Not fixing BFA and leaving it broken in favor of Shadowlands

So I’ve been watching a couple of the interviews Ion did, and I noticed that the dev team is aware of BFA’s flaws, but instead of trying to fix them they would rather focus on Shadowlands. And on some level I understand why, but you have a game filled with players stuck under a broken system and instead of fixing it for the current playerbase. It’s almost like Ion is telling all of us collectively to unsubscribe till the pre patch. I just don’t understand the logic behind this because if they fail again with Shadowlands and given Blizzards track record that’s likely and they will have to fix it again. I’m starting to wonder if a stagnet system that works is better than tearing down systems to replace them with new systems.

I’m starting to ramble, but I guess the tldr of this is well is this ok? Does playing right now under the thumb of rng progression dialed to 11 bothering you? Or am I preaching to a wall mirror?

Addendum

Everyone has somthing to keep them playing outside of that progression so I will addendum that right now so it’s not something that comes up later.

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They did the same thing with WoD after 6.2, there was a lot of content that did not see the light of day while they focused on Legion.

It’s almost like there was a pattern…

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Did they? I quit most of Wod and only came back to unlock flying before Legion came out and to level alts to max.

I mean, it depends. Are you progressing towards anything? I set myself a goal, I met that goal, and now my main is taking a long, deserved break until Shadowlands. There’s nothing worth progressing towards for me, but that’s why I’m asking. Is there something that you want specifically, or are you doing it to do it?

I find it easier if you set goals for yourself since Blizzard has failed to give us a decent stop for progression. But I do agree that they should be focus on Shadowlands. They probably should have done something for 8.3.5, but we’re at most three-four months out from Shadowlands, and probably two months from pre-patch. So it’s too late to consider fixing BfA now.

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Yeah that’s true. My current goal is to get this guy to 120 and farm some Legion raids for mogs. Outside of that I have nothing else to do in BFA.

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BFA was DOA, I’d say they did more than enough to fix what they could in an untimely fashion. If they kept working on BFA, Shadowlands would have taken an extra year.

I can live with this. They salvaged what they could, without risking BFA being another WOD.

It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

Remember, this game is an MMO. Dont expect to log in today and in 3 to 4 weeks, you would beat Mythic Raiding. You need to continuously play actively to maintain your character to make your toon current. Gone are the days where you can be carried and still catch up. The new WoW favors faithful players who stayed active for a long time.

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And they still are making some of the same mistakes in SL, Ap grind and punishing players are the first thing that come to mind.

Crunch time?

I mean I get that, but they seem to drop the tools and abandon the current players in a vain attempt to draw in new ones.

Yeah. I’m leveling for heritage armor, doing some mog runs, making sure I’ve checked off my list of stuff to do that may/will be going away in Shadowlands.

I looked at the Corruption system and essentially flipped it the bird. Heroic is the highest level I’ll raid at, and +15 is the highest M+ I’ll reach. Both easily obtainable without the best of the best Corruption. So I didn’t even worry about those, I just played the game.

This expansion has been one train wreck after another, so I have to hope that Shadowlands gets love and attention that BfA apparently didn’t.

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This is such a bizarre complaint considering like, a year and a half ago people whined and moaned about play the patch and WANTED the essence system. Asmongold begged for the essence system. These people want to have a big advantage simply because they’re addicted to the game and grinded it when it was current.

As far as I know Shadowlands is reversing course on this anyways and going back to a model more similar to play the patch anyways. You’ll have a Renown grind to catch-up with your emissary caches giving increased renown if you’re lagging behind, and the Carcerus grind will allow you to catch up as well in some way that has yet to be described. As long as they don’t pile any systems like essences into the mix, and/or add something like the “instant level 50” amulet quest, we should be in a good place.

Well, if you dont miss any patch, you wont need those catch up mechanics. And if you play actively, you wont be running behind that much against 24/7 no life players becoz time gating is on your side.

They were on the backfoot out the gate. They noticed a lot of things that weren’t working and somethings I think they chose to not work on, called it a day.

They have too much to change code wise and design that takes LOTS of time and resources to fix it which would take away from Shadowlands design.

It’s just a company seeing the 2 yr is coming in… next expansion should be finishing up… so they saw BFA getting the reception it did, too many things to fix from the ground up so they just saw it more beneficial to focus on Shadowlands.

Fine for me.

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If you don’t need to catch up, you won’t need to catch up. Obviously that’s kind of a given. WoW has never ever been a game where you can just roll a new character and hop straight into end-game content. There’s always been some little thing you needed to do on some level. Isle of Quel’danas, Timeless Isle, whatever the flavor of the patch island was, you usually needed to run around and grind some kind of currency or farm easy heroic 5-mans to get currency to buy gear.

I mean that’s the big thing. Making people feel like the endless grind isn’t endless. Because for example you have BFA were in as a new 120 you have essences, azerite and corruption looking at you and expecting those bars to be filled. And for most people that workload is fine. They gleefully jump in. I just keep seeing the heap of things I have to do in the distance and it’s making me want to do something else. And as a game that’s just terrible. Then I look at Shadowlands and it’s looking the same way, but at the start. And maybe they will gate progression, but in a good way. Like you can only progress x percent and you are locked out for the week so you can play alts or whatever. Something that doesn’t hinder me if I don’t have the time to no life the game.

I kinda wish Blizzard would stop with the RNG progression. WoD WAS better than BFA in that aspect, once you had your “best in slot” gear and met your Raid/PvP goal, you could take a breather or focus on another toon. I really miss that.

I hate wanting to work on an alt I may need for my guild or just feel like playing but have this nagging feeling that “Your main could be doing more”

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Does that mean the first half of slands is going to be awful like the first half of legion was?

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That’s the scary issue. Mythic+ was new and I really wanted to try it. I even swapped mains in a vein attempt to be the class everyone wanted. I never got a legendary and by the time I did I didn’t have the right one and could never find a group or make one. I tried joining guilds etc. and nothing helped me in that regard. So I quit for just about the entire expansion and the only reason I came back was because I could target legendaries. But by that time everyone was doing 15+ and I was left holding my you know. I still don’t see what all the fuss was about in Legion. All I got out of that expansion was rejection and pain. It really sucked.

I think Blizzard has careened down this path of RNG progression and external player power for too long. And while I respect their opinions regarding Covenants, I’m exceptionally worried that it’ll be another Azerite fiasco.

I hesitate to say WoD was better, but I DID like that BiS existed. The forever grind makes me not want to pursue gear, because if I get something that isn’t WF/TF/Socketed/Best Corruption or whatever, I have to either go grind the currency to upgrade it to that or go redo the content, and I may never get the BiS.

I don’t think it’s bad to have a natural stop at the end of a tier where you likely can’t get anymore upgrades. If upgrades take longer to get (slightly lower drop rate) then I prefer that over spending the first week in the new Heroic tier disenchanting stuff because nothing is an upgrade over what we got last tier.

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