BFA is done. Time for your official review

[TheRevenantHero]

BfA was awful but it did have some good parts, in my opinion. Certainly not the worst expansion, that award goes to WoD. Though after seeing the ending cinematic, I'm not at all confident in Blizzard's willingness to make a good expansion with Shadowlands. They've already butchered the lore for SL and everything they've posted looks boring as fuck.

[Dug]

Pretty meh but not worse than WoD. For all its faults there was LOTS to do its just that none of it was particularly fun for very long. Shadowlands isn't looking all that great but we'll see.

The quality is dropping but I think its also a combination of WoW players just bored of the game in general but unable to stay away after investing so much time.

[Justbas]

Even tho i think this forum is 75% people who really just wanna hate on everything here's my review

I liked the leveling & the raids
Classes are really mediocre and sometimes borderline boring
Azerite system sucked,
Essence system is fun but way too grindy if you're into multiple characters.
Story telling has been on the decline since cata imo but I actually do like some of the individual stories told..
However when you look at the total picture the lore of warcraft simply isn't good.

I wish blizz would step away from the gimmicky nature of the game right now and focus on good RPG elements again.

Another rehash of the azerite system simply won't do.

I give the xpac a 5.5/10.

[xStevooo]

1/10.

Started off as a pile of shit, ended as a pile of shit.

- - - Updated - - -

Even tho i think this forum is 75% people who really just wanna hate on everything here's my review

I liked the leveling & the raids
Classes are really mediocre and sometimes borderline boring
Azerite system sucked,
Essence system is fun but way too grindy if you're into multiple characters.
Story telling has been on the decline since cata imo but I actually do like some of the individual stories told..
However when you look at the total picture the lore of warcraft simply isn't good.

I wish blizz would step away from the gimmicky nature of the game right now and focus on good RPG elements again.

Another rehash of the azerite system simply won't do.

I give the xpac a 5.5/10.

You need to get off what you're smoking my man.

Almost every fucking thread people are saying the same as you, music, zones, art, theme good and enjoyable for the most part.

Classes, combat, story, features & systems all failed beyond epic proportions.

[Irian]

Forgettable and bad.

Too much of a focus on storytelling. I would've loved this if the story was actually worth reading but this was fanfic-level garbage. When comparing WoW's story to almost any other game, it becomes depressingly obvious how little writing talent the company has.

As far as gameplay goes, there were a metric ton of misses. The GCD change to cooldowns has just made the game feel less enjoyable and doesn't really have any notable effect otherwise, it reeks of a "developer problem" where developers feel like some quirk of the game is a problem from a development standpoint and want to change it solely based on that. In particular, healer buffs being on the GCD feels laughably bad because of how fast your reaction times need to be as a healer for difficult content, and it basically promotes "figure shit out earlier" situations that make me want to play a healer in this game even less than I already did.
DPS feel almost strictly worse from Legion, with possibly demonology being the only exception if only because it went from trash to tolerable. I literally could not find, out of my alt plethora, a single character that I genuinely thought had a fun rotation that kept me engaged. I quit raiding out of boredom.

The biggest problem though on the gameplay side of things would have to be all the systems upon systems they had in this expansion. It reeks of developer self-indulgence and feels awful from a gameplay perspective to be unlocking some overly complicated new feature every time you go back to Silithus. It feels like half or more of my character's development is now based on these bizarre systems, with corruption levels and azerite traits and essences, that I kind of just miss having a class that did its own thing and developed naturally instead of this stupid necklace.

If I had to give a number rating to it, I'd give it a 3/10 or 4/10. It's no WoD, there were some decent moments, but overall it was just a huge damn mess. The few positive spots in the expansion were outshined massively by bad game design decisions, and while the story was well-told it was a bad story that had an unsatisfying conclusion no matter how N'zoth resolves.

[Spiffums]

The art was good, the zones ran the gambit from AMAZABALLS to meh, the music was great and I meet some of the best people since I started playing in 2005. A game is what you make of it.

[CaptainV]

Worse than WoD and that says alot, at least 6.2 had *moderately* bad content, as opposed to just outright laughably bad 8.3

Yeah, considering the end patch is painfully bad it shows blizz golden age is finally over.

[schwarzkopf]

BfA is not done.

BfA is one of the top 3 for me of the last 15 years.


Summary - short term memory is why everyone always calls 'THIS' expansion the worst expansion... a constant in the history of WoW is that 'THIS' expansion which ever one it is - is always the worst expansion.

[Asrialol]

Pretty good. But then again, Legion and BFA are the only expansion with decent content to do outside of raids. I enjoyed BFA raids quite well, not as much as Legion (Antorus <3) But more so than other raids. Then again, raids were bland and had a lack of mechanics until MoP days. M+ has been fun in BFA, and was developed well compared to the AoE shitfest that Legion m+ was. The classes I play feel fluid and are fun.

