You made the generalization. I directly replied to you. I made no generalizations.
It’s ok if people voice a negative opinion of the game.
3 Likes
Honestly?
No. It was disastrous for the game.
It was a rushed expansion launched with a focus on unpopular features like Islands and Warfronts, no changes to legion’s daily gameplay (e.g. we still had world quests and AP grind), no new abilities added to classes, TERRIBLE class balancing, a packed storyline that gave nothing time to breathe, and a removal of transmog options like class sets that had often given players a reason to run old content.
Worse, it coincided with the launch of classic which split the player base and siphoned off enough players to fracture a lot of guilds. (not attacking classic btw - just how the timing effected BFA).
Finally, it launched with a badly thought mechanic (azerite) that Blizzard fumbled to replace, not once (essences), but twice (corruption). The first in particular hammered alts, creating one of the most unfriendly catch up mechanics the game’s had in years.
There’s been a few things that were fun in BFA (hey… I’m playing a small fox person) and the environmental art is fantastic as ever. But for a LOT of the player base… this expansion has been a major misstep. I’m honestly sort of shocked that the creative team behind WoW hasn’t been reshuffled internally.
13 Likes
I can count 7 of my friends who quit to never return. We all started in Vanilla.
One quit during Legion because of Legendary items and not getting BiS from his first 4 drops and said to hell with RNG then. The rest did in BFA and I’m the only one left and will be gone in 2 days unless someone else wants to send me the gold for a token.
1 Like
They knew Classic would bring in hundreds of thousands or millions of subs. So they had cushion or financial leeway to make BfA as bad as possible to test the lower limits of what they could put into retail before players quit. So that respect, BfA was a wildly successful experiment.
Oh, wait, Sunday was yesterday?
Depends on your point of view. Keep in mind the forums are the minority when it comes to satisfaction, or lack thereof, with the game at any given time. I’ve been playing since 2005, and lurking on the forums for as long, and the forums were just as filled with angst and salt during WotLK, the most beloved expansion in the history of the game, as they are now, back when there were over ten million subscribers.
Monetarily the expansion was probably considered a success by Blizzard, as people have pointed out it sold better than any other expansion, and Classic certainly brought back subs for a while. They also changed tokens to be able to add Blizzard Balance back in Legion, and with Allied Races this certainly gave them a massive boost.
In terms of content or satisfaction? Again I’d say it’s a tossup. People compare it to WoD a lot, but whether one is better than the other comes down to which is better in the eyes of the individual. WoD had very, very little content but said content was generally up to Blizzard’s usual standard, including class design. It was also very good for alts and for people trying to catch up because people sat at the same ilvl for nearly a year, once HFC hit, and so it was dirt easy to get up to a certain ilvl on an alt and get right into the content without being melted.
BfA is the opposite, where there’s a lot of content but good chunks of it are not up to the usual Blizzard par. Bugs, class design, armour design, gearing systems, and so on, are all more in our face, but there’s also no shortage of things to do. So it comes down to what you prefer.
With maybe everything but story, I think they consider it a success to an extent, if only because they are terrified of another WoD happening.
3 Likes
Id say over-all it was probably average. I see a lot of people hating on the story, and i suppose to each their own, but i actually really enjoyed how interactive the story of this expansion was. I enjoyed it more than “Random story most people don’t read while leveling up, then end content with no real care by anyone as to what’s going on”. However I think the story of legion was better and I think class halls were really cool.
That being said, aside with some issues with the gearing system, most of the content was good, if a little drawn out. The final patch though, I think has been over-all a failure, and most will remember an expansion based on the end state of it.
are you gonna come back for SL, do you have any curiosity for it?
I think class halls were really cool
I really liked the class hall, actually feel a bit sad to leave that behind
1 Like
It may seem like a complete success for blizzard in a business sense, but the fact that so many people spent so much time scrounging up ungodly low rep quests, the real question is what has been offset by so many people focusing so much time on one thing?
Blizzard’s success here may have unintended consequences. Like the beating wings of a moth causing a mountain to sink into the sea.
Stopped reading after I read this. I know of almost no one that agrees with this, but to each their own.
2 Likes
This is only a recent trend. BC/Wrath were both praised as you actually played through that xpac as current and retail. Cata it started to trend downwards, and MoP brought it back up. From WoD on though, your statement is accurate.
TL;DR its not the community, Blizzard can do better. They have.
2 Likes
agree 100%
1 Like
I’ve really enjoyed it
1 Like
I consider BFA and its story telling unsuccessful bcuz it is the first expansion where I stopped doing some of its content. I have yet to complete the story line in Nazjatar or do the Azshara raid and stopped doing 8.3 after that Anduin and Wrathion cutscene and didn’t do Ny’alotha raid.
1 Like
Class Halls were genius; they made people want to level up alts all the way through just to experience all of the other class stories and content. Encouraged trying alternate specs to get their artifacts and added a lot of lore to the game in general. I’ll never forget going to grab my Shards of Frostmourne from ICC and encountering the Lich King with his devious plans, or seeing a dejected Thrall abandon hope and exile himself, entrusting us with the fabled Doom Hammer.
And the order halls were always lively and filled with other players who you could ask for help with class questions etc.
Plus, just soaking in the lore and having a nice central hub to report into every day was satisfying. I’ve sorely missed order halls this xpac, and azerite armor is a lousy replacement for artifact weapons.
4 Likes
as a human pally (my old main) hanging around Tyrs hand just felt so epic. it had a real atmosphere
1 Like
Little doubt as to why. Removing the Brontosaur is a Pyrrhic victory on sales figures.
I have really had a lot of fun - and I moved region over Christmas, so I had to do everything twice (I even unlocked all the ARs and pathfinder twice). I landed shaman in S1 and had a blast running M+. I havent gotten back up to speed again since moving to Australia, but I think 8.3 is a blast - I look forward to running visions each week.
My big gripes are similar to others’ - the grindy dailies really suck, it’s alt-unfriendly, and what the hell did they do to Sylvanas?! I miss her being the Dark Lady that watches over the forsaken. Burning the tree for click-bait was a mistake.
Same thing as my on my DK! Getting to lounge around in a floating Necropolis, summoning un-dead minions to do my bidding just felt so immersive and atmospheric.
That being said, Boralus and Dazar are both wonderfully crafted cities, as least from a world building perspective (I do wish Dazar was a little more convenient) and getting the explore them is still fun for me.
1 Like
I don’t know why everyone conflates success with revenue
No it was not successful, every new feature they implemented sucked, the class design sucked, the story sucked
I don’t care how much money it made, I didn’t see a cent of it and no one here should care how much money it made
4 Likes