Not even in WOD did I see such a big amount of negative feedback

[meroko]

It never fails, at the start of EVERY SINGLE EXPANSION people shit on the class design because OH NO MY SECONDARY STAT RATING IS LOW. We have to gear up, that's the point of raiding. No one liked how their class felt going into EN, Highmaul, MSV, To4W, BoT, Naxx, Kara, or Gruul's Lair. Yes I went back all the way to the beginning of the first expansion. Our power is always decreased to start off. It seems like every new expansion people forget this. The classes themselves ARE FINE, we are just at a gear lull because raiding isn't out, and we won't feel "powerful" again until the final tier like Argus, HFC, SoO, DS, ICC, BT, SWP ...you see a pattern here? JFC

[Zoldor]

I've played every expansion from launch foward with my only time away, not unsubbed just not playing, might be 4 months all together. I think so far BfA is great leveling, it was fast (maybe 20ish hours without rest exp). I don't hate my affliction lock, granted most classes are death to play until raid gear kicks in and appropriate stats start stacking up.

Things I do have issue or qualms with:

Gear - the gating on making a piece fully available despite it's higher ilvl making it still not better than a lower piece with all its traits (looking at you Azerite gear) is a little off putting to say the least. Azerite gear generally I'm not yet sold on and kind of just wish I had set bonuses and secondary stats. (really them not having any secondaries is annoying even set pieces had secondaries) It is all the worst parts of the Artifact Weapon blown up, at least with the Weapon I got to keep most of my good traits and only worried about relics, now it is a whole new piecs praying it has something good or I'm stuck with a piece of lower ilvl because the trait is that much better and it looks like that is only going to scale worse over time. Reminds me of things like Convergence of Fates and Arcanocrystal.

Expeditions - I'm not impressed and after my first 7, I'm not sure I'm going to like/enjoy this and only do them as quick as possible for AP. Honestly, they are just like scenarios in MoP and I feel they will get the same reception. "Done them a couple times, and I don't care about them, but I do them because I want that weekly AP."

There are a ton of things to like so far for me:

Zones - really enjoyed the story, leveling, pace, and design. Design in the sense that unlike WoD or Legion I miss flying less as there are a ton of various pathways that are obvious and easy to get up and down hills, across water, etc. The other two it felt like the only true paths were roads and a few side paths. These zones seem to have a lot of obvious side paths and I like that.

Professions - I like the scrapper, I like starting the expansion good to go with my profession even if I'm on an alt that was behind. It hasn't been a terrible chore for me to level. I'm not max yet, but I've put no serious effort into getting to making cap, just doing my WQ/leftover quests/5mans/expeditions, scrapping what I have and using the mats I found.

Class - So far the warlock feels good or at least not overly complex or clunky, and I'm sure it will get better with proper gear. I have a warrior coming up as an alt and if 5mans and expeditions are any indication of Warrior, it seems they are fine and tons of people are playing the class. Druid is just a farm alt so don't really care much about his gameplay. And Blood DK hasn't changed a lot over all so I'm not worried about him either.

5 mans - So far I've done all but maybe 3 I think and I've enjoyed them all so far. Each one has a good zone look, decent bosses with some good mechanics that take a tad of thought, various pathways, and some fun story. I look forward to a few of them as +s to smash for loot chest each week and a couple I dread cause they'll be a serious challenge, but that is fun in its own right.

Mission Table - I like this super simple not as important mission table. It is nice, right amount of followers, none of the missions are super stupid time reliant missions blocking me for two days from advancing the story.

War Campaign - I've enjoyed it so far, outside of some serious lag when visiting the other factions islands. Not overly intrusive, a cool way to get the other side's major story points. It isn't blow me out of the water, but I've not hated it or dreaded messing with it like I have other features in other expansions.

Characters - I guess this fits leveling as well, but I enjoyed the mix of humor, interesting characters, voice acting, and personalities of the characters in this expansions a lot more than some previous ones. The Trolls in Vol'Dun are great (looking at you Oasis bar and undead pirates). I enjoyed the Vulpera a lot more than expected (less annoying Goblins?) I thought I'd absolutely hate them, but not bad and I didn't grit my teeth every time they speak.

Overall I think the expansion is good so far. Greatness for me gets measured at the end after the entire story is told, I've run the raids (I rank those as very important), and seen all possible zones.

WoD was insanely worse than this. The launch was trash I was stuck in limbo on a character for near 3 days or so because of the Garrison bug. The garrison itself became an awful chore. Ashran was the devil. The story was a damn nightmare all around. We killed all but 2 warlords before the first .5 tier was finished. We lost a ton of content, it never felt like the expansion was polished more like it was just left the way it was and moved on from quickly by the team. The only highlights were the Ring and the last two raids. BRF was great. Hellfire was solid, not my favorite, but solid. WoD was way way worse than this in my opinion for a ton of reasons, which I could keep going with. Class design for Warlock was a fucking roller coaster.