It's a bit hard to compare BFA to earlier expansions since previous expansions was so simple in terms of game systems, class mechanics, raid mechanics, etc. But both Legion and BFA are far greater than any other expansion for the type of gameplay I enjoy. Previous expansions (Before MoP at least) had a boring story, and wasn't really engaging (Wrath had some, though.. Classic / TBC not so much). Music and art in general has significantly improved, which is to be expected.


I'm a bit confused about people talking shit about class design. Every expansion until MoP had, what I would say, is horrible class design. One button spam, literally. Classes are far more engaging now than ever before.

[Holdodlig]

Not gonna lie, I liked BFA. It had flaws, but when you compare them to other expansions they're not as bad. People who voted it as "the worst expansion ever" are clearly not mentally able to judge anything. You can say whatever you want, here's what WoD brought to the game

>WoD made crafting professions useless, and made leveling your profession useless which made professions useless (outside of enchanting / alchemy / cooking)
>WoD had the most boring itemization ever (removed gems, glyph, enchant on all slot, professions perks)
>A'shran
>WoD was the pruning expansion where almost everyone lost their spells
>WoD was also the moment they removed the last bit of clever mechanics WoW still had (macro were no longer needed for anything outside of burst, dot sharpshot removed, auras, buff and co removed etc)
>Level 120 content was farming raids, arena and AFK at garrison
>More than half the content was cut
>Remember Tanaan being announced to be here at launch ?
>6.1
>No new arena (when they had the opportunity to make a lot of them)
>No capitals
>Not a single thing to choose for your class outside of talents with glyph gone and no PvP talent / azerite traits
>50 mount but plot twist there's only 6 differents models all the mount are recolors.
>The only good thing WoD brought were new models and themed weeks.



You can say whatever you want, but at least BFA tried to do shit to fix the game. When the dev saw the azerite grind was frustrating because you couldn't equip items they stopped to make it relevant. When people complained because of the lack of spells they added azerite essences. And when people complained about titanforge they added corrupted gear (which, I admit, wasn't the most clever idea they had). Sadly it can't run away from it's shitty main storyline, titanforge (which wasn't even something from BFA and they killed it in the end) and the azerite fiasco at the beginning of the expansion.

To me, the expansion rating is now :
MoP > WotLK > Legion > BFA = BC > Cataclysm >>>> WoD

[wombinator04]

Worst fucking expansion ever put out. Everything about it was shit except for art and music

Ehhh.....even then like only a few zones arnt terrible. Drustvar and Zuldazar were good, the rest were mediocre to straight up awful(vol'dun).

Music is forgettable, too.

[Azerate]

The thread is already full of people who quit 3 weeks in because they couldn't bear getting revered reps

I voted one of the best expacs, just because it's still ongoing and it has the fresh excitement for me, so I don't want to overestimate it. I think it might be my favorite expac of all time though.

[exsanguinate]

I enjoyed Ghuun mythic progression, dont ask me why, but everything before and after was just a pure mess and pathetic.

Shadowlands does not look even better.

[Nagawithlegs]

People that say that Shadowlands does not look better than BFA do not actually care about the game itself, considering the promised system changes are a return to form.

[Asrialol]

Ehhh.....even then like only a few zones arnt terrible. Drustvar and Zuldazar were good, the rest were mediocre to straight up awful(vol'dun).

Music is forgettable, too.

Just look at his post history and you'll quickly realize what kind of person he is. The fact that he plays the game or even is on this site still makes me actually laugh out loud. Go back to even his first posts about BFA. Try to find one single post that doesn't appear to be written by a young teenager throwing a fit. I actually spent quite a few minutes reading his posts and you know what - it was quite the entertainment. I recommend bookmarking his post history if you ever find yourself being bored.


The fun thing is that on this site in particular, the people who really hate the game with a passion are so incredibly vocal. They'll enter any thread to spread their hate. I'll never understand it.

[unlockedz]

i voted best ever out of spite tbh, it's not over. with all it's flaws it still had enough positives in PVE to keep me going through the whole expansion. sure i had weeks when i only did weekly m+ and raids but i've had more than enough trying to push m+ as well and overall it's been pretty good.
with the corrupted gear power spike i'd expect this raid/m+ season will be enjoyable enough to keep me playing for a few months more.
on the other hand i could not care less about shadowlands, i learned i hate playing on the expansion start...way better to start before 3rd raid when the game is actually interesting.

[LordVargK]

BfA. Wasted opportunity: the game.

