BFA is good in that I don’t feel compelled to play a bunch of alts in the dumb self-imposed goal of collecting every legendary for every class. It takes me about an hour a day to do everything I could want to do on the days that I bother logging in and that’s a nice change.
It honestly feels like the final year of WoD since about 2 weeks after launch, and that’s not a good thing for the longevity of the game.
TL;DR I don’t like the expansion. I don’t outright hate it, but it’s not a super engaging or high quality experience that I feel really dropped the ball in terms of innovating and going back towards good ideas and actually making me feel super welcome in this game. It’s a really stagnant experience and just feels like Blizzard playing it safe in all the wrong ways. At the end of the day it functions, but that’s all there is to it.
Now, onto the main course as it were. The long version where I’m going to try and collect my thoughts as well as I can to present them. I’m going to break into the positives and negatives of each thing as we go.
Zone Design
Something I can say I feel really improved from the past few expansions. I haven’t felt this good about a set of zones since Cataclysm released. Each zone is unique and there is a lot of variety in terms of quests and things to do. By no means do I feel things are perfect. There are still too many cramped areas, but at least they are a little more spread out now. I think the zone designers want to stuff as much detail into the world as they can but they at least are reeling it back in a little bit.
The cities are a bit of a mess though. Massive cities are cool and all, but if you want me to hang around there it needs to be accessible. Otherwise I’m going to spend time in Orgrimmar/Stormwind where a bank/auction house/easy transport to other zones outside of BFA content exists.
It astounds me they haven’t learned their lesson yet when it comes to designing hub cities. They are really cool for Roleplay though, when you can have it. But outside of RP their functionality leaves much to be desired.
The best zone I feel is Vol’dun. I’m a desert aesthetic kind of guy and it’s just a cool place to be in. Plus, we get the Vulpera as an added bonus.
Questing
I generally liked the story and quest experience we had this go around. There was lots of cool little bits of lore or interesting things to do. I never really felt forced into a zone as I genuinely wanted to keep going to see what would happen next. 100% better than Legion of which only had 2 zones I really wanted to be in at all.
There are way too many side quests though. If you want to experience the story you’re going to need to pass some of them up lest you want to finish it out at 120. Kind of crazy how you just get strung along from area to area. Really felt that at times you couldn’t go 50 feet without stumbling into another side quest.
The max level story quests in the other factions zones are alright. Story is a bit of a mess though we ain’t got to where I’m going to go into it fully yet.
World quests are part of questing. I hate world quests. We’ll surely be touching upon the various reasons why throughout my assessment of the expansion, but here we go. I don’t like doing repeatable versions of quests, much less many of them being things I did while leveling. I didn’t enjoy dailies and I don’t enjoy new dailies with a different coat of paint.
I absolutely despise that I am forced into this kind of content to grind for things. Daily content always used to be relatively optional if you weren’t someone trying to push your content to the max. Now it’s mandatory for pretty much every player because everyone wants flying and allied races. It’s malignant, malevolent, downright lazy game design and is a festering growth upon the game.
Allied Races and Pathfinder.
I like the idea of getting new races to play with, of course, but as mentioned above I absolutely hate the delivery system. Blizzard literally just gave us a bunch of reskins or retooled models with none of the interesting things new races used to get.
I think plenty of the Allied races seem cool. Really sucks when everything is behind a grind. Especially because this is a game we pay for. Races and Flying shouldn’t be time-gated. We’re buying the expansion up front and PAYING A SUB FEE. These are the kind of tactics that Free to Play games use and to make matters worse sometimes the grind is easier in those.
Blizzard put less effort into designing these races and then strings them along in front the player who may be interested in playing them. If I could change one thing, it would be this. Just give us the races outright like you used to, we already bought your expansion. And no starting at level 20 which at worst takes someone an hour or two does not make up for the dozen+ hours spent grinding reputation just so I can make my dwarf have a darker skin color or give my draenei some glowing tattoos.
Flying should just be given to you once you hit 120. You can reasonably assume someone did the content and even if they didn’t why would Blizzard care. You are getting their money, it shouldn’t be hard to actually care about your players once in a while and just give them something instead of making everything a drawn out grind. Honestly decisions like these make me feel like Blizzard hates me and other players for existing and playing their game.
Weapon and Armor Design.
It’s okay. Honestly there just isn’t a lot for me to say here. There are few really nicely designed weapons, The new Teebu, that weird beehive weapon, etc. But there is nothing particularly standout that makes me want to wear it. I find myself still transmogging into things from expansions past with very few items grabbing my interest in terms of design. Nothing is outright terrible, it’s just passable.
