IIRC the night elves who were turned into naga were turned against their will since Azshara pledged them to N’zoth to be his army. Maybe some of them liked the reminder of their lost lives and past. Who knows. The zone was still really nice and I wish they had a whole expansion dedicated to exploring more beneath the sea. If not for how divisive Vashj’ir was as a zone, maybe we would have got an underwater expansion one day.
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The Horde ones were ok. The Alliance ones were so incredibly boring.
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Totally not agreeing with this, the Horde ones were amazing especially with Zuldazar and the Alliance ones for me looked the best, Drustvar being the most annoying out of them but Stormsong Valley’s vibe was immaculate and the huge city that Boralus one with its music made it just as great as Zuldazar
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BfA wasn’t a terrible expac. I would put it in the “ok” category.
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BFA was fantastic, aside from the Teldrasil stuff. The smaller parts of the story were good, good environments, good gameplay even. Raids were fun, the m+ dungeons were fun.
What killed BFA (and continues to strangle wow today) is blizzards need to make everything take 1000 years to complete. “How do you keep someone logging in every day?” is the worst question you could ask from a gameplay perspective. Azerite Power, Azerote Armor, residium. All terrible. Good ideas, bad execution.
It seems so obvious, to me, what the problems are. I can’t imagine that blizzards development staff aren’t aware of it. So I have to assume that it’s intentional. The current state of PvP, m+, and raid isn’t an accident or an unintentional consequence.
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Blizzard and their systems. I suppose Azerite and Artifact Power weren’t as confusing as some systems in DF and so far TWW, they were simple even if tedious. I hate crest farming and miss Valor, for example. Blizzard rarely learns. Playing the game is fun but grinding currencies sucks and gets exhausting, especially for alts.
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The main story in Stormsong was over super fast and then it was just a bunch of boring garbage helping farmers. And then Boralus half the zone was just murdering random animals for some stupid noble.
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If you don’t mind me asking, are you the original Draenei from the og forums that started the “belves are floozies” thing?
The one that had like, 100k+ posts?
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I wholeheartedly agree with OP and miss the first half of BfA a lot. It was a magical time for me, but I understand and warrant the complaints about the grind. If you had the time back then to stay on top of it like I did, though… I thought the spec design, zones, music and story, PvP S1 and then Dazaralor raid days were peak modern WoW. IMHO it’s gone sort of downhill since 2019 tho.
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BFA was a good expansion. However, the chores were out of CONTROL. It felt like a job I hated but couldn’t quit. I do not miss the cringe of logging on during the dog days of that expansion. Not at all.
Because they fumbled BFA chores so dramatically I think it scared devs into thinking faction conflict wasn’t wanted. It’s sad really b/c that was what people I know liked about BFA! The borrowed power system and --I’ll say it again: chores-- were flat out awful.
But as far as zone design goes I agree 100%. Too bad flight was too difficult to unlock for many also (another fumble). BFA looks great from the air and on the ground 
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I think overall BFA did a lot of things right.
The main negatives to me were:
Azerite grinding just to unlock how your gear worked was stupid.
Titanforging was still stupid
They removed class specific tier sets.
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I agree and my unpopular hot take is any system that uses borrowed power is just poorly designed. I know people wanted to wield the Ashbringer in legion but artifact power lead to heart of Azeroth power and it was all bad.
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I feel like theme matters a a lot.
Legion giving class, and even spec, unique storylines and the artifact weapons each with a spec unique tree to powered up to me felt pretty cool thematically. I’m improving my Mistweaver specific staff, getting MW specific perks, etc.
Having a generic neckless, needed to make my generic helm/shoulder/chest abilities work, is bland and stupid. And higher item level versions of the same armor need more AP so you could get an “upgrade” that you can’t use for another few AP levels. That’s pretty moronic.
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Most beautiful zone ever made in my opinion
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don’t get me wrong. The weapons were cool. And had they worked the same way as the necklace probably would’ve made them less cool. However, I think handing them out right at the beginning of the expansion was probably a bad idea. I think once you hit level cap, then you could go after all three and rather than continuing to expand their power you could simply just weild them.
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Zone’s or race storylines was never the problem with BFA. The problem with BFA was the terrible faction war writing and some game systems.
I say, when it comes to race story telling, BFA is wonderful. When it comes to dumb faction war and hamfisted villains, it is terrible.
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Not controversial. I loved the first half or more of BfA, until it got way over systemized. Then corruption was added, and rendered onto our 2014 character models with 1992 quality black blotches. 
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zones were amazing, really enjoyed the questing aesthetic, some dungeons were really cool. Story was meh even early, alliance were kind of shoehorned into the story for dazalor raid. (not sure if that was within first 3 patches but yeah, not even being part of the raid story is/was lame, I don’t want to swap to horde for fights)
azerite gearing was terrible, islands fell flat although I still maintain they could have been pretty cool if they’d added a rewards system and kept iterating on them. I hated the corrupted gear system at the end, and I hated that all the gear was straight generic looking. You’re raiding for what looked like quest greens in the eternal palace.
edit: forgot hearth of azeroth was just like a grindier, crappier version of artifact weapons and we were all burned out on that system when we got there
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The problem with BFA was the annoying dungeons and azerite farming. The zones and raids were pretty good.
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I have no small amount of bitterness towards BfA - I quit the game before it was over, with 8.3 being the last straw for me - but if I were to try to separate the questing/leveling experience from the rest of it?
Eh… mediocre.
Some good moments, but often fleeting and isolated… and disconnected from the central plot.
But regardless, it was FAR better than BfA’s atrocious endgame offerings.
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