BFA is done. Time for your official review

[drebz]

Archimonde showing up at the end of WoD might have been the highlight of that expansion.

[october breeze]

I see 4 Sylvanus fanbois in the poll, lol.

[Delmorii]

Hard to say for me. Overall it replaced my old favourite expac (Wrath), but 8.3's disappointment is still too fresh for me to be looking at it purely objectively. I feel no desire to do any of 8.3's content aside from what I already did (unlocked the cloak, have the Ny'alotha quest), which is frustrating when I liked so much of BfA.

That said, I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I loved the art, the music, (most) of the story, et c; but for genuine gripes I'd have to say that, systems-wise, this feels like a disjointed expac. Azerite traits discourage me from playing any spec but my 'main'. Corrupted gear I actually like when I thought I'd dislike it, but I know it's going away and when it's in a single patch (of a patch I don't even want to play), I see no reason to bother learning it or fiddling with it.

I'll try to tl;dr:

Azerite Gear:
- Frustrating and obstructive. I hate farming multiple gear sets, but I'd have to if I wanted to play more than one spec.

Allied Races:
- I have mixed emotions. I unlocked all of them, but having played both core races and allied races, I prefer just getting core races. Don't get me wrong, I love the allied races we got, but it feels weird to both pay and work for a feature. I'm cool with a quest chain to explain the races joining my faction, but the rep grind just feels like an additional step.

WQs/Objectives:
- I like WQs, but the ones where I kill something and look at my progress to see 1% out of 100% makes me instantly hate it. It just feels shitty.

Story:
- While I say I liked BfA's story, BfA needed to pick a daggum theme and run with it. Too much was juggled and it feels like everything suffered for the fact. Re: Faction War, I remember reading a cartoonist's commentary on whenever they did a story arc; by the end, they'd 'stuff it all back a box' so the characters remained their static, recognisable selves. The Faction War's feeling like that, because we OOCly know we'll never have the factions ACTUALLY be at peace and cooperate.

Armour Sets:
- I actually like the new tier system, because I can farm them and use them on multiple alts. But I'm an altoholic, so I admit that's subjective.

Mechagon/Nazjatar:
- Mechagon is probably my favourite place in the game tbh. I loved the system they followed with a pleasant, non-grindy rep WQ and then some dailies and items that gave neat rewards. Nazjatar can eat my shorts with that hard time-gated nonsense with the followers. I generally hate having/dealing with followers (never used any in Legion; story quests are the only exception), but I'm also an achievement hunter so I got them all to lvl 30.

[Thage]

One of the worst. Warlords of Snoremore still deserves the title King Turd of Shit Mountain. BFA has to settle for Prince Plop.

[DemonDays]

"You people"? Get over yourself dude. You can hate BfA all the fuck you want but please don't pretend like this thread's intended purpose is anything other than (yet another) very surface level "DAE BfA sux LOL" echo chamber.

You use "dae". Jesus christ how old are you.

This thread is exactly what it says it is. A review thread of honest opinions. Evidently all 8 people who clicked saying it was a good expansion can't even justify or back up why. It's all the usual defenders too.

There's 8 pages of people telling you why they think it sucks. Maybe have a good read. Or tell us why you totally think it's da best. Have a good day.

[Aristai1723]

To be fair I can only compare BFA to expansions I played equally casually. Legion and MoP. Legion had awesome dungeons, story, single player content. Suramar was amazing. Immersion was there. BFA just can't compete. MoP had a goofy setting but some really good raids so that's a more apt comparison. It also had no clearly defined baddy and a tentacle ending. Gameplay was more fluid though, so worst out of three.

[Relapses]

You use "dae". Jesus christ how old are you.

This thread is exactly what it says it is. A review thread of honest opinions. Evidently all 8 people who clicked saying it was a good expansion can't even justify or back up why. It's all the usual defenders too.

There's 8 pages of people telling you why they think it sucks. Maybe have a good read. Or tell us why you totally think it's da best. Have a good day.

Why should anybody have to justify their fucking opinion? And who are you to tell anybody else that said justification is or isn't valid?

And sorry dude, I'm tired of the negativity echo chambers. There isn't any productive discussion to be had when it's just people quoting each other and going, "YEAH THAT FEATURE SUCKED." It's just people seeking empty, meaningless platitudes and validation of their oh-so-fucking-original opinion that BfA is the worst expansion ever.

[Malikath]

One of the worst. Warlords of Snoremore still deserves the title King Turd of Shit Mountain. BFA has to settle for Prince Plop.

i don't know, i played both and it's kinda hard to tell which is worse.
Both kinda fucked alts and players in general by controlling player activity with mandatory power progression.

[Knaar]

First time since Lich King's days that i unsubbed from wow and that was maybe 3 months after 8.0. No regrets what so ever!

