BFA vs. SL

There was so much hype about shadowlands and how it was gonna safe wow but i realy feel like BFA was beter at any point in time. zone were more exciting there were more different biomes and stories to discover etc. I even dare say azerite armor was more exciting than the gearing systems at this point. they say there is alot more comming but i feel like its an empty promise and a way to make themself feel beter. we are some months in the new expac now and i’m bored AF.

  • I tried M+ and it’s just not as exciting … it was more challanging in BFA and their were more options in pathing etc.
  • I’ve done a fair amount of pvp but there are some fundamental things wrong concidering rewards and gearing.
  • I did some raiding the raid looks kind of awesome but it doesn’t make me wanna do more after seeing it once.
  • and this might be me but i’m not much of a collector so thats not working either

am I wrong here?

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Hexx quit Retail during BfA… But Hexx never bothered buying and trying Shadowlands.

Conclusion? Well… BfA wins because at least it tempted dis Troll to actually play it for a while, unlike Shadowlands.

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This happens every expansion, but honestly I feel like if we truly look back SL had the least amount of hype in any expansion. Maybe BFA had less. Maybe.

Ever since Alpha people were raising issues with the Covenant system, and most of the feedback we got in alpha was “omg Torghast is amazing” and then Blizzard does huge changes to Torghast and it goes to trash and the news sort of fizzles out there for a while.

I think 9.0 is superior to 8.0 in every aspect other than class balance, and I think 9.2 (probably not 9.1) has the potential to be a solid year of WoWs life.

Honestly it’s like arguing if rotten milk or moldy bread is worse to eat. They’re both bad in similar ways.

The main issue I have is SL didn’t learn enough from Legion and BFA. Borrowed power systems in BFA? Fair enough, they didn’t really have time to 180 the expansion based on Legion feedback (giving them the benefit of the doubt), but by the time they were on to the SL conception stage they should have known borrowed power = big no no.

8.2 and 8.3 was better than 9.0, but that’s a little unfair and BFA biased. 8.0 and 8.1 was not better than 9.0.

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SL is better than BFA.

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BFA had much more world content and better maps, connected maps.

It wasn’t good but it had its moments.

SL feels just grindy and empty tbh.

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my opinion - SL over BfA SO FAR - as a casual i have no pressure to log in for x hours, do y WQ’s and do z amount of m+ just to feel remotely useful to a group. SL just feels like a massive timegate - however, i do have a feeling that SL will get better

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That’s personal, but I rarely see anyone calling BfA zones exciting. They were dull af.

Oh yeah man, I miss those boring powers. The way I had to grind my necklace in order to unlock them. The exponentially increasing price in gold if I wanted to reroll them. It was so much fun dude.

You spelled challenging wrong, they were annoying. SL dungeons are lightyears ahead of what we had in BfA. Still not as good as WoD or Legion dungeons, but they are decent.

With all that said, I’m not defending SL, because there’s room for improvements at almost every corner. But it’s still far better than BfA, although let’s be honest, it’s not an achievement to overcome that expansion.

Where they really missed the mark is the covenant system. No one asked for it, and it already shows that it’s just a pain for them as well. Instead of focusing on creating new content, they are busy with fine-tuning all those different abilities for every class. And that’s just one of the many issues. But still, it’s decent enough to keep me here for now, the only expansion when I actually cancelled my sub was in BfA, and I think it tells a lot.

Warfronts - Total failure. I liked the idea tho, it could’ve been good, bit they messed it up. What’s the point of a game mode where you literally cannot loose? If you can’t loose, there’s no glory in winning. It’s not exciting at all.

Island expeditions - Total failure

Azerite gear - Do I really have to explain this? They sacrificed set bonuses for this? I’d take set bonuses over azerite armor at any day of the week.

Corruptions and the corruption vendor - No comment, it causes me headache just to think about it.

The only good thing we got were the essences. But it just blows my mind how stubborn they were when it came to alts. Gearing up and keeping an alt up to date in BfA consumed an unimaginable amount of time.

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The issue with BFA was the azerite armor. People hated this system after coming from the Legion legendaries.

BFA had 6 zones at launch, island expeditions, and war zones. So much more to do and more ways to earn gear, not to mention you had the kill an npc WQ’s that made things easier.

SL has much smaller and less zones, a gear drought, and less to do for casuals. I also think that the pandemic did not help things as well with SL.

I think that right now BFA was the much better expansion apart from azerite gear than SL is. SL will have much to do in order to redeem itself in 9.1 in fact I think we may need a 9.1.5 and a 9.1.75 or something to make up for the content drought and to keep people around.

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you can see already that 9.1 just comes with more emptiness, more grind and more garbage. So uhm, not exactly.

The only really good thing about SL is indeed the fact that you don’t need to do WQs at all thanks to AP not existing. BUT as a stupid replacement that you are “forced” to do would be the maw rep if you want to stay in the min max department.
If you don’t, you shouldn’t have felt the BfA AP pressure either.

for me SL feels not good. M+ feels for whatever reason really boring. I guess it has largely to do with the gearing system. No drops, ilvl too low and you only got the stupid vault to “farm” your gear

I think BfA was a really bad expansion, but I honestly think that SL is much worse.
In bfa at least I could gear my alt quite reasonable

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As it stands, it is looking like 9.1 will not change much for the better and will make some areas worse or leave them as is.

