Overall I didn’t do too much PVE this expansion, so I won’t really go into m+ / raids, it’s few specific thoughts of in game systems and PvP.
Talents - I prefer old system talent tree. I guess because developers have much more room to change things with simple click of a button. If they wanted to change few spells, they could just remove old ones and add new ones, today they need to put a lot more work for nothing really. I feel like we are going to have stagnant next expansion and will feel boring because of this, thats at least how I feel with DF to TWW change. Its all very similar and plays the same - *this is the biggest problem for me.
Open world - I don’t like open world at all, I much prefer vanilla simple yet deep systems. Gathering and raw gold farming should be better by 100x times than it is now, should be doable solo and not only in group. Open world PvP should be reworked, pve events are really bad (should be gone completely), WQs are bad, didn’t even feel like doing those… *Compared to S1 of Shadowlands, this is one of the biggest deals in the game so far.
my opinion on delves is probably different than majority of people. I just didn’t like those, and I did delves for pve normal gearing. It feels bad playing solo in my opinion, that’s probably the reason why I dislike delves. Doing it in groups is no different than dungeons and I don’t really understand this system. Instead I wish they did something different, maybe similar to Throne and Liberty open world farming dungeons areas, but idk…
Story - it is good, we are closing one part of the WoW chapter, and it feels good. Narrative and how story is told could be better, or let’s say more ordinary / random at times. *This could be counted as an improvement from DF.
For me, TWW is an expansion developed by the old team, but Metzen had to run with it because of the time cycle.
It just feels very…meh.
Delves, I agree with you - they are just “meh” for me. I don’t think the system should be forgotten though because I think their premises is solid.
Story - I think if Metzen had his way, we’d have just gone back to Quel’Thalas and Lordaeron, remade and started things off in Midnight, but as I said…TWW was too far in development. It’s not a bad story, because Xal’atath is a good antagonist and you can see that she’s capable of driving the narrative…but I do wish and hope that Blizzard stops obsessing over her feet.
I’d hoped for more Iridikron though, because he was really cool in Dragonflight, but he’ll probably return in TLT.
There’s one good thing that could be said about the story of Dragonflight and TWW.
It’s better than Shadowlands.
But of course, everything will be better than Shadowlands from now on, of course- so it’s not a huge compliment. As long as we’re no longer visiting the so-called afterlife, the story will be fine.
lets not focus on the story aspect, but what about gold farming, is that good? what about systems that do not have borrowed power. I want BFA systems to return. Talents to be better, blizzard is dead if they dont revive game.
It still feels “meh” though to me. I mean, it’s better than SL, but it’s still…meh. Do I care about the Dragons…not really?
Oh no, Nozzy had a headache…ok and…?
It’s just the same as other World Quest Expansions.
Nothing will ever beat original WoD though with the gold mission tables where you could stack extra gold followers and have a hey day.
I’m indifferent. Both systems are almost identical at the level cap: There is little flexibility for most specializations.
Gathering is doable solo. The fact that groups are more efficient per player is not an issue itself; the problem are the hyperspawns and the 2x4 farming mechanic. Remove hyperspawns everywhere, make all loot increase in quantity logarithmically and then divided equally among participants and that will close the gap between legitimate players and bots.
Open world PvP cannot be incentivized further without breaking instanced PvP. You can already reach Conquest cap just by opening PvP chests. And it already attracts a lot of PvE-only players due to its 10% buff; even in the free-for-all PvP zones when there are PvP WQ active you see players co-operate instead of killing each other. I cannot think of any way to fix this.
Open world PvE events need to be become soft-instanced. The idea of being in the same place as 50 other players and all hitting the same boss as if it’s a target dummy sounds amazing for an MMO but it is not engaging gameplay. Open world PvE events should be like mini-dungeons in the open-world: think of something like Nokhud Offensive, Operation Floodgate etc., but with fewer players (designed for 1 to 20 people) and fewer objectives (for example: First kill enemies, then gather items, then kill 2 lieutenants, then the big boss).
You’re in luck. Delves can actually be done in a group! And unlike dungeons, they are neither entirely linear, nor are they only “Kill X”.
It seems to be picking up slowly from where BFA left us. I don’t think that anything we’ve done in TWW so far has even any relation to stuff in Shadowlands or Dragonflight (except that artifact with Iridikron).
I’m going to play the devil’s advocate here and say that all expansion storylines sucked in some way. Perhaps the story goes downhill ever since Warcraft 3.
