I will give a solid 8/10
7.5/10 so far. I like what theyâre doing with the story, I like the new characters, all zones are great, levelling is nice (especially with alt xp bonus), warband and delve features are excellent and I like the hero talents for the classes I mostly play. I would give it a 10/10 if some of the dungeons were better, and classes like Rogue, DH, Hunter and Druid werenât totally left behind with boring hero talents. Those are really my only major complaints.
I feel like enjoyment of this expansion (so far) is heavily dependant upon what class/spec you play. If youâre a Paladin, Warlock, Death Knight or Mage then the new hero talents are thoroughly entertaining, and specs feel truly expanded from DF. Some, however, have practically nothing for you to look forward to from 70 to 80. The story and zones are cool for sure, but I understand why so many feel like barely anything has changed from the previous expansion, when theyâre playing classes that got naught but invisible passive boosts.
Two stars out of five. Button bloat is real.
7 Likes
I mainly play for raids and M+, so Iâm annoyed by the extreme time-gating of those features. This week in WoW feels very dull to me.
I donât see how releasing raids and M+ earlier would have a negative impact on casual gamers. The only reason I can think of why Blizz does this is because they want to encourage raiders and dungeoneers to experience the stories and quests before they start pushing. But I think most raiders and dungeoneers donât care about the story at all, and Blizzard just doesnât want to accept that truth. Even with Metzen being back to give the story more consistency, I still think that any trash-tier Netflix series offers better story-telling entertainment value than an MMO will ever be able to.
Otherwise, everythingâs been very good so far.
Itâs a 9 for me. Really awesome so far
8/10 based on the lore, art work and music. Love the atmosphere they created m
So far I have loved it. I had no expectations, no hype, very little info what itâs all about, never looked up or read about the upcoming things. I just bought the expansion on launch day and I am having a blast!
9/10 as there is always room for improvement
Always have to be careful early on because thereâs a bit of a hype train.
Firstly, Iâm playing it. Actually playing it. So thatâs a good start. I honestly wasnât sure I would.
The levelling, in terms of difficulty and engagement, and the main story were painful, but I enjoyed the world and side questing enough that it has kept my attention through that. This genuinely surprised me and Iâm glad that it has.
I think all the zones except the Ringing Deeps land mostly well. Hallowfall has slightly weird lighting and The Ringing Deeps just looks awful by simply failing to embrace the fact that itâs under ground in its art direction, especially its lighting.
The combat has a lot of problems. Itâs very hard to see whatâs happening and how various enemies will interact with my spells. Lines are getting more blurry and procs are landing with such astonishing frequency that PvP basically isnât playable for me anymore.
Iâm not feeling the same sense of relief I did when going into Dragonflight for the simple reason that it also got many of the things right that this expansion gets right. But thatâs good - it just may have inflated my score of DF.
Iâve heard the M+ dungeons are supposed to be hard. We shall see! I hope theyâll give me a run for my money. I have a feeling though that weâll see a lot of Dracâthyr, and weâll see no healers, because even though I said it Blizzard just increased the damage of all the mobs and didnât really nerf tank healing, thus effectively nerfing healers again. Iâm very worried about this.
Delves are fun, I like 'em.
Overall⌠eh. Itâs a good 6/10 for me. It can go either way from here.
As a new expansion, the WoW storytelling/campaign is up there to a 9/10 if not 10/10.
On the mechanical level, at the moment we have not much to do since its not âreleasedâ yet. Having said that, I expect the first season to be âDF season 5â, with some people liking it, and some people hating it (waiting to see the end product to give a rating).
7/10
Good
- Art
- Quests (lore/stories)
- Music
Bad
- Lots of strange design choices
a. ) World Quests being terrible
b.) Patron Crafting Orders being impossible to do/cost too much (but are the major source of KP) - EA
- No real new content for the more casual PVP player (larger BGs)
Unsure
- Delves
- Weekly big events (theatre is nice, hollowfall is chaotic, machine is too easy/hard depending on class)
Lmao you sound exactly like my grandpa and a lot of other old folks. âChange is bad!â âThis newfangled doodoo is poo!â
1 Like
Isnât it too early to say?
So far though: 8/10 from me, if I had to rate it. I like the environments a lot, I like the main campaign a lot, but I think the game is very weak narratively on the side content, and the world building is also not that great. I think they also missed a big opportunity to explain the ecology of the zones.
FFXIV would like a word with you.
7\10 for me but the wq shortage and the horrible profession system are a problem.
a side note. i read the threads about dawnbreaker dungeon and i was so horrified that pushed me to try a follower experience. not bad.
Itâs a bit hard to say. But currently Iâm not too thrilled about the game-play. The world looks neat, nice tricks here and there, bonuses, stuff to do.
ButâŚ
PvP, casual battlegrounds currently, seems very oddly balanced. A new hero-class means a balancing nightmare, I fear.
Dungeons, canât tell. Theyâre waaaay too easy atm. I tried a new spec out yesterday and I could not really tell if itâs even something I like because the encounters were over so fastâŚ
Delves, same. Canât tell. Seem very chorey, esp given the lack of rewards currently. Hopefully this will improve.
Professions are ⌠vague, unclear and a mystery. Basically requiring external guides to get through them.
So that leaves the base game-play elements, for me, as severely lackluster at the moment. This will probably improve when the season starts, but I wouldnât be surprised if for some that will come just too late.
And then the bugs, bugs, and even more bugs. This is my main pain point. Random, and I mean random, framedrops on decent to good hardware (and no addon-bloat); even noticed myself and at others that a pc could actually randomly shut off due to WoW (not overheating); crucial elements just missing (the boat in the dungeon in Hallowfall was just missing completely for 2/5 players); auto-loot not working properly; clicking a quest-giver doesnât always result in a dialog; random DCs when flying in certain points/against objects, âŚetcâŚetcâŚ
In that last regard this is one of the worst expansions Iâve encountered. But Iâll stick to a 7/10 for now.
