May you explain me why BFA was considered so bad??

[fenixazul]

First of, I played Wow until the end of 2018. Meaning that I only played BFA in the first raid tier. I was able to kill Mythic Zul with my guild, and tried the island expenditions, the new allied race, and the warfronts.

I remember that I really enjoyed the expansion, I quit just because I got a new job and wow was very time consuming.

So, I really want to know why BFA was so hated. I have read enough information about why Shadowland was considered the worst WOW expansion, but I havent see much information why BFA was hated too.

Thanks

[Speedlance]

People get bored because they play too much, then they confuse that with the expansion being bad.

[Kaleredar]

Things like island expeditions and warfronts were pretty underwhelming. However, those things were pretty minor and unnecessary parts of the expansion.

The zones in BFA were fantastic. Each one felt unique and different, alliances and horde had fundamentally different leveling and stories, and the additional zones of nazjatar and mechagon were new and interesting and the revisions Of value of eternal blossoms and uldum, while rehashes, actually updated the stories therein.


Story wise… I’d say the real weakness was the constant and incessant reliance on sylvanas’ vague evil plans that were never detailed in any meaningful or interesting way beyond her and Nathanos being edgy for the sake of edgy, followed by the repetitive nature of the old god stuff with magni that just kind of goes out with a whimper.


There’s probably some niche, 1% of players thing that people on the razors edge of progression (or people who wanted to pretend they were) found annoying, like with random legendary drops in legion, and they glom onto that as the reason it’s the worst expansion ever and because they’re the kind of people that frequent forums they’re who you hear from.

[LordVargK]

• The lore did not make any sense. Trees don't burn, Sylvanas was annoying, Saurfang did only cry and in general another faction war felt forced especially with the Horde as an aggressor right with Garrosh still fresh on their minds. Oh, and Nzoth was just suddenly there.
• Island expeditions were boring as fuck but the best way to level and grind AP.
• Azerite armor was in alpha state at release. A concept that punishes you for getting a better piece of gear should have never gone live. And it did not get that much better as the expansion went on. You were heavily punished for playing more than one spec of your class.
• There were only 3 zones per faction, so leveling became stale very fast. Also loading screens were abundant. Just going to one of the central Locations of the expansion, the chamber of heart, required 2 screens in one minute. Getting to the opposing faction zones was also annoying.
• Coming from Legion most dungeons felt much worse.
• Classes got pruned in Legion and Artifacts and Legendaries were missing in BfA. So many classes felt lackluster. Also you were much weaker in 8.0 than in 7.3. Not a good feeling.
• Warfronts were way too easy. It was a scripted event, where your faction would always win, even if your team went fully afk (and many players did. Blizzard's solution? Kick afkers...). In addition the Horde got basically one week of free loot from them to equip alts, while this feature was patched out once the Alliance got to play WFs.
• You could level cooking with vendor mats. That bug was not fixed for days (and was on ptr), so people assumed it was intended. Well, Blizzard removed the mats from the vendor, leaving all people who weren't fast enough in the dirt.
• You got +15 loot in the first week from doing a Legion dungeon the week before.
• Bottom line: BfA was released in absolute beta state and some systems never made it out of beta.

SL is not even remotely as bad as BfA.

[Devilyaki]

The special gear you got was not so fun, the added power was boring system, the story was forgettable.. raids were fine, m+ was fine from what I heard.

[catalystical]

Things that got ripcord pulled. So firstly essentially Azerite Power and Gear. There was a lot of RNG involved in getting said gear. So they introduced a vendor to mitigate that.

Islands were boring. Then they introduced another vendor and fixed it by giving it an actual purpose. Warfronts were fun until the gear became outdated. Then we just stopped doing them. Nightmares were ok.

As a casual, the final step of the lore was locked behind mythic dungeons. I didn't complete the alliance storyline until they added Siege of Boralus into the heroic finder.

Also as a casual, two of the raid finder end bosses were terrible. G'huun and N'zoth, being the first and the last, were undoable in raid finder. Jaina was helluva fun though.

[crusadernero]

People get bored because they play too much, then they confuse that with the expansion being bad.

This is probably a bigger factor than most people would care to admit. The AP grind never really stopped and in BfA there was a loooong checklist of what you should do every day & week. Now, you didnt have to do them, but you should do them.