The Story and the Lore.
There won’t be a lot of kind words in this segment. Some of the new creatures are cool, the witches from Drustvar and all those twisted creations. I like the Vulpera and their story for what it is. I like Jaina and Magni. The rest is just alright or really just drops the ball hard.
There are SO MANY baffling story decisions that were made during this expansion that it kind of feels like they really wanted to force all these dumb things in with zero quality control.
Sylvanas, Thanks I hate it. Jokes aside, what the heck are you doing. Sylvanas doesn’t need to commit genocide. So help me if she gets redeemed I’ll tear my hair out, and I’m already starting to go bald I don’t need to lose more hair. I don’t need her burning down the tree. If your goal was to make me hate the character, congratulations, but somehow I feel like that’s not your full intentions. There are plenty of moments where it feels like I’m supposed to root for this character when nothing she’s ever done makes me feel like that should be the case at this point.
There are lots of inconsistencies within the expansion and unless things have changed 8.1 seems more than happy to continue upon that baffling path of where this faction war is just getting stuffed down the throat of the player base with little care.
The Mag’har and AU Draenor. LOL. What a mess. What a god damn mess. Somehow you took one of better aspects of Warlords of Draenor and turned it into a mess. Just nothing redeemable here.
Same goes for Void Elves. I know that’s ‘LEGION’ kind of, but really I still can’t get over the stupid lore black hole they got spat out from.
Saurfang is boring. He just is. He’s the orc posterchild for 'wrought with demons, strength and honor kind of thing. He’s just there and I don’t really want to see him succeed beyond not wanting a Sylvanas redemption story.
Magni. I will say I’m interested to see where the whole Azeroth is bleeding thing is going with this guy. But man it’s just an unusual turn of events. One of the few characters I don’t dislike their direction though. Maybe it’s innate Dwarven bias from my love of fantasy dwarves, but I like my dwarves and I like what they’re doing with Moira as well, even though she’s still on the side-lines and not a major lore figure yet. Dwarves feel good, and I like the Dark Irons a lot even though I got to grind for them.
Getting to see Jaina go home and reunite with her family was nice. I liked the way the story played out and there are some great moments buried in here.
Everything else is just there. There’s just a lot of weird stuff going on at the moment and I don’t enjoy it. The faction war is forced and there’s nothing super engaging going on story wise or it just makes me hate it.
The Dungeons and Raids.
Well. I don’t hate them. That’s a plus I suppose, but there’s not one dungeon I really am enticed to run. Maybe Freehold, as messy and annoying it is, it’s a really cool place to be but I just like Pirates so.
Island Expeditions.
Weak versions of the Scenario system from Mists of Pandaria. Instead of being neat little lore tid-bits we get to grind resource and kill mobs just like out in the real world, with no direction to be found. Yeah I don’t like this feature, it doesn’t make me want to go experience it and the fact they feel they need to add even more rewards means they know people aren’t doing them because quite frankly they aren’t worth doing.
Warfronts.
THESE WERE REALLY COOL, the first few times you do them. But you do them some more and it really wears out its welcome. With no interesting variety or changing it up we’re left with a system that feels gutted and dead. It had interesting ideas and failed to implement them in interesting ways. Kind of sad the two main expansion features are total flops.
Class Design
Yikes. Some classes like my mage and rogue feel pretty good to play but when I log into my hunter or my priest there’s just no desire to want to play and level those characters at all. It feels stale, we need a good shake up and not a regression where we just take things out and don’t replace them like they did here.
Nothing great design wise can be found this expansion and that’s a real shame.
The Music
To end my post on a positive note let me gush about the music for a bit. There are so many fantastic compositions for this expansion and it’s the one singular core aspect of WoW that has never failed to bring me into this world and immerse me in ways that very few games can.
It just always is on point and I love it. Some of my favorites,
Legion was great because it had tons of content. Bfa lacks content.
I like the ideas on the table–new allied races, new customizations like night warrior faces, heritage armors… these are all great ideas, tying in game progress to visual customization is perfect. Customization is a long standing weakness in wow and these ideas could remedy that.
But the pace of content is terrible. If we had launched with heritage armor for all, all announced allied races available and tons of night warrior-like new tidbits for every race, there would be a lot to be excited about. But that isn’t how it is. I’m really surprised that even apparently finished models like zandalari and kul tirans are being held off until some post 8.1 date… we need more content is the bottom line.
