You haven’t made a single argument or pointed out what BfA messed up compared to Legion.
I mean ad hominem being your starting point is always a good sign one can expect some serious lack actual arguments in the rest of the post, and you did not disappoint.
BfA doesn’t have to mess up the same way as Legion to be flawed and with faults.
Though I’d argue that Legion kept me occupied a lot more personally.
I am enjoying BFA, there is a lot to do at end game, more than in previous expansions have offered, I like islands in small doses, hope 8.1 will make them even better. Also I think warfronts are really fun, I look forward to them coming around each time, lost count how many times I have done them, it’s a lot more fun than waiting ages to get into a LFR group, and a great place to take alts of classes you don`t play much in group content to learn how to play them better. World quests are tried and tested and work, and dungeons are the same as in all expansions.
Hope 8.1 will improve on things, make levelling a bit easier/quicker, make islands more about explore/discover over rush/kill/mine, and the new warfront will give more choices and more flavour. Also looking forward to the new incursions which look great for some alt levelling.
I am enjoying BFA as much as I did Legion, maybe a little more with the addition of islands and warfronts thrown in.
It’s sad that expansions get worse by trying to improve the wrong things.
If they had kept
-the farm in MoP combined with the Legion shoulder enhancements
-the WoD profession system with the 3stage recipes from Legion
-The Legion Artifact system (how it was in the middle-end of Legion)
-WQs, but with reward for your chosen spec combined with rep from mobs like in WoD, and the extra rep reward of your choice from rnd hc like in MoP
-classes like they were in WoD with minor changes (or maybe just one spec every few months reworked if necessary)
They would had more developing time for other things.
How we got extra mats in MoP and Legion was pretty good. In the following expansions we got the garrison (unattractive to farm mats in the open world), and follower items (not worth creating)
Upgrading armour in WoD was a good idea, and an improvement over recipes you got in raids to craft raid armour. In Legion, with all the possibilities to get equip they could have just made armour HC raid niveau and the 2 and 3 star recipes obtainable like in WoD. Instead we got quests, and an upgrade system that wasn’t worth spending any mats on.
The perks in WoD were a good alternative to a new ability. And the Artifact system would have been much better, if we would have needed just 1/3 instead of 3/3 traits to skill further, and if it was one Artifact lvl for all specs. Instead we got a less diverse system, that brought a lot of new problems.
WQs were an improvement over dailies. Getting rep for the first rnd dungeon in a later patch of MoP was good, and getting rep from killing mobs was a good idea. But in WoD factions gave nothing really useful, in Legion the rewards where underwhelming when you reached exalted, and WQs were the only way for some factions to get reputation. In BfA even recipes are locked behind rep.
I think I don’t have to say much about the classes. It was okay in WoD, but in Legion they went to far by removing to many abilities and making far too many class changes. There still was a huge imbalance, and some specs were unplayable until later patches. Demo WL still has a lot of flaws even now after an expansion and 3 months in BfA.
They often fix things during expansions just to abandon it and bring in something new half-assed next expansion, combined with new half-assed content for which they didn’t have enough time.
Just look at M+ dungeons: they were a mess at the start of Legion. It got much better in the following patches. In BfA they wanted classes to bring something unique and dungeons trash to be more relevant/harder. And as result again affixes, timers, rewards, classes, and mob mechanics are unbalanced. Instead of keeping dungeons as they were (rather easy trash, that gets harder through affixes), and trying to work on classes weaknesses we now have classes that make dungeons runs much easier, a lot of classes with the same problems as before, and specs with new problems (especially tanks), and affixes that are extremely hard because the trash already is challenging without them.
Maybe if they would have continued doing dungeons like in Legion they would have had enough time to make island expeditions more enjoyable instead of 2 things that need a lot of changes to make them better.
But it’s the smallest expansion ever, over so quickly for me after 3 weeks (WTH did I pay all that money for 3 weeks) it used to take me months to go 10 levels and then a year or doing random stuff, never ran out of things to do - but there is nothing except old raids for me now. Must be me, raid seems so boring, dungeons same - why would anyone want to see those dungeons more than once lol
Too much RNG overall in the game IMO, little to “Work for”.
No carrot, only “Hint of carrot”.
To be quite fair if you played both you shouldn’t need someone to convince you of that, objectively BFA is legion with a lot of legion features removed or made less complex (and with that less engaging as a direct result)
Artifact power became Azerite power, this is a balanced deal
3 pvp talents vs 6 pvp talents, pvp customization slashed in half
Extra bonus abilities from relics, artifact weapons and legendaries replaced by azerite which feels lackluster
Locked into personal loot vs the option of choosing a different loot mode
PvP WQ’s vs hope you’ll see the opposite faction at a regular wq with warmode on
Island expeditions feel like it was a forced 3-man scenario, 3-man scenario’s have had a history of being unengaging and not challenging, with it being the main source of artifact power it felt like Blizz was trying to force the playerbase to finally accept 3-man scenario’s as a thing, something they’ve tried and failed at since Pandaria.
