I rank it above MoP slightly. Only expansion I rank above BfA is WotLK and Legion. Overall its what Cata and MoP should have been.
Pro
I’m enjoying the Horde vs Alliance story. I do not care if the Horde are the bad guys, because the target is the Alliance. The burning of Teldrassil was a long time coming because the Alliance can’t rain in their @^#* for 5 sec.
The BfA pre-event is the most fun I have had since WotLK.
Love war mode. It adds a whole new level of fun to the game as I’m doing world quest.
The level up progression of the Heart of Azeroth is an improvement over the artifacts in Legion.
PvP is fun again and I love the new honor/conquest system and gear progression is good for once.
Warfronts are pretty fun for what they are.
Con:
Professions are boring now.
The mission table is so watered down to a point that everything that made it worth doing in Legion (hell even in WoD) isn’t here.
Azerite traits are hit or miss for me.
Saurfang and “Lost Honor” is the calm before the @%!& storm that is to come.
Island Expeditions are meh. I only do them to get my 2500 weekly azerite.
Lving up the Heart of Azeroth sadly isn’t alt friendly.
There’s only one real way I can put it…
How I play this game and fail to find anything enjoyable. Even worse with the severe amount of sharding destroying any sort of roleplay I can find in the major BFA cities.
Honestly, I saw a lot of oppertunity for BFA. However I’m not a bit engaged with how they handled the story balancing. How they’ve gutted the classes and only did 1/4 of the job to fix their glaring flaws. And now we’re already having people quit in the first few bits of the expansion.
I’ve never wanted to quit so early in a game. But everything Blizzard did was 20 steps backwards from Legion.
I don’t mean to cause an argument, I’m just genuinely curious what you mean by this. Are you referring to Genn ordering an assault on Sylvanas’s ships despite the war-effort being focused on the Legion, or?
I genuinely don’t understand the hate. I love it, and it’s the first expansion I’ve stuck around for. Literally, every expansion since BC came out I’ve gotten flustered playing “catch up” in levels to try and even do the new content, left WoW, came back, rinse and repeat. The fact that boosts were added to the game changed things tremendously. I was able to enjoy Legion while waiting for BFA to drop. I was able to enjoy the pre-event stuff. I’ve been able to enjoy the game without having to youtube the story.
And no, we in the Horde aren’t screwed over. If you’re a roleplayer you have a gold mine to dig from when it comes to dealing with the ramifications of Sylvanas’s actions. Are you one of the OG Horde feeling disgusted at the Horde sacrificing its honor? Or maybe you’re a Forsaken that feels emboldened by the Dark Lady’s aggressiveness. Or maybe you’re a goblin taking advantage of things and making extra profit.
Perfect IMO.
If you’re not a roleplayer and you’re taking the factions so seriously that Sylvanas makes you not want to play Horde, maybe try being a roleplayer and exploring it that way instead of taking it personally.
To be fair, being a roleplayer and exploring it that way made me not want to play the Horde regardless. I’m glad you’re enjoying it, though.
Imo, though, we’ve just… seen all of this already. The Horde already sacrificed its honor with Garrosh. There were already characters feeling emboldened by the Warchiefs aggressiveness. We had this plotline a few expansions ago and it wasn’t incredibly well received. I personally enjoyed it, but having it return again and throw Sylvanas under the bus wasn’t… what I was really hoping for.
Just explaining why some people might hate it. I don’t think it’s as bad as some have said, personally, but it does have some issues that make it really hard for me to enjoy everything going on, and while not all of it is the fault of the faction war concept itself, that particular concept isn’t helping me much here.
I guess I see it from a different perspective there. The fact that there’s hints (or outright telling us?) that the same thing that messed with Garrosh is messing with Sylvanas makes me think there’s a bigger story being told that we’ll have to contend with. But even taking that aspect out for a minute. Garrosh tried too hard to be an old-school orc you could say.
You might argue that Sylvanas and her quest for immortality and being free from the “shackles” of an orc/tauren/troll’s honor adds a whole new level of crazy to it.
