I’ve been away for a while and just starting to get back into wow.
Is SL better than BFA?
Is wow still heavy on Horde favoritism?
Horde favoritism is still a thing. And let’s be honest, the player base hasn’t helped the issue, they’ve only made it worse by giving in and switching factions.
Personally… sigh… BfA was bad. SL is bad but in different ways.
But you’ve got game time, so I suggest just playing and finding your way and figure out if you like it. I liked it in the beginning, but when it was made clear that gear progression is to be thru M+ I’ve lost a lot of my drive to stay subbed.
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In some ways. PvP is IMO far worse, but PvE seems better.
If it weren’t for 8.3 I’d say they were comparable, but corruption was just such a bad mechanic.
Always will be, unless some miracle happens.
Is SLs better than BFA 8.3…no
But I do think it’s better than BFA 8.0. I was not a fan titan/war forging or azerite armor…or the hidden loot tables of island Expeditions
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It’s honestly about the same. There’s about 4 layers of borrowed power and the unnecessary systems that nobody wanted or asked for themselves have unnecessary systems that nobody wanted or asked for. Covenants are kind of a mess as well. Torghast is terrible, although you’ll find someone who says they like it in every thread complaining about it, so it has some fans even if I personally don’t like it.
The content isn’t. There’s not even horde and alliance cities anymore in SL.
The population shift to horde has continued however, and your ability to interact with players, find guilds, etc will probably be better horde-side.
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Well, someone put it nicely a while back:
BfA was all the bad systems from Legion with all the bad content from WoD
In accordance with that, Shadowlands is the bad systems from BfA with decent content. So better than BfA by a large margin, but still not that good.
They are very similar in my opinion 
It’s very pretty.
I’m enjoying it more. I liked BfA, but the amount of character upkeep and the rng on the rng on the rng felt horrid to me. I was very burned out at the end of it.
SL has interesting themes, and is more thematically cohesive. The character upkeep is very low, and the raids n dungeons are well crafted. If you run in low numbers - the scaling is right on point.
But you’d probably get more targeted feedback if you stated what your primary interests are.
Welcome back if you decide to give it a go!
SL was leagues ahead of BFA at launch and for the first 3-4 months. However, the game is going to go well over 200 days from launch with no content patches - making it the worst expansion since WoD at this stage IMO.
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Other than ember court, bfa was better.
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I’m enjoying it. Running a few low mythic +, leveling alts, actually going into the maw some more since I cleared Torghast TC and have the mount. It’s not bad really, guess everyone has different opinions on it. I didn’t care much for BfA 8.3 but the rest of it wasn’t bad IMO so there is that to take into consideration.
You’ll have to play to see if it works for you.
Depends what you like about WoW in general.
I’m not a fan of SL theme, so I like bfa zones better. Boralus/Zuldazar miles better than Oribos. I liked separate horde/alliance questing that BFA had. BFA had Maghar/Darkirons to unlock. But islands/warfront was a dud… azerite armor sucked. Torghast is better in that regard to non raid/pvp/m+ content. WQ a little more enjoyable in BFA though.
SL endgame systems better, SL 1st raid is better. Tree mount is pretty damn cool for Blizz to give us. Other than that just a new coat of paint for the same gameplay formula
This early on in the game, it’s very lacking, even compared to BFA. We will see if it improves in future patches.
WoW has never been heavy on Horde favoritism, though. That’s just your personal bias.
Lying isn’t effective when the truth is blatant. Especially when it’s showcased repeatedly and openly by Blizzard for years.
My personal favorite examples
All of Adventures of Green Jesus: The Expansion
5.3.
All of WoD.
Start to end of the War of Thorns.
Super Moonsaiyan Tyrande + Walking demigod Malfurion struggling, and failing, to kill two val’kyr + some dude with a bow. They got a val’kyr though I guess.(Val’kyr can be killed by a bunch of farmers with pitchforks btw)
Those are just lore examples, too.
But most importantly, mechagnomes and their abominable existence is a downright insult to ally players.
EDIT: Cutting this off before it has any chance, Horde losing in lore is not an example against the favoritism. The Horde, win or lose, has the primary focus of lore and has since Cataclysm.
Not to mention that when Alliance does win, the wins are often if not exclusively pyrrhic, and rarely shown in the game.
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It’s actually getting even worse. Blizzard still has done nothing to address the faction imbalance and more and more high end Alliance hold outs are going Horde because there’s just not enough people to recruit.
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Believe it or not, SL is worse than BFA.
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SL 9.0 is better then BFA 8.0
However the game is still flawed like BFA in terms of borrowed power, random new systems introduced and metas for PvP, raid and M+. Though, the meta part will likely never be resolved as it’s the hardest to balance.
I played BFA and now playing SL, I can say (in my opinion anyway) that players seem “happier” with the first 5 months of SL then they were in the first 5 months of BFA. M+ dungeons and Castle Nathria are more enjoyable in SL then M+ dungeons and Uldir were in BFA during 8.0. The covenant system with conduits is also more enjoyable then Heart of Azeroth + Azerite traits in 8.0. That’s not saying much though as the current systems we have are still flawed and could use some improvement.
It’s not much better the BFA was it’s first 5 months, but it is in a better spot. There is potential to improve it and hopefully the Devs listen to the playerbase and implement nice changes in future patches.
Also, don’t gauge the success or status of the game by the forum threads. Most posts and threads are just people trolling, arguing or being toxic since its you know… the internet. People will always take the time to voice what they are displeased with in the game, they rarely ever come to post on forums about what they like or find appealing.
Like other posts said, play it for yourself and I highly recommend to get into a guild for the level of content you plan to play. Whether it is raiding, PvP or M+, if you find the right group of people to play with, the game is much much more enjoyable then playing solo and pugging.
Much much much better IMO but you will get very different responses from very different people.
I think SL is the best expansion we’ve ever had. Others hate it with a passion.
Play it for yourself and form your own opinion about SL rather than be influenced one way or the other by people you will never again interact with.
It’s hard to say, it doesn’t feel as grindy, but there’s not as much to do either. 9.1 is a make or break patch imo.