Is shadowlands actually better than bfa?

Community General Discussion
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What do you think?

I think that overall classes are generally better, secondary stat diminishing return is a big blow to the potential fun you can get out of a class though, especially when we will have more stats, and i think covenants are even worse than azerite honestly, i really do not like covenants, they are like a bad copy of artifacts, soulbinds are basically normal and golden traits, but diminished and generally less fun, and the covenant you choose is kinda like the artifact ability but it’s class wide, and generally less impactful, there are also some other downsides of shadowlands like m+ not being in a great spot at the moment.

All in all, i think shadowlands might not be much better so far, just a little bit. And the time i have played so far reflects that honestly, as i don’t really have a lot of interest playing wow at the moment.

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I think its better yeah, but ive played so much back in BFA that im fed up with WoW atm. Mostly 4 or max 10 M+ a week. thats it for me.

Still SL is starting really nice but the grind is an overkill in my current situation :laughing:

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At this point in time, early on for both expansions? I’d say they’re about the same. I generally find Blizzard to be pretty consistent in their box product content for WoW, and would say that most expansions have been solid and about the same.

It’s the length of an expansion, when the content patches are released, how many there are, and what’s in them, that tends to be what creates differences between expansions – in my opinion. Not huge differences, but notable ones. Again, with an exception here and there, I generally find WoW to be a pretty consistent product.

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I have to disagree with that, i don’t think blizzard is super consistent, sure the final say is at the end of the expansion, but some expansions made better first impressions than others, infact, most expansion that did well started well. Bfa, wod etc started badly and ended badly.

I really would like for wow to be better, i have made quite a few posts in the last few days because i still care, unlike eso, i hope they will improve things, but honestly, it’s looking pretty grim.

The only example of an expansion that started bad ended good is probably mop, but i think it was mostly down to perception more than anything.

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They’re about the same. Although Uldir was a better raid than Castle Nathria.
But really almost every raid is better than Castle nathria so that’s not really hard.

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BfA was better. It felt more BIGGER - zone wise. SL is boring and depressing. We had cool and huge zones in BfA. In SL we have tiny 4-5 zones with 5325235235 mountains, obstacles, elevators, cliffs, etc.

Dunno about you, guys… but I like BfA more than SL.

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Well to each his own. But just personally I’ve always found that when I bought a WoW expansion I could easily squeeze a few months of enjoyment out of it.
The bulk of the box product is always leveling, dungeons and the initial raid – alongside a few special expansion features.
And that stuff always seems fairly solid to me. I don’t think I’ve ever played a WoW expansion at launch and thought to myself: “Leveling through these new zones is terrible. This is all so bad.”
It tends to be WoW as I expect WoW to be. Sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse, but generally on the same consistent level of quality.
But as said, to each his own.

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… you lost me there.
“Blizzard” you say…
Blizzard is long “ded”… its all Activision now.

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Honestly, i think i wouldn’t dislike bfa and shadowlands nearely as much if they didn’t constantly play this game of give and take, iv’e spoken many times about how the removal of artifacts and this new expansion new system is something i really do not like at all.

It just feels like the devs play a game of give and take where you lose a lot of stuff, gain some new stuff, and in the end the result is at best equal, at worst, well, it’s much worse, which is generally what happens.

Also, covenants make sense only for shadowlands, which worries, me about the future of wow, because it makes me think this mentality is still alive and well in the dev team. And i think it’s bad.

They are wasting resources and time developing stuff that at best replaces what you already have, instead of investing that time into making the game better, and things you already have better, i still think that artifacts were by far the best borrowed power system we had so far.

Wasn’t perfect, but could have been improved a lot, and the effects were great. Certainly better than what we had in bfa or now.

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Oh, definitely! Without question.

Because it’s been almost 4 months since launch and I still don’t want to uninstall it. Unlike BFA which I uninstalled within the first 2 weeks of launch.

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There’s no Azerite. There’s no War and Titanforging. There’s no Magni. There’s no Teeming, nor Skittish. Tyrannical has been nerfed. We have a dungeon with both Bwonsamdi and Gnomes, in the same instance.

Beats BfA hands down.

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Castle nathria sucks , and plaguefall urgh

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For the time being it’s the only conceivable solution to prevent excessive power creep in the game. There has to be a reset button. Other games use Seasons and such, which essentially accomplish the same. There really isn’t a design foundation that allow for infinite progression.

