BFA risks and rewards

[Ghazan Julio]

OK before the mods attack, I just want to say It's my opinion that WOD was poorly executed. Now then, I think BFA has some really cool things going for it, and I've played the Alpha. I'm wondering what everyone thinks about the GCD changes and the no more tier for raids. I love the aesthetics too, all the new customization's and races are long overdue in my opinion. I'm even glad we cured the Orcs' scoliosis. Besides that, I'm really not so sure about these "Island Expeditions" it kinda gives off a strange vibe. Anyways with all the pros and cons I've seen and heard about, share your own thoughts here on how you think the Expansion will do. Let me know what you guys think. Sometimes it's fun to just judge a book by the cover, I think we can all agree. First Impressions.

[Toybox]

I think it'll be Legion 2.0, but with a bigger reliance on content to help solve the lacking class design.

Legion is one of my favourite expansions, but class design for the majority of tanks has taken a step backwards. BfA looks to me like it's continuing that, but with a more reasonable AP system, new M+ dungeons designed specifically for M+, improving on things like WQs & world PvP... I'm confident overall.

Even if the Warfronts/Island Expeditions are gash, we still have new raids & new M+ dungeons, so I'm happy Just worried about classes, that's all. Prot Warrior & Guardian Druid have already seen a nerf to class fluidity thanks to the Devastator/Galactic Guardian nerf (I don't care about damage numbers being tweaked, but losing proc chance & fluidity I really dislike).

[Craaazyyy]

dogshit class design will ruin it regardless

[Ghazan Julio]

I think it'll be Legion 2.0, but with a bigger reliance on content to help solve the lacking class design.

Legion is one of my favourite expansions, but class design for the majority of tanks has taken a step backwards. BfA looks to me like it's continuing that, but with a more reasonable AP system, new M+ dungeons designed specifically for M+, improving on things like WQs & world PvP... I'm confident overall.

Even if the Warfronts/Island Expeditions are gash, we still have new raids & new M+ dungeons, so I'm happy Just worried about classes, that's all. Prot Warrior & Guardian Druid have already seen a nerf to class fluidity thanks to the Devastator/Galactic Guardian nerf (I don't care about damage numbers being tweaked, but losing proc chance & fluidity I really dislike).

Yeah, one thing I've noticed about cinematics is the fact that they're becoming less and less about the main villain and more about just random events that we will get to see when we play the game. Why didn't they open the Cinematic for BFA at the bottom of the Ocean...where a certain Kraken is sleeping, why didn't they have him to a monologue about "they always said I was the weakest. The truth is, I just took longer to...grow." *N'zoth laughs* then maybe actually do some N'zoth CGI or at least show him sleeping?

[Toybox]

Yeah, one thing I've noticed about cinematics is the fact that they're becoming less and less about the main villain and more about just random events that we will get to see when we play the game. Why didn't they open the Cinematic for BFA at the bottom of the Ocean...where a certain Kraken is sleeping, why didn't they have him to a monologue about "they always said I was the weakest. The truth is, I just took longer to...grow." *N'zoth laughs* then maybe actually do some N'zoth CGI or at least show him sleeping?

Gotta be honest, I don't care about in-game or expansion cinematics in the slightest. Argus was out for 3+ months before I watched any of the questing cinematics, and both the Legion/BfA cinematics are weaker (to me) than the TBC/Wrath/MoP/WoD ones.

[Ghazan Julio]

Gotta be honest, I don't care about in-game or expansion cinematics in the slightest. Argus was out for 3+ months before I watched any of the questing cinematics, and both the Legion/BfA cinematics are weaker (to me) than the TBC/Wrath/MoP/WoD ones.

I do when other people are getting excited about something we get to do in game literally.

[Toybox]

I do when other people are getting excited about something we get to do in game literally.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I hope every aspect of the game (even those I don't enjoy) is as strong as possible for those that do enjoy it. I'm just saying for me, personally, I'm not really bothered

[Soon-TM]

So far...

