Change - Enough or no?

[arkanon]

I frequently see people comparing Legion to BfA, saying BfA was a watered down, inferior iteration of Legion. I am also seeing some people say the same about BfA vs SL. We have countless threads breaking down the specifics of each change, new system, old systems that are leaving etc etc, but i was really hoping for an overview of how people felt about BfA and how they feel about SL.

Yes, i am well aware that SL is not out, most are not in the alpha, and many will reserve judgement until they have played it. However, what i would like to discuss is if you hated bfa, is SL looking different enough to interest you, or, if you loved BfA, are the changes concerning?

edit - sorry for the poll typo PLEASE FORGIVE ME

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I seem to have made an error - i assumed at least one person would admit they liked BfA.

[ZazuuPriest]

Will it (SL) be better than Legion, I highly doubt it. Will it be better than BfA ... well corruptions are going away in pre-patch so that automatically will make it better

[Marxman]

BfA sucked out loud. It was one blunder after another for 2 straight years.

SL has a lot of potential, but I get the sinking feeling that, just like in previous beta tests, they're going to ignore the overwhelming negative feedback and allow Covenants to ruin the whole expansion. It just seems to be what they do these days.

[arkanon]

BfA sucked out loud. It was one blunder after another for 2 straight years.

SL has a lot of potential, but I get the sinking feeling that, just like in previous beta tests, they're going to ignore the overwhelming negative feedback and allow Covenants to ruin the whole expansion. It just seems to be what they do these days.

this is actually my opinion as well. SL looks very promising in some areas, and very, very concerning in others - to me, although i will try it out, i think after playing since vanilla, SL needed to do something really interesting and exciting to draw me back in, rather than simply more of the same, which is how i see SL.

My main concern is that personally, i cant stand all the additional progression systems slammed on top of each other, all with their own grind and gated progression, and if anything, SL is doing as much if not more of that compared to BfA.

[Soon-TM]

BfA is imo the second worst expansion in the entire history of the game, with only WoD below it. There are a few things that I like from SL from what I've seen (so far), but I'm fearing that Covenants (in its current iteration) will be worse than artifacts in early Legion, with Conduits looking awfully similar to Azerite gear 2.0. Torghast, one of the central features of the expansion, looks cool so far, but it rests to be seen how it will age. Hopefully it won't be the same story as with HVs, which were also fine at the beginning, but got old REAL fast.

[Toybox]

Didn't like BfA, but cautiously optimistic heading into Shadowlands.

[arkanon]

BfA is imo the second worst expansion in the entire history of the game, with only WoD below it. There are a few things that I like from SL from what I've seen (so far), but I'm fearing that Covenants (in its current iteration) will be worse than artifacts in early Legion, with Conduits looking awfully similar to Azerite gear 2.0. Torghast, one of the central features of the expansion, looks cool so far, but it rests to be seen how it will age. Hopefully it won't be the same story as with HVs, which were also fine at the beginning, but got old REAL fast.

Yeah this is really fair, and mirrors my concern - i just feel like most of the new systems are simply reskins of the current systems i dont enjoy, and many of them are gated and tied to systems that encourage frequent / daily play, something i just am not interested in now. I would be willing to put in the same total hours/week i used to, if it was on my own terms.

I am not so twisted and warped that i cannot remain somewhat optimistic though, as you said, and would love to be proven wrong about this, i really would. Unfortunately, and potentially by design, most of the systems i see concern about will take months before the general player-base understands what the concerns are regarding.

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WoD was better let's not kid ourselves lol.

I played WoD start to finish, and actually quite enjoyed most of it. It certainly wasnt my favorite expac, but i personally have not enjoyed BFA at all - for me, it had literally zero redeeming qualities that hadnt been done before, and usually better.

[Ludvig]

WoD was better let's not kid ourselves lol. Class design wasn't absolute balls in WoD and that accounts for why a majority of people absolutely hate BFA and WoD wasn't contaminated with stupid shit like with essences, corruption's or azerite grinds. The fact that WoD still had fun class design (not as good as MoP but still), amazing raids (BFA's are bleh as f to me) and no overlying system's that were ass is just a win of comparison to me. The fact that WoD may have had less "content" still doesn't matter to me in the comparison. The content it actually did have was absolutely awesome compared to wtf we have for world quests etc.

Based. This is the reason I favor WoD over Legion as well.

[Frolk]

Didn't like BfA, but cautiously optimistic heading into Shadowlands.

Should be stickied top of Shadowlands subforum.