The fact that azerite rewards got upped by more then 100% in some cases like emmisery because ‘in practice there wasn’t enough azerite’ I’m guessing is mostly because way fewer people are running Island Expeditions then they expected, the expansion of the loot table on island expeditions also suggest this.
Imho the only thing it did right was remove stat templates from pvp, story potential (I really like it) and general aesthetics of the new zones
All I want now is the same treatment for pvp gear that pve has gotten, azerite gear on a token and chest cannot drop azerite
Have high hopes for 8.1 based on what I’ve read about its contents and changes and the game is still enjoyable, but the more objectives you complete (exalted with factions)
I also thought the expansion look ok til I past ilvl 340ish
Dude even your own nan wouldn’t read posts that long.
I think the problem with BfA is that, while it is a decent expansion on its own, Legion raised the bar really high for what players expect from World of Warcraft. It is a bar that will be difficult for any future expansion to live up to.
While BfA is certainly not as bad as the forums may lead you to believe, I think it is fair to say that it does leave some to be desired when you put it up against Legion. To players, that may make them believe it is the worst expansion.
Without Legion in the picture, and comparing it to Warlords of Draenor, you would be very hard pressed to believe that BfA is even close to as bad as that.
It’s not terrible, but… I’m not having much fun at the moment, I’m starting to feel that same burn out I had by the end of legion. Really need something more fun to do than this endless AP grind, probably why I’m back to playing other games now like diablo 2 and fallout 4
Guys you got it all wrong. Wow is not MMORPG but MMORNG
I like the expansion, but it exacerbated gross faction imbalances that represent a great danger to the future of the game, as it will affect the experience of all players.
We expected that they could delivere ONES again a solid product, like they did in past.
We are talking about a company that was nr.1 in the gaming industry and hopefully they want that throne back.
Sorry to say but I expect them to do much better than what they have done.
Lets go through your points one by one.
Azerite power>Artifact Power. AK is no automatic an gamewide with no cost or research time. All points go in a single item affecting all specs. Azerite is multispec and alt friendly than AP ever was before auto AK(even then you had toto grind for 75). Also keeping the numbers out of the billions is a nice minor design improvement. So no it’s not a balanced deal.
PvP talents there is 4 of not 3. Also one row was a boring generic filler row. As far as meaningful stuff you lost 1 extra talent choice in exchange for freely mixing and matching all available ones and using them in all forms of WPvP in warmode. Overall it is better than the Legion system.
Legion extra traits was a broken unbalancable system, any balanced incarnation should feel underwhelming compared to that. They consolidated Leggo design into the artifact progression, instead of having 4 different systems each affecting your power, Relics, Weapons, Leggos and Tier together were excessive and forced blizzard to balance classes around them. Not gonna repeat how bad early Legion was in leggo acquisition and AP farming trivialising the first raid tier. By design and balancability(most traits are actually in a fine place right now with very few insane outliers, and 8.1 is gonna smooth out that curve even more) Azerite gear has all of Legion’s beat, and the only thing Legion’s was better at was some of it’s BIGGEST problems, it is literally the same argument as FotM overpowered classes being nerfed into balanced status complaining how they feel worse.
Personal loot is not a BfA feature, but fair enough, to anyone who didn’t abuse it, it is a real and meaningful downgrade.
PvP WQs do not make sense in a post warmode setting as Blizzard does not like to design world content only accessible to PvE or PvP servers, and they were essentially designed to be viable in both and could be completed by solely taking part in PvE, that being said they are returning for 8.2. Also lets be honest most only care for them for the free honor they provided without actual PvP. I do not think it’s farfetched to think they though Warmode means every WQ is a PvP WQ if one opts in. But yes this is a thing that was taken away.
Expedition while not well liked are clearly popular to use l, queues are shorter than jumping into heroic dungeons in tank spec during active hours. While your role not mattering makes those queues quicker, the fact people are running them for azerite at least is undeniable. Also this has nothing to do with a comparison to Legion, besides listing the existence of an AP farming game mode that offers some variety rather than being MoS m+ for the 100th time this week ;P. You can not like it but it is still not only something extra but an improvement to the repeat the shortest dungeon for AP formula, which yet again is improving with 8.1.
