BFA was 1000x better than SL, you just didn't play it

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I did play BfA, and I didn’t really like it.

The professions took ludicrous levels of grind for very little reward (I still don’t have some of them done to this day!), there was nothing other than World Quests for non-instanced content to do, and mobs were over-tuned and just not very fun to fight, and it was hard as nuts to try and find a weapon.

The terrain was terrible, and I hated having to grind reps and wait for 7+ months to get flying and then, Nazjatar as a zone was terrible too, and Mechagon wasn’t that much better, more overtuned mobs, and either terrible terrain (Nazjatar) or mob density through the fricken roof (Mechagon).

Meanwhile, dungeons weren’t that great, the drop rates were terrible, and the storyline sucked. The entirety of the game was Raid, Mythic, or PvP and that was it.

Same with Shadowlands, until 9.1 and finally we have Korthia and Maw Assaults.

Hence why, ever since 9.1 dropped, I’m actually playing the game longer. I will actually log alts on and play them for more than 30 minutes at a time, and multiple alts per day. At least, for now. Once I get CM3 on all of my crafters, I dunno. Might just do one or two in Korthia and that’s it, try to actually unlock the later content for it rather than just grinding rep for CM3.

About the only good thing I have to say about BfA, was a couple zones (Drustvar and Vol’dun) were neat to quest through, once. After about 2-3 times, though, they quickly got old, especially Drustvar.

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122

Well, you never wanted to do it. I enjoyed a lot of it, comparatively. I liked Warfronts as a one-time weekly thing, I enjoyed islands. Liked horrific visions, etc…

I mean, I wasn’t huge into BFA in general. But Shadowlands has me logging in far less than BFA. I think it’s been a downhill plunge since Argus, IMO. Still, at least BFA tried to have content.

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Warfronts were a “hey this is neat” type thing the first once or twice you did it, but after that… they got old and boring because it was the exact same thing each time. The only thing that was different was the randos you got. Were they good, or did they suck?

Islands… same thing, they were highly randomized, sure, but did you get 2 teammates who knew what they were doing, or did you get a derpy guy who didn’t know how to play his class and can barely kill a single enemy himself? Did you go in wanting to find unique encounters hoping for special loot and find 2 other players who wanted to speedrun azerite, or vice-versa?

It was too much of a mixed bag.

Horrific Visions… overtuned mobs, too high mob density, some of the mobs were annoying AF to actually fight, and the rewards you got out of them had some of the most ridiculous punishments. Yeah, you got this awesome piece of gear… only now your character randomly takes huge damage. Yeah, that’s awesome… not.

Meanwhile, Korthia has similarities to Timeless Isle, and I rather enjoy it for that. I feel some mobs are a little over-tuned, even once you get geared up, but eh. At least it’s not so bad you can’t at least rep up for CM3 (the only reason to bring alts there other than gear), and my main is a Ret Paladin so once I get her fully geared, I’ll stomp all over the place with relative ease.

EDIT: I will say it woulda been nice if Korthia had some actual color. What is it with Shadowlands being devoid of color variety? The maw is grey grey and more grey, Korthia is even more grey with rusted bronze outlines on the structures there with the occasional bits of blue, Ardenweald is all purple, Bastion is ALL GOLD AND SILVER ALL THE TIME, and Revendreth has never seen a color other than red and grey.

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124

I’m not defending the quality of BFA’s content or its longevity. I’m just stating that it had far more content than Shadowlands likely will.

As far as opinion goes, Shadowlands might be an improvement on some things, but it’s an empty-feeling improvement. A better version of a bad version of the game, with significantly less to do.

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My point, though, is what was to do was either pointless, only good to do once or twice, or just too random.

And besides, we’re only in .1. Now, I don’t remember the . patches all that well but wasn’t BfA .1 just Warfronts and more dungeon content?

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126

That’s exactly how I felt about BfA. I truly enjoyed it until 8.3 on into Shadowlands.

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Just because you think BFA was 1000x better than SL, it doesn’t mean either was good in the first place.

Eating dirt probably tastes gross, but I’d bet it’s better than eating feces. See? I can do the same thing.

When the bar is super low, which it has been for years, it doesn’t really matter which is better.

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128

After the corruption vendor when you could actually target what you want. Players asked for it before the patch went live. Like usual Blizzard holds back QoL updates for later.

And that’s what made it great POST vendor. They put player customization in their own hands. I could run all vers amps or a bunch of twilight dev to explode trash packs. Players need ways to customize their characters. BFA S4 was probably the most balanced from a tank perspective at the 20+ level than any other season before it. Take Blizzard out of the equation and tanks find a way to balance themselves via corruption. Warriors were still a bit busted but overall representation of all tanks was way better in S4 at the 20+ level.

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Yeah I think I enjoyed BfA more than this expansion so far.

