Genuine Opinion on BfA?

[TigTone]

Almost everything has been good for me this expansion expect for horde vs alliance story.
The other stories and sides stories are great imo.
But I might change my mind on that seeing how it’s not even half way over.

[Zantos]

My list of complaints that made me basically quit.

- Story sucks. Basically Garrosh 2.0
- Horrible AP grind 2.0 that is just zero fun on any level
- Nothing to do. I got the allied races on both factions. That is how little there is to actually do outside of allied races
- Warfronts should have been PvP

So, I have quit. I am back right now because I got the urge to PvP. However, its not going well since its on a lower level character and the balance is so completely messed up right now.

[Zyky]

--but it's certainly not the train wreck, abysmal expansion it's made out to be.

Might I ask what redeeming factors you see in BFA? All the expansion's features aren't any fun, honestly from someone who's been playing almost 14 years, this is the worst place the game has ever been in, and that's saying a lot when Warlords was a thing that happened.

- Class Identity is nonexistent and most classes feel unfun to play, none feel rewarding, and the GCD change feels absolutely awful no matter what you're playing.
- Ranked PvP balance has been nonexistent with tank and healer trinkets dominating the high end bracket and took several months to adjust.
- Islands aren't fun at all and the rewards are too random to actually expect to realistically get them in a reasonable amount of time(Done over 300 mythic islands myself and haven't gotten a single mount and know of people who have done hundreds more than me with no mounts).
- Warfronts, advertised as an expansion feature, is only available once every 3 weeks to participate in. Plus they're extremely repetitive and boring to complete.
- M+ is 80% dominated by the same 2 melee specs and if you're not those specs you have an unreasonably hard time finding groups for anything higher than 12s. Healing specs are 60% dominated by Druids and Tanks are dominated 55% by Warriors and DKs.
- Both raids are significantly under-tuned until one ridiculously difficult boss that isn't even difficult because of mechanics, but difficult because of RNG(no comment on Crucible, based on heroic it was too easy, let's see Mythic this upcoming week).
- World Quests are worse versions of last expansions feature, most of them are "kill this one guy" and if they aren't it's "spend 10 minutes killing way too many mobs".
- Faction Assaults are god awful to their Legion counterparts, no end scenario and locked into a small subsection of zone their in, with a maximum of 6-8 quest options linked to each zone.
- Azerite taking upwards of 10-12 months for a decent change, that's still overly obnoxious, followed by a system meant to "save" the feature of the expansion being cookiecutter with zero spec specific options available to actually fix boring rotations.
- Azerite Neck grind feeling like complete shit with practically no reward per level when it's not an armor trait.

I would really like to hear your opinion on what's actually mediocre about this expansion, because nothing the game itself offers is enjoyable to me. The only reason I'm still playing is because I like the people I play with.

[Doffen]

BfA is a mediocre expansion in my opinion. Not as good as Legion and TBC, but better than a couple of others.

The story is silly, but the Azshara/N'zoth part is interesting. Maybe it's because I think the faction war is a bit over the top so far into the game, after the previous expansions. But Old God stuff is nice. When it comes to the story in the zones they are quite allright. Drustvar being my favorite. That theme is so nice. Would love to see a raid like Waycrest Manor in the future.

The new zones are beautiful, music is awesome. It might not mean much for some people, but for someone like me that's important for the grand scheme of things. Makes the world of Azeroth a better place to be in, so to speak. Same with the BG makeovers like Arathi and WSG, looks much better.

Class design is okay. Feels a bit slow on some specs, while others are very fun. Azerite-system is a big letdown from the systems we had in Legion, though they have made it better, and hopefully in 8.2 even better.

All in all it's a fine expansion, but not more than that. Would see some more non-faction war stuff in the future expansion, bit more fun on the class design side of things, and a more straight forward system compared to the Azerite-system we have.

[Redecle]

It's alright, in the middle ground.
Not as good as the top Wotlk or Legion, but then again not as bad as the very bottom TBC, or well even WoD above it.
Somewhere in the middle with Cata and MoP. Propably closer to MoP level.

Guess it depends what you're looking for.
If you don't care about the gear treadmill and just have fun with it, it's great.
But if it's all about the gear, i can see it gets frustrating fast.

Raids are the same as they've been a while, mechanical encounters. 8.2 is bound to be interesting.
M+ is the same as Legion.
Although the gearing part is a mess and a shitshow.
WQs are the same, could have used the next iteration and the next improvement, so that's a negative side, but they are not at least worse.
Zones are interesting, but they've been done well almost always.
Story has been good in the leveling phase outside the overarching theme, but has been lacking after. 8.2 might change that to a more positive note.
Timegating is as bad as it has been a long time.

