Simple, I quit the game before I got exposed to the Corruption system, so I don't really have an opinion on it. From the little I've bothered to gather, it was an unbalanced mess of yet another borrowed power system, desperately trying to hold on to players by dumping massive short-term power gains and hope that keeps players hooked.
The less I remember about BFA, the better.
Last edited by MasterHamster; 2022-05-12 at 12:52 PM.
Active WoW player Jan 2006 - Aug 2020
Occasional WoW Classic Andy since.
Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
But at least I can casually play Classic and remember when MMORPGs were good.
Systems upon systems upon systems filling combat with proc-based effects that almost made class choice irrelevant. Azerite powers were poorly balanced and spent the entire expansion being iterated upon, only for them to release Corruptions which were even worse. Poor storytelling. Really disappointing expansion features like Warfronts that people thought were going to be cool and just kind of ended up being a dull grind, not even continued throughout the expansion. PvE Island expeditions had a shoehorned competitive element that pretty much nobody liked yet Blizzard kept in for some odd reason. Uldir was a bland and forgettable first tier with a lot of mechanics that were just frustrating or obnoxious to deal with. Allied races were a cool idea that was executed poorly and given really bland options like mechagnomes and highmountain tauren which nobody plays and fewer people asked for.
BfA was the expansion of letdowns. It wasn't completely horrible but it had a lot of cool ideas in both the story and gameplay that were mishandled.
Forest fires do not start with healthy trees, they usually start in dry underbrush, gaining momentum until they have enough energy to incinerate trees in seconds.
They could have made the burning of Teldrassil work, but when neither Archimonde's death throes nor the freaking firelord himself could burn another world tree, then how is burning a seaborne world tree remotely consistent with the rest of the world and its stories?
Don't get me wrong; they could have made it work.
They just neglected to do so.
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The left one remotely resembles a real hyena though, the right one looks reminiscent of a pastry.
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.
There were lots of problems in the beginning, especially with azerite gear. also people didn't like grinding for azerite power.
i thought it was decent, the raids were awesome (especially BoD and EP). and nazjatar was a beautiful zone
Just making a joke! You are right, of course. Personally I always thought it was something like, the corruption that the previous Archdruid, Fandral Staghelm, started and added to the tree, but then I remembered that it got cleansed in a book when the tree got re-blessed by some of the Aspects. I honestly thought they were gonna say something like, "Oh, they were Azerite-powered catapulpts" or something to explain it, but they never did...
Ah, sorry, can't be sure in written words.
Yeah, azerite seemed fairly logical, but even then that stuff seems more about a bigget boom and less about fire. But as you say: They didn't try even that little.
Your joke is right in that they just went with a sort of Pokémon-logic that grass=plant=tree means fire is supereffective.
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.
Legion was pretty fucking awful in the first few patches, as was BFA. Point?
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Pretty sure the tree burned, so they made it work.
Are we gonna argue about nature logics in a game with cows that can turn into cats, bears, and so on?
Hi
Yes, yes we are.
Fiction that is inconsistent with itself is simply a textbook example of poor storytelling.
Conflating that with confusing fantasy logic and real world logic is either dishonest argumentation on your part, or an illustration of plain stupidity.
And the latter is no exaggeration, as it would illustrate that you do not understand even the most basic level of what a "story" entails.
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.
It really wasn't as bad as people claim if you look back on it, however it had a doozy of a launch which likely taints the rest of the expansion.
Azerite was balanced incredibly poorly at the launch of the game and it's acquisition method was terrible. The entire dust thing to buy Azerite wasn't implemented until later, and having to regrind rings in each patch felt really bad in a world where AP was scarce, essentially forcing you to do island expeditions which weren't well received either. Islands were eventually 'fixed' at least from the cosmetic standpoint later in the expansion, but for those that don't chase cosmetics anyway, it still felt like a dead feature. Warfronts sounded cool on paper, but were pretty bad and also lagged like crazy. Warfronts were something you really couldn't lose and the cycling process of the event likely turned loads of people off, as you couldn't engage with the the feature when you wanted, and instead had to wait for it to cycle through the stages.
So you have an expansion launch where they took away a lot of the major talents, legendary items and abilities from Legion, thus making your character feel really awful instead of better during the leveling process. Met with features that were obviously not finished and systems that people didn't really like at all. It also became apparent to the majority of the population that a lot of feedback was either being ignored completely, or being held back from implementation until a later date to string people on. Thus a cycle of systems being broken until the end of an expansion, or half way through a major patch before being corrected to actual fun 'levels' began.