WoW builds a lot of its gameplay and progression on its content and systems. It isn’t feasible for the developers to carry every existing form of content and system into the next expansion. If they did, then creating an expansion would quickly spiral out of control as the work load would increase 2x, 3x, 4x, and so on, as the volume of content and systems that needed to be updated before even making anything new, it would be gigantic.

So Blizzard’s solution is to have expansion-specific content and features, thereby ensuring that an expansion can explore a lot of new content and systems without the worry of overburdening a future expansion with regards to production or power creep.

It’s a necessary evil. There really isn’t a better design alternative. Imagine if you kept you Artifact Weapon and its powers. And your Heart of Azeroth and its powers. And your Conduits and its powers. And whatever the next expansion provides. And the expansion after that. And after that. And… It quickly spirals out of control and your character would become a monstrous amalgamation with no design structure at all. So Blizzard deliberately limits the design space for class design and content design, and just remakes it for each expansion, so nothing grows out of proportion and turns into numbers upon numbers.

It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we have.

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I liked teeming, but not skittish personally, oh i forgot about aoe caps, that is also something i do not like.

It just blizzard being like, no you can’t do that, and that annoys me. I really do not like it when devs try to control player actions because “it was not our design” Look, just because you can’t do it, doesn’t mean no one else should not be able to.

I think titanforging and warforging is only bad if you have 0 control on it, for example, i think it would have been fine, maybe even good, if you had the possibility of upgrading pieces of loot up to the max titanforging level, this way, if you get lucky and get a titanforge you are happy you got it, if you didn’t oh well, can still upgrade it at least, so getting non titan, is not the end of the world.

Tyrannical nerfed is definitely a good thing.

Azerite was not great, but honestly, are soulbinds really superior, or are covenants superior to essences? I think not honestly, if anything i think they are possibly even worse. As i said before i really do NOT like covenants.

Shadow legendary system, not effects keep in mind, that is definitely a step up from legion rng legendary system which was one of it’s biggest problems that kept the expansion from being a 9/10.

Also, @jito, I don’t really understand your point about power creep, i think it’s pretty flawed, after the expansion ends things are rebalanced either way, power creep only happens when you outscale the content you are playing, for them solving power creep is just a matter of balancing the content around the power level of players, so honestly, i think it’s a non issue, because it can only happen if the devs made a massive oversight, or just didn’t balance the content around the player. It is literally a non issue, ability bloat could be a bigger issue on the very long run, but honestly, there are many ways of dealing with bloat, there are a couple that come to mind.

Remove “useless” or abilities that do not fit well in the rotation, aka clunky, merge funcionalities of some abilities where it fits, create more passives that make the gameplay better, for example, hot hand, it doesn’t add a skill it just modifies one that you already have, or add cds instead of rotational abilities, think like doomwinds, or glaive tempest, buttons that you do not press a lot of times, but add something to the rotation. So ability bloat really is not a big issue. It’s been blown out of proportion.

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BFA was better no matter how much i hated it. shadowlands is still full of bugs. and only because there is this new shiny content that it looks appealing. game has never been so out of balance. blizz/activion look clueless and i hope they loose 80% of their sub base, maybe then they will start fixing this game that people are paying so much money for. greed has overtaken this company and they are going downwards big time.

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Yes, but it has its problems but nowhere near as bad as BFA with the stupid azerite armor.

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So far PvP and Dungeons are far better than in BFA :man_shrugging:

Apparently, Raid is meh tho

Ofc. there is nothing to do in the game apart from those 3 features so I guess that’s it.

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Yes it’s better. BfA was one of the worst things Blizzard have ever created.

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Honestly though, azerite armor was so badly received because it was supposed to replace tier sets, leggos and artifacts something that did not happen, but if we compare it objectively to covenants and soulbinds, is it really that much worse? I think not.

I think it’s mostly perception. They lied basically, and got justly criticized.

Id say that soulbinds are the azerite counterpart, and covenants are the essence counterpart.

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Yes.

You can choose the covenant. You can choose the soulbinds.

Azerite armor, unless you were doing pretty high keys, took ages to obtain unless you gambled and if you gambled you just got horrible azerite pieces a lot of the times.