It wasn’t better. It was just more content.
8.2 was good though. Horrible for alt progression, but fun for a single character. If 9.2 ends up being garbage, then we can talk about BFA being better. Until then, we’ll see.
BfA was a masterpiece compared to this. There were a lot of bad things, but there were also good ones (zones, quests, wqs, even side quests, music, etc), while in SL almost everything is bad.
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Anyone who thinks it’s just nostalgia should go run through some BFA zones. Yes classes and dungeon mechanics are better in SL. But it’s the setting, music, characters etc. that define an expansion.
Both currently AWOL… you may still get your wish.
Unless they have N’Zoth turn rogue against the Void Lords and side with us because he regards us as his “children” due to the curse of flesh and him manipulating us and basically “leading” us with all that stuff happened given he also never intended to flat out Mind control us (or any of his people given they all followed him willingly) i dont see this happening. He will be reduced to another tier boss during the void xpac. Same with Azshara. The latter probably being part of the tier as to get her “revenge”.
Game content & reward loop follows the same format save for a few tweaks.
We get new fancy expansion system, the new variation of content X, the new unchallenging world & story content etc.
Blizz has tried to recreate the Legion formula for two xpacks now.
Where legion Legos were a rng nightmare and had fixed stats we now can cherry pick what we want
Instead of having an abysmall chance of getting your BIS gear (or even a specific piece of gear with the right upgrades) from a given content we now only have to wonder about tercery stats.
Instead of having a time consuming daily grind for a hamster wheel like system we now have two short weekly quests to be optimal in term of progression.
BFA had a terrible power bloat with systems on top of other systems which led to absolutely crazy situation. We currently have none of that and they stated they wouldn’t repeat that experience back at Blizzcon 2020 iirc
In 8.0 you were stucked in your spec for a while as you had to regrind AP to re-unlock your azerite traits and you had to earn the right azerite set for each spec as they only had two main rings & often didn’t fit multiple specs.
PvP gearing relied almost exclusively on your weekly chest, had ilvl scaling issues where a character in green gear could destroy glads, was greatly impacted by pve trinkets & drops & was an absolute clown fiesta with corruption. In 9.0 PvP vendors were the most efficient way to gear especially in RBGs.
So yeah they improved a lot of issues BFA faced.
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In a single expansion that was supposed to be based around horde vs alliance they wasted both N’zoth and Azshara in 2 patches.
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Tottaly agree OP, any other expansion is better than Shadowlands. Both because of quality of content AND lack of content. There’s choregast, there’s no mount riding in the maw, too many borrowed systems, too many restrictions with covenants, no customization despite leading us to believe otherwise. No new races and no new classes. Yea sure the raid was good. Some dunges were good too. And, uhm. That was it.
Ahahaha. Yeah, if you liked being gated behind azerite, rep grinds, honor grinds etc.
BFA SUCKED.
False, I’ve been able to mount in the maw since January.
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Do most people really think Nathria is a good raid? The mechanics to me are just tedious and frustrating, not fun, and I feel relief once a fight is finally over instead of enjoyment. I feel no desire to go back in there whereas I kept going back to Nyalotha until the end of 8.3 even when I didn’t need loot because the fights were fun. I mean just compare how epic Carapace was with the mole-whacking nightmare of SLG.
I do not know about the complete experience , but levelling in BFA is very much more fun than levelling in Shadowlands… IMO
No titanforging, no azerite powers (altho having to recraft legendaries comes disgustingly close to the issue with azerite powers), no corruption.
Transmog for both slands and bfa imo are poor because not enough fantasies are being ticked off since they’ve moved away from class sets
It is problematic that what makes shadowlands better then bfa is mostly about what it doesn’t have but that doesn’t change that sl is better to me
Nah, BfA was the worst expansion by far. I’d rather play 2 years of SL than 2 months of BfA.
We have plenty of famous lore characters now?