As such, people ofc farmed alot to gain some miniscule % better stat.


There was also the azerite gear, that was a total failure.
How they managed to have N'zoth as a mere patch, only to be stabbed in the face by wrathion to end it all.
IE & WF were cool concepts, but failed overall. Blizzard refused to develop them.


There were lots of things probably, but I think the most important part is that people felt the need to farm AP. Dont forget, this was how it was in Legion too. So people had already farmed AP for 2+ years when BfA came along.

I think BfA would overall had been much better received if it didnt have the forever-AP farm.

[Delekii]

People get bored because they play too much, then they confuse that with the expansion being bad.

People getting bored in BFA wasn't a result of them playing too much, it was just boring outright.

I took a break from leveling because it was boring. If that's "too much" it's a problem.

[cparle87]

People get bored because they play too much, then they confuse that with the expansion being bad.

This. Xpac launched on a Tuesday. By Friday people were hear saying they'd cleared the 6 zones of quests and done all the 0s and where was the rest.

- - - Updated - - -

This is probably a bigger factor than most people would care to admit. The AP grind never really stopped and in BfA there was a loooong checklist of what you should do every day & week. Now, you didnt have to do them, but you should do them.

As such, people ofc farmed alot to gain some miniscule % better stat.


There was also the azerite gear, that was a total failure.
How they managed to have N'zoth as a mere patch, only to be stabbed in the face by wrathion to end it all.
IE & WF were cool concepts, but failed overall. Blizzard refused to develop them.


There were lots of things probably, but I think the most important part is that people felt the need to farm AP. Dont forget, this was how it was in Legion too. So people had already farmed AP for 2+ years when BfA came along.

I think BfA would overall had been much better received if it didnt have the forever-AP farm.

That first bit was also in Legion. Mythic NH, for instance, was tuned around having a certain level of the 20 paragon skill, for instance. As a druid I had four weapons I use and had them all comfortaly maxed each patch before the cap was raised again. Yet the stories of "being forced to run MoS for AP until my eyes bled" and other such unpleasantness were rampant. People needed the max weapon NOW even before it was even required.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

BFA was one of the most barebones expansions in the history of the game. The only thing it had going for it was the story, which is a burning carfire. Half of the Horde is acting out of character. Suevanas commits mass genocide on a whim. Morally righteous characters like Dezco or Lor'themar aren't immediately revolting against Suevanas immediately. The Alliance gets to kill Rastakhan but Horde players don't get to kill Jaina as she teleports away and escapes. The Alliance storyline is unsatisfying as they keep getting genocided but are never allowed to actually deal with the problem once and for all. We get sad orc story #47.



Even if you disregard the writing, the questing content isn't very fun to play compared to MoP or even WoD.

Four expansion concepts (war arc, South Seas, Azshara, N'zoth) are thrown away in one expac. N'ylotha wasn't even a zone.

The quality of the voice acting has declined.

The music continues to suck. I have three tracks from BFA on my favorite's playlist but otherwise the soundtrack is a dud. Should have brought Russell Brower and Jeremy Soule back.

Decline in aesthetics. The new character models and armor look really goofy and don't fit the Warcraft universe.

Zones are very mundane and don't feel very fantastical.

I need not mention Azerite power.

No content to do outside of the questing. What, you consider doing your world quest chores or running the same dungeon over and over again on time attack mode to be content?

The one thing I did like about BFA was the island expeditions, which were sadly thrown away and forgotten. I preferred levelling up to cap through them rather than slogging through the questing experience.

[crusadernero]

This. Xpac launched on a Tuesday. By Friday people were hear saying they'd cleared the 6 zones of quests and done all the 0s and where was the rest.

- - - Updated - - -



That first bit was also in Legion. Mythic NH, for instance, was tuned around having a certain level of the 20 paragon skill, for instance. As a druid I had four weapons I use and had them all comfortaly maxed each patch before the cap was raised again. Yet the stories of "being forced to run MoS for AP until my eyes bled" and other such unpleasantness were rampant. People needed the max weapon NOW even before it was even required.

I never really had issues with Legion or BfA. I even enjoyed WF & IE for the most part in BfA. Probably because I didnt farm all the time, because there really wasnt required.

