BFA felt incomplete, unpolished and rushed out the door upon launch. WOD did not. There was a content lull during WOD but it was much better than BFA.
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I mean. You can argue unpolished and rushed out the door.
But incomplete?
WoD is the very definition of an incomplete expansion.
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Yes. Absolutely.
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Source for the millions upon millions.
I guess WODās level of incompletion was higher than BFAās. I mean, at least during WOD there was a Feedback forum that Blizzard used. BFA didnāt have that which led to a lot of incomplete and unpolished stuff, good example being the Azerite system, a major pillar of BFA.
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For me personally, WoD is a little bit better than BFA so far. There are some aspects of BFA that I really like but I almost always logged in. Now I donāt even log in some days.
![:cookie:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/cookie.png?v=6" ":cookie:")
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Iām of a minority who really liked Warlords. Roleplay supplemented heavily for the lack of content, though.
Neither expansion was that bad to me. Garrisons sucked, and in BfA the push for ārush through everything to get your gearā also kind of sucks.
But I think I liked Warlords more at the moment. BfAās gear progression doesnāt give me much reason to attempt the raids, or even M+ really. And Warlords did have some genuinely good content, even if there wasnāt much of it.
That being said, Iām excited to see what the new patch will bring, and Iām pretty hopeful for it to drag BfA back up to be on par with other expansions.
(Also, the art team is killing it in BfA)
Itās a multi tiered question, so it needs multiple answers.
In terms of design and end game, no. There are meaningful raids and fun things to do. However the system of rewards and Azerite resource cripples this such that recieving a cheap crystal feels like you being spit on rather than rewarded for your kill.
Artifacts should of carried over with new traits and this would of solved much of this. Azerite Armor is not a good replacement and subject to more RNG which while perhaps beloved by Activision, is despised by the players.
Disagree with it if you like, but I suspect many players who pay for the game would agree since they are abandoning the title now that Sargeras is defeated.
Moving on.
There is the state of the story. Sylvanas does X. Sylvanas faces no consequences. Players are sick of this. They are tired of her getting away with everything, and itās been over-used so much that at this point itās eyeroll worthy. It also alienates both factions. Alliance feel they are wronged with no trade-off. Horde also feels wronged in that they are told āGo along with the programā.
At this point Sylvanas could find the cure for all bad things in the world, and people would still want her dead. She has no place in the story, and frankly has been an elephant in the room since Wrath ended. She needs to become a āLegend of the Pastā immediately.
The Zandalari and KulāTiran story were well done. The time it took to acquire these races, and intentional delaying of the races; was unacceptable. There is little complaint on the feel of the zones as they are beautiful as are the cinematics.
The prospect of the Naga and Nāzoth are excellent story points. It is hobbled however by the idiotic need to continue a faction war that only PVPers (who donāt even HAVE their own servers) enjoy. Yes Warcraft started with Orcs vs. Humans, but the story has evolved past that.
Time to make it āMortals vs. Godsā or introduce new threats. You did not see Captain Picard constantly fighting the Borg. They were a threat, but not the only threat. There needs to be a wide spectrum of dangerous threats to sell the idea of conflict, otherwise itās two guys hitting eachother with rocks like in Rust.
Last but not least. Classes need to be fixed. I had to abandon my Shadow Priest because radical and ignorant redesigns left me with a feeling that my class was deleted and replaced with the āCultist Specā. No player should ever have to endure that. Respect the feel of classes and stop redesigning for the sake of redesign.
I play Mage now because time and again Blizzard gives them everything they need or desire, be it in the form of visual overhauls, damage increases, or just fun toys and perks like Teleport. Other classes need this too. To say Mage was a favorite of the developers would be accurate I think given the track-record established 15 years out.
Ultimately the game is stagnating because weāre being given the same thing for the eighth time. We need factions to drop, we should have the ability to connect to the Classic WoW world via Caverns of Time, and we should not have to āchooseā the version of WoW we want.
This is retail, it should be the top priority and have the most options before it. I am not trashing Classic. Servers that were āLaddersā or set in a specific expansion is fine and awesome for those who want to do that. The problem is that right now players feel like WoW is not a priority. Thus it becomes a lesser priority to them and they go to FFXIV whose staff thank you in turn for these design priorities.
Is BFA bad? No. But it has multiple issues in need of correction post-haste.
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Funny you should mention that, I agree with you that the Legion WQ system might have made WoD better. Hard to say now, but at the time, yeah, there was a severe lack of actual content in the game.