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

The only thing keeping it from claiming the title of worst is it kept World Quests from Legion. The story was all over the board, none of the plotlines resolved satisfactorily, any consequence of what we did is almost certainly on pause until 10.0, the twin continent system was a big L, Islands were irrelevant, Warfronts should have been PvP world events, 8.3 was clearly half-assed, and Azerite.

About the only good thing to come of BFA is Allied Races. And that's purely as a system, because goodness knows the actual races were pretty meh overall.



Kinda a side point, but I think it's clear at this point that WoW's leadership is not fit for the kind of game WoW needs to be. They're good devs, but WoW needs to get back on the train of big open world RPG experiences. They're in vogue again thanks to Witcher, Skyrim, and Zelda. Transfer Ion & Company to work on the new Destiny ripoff we all know Activision is pining for now that Bungie went independent.

[Kyphael]

Allied races were the highlight for me. Kept me subbed, really, I'm a huge alt-holic.
Leveling experience was top notch, one of the best ever. Hat's off for Kul'tiras and Zandalar, great zones that took me a long time to get tired of, especially Drustvar, Nazmir, and Vol'dun. Blood Trolls, Kul'tirans, Bwosambi, Jaina's Daughter of the Sea stories were all greatly done and kept me interested. Fucking dinosaurs everywhere! Loved Zuldazar.

Raids were all right, I just do LFR. Didn't seem awful or great.
Dungeons were meh to be honest. Normally, dungeons are like my favorite thing in an expansion, but they didn't stand out to me, not one bit.
Features aside from AR's were forgettable. I didn't do a single Warfront or set foot in a single Island Expedition aside from the introductory one.
The latter patches were boring and uninspired. Mechagon was marginally fun. Visions of N'zoth, so far I've spent more time creating more Vulpera and Mechagnome alts and unlocking the Goblin and Worgen heritage armors, I have no interest in doing the actual visions, getting corrupted gear, or the legendary cloak. I just don't. I don't care about Wrathion, or Magni, or saving Azeroth.

Now... for the main stories and faction war.
That Faction War was the single biggest red herring piece of shit main plot line I have seen in WoW, and that's no easy feat. I mean, we've seen Deathwing scream for three years flying over Azeroth's skies, and we saw Grom go full retard only to have a hero's celebration, but that Faction War was irredeemable. Not a single fucking character came out looking good on the other side. Anduin proved himself a weak and incompetent leader. Baine was turned into a pathetic, traitorous joke. Varok Saurfang was nearly ruined, and only wasn't because he died on his own terms Malfurion and the Night Elves reached new levels of impotence. Tyrande did a whole bunch of screeching and went absolutely nowhere. And Sylvanas...? She was everywhere. She became a caricature of herself, her new secret, poorly woven plans bearing absolutely no bearing in the expansion of which she was the most prominently featured antagonist. She literally occupied 90% of screen time, snatching it away from Azshara and N'zoth mind you, only to throw a tantrum, and go kthnxbai, see you in Shadowlands. Are you fucking kidding me? Azshara is treated as second fiddle (don't even get me started on how lifeless and boring her zone was...) and N'zoth is dealt with in the most anti-climatic final patch I've witnessed (I wasn't subbed for WoD.)

BfA felt so much like WoD in the manner they were just setting up the following expansion, the only difference is they didn't abandon BfA mid-patch. More like it seems they abandoned it halfway into 8.3 development and shelved 8.3.5 to rush Shadowlands out. Shame, really, BfA had a lot going for it. I was happy with content output pacing, I was never really bored. Just so many bad creative decisions with the story, depressing really, character assassinations and just bad writing on the main story for no good reason than setting up what comes next, instead of making what you're doing now the best it can be.

[Morae]

At first, I was hopeful. This was before bfa release and right after its release.

The questing and zones where generally speaking ... acceptable. Just too much. Neverending stormsong...

Then game the rep grinds. Azerite. Islands are trash. Endless wq's.
I, unlike most, actually liked warfronts at first. That wore off somewhere along when I grinded each warfront with all of my multiple alts to collect the transmogs.
Storylines were not that good. Its mostly horde stuff anyway, which I did find to be better than alliance side once I leveled my horde alts. Alliance never had really reason to do anything until dazar'alor. Literally we just went to uldir, just because. Uldir was the last raid in went to so I can't say anything about the rest.
Uldir was lower mid quality raid. It wasnt terrible, but was generally unfun.

Generally speaking, it feels to me that bfa boils down to series of unfun grinds. Grind ap. Grind rep. Another patch, grind some more rep, grind this and that. You gotta do it on all of your alts separate if you want to make them relevant! Grind some more!

I have my stuff that keeps me playing, but none of it is any relevant end game content. Everything is trash at end game. Not worth my time.

I voted second worst option. BfA did have some good parts, but expansion is really "not good".

Also... all the horde favoritism! You can agree or disagree about this, but having played all classes to max lvl on both sides and done all of the storylines on both sides at least once, horde clearly has better quality stuff. From small minor things like own voice lines for random quests, while alliance gets recycled voice line repeated everywhere to larger things like reward quality, better zones (except the pyramid). Storyline is all horde. Horde. Horde. Horde.