[probert]

It never fails, at the start of EVERY SINGLE EXPANSION people shit on the class design because OH NO MY SECONDARY STAT RATING IS LOW. We have to gear up, that's the point of raiding. No one liked how their class felt going into EN, Highmaul, MSV, To4W, BoT, Naxx, Kara, or Gruul's Lair. Yes I went back all the way to the beginning of the first expansion. Our power is always decreased to start off. It seems like every new expansion people forget this. The classes themselves ARE FINE, we are just at a gear lull because raiding isn't out, and we won't feel "powerful" again until the final tier like Argus, HFC, SoO, DS, ICC, BT, SWP ...you see a pattern here? JFC

The GCD change and class homogenization isn't about power creep or gear incrementalism, its about design decisions. Maybe this would have worked 5-10 years ago, but most people have played Dark Souls / God of War / Breath of the Wild or other similar games in recent years and hotkey combat is getting really tired.

Slowing the game down and taking away options wasn't a good move. Combat seems more sluggish than ever on a variety of classes. Leveling is more tedious than its ever been.

[xanzul]

BFA has some beautiful zones and cinematics, the main cities are awesome, the music is one of the best we had in wow so you feel really good for a few hours...but that's it. The gameplay of classes has never been this dumbed down, the dungeons are full of trash and bosses feel super easy, island expeditions are boring as hell and the recompenses are awful, war modes are just a big fail...

Seems like the only real good part about this expansion might be raiding...does that remind you guys of something? Hmmm...

Inb4:

"Ok bye"

"It's only been out for x days lol"

"I'm loving it"

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out"

"If you don't like it don't play it"

And so on...

Ever think to consider the reason these threads get those responses is because you people have been making them about every single fucking expansion since TBC?

[Dristereau]

I think the zones and quests are good, more grounded than some of Legion and pretty fun. The scaling as bit strong for me right now but it will get better with gear, as it did with Legion (I remember getting bits of the class set and things getting easier). I've played a lot of the expansion so far, and I can say I've made up my mind that I don't like the GCD. Just makes the classes feel more clunky, and I think some of them feel in a pretty meh state right not.

As for azerite gear, doesn't give too much right now. I've noticed the Raid gear has an extra trait on each piece and they will probably add more interesting things to pieces when it comes to actual 'tiers' to replicate Set Bonuses. I have something I like now called Festermight (Strength increase for every FW I pop for a set time). I just don't know if it's enough to replace Artefact Traits which changed the way the class played for the first part of the expansion.

As I said above, Class Design is probably my biggest concern right now. Apart from a few specs in Legion (SV Hunter, Demo Lock, MM Hunter) I felt they worked well. I know there were a few problems, but I felt they worked well. Elemental Shaman seems extremely clunky right now, there's some changes to Frost DK abilities I don't like as well as having to choose between a Talent and Artefact ability you had before. Plus the loss of Legiondaries which in my case added an extra ability into my rotation.

I'm just saying my opinion so far, I would expect things to calm down a fair bit when Mythic+, Raid and PVP Season begins. Class changes can come with hotfixes, so we'll see what happens.

[Deleted]

BFA has some beautiful zones and cinematics, the main cities are awesome, the music is one of the best we had in wow so you feel really good for a few hours...but that's it. The gameplay of classes has never been this dumbed down, the dungeons are full of trash and bosses feel super easy, island expeditions are boring as hell and the recompenses are awful, war modes are just a big fail...

Seems like the only real good part about this expansion might be raiding...does that remind you guys of something? Hmmm...

Inb4:

"Ok bye"

"It's only been out for x days lol"

"I'm loving it"

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out"

"If you don't like it don't play it"

And so on...

This is what I think the problem is and why we see many complaints right at the beginning of the expac. You are partly right about some things...

This is the first expac we are actually getting weaker when we lvl towards 120. The reason for that is complex, on the one hand we lose our Legiondaries which for some classes can have a big impact. Secondly, the impact of your secondaries is miles lower and you lose alot of the numbers towards 120. Some classes end up slow, sluggish and weak at 120 when compared to lvl 110 (try going from 30% haste to 7%) Combine this with the GCD changes impacting some classes and it can really feel like slow dumbed down gameplay (I say: feel) The biggest No No for me is the scaling. I get what they are trying but in my eyes they failed massively. One of the pinnacles of any RPG is character progression, getting gear and getting stronger. If enemies scale this is no longer the case (especially combined with what I mentioned before) and the sense of progression feels not there anymore. I think people underestimate how much impact this can have.