But once the sentiment, or a "truth" is established, its hard to turn around for many. The truth was that you had to farm this and that, for this amount of time. So people did it, over and over. Then they get bored and frustrated.

Also, people want it quickly as possible. So with that state of mind(NOW) against a AP farm that never really ends.. well

[KayRule]

• The lore did not make any sense. Trees don't burn, Sylvanas was annoying, Saurfang did only cry and in general another faction war felt forced especially with the Horde as an aggressor right with Garrosh still fresh on their minds. Oh, and Nzoth was just suddenly there.
• Island expeditions were boring as fuck but the best way to level and grind AP.
• Azerite armor was in alpha state at release. A concept that punishes you for getting a better piece of gear should have never gone live. And it did not get that much better as the expansion went on. You were heavily punished for playing more than one spec of your class.
• There were only 3 zones per faction, so leveling became stale very fast. Also loading screens were abundant. Just going to one of the central Locations of the expansion, the chamber of heart, required 2 screens in one minute. Getting to the opposing faction zones was also annoying.
• Coming from Legion most dungeons felt much worse.
• Classes got pruned in Legion and Artifacts and Legendaries were missing in BfA. So many classes felt lackluster. Also you were much weaker in 8.0 than in 7.3. Not a good feeling.
• Warfronts were way too easy. It was a scripted event, where your faction would always win, even if your team went fully afk (and many players did. Blizzard's solution? Kick afkers...). In addition the Horde got basically one week of free loot from them to equip alts, while this feature was patched out once the Alliance got to play WFs.
• You could level cooking with vendor mats. That bug was not fixed for days (and was on ptr), so people assumed it was intended. Well, Blizzard removed the mats from the vendor, leaving all people who weren't fast enough in the dirt.
• You got +15 loot in the first week from doing a Legion dungeon the week before.
• Bottom line: BfA was released in absolute beta state and some systems never made it out of beta.

SL is not even remotely as bad as BfA.

Don't forget 90% of every bug and an unintended features existed since alpha, Beta, PTR and had threads with pages and pages, and took until live to ever get fixed.

- - - Updated - - -

Decline in aesthetics. The new character models and armor look really goofy and don't fit the Warcraft universe.

Probably the dumbest fucking thing ever posted on MMO-Champion.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Probably the dumbest fucking thing ever posted on MMO-Champion.

One belongs to the Warcraft universe. The other belongs to a tumblr cartoon. You tell me which is which.

[cparle87]

No content to do outside of the questing. What, you consider doing your world quest chores or running the same dungeon over and over again on time attack mode to be content?

Why do people believe they can decide whether something is content or not based on whether they like it. If it's in the game it's content. It's not like you can open your fridge, not see anything you're in the mood for, and say the fridge is empty and what's in there is "not food."

- - - Updated - - -

One belongs to the Warcraft universe. The other belongs to a tumblr cartoon. You tell me which is which.

Cited for opinion. That's the other thing. The people who proclaim something "belongs" in WoW and if they don't like if they denigrate it by calling it a tumblr cartoon or some other diminutive.

[MrLachyG]

Story wise… I’d say the real weakness was the constant and incessant reliance on sylvanas’ vague evil plans that were never detailed in any meaningful or interesting way beyond her and Nathanos being edgy for the sake of edgy, followed by the repetitive nature of the old god stuff with magni that just kind of goes out with a whimper.

There was actually very little Sylvanas story quests in BfA. The prepatch event did, sure. The initial zones, dungeons and first 3 raids had nothing to do with her. She was spotted in game for a brief moment at the start of 8.2 and then was more involved in story quests in 8.3. It was the lack of story that was bad, if you didn’t read the novels then a lot of story was missing

[MoanaLisa]

For me Battle for Azeroth was a middling expansion. Generally I think it's better than it's reputation but it's true that in terms of systems and game play it was a reskinned Legion. I'm not sure I can blame the developers for thinking "Legion was liked better than Warlords so let's go with more of that" but systems and things are always going to be stale after 18 months so BfA's progression systems were more or less moving deck chairs around and calling it different. My issue with the expansion from the start was that I simply did not care for the theme and the story as it worked out I liked even less. That's my opinion of course.

You should also account for the many, many people here and elsewhere that make bashing everything World of Warcraft some sort of blood sport no matter what it is. Every expansion is the worst if you have an axe to grind. Angry fighting over trivial things counts as "engagement" in social media so try to avoid that.