[deenman]

Will it (SL) be better than Legion, I highly doubt it. Will it be better than BfA ... well corruptions are going away in pre-patch so that automatically will make it better

depending on the person SL can be far far better for them,and depending on how SL actualy works out,for me i hated early legion,i never got my bis legenderies until much later,and the ap grind was brutal in legion,by comparison bfa was a cake walk,i did like the raiding in legion,but thats always good

SL looks nice,love the theme personaly,but i also loved the wod theme and we al know how that one turned out,and i hated mop theme but it was one of the best

[VinceVega]

I don't think BfA was as bad as poeple make it out to be and SL looks good so far. Most points people complain about are adressed and i don't care about new classes or races as we have more than enough allready

[Arainie]

I don't really dislike BfA, but they've made a few too many bad decisions to say that I like it either so neither of the options fit for me. 8.3 would probably have been a superb patch if they didn't introduce corruption at all, but people just tend to focus on the negative.

That said, Shadowlands is looking mostly awesome. I'm a little concerned about how they'll manage to design and balance Covenants, Soulbinds and Conduits together and I think we would've been fine leaving out at least one of these tree tiers of customization.

[Doffen]

Maybe a bit unfair of me to vote "Did not like BfA, but like the look of Shadowlands" seeing I have had fun in BfA too, but I guess as far as ranking goes, I guess that's the best choice in this poll. I don't think Shadowlands will be better than Legion though. Legion just wins purely by the amount of content we got, and classes played better than what I have seen so far. But there are part of Shadowlands that brings stuff from Legion in another iteration, like said Covenants(class hall) Legendary Power with better acquisition, relics in a simplified form. One another big thing that Shadowlands just do better than all the other expansions together is customizations and bringing that RPG element in(Covenant, yes I like Covenants). It is long overdue. I also love the new sets and transmogs we get, it seems after BfA when they went a bit lazy on it there are incentives to go and do the content to get good looking transmogs, and to me that's maybe the best reward you can get in the game. In the later years stuff like that means more to me than character power, and that could be a reason why I don't particularly like BfA that much.

I like the more streamlined power gains in Covenants, I like that you get it all there, except legendary. So like Legion pretty much. In BfA it's been all over the place, meaning there is power you need to do this to get, then another power here to upgrade that power, then you need to get something else than can do up to 80% of your damage(it has happened, TD rank 3 as tank LOL) and it's constant, it just do not stop except for AP, which would be fine if AP was the only thing we had as a end game system. I like AP in it's different iterations, I just think Legion did that better. Also better catch up and for someone who got a lot of alts, Shadowlands looks really nice. I do like the soft caps we get in Shadowlands. I think that's something many people here and in other forums underestimate.

I am also not really a big fan of the faction war. I don't think that story is good. Shadowlands brings something "new" to the story, it's a different world. It's more mysterious and I kinda like that.

[arkanon]

I need sleep. I read your title as: "Change - English or no?"

I liked the story of BfA, and I enjoy horrific visions.

Which is interesting, because I absolutely hated the story. I had almost no interest in it AT ALL. Now the old argument goes "well if you havnt read every quest txt, all books in the game, and done every single quest, how do you know you don't like it?" But it's up to the devs to deliver the story in a way that makes me WANT to engage and learn more.

Even as an avid war1-2-3 player, I still found myself extremely engaged in wrath and wanted to seek out side quests and little titbits of story where I could find them. With bfa, right from the blizzcon trailer, I had close to 0 interest in the emo hunter and her story, or any of the other characters.

Wait, I'll be honest - I did somewhat enjoy Jainas parts - and bwonsamdi is a fantastic character, but he was terribly underused. Bfa felt more seasonal than ever, and the story felt the same - segmented, seemingly unrelated chapters of the same book. It's like the writers were all given an entirely different brief for the book, and all wrote one chapter each based on their brief.

100% subjective, and I appreciate your opinion.

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Maybe a bit unfair of me to vote "Did not like BfA, but like the look of Shadowlands" seeing I have had fun in BfA too, but I guess as far as ranking goes, I guess that's the best choice in this poll. I don't think Shadowlands will be better than Legion though. Legion just wins purely by the amount of content we got, and classes played better than what I have seen so far. But there are part of Shadowlands that brings stuff from Legion in another iteration, like said Covenants(class hall) Legendary Power with better acquisition, relics in a simplified form. One another big thing that Shadowlands just do better than all the other expansions together is customizations and bringing that RPG element in(Covenant, yes I like Covenants). It is long overdue. I also love the new sets and transmogs we get, it seems after BfA when they went a bit lazy on it there are incentives to go and do the content to get good looking transmogs, and to me that's maybe the best reward you can get in the game. In the later years stuff like that means more to me than character power, and that could be a reason why I don't particularly like BfA that much.

I like the more streamlined power gains in Covenants, I like that you get it all there, except legendary. So like Legion pretty much. In BfA it's been all over the place, meaning there is power you need to do this to get, then another power here to upgrade that power, then you need to get something else than can do up to 80% of your damage(it has happened, TD rank 3 as tank LOL) and it's constant, it just do not stop except for AP, which would be fine if AP was the only thing we had as a end game system. I like AP in it's different iterations, I just think Legion did that better. Also better catch up and for someone who got a lot of alts, Shadowlands looks really nice. I do like the soft caps we get in Shadowlands. I think that's something many people here and in other forums underestimate.