Uther
Draka
Kael’thas
Jaina
the Mograines…
And the SL story quests were pretty good…
I wouldn’t say it was much better, but it does seem like when Blizzard heard us say “it can’t be worse than BfA”, they took it as a challenge.
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You are comparing x-pac release patch vs full x-pac. The only problem 9.0 has - it was way to long and 9.1 was overdue by like 4 months. Once we are 9.3, then we can compare things.
i never liked the timegated war campaign it was horrible
but
I really liked BFA story in ZONES when you leveled UP it was fun it felt like warcraft
and the zones were much better then Shadowlands now
maybe because i’m really fan of zandalari culture in game but even kul tiras and boralus was awesome
shadowlands on the other hand the only thing i like was bwomsamdi story in ardenwald but all other covenant story quests are just annoying and not fun at all.
I feel like im in simulation when im in shadowlands like it’s not even REAL.
Most of the things OP listed just come down to personal aesthetic preferences. If you are into Alliance theme/epic loud music a-la Stormwind/lovely green zones with farmsteads, then of course BFA would feel much better than SL for you.
Gameplay-wise BFA was a lot worse, at least for me. Maybe it is because I enjoy raiding, and in Bfa you needed to farm a lot of stuff to do good numbers (essences, cloak, corruptions, neck levels, magni rep at the start, benthic gear lottery for EP raid, etc). It made me give up on several raid tiers and obviously ignore alts.
I think SL sets are great (both tier CN and tier SoD), lots of great mounts, venthyr and nf have really nice music. Bfa also had great mounts, sets (at least for Horde) were mostly meh, only forsaken themed one seems decent. Nazjatar elf music was really lovely)
Story-wise I’d say that Horde war campaign is my least favorite story piece in the entire game, even “Draenor is free!” was better. Alliance side felt a bit better, Jaina part was really nice. Horde levelling was also not enjoyable for me, I eventually levelled my alts in timewalking. SL levelling is also underwhelming, especially Bastion part, it is insanely boring. Threads of fate levelling is a good idea, but it should have more options.
As for dungeons, Bfa ones were definitely better visually and thematically (Atal, Freehold, Waycrest, for example), but I enjoy SL ones as m+ a lot more. They go better with my class and are much easier to navigate.
It is hard to compare raids, but I really love Castle Nathria and it is miles ahead of Uldir. Sire is a great and charismatic villain and end boss)
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You can see this as a strength of the design however. It’s the afterlife - it’s not meant to feel like the living world, or familiar.
The idea is we;'re completely alien entities in this new dimension (in a way), so if the whole thing feels very “surreal, and not quite reality” then you could easily argue that blizzard have “nailed it”. (I’m not saying this is my PoV, although I do think people give SL’s zone premises unfair flack for not being “Azerothy” enough)
I am actually quite glad the zones themselves aren’t just “Elwynn forest with ghosts” and feel a bit abstract with their colour schemes and depictions in places. I mean I will criticise the zones (for their physical design and layout, which is hugely contrived) but the actual premise of them is fair enough to me.
Same for Oribos. I get a lot of people hate Oribos. It’s not meant to be a city in the same respect as Stormwind or Dalaran. It’s literally an airport for the residents of the Shadowlands. The fact it feels like a glorified visitor’s centre in this respect actually works in it’s favour imo. This said I still hate the whole portal in portal out system for massively increasing downtime on getting anywhere!
Do you remember legion legendary ring for paladin? do you remember what that RING was doing? it was giving you free TALENT so it completely changed your gameplay
now in shadowlands there are interesting legendaries but many of them are like meeeh because they don’t do anything special like resto shaman riptide legendary
it’s cool to have it
but is not changing anything like that Ring in Legion
it’s good to have stats you want but as i said many of those legendaries are trash and only few are bis
but legion had more variety in it like you could use RING for paladin and you could use Cloak or shoulders ? there was more options to pick right now you have like 2 xD