A lot of your points mirror my own. Good write-up.
I actually really like this expansion. That being said, I find myself playing less than I have in the past. When I think about why, I find it’s not because there’s something particularly wrong with BfA.
When I think back to the days where I used to play more, I realize I was in a different place in life. I was younger and had more time on my hands. The concepts of raiding, progression, PvP, and RP were all newer to me to some degree; and they excited me to participate in. I had a high tolerance for dealing with different groups of people and guilds in order to accomplish the goals that went along with enjoying those previously-mentioned aspects of the game.
Realizing all of that leads me back to how I felt when I first started playing. There was this immense world standing before me. Everything about it intrigued me. The races, characters, zones, heroes, villains, history…all of it. It was amazing to me, and it inspired a lot of awe as I sat there beholding it. Learning it all was a daunting task, but I had a lot to look forward to and work towards.
The MMO genre was also still growing and becoming more prominent in mainstream gaming. The formula as a whole wasn’t really new, but it was newer than it is now. I felt that newness and immersed myself in it.
Nowadays, I’m older and living with a different set of circumstances than I was all those years ago. I don’t find myself with as much time as I used to have due to real life obligations and constraints. The MMO formula is one that I have been to the end of and back again over and over. I recognize that all the things I used to love about the game are still present. In fact, many of those things have only improved. There are so many technical and quality-of-life changes that exist now and that I never knew I needed so badly back at the beginning. I’m not as interested in grinding for progression anymore, whether that be in a raiding/M+ environment or a ranked PvP one. I am more discerning of the types of people I choose to surround myself with which results in me being more picky about guilds.
So basically, I came to realize that the reason I play a little less now is me. I still recognize the good about the game and the good/interesting things this expansion has brought. The game itself doesn’t feel any worse to me. I just feel like I’m personally jaded in ways I didn’t used to be. And despite that, the game keeps me roped in. I keep coming back. I still love to RP even if I don’t get to as much as I’d like. I still love the story and want to stick around to keep living through it with my character as Blizzard writes it.
There is a lot I agree with when reading previous posts about what specifics people like and don’t like right now. Overall though? I remain optimistic and continue to enjoy this game and this expansion for what it is while recognizing how my own changing circumstances have affected how I feel.
I’m always a fan of the art, music, voice acting, etc - but BFA has been the first expansion I’ve actually really struggled and had issues with, and mostly because of the story’s execution. I think the big strokes are great, as I’m personally a fan of the faction war, but I think they’ve been careless with a lot of the writing and execution.
For Allied races, I really wish we’d gotten more customization on the base races, instead of a whole new physical race we need to grind for and what not. Why not give us both Wildhammer and Dark Iron skins for regular dwarves? New body types for humans? New variations and customization options for Trolls/Orcs.
They’re pointlessly gating things, and, as always happen with Blizzard, when they add new content or races, all the old ones are left in the dust (E.G. waiting another half of a year for Worgen, three expansions now after everyone else got updates.) Now, I know, adding new races encourages paid race changes - I get it, but it’s just ridiculous.
The story has seemed hamfisted, and poorly articulated most times this expansion. They wanted a huge conflict with high stakes, but they ran out the gates with their climax (Teldrassil) and nothing seems to carry weight after that. They haven’t followed through on delivering compelling responses to in game events, like how it’s taken them a whole four months to add any legitimate Horde reactions (aside from Saurfang) to Teldrassil. They also aren’t explaining character motivations for anything, and when Blizzard says “Trust us, it’s not what you think - there’s more to the story”, I roll my eyes really hard these days. As a writer, you need to show, not tell, and all Blizzard ever does anymore is “tell us” all the stuff they leave out of the game, and then act shocked when people are frustrated.
“Sylvanas isn’t evil; there’s more to Teldrassil.” = “She burns down Teldrassil and wipes out a civilian population to break people’s spirits.”
Questing has, strangely enough, been a high point, at least Alliance side for me; I love when there is a wide array of stories that aren’t immediately tied to the main plot (Drustvar, Stormsong, etc). I’ve really liked those stories, the characters, and all the zone detail- for sure. I’ve also been a fan of the revamp in Arathi, and wish we would get more of that.
I haven’t been able to quest Horde side to 120 yet, however, because it’s been really hard to find any stomach to play Horde; it feels empty to play a faction that tries to be heroic in their quests, when they’ve just laid waste to an entire civilian population in one of the most horrific acts we’ve ever witnessed in WoW. I’ve always been a fan of the OG Horde - but I don’t honestly think I can ever go back to Horde again at this point; Blizzard broke my spirit on that, and I already know there is no possible way to rectify the situation without imposing unrealistic punishments on the Horde without making it unfair to the players. Blizzard allowing the Horde to get away with the worst of things is really old at this point.
