In a word? Disappointed.
This was a hugely anticipated patch after a very long content drought and, at least to me, it fell flat on its face.
The two new zones are visually appealing but as many have pointed out, feel old and recycled (there is really nothing that’s new or awe inspiring aside from the Zin Azshari/ Eternal Palace part of Nazjatar). Terrain is absolutely atrocious and in places nearly impossible to maneuver, only exacerbating the pent up desire to unlock flying and get our wings back (yet again). The jetpacks in Mechagon, particularly, feel like a slap in the face. The difference of being with one as opposed to w/o is like night and day.
NPC enemies in the new zones are once again way too overtuned and difficult to kill by mythic geared players that could one/two shot most mobs just days ago.
Perhaps my biggest gripe of all is the fact that, especially in Mechagon, daily quests are not tracked on the map! This is a hugely frustrating issue especially right now when everyone is hyper aware of these quests and wants to get every single ounce of reputation possible to get flying unlocked! As of right now I have no idea how many quests I’ve missed even though I scoured the zones diligently every day.
Another issue is the plethora of bugs and other frustrating situations like easily predictable bottlenecks, extremely annoying and RNG based quests like the puzzle chests, ley-line untangle, jellyfish nonsense and on and on.
In the same vein as above, the legendary pet quests are incredibly overtuned and in many cases impossible to complete (while simultaneously being ridiculously easy in other cases) for people who don’t have high level rare pets. Normally, I don’t have a problem with rewarding people who participate in all aspects of the game but in this case you gated a substantial amount (in the thousands) of reputation via one time turn in quests after defeating a legendary pet for the first time and that feels horrible as yet another hurdle to obtaining flying as soon as possible which you had to know was going to be first and foremost on most players’ minds.
Some things that work, well one thing really, the revamp of the horrendous Azerite system. I absolutely love the new active abilities unlocked via essences. They look beautiful and range from simple fire-off-and-forget-it abilities to much more complex and rotation impacting longer cooldowns. That said, here too I find myself very disappointed by the enormous time gating involved with upgrading the essences to unlock the fancy FX visuals. One of the essences requires leveling your Heart to 70 (which will take months) while others require Mythic Azshara kills, which very few people will ever get. It seems like such a waste of resources to create these beautiful assets and never use them, leaving them tantalizingly out of reach for the vast majority of players.
As a specific example, unlocking the fancy FX for the Essence of the Focusing Iris, arguably the most visually impressive, currently requires completing Mythic Keystone Master! That’s insane! I am not sure of the exact statistics but it is something that probably only ~1% of all players achieve every season. And even those who do achieve it will take so long to do it that they will hardly get to enjoy looking at it as by then a new expansion will likely be behind the corner and those abilities will be taken away along with the Hearts. Lowering the requirement to Mythic Keystone Conqueror is much more reasonable.
Just my honest thoughts.