Story:
- Warcampaign: Horde and Alliance got totally different stories. Also they didn't even got to see all their respective faction was doing. In the faction war you are just some random high rank soldier, who gets manipulated by their leader nontheless. Also the whole war made zero sense, especially the timegated beginning, where the story of one week did not connect with the follwing one at times. Also story should be told ingame, not in some Cinematics in the client. I did not like the style of those, so I never watched all of them. The siege of Dazar'alor had also no impact whatsoever on the war. 1/10
- Azerite/Magni story: Did matter in the beginning and was then quickly forgotten. Sure chamber of heart is still there, but there's no real reason for it. Did Azeroth get healed? No, there's still a pretty big sword in Silithus. Chamber is repaired? Yes. So what? Made pretty little difference overall. Also Azerite was only used once in the entire war, where the war broke out over the azerite. All in all this was a total letdown and served only as a boring way to give us something to grind. Totally different to Legions Class halls, which had the same gameplay purpose. 2/10
- Kul tiras quests: pretty nice, From Jaina over Talia/Finn to Drustvar and (half of) Stormsong; all of those were fun questlines and stories. Nothing really replayable, but interesting nontheless. Shame that the Drust got no further story involvement. 8/10
- Zandalar quests: did not play any of that. ?/10
- Naz'jatar story: Pretty generic, not bad, not particullary good. Just "there's something evil in an unknown land, let's make weekly progress" 5/10
- N'zoth story: kinda linked to Kul Tiran and Naz'jatar story but only slightly touched. In theory good but they could have done WAY more with N'Zoth so only 4/10
Overall story: 4/10

Content:
- warfronts: The way to access warfronts was terrible design. Absolutely awful. Warfronts themselves were somewhat enjoyable once but got boring after 2 or 3 times. Also you could afk them. So yeah, they should have been a mix of PvP and PvE with frontline wars, conquest and attacks for PvP interested players and with turn-in quests, support and rebuild activities for more peaceful players. What a wasted opportunity. 3/10
- island expeditions: Just no. Where Warfronts should have had more PvP, Expeditions should have less. They felt nothing like an expedition, you just rushed onto the island and zerged the entire thing. There was no reason that they had to be de facto timed content. Also these random toys should not have been a reward from bags but rewards from exploring the islands. I can't find anything redeeming about them, also a HUGE wasted opportunity, could have been WAY better: 2/10
- raids: interesting and fun but not super awesome. can't rate Ny'alotha but as it stands: 8/10
- dungeons: i can't really say I enjoyed any of them. they all felt pretty cramped and claustrophobic. M+ was not an enjoyable experience in BfA whatsoever. Also just 11 dungeons and only one new one over the entire length of the expansion: 3/10
- zones: Kul Tiras was awesome, Zandalar was 50% awesome, 50% mud. Naz'jatar was absolutely horrible without flying, Mechagon was kinda nice. No idea though why Mechagon and Naz'jatar were unlocked at the same time... BUT: there were only 3 zones per faction to level in and that's absolutely inexcusable. 4/10
- professions: new leveling system was good, their usefulness not as much. Also why is archeology even in the game anymore? 4/10
- pet battles: I've spend more time in BfA with pet battles than ever. Because other content got bring pretty quickly. I liked it, you could even use them to farm rep. 8/10
- secrets: the best thing about BfA. It was the only thing that made me really think "WoW is an MMO". I'm not even on the secretfinder discord but I find it amazing how detailed those treasurehunts were and that players around the globe had to work together to find them. It gave the world some of its mystery back and rewarded exploration. 10/10

content overall: 5/10

Gameplay:
- DPS classes: Not enjoyable whatsoever. Little minmaxing potential and their performance relied almost entirely on their gear. I've tried many specs and found them very repetitive. most casters felt not fluid enough, most melees felt like they could be played by a castsequence macro. A huge step down from Legion from which we only lost abilities and gained nothing. Even vanilla classes felt better and more interesting. Actually repulsive design. -2/10
- HEAL classes: In contrast to DPS I found healing pretty fun and challenging, sometimes actually a little too hard because with BfA you lost many abilites to react to mistakes of your groupmates. Raidheal was the most fun. M+ not that much, but still not bad. But I've realized I am a DPS whore by heart so healing did not fulfill me. 8/10
- Tank: I did not Tank that much, but there were hefty balance issues with tanks. Nothing else was really wrong, but there was nothing really great about it too. They got the job done, played better than DPS and were less interesting than heals. 5/10
- gear: There is too much gear. And too much RNG in it's aquisition. Sockets must not be randomized. Azerite was absolute dogshit, it was not a worthy replacement for artifact, legendaries (aka: glyphs) and tier sets. It did not even replace one of those things sufficiently. Most of the traits were not even class specific, all of them were either negectable or proc based and all of the really interesting and gameplay changeing ones were nerfed into the abyss. Azerite was an absolutely failed concept and essences could not redeem it, as they were more of the same. 0/10
- open World and endgame quests: No flying. Scaling enemies. Enemies with an an aggro leash the size of Sargeras. I was hesitant to even leave Stormwind, there was pretty much nothing enjoyable. 2/10
- Warmode: Another wasted opportunity. It should have rewared PvP but did the opposite. I previously played on an PvP server as part of the minority faction. But overall you could quest, level and do most other stuff in relative peace. WM changed that and on top of that I lost 10%-30% of open world rewards compared to the experience I had before WM. Second worst feature of BfA. 0/10

