BFA was just like legion - poor at start, perfect in the last patch.
BFA was just like legion - poor at start, perfect in the last patch.
That I agree with as well. The art style of BfA really gave sprang a whole bunch of life into the game. Sure there are some cutesy cartoony stuff, but none of that matters when you have places like Nazmir and Drustvar to counter balance that stuff out. Blood trolls riding these two legged beings with mouths encompassing their bodies, and Drust Witches stitching together living wickermen and creating zombies with pig and crow heads...
Gameplay makes it the worst.
In Legion, artifacts were borrowed power, but at least it was thematic and fitting to each spec.
Shadowlands covenant abilities are borrowed power, but most of them fit the classes and have synergy with the rest of the toolkit.
BfA systems like azerite, essences and corruptions are an absolute definiton of borrowed power. They were literally tackled on your spec via items.
- The story was bad and you needed to play both factions if you wanted to experience all the content (outside of raids/dungeons)
- The RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG was just bullshit
- Azerite was horrible, like holy shit that was the worst system ever added, Essences were nice but added pretty late
- Island Expeditions and Warfronts were just a borefest with nothing interesting
This, also quite a few classes were just playing terribly (not talking about dps results here); felt like they moronically kicked out their class design / gameplay team.
Ironically this could mean that BfA content will be a lit better going forward, as better class design might make old content actually fun.
Edit: Mind you that this does not mean that Shadowlands was in any way good.
This is a signature of an ailing giant, boundless in pride, wit and strength.
Yet also as humble as health and humor permit.
Furthermore, I consider that Carthage Slam must be destroyed.
Because it was a complete dumpster fire when it comes to story, lore, gameplay and systems. The shocking thing is that they managed to make something even worse with SL, because for every step in the right direction away from BfA, they made two backflips into it's cursed direction again with other design descisions.
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.
I much prefer BfA to SL. BfA was very ambitious, delivered a lot of content and had a lot of lore. I can see myself returning to those continents just to fly around and enjoy the landscape years from now. I don't see myself coming back to Shadowlands.
I have two main problems with BfA and that was Azerite gear working very poorly in 8.0 and the story being a dumpsterfire. The worst part is that it was abundantly clear how problematic Azerite was, the feedback was clear and constructive and entirely ignored.
Secondary issues include how bad the transition from 7.3 to 8.0 was powerwise, the change from the much friendlier M+ dungeons of Legion to the far more complex ones of BfA (and it did not help that seasonal affixes complicated things even further), the complete lack of iteration on Warfronts (a design with so much potential that was DoA because it was only available every other week and there was almost no reason to repeat it, also provided no challenge), the mismatched design of Islands (massive sandboxes filled with lore and unique encounters effectively ready for you to explore them that you were very much forced to speedrun because mechanically even if you had a group that wanted to fool around there was a hard timer to how long you could stay there). I'd also say Eternal Palace was a mediocre raid and Azshara probably the most frustrating endboss design in a long time (worse than KJ with it being problematic in ALL difficulties. LoS is awful).
Well, this is not actually true. I lost 2 times when many ppl were AFK. Its rly possible
But in fact BFA is good expansion. With decent raids, outworld events, and story. But azerite system were rly trash. And Islands played a bit too mach than expected. As best place to farm azerite.
- The story started spiralling out of control
- Islands were repetitive and boring, and queues for PvP islands were long. (Plus tanks were OP)
- Warfronts were unbearably easy, and had NO PvP OPTION.
- Daily quests were boring and repetitive, and seemingly neverending.
- I personally really disliked the Seething Shore battleground, it was very buggy and tried to imitate PUBG.
-On the other hand the zones looked/felt great, I loved Boralus and Zuldazar.
Overall my main gripe was the unending grind- you felt like you had to log on and do dailys, islands, warfronts etc. over and over and over.
Every day Magni screaming in my ear: "YE'V GOT TO SAVE AZEROTH, CHAMPION!!"
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
I liked the additional explanation Shadowlands gave us for the Scourge, and I love the re-retcon of the Dreadlords.
Also, I enjoy it that they "fucked basically every belief system" because that's what they are - religious crap that's prolly not real.
Shadowlands atleast gave us new lore to explore for the Warcraft setting - the only thing they failed was to give us a chronicle-like experience for it. Instead we only got vague hints and teasers because they caved into people wanting "mystery in the lore" again.
#TEAMGIRAFFE
Ok. Well, i don't think it was so bad, but there was a big problem with azerite and AP grinding as well as alt unfriendlyness. That was pretty frustrating. After that it was the nazjatar gear effects being better than regular raid gear and later random corruptions on gear in the last tier. Eventually it got sorted. There was also the war mode with extra rewards with unbalanced factions.
The story was also really bad and it was a waste of such a good villain such as Azshara and the Naga.
So, it wasn't good. But the setting itself i thought was good. I loved the new zones. I just think it would've been much better if the story had been focused on the Naga rather than the shoehorned faction war.
Last edited by Swnem; 2022-05-09 at 12:07 PM.
Mid patches were not cool as i remember. Story was awfull. Itemization with that powers were just crap and ofc azerite. In the last patch BFA was good tbh like all of expansions are the best in the last patch :P Corruptions were silly as fuck. I sold one belt with sick affix for 500k and it was normal raid item but the affix were OP.
Last edited by czarek; 2022-05-09 at 11:59 AM.
BfA relied on SL to deliver something, anything, that justified its story decisions; and as you can see, deliver it did not
I dunno, its my favorite expansion. I'm just as confused on why people hate it.
usually wow expansions work like this:
-put in finetuned and less effort required/less important systems of the old expansion. the way they handled WQs between legion/BFA/SL is the most obvious example. but also mission tables, those went from a major feature in WoD to basically being optional sidecontent in SL. legion > BFA also had the artifacts/legendaries > neck/azerite which was another watered down system.
-add in a few new features to make up the difference. in BFA this was islands expeditions and warfronts, both of which weren't received well at all. (and then torghast/maw in SL wasn't received very positively either, but not nearly as negatively as BFA)
-another problem thats more emphasized now that borrowed power is at its peak is that going from artifacts/legendaries with 2 years of dev time to fix issues to neck/azerite armor with major issues is a very rough transition for the player. you always go from strong to weak on a new expansion, but it's been particularly noticable in the last 2 expansions. which they now seem to be acknowledging with dragonflight.
Last edited by Hellobolis; 2022-05-09 at 12:07 PM.
Lot of systems were added that did nothing but add frustration and take away from the content. If bfa didn't have any alternative power I genuinely believe it would of been remembered rather fondly.
Instead its recalled as the grind stupid shit expansion and forcing players into content they didnt want to do.
Each to their own, but "additional" explanation certainly is not how i would phrase a retcon.
Considering you can literally call upon the Light / Spirits / whatever to do stuff for you, calling it religious crap "that's prolly not real" is pretty ignorant.
Last edited by Kralljin; 2022-05-09 at 12:08 PM.