Remembering the BFA dumpster fire start to finish.

[Anderson]

With the release of the SL drop date and prepatch hopefully arriving in less than a month please in the replies let me know how BFA helped taint the last 2 years of your lives. (to those people who began in BFA/Legion that are going to tell me if you dont like it dont play, this game has been a part of my life since the 5th grade and I don't like seeing something i love treated so horribly. So if you guys could just go run some more visions to actually make your character perform worse with sockets that would be for the best<3 )

First we have to acknowledge that WONDERFUL launch of BFA. I play on Area 52 myself and let me tell you was I livid that all I could do was watch people literally finishing leveling toons before blizzard implemented a patch at the end of the first and arguably the most nostalgic day of an expansion. I personally love to PvP its what I fell in love with 12 years ago with WoW and it broke my heart watching blizzard literally brush off whatever the community had to say. After the original blizzcon for almost all intents and purposes the devs abandoned PvP and only fixed the issues that made viewing it on twitch for the AWC was a little less mind numbing but not by much. We also cannot forget when they lead players to believe that we would be crowd funding along with blizzard's minimum amount promice to support the AWC and MDI and not just lining blizzards pockets and helping them not have to pay much for either tournament. That move was disgusting and greedy but completely in line with what i've come to expect personally. Im sure those of you reading this probably watch the MDI/AWC so I shouldn't need to discuss the horrible lack of class diversity at the top tier of game play in either "E-sport".

We where told at the end of legion that they ended production early in order to make BFA an A+ expansion but we got..well we got shit and there is no other way to put it. I hope that we aren't being fed the same lie with SL but over the past 5 years im sure we have all learned to take what comes out of their marketing teams mouths with a grain of salt.

[MrLachyG]

the tone of the expansion was set for me as I finished levelling in Nazmir. I had managed to get beta access and had levelled throughout all the zones and found them quite enjoyable but Nazmir was my favourite. however there was a bug right at the end which basically removed the final cinematic of the questline (firing a weapon at Taloc and he fell through the floor) and just had a blood red sky instead. now I reported that bug, as I am sure most other people did as well; however not only was nothing done as when I quested through on live the bug was still there but it took at least a few months to fix.

[goldlock]

Honestly bfa had decent content spoiled by terrible progressions systems.

[Zogarth]

Honestly bfa had decent content spoiled by terrible progressions systems.

I think this sums up half of the recent expansions. Legion had shit legendaries and unbalanced artifacts at launch, and BFA had... well, too many things to bother talking about.

Funny how WoD was the exact opposite. I only raided back then, and can say with full honesty that it was the best expansion for me since TBC. Too bad there was nothing else to do.

[Powerogue]

Well I made the positivity thread (https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...itivity-Thread) so we might as well have an inverse, as if we needed another.

All my gripes were mechanical, except two, being my horde pandaren giving Sylvanas the dagger being the single biggest idiot ball moment of the game's entire history, and N'zoth's defeat not addressing the sword problem. Don't like those. The rest of the expansion's story and visual/audio design I am one of the only celebrators of, and I'd put it at second only to Legion.

But the mechanics, oh boy. Azerite armor is possibly the worst thing they've ever designed. Every upgrade isn't an "upgrade" so much as "maybe possibly an upgrade...if I level up another 20 azerite levels...and the perks are good...but usually you get strong dps perks but worthless survival ring perks, then the mobs scale to your higher level so the azerite gear makes you weaker, rant rant rant. Nothing good came of it.

Island expeditions were a neat idea but I felt no motivation to try the harder versions when the main reward was most easily done by just queuing for heroics and breezing through them with no effort. Boring.

Warfronts were literally so undertuned it took a dedicated raid group with everyone doing their part to lose. (It HAS been done!) Heroic warfronts were OK though. They are what warfronts should've been from the get-go. I like the armor appearances though, top tier. Customizable detail levels that still match needs to be a thing on more gear.

Corruptions. All the weaknesses of titanforging with RNGesus with none of the strengths where you'd gradually build up ilevel to get past stupid player-created barriers of "you need the ilevel of the content to do the content." And even though I don't pvp, it completely broke pvp. What were they thinking with this one? Yet the worst part, and this is super petty, is that the purple goop all over me ruined my transmogs. Unforgivable 0/10.