Classes and gameplay are in a excellent place. At least in the fun aspect, don't know about pvp balance.
Almost every class has at least one spec that's fun to play. Top of list are outlaw rogue (when you take the path of old old combat rogue, so most of the passives), fury warrior, enhancement shaman, shadow priest, retribution paladin, prot paladin and beast mastery hunter. But feral druid, frost mage, destruction lock, disc priest, marksmanship hunter, windwalker monk and frost dk ain't bad either. Demon hunters are really the only thing doesn't feel good, but they didn't feel that good in Legion either.
But to specify for all of these, this is when you talent like you want to play and not by what is the cookie cutter build.
So if you're on the mythic race or after some rankings and need to cookie cutter the experience might vary a lot, but from the rpg aspect of talenting how you want to talent, it's pretty fun.
Then again that's a personal opinion and it's heavily based on the fact how simple most of those are to play, 3 button specs are the most optimal and fun.
If you prefer max difficulty, like WoD sub rogue or MoP feral druid level, you're probably not going to have as good of a time.

So the moment to moment gameplay is simple and fun, but the outside world could use more new things to do.
Instanced shit is instanced shit and there's enough new forms of it. Raid difficulties for every and each one, dungeon difficulties for all, pvp for whatever it's worth, warfronts are a nice story element for the first like 2 times then it's a transmog farm, island expeditions are instanced stuff farms, they could and should have been something to do in the open world. Also their difficulty seems to be varying with each patch, one moment you're a god of the island mass pulling the whole island and next patch everything kills you in 1v1. The neck is the new artifact weapon, with the same problems as the weapons, but without the best part, the skins.

The new headliner features keep the expansion from reaching a better position by being mediocre, some of it is not as bad as others, warfronts in the end are okay and the unlocked zones by them are okay, as island expeditions are on the other end of not really that fun, but the saving factor comes from the class gameplay and the fact that at least the outdoor content is the same as the last and not worse. Gearing is as shit as it has been since vanilla launch, only good difference is that the gear looks better than 14 years ago, cause it has detail and fidelity, although even that's not entirely true, raid sets look like shitty leveling gear and leveling gear almost looks like epic raiding sets, the sets look nowhere near as good as Legion had, which had probably some of the best ones in the entire game, pallies and priests come to mind first, something that probably hasn't been done better ever and won't be done better in a while. As everything else, the story alternates between good and bad. Some of it is really good and some of it is really bad. Hence it's in the middle, mediocre.

[lolbubble]

Worse than WoD, and that is saying a lot.

[Irian]

It's not fun and not compelling, and made WoW as a result not worth playing as a game.

Classes are boring as molasses, PvP is a comical mess, PvE is dull with pretty and complex raid bosses that have more abilities than the player does. The influence of a raid encounter designer being the lead developer is obvious in the worst possible way.
Allied races were a cool concept that partially succeeded but again was let down by Blizzard's shortsightedness. I had several friends who wanted to play races like Zandalari and void elves, but weren't willing to endure leveling to 110/120, then grinding a reputation for weeks only to then unlock the right to pay for a race change.
Both of the other new features, warfronts and island expeditions, are pretty bland. The racing aspect of IE actively stands in the way of the idea of a free, open exploration. Warfronts are a design mess that apes the classic Warcraft game design without actually putting in the work to make it an enjoyable and interesting game mode, with difficulty that can best be described as "unfailable".

BfA feels like a regression in every possible way from Legion, which wasn't even an expansion I was super fond of either. WoW isn't showing its age, but its development team is.

[Rustykeyboard]

lvling: pretty boring
world content: pretty boring when done gearing and rep farming
Island exp.: pretty boring.
warfronts: pretty boring
arena: fine
BG: fine
Dungeons (not m+): good
m+: most dungeons for m+ are boring.
raids: boring when theres no tier loot and class sets.
classes: pretty boring.

[Asrialol]

My opinion.

Not worth coming back to in it's current state or 8.2 which only fixes 1 aspect.

Content while in quantity lacks quality, game still throws timegating and rng aspects to attempt to keep people subbed, Allied Races unlock requirements (for a fucking core feature of an RPG) are still a thing and overall the game is just in a meh state with people leaving left, right and centre.

Not to mention the devs just don't flat out care. Ion has actually gone as far as to slyly blame the players for the problems of the expansion in recent interviews. There was no passion or love put into this expansion whatsoever except maybe from the art team with zones.

My advice is if you quit back then you'll just end up wasting a months sub to come back and quit in 2 weeks. There are better alternatives on the market right now is all I'll say.

Overall for me BFA gets a 3/10 and it's lucky to be getting that. It's not representative of what WoW can be. It can do better but the current situation at ActiBlizz is stopping it from doing better imo.

However. It is your money to do with as you see fit so if you want to come back to the game then come back. It's your decision first and foremost. Not the posters of MMO-C.

New races never has and never will be a "core" part of an expansion.

[Kantoro]

It's the 1st expac I have been unsubbed for months.

