So BFA is better than Dragonflight now?

Community General Discussion
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So an interesting thing happened. Three content creators, who all enjoy the attention of Blizzard recently had a podcast. Dorki, Dratnos and LimitMax to be exact. They had Naowh a tank as a guest. The podcast is really good btw, worth a listen if you are into this kinda stuff:

When discussing when they had the most fun playing WoW they all mentioned… wait for it… BFA, BFA S4 to be exact. Three out of Four guests mentioned BFA S4 as the time they had the most fun playing WoW.

Now why is that interesting? Well Blizzard have designed Dragonflight after listening to the WoW ´´community``. This community being top players who claim to represent the will of the majority of players.

Here is the interesting thing though, at the time S4 of BFA was out there were non-stop complaints about almost everything about S4, especially from the top players. According to the complaints at the time:

S4 of BFA was incredibly

Alt-unfriendly: You had to grind AP, had to grind essences, had to grind gear, had to grind legendary cloak levels AND had to grind corruptions. This sounds the complete opposite of DF, which is focused on getting characters into Mythic raiding or pushing M+ within a single day. When these top players have asked for alt-friendlyness, why is their favourite part to play WoW a time that had massive amounts of CHARACTER PROGRESSION? You think you do, but you dont.

Pruned There are pretty much daily posts about the game being too bloated after the DF talents at this point. When people point back to where classes were awful and felt bad to play, they point to BFA, which was probably the most pruned modern WoW has ever been. Top players complained about this ALL THE TIME, in BFA. Yet looking back? Looks like pruning didnt even really matter? Shouldnt DF be the most fun to play? More complex talents than ever, more actives and defensives to chose from? You think you do but you dont.

Passive damage effects When BFA was out, top players complained about passive effects all the time. Passive effects did damage no matter if you failed your rotation or not. Twillight Devastation would do massive damage no matter how bad you were at the game. The argument from top players like Preachgaming https://youtu.be/PJVRwdJorEw and all the others were that this was bad. We cant have something like corruptions or essences bridging the gap between top and bad players. You dont earn your damage, and that ´´feels`` bad. Well looking back, all the top players from Preachgaming to participants in this podcast look back fondly on corruptions. Turns out… You think you do, but you dont.

All in all… One has to ask… What is the point of Blizzard listening to top players? When they dont even know what they want, and have asked for things that are completely the opposite of what made BFA Season 4 fun? Especially when one looks at the very poor participation numbers for raiding, PvP and M+. We now have the most alt-friendly WoW has ever been. Turns out that wasnt actually a good thing. We have un-pruned the talents, well that just seems to scare people away and doesnt even seem to make classes feel better to play. We have made the game more skillful, you know ´´earn`` your damage. Well turns out that wasnt actually what made WoW fun in the first place, and just increases the skillgap between bad and good players significantly.

Personally? Yeah S4 of BFA was some of the most fun I ever had in WoW and I have played since the beta, they are right. Judging by Dragonflight M+ and raid numbers? Yep looks like the majority of the playerbase enjoyed BFA S4 significantly more than Dragonflight as well. I just wish the top players had been more vocal about actually enjoying S4 of BFA before we got this cold porridge version of Retail WoW :confused:

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The only thing I remember fondly from BFA was the “meme beam” azerite power. Just a big channeled blast of aoe dps.

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based off of health amount and tanks destroying everything.

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Frankly Visions were more engaging single player content then anything in df. Timers and all.

If corruption vendor was there at the start and not on some dumb rotation its of been pretty good

Burning through the entire story of the black empire in a patch was very lame

Idk, its like their, opinion man.

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Yeah this is the entire thing though. What players look fondly back at arent all these complex class design stuff.

It is basically just, yeah a massive beam doing damage is fun.

Looking at current Retail WoW numbers I think it is safe to say people dont enjoy the current extremely dull version of Dragonflight endgame content. That is why it is relevant. If Dragonflight M+ and raid numbers were amazing, we could discard their opinion. Whereas, now I think their opinions are relevant and interesting to discuss.

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This is just your standard “dislike it when its current, like it years after” nostalgia.

It happened with TBC, WotLK, etc.

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…and you believe them?

:rofl:

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Except that comparing the numbers of S4 BFA to current numbers, it is clear players enjoyed S4 of BFA more.

What I find interesting is they say the part of WoW that represents everything they claim to hate was when they had the most fun.

That is my point. They dont even know what they want lol.

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Except thats not a comparable thing like that.

You cant equate one singular end of expansion season with the entire expansion.

MMO populations in general across the board have gone down, as well.

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Indeed.

As you said:

There’s a huge difference between listening to top players (which may have merit) and listening to internet shock jockeys trying to make a living out of saying controversial things to get clicks.

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Well that’s just me though. I would happily play a class with like 5 buttons and a couple cooldowns. Doesn’t mean other people don’t want 20 buttons.

My problem with BFA was all the RNG around its systems at the start, like getting the right azerite traits on your gear or the right corruptions before the vendor. It wasn’t a problem that corruptions were passive, it was a problem that if you didn’t get lucky and get the right ones, you were left in the dust by people who did. By s4 a lot of that had been addressed, but it was too late for many people.

Also big problem for BFA for me, all the transmog was trash. I don’t think there’s a single set from the entire expansion that I’d ever use on any class since they went with the generic 1 set per armor type route.

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I loved BFA.

Kultiras is my favorite place in the game. The visuals and quests are amazing.
The open world content was good. Much more variety of world quests.
Daz’aralor and Azshara raids had unique and fun bosses.
Mechagon is the best dungeon experience i ever had in wow. Also the island was fun.

The only thing I didn’t like in BFA was the last patch. The raid was boring and they took it away from the original “sea and islands” theme of the expansion.

Azshara should be the last boss of BfA

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everyone keeps propping up Horrific visions…they were ok.

that was it, they were ok, they weren’t amazing content, it was ok content.

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BfA was only disappointing because it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Legion. it’s still better than SL and DF. The game still felt like a big deal and it still had the Warcraft feel that it lacks now.

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I personally really enjoyed the first patch of BfA in particular. There was something about the zones, esp. Zandalar that IMO was really appealing but not replicated since. It was probably a mix of faction war vibes, the fact I had a lot of time to play so the grind didn’t bother me, I started getting achievements again etc… but I also enjoyed the story and art. I genuinely think it could have been a much better setting to introduce some of the things we have now in Dragonflight where the story feels a bit lackluster and participation is unfortunately dwindling despite the systemic ease of access and engaging class design. I’d even go as far as to make the setting of BfA the ‘last WoW expansion’ and the outset of a horizontal “WoW 2”, so imagine a cheaper game with island DLCs, staying with the faction war and exploration themes, a larger focus on player engagement, social and customization aspects, etc.

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I’ve been doing BFA stuff on my dragon person because I want to get the HoA and then upgrade it for timewalking purposes.

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The alliance plate gear from warfronts is pretty cool, in my opinion. I still rock that one on my human paladin a good majority of the time.

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BFA without rental systems is hands down better than DF.

Azerite armor sunk that expansion hard early.

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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These same people demanded an end to seasonal mythic+ affixes because of thundering despite all agreeing that Awakened was the greatest seasonal affix ever made. Soon they’ll be demanding a return of seasonal affixes and pointing to awakened as an example of amazing seasonal affixes. They’re extremely reactionary.

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At the time I didn’t like BFA. After playing Shadowlands and now Dragonflight, I’d kill to play BFA again.

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