Battle for Azeroth is based on the playerbase requests

[Pheraz]

Faction war is complete crap indeed

[Magicon]

If you take a moment and look at it,it consists of many features people have been asking for years:
1)Sea themed expansion - check
2)Kul Tiras - check
3)Pirate theme - check
4)Zuldazar - check
5)Old god theme/Nagas/Azshara/N'zoth - check

But here's the problem - they threw in a stupid faction war and the "Azeroth is dying" and made them a main feature of this expansion.So,they took the ideas of players,which were fine and added some unnecessary bullshit,that literally ruined the expansion. We are in the middle of expansion,where the main theme and threat are supposed the Azshara and N'zoth,yet all we do is fight for azerite and territoties.

It's actually hilarious - the ideas of an expansion were given on a plate,all they had to do was just take them and put inside the game. And now, when thousands of players quit the game,because of the lack of things to do and the crappy written lore,they gonna introduce the unexpected turn of events - that old gods were behind all of this faction war and thar azerite had corrupting. Amazing,a half of year too late.

There is No sea themed expension yet. That will be when the sea opens up and we get personal boats. The sea and small islands will be the expension areas.

[Zyrinx]

It's the systems and most importantly class design (gutted to prop up the stupid Warmode system, which is there to support the stupid theme).

[Niffo]

If classes were fun, all was forgiven.

[Jujudrood]

It's not so much "giving players what they wanted" as much as "failing to deliver core elements" around what they had already planned.
Story is bad, some classes are bad.
Those are the two primary issues.
Players have clamored for many things over the years.
Just because some come to pass doesn't mean the players influenced it any more than what they had already planned.
If they truly listened to players, they would stop fucking with classes and leave them largely intact.

Also, it's not "there's nothing to do".
On the contrary, there is more to do than ever before.
But if the story sucks and your class feels wonky, doing your dailies is more monotonous.
Same with the other content; if you don't feel invested at all and ultimately don't care, you enjoy it less.

I guarantee you if classes felt good to play and the story wasn't a clusterfuck of forced shenanigans, people would enjoy it more.
Themes are good, factions are fine, the expansion itself is very middle of the road, but the core (class design, story) is rotting.

[Darknessvamp]

If you take a moment and look at it,it consists of many features people have been asking for years:
1)Sea themed expansion - check
2)Kul Tiras - check
3)Pirate theme - check
4)Zuldazar - check
5)Old god theme/Nagas/Azshara/N'zoth - check

1. South Seas and Dragon Isles was the expansion I recall people were excited a lot for and some kind of evolution for water combat and travel, none of which BfA has had and the only sea themed thing about it has been "The Alliance n Horde have ships now... Oh wait now the Horde doesn't... Allian-" and Azshara baiting again
2. I'll give you that but from what we have heard about it I thought it would've been a bigger island and Kingdom.
3. Just sticking pirates in a single dungeon is hardly pirate themed, it's not like we've been conscripting a crew and plundering the other factions supply lines or something. Heck a mini game based on battleship and scuttling enemy ships would've been appropriate.
4. I don't recall anyone asking for the Zandalari's home kingdom since MoP considering that we didn't know until this expansion that it even still existed because of Cataclysm.
5. True but then it's partly because people are getting tired of Blizzard baiting these characters/themes in previous expansions and going "Ah ah ah, maybe next expansion you clueless player you."

[Knolan]

If classes were fun, all was forgiven.

This.

Currently playing WotLK and I can't stop thinking: "how did they fuck this up so badly"?
I am leveling as a spec that is new to me and everyday I learn a new trick, it is really fun.

[Tazr]

There's not a lack of things to do though. The problem is that the classes simply feel shit to play if you compare to old iterations of them, like MoP or WoD.

Sure, there's not a lack of THINGS. But these "things" aren't particularly rewarding or satisfying entertainment. They're designed purely to artificially inflate MAU in the absence of actual ENJOYABLE content. WQs are not rewarding unless you've done enough of them to finally get a Paragon satchel. If you DO need an upgrade they can provide, guaranteed that slot will NOT be covered in whatever reward you get. If the Tortollan Emissary has the ring and the trinket and you need the trinket, you will keep getting the ring, guaranteed.

