With all of the controversy surrounding the current state of WoW and the Tides of Vengeance video on YouTube getting more dislikes than likes, I wanted to ask what our little server thinks of the expansion? Are you enjoying it? Are you just sticking around because of friends? Are you raiding or PvPing or are you on the verge of quitting?
Personally I love the heritage armors and updated zones and music but overall I’m not very impressed so far. What about you?
Best expansion ever.
I haven’t played in weeks and don’t see that changing until Zandalari at the very least
Not very highly.
It is terrible.
Worst expansion since Cataclysm. If I hadn’t prepaid for 6 months on Zan because finances in flux I wouldn’t be subscribed at all.
While WoD was bad I found stuff to do and kept my accounts active. I have not done the same in BfA.
It’s bad enough that, well, i’m having fun.
Doing old stuff. Also hi draenei lady I see you replying!
It’s pretty bad, yeah. Bad enough to drive me away from WoW if not for my pattern recognition; expansions have always altered between good and bad. Legion was great, and so here we are. Now, if the next one is bad, I may find myself quitting for good.
I’m still around after a short hiatus because I’ve got stuff to do yet. Alts to level, mostly. Steadily raising my numbers gives me a nice little dopamine boost, which is mostly what I want out of this game.
For the decade or so I’ve been subscribed, I have been happy to just fight crap and clear dungeons, leveling alts in the background. I’ve never been a hardcore player, but I had fun doing what was provided.
This expansion I just… haven’t. I don’t think it has much to do with a lot of the complaints, I ignore Azerite practically, and destro is barely different from Legion destro, so it’s not specs.
I think I’m just at a point where everything is the same and nothing changes. I kill and get money or gear. To do what? Kill faster to get more money and gear. There is nothing exciting in between; I’ve gotten so many mounts and pets that I’m happy using that one mount/pet and that’s it.
The only thing that’s kept me is the story/RP and I’m feeling a little burned by the “wait and see” approach. Maybe 8.2 can clear the waters and redeem BFA’s overall story, but right now I’m not thrilled.
I think I’ve just been playing too long and I’m tired. So the only logical response is to log in and RP tonight.
Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble. I got hit by a wall this week where I realized that my two favorite franchises since I was a kid, Star Wars and WoW, are both going in a direction I don’t plan to follow. It’s really bummed me out. At least I have Marvel to pick me up ![:pensive:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/pensive.png?v=6" ":pensive:")
I’m actually enjoying this expansion, though I’ve been playing it fairly casually. I’ll lay it out in pros and cons.
Pros:
![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
Lillian Voss in particular intrigues me!Cons:
There’s the list! To be honest though, I’d have said much the same about patch 7.0. I found it very dull and boring after a while, and the extra content they added along the way made it more interesting. I guess we’ll see what happens! 8.1 seems to be nullifying at least 2 of my cons, to a certain extent. So I remain optimistic, and I give the expansion an 8/10. In my opinion, equal to Legion, at this point in its release.
I like the expansion. That said, I put it below Warlords in terms of story overall, thus far at least.
The Horde pointlessly makes the first move, and it’s villainous, again. I honestly was hoping that Mrs Golden’s arrival on the scene would mean we’d go back to a more balanced story and less fallback onto the tired old trope of humans = goodies others = baddies, but if the War of Thorns was written years ago and then greenlighted, then maybe we’ll have to wait to see if Golden really can steer this ship away from the reefs of substandard writing and over-reliance on over-used story-hooks.
I love the game-play, the different leveling zones and stepping away from only Humans and Orcs doing things and the other WoW races just kinda showing up in a token fashion.
I hate how once again Horde players are getting the short end of the stick in terms of morality with little to no way of flagging themselves unwilling participants in the whole genocide angle, especially with how soon this is happening, chronologically, after the debacle that was Garrosh, while the Alliance players are getting all this lovely world-building and uplifting story of redemption and families coming back together but it’s come at the cost of a near-complete decimation of an entire species and leader of aforementioned species returning to her true-to-form pants-on-head style of leadership and ignoring everything her allies have done for her people in the past fourteen years.
Mechanically I find little to protest with the War of Thorns, but story-wise I find there’s a lot of the same bland, cowardly story-telling being shoveled at us and a complete lack or will to explore more modern themes in a fashion that could engage the players without miring the forums and other out-of-game media in the kind of needlessly hostile armchair-psychiatrist slanderfest that the War of Thorns has delivered.
I pretty much agree with all of what Sarestha said - I do love Kul Tiras and I’m looking forward to eventually leveling in Zandalar
My only other salty thing is that the titular races of the expansion probably won’t be playable until February, which is a bummer, as I’ve been hyped for them for months.
Barring that, I do love the idea of Allied races, even if I don’t agree with Blizz’s release order.
Perhaps I should elaborate: I don’t think that the higher-ups on the WoW dev team have ever so transparently and so thoroughly not cared whether Alliance players get to enjoy their faction or story.
The zones are beautiful, and many of the zone-specific quest chains are very well done. A lot of the new transmog sets are just gorgeous to look at (the only thing I’m not pleased with so far is the Zandalari questing gear). Heritage armor is fantastic to see happening, and I’m stoked that Blood Elves are one of the first old races to be getting it. I’m pretty enthused by some of the allied races, and not bothered by any of the rest.
