The true and only reason why DF does not suck is the removal of borrowed power and other crap that made us feel like we are falling behind.
It worked once as a flavor in legion and yet it was biggest anti alt, grindfest xpac, and from then on they tried to make “the magic” happen again and again…
BFA had an epic start with epic continents and intro but the azerite gear and the stupid heart of azeroth killed it before it could become any good (won’t even mention the crap writing as the xpac went on). The borrowed power exhaustion was real…
Shadowlands was just empty pile of hot garbage with no content and power hidden behind boring crappy renown and rng legendary drops(Blizz: but we had it in legion and you liked that expansion!) No.
I believe everyone who knew about shadowlands from the story we received pre shadowlands expected something different than hourglass and bunch of boring flying npcs.
Blizzard does not play their own game which is expected but did they ever listen to the player base? I don’t think so and they still won’t. The players know what is good for the game and how to improve it the best.
Whilst I agree with you and I am having an absolute blast in DF. I can’t help but feel DF is missing something.
It is definitely not borrowed power, that is for sure.
But it’s missing some kind of system. The system ofcourse should be completely optional. But it needs to be some expansion/patch long grindy mini game which lets you work towards some cool, non power related rewards.
Renown, doesn’t cut it, and those rewards aren’t really desirable. Siege, Community Feast and similar event’s are fun too short lived.
Profession changes have been cool. But I don’t think it counts as a mini-game either.
It misses something as in-depth as the Covenants or Zereth Mortis. Something you can slowly work away on, if you’re that way inclined.
Compared to what? Yes, it doesn’t suck compared to Shadowlands, but it feels SO much better than it is specifically because it followed Shadowlands. Imagine if it followed Legion.
As you say, Borrowed Power worked in Legion. It did. Yes, it was grindy for high-end players especially near the start, and everybody had fatigue by the end, but it was wrapped in +1000 Charisma armor consisting of the Artifact Weapons, serious Lore, Naaru, Illidan, new races, and new content every 11 weeks.
Borrowed Power worked. For one expansion. Ion said in an interview that they started designing BfA in the earlier days of Legion, when Borrowed Power was riding high, and they thought they had found a great new mechanism. By the time disillusionment set in, it was too late to redesign BfA.
The hopeful thing is that, having torn down a lot of the badness that followed Legion, and perhaps with a dose of humility from seeing the participation in Classis, they might use Dragonflight as a base to build in a better direction.
For me it’s missing the ability to customize our classes visually. I mean what if my hunter could be a light infused hunter with abilities that visually reflect that? Maybe my warrior is an elemental warrior infused with fire and lightning. What if my warlock secretly joined the drust and now can summon and command wicker constructs. Nothing there would change how the classes function mechanically but it could be a really fun system and maybe even add quest chains or achievements to unlock these visual changes.
I never saw borrowed power as a bad thing in itself. It was the alt unfriendlyness and poorly and often too late catch up stuff that was the problem for me. I know people say Legion was alt unfriendly but atleast classes had their own campaigns and artifact weapons which made things more interesting for me. BFA and SL had the most imagination lacking borrowed power items.
Right now making and levelling alts is incredibly boring after doing the same thing over and over again.
I loved the system in Legion. The legendaries were awesome combined with the class hall and I loved increasing their power. The only things I hated in previous expansions was needing to pvE to pvp, which DF has solved.
I liked the BFA story but yeah, the Heart of Azeroth thing felt lame compared to Legion and I kind of gave up on the expansion towards the end.
I enjoyed the first part of Shadowlands, and really liked the idea of the legendaries - but hated the RNG element. I remember constantly doing this stupid raid with the stupid dancing to try to get something to drop. I was so annoyed I took a long break, and when I returned all the legendaries auto dropped - this totally transformed my game as the catch up phase of shadowlands made it fun again.
With DF I find it alt friendly and like the lack of borrowed power, love pvp gearing ……but find the story totally dull and the zones all the same. Also the renown is just dull dull dull.
The borrowed power as never been the problem, honestly, it’s their acquisition that was in most cases:
Legion
Legion Legendaries had been fixed by having a currency to target them.
Artifact weapon were fine, except the infinite farmable trait that came in 7.1.
The netherlight crucible was boring but i never have seen anyone complain about it’s acquisition since it was done so passively we barely seen it.
BFA
BFA essences could have been the single best Borrowed power if the power unlock had been account-wide.
Corruption were almostly fixed, it only needed to not have a 3-week rotation on it’s vendor.
Azerite Armor didn’t needed much investment in terms of azerite farm unless you were playing in Mythic in the first few weeks of a patch and most player reached the level requirement of Heroic/Mythic gear even before dropping any of those items without thinking much about it. The community just overreact over it for absolutely no reason over a farm that was totally not necessary to do. Still it could have been alt friendlier by having the neck level to be Account-wide. It was typically a 5% top player issue.
Shadowlands
Conduit were concretely 6 more slots of items to fill, and getting them was so easy there was no reason to complain. The only part that was questionnable was the 2 last ilevel upgrade of 9.1 tied to Korthia Farming and when you found the trick, it was pretty much a 4-hour farm on an alt to max them all.
Soulbinds power didn’t need much to level up. But it could easily been fixed by having renown be account wide.
Legendary should never have needed to buy/craft the white item to be upgraded in between patches and it would have been fine.
Dragonflight
Leveling crafting is even worse than any of the previous expac borrowed power since it has pretty much no catch-up and is even more time-gated. At least it has a definite end (I’m almost there in my forge).
The Annulet is easy to get and upgrade, but it has RNG mecanics that’s annoying when you are not lucky with the gems drop. Plus it need to know a Jeweller or to level one (i have done the second). And it won’t last over the heroic and will be eventually nerfed in 10.1, as said in interview, which means it’s near to not worth doing it on long terms, unless it’s a BiS for your spec and you foresee you pushing hard on the first weeks.
I voluntarily missed talking about the Covenant spells to point out many of them are still there, including some that were heavily criticized during Shadowlands. The talent tree is a best off of the previous expansions borrowed power, done right. But without them, the talent trees would probably never have existed or would not have been this good overall. If you need a proof Borrowed power are not the problem but their acquisition is, you have it right there.
PvP-centric players are pretty much the exception to everything i said previously, but let’s face it, Wow is not a PVP-centric game.
I disagree, i think it’s fine to ask sometimes the player to get out of it’s comfort zone. In the end, you only required honor, which mean you did not even had to do any rated content or be good at it, only to participate, unlike the MoP cloak that required you to win BG’s.
Problem was to have to do it on all char that needed Blood of the Enemy.
Good for you. I still think an incentive once per Expac to play the other game modes is a good thing overall for the game. Staying in your comfort zone is a direct highway to not have a full picture of the game and be more prone to boredom.
I quit PvP because it was boring because it’s so unbalanced and here you are, going “hurr, you’d be more prone to boredom if pvp didn’t exist”. I absolutely loathe PvP.
At that time it was exactly what was intended, you know? No matter what you did, it was empowering you one way or another. PVP and PVE was so blurry at that time you could opt-in one or the other without too much of an issue. But maybe it’s only my Jack of all trade side that speaks here. I don’t mind PVP if i want something from it.