gameplay overall: 1/10

Bfa overall: 2/10. I value gameplay the most. BfA is also the first WoW expansion (or newer Blizzard game) without a fancy cardboard box. It just does not fit to the other boxes in my collection.
BfA (and the Shadowlands trailer) made me even hesitant to buy Shadowlands at release. Or at all. Judging from Legion's and BfA's release SL will be playable with patch 9.1.5. Or maybe I will buy it in a sale. Beta will tell.

[Mysterymask]

Eh its mediocre..not amazing but...no where near "THE WORST"

The Good:

* War Mode...bad implementation but the idea of the server is a PVP server when you want it and a PVE server when you don't is actually pretty damned nice. I think the increased rewards may of gotten people who wouldn't of done it otherwise into it and then got them all pissy...but its WoW so no matter what they do people are going to be pissy. The net gain (The HUGE amount of people on a PVP server who don't wanna leave but don't want to be in a pvp server) was a positive

* Cinematics...My god they did FANTASTIC with those....meme worthy ones aside they were quite impressive....plus I do have "Daughter of the Sea" in my spotify playlist cause that is actually a pretty good song.

* Mechagon/Nazjatar: honestly...really good zones kinda fun served its purpose told a decent story and otherwise fun additions

* Allied Races: Controversal here but I think the Allied Races were a good addition. A race specifically made to be someones alt with a reward because you actually did the slog to max level with them.. Yeah people hate them because of the grind...but those people generally hate grinds period. To someone like me who in reality doesn't care about the side I don't play knowing I can get them whenever is nice while the ones on the side I DO play is practically automatic.

The Meh

*Story: honestly NOT THE WORST..but the least memorable story we have..but I'll give them props even though people HATED it...there were discussions about it all throughout the entirety of the expansion... I mean lets face it in Wrath, BC, Cata...no one gave as much about the story as they did here..wasn't really that the story was shit...its the fact that people GAVE ENOUGH OF A SHIT about the lore to care enough to even call it shit....

* Classic: Calling this a meh and part of the expansion cause..it was added with this one. I PERSONALLY am not a fan but it did bring something that a good chunk of people love to wow. This is honestly VERY successful..but not something that adds or lowers my enjoyment but felt I should add it anyway

* Leveling: Storywise it was ok to kinda bad but to me the fact that 110-120 is actually pretty damned fast is a good thing makes GETTING alts to 120 pretty painless to that part

*Islands kinda meh they serve their purpose..I think in Blizzcon they even said this was the most efficient way to farm Azerite but this "OMG AMAZING FEATURE" turned out to be a "get a tank pull and kill all the things" thing...The enemy AI ended up being kinda useless

The Bad

Alts once you hit 120...its a slog to do anything. If you are one of those "NEED AN ARMY OF RAID READY ALTS TO DO EVERYTHING" this expansion SUCKED when essenses became a thing... otherwise it was "yay a 120 that I get to see that stupid error message forever"

*Cruicible of Storms The bitching about this place speaks for itself..the LACK of bitching about this place speaks for itself...no one really liked this raid

*Warfronts HEY LOOK FREE GEAR EVERY SO OFTEN!...that was literally all this was

*Mission Table Only calling bad because it was mostly useless...I feel blizz is phasing this out..and hopefully this will just be gone next expansion

*Azerite Armor: This was SO badly implemented its not even funny. At first the fun of HEY LOOK AN UPGR...oh wait I don't have enough points so this is useless till I do a bunch of world quests over the next 2 weeks....add in the general off spec unfriendliness of it...to me it was a STEP in the right direction but stumbled and fell pretty hard

[Very rare pepe]

That ending pretty much sums up BFA, looks great but plays awful. The GCD change was their biggest mistake, the story writing and Azerite traits come in 2nd/3rd. The 4th worse thing they did in BFA were the expansions main features, Warfronts and Islands. An easily forgettable expansion and one that I guess for many wow players will be the last one they come back to try. Game will be fine though, plenty of whales to buy their in game items, WoW could easily run on 500k players because of these people.

Hoping shadowlands is good but BFA is giving me scared vibes for it.

[darklogrus]

3/10, Art Team and Music guys pulled in that score, the rest was a complete mess from Alpha to Final Patch...