[Deferionus]

I am curious what expansion you started to play in. WoW PvP has had some positive times, but by far and large their devs have neglected PvP and it has truly shown in the game. BC and Cataclysm were the best PvP experiences I personally had with WoW, but you have to keep in mind I did not play much in MoP or WoD. WOTLK the damage was too busty until season 8. Vanilla engineering made it a shit experience, plus the fact the gearing system is tied to convincing your parents to allow you to live in their basement or paying a Chinese farmer to farm honor for you. What little I did do in MoP I don't remember being bad, and then the prune in WoD started the downward spiral of class design.

My advice: If you want to play a PvP game there are much better out there. League of Legends if my go to for that niche these days. WoW is good for completionist types and PvE. It offerse a good theme park for people who likes the Warcraft universe. It does not offer good PvP. I used to be someone who defended WoW, but I haven't been able to do that in what is approaching a decade, and that is solely due to how Blizzard designs and treats it.

Far as BfA it probably gets more hate than it should. Legion was far superior, and BfA had the displeasure of following a far better expansion. There were tons of things to do. The downsides to BfA I think were forcing players to do content they had no interest in and the Azerite/Corruption systems. Class design as a whole was bad as well, and when you have these 3 systems tied into literally everything you do it is going to make for a bad expac. Outside of that they did positives with world content, solid raids, interesting dungeons... they just need to get rid of this current class design theory they are using every expansion now because it is not a good long term strategy.

[Miyagie]

Azerite system was bad but not as bad as the Legendary System and the 3 Runes you had to farm later.
Raids and Dungeons were good, i just hated the mini Raid and 3 Dungeons.
I liked in Legion that you got from the start good stats and later they nerfed the stats a bit, that was missing in BFA since for a year most specs were terrible and boring to play.
I still would rank BfA over WoD and close to Wotlk and Cata.

[Relapses]

Oh hey, another anti-BfA circlejerk. I'm sure this will be full of refreshing hot takes like, "Azerite sucked" and "Corruption is the worst system ever made." Maybe we can sprinkle in a little bit of "what the fuck are Essences" and, oh, no anti-BfA thread would be complete without a totally new and exciting rebuke of Island Expeditions and Warfronts.

Thanks for giving us yet another place to air our grievances friend. I eagerly look forward to the earth-shattering revelations this thread will surely provide us.

[McNeil]

Most dissapointing part for me is how warfronts turned out. As someone who loved playing the RTS games I always liked the idea of experiencing a strategically battle with 39 other players and having to take down your enemy base. Westwood also tried this by making C&C: Renegade as a shooter which has the objectives of a RTS, having to take down your enemy buildings so they will lose their benefits like buying better soldiers or collecting more money. Its also why I always liked Alterac Valley because its pretty close to how I envision a proper AvH war, as long as its not just a zergfest. Maybe they should've given this a PvP option, but I do like the PvE aspect aswell if only it didn't turn out to be another boring zergfest.

Island expeditions didn't excite me as much once I heard that it was never going to be an actual expedition. I would have loved if these islands were part of the main world and if we had another feature where we were able to own a boat and being able to customise it. Then have events happen where you can only reach these islands using your boat, do certain objectives and collect a lot of Azerite for doing so. It could also serve for a proper PvP experience in war mode, maybe even have a naval battle. So many ideas and we ended up with another zergfest

Allied races started out weak (we only got a lot of cheap reskins at the beginning) but it got so much better once the Zandalari and some others came along. Definately one of their better features which could be expanded upon in future expansions. I only think that all the grinds to unlock them is completely unnecesary.

BFA overall was not a good expansion. It felt like I was playing a beta up till 8.2 hen the game finally felt somewhat finished. I very much doubt that Shadowlands will feel finished either. 8.2 was a good patch at least, 8.3 not so much. Way to many issues and the devs refuse to listen to the players.

I guess I need to comment on the lore aswell which is just a mess. They wanted to do so many major arcs in just one expansion that they didn't give any of them a satisfying. I liked most stories in Zandalar and Kul'Tiras, but the expansion as a whole has about the same story quality as Game of Thrones season 8.... which is bad.

[Anderson]

So I began at the end of TBC i got to max in wrath but didnt play much outside of BG's and dungeons due to my parents (However that didnt stop me from watching countless hours of videos and reading as many game guides as I could.). It was around Mid cata when I got to seriously begin pouring my time into it and by MoP its been pretty much my main game ever since. To scratch my PVP itch that WoW has been unable to satiate for the past year ive turned to SMITE. But I long for the days of WoD (sheerly for class design) and before expansions Arena's especially MoP.

