Now that the dust has settled, is BfA worse than WoD?

[Akston-bloodhoof (Akston)]

Look class in wow have mostly 4 buttons rotations. Right now most spender/builders are the same, only dks/spriest/mages/warlock have a tad bit more difference on how they do it. But a lot of their gameplay got wrecked in half.

I use about 20 or so buttons every raid / m+

[Toddorbert-thrall]

Classes were still entertaining to play in WoD, and leveling up wasn’t as much as of pain as it is now. Those are the 2 biggest things I preferred in WoD.

I’d like to add to that short list: no scaling in WoD either; plus the big exp nerf (for power leveling alts); plus the nerf to heirlooms

[Aenoan-tichondrius (Aenoan)]

Yeah, I am not a fan of either.
I think BFA is better than Legion but only because we get weapons back. I still don’t like this bandaid fix for content called artifact necklaces and weapons.

Things I would like to see done but won’t ever happen.

-Group finder/raid finder. The menu system I like, being able to tell the world you are LFG would be a nicer option not just being forced to look through a menu and filter through a 100,000 groups from gold sellers trying to find actual groups looking for more players.
This way you can say run some BGs or LFR or maybe even do some arena’s while you have your tag on. That way player_x may go ok, we need to fill the group lets check who’s LFG and do a /who lfg and look down the menu. Or just click a button to do the samething.

-Remove all the Garrison style missions. Instead make chests or quests harder to discover and make similar missions available through the regular world.
Realizing wowhead and similar sites kinda ruin the game for this stuff, they outta be a ashamed. It would be nice to have some mystery left in the game.
The quest help is great but they take it to far. For those higher end rewards, like Treasure maps make it similar to “How to Ptrain Your Pterrordax” or “They Grow Up So Fast” and make it a chain that is extended over a few days, but the rewards is 5kg or something.

-Make trade skills relevant to questing to help those with either training or just to change up actual canon/main quest lines. Instead of killing 8 boars every day like we have been doing for the last decade and a half.
And what you can’t do, you buy.

-Make exp harder to get, make the game more about the journey and less about cap.

And finally condense classes down, make tanks …tanks and healers actual healers and buff the dps so they don’t feel like butt while leveling even if that means removing off specs, at least then we could in theory have more classes added this way.

[Lumino-queldorei]

Except you kind of can’t.

Just using my primary alt as an example. Mid-way through Uldir, when I was running out of stuff for my main to do, I started working on my alts.

The problem though is that my alt had been through the Warfront a few times and he’d gotten a couple of sporadic M+ caches as well so he had a weird mishmash of some very low pieces and some very high pieces that averaged out to an ilevel where it seemed like I should be doing Heroic but couldn’t actually perform well there.

Normal seemed completely pointless because I could only find an upgrade for 3 out of 13 slots … but since my weapons and trinkets were lagging so far behind everything else, even though I was 370+, I was struggling to perform and was frequently near the bottom of the dps charts.

I don’t believe it was a skill issue because this is a spec I’ve played for years and I’ve raided on at a Mythic level in the past. I was just gimped by bad weapons/trinkets/luck.

Normal raiding was a huge waste of time because the odds of getting an upgrade for the slots I needed were so low and it was frustrating to continually get drops for slots that I already had better gear in thanks to Warfronts or M+.

Maybe if I had just done M+ instead of attempting to raid I’d have had a better time doing it even though again, my ilevel was suggesting I should be doing a level of M+ that my character couldn’t perform well in, so it was just all around frustrating.

I’m not arguing that it’s easy to gear up a character. It for sure is. It’s not easy to gear one up doing fun content though. I’d much prefer to raid and work my way through a difficulty until I eventually “graduated” to the next one. I hate this feeling of not knowing what content I can/should be doing because my gear levels are all over the place.