Pros: PvP/E toggle, expeditions (assuming they will be something akin to an improved version of MoP's scenarios), smoother M+ scaling and warfronts (provided that they don't !@#$ them up), no more lolgendaries, shared AP pool for all specs.

Cons: class design is definitely bad, and made worse by this idiotic GCD change, Azerite stuff looks *very* underwhelming, and not having a "big bad" to fight will make storytelling harder (at least for Blizz lul). The PvP rewards for enabling PvP during levelling/questing will be either too good, forcing non-casuals to suffer through the mess that is wPvP atm; or they will be too bad, and no one will ever bother. The "happy middle" isn't one of Blizz's strong points...

[Deleted]

They'll fuck up the class buff system in a lazy attempt to increase class/spec representation of classes or specs that aren't really played at all (Monks, DH for example).

[Aeula]

I think the expansion will be pretty bad. Hopefully not Legion or WoD levels of bad, but pretty bad.

Island Expeditions seem like an okay distraction every now and then but it’s not really anything special.

Warfronts sound like a cool quest but they’re not something I’d consider to be more than that.

Allied Races were an idea I supported. Seeing them in action I now realise it was a mistake to add them. Blizzard can barely give attention to all the non-allied races we have, now with eight more races being added to the mix and demands for even more I feel like they’ve overdone it. Especially with the calibur of requests people are making. Even more elf and troll reskins? Yiffer races? How about no. They’ve opened a Pandora’s box they’ll never be able to shut.

They should have focused entirely on increased customisation and lore for existing races. As a flagship feature of the expansion I find the entire system rather worrying, especially since the first thing they did with it was give a Horde model to the Alliance and a slightly tweaked and uglified Alliance model to the Horde.

There’s also a focus on World PvP I find unsettling, they seem to consider it content of its own that everybody should do rather than a choice of play. The reward system seems intended to lure people who don’t really want to partake into doing it.

The loss of our artefacts seems to equate to a giant prune and Azerite armor seems to only be able to replace set bonuses at best.
Azerite armor is also likely to create a huge power gap between high end raiders and the casual playerbase due to raids having exclusive traits. It could also make LFR something of a necessity for casuals, eliminating alternate gearing paths.

Actually the more I think about it the more I’m getting WoD beta ‘this is going to be bad’ vibes and my hype is only decreasing.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The question is: Will it drive away the crowd that's never EVER happy?

No? Then guess we're all good. As long as the players that are open to be happy with the game keep playing and the Negative Nancies stick around, the game is trucking on as per usual.

The one time that balance was out of order, was during WoD.

[Deleted]

With the things I heard I expect it to be a second WoD for me. I mainly (almost exclusively) play alliance and I'm mainly in it for the story. With what we've seen so far it doesn't really look good. My main (shadow priest) is going to suffer again so I'll have to look into one of the other specs which means I'll be stuck healing.

There hasn't been even one feature that has me hyped so far. Island Expeditions sound like a drag, Warfronts sound horrible and I don't really care about Allied Races because they're lackluster (VEs) and/or just things that could've been baked into regular character creation (Orc, Tauren, Human variants). Azerite just looks like Diablo Designers wanting their Diablo things in WoW. It's not really comparable but it does feel like it for me. Likely because of the Nether Crucible 2.0 and still pushing the legendary crap.

Add to this the pruncalype that's happening it can only take one more iteration until we're playing DOTA/LOL/HOTS with a slightly different perspective and the forced PVP (theme) just isn't really for me. I'll probably play regardless because it will be hard to be disappointed at this point but I really don't expect a positive surprise. I really shouldn't be playing I guess.

[Ghazan Julio]

With the things I heard I expect it to be a second WoD for me. I mainly (almost exclusively) play alliance and I'm mainly in it for the story. With what we've seen so far it doesn't really look good. My main (shadow priest) is going to suffer again so I'll have to look into one of the other specs which means I'll be stuck healing.

There hasn't been even one feature that has me hyped so far. Island Expeditions sound like a drag, Warfronts sound horrible and I don't really care about Allied Races because they're lackluster (VEs) and/or just things that could've been baked into regular character creation (Orc, Tauren, Human variants). Azerite just looks like Diablo Designers wanting their Diablo things in WoW. It's not really comparable but it does feel like it for me. Likely because of the Nether Crucible 2.0 and still pushing the legendary crap.