I haven’t raided seriously since Cata, but I have enjoyed War Mode - I just really wish Blizz would implement systems to prevent low level griefing. I’d really like an “Under 120” shard, and then a “Max Level War Mode” shard, and keep it exclusive to that.
All things considered - I’ve enjoyed most of the QoL stuff and the quests and art/music/voices, but aside from that, I’ve been really disheartened and let down by this expansion thus far.
Overall my experience is 6 out of 2 meh.
Pros -
I’ve enjoyed questing, I still need to do Alliance side of Kul Tiras but I’m not in a huge rush to get through it all. I especially like the questing, Vol’dun had most of my favourite quests. Things like helping skeleton pirates steal gold and open a desert oasis inn, it’s these small stories that gets you immersed in the world.
I also laughed a lot at the NPC that asks who I am and you’re given joke options to declare you’re the hero that defeated the Lich King, Deathwing and the Legion and the NPC does not care LOL. This little stuff is a lot of fun and I really do like it all.
Blizzard always nails it with the presentation, Kul Tiras and Zandalar are really awesome places to run around and explore. It makes me just want to yell old world redesign when??? The new zones make the rest of the game look so dated. The amount of careful detail that went into these places is great and I hope we one day get this same level of work put into the faction’s capitol cities.
Refocusing the art team from having to design tier sets for all the classes really shows. There’s so much awesome gear I want to collect. Even things I don’t want to mog I still want to collect it!! It’s all so good!
Allied races! Sure I have come criticism for them but while I don’t really plan to play any except maybe Dark Iron. I am happy to have the option and the amount of new characters people have been making has been a boon for RP.
Cons -
Sharding is going to kill roleplay, that’s my tinfoil hat theory and I’m sticking to it. Here we are in these great new zones to bad all my friends are in another shard and I need to be invited in to RP with them. This is going to kill organic RP for sure and I think Legion is a good example of this. Yes, it was a good expansion with plenty to do but I’m wondering how much of the decline in RP was from sharding? There where plenty of great places to roleplay and I wonder how much I may have missed by sharding.
I’m very casual but I don’t have much interest at all in the end game.
The world quests rewards all feel so pointless and exist to just gain rep. At least in Legion I felt I could actually gear up doing WQ but I just keep getting bland gear I need to collect Azerite for. Yes, artifact weapons felt grindy but at least it felt like there was progression. It’s definitely better that I don’t have to be married to one spec but I hope the improvements in 8.1 actually makes the experience feel worth while.
The theme of the expansion is a big hot mess. Battle for Azeroth? OK where? Yes, there’s been some events like Darkshore and Lordaeron but immediately after that I’m carried away to Zandalar and now I’m trying to make two dinosaurs *&#$#% so that the Zandalari like me and maybe fight in a war they have no stake in.
Blizzard could have even made use of some of the same mechanics we saw during Legion pre-patch. Having Alliance or Horde armies invade a zone and players called to defend it. It would have actually made the game feel like there’s a war or something and I should care but I don’t.
I’m okay with the xpac! I think they did a bit too much of copy pasting Legion and then additionally taking things away in the beginning without adding enough. Some of it seems like it’ll be fixed in 8.1. I have heard the killed the xp on Incursions versus Legion type invasions which is a bit disappointing.
I want some quick leveling of my alts mixed in. Which they seem to be making easier to get to 120 but I’m in a holding pattern. I’ve definitely dropped off activity, basically jumping on to rp with guildies.
It doesn’t help its winter. I’m always fairly inactive this time of year so how much is BFA’s endgame feeling blank for me personally, and how much is normal winter lassitude? Hard to tell just yet. So right now the game sits at an okay but not spectacular. And the storyline is horrid for me but the less said the better.
BfA has been pretty abysmal. Most pros and cons have been discussed, so I don’t have a whole lot to elaborate on.
Nothing upcoming particularly grabs at my interest or fills any niche that seemed missing, in some cases not even addressing existing gripes. I’m subbed to raid, and even that is half out of some false sense of obligation.
I’m absolutely in love with the zone design, questing, Warzone upgrading of old regions, music, Island Expeditions, Allied Races, Heritage Armor, and many other features of the expansion. And yet… it feels very unfulfilling all the same. When I sit to try and put my finger on exactly why that is, I suppose it all comes down to a lack of player agency.