IEs are not rewarding unless you're lucky enough to get loot - and loot you don't already have. I almost never get anything, and when I do, it's a pet I already have multiples of, despite my missing tons of pets and ALL the mounts. They're still too stingy with doubloons, and it really needs a gold reward per completion.

Unless your character is VERY new (but not TOO new, thanks to ilevel requirements), warfronts are not rewarding except for the first one where you get the quest. Even then, that's more Darkshore than Arathi (I do it just for the 15 currency tokens). The number of people that afk in warfronts makes that tedious task even more annoying. Nothing like doing something stale and having to carry lazy cheaters while you're at it.

Allied races don't feel like content, because most of us already have all the toons we need/want, and we were given no new content to enjoy in leveling them (no starter zones - the real reason they "gifted" us with 20s was to avoid having to make them). Heritage armor requirements are there to force people to level toons they don't need or want through old, boring, often poorly scaled or buggy content.

I'm super casual and I have nothing to gain even from LFR at this point, but whatever mounts/pets/toys I don't have are gated behind various currencies (I have all exalted rep, at least) that is generally painful and boring as hell to acquire. It would help if the currencies were at least account-wide, but that wouldn't allow for the shameless MAU grab that EVERYTHING is designed for.

[Archibalde]

But here's the problem - they threw in a stupid faction war and the "Azeroth is dying" and made them a main feature of this expansion.

To me, the worst part is that Azeroth dying isn't even something the characters care about. Having that as a main feature for the expansion would have been fine if it was used to create a narrative that united the story of Zandalar and Kul'tiras together at some point but as it is, it's completely wasted.

We got the Heart of Azeroth and then... nothing. We haven't done anything to save the planet. If anything, we've done everything to kill it faster. Magni is constantly chastising random groups of enemies for using Azeroth's powers for their own greed, but that's exactly what we do with it as well. They took the most urgent part of the story and put it on the back-burner, which makes no sense. The planet is dying so let's ignore that for now and fight to see who gets to play with her blood that's gushing out of the ground... The god-awful storytelling is the biggest problem, in my opinion.

[Magnagarde]

The faction war is a fine theme to continously explore.

The writers simply didn't manage to present it in a credible way.

[Nerovar]

A whole expansion about one island? Who would want to play that?

Is this sarcasm?

[Freighter]

Sure, there's not a lack of THINGS. But these "things" aren't particularly rewarding or satisfying entertainment. They're designed purely to artificially inflate MAU in the absence of actual ENJOYABLE content. WQs are not rewarding unless you've done enough of them to finally get a Paragon satchel. If you DO need an upgrade they can provide, guaranteed that slot will NOT be covered in whatever reward you get. If the Tortollan Emissary has the ring and the trinket and you need the trinket, you will keep getting the ring, guaranteed.

IEs are not rewarding unless you're lucky enough to get loot - and loot you don't already have. I almost never get anything, and when I do, it's a pet I already have multiples of, despite my missing tons of pets and ALL the mounts. They're still too stingy with doubloons, and it really needs a gold reward per completion.

Unless your character is VERY new (but not TOO new, thanks to ilevel requirements), warfronts are not rewarding except for the first one where you get the quest. Even then, that's more Darkshore than Arathi (I do it just for the 15 currency tokens). The number of people that afk in warfronts makes that tedious task even more annoying. Nothing like doing something stale and having to carry lazy cheaters while you're at it.

Allied races don't feel like content, because most of us already have all the toons we need/want, and we were given no new content to enjoy in leveling them (no starter zones - the real reason they "gifted" us with 20s was to avoid having to make them). Heritage armor requirements are there to force people to level toons they don't need or want through old, boring, often poorly scaled or buggy content.

I'm super casual and I have nothing to gain even from LFR at this point, but whatever mounts/pets/toys I don't have are gated behind various currencies (I have all exalted rep, at least) that is generally painful and boring as hell to acquire. It would help if the currencies were at least account-wide, but that wouldn't allow for the shameless MAU grab that EVERYTHING is designed for.