[Lodravel]

- - - Updated - - -



Probably the dumbest fucking thing ever posted on MMO-Champion.

You've been here a while, you know better.

[Vaedan]

• The lore did not make any sense. Trees don't burn, Sylvanas was annoying, Saurfang did only cry and in general another faction war felt forced especially with the Horde as an aggressor right with Garrosh still fresh on their minds. Oh, and Nzoth was just suddenly there.
• Island expeditions were boring as fuck but the best way to level and grind AP.
• Azerite armor was in alpha state at release. A concept that punishes you for getting a better piece of gear should have never gone live. And it did not get that much better as the expansion went on. You were heavily punished for playing more than one spec of your class.
• There were only 3 zones per faction, so leveling became stale very fast. Also loading screens were abundant. Just going to one of the central Locations of the expansion, the chamber of heart, required 2 screens in one minute. Getting to the opposing faction zones was also annoying.
• Coming from Legion most dungeons felt much worse.
• Classes got pruned in Legion and Artifacts and Legendaries were missing in BfA. So many classes felt lackluster. Also you were much weaker in 8.0 than in 7.3. Not a good feeling.
• Warfronts were way too easy. It was a scripted event, where your faction would always win, even if your team went fully afk (and many players did. Blizzard's solution? Kick afkers...). In addition the Horde got basically one week of free loot from them to equip alts, while this feature was patched out once the Alliance got to play WFs.
• You could level cooking with vendor mats. That bug was not fixed for days (and was on ptr), so people assumed it was intended. Well, Blizzard removed the mats from the vendor, leaving all people who weren't fast enough in the dirt.
• You got +15 loot in the first week from doing a Legion dungeon the week before.
• Bottom line: BfA was released in absolute beta state and some systems never made it out of beta.

SL is not even remotely as bad as BfA.

This.

I'd also mention removal of tier sets, raid set appearances were hideous except for Uldir sets.

Island expeditions were to offer numerous cosmetics rewards, but the droprate was so low that collecting these rewards was painful.

Also weekly stash was extremely frustrating. Great Vault is huge improvement.

Basicaly, BfA was so content dry that I did farm legacy raids on several alts, plus spend hours on archeology grind. That is not the case in SL, I always got something to do.

[PenguinChan]

Overall I think BfA was fine until 8.2 and 8.3 - not because N'zoth or Azshara are bad by any means (They are far more interesting than the majority of the cast right now - still are, really.) But because they rushed two expansion worthy villains into one major patch and one half-patch. They even skimped out on N'zoth, to the point it was reused assets galore. It was so half-baked that even the ending 'cinematic' was just a shitty in-game one that everyone thought was placeholder.

Fucking, lol. That was terrible.

Azerite Armor and the Heart of Azeroth, cool items and concepts. The armor was pushed out the door when it shouldn't have been, and the necklace was just a glorified stat stick with the dumb grind to unlock azerite traits on your armor. Until 8.2 where it finally has essences and a purpose - of which was also not a great system when it released. It was ok by 8.3, but completely dumped and trashed since Shadowlands released (At least you can still use it and get it, which I appreciate.).

Island Expeditions were a nice concept but abandoned after their introduction, same as the RTS style battlegrounds. Shame.

Then we have Mechagon which was completely out of left field for what was going on, honestly. Cool zone, diaper baby gnomes were approved somehow and the actual execution of the Warcraftified Cyberpunk augmented limbs was... Laughable. Again, abandoned after its introduction as you'd expect. That was BfA's REAL big issue to me. Introduce new thing: Abandon it. Repeat.

It's a really confusing state of affairs and I'd love to see in maybe 5-6 years when ex-devs speak out (Like they tend to do in the future) about what the fuck happened.

One belongs to the Warcraft universe. The other belongs to a tumblr cartoon. You tell me which is which.

Both belong, but one is the Classic - WotLK art style, and the one on the right is Cataclysm+ - this art style isn't anything new.

[Beuargh]

there is 2 years of threads talking about it when it was current on these forums. you'll have a better picture of what people disliked about it rather than asking at the end of the xpac that followed and that's also viewed as bad or even worse than BFA. with SL I'm sure there is people that are nostalgic about BFA even if they thought it was terrible when current.