Armor chests are opened automatically rather then letting us open them ourselves. The chests we DO get to open contain nothing of notable value. Azerite abilities are all passive ones, with no new abilities to use this expansion nor to plan and choose from. The larger war story is told almost entirely through Scouting Mission flavor texts, rather than any actual player involvement. Alliance and Horde find themselves relegated to good and evil roles rather than there being much in the way of shades of gray in either.
It just sort of… feels like my character is on auto pilot, you know? That I don’t really need to DO anything, and consequently have no say in what’s happening or any real impact on how it unfolds. It’s streamlined to the point where it feels like I’m not even part of the process, and like it would continue on exactly the same regardless of any action I may or may not take.
It’s a wonderful expansion… I just wish it felt like I was a part of it.
I have two separate things to say about BfA. First, I’ll day that regarding the future of BfA, I don’t know that I’m optimistic, but I also haven’t written it off. I’m talking as a whole. Including future content, which looks potentially promising. Which frankly, I did not feel towards 8.0 content before launch. I knew more or less exactly how much I was going to like it.
Now regarding things as they stand… uh, well… it’s a bummer. There’s not a lot to do gameplay wise if you’re not a mythic raider. I enjoy island expeditions more than most, but I still can only do so many before I’m bored of them for a week. Warfronts are cool the first couple times. I did feel pretty immersed in the battlefield atmosphere and narrative. But then it just becomes another grind and it sucks.
As someone easy to please, and a genuine fan of most Warcraft story, I say this: the BfA main narrative is garbage. It’s absolute garbage. It makes next to no sense, nobody seems to have any real motive or personality, were supposedly at war over Azerite, but I’ve yet to really see that. The only people I’m taking Azerite from are random trash mobs out in the desert or a forest. Arathi was the only real open conflict of BfA so far and had nothing to do with Azerite. Frankly I’m not sure why it’s a place we’re fighting over. I’m sure there’s a reason, it was just not important enough to be made obvious. Apparently.
They need to start listening to fans and not just writing us off, or BfA is going to tank, HARD. And it’s not like it’s doing great as of now.
BfA is Blizzard affirming every single criticism anyone has ever made about them.
i like it, but theres a lot of fair criticism surrounding it
the allied race system is very very good, however, and the void elves and magister umbric are the best addition the alliance has had in a long, long time
Battle for Azeroth feels a bit like growing pains.
I’ve pretty much been ignoring everything to go back and do the Legion content I missed. Eventually I’ll need to start grinding Island Expeditions until the end of time for all the pets, but… after I leveled through all the zones, I’ve really only had fun with legacy content.
Everyone upthread is right tho. BfA’s music does pop off.
Probably one of the most thematically and aesthetically nice expansions. The two islands put the broken isles to shame with how they’re handled (as opposed to like 4 random zones mashed together like the isles)
and then you hit the content cap and the time-wasters kick in and it all sucks. Tides of Vengeance seems to be fixing the problems for the most part, but they’re problems that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
yknow, this hits the nail on the head for me I think. They announced a lot of content, but they’re drip-feeding it to us over the course of like 6 months. It makes it incredibly not fun, and you feel like you’re spending all of BfA so far waiting for things to release.
I want to frame this, and put it on my desk.
I don’t remember the last time I logged in.
At the risk of being tarred and feathered, I actually kind of like BFA.
For one thing, I actually don’t mind all the grinding that much, mostly because it’s nothing we haven’t done before. I mean, let’s face it, we’ve grinded reputations to exalted for WAY less than a new character to play. I was willing to do it just for a cool new mount in the past, so I’m definitely willing to do it for Dark Irons and Mag’har.
As for the flying grind, again, it’s nothing we haven’t done before. Flying wasn’t available until Patch 7.2 in Legion, and I don’t remember a lot of people complaining about it then.
The questing and the zone designs, obviously, remain one of the best parts of the expansion. Raids and dungeons are pretty cool as well.
I feel like Warfronts and Island Expeditions get WAY more hate than they deserve. Warfronts are interesting to me if for no other reason than they’re DIFFERENT from dungeons and raids. As for IE’s, I kind of LIKE that it just plops you and two friends on a random island full of random mobs and goes “Go nuts, tiger.” The scenarios in MoP were cool, but they were linear and got repetitive after a while. With IE’s, no two are ever exactly the same, which I actually really like!
The story…okay, yeah, I can’t defend everything. The faction war storyline is basically a hot mess. Same with the gearing system.