You literally have mythic+ dungeons that scale infinitely. They'd be a lot more fun if the classes didn't suck.

[Soulwind]

To me, the worst part is that Azeroth dying isn't even something the characters care about. Having that as a main feature for the expansion would have been fine if it was used to create a narrative that united the story of Zandalar and Kul'tiras together at some point but as it is, it's completely wasted.

We got the Heart of Azeroth and then... nothing. We haven't done anything to save the planet. If anything, we've done everything to kill it faster. Magni is constantly chastising random groups of enemies for using Azeroth's powers for their own greed, but that's exactly what we do with it as well. They took the most urgent part of the story and put it on the back-burner, which makes no sense. The planet is dying so let's ignore that for now and fight to see who gets to play with her blood that's gushing out of the ground... The god-awful storytelling is the biggest problem, in my opinion.

And what's funny is that we can be sure that the moral of the story will be that we should have focused on saving the planet but we were too busy with our little war.

As if this faction war that doesn't make sense after Legion, and all the out-of-character decisions made by the NPCs in order to force it, are somehow the players' fault.

[Tazr]

You literally have mythic+ dungeons that scale infinitely. They'd be a lot more fun if the classes didn't suck.

IT IS STILL THE SAME DUNGEON. I don't even LIKE the dungeons this expac.

[Freighter]

IT IS STILL THE SAME DUNGEON. I don't even LIKE the dungeons this expac.

Uh, that's a weird thing to hate on. Literally all expansions have been running the same dungeons through the expansions. They've never made it a point to add an abundance of dungeons over the course of an expansion.

[Mic_128]

We got the Heart of Azeroth and then... nothing. We haven't done anything to save the planet. If anything, we've done everything to kill it faster. Magni is constantly chastising random groups of enemies for using Azeroth's powers for their own greed, but that's exactly what we do with it as well. They took the most urgent part of the story and put it on the back-burner, which makes no sense. The planet is dying so let's ignore that for now and fight to see who gets to play with her blood that's gushing out of the ground... The god-awful storytelling is the biggest problem, in my opinion.

So, the world is in crisis and it can't be ignored, something that should be the major focus of everyone. Instead it's ignored as fighting between factions and infighting takes all the attention, ignoring the experts warning everyone else the world is dying.

Seems pretty realistic to me.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

A whole expansion about one island? Who would want to play that?

well since we 've had 2 expansions before that having to do with 1 island per expansion.... you tell me?

[Kuruption]

I'm sure if they didn't prune classes to all hell, make GCD changes, and have this stupid azerite system, the expansion would be viewed pretty favorably.

[Taeldorian]

What you listed are good features of the expansion though. However we ended up getting a pirate themed expansion that’s based on a war between horde/alliance which kinda ruins it imo. The theme of the expansion itself (sea/pirate/old god) is great but its getting drowned out by this ridiculous faction war garbage that has 10 different plot holes every time a new storyline is introduced.

Nobody asked for islands or regressed class design and that’s what we got. Nobody asked for Azerite Armor which is a regressed version of artifact weapons. We lose abilities from season to season whereas we gained new shit all the time with artifacts even if it was just passive.

A lot of the main systems in BfA feel like regressed versions of what legion had. Class design for most classes is basically waters down legion 2.0 with less abilities, less power, less interesting choices (legendary swapping, combining tier sets, etc). Azerite Armor is a much worse version of artifacts. We still have the spec problem where if you wanna play a different spec you have to reforge and eventually it gets too expensive and you can’t continue, they didn’t solve this at all from legion to BfA like they said they wanted to. You also lose abilities going from uldir to BoD which is ridiculous.

I’ll be honest, if we kept artifact weapons but got different ones meaning we’d keep a good progression system and not have Azerite Armor I’d be pretty happy but the further pruning of classes just ruined class design which makes everything else outside of raiding almost unbearable.

[Kokolums]

The dungeons in bfa might be the worst set of dungeons yet. The art in bfa has taken a dive as well. The music is also poor. War mode is terrible and to make war mode work, they broke world quest functionality and make it a lot harder to form groups for world quests. Lots of mistakes this xpac.