Take the previous criticism with a grain of salt though because a lot of people like to totally ignore the fact that Legion began this trend and arguably did it way worse. AP grinds in legion were awful, TF grinding was awful, legendary acquisition was awful. Legion obfuscated all of this shit from being taken seriously because it was the first time features like M+ were introduced and people were oblivious to how bad systems like AP actually were until it was too late. If you actually sat down and did a retrospective of Legion, it was pretty bad. There is nothing fun about having to grind out legendary items and AP for the SAME CLASS BUT DIFFERENT ROLE.
Not saying Legion was awful but all 3 expansions including SLands have similar design philosophy. Legion and BFA both have a lot of actual content, but piss poor systems to which Legion gets a pass by the community (generally) because it was the first one to implement such a feature. Which is slightly fair IMO because you're suppose to learn from your mistakes, scrap piss poor ideas or at least make them better.
Looking back most of the BFA raids were really good, the areas were cool and I personally liked aspects of the story minus the forced narrative around the War. The Saurfang stuff I thought was really cool, but it doesn't save an expansion. Essences and Corruption were really fun systems, ruined by how they were implemented (initial grind for essences and lack of a fixed vendor for corruption, and corruptions overall launch implementation). Once setup though, I doubt people could deny how fun characters felt to play at the end of BFA because I certainly had fun.
That's the thing though that taints BFA though. Everything wasn't fun until half way through a patch cycle for every single patch, and the launch patch just wasn't fun, nor were the expansion features. M+ was still fun (at least to me, although I'd argue dungeon design suffered a bit). Basically more of the same design as Legion, and people wanted advancement in the game, not repeated and arguably less fun features depending on who you ask.
Also as a general rule everyone always hates on the current expansion and likes to look back thinking things in the past weren't so bad lol. When 10.0 comes out I'm sure there will be some people claiming that Shadowlands wasn't that bad either, sort of like you have people who unironically post about how Warfronts and Island Expeditions were actually fun (to each their own).
Last edited by Tojara; 2022-05-12 at 02:17 PM.
It was the xpac where borrowed power and RNG truly got out of hand:
- Azerite gear and traits
- Essences
- Warforged and the insane Titanforged procs
- Corruptions
BfA was also very alt unfriendly. Grinding Essences from scratch for every character was horrible. They did make them purchasable for the new currency if you already had it unlocked on one character, but that was very late into the expansion. They should've been account wide from the get go.
Last edited by Eace; 2022-05-12 at 02:29 PM.
"We don't care what people say, we know the truth. Enough is enough with this horse s***. I am not a freak, I was born with my free gun. Don't tell me I'm less than my freedom."
BFA was not good.
1) The Azerite armor, especially on release was really really bland and disappointing. The abilities within the armor for most classes / specs was generic, boring, and not that impactful. New pieces of gear needed to be leveled up over and over again to retain the same traits...
2) World Quests were alright, but they got really old after 3 months. It was more and more of the same.
3) New expansion with no new talents or abilities; except, we lost our awesome Artifact weapons and all of their traits. Our gameplay was "simplified" and dumbed down even more.
4) The initial raid had a cool concept... but it was too small. Like how did these raid bosses get into their boss rooms with the super small doors?! I'm still confused...
5) Leveling Azerite was a grind, boring, and not impactful. Not only that, but there was no point in leveling, because the catch up mechanics make me feel like I'm wasting my time.
6) Class and spec gameplay was at it's worst. Everything was so homogenized and bland it was not fun
7) Grinding meant I could not create an alt and have a full time job + a wife
8) "Big Bads" were defeated within a patch and felt super rushed. N'zoth and Azshara downed in 1 patch a piece? Should have used a full expansion to lead up to them.
9) Too many raid mechanics. It just stopped being fun BFA onward. I really miss 1 or 2 mechanics + raid DPS / Heal checks. Addons are just too much imo.
10) Warfronts were an awesome concept, but they were PVE only, which was a bad idea. PVP would have been so much fun.
11) World PVP was great, but the rewards were terribad. Literally motivated nobody to play World PVP.
12) Where are the rest of the Heritage armor sets? (Still waiting)
13) No tier sets... so I really had nothing cool to loot off bosses... except +1 agility and +2 crit (...so boring)
14) Mythic+ was fun when I could go crazy with AoE DPS tied to the Artifact weapon... that "kinda" was dumbed down in BFA
15) Weekly M+ chest NEVER gave me anything good. Tuesdays were always a disappointment and made me question why I wasted my time grinding for a *chance* at a good reward
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The left one is more realistic, thus better
Last edited by Aedruid; 2022-05-12 at 02:51 PM.