I mean it’s disingenuous to say in some places like emissaries, because that is p much the only place it was upped, but ignoring that, that mostly happened to make it more desirable vs a 370 azerite piece when you get it, after all they upped the other less desirable one at the same time. Also again nothing to do with the Legion comparison. Also the IE stuff is completely reaching since AK and everything awarding AP means you literally can’t fall meaningfully behind. IEs beyond the weekly are also only the most rewarding source of AP when you have cleared out all of the quests and wqs that award them. Better argument would be that Legion used to give you an item, resources and ap for emissaries, and to counter that instantly every wq still gives AP and knowing the reward you can choose to skip it rather than praying for good rng.
As for the PvP azerite getting the same treatment, conquest already gives you direct choices, and not only from your weekly chest at the right ranks, but also from just conquest you can upgrade to a free 370 already. Frankly only a miniscule amount of players reach the point they could buy 385 azerite from vendors, and 370 is attainable by literally hunting supply drops(a lot of supply drops, but still 50 conquest per box) with the direct ability to choose which one you want. Changing to the PvE system coming would literally deny the ability to get a basic 385 set next season that you will upgrade to a 400 either with time or high enough rank in exchange for buying a single 415 after 6-7 weeks(which in PvP would obv be rank locked). Going to the coming PvE system would be a literal downgrade.
Solid as gravestone.
That one is a bit of a selffulfilling prophecy don’t you think? The fact that you only mention the roles as reason for hte queues being shorter is like 1/4th of the story.
One small part is that you only need 3 people which makes it quicker but I would guess not by much. What is the big part compared to heroics though?
The fact that Blizzard themselves made heroics completely obsolete 3 weeks into the expansion, with warfronts and arathi there is literally no point to even running heroics at all, unless you desperately want to learn the dungeon or are so bored out of your mind that heroics somehow is the only solution to fix your boredom.
Gear from Heroics is meaningless, there is no dungeon quests or events, some dungeons are straight up obnoxious as all hell, and take forever even if you chainpull the entire thing, which compared with the utter lack of useful rewards or incentive to do them.
Simple reason is:
Islands>Heroic Dungeons because: Contrived forced use+ random chance for pets and mounts>no use at all
It’s an ‘alright’ expansion. Art is great, music is great and instances (raids/dungeons) are great. Let’s see what’s horrible:
1-Class Design: Horrible
2-Azerite Traits: Horrible
3-Raid Reward: Horrible (they said that with removal of tier they will have ‘plenty’ of interesting items dropping from raids; turned out to be plenty of sh!t.)
4-Story telling: horrible. As an alliance player I feel I completely missed on some nice lore on the other islands including raid lore and dungeon lore.
5-RNG: As a protection from bad luck you start not caring about getting loot to avoid disappointment. You also eventually stop bothering trying to get it since it you already in the mentality of not gonna get it.
6-Rewards: When I say rewards, I mean mounts and mogs. Every game out there knows that it’s all about the ‘hats’ yet wow forgets to have content with meaningful mog/mount rewards. Why isn’t there a cool mog or mount for finishing every dungeon on +15 for instance? There are tons of and tons of mob models that can be used for mounts. There is a complete lack of cool looking weapons, compared to Legion most weapons now look like sh!t.
Still, overall it’s alright because I enjoyed the raiding and dungeons but I wouldn’t go as far as calling the expansion ‘solid’.
I didn’t count the medalions, if I did it would have been from 7 to 4 which still feels like half because the medallions are not class or spec specific, this is just my way of looking at this tho. Most of my builds needed multiple talents to set, yes you can choose specific talents now that were on the same row, but, personally, I don’t like that and in my honest opinion is still a net loss in customization, it feels that way to me atleast.
Don’t get me wrong. my arguement is biased because I have opinions, but some of the most fun pvp playstyles for me atleast have been made impossible and all viable builds feel clunky and weird to play compared to Legion
The legion extra traits were questionable in some regards, they made you very poweful, but on the other hand they balanced the world around you to fit that powerlevel. I would even say that the artifact traits are more balanced then BFA classes were because BFA at the start was basically minimal class changes without artifact traits which were promised to be balanced around eachother without the traits in mind, this didn’t hold up, class balance took a hit from legion into BFA so all in all, BFA’s initial class balance was worse then what Legion had
AP/AZ acquisition is something I can do without tbh, I just see (not saw) it as a flat 1:1 copy with the changes being cosmetic in that instead of the numbers getting bigger, the amount you need for a new level becomes smaller every week. I also want to stress that I cannot wait for 8.1 because as you say, this fixes a lot of issues BUT, the real point I was trying to make; We felt like we had a lot of choice in Legion, we could progress our artifact weapon to unlock more traits which slowly progressed, that felt great, now we’ve reached th epoint where azerite trait unlockin gfor gear feels as clunky as leveling, you have to level 5 levels on your neck before you can increase in power. Sure the power up is bigger then one trait was but there’s just a much much bigger length of time between moments of excitement and those moments of excitement tend to be rather shortlived.
