BfA is WoD 2.0

[HuxNeva]

It is exactly like WoD in making something that the vast majority of the playerbase don't like, Garrisons in WoD, PvP in BfA, the core feature of the expansion and then over-incentivizing it so players feel bad about the game if they do participate in it, and bad about the game if they don't participate in it.

We'll never get the numbers, but the player exodus already feels stronger than the giant WoD one.

[Zoldor]

The lead designer just insulted a wide swath of mythic guild/raid leaders for playing by the idiotic rules his team is responsible for. The dev team is off the rails, COMPLETELY out of touch, and arrogant and egotistical on top of it.

The game is the biggest grindfest it has ever been, classes have been gutted and most rotations consist of 3-4 spells or abilities, and the raids and dungeons while good are certainly not worth the hassle of putting up with all the extremely poor design decisions that have been made.

Sorry if you wanted to hear something different but we live in a time when frankly there are just MUCH better games out there that are more worth your time.

I feel bad for the raid and dungeon team. Each expansion I think they've stepped their game up each time. WoD had solid raids outside Highmaul (and some will argue with me that they loved it), Legion raids I greatly enjoyed NH was rough with the excess magic damage and being a non-badass magic tank and I loved the Dungeons, again in BfA, some really solid dungeons and so far Uldir has been a treat. I actually enjoy G'Huun mostly because its mechanic driven, but not overly so, and when you complete the mechanic it feels rewarding and it can be done multiple ways instead of must have X or can't be done etc.

Sucks that this team keeps pumping out some good shit, but the rest isn't following through on their end as well. While I don't think BfA is an abject failure, there are some things I dislike about it. I'm having a great time though, but I do every expansion because I have a great guild. So even the dull content is fun cause I'm with friends goofing through an Island expedition or a warfront. I will agreee Islands are exactly like MoP Scenarios and just about as fun, so not very, but it is a nice way to gain some AP if you are casual. It is a better grind than world quests etc.

I sometimes feel like BfA tried to improve on some of the Legion designs that people didn't like by just throwing a lot of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Because of this a lot of it feels dull. Warfronts seemed cool and so did Island expeditions when they were announced but in practice, pretty dull. If you over tune them they don't fit the niche for the casual, guildless folks and by having them undertuned those with guilds etc are totally bored by them. WQ are just what they are, WQ.

They expected Azerite gear to fill a void that was too big to fill by the system. I'm glad legendaries in the way they were in Legion are gone. I liked artifact weapon better personally. One thing, lots of traits, instead of few traits multiple gear. Really made the classes feel empty (even though a lot of the traits were just static buffs etc). Big problem with Azerite is it feels odd when getting an upgrade you haven't unlocked, calls back to the days of having to reforge. It isn't an upgrade till I do X, which is a bummer or the trait is so weak it really isn't an upgrade. BUT you can't delete it in case they buff that trait through the roof. For the start of an expansion I'm carrying a fairly excessive amount of gear for someone playing a pure DPS.

I have enjoyed the story, dungeons, and raids thus far. Having two versions of the story is a great move and I hope the work on it so that it flows better next time, but this is a design direction I'd like to see again just with more polish in implementation. I see potential in some of the systems and I hope they polish for the next go round. I don't want them to shrink BfA like they did WoD, or so folks assume. I want to see the story play out and I want all the raids because so far Uldir might be one of my favorite first tiers. Way better the EN, HM, and MoPs triple for sure.

[hodgepodge611]

i don't entirely disagree with your point, but bolded is wrong.
MoP at launch and though it's run reversed the downward trend that cata, WoD's spiritual ancestor, started off of the rather poor handling of post-ICC wrath.
WoD's beta is what caused the sudden hemorrhaging of subs that eventually led to blizzard canceling the practice of announcing the current active subscription count every fiscal quarter.

MoP actually continued the downward trend of subscription losses. The latest (and last) report that Blizzard released to it's shareholders showed the subscription count lowering to about 7m in MoP (Search world of warcraft subscription graph and you'll see an image posted on multiple gaming websites. I can't post links yet.)

They stopped releasing sub counts in reports during WoD. My guess is that it was tanking harder than ever before at that point.

[SirKickBan]

i don't entirely disagree with your point, but bolded is wrong.
MoP at launch and though it's run reversed the downward trend that cata, WoD's spiritual ancestor, started off of the rather poor handling of post-ICC wrath.
WoD's beta is what caused the sudden hemorrhaging of subs that eventually led to blizzard canceling the practice of announcing the current active subscription count every fiscal quarter.

I love MoP. It was the best expansion we've had to date, and I will defend it to the death. But MoP did lose subs, that's something you can't really deny.