Mechanically, I like warfronts so far. I’m not quite as happy with Uldir overall as I was with most of the fights in Legion raids, but it’s not bad and I enjoy my LFR time.
The faction war plot, however, is bad. It’s very bad. It’s difficult to decide where to start with how bad it is and in which ways.
I don’t feel qualified to speak over much about the Alliance’s role in BfA, or about how it feels, because I haven’t played much Alliance-side since 8.0; the leveling experience in Kul Tiras has been lovely, but when it comes to the war content have yet to see many things for myself. What I have seen, however, combined with what others have said about the passivity involved, is kind of painful. As far as I can tell, the only major “win” they’re getting out of this exercise was yanked out from under them and obliterated before the expansion even launched.
The Horde meanwhile has been struck so hard with the villain bat, it has forgotten its name and doesn’t know who the President is. I’ve seen it said a couple times that the Horde at least gets to be “active,” and I suppose that’s true. I also suppose that, in the context of an objective checklist of “good story elements,” being active is an advantage. But I see absolutely no value in being “active” when the actions that are available to be “actively” pursued are hypocritical, pointlessly cruel, counter to the identity that Blizzard insists the Horde possesses, etc, etc, etc.
I’m also not sure it’s a useful form of “active” participation in the story when your only options are:
The relationship between reality and what Blizzard says is reality is another issue, particularly with regards to the War of Thorns. They insisted that the Burning of Teldrassil wasn’t what we thought it was. They insisted that Sylvanas was not evil. We all know how those things panned out. I wasn’t surprised, but I was bitter and frustrated. I wouldn’t have liked the plot direction either way, but being blatantly lied to just makes it that much less delightful.
And lastly, for now, because this post is inflicted with quite enough negative opinions, the faction war displays a huge fumbling of theme. The game seems to be trying to send the message that war is bad, that hatred is wrong, and that vengeance leads only to suffering. This is great. I agree. But then they paint a big, sloppy “FOR THE [FACTION]” on top of it, and try to hype up the idea of slaughtering the other guy for honor and glory (from a Horde perspective; the Alliance experience seems like it might be more along the lines of: they hype players up for fighting back by creating a situation in which it couldn’t be more right – but then tell you that fighting is bad and you’re a bad person if you do it).
I think Blizzard could write a halfway decent story about how war is bad, and I think they could also write a pretty alright story about standing with your chosen side and feeling purposeful and vindicated in fighting the good fight. But here they seem to be trying to do both of these at once, and they are not pulling it off.
That’s a good point actually, in the cons section. I’d echo that. Kul Tirans and Zandalari are the allied races I’m actually hyped for. XD And given how much we’ve already done for them, it’d make sense to have them first.
I’m… pretty much okay with it, really. As a concept, that is. I’m not hyped about Blizzard doing their usual and trying to convince us that we can still be fooled, despite their storytelling repeatedly proving them wrong.
Otherwise, I’ve enjoyed what I played so far. Blizzard just needs to decide what the Horde is - if they’re good or evil. Quit screwing an entire faction around based on whims.
If you want them to be evil, fine, just quit beating around the bush about it and wasting the time of everyone who plays Horde and is getting tired of the flip-flopping.
Tagging to post so that I can come here later to talk about it in more depth.
Overall; tl;dr: I’m… disappointed with BfA.
I don’t really have much of a reason to stick around as I surely don’t care much about the actual end-game content of this game, and I’m no longer leading a guild that’s keeping me around. BFA and Legion were both pretty much expansions in which I took a prolonged break from the game until later content patches. I just re-subbed today so I’d be able to try out the new patch when it releases, and if I don’t find anything proper to do then I might just unsub yet again until 8.2.
For the month I played BFA, it felt like fun was something you had to hunt for, rather than felt naturally while playing. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I don’t really know how else to put it.
I feel like for every positive they brought into the game, they had to take away something that worked.
I’m definitely enjoying it. More than Legion at least. Granted, I didn’t get into Legion until the tail end, so I never really got burned out on rare encounters, world quests, or follower mission tables the way others seem to. I also had no interest in any of the allied races, so no rep grinding for me.
I’ve had a lot of fun in Warmode. It’s the first time I’ve engaged in so much open world PvP in years and actually inspired me to do some more random BGs and even a few arena matches.
I’m neutral on Azerite armor as well. It’s just gear with a little meter you fill up until you can unlock stuff. Pretty much like my artifact. I know there’s meaningful details in there if you REALLY care about eking out optimum performance/upgrades, but I’m not into progression raiding or mythic content, so I’m fine.
Warfronts and Island Expeditions are fine too. More PvE content other than raids, dungeons, and repeatable quests is always welcome.
I don’t really have high expectations when it comes to the writing. I’m not seeing anything particularly good/bad compared to any other expansion.
The biggest thing for me though is that I’ve always been a huge fan of Warcraft trolls and troll lore since the beginning. With one notable exception, ALL my characters are Trolls. Seeing Zandalar given some depth and getting the chance to explore it is something I’ve been wanting for years. It brought to mind elements of Mists of Pandaria- only I’m a lot more about the lore and real world influences that inspired Zandalar, which makes it all the more exciting for me to catch many of the little references. I’m very pleased with how everything was executed.
And finally, getting to play a Zandalari (troll) Paladin is the fulfillment of yet another dream.
This is all from a Horde player’s perspective. Couldn’t care less what’s going on Alliance side.