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

[Tanaria]

As much as I didn't like the theme of BFA, being Horde vs Alliance - I was spending most of my in-game time on Zandalar, Kul'Tiras and Nazjatar. (I didn't really like Mechagon myself.)

The fact that I was spending large chunks of my time in the new zones was a positive thing.

I didn't like the systems or anything, like Azerite gear, but I primarily played a Nightborne Holy Priest and I really enjoyed raiding as a Holy Priest in BFA.

For me - an expansion has issues if I'm not spending most of my time in the new zones. For Shadowlands, I don't like the zones, raids or anything and I'm very much looking forward to going back to the Ghostlands (a TBC phased zone) to do a questline for my favorite race.

[Richardbro]

BFA was not bad. It was good, but not great. It kept the same successful systems from Legion, but had inferior versions of them. I am a casual player and not a raider, and from my perspective as a collector, BFA was the most grindy and added the most mounts of any expansion up to that point. Many of them were very unfun to acquire. The zones, dungeons, and aesthetic and capital cities were very good. The raids were pretty good but not their best compared to other expansions.

I found the Azerite powers very cool and fun as a casual player, but I am sure hardcore players hated them because they were grindy to acquire and they had to participate in areas of the game they did not want to do, to acquire some of the powers.

[Tanaria]

BFA was not bad. It was good, but not great. It kept the same successful systems from Legion, but had inferior versions of them. I am a casual player and not a raider, and from my perspective as a collector, BFA was the most grindy and added the most mounts of any expansion up to that point. Many of them were very unfun to acquire. The zones, dungeons, and aesthetic and capital cities were very good. The raids were pretty good but not their best compared to other expansions.

I found the Azerite powers very cool and fun as a casual player, but I am sure hardcore players hated them because they were grindy to acquire and they had to participate in areas of the game they did not want to do, to acquire some of the powers.

I'm not hardcore, but I didn't like Azerite at all.
I think they wanted a replacement to the artifact weapons, which did work, but they seemed to take all the less-than-favorable parts of that system and implemented that into the core areas of the Azerite system.

But - the zones themselves were good and again, I didn't like the red vs blue theme, but Blizzard made use of telling a war story throughout both zones. Yes, their were some parts which I found quite boring, like the Jastor vs Gelbin - that could have been told better.

[Accendor]

I'm not hardcore, but I didn't like Azerite at all.
I think they wanted a replacement to the artifact weapons, which did work, but they seemed to take all the less-than-favorable parts of that system and implemented that into the core areas of the Azerite system.

That's true for almost every aspect of the game tho. They continued worldquests, but changed the reward system and killed wqgf, so now they were not even half as fun (and then in SL they killed them completely).
They took the artifact weapons and removed everything that was cool about them (progression path, weapon skin system, feeling of connection to the item) and removed all that to replace it with an utterly broken and unfun system.
They took m+, which was an experiment in legion, and created a completely streamlined version in BfA, which was a much less rewarding experience, both in terms of gameplay as well as in actual rewards.
They had the mission table in Legion, which was already a boring version of the WoD one and managed to make it even LESS interesting, before killing the concept completely in SL.

Before I get too much hate about the WoD version of the mission table: It was a great start for that sort of system, with completely overtuned rewards and the fact that WoD had no content outside of Garrisons.
Imagine them instead of simplyfing it, going all the way and using something similar to BfAs island expeditions with it. You send your followers on a mission and once they complete it, part 2 starts: You join them at a procedural generated place and actually do a mission together with them with actual gameplay. Missions that could actually be hard, to which you could also bring friends along, maybe even PVP ones.
Different NPCs with actual strenghts and weaknesses etc.
Its just ONE idea, but there was no reason to just kill it entirely except laziness.

[Kalisandra]

I still find it hard to believe how badly they managed to fuck up a crafted legendary system; We are not allowed to name our pieces, we are not allowed to alter its appearance in any meaningful way, we're not allowed weapons despite those being the most defining feature for pretty much all characters, we are allowed only a handful of simple effects (Admittedly powerful ones, but still) which makes legendaries feel like an orange trinket in a wrong equipment slot. Also WTF regarding the gold costs and the bird-brained idea of forcing people into one niche type of content for no reward other than to farm for a mandatory piece of equipment.

That most of them are so weak annoys me greatly. In Legion we'd be passing half of the DPS legendaries we have today over for utility Legion legendaries.

For example, Prydaz plus Roots of Shaladrassil let my Elemental Shaman tank and solo outdoor rares in an ilevel that would normally have meant only a tank (or possibly a Hunter with pet and kiting) would expect to manage it because that combo gave you stupid amounts of effective health.

