Remembering the BFA dumpster fire start to finish.

[Nuciek]

Smart players will opt out of stuff they don't like or play like a lot of us: do what you want to do and if you relax into that and don't overly worry about keeping up, you'll get what you need. It just takes longer. The min-maxers are playing another game altogether and I don't have a lot of sympathy that it takes a lot to actually approach "max." Seems to me that's how it should be.

From a mainly PvP player perspective (with lfr/casual raiding and running M+15 without pushing higher, I like every aspect of the game, just don't have time for it) - it doesn't work that way this expansion. This expansion is all about gear. You can't just "relax into that" because you're competing with other players every game. If you don't keep up with arms race you're going down. You're going to loose because their healer farmed that essence that's OP, because they farm high M+ keys or raid mythic, because they have insane PvE trinkets and because they stacked BiS corruptions with their high corruption cloak.

I know someone will come in saying learn to play or stuff like that but this season is not about skill, and you can't just relax and get everything you need just later like you said. You're either grinding the things you need or you're loosing rating to people that have bigger numbers and more tools, even if they are at the same or lower skill level. I've played thousands of arenas this expansion and current season is the worst out of the worst seasons in WoW history.

[Manhands]

I'm not really sure how you can put essences as high point of BfA. Having a skill that's more powerful than any class cooldown is one of the reasons why gameplay felt so bad. This plus the way they were obtained. It's not like you mentioned it, that they were obtained by doing content in which they excel. Frankly, your example with Conflict and Strife is also wrong because it actually was THE BEST PvP essence and mandatory for everyone as at least minor and for plenty as major, and in PvE it was just for some (and probably noone used it as major). But did Memory of Lucid Dream excel in farming reputation? Vitality Conduit is so powerful that you can't play healer in competetive PvP without it. Being forced to grind endlessly to get essence that you HAVE to get to stay relevant is not fun, and then again being forced to get it if you have an alt (only last patch changed that to some extent). And it doesn't matter if we're talking about PvE or PvP, because often you couldn't get your BiS essences by just sticking to what you like. You just can't have 3 top essences from raids or M+ or PvP, you're forced to farm content that you don't like. Essences weren't bad idea but were terribly implemented and are one of the things that made the gameplay less fun even if it doesn't look that way at first. When you burst someone down in PvP and then look at damage done you'll see that top damaging "skills" are essences, corruptions and PvE trinkets, doing more damage than class abilities. It's not a good design and essences play big part in this.

Maybe all systems in BfA had the problem of adding too much player power. Legit viewpoint. What percent of player power was ilvl and talents compared to Azerite, Essences, and Corruptions? Stupidly low, and that was a problem.

But they were targetable, predictable to acquire, had a definite end point (rank 3 and you're done), and could be swapped easily. Even though they were imbalanced, everyone had access to the same ones. Compared to the other systems which were random to acquire, imbalanced, and tough to change, essences was a win for implementation. To word another way, the design philosophy behind essences should be used more (soul conduits!).

Yeah, maybe the comment that essences generally were acquired doing the content that used them is off. Could have been worse, but I don't want to debate it.

[MoanaLisa]

I've played thousands of arenas this expansion and current season is the worst out of the worst seasons in WoW history.

I don't PVP at all so I cannot competently comment on your post. The only thing I will say is that it demonstrates my point: the quality of an expansion depends a lot on what you do.

I wasn't trying to make excuses for BfA or anything. I'm a very casual player at this point--two or three times a week at best--and my beef with the expansion is that the story of it was all over the place and the writing generally suffers from a severe case of too many writers.

I was not a fan of the classes I play either. The pieces were there but for me most of the specs I play were like a musical instrument that needs tuning. All the notes are there but you can't make music that way either. I've had all of those complaints with other expansions which is why I put BfA in the low-to-middling category based on my experience with it.

[jazen]

Overall was pretty happy with BfA. First expansion I did almost no raiding in though, as rl gets in the way more and more the older I get. I like the fact that you can get decent (470'ish) gear without having to bow down to a raid leader. I miss the content, but honestly an hour in the morning (4:30-5:30 am CST) and an occasional hour at night don't really make raiding feasible for me.

[Bumbasta]

I really enjoyed the zones, the vibe was great, the enormous cities are awesome. The quest lines were incredible, including the cutscenes. I also really loved M+, and still do. Island expeditions were pretty fun to grind as well. The raids were quite alright as well, some encounters were top notch in terms of creativity.

I definetly dislike warfronts and the same old expedition tables.