[SinR]

I rank it up there with WoD.

Storywise its like the writers didn't know who to focus on, so they flipped Danuser's Coin and it came up Sylvanas (Spoiler, its a double Sylvanas coin). So they shoved THE FOURTH WAR down our throats and once it was over, its like "oh yeah, Nzoth. Uhh... what do we wanna do for this?"

[TheRainman]

The results of this survey are extremely predictable. Ask the same again in two years. Everything will change. Exactly like WoD.

The fuck are you talking about? WoD is still considered by many to be the worst expansion, and by others as one of the worst. It got and still gets very little praise.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

The fuck are you talking about? WoD is still considered by many to be the worst expansion, and by others as one of the worst. It got and still gets very little praise.

I mean I'll point you to the thread "Was there really a lack of content in WoD."

May take longer than the normal 3 years, but even WoD is fading into a fond memory.

[Soon-TM]

I didn't play MoP at all, neither I played WoD until the tail end. With that caveat, I'm going to say that BfA is imo one of the worst xpacs. Let's see:

• Classes are boring as all !@#$. Not that they were great in Legion, but at least they had OP artifacts, tier sets and NLC propping them up. In BfA, the two former have been simply removed, and a gaping hole has been left in the gameplay of a lot of classes/specs, except those which were specifically revamped to make up for the removal of artifacts (fury warr, surv hunter, demo warlock) - but that's something that should have been done with all specs. Add to that stupid !@#$ like e.g. turning SWD into a talent, and you have the rubbish gameplay of BfA.
• Story is another major dud. Honestly, I can't fathom why could have anyone thought that a MoP 2.0: Morally Grey Edition was going to be a good idea. Besides, AvH stories tend to be hugely divisive and are bound to piss off at least half of your customers, unless penned by an exceptional writer - something clearly missing in the story department. In BfA's case, they managed to piss EVERYONE off, Hordies and Allies alike (except the handful of Anduin shills, I guess). And I'd rather not talk about the disastrous way they've handled N'Zoth.
• Systems are meh at best. We got a bland necklace instead of those fancy artifacts because the latter were supposedly (and they actually were, until 7.2) too alt-unfriendly. Fast forward to 8.2 and especially 8.3, and we have some of the least alt-friendly patches ever. The Essences system, while well-intentioned, has become a massive hurdle for alts, to the point that it becomes, well, pointless to reach 120, unless you want to turn that toon into your new main. The specific features of BfA, aka Islands and Warfronts, are a major flop as well.
• Art is the one saving grace of BfA. Allied Races look fine (except NB, whose models are REALLY ugly), landscapes are stunningly beautiful, and music, while not my favourite, is still spot on in many zones (gotta love the Drustvar and Tiragarde themes). Too bad that a nice package can only carry so many design mistakes.

Conclusion: assuming that N'yalotha is an awesome raid, I will give BfA a 3/10 overall. There was a remarkable effort put into it, at least until 8.2, but it was entirely misplaced and built on premises that have proved to be at least partially flawed.

[Dakara]

In an expansion that is incredibly punishing to re-roll, I've re-rolled more than any previous expansion.

[TheCookieGod]

The phrase that comes to mind with BFA as a whole is: wasted potential.

The faction war COULD have been fun and an enjoyable story. Say what you will about the War of Thorns but it had actual consequences in the loss of two capital cities, something that has been lacking in WoW since its inception, really. I love seeing the world changed and be impacted by the story and things having actual consequences. With a few tweaks to the narrative (mostly in Sylvanas' motivations and not making the Horde bad-good guys for lulz again) and a proper focus on the war instead of abandoning it after 8.1, it could have been really good.

N'Zoth and Nyalotha COULD have been amazing. What we have with the visions and the assaults I think is really cool and it makes me want MORE. If we'd gotten what we have AND a proper Nyalotha zone akin to Argus, this would be incredible. I don't think N'Zoth needed an entire expansion. Fleshing out Azshara and her connection/alliance with N'Zoth as an expansion started and N'Zoth still being the patch end-boss could have worked out well.

Azerite traits and the Heart had some good ideas and godawful implementation that they've been trying to bandaid since launch but the core concept was neat and just wasted on poor execution.

BFA could have been so much more, but here we are. Probably my least favorite expansion of all. WoD may not have had content, but it was at least fun to play what WAS there because class design wasn't utter garbage.

[Seylene]

Well it started utterly insultingly horrible but they kept saying "Trust us." And against better judgment we did they kept at it and it got worse and worse. Azerite was completely half assed and boring. The Jaina story and parts of Draz'alor were quite good and gave a glimpse of what could have been. But overall everything was dropped and unfulfilled strung together and left wasted. So the sad part is BfA is pretty much on the bottom of the trash heap right alongside WoD.

[Kithelle]

I'd say mediocre, not as bored with it as I was WoD but definitely not as happy as other expansions either.