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Korthia is great content, even though it’s unpleasant to look at, as you said.

But it’s not enough to make up for the rest of the small-feeling expansion. And, yeah, we’re only in 9.1 now. We’re also closing in on the expansion being a year old, and we’re only in 9.1. No 9.1.5 on the PTR or any hint of it arriving anytime soon.

Top that off with all of the chaos going on at Blizzard and it may just be another 6 months or more before we even hear about a 9.2.

I know there’s a lot of stuff going on at HQ that’s hurting this expansion. Maybe it would’ve been one of the better ones by the end. Maybe it still will be. But I won’t hold my breath.

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Oh, absolutely, I get that development is either slowed or halted entirely and the whole expansion is going to be damaged by this stuff going on, and the stuff going on IRL.

But, when comparing patches to patches, leaving the wait times out, I have to say that SL 9.1 is better than BfA 8.1 in terms of content that there is, to actually do.

And sure, 9.0 was abysmal with nothing to do but grind anima, forced Maw Intro, etc. Half of my characters are still stuck in Azeroth because I can only stomach 1 maw intro every few weeks because I am just entirely sick of doing the maw intro.

On the flipside tho, BfA 8.0 wasn’t really any better or worse, about the same really. No stupid intro to have to plod through, but yet BfA had these stupid scenarios and story bits that you had to do on every single alt to upgrade their HoA so that they had some kind of chance of surviving in the world. I got so sick of that Highmountain thing where you went into Neltharion’s Lair doing it on character after character after character without the option to skip any of it.

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They both suck. I played more BFA though

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I suppose patch-for-patch is fair if you forget that time is a thing. 9.1 has Korthia. 8.1 didn’t come with a new zone, but the expansion itself launched with an additional zone. We also got faction assaults in 8.1.

8.1 didn’t come with the mega dungeon, but it did come with two raids instead of one.

We got a continuation of the one story in both. We got new islands to explore, etc… I mean, pound for pound, I’d say both x.1 patches come out even with the same amount of content. What felt better is a matter of opinion.

One big factor though is that we’re about a month away from where we were when 8.2 launched, and we were already deep into the 8.1.5 patch.

Your only argument is that one patch felt like it had a little bit more to you, when comparing labels, with complete disregard to how long the content itself remained stagnant.

Korthia is fun, but it’s not half a year fun.

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I suppose that’s a fair take on it, though to be honest, is it a huge crime to play something else for awhile?

I mean XIV was built around this, and I’m actually excited to have some time to work on side-projects, etc without feeling like I need to hurry up and grind before a new grind is dumped on me. I can take things at my own pace and not miss out so much.

And, if I run out of things to do? I wouldn’t mind taking a short break from WoW and not feeling like I’ve been left behind in the dust. Sometimes I NEED breaks from WoW, but the hardest thing to do is log back on after a month or two of not playing and finding it hard to do so because your gear is outdated, your progression is out dated and you’re basically in the dust. It makes it hard to log onto the game like that.

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135

How about this: Both expansions are bad lol

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BFA was bad compared to the rest of wow’s history but yeah it was better than shadowlands 100%

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No, not at all. I play both FFXIV and WoW. I have a lot of projects I work on on the side. I just wanted to participate in the discussion.

I’ve just been playing WoW less and less. I, personally, felt like BFA was a much better expansion. I didn’t like some of the systems in place, sure. I dislike some of the systems now. I hate everything they do that tries to be tier sets that isn’t tier sets, for example.

As I said, I like Korthia. It’s not Timeless Isle, but it’s close. One big factor is that MoP had a lot of other stuff going on at the time, too. It wasn’t just Korthia or nothing. Flying being another factor. I can’t fly in any zone they want me to spend time in. What’s the point?

There’s a firm difference between downtime in the game between patches and most of the game feeling empty. Shadowlands is a bad expansion. It’s shaping up to be better, but at a pace that’s incredibly slow.

IMO BFA was a better expansion, but I like Korthia’s systems better than anything BFA offered.

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I like Shadowlands pvp (season 1)

I liked 8.3.7 corruptions, because by the end, it was finally targetable and provided so many options to break the game

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BfA had some fun content, but overall it was a discombobulated mess with too much going on. It lacked cohesiveness and was generally overwhelming to follow. Too much information, too many loose ends.

And of course let’s not forget all the systems.

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MoP was indeed the height of WoW.

I once played in MoP for like 20-40 hours a week. These days… meh, maybe 5-6 hours a week. Maybe. Only because I’m grinding for CM3 on like 5-6 characters. Once I do that?

That’ll go down to maybe 3-4 hours a week, just my main doing Korthia a little here and there.

MoP was the bomb though. SO. MUCH. STUFF. to do. Nice beautiful scenery, variety in areas, I could just keep gushing.

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