[Gaidax]

I, personally, thought it was fine.

The glaring issue was the story, we could not figure out what the fuck is Sylv's problem all the way to the end and it put a huge "wtf is this shit" sign in experience.

Then the systems were kind of all over the place. Unlike Artifact or covenants where you had at least some semblance of central single feature, here it was all over the place with eventually 3 different core systems to juggle.

On the other hand, BFA had excellent content patches. 8.2 imo was one of the best content patches ever released.

Zones, dungeons and raids were as good as ever. Expansion mimnigames did not play out. Warfronts and islands were great first few times, but quickly overstayed their welcome.

Overall BFA was OK. But it was no Legion, which also hurt it. Legion was great so by contrast BFAs OK ended up being underwhelming.

[Ielenia]

And Archimonde and Ragnaros are much stronger than some random catapults, with or without magic fire.

Archimonde and Ragnaros never attacked Teldrassil. Again: Teldrassil was nothing like the original World Trees. It was much weaker and did not have the same magical defenses as the other trees.

If you shut your eyes real hard things look alije, consistent almost.

You're the one "shutting your eyes real hard", here. You're the one that keeps denying information that people here are giving you. Teldrassil is nowhere near an equivalent to Nordrassil in power.

I am not a fan of viewing any world like that, especially when judging its internal consistency.

Then perhaps you should open your eyes instead of shutting them to avoid taking in information that goes against your pre-conceived notions.

[Finlandia WOAT]

Launch: Blizzard overreacted to complaints about the Legion legendary system. Many specs were made or broken by a specific legendary, meaning you had viable specs locked behind RNG dependent on chores (interestingly Legion is now remembered as "good", despite the absolute shit storm of crying this caused at launch). The solution was Azerite gear. The idea was you could target specific pieces and that would be your legendary. I think the further idea was for players to build sets for different circumstances- but in practice players would research their BiS, maybe situational #2, then target it. You would run 15 runs of a dungeon, then get your piece and bam! you're done. That isn't fun.


Also, warfronts and islands failed + removal of tier sets.

Later patches: same Azerite system, then it added more systems you had to grind. Having a new power system every patch was tedious. It made players feel like they were being artificially knocked back to square one. People love this Skinner box of a game, but tend to hate it if the manipulation becomes too obvious.

Shadowlands corrected a lot of these issues- it just suffered from exterior development problems that resulted in the longest opening patch ever that even turbo nerds grew tired of.

[Unlimited Power]

Most people didn't care for the Horde bad Alliance good MoP story regurgitation.

Furthermore, Azerite gear was an atrocity at launch, especially tying the unlocking of powers at different ilvls to your Heart of Azeroth necklace level.

And the big major features of the expansion, Island Expeditions and Warfronts fell flat in a major way.

Essences also had it's share of issues when it launched in 8.2, and corruption was largely disliked until it had been repeatedly iterated on and was available on a (rotating) vendor.

[Orby]

I actually liekd BFA... well the start of it and the middle of it, the end of it was trash :P

[DrIvoRobotnik]

• Gameplay changed very little from Legion, making it feel stale from the start.
• Azerite Gear somehow took all of the worst parts of Artifacts, getting rid of the good, and then added more bad. (HoA level requirements and making the grind far, far worse.)
• Stories felt disjointed in the first half and rushed in the second half, with a terrible and anti-climatic ending cinematic.

The simplest short-hand list I could think of off the top of my head.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

IMO it had middling iterations of systems, and the borrowed power philosophy was well ino its backlash phase.

But I do think that the nonsensical narrative swerves were where a lot of people became hostile towards it. I think there's a relation between people that don't really care for the story not being so vitriolic towards BfA. -There is a lot of people that did like the setting and zones as well-

I do think that if BfA's story had been better, overall we would be far more forgiving of its gameplay flaws.

[Ringthane]

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

In the land of Chicken Drummer threads?

Dude.

[nvaelz]

I think BFA was a solid expansion, the world was decent and the azerite farm gave some incentive to want to do world quests unlike Shadowlands where the world is really annoying and I'm not gonna farm all those cosmetics etc especially not the Korthia ones omg that's like waiting for a miracle cba even checking those quests.

BFA had some annoying weekly reward bingo, I remember wanting a ring that I didn't get for the entire last season and I capped every week. Also I never liked being forced to PVE but atleast the PVE was better than Shadowlands IMO.

Shadowlands has great alt gearing systems, maybe except for the fact that everything costs insane amounts of gold but I'm just lazy with my gold farming that's not a game issue really. Having a main in BFA felt way more rewarding than in Shadowlands.

