If you want to respond to a metagamer or someone who will throw numbers at you like they should have been a math professor instead of professionally sitting in a basement playing WoW (Not me personally so you’d have to go to someone else for that too) you should probably check out another thread. I’m sure there are quite a lot of these types of things.
I am an extremely casual player, like I have never done a normal raid. (Partially because every time I try to join one it's a less exaggerated version of "raid finder gear level in my normal run! Disguising!) I tried to really get into guilds twice...... I am unguilded. The most hardcore experience I've ever had was staying up a consecutive 32 hours attempting to down N'Zoth...... On raid finder. I forgot to put earlier that I started playing in 8.1.
So, take this with a bit of salt, since BFA was my first expansion, but I feel like BFA was actually pretty good compared to shadowlands. In my opinion it just feels more like WoW. That really has to do with the settings though.
I get making new lore, new places, NEW MONSTERS is an essential part of not being New World. But I think you have to push the plot forward like a grate and not a laser wall with maybe a dozen holes in it. You filter out some of the old things, and you keep the best bits to get pushed forward and blended with the new. You don’t disintegrate everything besides 10 characters until the end of the xpac and then be like, “oh Lor’ Themar is here by the way” so the characters can get 2 conversations.
Don't get me wrong a lot of the new stuff I find pretty cool, like armored jailer. The armor makes him twice the villain. The necrolords are..... kind of cool. Its all good to throw that "bangin party" with the Venthyr as well, and Denathrius and the Dreadlords are nice. The Kyrian are probably the coolest despite the fact it was originally between them and the night fae that I disliked the most. Uther does some damage control with the sylvanis arc. I'm not going to compliment the night fae though because they're the night fae.
Shadowlands is a cool setting that I wish we got more of, but at the same time, besides the occasional character coming back, for me it lacked the WoW feeling.
Now let’s think to BFA, Horde you know that feeling when TalanJi takes you to the docks for the first time and you see that atrociously colored pyramid. Despite how badly colored the city is (which I wouldn’t want to change) its still really cool to see the Zandalari capital because they are a group you’ve seen for 14 years. Its also really big. Alliance, Boralus is cool because its also massive its probably only smaller than Suramar although I couldn’t confirm that. The entire place feels alive, even the market which probably would be the most artificial since all the systems are packed in there.
These are settings people have thought about, that have stewed in their head for years. Nobody thought about Revendreth before Blizz announced SL, because it didn't exist. Same with the Jailer. Theoretically he indirectly existed in one book but also you don't know anything about him. Then you get the reveal that he is just a guy that lacks vitamin D in some 100,000,000 year old pants
Sure BFA didn't have a great or even good story after 8.1.5 when it just kind of left the war for N'zoth randomly but at least it didn't go like "Here's the better Ma- I mean Korthia. Here's the better Kort- I mean Zerith Mortis. Because they may be radically different in looks and NPCs but they have the same idea. Korthia I remember was supposed to be this mysterious place with all these cool secrets. It seemed a bit lacking to me, in fact it was 9.1 when I quit until 9.2 came out. "The mysterious land of Zerith Mortis with all these new cool secrets" let's look at those. Cypher is a bit bad quite frankly. It takes way too much time to unlock for a primary system despite what blizz claims that it's just extra, and once you get the protoform cyphers and the automa/jiro it's just boring stat buffs for consoles. Protoform is cool, but I'll probably only farm at most 5 mounts out. I do like the little hidden things but also a lot of them are so hidden I don't even know they exist. Covenants also got ditched pretty much in 9.1 and only really in 9.2. Like I don't care about my souldbind levels, I barely even touch that console. I can't really go about..... I can't go on at all actually I'll edit this later
In BFA I liked assaults, they did get repetative but the special encounters were fun, and it actually felt like fighting a battle 8.2 was overall a well rounded patch