[prwraith]

Feels like a filler expansion tbh

[pahbi]

BFA is a solid C+ expansion.

Not awesome, not terrible. The classes work, dungeons work, raids work.

- P

[Seylene]

If you are impacted or care about the story, wait till this one is nearing the end so you can just get the whole journey in one go its not one that is made for a patch based release system. The game itself if basically legion but without the order hall. The raids are non eventful but still fun. Its got a very WoDish feel as in if you dont just really love the faction war its going to feel a bit slow for you.

[seleri]

Not quite as good as MoP but better than any other expansion. A lot of that is because of the story though, everything else continues to get better with every expansion.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Mediocre filler expansion with a very confusing story direction.

[Ticj]

When the expansion was first released, it was a steaming pile of crap honestly. With the improvements made in 8.1 the game is in a slightly better state, making it a mediocre expansion in my opinion.

We'll see how 8.2 changes things.

[Lurker1]

A+ for WoW BFA,F score for final fantasy 14.

[Brewhan]

I was unsubbed for 3.5 months, I was playing other more fun games but one of my friends said he needed a long term grind game so we both came back to wow. I paid $15 for 1 month resub, apparently my horde char was close to unlocking zandalari so I got them done. Then I was working towards getting kul'tiran on my alliance character I had. He finished the required war campaign achievement but was still 10k+ rep away from exalted. I was like aw hell noo im not waiting 7-10 days of all WQs just to get that. So I paid $30 to faction transfer my horde char to alliance for the exalted rep . I lost all storyline chapters and war campaign progress by doing that on him but its fine since I had an alliance character that had all that done already. Still I had to do 4 dungeons and a long ass questline to unlock kul'tiran compared to zandalari which triggered me a bit because it wasn't fun at all.

Got the Kul'tiran and am now leveling a hunter up slowly while getting ganked in every zone ive been in so far (duskwood, group of 3 lvl 120 horde). Managed to survive that then went to STV and as soon as I crossed the bridge there is a guy ganking at that choke point with the toy sign markers saying "go away" "horde nearby" . Apparently general chat said hes been there for a few days lmao. Lonely max level characters are so bored of BFA they resort to perma griefing leveling areas for days. At least that was my impression. Had to go back to stormwind and turn off warmode then went back to leveling but I'm really bored of it right now. I ask myself wtf am I doing leveling from 20-110 again just to get a heritage armor for a hunter. I already have a level 111 hunter night elf. So it's not for the lack of classes I have. I have all the classes at 100+ but I just want to collect that set otherwise I'd have to pay $25 to race change my hunter to kul'tiran. I already spent $45 in a month and I regret it. I should have just told my friend to stop going back to wow because I was 3.5 months strong without it and doing okay. Now im back in this toxic cesspit with other people ganking. The first dungeon I did the tank was cussing out the healer for letting him die and was raging hard lol. Then the dps accidently pulled another group of mobs and the tank went full tilt on the guy. It was a normal dungeon btw.

The war campaign they added in 8.1 or w.e was forgettable, the cinematics were okay but not worth the price of admission when I can watch on youtube. I will say the Zandalari trolls look badass but at this point it's too little too late. I don't even want to level either new allied race anymore even after I spent $30 to transfer and unlocked them both. This is coming from a guy who's leveled up void elf/dark iron dwarf/high mountain tauren for the heritage armor. Xmog farming and mount collecting is about the only enjoyable thing I guess. I did the warfront quest after not doing it for 3.5 months since my sub ran out. It was still terrible and forgettable after 30 minutes I was ready to fall asleep. I typed in chat " this is really boring lol" . Not even one person replied or anything in a group of 20 people. I feel like many of us are just going through the motions and just staying busy to look busy but not really achieving anything in wow anymore. It's a sad time to play wow.

I've only been back for 7 days but already contemplating uninstalling again and just taking a loss. Yeah my gametime has improved playing 4hrs a day for the last week (28hrs ) but it wasn't really fun at all. There were a few brief moments of enjoyment but even with my buddy in discord talking it just wasn't enough to keep me hooked. 4hrs playing per day out of obligation of my to do list collect this/farm this/ do this mount run/ do this xmog run/ farm these WQs for emissary rep. It's just bad to me now. I've played wow a long time so it's not like I always hated the game.

Also every guild on characters is dead which was sad to see logging in. Like one message a month in the guild chat and then everyone quit since the messages in guild chat stay up permanently now. My server was one of the top 5 most popular on US and now its a ghost town outside of 6PM prime time. What happened to wow? /end blog post.

[Heran]

It's shit. It's legion all over again but they stripped us of abilities as well and added GCD to everything.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Bfa is fun but wow has lost a lot of interest from me after mop. Bfa is Proabbly only slightly behind legion but there are so many other things that are holding my interest more so it’s not getting to much play out of me compares to wow in the past.