Itās really not that much different. At least thereās stuff to do this xpac heh. They honestly progressed not regressed. Artifacts/legendaries were a total failure anyways so thereās that.
why did they keep these systems then? More RNG and repackaging AP with azerite?
They also managed to prune more
Meh. Holy Paladin went from fun to garbage in WoD.
Elemental Shaman is way more interesting now than during WoD.
Shadow Priest is way more interesting now than during WoD.
DPS Warriors were stupid during WoD (but I canāt compare that to BfA).
Basically Iām saying this is subjective. Wod Design vs Legion-lite Design.
Highmaul was generic.
Blackrock Foundry was pretty unique.
Hellfire Citadel was good enough. Nothing fantastic but certainly not bad.
Uldir was generic.
BoD and CoS are both good. Again nothing fantastic but certainly not bad.
Weāll see how the next 2 raids stack up.
So again I say, subjective. I think both expansions have solid raids.
The only WoD Dungeon I like more than BfA dungeons is Grimrail, and itās only because of the neat environment on the train. All in all Iād say itās about even, and Mythic+ makes BfA win out by far, because dungeons are pointless without it.
Both expansions have absolutely horrid stories. But in fairness I feel like that about most of WoWās storytelling, at least the āmainā bits.
Garrisons arenāt story progression. These 2 things arenāt comparable. You just built up a base to give you free stuff, and it only took about 3 weeks to get it mostly upgraded, after which it ceased to be content and was just a gold/gear generator.
Iām not a huge fan of the way the story is going in the War Campaign, but having endgame story progression that isnāt just little bits in raids is nice.
I dislike sharding. It should only be used early in an expansion to help with launch crowds. If Blizzard is so dead set on making realms irrelevant, they should just get it over with and merge them or otherwise allow proper cross-realm guilds and trading.
But I donāt feel a back-end system like this should be considered when discussing the merits of an expansion.
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WoD had its problems, for sure, but at least the classes were fun to play. BfA currently sits at the bottom of the heap for me.
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Lot of people disagree about classes. Atleast in WoD, classes were complete. So even if the rotation was more generic, the tools available were higher. Iām not saying that the classes in WoD were the best, but itās better than BFA that got the worse class design overall and you can add the way they handled GCD.
Highmaul is one of the best first raid in an Expansion after Karazhan. If you didnāt do the raid on Mythic itās understandable tho. Mythic difficulty in WoD was way more unique than what we got now, hence why I say raiding. (Imperator Mythic is considered one of the most amazing boss of all time)
Story right now feels horribly forced, and lot of it is in the books. It just doesnāt feel good. Thatās how I would say that atleast even with the āterrible writingā atleast wod story was completly in the game.
Garrisons had campains that led you around the world and that led you to get a legendary follower Garona. I was just not comparing the garrison standalone.
As for sharding, you might think itās not relevant. It is for a lot of people. I play on a server to play with that community and my friends on it, I play in a guild to see them in the world with me. I donāt care about other servers people that Iāll see maybe once in my lifetime.
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No, not in my opinion. WoD is still worse than bfa, and cataclysm is the absolute worst.
WoD was its own tier of horrendous garbage. And what do you mean? Dust settled? its only 8.1.5. Legion was absolutely horrible at the start and apparently people liked it at the end but i quit after 7.2 launched so i wouldnāt know.
Despite bfaās flaws, if you say wod was better you are just lying to yourself.
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I was unsubbed for WoD but Iām subbed for BfA, what do you think??
Plot twist: I just got my Corrupted Dreadwing for 150k Apexis crystals, Iām 7 missions away from my Captainās title and working on Draenor Pathfinding. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I had a lot of fun in Warlords. Lots of stuffs to do and made a Huge amount of gold. Gobs of new mounts and pets, new things to wear, etc.
BfA is fun too. Tons of stuff to do, gold is slowly refilling. Gobs of new mounts and pets and achievements and new things to wear, etc. etc.
Now, none of the xpacs were screaming fun times for the entire duration but Iāve been subbed thru thick and thin. I have other games to play while WoW languishes. Itās all good.
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I liked WoD more, but I also really like WoD tbh. Itās when I started really getting into the game, druids had that cat form (another thing everyone hated but I liked), and there was a whole new world of arakkoa lore to be explored. My regret is that so much of the planned content was cut out.
I really want the game to be as fun as it was before all the dev-thefts. Now that I have disposable income to spend, I donāt even want to log in.
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