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/gl...915/915591.png

[Archmage Alodi]

You know what? You are right because WoD had momentum from MoP. BFA could have utilized momentum from Legion but they decided to simply prune, remove and rush BFA hoping that would lead to prosperity.

WoD could be a great expansion if they didn't decide to scrap everything but i have no hope for BfA. This expansion felt underwhelming from the day it was announced.

[Vakir]

WoD 2.0, cata 3.0, and the first and 3rd tiers of wrath.
phoned in "we know we got you" filler garbage flowered-up by false-advertising.

But Wrath was the BEST expansion, and in no way overrated and the starting point of homogenization and easier difficulty curves - all the people who just so happen to be of the age where they probably started playing WoW during it said so! /s (But of course, those claiming that have totally been playing since Vanilla. I mean, everyone on MMO-Champion says so despite it being statistically very unlikely, so it must be true.)

...also can we cool it with the extremely bizarre decimal use? How the fuck can something be "WoD 0.5" when it was literally released after WoD? That's not how version numbers work. Legion isn't "WoW 0.73333" because you think it's only 73% as good as the original.

[Archmage Alodi]

I love MoP. It was the best expansion we've had to date, and I will defend it to the death. But MoP did lose subs, that's something you can't really deny.

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/gl...915/915591.png

Pretty sure any other expansion would have lost more than mop if they had a 13+ months of content drought.

[Mafic]

WoD could be a great expansion if they didn't decide to scrap everything but i have no hope for BfA. This expansion felt underwhelming from the day it was announced.

Yup.

WotLk was a slow burner of an expansion and the same with Mop. They abandoned WoD too quickly and it showed with patch 6.1.

[hodgepodge611]

Pretty sure any other expansion would have lost more than mop if they had a 13+ months of content drought.

Most of the drop was in the beginning of the expansion's life.

[Kyranna]

Class design is horrible. They used classes meant to work with artifacts, removed the artifacts hoping people wouldn't notice how shitty they are. Basic skills that have been part of the class for ten years or more, made as talents.
I can't have fun if what I play feels shitty to actually... play!
The rest? Almost irrelevant.

[Derpleton]

With my sub ending about 30 hours from the time I write this I have to say people are debating whether Morhaime should go or whether Ion should go etc. I kind of think they both do. I cannot help but feel that the current WoW dev team does not listen to it's players, chooses to communicate with its players as little as possible and effectively is operating under the idea of "We know whats best for you" (as someone looking forward to Classic I sincerely hope this mindset doesn't infect that team). I think the only thing that the upper echelons of the company can be blamed for (other than keeping this team in place) is when the product released which clearly led to a rushed, buggy mess.

[SirKickBan]

Pretty sure any other expansion would have lost more than mop if they had a 13+ months of content drought.

It's possible. I've always felt that the main source of subscription loss wasn't due primarily to expansion quality, but external factors like the original demographic's increasing age and responsibilities, the accessibility of other MMOs, etc., and a low quality expansion only exacerbates the issue, while a high quality expansion has to fight against that force of attrition.

Most of the drop was in the beginning of the expansion's life.

And that's only partially true. MoP saw a spike, and then a slow drop to just below where it was before the spike. They did, technically, lose the most subscriptions in the first third of the expansion's life, but they only began dipping below the pre-MoP numbers at the end of that third.

[Divada]

8.1 is going to need to be nothing short of incredible.

[Zoldor]

Yup.

WotLk was a slow burner of an expansion and the same with Mop. They abandoned WoD too quickly and it showed with patch 6.1.

I agree with this, as two expansions that ended up going down as some people's favorites they started rocky. The start of WotLK was met with a ton of "Fuck Blizzard, Rehash BS. Killing Malygos WTF. T1 trash easy." and MoP started with "Boring first T, lol kungfu panda, WTF story." But both built to have some fantastic portions. ToT/Isle of Thunder raised MoP way up. Same with Ulduar for WotLK. ToC was a gamble and it didn't pay off as well as they hoped at all. ICC gave everyone the feels. MoP's really biggest downfall was the same was WotLK too long content drought followed by super lackluster expansions. Wrath to Cata, we waited that long for this shit? Same with MoP to WoD, we waited that long for this shit?

Sometimes the rocky start leads to a great expansion some times it leads to mediocrity.