Add to this the pruncalype that's happening it can only take one more iteration until we're playing DOTA/LOL/HOTS with a slightly different perspective and the forced PVP (theme) just isn't really for me. I'll probably play regardless because it will be hard to be disappointed at this point but I really don't expect a positive surprise. I really shouldn't be playing I guess.

Sadly I agree.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Not sure why we need another thread for this, but I'll bite. My summary so far boils down to: Watered down version of Legion.

In more detail:

A.) Azerite pieces will never be able to fill the role of artifacts, legendaries and tier sets in 3 slots. That is just not possible. Especially the current versions.
B.) Island Expeditions are just slightly randomized scenarios. Like with all games with randomzied content and procedural generation, it comes down to how many core variants you provide. It's a nice gimmik, but it will live and die by the reward structure, as the core gameplay loop is not that compelling for the PvE variant. Will most likely go down as a PvP feature in a game where PvP sucks ass.
C.) Warfronts are glorified battlegrounds with bots. Their only goal so far is to gate PvP-capture&control like content (see: Winter's Grasp) which is intended for PvE with a currently planned weekly turn over time. After the tests today I full well expect that to be the general consensus. Will be fun once or twice, but I don't see it as a core feature I'm waiting for each week, or every 2 for that matter.
D.) The questing is.. okay. I can't stand troll stuff and so far I'd say that the Horde has actually the better quests, despite that. While I want to love the alliance zones, the current state of them is a bit disapointing. A few highlights here or there, but overall it feels quite random. Thank god for transmog though, because OMG is the troll themed leveling stuff ugly on everything that isn't some atztec wannabe troll-tribe.
E.) The GCD changes are utterly asinine.
F.) Of the 4 dungeons available I like 2.5 so far. The troll and pirate one (despite hating both themes) are actually fun and well structured dungeons. The other 2 (prison/goblin) are overloaded with trash and rely on a dumb gimmik to stretch them (fleeing/trigger-scout respectively). The prison one has at least nice art though, the other one is a goblin shit hole :/. I hope the remaining 8 will be better than the last to and at least reach the level of the first 2 they released. The first raid boss looked fun enough, not much worry there. Well I do worry about the item art but we will see.
G.) The world overall seems certainly a bit better organized compared to legion. The didn't rely that much on verticality this time, so in the beginning there won't be zones as bad as Stormheim and Highmountain, what is annoying about some of them though is that they are packed to brim with yellow trash that get's agroed with aoe all the time. That is just annoying, especially when core rotational abilities have AoE components.
H.) The command table was scaled down even more. Currently I'm not a huge fan, but that is mostly because while I play on Horde I never really was one that got too excited about Horde characters. The first set of champions is hit and miss. I actually liked the way it worked in WoD (the lack of content was certainly not caused by the UI gimmik feature that some intern programmer could hack together), and so far it seems even more watered down.
I.) So far most class changes are summarily.. meh. It's bits and pieces here and there that I like, but overall the core mechanics feel a bit stale after coming from legion where every button ignited an explosive firework at the location. The GCD shit just compounds that sadly..
J.) While the overall zone design seems better, so far the way the core gameplay hubs behave is terrible. As the horde having all your stuff spread out between the harbor and the temple is annoying. I guess later people will congregate mostly towards the harbor though (feels kinda shabby though) because the daily grind is easier accessable from there. Either that or they change up where the command tables and traveling locatons are placed. We will see.
K.) Having to grind the core resource for all specs at once is definitely an improvement. Not sure about them being twats with the spec lock on azerite pieces though, but that goes into A.).

As someone who isn't into the troll/dino and pirate/marine theme at all the expansion doesn't exactly start off strong, but it will be entertaining enough to kill some time. If blizz does turn it into another WoD debacle i will just give them the middle finger again and wait until the next expansion before I return. Sounds a bit negative, but we will see I guess.