As someone who personally hated borrowed power and the associated grinds during BFA and SL, my main issue with these systems was being forced into doing specific content I didn’t like in order to get the thing, and the direct implication that all the other content I’m doing, the content I like, is less than ideal because I could be doing that other thing instead.
This was solved from the get go in Legion, and then retroactively ruined for incomprehensible reasons. There is this very rewarding and satisfying feeling, both irl and especially in games, of achieving multiple goals at once while doing something. It feels good killing mobs that are simultaneously a part of 2 different quests, or a quest and a bonus objective. It feels inherently good because you’re being productive and can immediately see the fruits of your labor.
In BFA and SL, they destroyed this feeling by forcing you into Islands, Torghast, into farming Nzoth zones to access Visions, into Visions themselves for the cloak etc. Visions are the only exception here imo because they also rewarded GEAR, the core of the entire game, while the other activities felt awful to me personally because I 1) didn’t like them in general, 2) they gave no gear.
Legion was the happy place because the power grind was available literally everywhere, it was tied to interesting powerful weapons with artifacts, gear with legendaries, and also strengthens your bonds with your class through the Order Halls as the go-between. All of this was completely missing in later expansions, they nailed it on the first try and destroyed it afterward. Legion also had issues with lego RNG and the borrowed power locking you into one spec, but both of these are extremely easy to fix if you’re not an arrogant stuborn dev.
The bottom line is that when done right, borrowed power can be a great addition to the game, and may even be a necessary one to a certain degree. We’re 19 years into the life cycle of this game that’s build around player power and progression, and as I’ve come to realize now with DF, having nothing but the gear grind (a slow and boring gear grind at that, that revolves around currencies and upgrading items rather than getting the drops and buying them deterministically on a more frequent basis), is just boring after all this time for me.
It’s not 2008 anymore, having nothing but gear to improve my character feels a dull, especially when that gear is as boring as it is and has been since Legion. No sockets, no reforging, no hit and expertise breakpoints to chase as annoying as that was, there’s just nothing.
Another consequence of this is that open world content is entirely pointless and stupid because the gear ilvl caps at pathetic levels, and there’s nothing else of substance it can reward you with. Cosmetics are bad, there’s no power attached, and the world is dead with Zaralek possibly being the worst zone they’ve ever made.