[Spinster-farstriders (Spinster)]

They removed much of what made Legion work, and broke classes. Then they added mediocre new features (I mean Island Expeditions are just . . .so boring and unrewarding. I like Warfronts but they are pointless after you reach a certain gear level). They kept endless grinding for EVERYTHING but made sure your character never feels much stronger.

I mean . . .

I actually LIKE the area designs and much of the questing. I don’t mind WQs. I wouldn’t mind the mission table if the rewards weren’t puny. There is quite a lot to like in BfA . . .but it is the detail stuff that is good. The BIG picture isn’t very good: Story, classes, feeling of progression.

So, really, the blame lies with the top designers of the game. The big decision people. Because the folks working on individual quests and art and dialogue and all that did great, but their stuff got put in a bad system.

It’s like putting 800 thread count sheets and awesome soft blankets and pillows on a horrible mattress with bedbugs: It isn’t going to be a great experience even if the details are perfect.

[Akston-bloodhoof (Akston)]

Except you kind of can’t.

Just using my primary alt as an example. Mid-way through Uldir, when I was running out of stuff for my main to do, I started working on my alts.

The problem though is that my alt had been through the Warfront a few times and he’d gotten a couple of sporadic M+ caches as well so he had a weird mishmash of some very low pieces and some very high pieces that averaged out to an ilevel where it seemed like I should be doing Heroic but couldn’t actually perform well there.

Normal seemed completely pointless because I could only find an upgrade for 3 out of 13 slots … but since my weapons and trinkets were lagging so far behind everything else, even though I was 370+, I was struggling to perform and was frequently near the bottom of the dps charts.

I don’t believe it was a skill issue because this is a spec I’ve played for years and I’ve raided on at a Mythic level in the past. I was just gimped by bad weapons/trinkets/luck.

Normal raiding was a huge waste of time because the odds of getting an upgrade for the slots I needed were so low and it was frustrating to continually get drops for slots that I already had better gear in thanks to Warfronts or M+.

Maybe if I had just done M+ instead of attempting to raid I’d have had a better time doing it even though again, my ilevel was suggesting I should be doing a level of M+ that my character couldn’t perform well in, so it was just all around frustrating.

I’m not arguing that it’s easy to gear up a character. It for sure is. It’s not easy to gear one up doing fun content though. I’d much prefer to raid and work my way through a difficulty until I eventually “graduated” to the next one. I hate this feeling of not knowing what content I can/should be doing because my gear levels are all over the place

Weird. My guild is pretty casual I guess. Only 3/9 mythic. We have people that have main changed quite a few times for BoD without holding us back.

[Tempestwinds-hyjal (Tempestwinds)]

It’s not a fair comparison as of yet. You’re trying to compare a completed expansion with one that is, at best, 50% finished. Does BFA have issues? Yes. Is it clearly the “B team” group that made it? Yes. But we have what is shaping up to be an incredible patch coming in 8.2, a new raid where we finally get to fight Azshara and, presumably, 8.3 and another raid with that.

Now, before anyone chimes in with “white knight” comments, let me be clear: BFA is one of the worst 3 expansions, no doubt. But it’s simply too early to decide it’s place in history, especially when it’s maybe half over. Let’s give 8.2 and beyond a fair shake first; when we’re in the last few weeks of BFA before 9.0, we can revisit this.

[Zoumz-zuljin (Zoumz)]

Do you think Blizzard will finish class design this expansion?
Yes more of the same content, if you’re not happy with the design won’t fix anything.
Not saying that 8.2 is not a great patch, it sure brings a lot.

[Waidmann-gilneas (Waidmann)]

I knew these forums had extreme recency bias but this is ridiculous. Do you people not remember how much of a complete disaster WoD was? Blizzard LITERALLY GAVE UP halfway through

THis was done when Blizzard said they planned on releasing an expansion on a yearly basis.

How did that work out ? It didn’t it was still 2 years between the launch of WoD and Legion.

THe problem with WoD was they set a goal that they couldn’t reach and for that the content of the expansion suffered.