Just my perspective anyway. I get that folks have different tastes, but I do think the idea of something called ‘Warcraft’ should have war in it ultimately. It’s one of the things I didn’t like about recent expansions - too much “let’s work together” stuff. Though I do think Alliance needs to have their own inner turmoil for once after this is settled.
I admit, the lack of interest in honor -is- my favorite part of Sylvanas. So tired of hypocritical (imo) honor. Just do what needs to be done, whatever you believe that is. Stop justifying it with honor that means nothing do the dead. Justify with the lives you can still save. That’s a character I’m interested in. Not… Saurfang, with his ‘i killed someone wrong and feel bad’ honor.
I’ve always been a fan of the ‘noble savage’ trope, so for me Saurfang’s journey is exactly what I like to see. That of course requires someone like a Sylvanas to exist.
I am a roleplayer, and you’re correct that there’s a story to be explored here. But I don’t like this story, and also I was already obliged to explore it.
I liked exploring it the first time, partly because it was better written then, and partly because it was pretty early in my time of playing Horde. It’s not well written this time, and it’s not new or exciting.
Additionally, while RP is my main WoW activity I am also obliged to do at least some content, and acting out much of the current storyline is distasteful to me, for a number of reasons.
The plot is diminishing my enjoyment of playing Horde not because I’m taking the story personally, but because it simply isn’t fun. It sounds like it’s fun for you, and that’s good – I’m glad somebody’s getting a good time out of all this. But the fact that many aren’t enjoying it isn’t a result of players not seeing where the story is, or realizing that they can interact with it as roleplayers.
Think of it this way, you’ve already read all the Harry Potter books, and you see this:
Harry Potter sequel confirmed. It’s his son, and he has to find the Magic Stone, but it puts him at odds with the evil dark wizard, Lord Baldermart. Along the way he befriends the young wizards Jon and Hermina, as well as Hogsbort gamekeeper and half-giant, Gaggrid.
Are you going to excited, or annoyed? Are you going to say, “Oh awesome, a new story!” Or are you going to say “Why is Rowling insulting my intelligence by changing letters around on something she already did, and then selling it as if it’s a new product?”
Pretty much. There is a certain subset of players who buy whole hog into the idea that the Horde are the put-upon nerds and the Alliance are the elitist jocks and enact the ensuing revenge fantasy.
I missed this, but it’s worth pointing out that Blizzard went back and added a choice (a previously unprecedented event) solely to address the hurt feelings and comfort of Horde players.
It’s one of the shining pieces of evidence that the Horde’s hurt feelings are of the utmost importance to Blizzard and the privilege the Horde commands in being able to exert their influence on the story that the Alliance is not offered.
I played MoP, one of my favorite expansions. And I don’t see BFA as a “shot-for-shot remake”. But, hey, sorry the people who don’t enjoy the game. I’m excited to continue seeing the story in this expansion unfold, and a lot of friends I play with currently are really enjoying the expansion.
There’s still improvement in some places for sure. But nothing to make me hate it like some others here. Then again, there seems to be a very different outlook of people I interact in game compared to the forums. In game, I see and hear people enjoying the game. Here it’s very different. I hope the next expansion for you folks is up to your standard and liking though.
Not just that, but also the Alliance attacking the Hordes miners in Silithus all for a material the Horde had every right to gather, which the Alliance could have gone elsewhere for it. On top of that the SI:7 attack the Horde PC whos job was to protect the miners and put a boot to their #^* when they got lazy. And finally a fleet from Teldrassil was on its way to attack Silithus.
The Alliance has given Sylvanas more than enough reason to believe that a peace between both factions won’t last.
I honestly haven’t been able to play much. I don’t think the neck and azerite armour feels like enough, it feels better to get a new ability at cap.
That said, it’s fun to do 110-120 battlegrounds without missing any abilities.
I would welcome a level squish and talent revamp next expac.
The devs seem a bit like creeps lol SORRY, I know that’s probably not right to say but the whole morally gray genocide, self-insert Nathanos etc makes me wish for the WotLK team.
![:raised_hands:t4:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/raised_hands/4.png?v=6" ":raised_hands:t4:")