1 Like
Iâd say 8/10, potentially more (or less ofc).
A very good expansion imo, incomparably better than DF. At first it seemed similar to DF, especially the first zone, but as the story progressed and as I progressed from zone to zone it reminded me more and more of Legion for some reason. Ofc there are things I donât like, like some characters, some hero specs etc, but it doesnât spoil the overall impression too much.
But itâs just the beginning, weâll see in which direction it goes.
Probably like a 6 or 7. I like that is isnât Dragonflight as I hated that xpac. The story and the build up to where it is leading is interesting too.
Things bringing the score down are:
- Whilst the zones are nice, they can be a bit annoying to navigate through when flying
- Lack of variety in quests, including campaign, dailies, weeklies etc - where is the innovation?
- The Earthen race as a new playable race is lazy design, I donât care how fans try to spin it
- The main interaction with people in the campaign favoured Alliance characters with Thrall being included but hardly utilised
- Profession design continues to be convoluted
- Still too many soft feelings included in the narrative for my liking - lets just be raw heroes who kill bad things because we can
- Delves arenât as interesting or fun as I thought theyâd be. Tourghast was better to play through as you really could ramp up your skills and be OP (I didnât play Shadowlands when it was current so this isnât factoring in the negativity around being forced into it etc - Iâm just comparing basic playstyle)
Something that will always bring the score down on each xpac for me:
- All race and class unlocks not being included
3/10 So far.
I was on a break since the start of Pandaria, so a lot of changes were pretty drastic for me. And itâs rating not just of this expansion but of changes in the game during my time off.
The biggest surprise were changes in rewards and activities which looks pretty disappointing to me.
Activities.
From my perspective content lives in 2D space of challenge/attention. There is low challenge / low attention content, which is good, relaxing and you can spend excellent time in it while watching a movie on a second screen or listening to the music (ex. fishing).
There is high challenge / high attention content, which is great (I believe none is currently in the game but I hope M+ will be such a content. It also can be high rated PVP or similar stuff, itâs dark-souls like fun). And then there is low challenge / high attention content, which, from my perspective is miserable and it feels like your time is wasted.
For some reason WOW gravitated to this low challenge / high attention area making some low challenge / low attention activities from the past higher attention (ex. gathering) and making some medium challenge / high attention activities lower in challenge (dungeons/heroics).
Same about new mechanics ex. dirt farming, due to different outcomes and no display on the map it is a low challenge / high attention activities.
Same with word quests, there is no challenge, but due to low drop rates and big crowds they require your full attention to finish in reasonable time.
I literally can not find any good low challenge / low attention activity now outside fishing, which does not look too rewarding. All possible recipe/reputation farms are locked behind time gates.
I hope for high challenge / high attention activity in the future, but now I canât find it either.
Most often I find myself in âmiseryâ zone, doing high attention / low challenge stuff and this does not look like good game design.
Rewards.
I see two main reward types in MMO games: 1. Internal, i.e. unlocks 2. External, i.e. achievements.
By unlocks I mean that you can do smth you was not able to do before (or do it better), and by achievements I mean smth you can brag about (ideally they should be visible for other players, ex. titles / transmogs).
One of good examples of rewards which fits into two categories at the same time is level: everybody can see it, and it allows you to do new quests/dungeons.
However leveling was more-or-less removed from the game. I was shocked when I created a character a week before the release and accidentally leveled to 70 in two evenings in ~5 hours total (ended up buying EA which in the end looks like a trap and overall mistake on a blizzard side as it creates bad feeling for those who didnât buy it and there is nothing to do at max lvl for those who did).
Gear also can be in two categories: when you got this new T3 shoulders you can brag about it in front of the bank (achievment) and it can help to unlock you new content / improve your experience in the old one. However due to gear upgrade system it feels well less of an achievement to get the same offhand but 10ilvl higher and, at least in the current content, the only stat which can improve experience in heroics is speed.
Unlocks.
Looks like this kind of rewards is completely reduced to number game as by design every player sees all the content. Before you had to kill Patchwork to see Grobbulus, now you kill Patchwork 26 to fight with Patchwork 27. It may be good for ESports, but for me as a casual player it does not feel rewarding.
One exception which felt rewarding so far was profession gear. Getting to T5 blue tools and enchanting them felt good, even though the process of getting there (acuity/gold farm + crying in the trade chat) didnât feel exciting.
Achievments.
There is way more titles/transmogs/mounts in the game than ever. But in the end it also reduces this system to number game. Back in BC everybody new what does phoenix mount mean. In WOTLK when you saw invincible you salivated. Now nobody can remember and care about all of the mounts so they are reduced to numbers â- I have 300 mounts. - And I have 301âŚâ. Same with transmogs/titles. What is even worth, many of them are locked behind RMT, so these numbers are not achievements at all.
Which in the end leaves us with the only reasonable achievements being the same as reasonable unlocks (â- I killed Patchwork 31. - Iâm better, I killed Patchwork 32â). Which again may be great for ESports but not look fun for me as a casual player.
The game may be good for pro players (however I think they will probably benefit more from a more âpureâ experience, ex. CS or League, as by brewing multiple competitive systems like BG/arena/M+/raids together balance inevitebly suffers), but for me it looks more like a miss so far.
6 Likes
7/10. Of course the main focus should be on a Xbox console release to open the flood gates to millions of more players, this should be the highest priority. They also need to focus on their graphics engine now and upgrade it while keeping the look of the game. Similar to the way other games have done it in the past. A Path tracing patch and some more RT features are much needed at this point.
err but you are a mechanognome from BFA