[Hanners-emerald-dream]

Dust hasn’t settled. At all. Let’s talk again in 9.0. Wrath of the Lich King was viewed as “failed” during the end cycle of the expansion. Cataclsym was viewed as “failed” during the course of the expansion. Mist of Pandaria was viewed as “failed” during the course of the expansion.

BfA is not a terrible or failed expansion. Unless Blizzard decided to cut the expansion at 8.2, then no, factually it is not worse than WoD no matter what opinions say.

It’s a 15 year old game, it will never have 10M subs again and that is ok.

GD is very loud and toxic, with a lot of White Knights, but also with A LOT of “basement game developers” than constantly think they know better about how to “fix” a game instead of playing said game.

I mean, if your measure of success is “it’s not as bad as the next one will be”, more power to you. Also, way too many people equate “lots of stuff to do” as “fun”. I have lots of stuff to do in my yard, doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy it.

[Tempestwinds-hyjal (Tempestwinds)]

You missed my point. I’m in no way, shape or form saying BFA is a good expansion. I’m just saying we need to see ALL of it before we do historical rankings.

[Zoumz-zuljin (Zoumz)]

And I’m sure the thinking that the next patch will fix it is nice to have.
I’m sure lot of the designs won’t be changed a lot.

We will keep getting more raids, more dungeons, more wqs.
And for sure just the mere quantity of content is bigger than WoD.
But is the quality of it comparable? I wouldn’t agree on that.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect any changes before next expansion in designs or philosphies behind them. Which in the end is just a reasonable guess. And for sure we need to wait before having a “final” ranking, but that doesn’t mean we can’t rank what we’ve seen now.

[Calistrian-garrosh]

Actually SoO had a longer time between it’s release and the release of WoD. Another thing is all final raids in an expansion since ICC have lasted anywhere from 10 to 15 months before the next expansion was released.

HFC was longer than SoO by about 5 days actually

[Lumino-queldorei]

Weird. My guild is pretty casual I guess. Only 3/9 mythic. We have people that have main changed quite a few times for BoD without holding us back.

My guild rarely does alt runs and only a few people in our group are allowed to bring alts to the regular run because we trust them as good, reliable players and they offer us flexibility.

We’re fully focused on Mythic so we’re not doing any Heroic clears anymore so my only options are either Normal pugs I mostly outgear or Heroic pugs I weirdly undergear even though my ilevel says I should be fine.

I’ve essentially just given up trying to play alts because Warfronts are the easiest way to get upgrades and I just can’t stomach doing them anymore.

[Phydeaux-windrunner (Phydeaux)]

I played a lot more in WoD because my class was fun and PVP was good.

But WoD wasn’t very good either, because of other issues. That being said I enjoyed a lot of WoD more than BfA.

[Drougen-emerald-dream (Drougen)]

Theres already a PVP warfront thats been in the game forever.

AV.

That’s not a warfront, It’s an epic battleground for one and they are totally different rewards. Get your head in the game, buddy.

[Keronso-stormrage]

How does it feel to be completely delusional?

[Kaath-blood-furnace (Kaath)]

Except we are less than halfway through BfA. The dust has still not settled.

[Balanor-maelstrom (Balanor)]

No one talks about the stagnant over a year of Hellfire Citadel, and how long and awful the first tier raiding was (Pretty sure someone coined the term, “that’ll cost you a raid tier” in WoD.

Long stagnant final raid tiers going into the next expansion has been a long problem that they tried to fix in WoD by tightening the content schedule and making the expansion shorter, and we did ultimately lose some raid tiers. But the joke is actually pretty old, and the WoD team included it as an easter egg in the Alliance garrison (maybe Horde too)? There was a tombstone for a person called “Ray D. Tear.”

[Cladis-korgath]

How does it feel to be completely delusional?

Got any context you wanna add to that or do you want to keep it easy mode with just an insult?