World of Warcraft: Vanilla didn’t have huge story flaws, but it’s because the storyline wasn’t that important. It was a side feature to the game mechanic. Yet they managed to capture the mood - the storylines from Elwyynn to Westfall to Redridge and uncovering the Defias brotherhood was cool.
The Burning Crusade was famous for its Draenei retcon. Metzen forgot his own storyline - and everyone noticed.
The storylines from BC to WOTLK to Cata and even MOP suffered from one huge flaw - it was too Horde focused and the Alliance suffered. It was especially worse during end-Cata when everything was about Thrall, the Alliance leaders were nowhere to be seen… and MOP where a famous fist-pump moment was promised to the Alliance players. A moment that never came. It was supposed to be Garrosh’s defeat, but it didn’t work that way.
WOD was going back in time, and it’s incredibly hard to write time travel fiction. There are very few time travel books for a reason. Oh, and it was once again about Thrall and his “justice” in Nagrand.
Legion was IMO peak storytelling. Every class hall has its own unique story, so I think I enjoyed this expansion quite a lot. But the overall story suffered because it was focused on the Illidan retcons.
BFA had it’s good moments too, but it set the motion for the Shadowlands trainwreck. There’s no good reason to remove the mystery from the afterlife. It shouldn’t have been done at all - which is exactly why SL sucked so badly.
And Dragonflight was meh, yeh, but it was mostly about recovering from the damage SL inflicted.
It wasn’t that it wasn’t too Horde focused…the Alliance just became “Humans and the rest” and that is why the Alliance is quite boring.
Blizzard always seems to put different Horde races into the spotlight when it fights, but for the Alliance…it’s always Humans. Look at 8.2. Going to Zin’Azshari yet the only Night Elf to make a meaningful appearance was Shandris.
Yet for the Horde - you had Blood Elves and Nightborne
I personally disagree that humans are boring just because they’re humans. You could say that the Horde is just “Orcs and the rest”. Indeed, back in 2012 Chris Metzen said that “the pillars of the franchise are orcs and humans” - that’s his exact quote.
But the orcs have always been much more interesting compared to the humans. You have different clans - Frostwolf, Warsong, Laughing Skull, Dragonmaw, Shattered Hand, Shadowmoon - and all these clans have different cultures. From the story perspective, each clan is almost its own race.
Compare this to humans - there’s almost no diversity. Okay, there were seven human kingdoms, but you get the impression that with the exception of Dalaran where there were mages, everything else was pretty much the same - priests, paladins and warriors. Oh, and most of the human kingdoms have been destroyed. Among the destroyed ones, Alterac has some diversity as being most about rogues and thieves and there’s the Syndicate faction. As for Gilneas - it was a huge wasted opportunity back in 2011 - you see the impressive architecture, quite distinct than Stormwind, yet once you completed the story you got one deserted city.
One of the strongest points of Battle for Azeroth expansion was that it gave a long needed diversity for the human race - and you can still play a Kul Tiran human. Kul Tiras is a very distinct human kingdom. It’s not corrupted by a curse like Gilneas, or fallen and in the hands of thieves like Alterac. It’s true and active human kingdom, inhabited by humans. But unlike Stormwind where you have a centralized government with a king and the nobility don’t hold much power, you have less centralization in Kul Tiras. The nobility holds the true power. The religion is also quite different - Lordaeron, Stormwind, Stromgarde were all about the Holy Light. Here the tidesages (the priests) worship the Tidemother.
I think the Alliance became interesting to me in BFA - and too bad everything went bad very soon after that.
The issue you’ve got with how Kul’Tiras was introduced was that it came right after the destruction of the Night Elf home…so it was basically, “Boohoo Night Elves, enjoy the Human Master race because that’s what we’re actually here for.” I wouldn’t have minded this too much, if it had been Stormwind that got destroyed and the Humans were displaced.
Zin’Azshari was a slap in the face, by comparison of the Horde. I mean, how can Human-led compete with Blood Elf/Nightborne-led in the ancient capital of all the Elves’ ancestry? It simply can’t and more times than not, Alliance fans have raised this point that Humans are far too forced into the story and the Alliance races are made to be idiots so Humans can get their fist pump.
For the Horde, it’s been different. Each race has been given time in the spotlight, when it makes sense and BFA is the proof of that. Hell, even MoP and WoTLK was the proof of that. The Alliance has always been, Humans, Humans and more Humans, with maybe a bit of Night Elf and High Elf if we’re lucky.