Azerite traits to me feel like they were intended to replace artifact relics and only those but because of the removal of artifact abilities and legendaries it immediately became the default replacement for all of these, intentional or not.
I know PL isn’t a BFA feature, I never said it was, however not being able to opt out of it IS a BFA feature, it was done in the last weeks of Legion with BFA in mind. It’s the inability to opt out I was mentioning.
With PvP WQ’s I mean WQ’s with pvp specific rewards. in Legion unfortionately they made it so that you only met other players to pvp with the FFA WQ’s, now we have warmode which is basically an alternate azeroth with pvp on and yet somehow we’re still killing sets of 10 krolusks in warmode.
In Legion, the pvp wq’s were either about the faction war or about arena, that’s basically what I want for BFA (atleast warmode), BFA’s wq system’s strength is thankfully in warmode something that brings players together, but to say that it would make no sense to have more pvp or faction war oriented WQ’s with pvp rewards for warmode I can’t agree with.
Actually, taking this into account, I’d say that both Legion and BFA WPvP was handled weirdly in the sense that it both worked to a certain point, but not completely.
Honor being a reward for the pvp wq’s was a bit weak yeah, but rewards like marks of were alright, maybe a pieces of gear that scales with you the same way regular wpvp gear does only with pvp appearance, they could even reward usables for BG’s and arena’s
IE isn’t unpopular sure, but at the same time it’s not as popular as they hoped which was my arguement as to why I believe(!) they upped the artifact power rewards, too many people were lagging behind.
AP in Legion felt better then it does in BFA for me, because I’m not a fan of the system and can do without it, the idea that you passively got something for everything you did was A+ in my book, but having to go out and keep track of it, I don’t see how it adds anything outside of a bland farming element to the game through scenario’s. With the recent fix and upping of azerite power from some sources it feels like that issue has already been adressed in my eyes tho so I didn’t mention it.
As for IE offering variation, that variation is cosmetic only, it’s still you and 2 others vs a set of predefined mobs, rares and resources you have to kill before a predefined set of enemies from the opposing factions do. If you see one you havn’t seen them all sure, but currently if you’ve done one you’ve done them all.
I heared MOS m+ AP farming was a think but honestly were there actually people who put themselves through this torture? just spend every downtime minute farming exactly that? do these players even still play because I would get burnt out under a month, probably sooner. I’ve been in a lot of guilds over legion and I havn’t met a single player who did this but I read it as an arguement everywhere.
Ideally, you get the gear to drop and the abilities on it are available to you and AP will never be needed again.
It was only upped in emissery’s yeah but not by a small margin, from 400 baseline to a 1000 baseline, that’s 600 extra AP every day, that’s like… I actually don’t know how many IE’s they are because I don’t do them, but it’s bound to be more then 1, 600*7 = 4200 extra AP a week, it feels like this was implemented so that you can still get the amount of extra AP from a weekly IE without actually doing IE’s, while also being able to farm even more if you also do IE’s, but the amount they estimated is now available to everyone even outside of IE’s.
Conquest gives you psuedochoices, “you get to choose between two items, one has better itemization for your spec/class”, that’s not much of a choice. Again, the current system requires me to complete the entire conquest bar 4 (I got off my buttocks (apparently the alternative word for Donkey isn’t allowed) this weekend and forced myself into it again) more times before I get a gear upgrade, to me this just drive me away from BG’s even tho I used to just do them for the sake of doing them in legion (pvp customization (not viability) taking a hit makes it less fun to play in general because I can’t play with my prefered style anymore. I.E. I do not experience my character’s playstyle as engaging enough to just want to play it against other players for the sake of it, again, personal experience/opinion tho)
I don’t mind 385 being obtainable for a small amount, ideally that’s the way it should be. I’m just really digging the PvE changes to M+ chests and really really really hope they’ll just copy paste it over to PvP and maybe change the amount of tokens needed for slots and tokens gained from objectives, I’ll take your word for it that 385 in this system for pvp would be unobtainable and to that I’d say; do a number tweak after the copy job so that it meets the time invested (roughly 2-3 weeks) for a token depending on the difficulty
Good arguements tho
Time investment to reward ratio is abysmal this expansion, havent logged in to play for a couple weeks now.