[Lurker1]

With the release of the SL drop date and prepatch hopefully arriving in less than a month please in the replies let me know how BFA helped taint the last 2 years of your lives. (to those people who began in BFA/Legion that are going to tell me if you dont like it dont play, this game has been a part of my life since the 5th grade and I don't like seeing something i love treated so horribly. So if you guys could just go run some more visions to actually make your character perform worse with sockets that would be for the best<3 )

First we have to acknowledge that WONDERFUL launch of BFA. I play on Area 52 myself and let me tell you was I livid that all I could do was watch people literally finishing leveling toons before blizzard implemented a patch at the end of the first and arguably the most nostalgic day of an expansion. I personally love to PvP its what I fell in love with 12 years ago with WoW and it broke my heart watching blizzard literally brush off whatever the community had to say. After the original blizzcon for almost all intents and purposes the devs abandoned PvP and only fixed the issues that made viewing it on twitch for the AWC was a little less mind numbing but not by much. We also cannot forget when they lead players to believe that we would be crowd funding along with blizzard's minimum amount promice to support the AWC and MDI and not just lining blizzards pockets and helping them not have to pay much for either tournament. That move was disgusting and greedy but completely in line with what i've come to expect personally. Im sure those of you reading this probably watch the MDI/AWC so I shouldn't need to discuss the horrible lack of class diversity at the top tier of game play in either "E-sport".

We where told at the end of legion that they ended production early in order to make BFA an A+ expansion but we got..well we got shit and there is no other way to put it. I hope that we aren't being fed the same lie with SL but over the past 5 years im sure we have all learned to take what comes out of their marketing teams mouths with a grain of salt.

Maybe for you and the others but i loved BFA from the very start you don't speak for me sir.

[Grimbold21]

BFA's iteration of enhancement shaman.

[Godric]

I was mostly disappointed in Blizzard deciding to back away from the class identity and powers offered in Legion. Between that, void elves polluting my cities, oh and Sylvanas being the single most boring villain of any piece of fiction. I’m not sure how it could be worse. Oh wait, it was boring too, shouldn’t forgive that.

[Aggressive]

There is nothing about BFA that I will miss. The only issue I have is that I wish Shadowlands would come out this month instead of next month. In my opinion BFA is the worst expansion ever and adding corruptions into the game was the dumbest thing that Blizzard ever did. When BFA is over, it will be good riddance. BYE FELICIA

[Mafic]

Battle for Abilities never had a chance with fisher price game play. Corruptions and essences made it all worse as you were completely disconnected from playing your class or your spec.

[Xalea]

The mistake made with BfA was merging content with classes. By that, I mean there were too many systems (azerite, essences, corruption..) that impacted how classes played. There is a group of devs in California who think they are the most brilliant people ever to walk the face of the Earth. What they don't realize is simply adding a few more rows to the talent screen would've saved everyone a lot of time and effort. But, they are too focused on showing the world their own brilliance (and adding stuff to their CV so they can get a better job) so we get systems-on-systems. This is continuing into SL. The game won't improve until they stop this and go back to genuine class design separate from temporary systems.

I think another reason for these dumb systems is they're cheap and quick to make vs. creating zones and content areas. The zones keep getting smaller and smaller every expansion. Maybe they've laid off too many people, I don't know. BfA was the worst expansion to me by far, because of how they corrupted the classes by overlaying a bunch of trashcan systems - literally stuff that gets thrown in the trash 20 months later.

Everyone get excited to throw your covenant/soulbind/whatever powers in the trash October 2022! What fun to look forward to..

[Tyris Flare]

And all of that is incorrect. Do understand research? Do some. BfA never even reached anywhere near WoD levels of 10 million subs. Post numbers and facts, not your feelings or what Blizzard told you. According to aactual data BfA sales were horrendous hence the free 6 six month sub mounts.

According to data BfA was a dumpster fire compared to WoD. Sorry the numbers don't support your narrative.

WoW does not need 10 million subs to make more profit than in WoD. WoD did not have the wow token or the same cash shop support.

I don't know if we have total sales numbers, but the fastest-selling vs total is a good point!

Anyway I'm not sure what "narrative" is being pushed here. I thought BFA had a lot of peaks and valleys and I disagreed with many of their decisions (and liked others!). But I'm also not trying to confuse my personal opinion with whether something is "successful." I mean, I think a lot of Marvel movies are pretty "meh" but they still make billions. I also think Classic wow is garbage but the reality is that it's very popular.

I could be way off base, but from the few Blizz employees I know, BFA is not considered a massive financial failure at all. A large part of this is probably Classic, but it is what it is. The game is not in any danger at all.

[Kralljin]

That's why we call them gimmicks.

That's more of a [You] thing, because for some reason you seem rather deadset on this whole "They're not Content, they're gimmicks" thing.

I repeat: Such as pointless thing to argue over.

The claim that WoD was unfinished at launch is simply just not true.

The content in there was "finished", but the expansion clearly lacked content left and right.

[Zantera]

It's been a mixed bag with some good stuff and some bad stuff. Overall I have enjoyed myself in the game more than I did in Wod, Wotlk and Cata but not to the levels of TBC, MoP or Legion.