[Hekazi]

It shows with the latest raid not having a cinematic, literally nothing to look forward to after we literally defeated G'huun, presumably the biggest threat they made us believe in

[Mafic]

I agree with this, as two expansions that ended up going down as some people's favorites they started rocky. The start of WotLK was met with a ton of "Fuck Blizzard, Rehash BS. Killing Malygos WTF. T1 trash easy." and MoP started with "Boring first T, lol kungfu panda, WTF story." But both built to have some fantastic portions. ToT/Isle of Thunder raised MoP way up. Same with Ulduar for WotLK. ToC was a gamble and it didn't pay off as well as they hoped at all. ICC gave everyone the feels. MoP's really biggest downfall was the same was WotLK too long content drought followed by super lackluster expansions. Wrath to Cata, we waited that long for this shit? Same with MoP to WoD, we waited that long for this shit?

Sometimes the rocky start leads to a great expansion some times it leads to mediocrity.

They also undid a lot of the time gating with MoP quests too and in WotLK they acknowledged that heroics were face roll. So the new heroics that came later in the expansion were more difficult and they were the most memorable ones of the expansion (eg HoR).

[Metallourlante]

Didn't people like WoD a lot more during its first month though?

Apparently yes, WoD was decente, hell I'd say even GOOD the first few months. On the other hand BfA right now is pretty meh and can get better with new patches or can go into the oblivion if Blizzard don't wake up soon.

[Veldoranz]

At least BFA has content. Stop being dramatic, WoD was a shitpile with 1 content patch and almost nothing to do but grind garrisons for a week, and raid.

Here is a comparison for anyone trying to say WoD was better:

BFA:

-8 Boss Raid
-10 Dungeons (Repeatable and relevant through the entire expansion due to M+)
-6 Zones
-World Quests
-Rep Grinds via WQ's
-Island Expeditions (Boring grind)
-Azerite System (Issues, but still a progression system)
-Warfronts (too many problems to list)
-8.1 on the horizon with a raid
-6 new allied races
-New Battleground
-Multiple new arenas
-Little to no cancelled content

Now let's look at WoD:

-7 Boss Raid
-8 Dungeons (No mythic+, useless after 2 weeks)
-6 Zones (Tanaan delayed until 6.2)
-Very few dailies, no world quests
-rep grinds via grinding mobs
-Garrisons (bad system from the start)
-10 boss BRF
-New character models
-No new BG's
-One new arena?
-Enough cancelled content to make an entire separate expansion from. Including but not limited to: Bladespire Fortress (Horde Capital), Karabor (Alliance Capital), Ogre continent (south of spires), Faralon, Tanaan delayed until 6.2, Zangermarsh Zone, movable garrisons, trains in gorgrond, blood elf models delayed until 6.1, gorehowl legendary, tabard tab delayed, gromm as last boss, orgrim doomhammer story, trial of the gladiator.

one is obviously more full of content than the other, and in a more complete state. Stop being drama queens, BFA isn't great, but it's better than WoD by miles.

[Sixy]

At least BFA has content. Stop being dramatic, WoD was a shitpile with 1 content patch and almost nothing to do but grind garrisons for a week, and raid.

Here is a comparison for anyone trying to say WoD was better:

BFA:

-8 Boss Raid
-10 Dungeons (Repeatable and relevant through the entire expansion due to M+)
-6 Zones
-World Quests
-Rep Grinds via WQ's
-Island Expeditions (Boring grind)
-Azerite System (Issues, but still a progression system)
-Warfronts (too many problems to list)
-8.1 on the horizon with a raid
-6 new allied races
-New Battleground
-Multiple new arenas
-Little to no cancelled content

Now let's look at WoD:

-7 Boss Raid
-8 Dungeons (No mythic+, useless after 2 weeks)
-6 Zones (Tanaan delayed until 6.2)
-Very few dailies, no world quests
-rep grinds via grinding mobs
-Garrisons (bad system from the start)
-10 boss BRF
-New character models
-No new BG's
-One new arena?
-Enough cancelled content to make an entire separate expansion from. Including but not limited to: Bladespire Fortress (Horde Capital), Karabor (Alliance Capital), Ogre continent (south of spires), Faralon, Tanaan delayed until 6.2, Zangermarsh Zone, movable garrisons, trains in gorgrond, blood elf models delayed until 6.1, gorehowl legendary, tabard tab delayed, gromm as last boss, orgrim doomhammer story, trial of the gladiator.

one is obviously more full of content than the other, and in a more complete state. Stop being drama queens, BFA isn't great, but it's better than WoD by miles.

This exactly. I actually have hope for 8.1 too, especially since the part of BFA I like most atm is the story and I wanna see where it goes.

[micwini]

I don't remember WoD getting this amount of shit until a bit later. 6.1 is where the bomb was dropped. BFA is already a shitstorm from day one.