Can't wait to experience the structure of next expansion since they've all been so different, lets hope it's not bad like WOD tho, that's the really bad expansion IMO.

[Kalisandra]

Funny enough, I loved the initial version of the system (but well, I had twilight devastation early on my tank). Once the vendor came out, people expected you to use the boring stat increase corruptions, which was horrible.

That depended on your spec. For some Devastation remained the top, for others you wanted stat buffs (which were definitely boring).

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There were lots of problems in the beginning, especially with azerite gear. also people didn't like grinding for azerite power.

i thought it was decent, the raids were awesome (especially BoD and EP). and nazjatar was a beautiful zone

I really didn't like Naz. Too vertical and annoying to get around even with flight and and so densely packed with mobs that moving without it was an absolute pain (and a nightmare with a clothie until you out geared the place). Also Naz and the Mechagnomes also brought the essences, with all the annoying too-ing and fro-ing every time you wanted to change anything about them with lots of annoying loading screens.

I did like most of the dungeons, and BoD (as a raid - as a plot arc it was more "Alliance grabs the idiot ball and runs with it").

[Gigantique]

Again, you keep ignoring the fact that it wasn't your average fire that was tossed onto Teldrassil, but magically-enhanced fire. Also, Teldrassil is certainly not like Nordrassil. For example, it didn't have the blessings of the Ancients, which is what granted part of, if not the majority of the power the original World Tree had.


WoD did not give classes any new active abilities, by the way. All we got were "draenor perks" that were passive abilities.


I never heard of that, and searching the internet yielded no results.

If you did a +15 Legion Keystone beforr BfA the first week M+ started you got a reward in your weekly chest as if you did a +15 BfA dungeon. Was a pretty big story back then at least.

On the fire beinh magically enhanced, got a source for that? I never saw that or heard of it myself at least which is why it all seemed silly, but if you got a source I can check I'll happily change my mind on that!

[omeomorfismo]

you have to help baine instead of stab him to death

[gigasx]

If you follow comunity and forums, you'll find out that EVERY EXPANSION IS THE WORST AND BLIZZ DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING

Untill the next one releases and they remember that the exp was awesome and had some really great moments.
And so it goes, since cataclysm is exactly like that.

I remember the extreme backlash pandaria had, because it lacked the "war" feel, as it was pretty fields and beautifull grounding. And how chaotic were all casters with almost free movement on fights, and the famous "wow is dead" all around, because the game sucked.
Now it is praised for top map design, game design and some might even say it was the best wow have gotten.

[Kalisandra]

2) World Quests were alright, but they got really old after 3 months. It was more and more of the same.

One problem with them was that, unlike Legion, there weren't very many WQs up at a time, so you didn't have a great deal of choice and couldn't avoid all the one you didn't like or which had rewards you felt were poor. SL is even worse - there are usually only about four up at a time (plus a pet battle or crafting quest, perhaps). I presume this is to save people from themselves by saving them from the continual WQ grind some player did in Legion - but in Legion it was done because of the AP grind. With that gone (at least from WQs) there was no need to limit them, and at least they gave a way to just grind gold that's not really there otherwise (because crafting sucks, so mat gathering isn't great, because the economy is borked).

11) World PVP was great, but the rewards were terribad. Literally motivated nobody to play World PVP.

They started out decent - the best source of gear very early on)

15) Weekly M+ chest NEVER gave me anything good. Tuesdays were always a disappointment and made me question why I wasted my time grinding for a *chance* at a good reward

It was usually a disappointment, for sure. I think they should've made the rolls weighted towards the slots you had the lowest ilevel gear in.

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If you follow comunity and forums, you'll find out that EVERY EXPANSION IS THE WORST AND BLIZZ DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING

Untill the next one releases and they remember that the exp was awesome and had some really great moments.
And so it goes, since cataclysm is exactly like that.

I remember the extreme backlash pandaria had, because it lacked the "war" feel, as it was pretty fields and beautifull grounding. And how chaotic were all casters with almost free movement on fights, and the famous "wow is dead" all around, because the game sucked.
Now it is praised for top map design, game design and some might even say it was the best wow have gotten.

Aside from the absolutely awful dailies and rep and more rep and more dailies grind at the beginning, I never had any great hate for MoP, and that's despite burning out on those dailies and never really feeling like I'd every caught up until SoO.

[Ielenia]

On the fire beinh magically enhanced, got a source for that? I never saw that or heard of it myself at least which is why it all seemed silly, but if you got a source I can check I'll happily change my mind on that!

Check it right here.