I share the sentiment of BFA having issues, but SLs being much worse then BFA for many of the reasons sighted above.

I find great irony in that a expansion (SLs) which is supposed to be about the infinite bustling possibilities of the afterlife… is freaking empty and soul-less.

Even the people who do like SLs, they only seem to like it for trivial reasons like WQs being pointless. When SLs is over, it will be an unmemorable experience for them too.

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Ofcourse BFA was better! BFA was the best expansion.

But seriously. I really do like Shadowlands. But it doesn’t feel like Wow.

I dont really understand what people didn’t like about BFA (except corruption). But atleast we were on Azeroth, the general storyline was focused on building upon Characters, Races and Lore which had been in WOW for years!

Shadowlands, is cool. But it’s not Wow.

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I didn’t like two big things about BFA: 1) Sylvanas. I hated how she was the focus for most of the game. Even for alliance players. Every step of the story was like: Sylvanas, Sylvanas, Sylvanas, Sylvanas into infinity.

This dove tails into my second dislike of BFA. 2) How I as an alliance player was forced to play through a horde centric expansion with most of my story content, alliance wise, being focused on the Horde and their internal disputes. While Anduin went about crying and bailing a hordie out of jail.

Everything else I had no real issue with. AP was a little grindy, but that was because I was overlooking Island Adventures lol.

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Just as a post above said, shadowlands feels like an alien world, and I know that’s the point we are in the afterlife, but it just doesn’t feel as WoW, back in BFA you had nice connected zones, beautiful tavern music,really cool and beautiful zones,you had hope from doing m + to actually get gear you are after and so on… But yes the corruption, essences and azerite armor were just too much to keep up with, oh and I did like BFAs obvious throwback to Warcraft RTS games Orcs vs Humans

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I appreciate that the first 2 raids were in Horde territory. But Trolls particularly Zandalari have been a focus for raids and dungeons for a long time.

But I don’t understand what you mean about the story being Sylvanas centric from alliance side? When I played the alliance content through, I got a bit sick in the mouth of all of the Happy Disney style story of Jaina and friends. I found it far too Jaina centric. the Horde storyline was definitely a lot better. But both sides had their character development.

It was always focused around what she and the horde was doing, whether by talk or cut scenes. Heck just doing random bits in Stormsong valley ended you up with long cut scenes of Sylvanas talking to her horde. Even during the Nzoth bit Sylvanas kept getting dragged in, with her and Azshara having a long cut scene together.

The when it came to saving Orgrimmar for the Horde, as an Alliance player. The total cut scene time for my alliance character was like 8 seconds and all she did was walk behind Anduin.

What did the horde get? They got telltale style story telling, with one of the options giving special rewards.

And then there was all the cutscene/story stuff about the horde selecting their new leader for their undead.

From start to finish I felt, as an Alliance player that I was somehow playing as a Hordie.

I didn’t want to save Orgrimmar for the hordies. I didn’t want to save that old orc. I didn’t want to save Baine. I didn;t want to help you with your undead elections. almost every. Step. …just Hordie questlines for Alliance.

There wasn’t a pandemic going on during BFA so in that way it was better.

I don’t think that’s fair.

Yes, Uldir took place in “horde territory”

BODA was focused on the alliance attacking a horde friendly territory, not the horde itself. You could argue alliance was the focus here given two of their racial leaders were bosses.

And now, the real focus: why ignore the fact that perhaps the entirety of the alliance questing experience sans a scuffle with horde in brennadam had little to do with the horde. The horde don’t come up even once in Drustvar, nor in Tiragarde sound. The focus of alliance zones is Kul Tirans. The focus of the alliance war campaign is initially getting at the horde, but then it’s largely about Jaina and helping her get her mojo back as she smacks the horde.

Yes, Sylvanas “set things off” but if you really believe everything the alliance did had the shadow of the horde over it, then you need to stop letting Sylvanas living in your head rent free simply because she sparked things off, because she isn’t mentioned much if at all during the questing experiences in the alliance BFA zones.

How anyone could quest through Drustvar and think “omg this is horde horde horde” is beyond me.

I do agree, Sylvanas being “the primary front” of the horde for legion and BFA and now a focal point in SL is annoying, but she didn’t dominate the entire expo of BFA, much less for alliance. If anything it’s only for horde this is possibly remotely true due to all the interactions with Nathanos in the war campaign and the fact he can’t help but talk about her constantly.

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Are you new here? Blizz focuses everything on presale advertising and the actual games are low effort quality, but who cares about reviews and rioting forums once the presales are done, right?

Thats the part I dont really understand people liking.

You dont have to grind world content, but then the question becomes : is it because they made it better this time (considering they said some about this expansion being less grindy and more alt friendly) or is it just another design failure in making world content attractive to majority of the population ?

I mean I dont have a problem with not needing to grind wqs for anima, but also I dont really need to do it only because I skipped almost all covenant upgrades apart from two on all of my chars, and I have no intention of buying any cosmetics/ collectables related to covenants. Ever.

Bfa by a mile. I had lots of fun in bfa but after they made azerite gain faster.
I had lots of fun doing world pvp even Wq’s were good mostly because those didn’t take ages to complete.
And I actually liked isles and warfronts.

SL on the other hand is just boring as hell everything just takes way too long to do and boy do I hate leveling I have always liked leveling part the most on wow but this is the first expansion that I truly hate that part.

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