[Utrrabbit]

Can I ask what you do in-game and how long you've been playing? I have legitimately never encountered someone who couldn't find some flaws in Legion/BfA. Even if you defended them as not horrific piles of manure, surely you can see the problems... they aren't exactly hard to spot for anyone who's paying attention.

Raid mythic. Raid mythic. Raid mythic or and high 20+ keys.

[Shadowisp]

The End was before the Start for me...

The BFA Beta they ran out of time and decided not to do a second pass on 5 Hybrid DPS Specs (Shadow, Feral, Shaman x2 and Fury). The second pass was a class development staple for 14 years in their little Sandbox. The failure to do a second pass cascaded to lackluster changes and abilities but without a decent balance pass when the Expansion started... it effect leveling, gearing and player experience.

The thing was Ion mentioned this in a sidebar interview one month before the go-live of BfA... it took them 3 weeks of Live to admit they under-estimated the problem of not doing a second pass, and started to hotfix the broken classes 1 month into live, but for Shamans and Priest it was a death knell being absolutely useless in most end-game content for a full month.

They didn't take Beta feedback, they didn't seem to do any quality testing, and the rush to produce an expansion clearly had a serious cost, splitting the class design teams focus to work on Azerite Traits was a clearly bad design, but they refused to admit it.

The whole fiasco was the End before the Beginning for me... cause Feral Druid and Shadow Priest were my mains, Warrior and Shaman were my alts. They seriously broke my Top 4 toons. All of them, at the start of an expansion. It was mental!

I quit 6 weeks into BfA... shortest period I ever played WoW. I hoped 8.1 PTR would give me a reason to return but it was also a mess cause the promised "second pass" was being shelved in favour of another hotfix cause Azerite Traits were more important to fix.

So I look at Shadowlands, waiting... listening... and I am not confident I will return this next expansion.

[Hyeonh]

The thing is, we still have a giant sword in Silithus, at the end of Legion I wondered what does this now mean for the planet. Apparently it means we need to do some world quests for Magni for 2 years.

Yeah that would still be pretty apparent but the Horde vs Alliance war was unnecessary and would make more sense that they play it off as the sword Sergeras planted into Azeroth caused multitudes of the titan defenses to break. That would also be the least of their problems too as forces of the old gods have become active again, the return of the twilight hammer who also enlist the help of Stormsong that fell to madness, and it's the alliance job and Jaina to sort it all out and save Kul Tiras. The horde coming to help Zandalar to stop the blood trolls and G'huun. Both it culminate into us going to stop Azshara with the allied races realizing that they have a bigger role to play and choose to join the factions to take on old god.

As for the transition into Shadowlands i thought for sure that N'zoth would be the one to lead to it due to how his most recent followers were using necromancy and for a while people were speculating that he becomes the last old god we must stop and to permanently stop him we head into the Shadowlands where he's completely entrenched in.

[tangers58]

The sheer lack of exposure of Firelands, as well as its lack of bosses and areas, forced LFR to be moved forwards from MoP launch to Dragon Soul.

That says enough.

Well those were certainly words... just not any that fit together to form a cogent sentence

[breadisfunny]

they ruined my favorite character and made her into some sort of abomination. so 0/10 for me.

[Mafic]

The End was before the Start for me...

The BFA Beta they ran out of time and decided not to do a second pass on 5 Hybrid DPS Specs (Shadow, Feral, Shaman x2 and Fury). The second pass was a class development staple for 14 years in their little Sandbox. The failure to do a second pass cascaded to lackluster changes and abilities but without a decent balance pass when the Expansion started... it effect leveling, gearing and player experience.

The thing was Ion mentioned this in a sidebar interview one month before the go-live of BfA... it took them 3 weeks of Live to admit they under-estimated the problem of not doing a second pass, and started to hotfix the broken classes 1 month into live, but for Shamans and Priest it was a death knell being absolutely useless in most end-game content for a full month.

They didn't take Beta feedback, they didn't seem to do any quality testing, and the rush to produce an expansion clearly had a serious cost, splitting the class design teams focus to work on Azerite Traits was a clearly bad design, but they refused to admit it.

The whole fiasco was the End before the Beginning for me... cause Feral Druid and Shadow Priest were my mains, Warrior and Shaman were my alts. They seriously broke my Top 4 toons. All of them, at the start of an expansion. It was mental!

I quit 6 weeks into BfA... shortest period I ever played WoW. I hoped 8.1 PTR would give me a reason to return but it was also a mess cause the promised "second pass" was being shelved in favour of another hotfix cause Azerite Traits were more important to fix.

So I look at Shadowlands, waiting... listening... and I am not confident I will return this next expansion.

Waiting is a smart move because the current PTR is very buggy as well as beta. Better wait and see what is fixed by early 2021.