I am also not really a big fan of the faction war. I don't think that story is good. Shadowlands brings something "new" to the story, it's a different world. It's more mysterious and I kinda like that.

Yeah to be fair, this sort of thing is more of a scale, but I really wanted to keep it relatively recent and clean - I thought about including legion, but that would have muddied the waters too much imo.

I actually thought this would be more one sided, but it's cool to see people's different thoughts on bfa and SL without it being a total shitshow of fighting.

You lot have been drinking the happy cool-aid today, keep it up.

[Restors]

The content it actually did have was absolutely awesome compared to wtf we have for world quests etc.

My God, how fast people forget about the "contents" WOD had. Who the hell ever said Ashran, daily apexis, Garrison invasions, Mission Table, "Selfie patch" were EVER called "Awesome" ????

The fact that WoD still had fun class design

Once again, people seem to have short memories. WoD were the expansion where pruning abilities began. Alot of class homogenization, removal of stats such as multistrike/parry/dodge/block/hit/expertise etc.

One of the so called "content" where shipyard at garrison were mandatory because of Legendary, were also a huge dissappointment.
Let's get real people, theres a huge reason why WOD expansion is regarded as the worst one.

[Doffen]

Yeah to be fair, this sort of thing is more of a scale, but I really wanted to keep it relatively recent and clean - I thought about including legion, but that would have muddied the waters too much imo.

I actually thought this would be more one sided, but it's cool to see people's different thoughts on bfa and SL without it being a total shitshow of fighting.

You lot have been drinking the happy cool-aid today, keep it up.

Nah, the poll is alright! We do scale expansions pretty harshly, even though we still think WoW is fun. Which kinda make sense if we want to rank them. Ranking them to good to awesome wouldn't be correct either :P

[Lord Pebbleton]

BfA is not atrocious on its own, but it didn't really add anything meaningful to the table. You have world quests, M+, emissaries etc like in Legion, but while they were new and refreshing then, now they are stale. They didn't really take any risks and repurposed the same formula with some negative decisions on top of it (island expeditions, warfronts, horribly agonizing plot).

I don't know what to think of Shadowlands. The aesthetics look cool and it has promising ideas, but I have to admit that the expansion trailer left me kinda disgusted with how the Lich King image was treated and I never felt disappointed by a WoW trailer before.

[cocomen2]

My God, how fast people forget about the "contents" WOD had. Who the hell ever said Ashran, daily apexis, Garrison invasions, Mission Table, "Selfie patch" were EVER called "Awesome" ????



Once again, people seem to have short memories. WoD were the expansion where pruning abilities began. Alot of class homogenization, removal of stats such as multistrike/parry/dodge/block/hit/expertise etc.

One of the so called "content" where shipyard at garrison were mandatory because of Legendary, were also a huge dissappointment.
Let's get real people, theres a huge reason why WOD expansion is regarded as the worst one.

HEllo? man, maybe you wanted to say

Once again, people seem to have short memories. Legion were the expansion where pruning abilities began. Alot of class homogenization, removal of stats such as multistrike/parry/dodge/block/hit/expertise etc.

There was no pruning in Wod..... , wod failed not because of class design =>
1) broken versatility in pvp (+bugged ashran) ;
2) NOTHING to do for 6 month in pve;
3) Daily quests grind for a months (jungle);
4) garrison ala SIMS 5(solo game where you not see others ..);
5) NO FC new experience => No new class+ No new races (old bois have nothing to do).


And then COME big boy legion , rework of classes , removal of range surv hunter, renamed combat rogue, PRUNED "useless" stats+skills LMAO, but added new Class Demon Hunter +Artifact weapons = SO people were okay with it and took a bait to run M+ all day long like hamsters.

And it would be okay.... with me but then BFA removed artifact weapons , and pruned classes broken shit without them.
Still cant get why remove Artifact weapons only to add back farming stat stick weapons ...... its like you made perfection system and then throwed it to dumpster fire.

Why just not add new series of artifact weapons ....(expand old artifact weapon talent tree more more more without need to add borrowed powers that gonna be deleted after 2 years)

[arkanon]

Everyone is welcome to comment as they please, however i believe we will have a better discussion if we focus on BfA compared to SL, rather than dredging up 15 years worth of drama.

[Cosmic Janitor]

To me BfA is one of the worst expansions to date on the level of WoD, everything from gameplay, over story to systems were failures in my eyes. It pretty much starts with the most obnoxious themes like trolls, pirates and faction war and ends with systemic design failure azerite on every conceivable level. Somewhere inbetween were 2 new gameplay additions that immediately fell flat on their faces; Islands and warfronts.

From what I've seen so far SL will easily be able to top that, even though I have firm reservations about lore retcons and the whole concept of visiting the afterlife as well as their misguided goal for covenants.