[Neforpubl]

Oh hey, another anti-BfA circlejerk. I'm sure this will be full of refreshing hot takes like, "Azerite sucked" and "Corruption is the worst system ever made." Maybe we can sprinkle in a little bit of "what the fuck are Essences" and, oh, no anti-BfA thread would be complete without a totally new and exciting rebuke of Island Expeditions and Warfronts.

Thanks for giving us yet another place to air our grievances friend. I eagerly look forward to the earth-shattering revelations this thread will surely provide us.

I am 100% convinced that you literally have nothing better to do but whine and put people down on these forums.
Looking back on all your posts, they are just talking trash to people and putting them down for having opinions or being slightly wrong.

You should see a psychologist or something dude.

[glowpipe]

"how BFA helped taint the last 2 years of your lives."

if something is "tainting" your life, you walk away from it. You do not keep playing a game you hate

[Cyz]

Why are you attacking him and looking at his post history? Then you suggest he needs a psychologist? You're post is the definition of an ad hominen attack....
The guy is just saying threads like these are purely opinions with recycled garbage reasons why BfA was a bad expansion. I liked BfA, the raids were good as always and I even played arena and got my highest rating this expac. So I enjoyed it.
But you have to attack him for rightly complaining about how these threads are really always just circle jerks about why you're all unsubscribed and the game is dogshit yet continually posting on a wow forum.

[rogoth]

"how BFA helped taint the last 2 years of your lives."

if something is "tainting" your life, you walk away from it. You do not keep playing a game you hate

that's exactly what i did, and in all honesty i should have done so sooner, this 'expansion' has been 1 big dumpster fire after another, the art team as usual carries the game, the sound design is great, and still like clockwork the mechanics and gameplay team drop the ball like it's made of lead literally everything that could be bad was bad and some things that worked fine previously got fucked over for the sake of 'building the future' it's infuriating when the dev team is so out of touch with the general playerbase.

[enigma77]

Bfa was just a massively inferior version of Legion.

In Legion you had Artifact weapons and Legendaries. In Bfa you had Azerite armor, which at the start only had one tier 1 trait row. And that was it. You had to grind ap for one silly trait.

Sure eventually they added Essences and Corruption, but that was only after half the expansion was already done and if you don't enjoy it at the beginning, well people quit.

On top of that class design was bad, dead talents went unchanged for an entire expansion and the loss of Artifacts and legendaries severely affected many specs.

I feel as if the expansion simply went live in an extremely unfinished state, much like Warlords before it.

If it had gone live with the Essences and post 8.1.5 Azerite armor, better talent balance/class design, it would have been a lot better, I think.

[callipygoustp]

I liked BFA. Plenty to do. Interesting, though at times a bit of a pain in the ass. But, yeah, in general: I liked BFA.

The only real issue I had: how unbalanced corruptions are/were. That has been more than a little ridiculous.

[A Chozo]

I liked it, 7.5/10

[Caerule]

The big downer for me was the plot. Blizz wrote it like a book. But with a book you do not need to wait 2 years in uncertainty before the trouble get resolved. I'm also not a fan of the Horde vs Alliance conflict at all. And it got pushed over my actually favorite foe of N'Zoth, who got to play second fiddle. And at the end of all that, the thing that caused it all, Sargeras' blade, is still right there.

[LemonDemonGirl]

the tone of the expansion was set for me as I finished levelling in Nazmir. I had managed to get beta access and had levelled throughout all the zones and found them quite enjoyable but Nazmir was my favourite. however there was a bug right at the end which basically removed the final cinematic of the questline (firing a weapon at Taloc and he fell through the floor) and just had a blood red sky instead. now I reported that bug, as I am sure most other people did as well; however not only was nothing done as when I quested through on live the bug was still there but it took at least a few months to fix.

Nazmir was/is one of the best zones in the game! I still love playing through it today.

I think if it weren't for the Zandalari, I think I'd hate BfA lol

[Kralljin]

Honestly bfa had decent content spoiled by terrible progressions systems.

Considering that the launch features were Warfronts and Island Expeditions, i disagree on the "decent content" thing.