It’s why I don’t hold out much hope for Alliance characters in Midnight, because I’m only convinced that Alleria will be present. I reckon the Horde will have a combination of Blood elves, Nightborne, Forsaken etc, whilst Alliance will just be 1 void elf and Humans.
The Alliance will continue to be mundane and boring because all it is now, is Humans and the rest. The Horde will be the faction to play, for a meaningful story in Midnight. Alliance - you could remove the faction entirely for Midnight and no loss would be felt.
I stopped reading at
“Open world - I don’t like open world at all, I much prefer vanilla simple yet deep systems”.
If anything vanilla was about open world. You needed to go from point A to point B on foot in the world.
Thing is. This was cool no becouse story it self. It was game desing and gameplay what made it fun and interesting. You can hardly make interesting story if i can one shot everything, pull 20 mobs and aoe it all down in 2 secs. Flying also ruined it. Things become fun and memorablen if there is adversity otherwise its just memory covered by dog So people end up thinking its bad story. It isnt, problem is gameplay.
Cataclysm and Mop was so heavy influenced by Horde lore that affected the total shift of Horde>Alliance population .
Currently i don’t know but the game has changed so much that i don’t see any point with Factions since ~
Alliance-Horde raid together-Guild members from both faction etc…
Right now you cannot even create Lore based on Alliance vs Horde since they merged them.
True .
The Alliance have stopped since the Devs were to Focused on Horde at the point they didn’t bother with any race ~character from Alliance Side . I’m Alliance and other than Tyrande-Jaina and Anduin (trust me i don’t know the other Leaders name or something that may have done )
Garosh as Horde Leader was focused for 2 Expansions and 1 Major Tier-raid.
Sylvana the same (In Shadowlands i was believing that i play as horde with so much interaction that i had with Sylvana with helping , etc. )
If you look at Alliance Side nothing .
Varian Died from an random Npc with a 10 second animated-Video (The leader of Alliance for many expansion deleted with a 10-seconds cutscene )
And his son a cry-baby that even lowers the standards in this World of Warcraft . (Imagine there are 9 scenes that hes crying .)
The potential for the Alliance to be as every bit as interesting as the Horde is there. It’s just Blizzard chooses Humans over the rest of the Alliance races.
This isn’t the case on the Horde and 8.2 and going to Nazjatar is telling and you can tell which side had more focus and more care and more thought put into it, just with it being a Blood Elf/Nightborne led effort.
Why couldn’t the Alliance have been a Night Elf/Void Elf led effort?
The Alliance does have potential, I mean they’ve got the Dark Iron Dwarves and their mysterious ways of working with fire and within the Blackrock Mountain.
The Shen’dralar Highborne - revered Mages to Azshara herself, yet they get outclassed by Humans. Human Mages need to be the ones securing Darnassus, apparently.
Void Elves - as much as I don’t personally like the void elves and turning purple, I appreciate their mysterious and different take they bring to the Alliance.
Humans are boring and bringing the Alliance story down and it’s time for them to be forgotten for an expansion. If Blizzard actually focuses on other races in Midnight and primarily ignores Humans, then the Alliance has potential.
The biggest issue with the Alliance truly isn’t the Horde. It’s the Alliance itself and the Humans.
Well, the good news is that The War Within is dwarf-focused. And it was high time for that. The dwarves are one of the most interesting races, with three distinct clans ever since Vanilla. Plus the earthen, of course. Dagran and Moira got the long-awaited story update. Especially Dagran who has now grown up since he was a baby in Cata.
DF talent system is better for casuals that don’t copy paste their talent build from somewhere. The MoP talent system only let you pick a few somewhat random talents. The DF talent trees let you customize how you play your character to some degree, although I feel that as trees get reworked they becomemore restricted.
As for delves, I don’t really like them because they don’t have any lore. In dungeons there’s always a small story. You go defend the arathi airship, or you infiltrate the nerubian city or whatever. Delve “stories” feel very generic, on the level of random world quests that barely make any sense. I hoped delves would be mini stories like N’zoth visions but without weird mechanics. Instead they want me to roleplay some treasure hunter that explores random caves and I’m not really interested.
It just needs to carry on into Midnight. Leave the Humans out of the story completely and let other races like Void Elves, Draenei and High Elves command the Alliance side of the narrative.
Horde already has it’s stage set with Blood Elves, Nightborne and Forsaken.
I’m seriously not impressed with Blizzard bringing back Paragon mounts with all the Cartels and Darkfuse in Undermine, after them saying they wouldn’t do that again after Legion… and rep gain is hell of a lot worse as you’re locked out gaining rep with 3 others while focusing on the one each week.
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