I guess BfA kinda seems like the âgood old daysâ right now⌠I donât really think it was judged too harshly, though. Itâs like looking back at the worse MCU entries from before Endgame now. It might be good compared to crap.
I certainly liked the leveling experience. The quest zones were actually pretty great, when you didnât have to escort a drunk around. Kul Tiras (including Mechagon) and Zandalar were wonderful additions to the world, and they really hit the right tone to make it feel immersive, be it a swamp full of trollish cultists, a dark witchwood, or some formerly peaceful valley where everything was just not quite right. And while they didnât even try to really tie the Alliance into it, the Uldir-Raid was a great finale for Zandalar. Top marks on that. Well⌠good marks at least. The depiction of the Zandalari was generally way too enlightened, and way too Wakanda, but I guess thatâs Warcraft cheese that we are used to, so I donât really hold that against them too much. And there was the Jaina arc that was the third rerun of the same character progression⌠But I guess it didnât ruin too much.
That doesnât really save the whole addon for me, though.
It started with a main feature: Allied races. Horribly rushed stories that changed the factions forever without any care for the long-term consequences. Some allied races were just unnecessary, some were just bovine excrement. Void Elves were my breaking point, where I finally accepted that the devs as a whole didnât really care about their story. While a lot of that technically came in 7.3.5. I do count them as a BfA feature, and it kinda set the tone for what to expect.
Speaking of Legion⌠The transition from Legion to BfA was a joke. They just unceremoniously dropped the class orders without any explanation whatsoever. They didnât even try to make it seem as if the player was one continuous character, they just seamlessly transitioned him from a powerful neutral leader to some special forces faction soldier. Simultaneously they created the Champions of Azeroth faction that tried to control the fallout of that litte issue of the giant sword sticking out of the world, which might have been of interest to pretty much all the class orders⌠Nothing came of it anyways, since whyever would we expect a stabbing by the giant sword of space satan to have any serous effects? Thatâs a problem for future Blizzard, that Metzen can clean up 6-10 year later, or somethingâŚ
Then there was what supposedly started the faction war: Azerite. That one just fell mostly flat. It worked well enough as a MacGuffin in the context of the âSaving Azerothâ-Plot, where the player hero just collected energy for his personal upgrades and the Super Sayian transformation, I guess, but as a driving force of the factions it did nothing. We didnât really feel the technical or magical progress that necessitated a recource war at all. All opportunities to show its potential they threw away. Why the everloving heck didnât the writers use Azerite in the burning of Teldrassil, or to explain Jainaâs flying siegebreaker ship? As it was, Azerite wasnât even a storm in a tea kettle, it was just nothing. A red herring that distracted from⌠the lack of any real plot, I guess? After the addon was over it wasnât even worth a mention.
Next there is the faction war⌠At this point I almost miss it, but since we could always predict that a faction war addon with an evil war leader would have to end with the ousting of said war leader by the united factions, I always thought it would be pointless. And it was. But well, we could have hoped for âpointless, but epicâ. Thatâs not what we got, though. If the Siege of Lordaeron and its cinematics had set the tone for the conflict, it would have been awesome. And thatâs kinda what we were sold with the concept of war fronts. But⌠nope. Almost all of the war that we could see played out in some special ops missions on Zandalar and Kul Tiras, because⌠erm⌠the factions needed boats, or something. Though it had no repercussions for the war, when the fleets were destroyed in 8.2, but whatever⌠And the war fronts were just some strange minigame that didnât get any story content at all.
So the faction war came down to some rescue and sabotage missions, a short movie about a sad orc warrior, and⌠the mission table descriptions, that told us what cool stuff could actually be happening around the world, which we didnât get to see. Oh, and we raided some troll city for working with the Horde, instead of Horde cities. Yeah, not really a triumph, eitherâŚ
So the whole thing fell flat to me.
And then there was Sylvanas. Yeah, 'nuff said.
But well, the real enemy was always Nâzoth, so even if the faction war was a dud, at least we got a capable and menacing villain that had been build up for a decade or so. Stormsong worked, we got a constant barrage of prophecies and hints, including a kinda random mini raid, and the way Nâzoth got his freedom in the Azshara raid was actually nicely done. We were thoroughly manipulated into helping him, and while we were kinda stupid not to see it, it was plausible enough.
But then we got his patch and⌠yeah, he was a dud as well. The master schemer invited us to his realm of madness⌠and we got an immunity cloak and just murdered him, using only methods that he already knew we had access to.
Oh, and there was Azshara as well. We saw, we came, we punched her face in. Facing Azshara wasnât exactly the grand finale that one might have expected with her buildup, but weâve had worse, I guess? Just seemed so boringâŚ
So⌠I guess one can still recommend leveling through BfA zones. But the main story was a mess, full of missed chances and ideas that could have been cool, but werenât. I wouldnât rank BfA higher than DF, to be honest, even with the more warcraft-y tone. And in a sense I hate the âthey almost got it here and there, but ruined itâ more than the âyeah thatâs not for meâ we have now.
At least Tyrande should get similar screentime like Saurfang or Jaina.