ I enjoyed a ton, Bfa M+ I despise. It might be that Tyran/Fort is a base affix and they add some annoying 4th seasonal affix at +10 now, just making it bleh. In any case, I LOVED Challenge Modes in both MoP and WoD. They were like the Mage Tower for a group, with awesome rewards and replay-ability on alts if you wanted the unique armor/weapons on that class as well. Unlike Mage Tower however, you couldn't outgear them, which meant they were even more prestigious (unless you bought a carry, which was rarer in those days, but did exist).

4) I agree, hardly touched Ashran, it was a joke. BfA didn't bring any big BG/PvP experience though, closest thing would be Warmode?? Which at least gets rid of PvP/PvE servers, however WM will be a joke as long as the faction imbalance exists.

[Marrilaife]

WOD lacked a big content patch true.

On the other hand it had better levelling, better crafting profession setup and didn't bog alts with ap grind or bazillion essences from tedious content to make them playable. It had "only" legendary ring that many of my alts got through mission table catchup without even setting foot in Highmaul or Blackrock Foundry.

Garrison mission table minigame was also fun because it was new, meanwhile BFA has mission table 3.0 that is not only old and boring, but also dumbed down and reusing the horrible troop system. There's nothing "smart" about rng cursed mission that you either have the rng troop to counter or you don't so you're screwed out of bonus.

Also some specs in WOD were much better to play than now. For example Brewmaster Monk, Marksmanship Hunter or Shadow Priest.