Another big thing is the azerite gear. They outright said they want players to be able to wear gear straight away when it’s an upgrade. Now I have all these “upgrades” in my bag but can’t use them since I need to lvl my neck first. Feels so weird and so conflicting with what they said. It can feel like you’re playing but not really advancing (azerite grind also feels slowish)

[Daedius]

Playing Shadow sucks balls... seriously can't get over them making core rotation abilities into fucking talents...

[sam86]

I remember people being mostly excited for the very early part of WoD, the real bitching began shortly after Highmaul opened.

i 2nd that, WoD had an even stronger start than MoP, but selfie patch specially made ppl feel insulted and left game in masses
maybe bfa will be like MoP, crap start get better later ? (they already making garrosh with boobs)

[Nyel]

Most of those were not considered "decent" at the time. People hated pandas. People hated scenarios. People didn't like the zones because they were not medieval based. People hated pet battles.

Yup - sounds pretty similar to BfA feedback

A new class is still better than no new class. Additionally we got the talent tree revamp plus a new talent row (something that's entirely missing in BfA). I know Pandaren were and are still the most unplayed races. Don't like them either. Still most of the negative feedback was pointed towards the setting, not the actual gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -

To be honest I am not as confident that patch 8.1 will fix a lot of the issues that BFA has. The issues BFA has are very major (class design, GCD, etc).

Seriously: what can 8.1 fix? Or 8.2? Content patches don't fix major gameplay flaws or lack of features.

[Marrilaife]

Too soon to say it, it could be. Who knows? People were super hyped about WoD if you remember

If we were 3 days into the expansion during WOD all you'd see if "transfer aborted: instance not found" when trying to enter your garrison and the disappointment was so immense they had to hand out 7 day free time compensation as an apology. BFA launch was a bit shit (some big pop servers especially on US having 6h downtime, lots of bugged quests etc.) but still doesn't beat WOD where lag and dysfunctional garrison cockblocking you from doing anything was sucking the fun out of attempts at levelling. I spent half the first week of wod herbing and mining in Talador because I couldn't do anything else.

So yeah, people seem to have short memory in regards of negative feedback.

[Krekko]

I've noticed an uptick over the past 2-4 years in what can be considered "Recreational Complaining", where people seem to complain just for fun. It's not just been with WoW but everything. It's nothing new, but it seems to have hit a tipping point in recent times. It's gotten exhausting, and has alienated me from many of the communities I used to love being a part of.

[Aeula]

Too soon to say it, it could be. Who knows? People were super hyped about WoD if you remember

Not really, the beta was a disaster with cut content left and right. Then when it launched people hit 100 and realized there was nothing to do.

[DFu4ever]

This forum seems to be the epicenter for most of the current complaining, because elsewhere this expansion seems to be received quite positively. Even the WoW subreddit on Reddit is overall really positive about the expansion so far.

You'd think this game was dying/the worst thing ever if all you ever read were these forums. This launch has been pretty well handled so far, and the content is actually interesting (I never thought I would say that about Troll-related stuff).

[Mafic]

Playing Shadow sucks balls... seriously can't get over them making core rotation abilities into fucking talents...

Worst part is that they use the excuse that they can't keeping adding talents. But they can keep pruning baseline spells to make as talents....lol.

- - - Updated - - -

This forum seems to be the epicenter for most of the current complaining, because elsewhere this expansion seems to be received quite positively. Even the WoW subreddit on Reddit is overall really positive about the expansion so far.

You'd think this game was dying/the worst thing ever if all you ever read were these forums. This launch has been pretty well handled so far, and the content is actually interesting (I never thought I would say that about Troll-related stuff).

That isn't true. The official forums is a lot worse.

WoW reddit is simply a kumbaya of sunshine and lollipops. You will be lucky to find anything above fisher price discourse over there.

[bmjclark]

Nonsense. WoD was totally obliterated on these forums and everywhere. Not only was the game not great, but the servers were dead. Then you had a few exceptionally bad players who couldnt complete silver proving grounds bitching up a storm about that. It was waaaaay worse.

[Krekko]

So essentially they shot themselves in the foot and are bitching about it now.

Yup!

They have no self control and are surprised that things don't last as long as they should. I wonder if they go grocery shopping for a week and eat through all their food within the first couple of days, then complain to the supermarket's management about how short it lasted.

[Malikath]

Too soon to say it, it could be. Who knows? People were super hyped about WoD if you remember

dude, WoD was hemorrhaging subs in BETA.
nothing could be that bad right now without actually killing WoW.

[MalfLFT]

Bfa is great, and most People Are loving the shit out of it

[Deleted]

I'm enjoying it. There seems to be more content at the start than say, Wrath.

[PrivateSmiley]

I thought it really kicked in with the SELFIE patch. Yikes! lol

Patch 2.2.0 would like to say Hello.