Why BFA Was Good

Community General Discussion
1

I feel like we’re not going to get anything this good again.

2 Likes
2

BfA overall was a pretty :poop: expansion

  1. Island expeditions:
    Sounded like it would be a cool feature when they announced BfA but it really fell flat. We run around a random island, in a random location, killing random things that spawn randomly for random reasons because… something something Azerite. Win or lose, it has zero meaningful impact on our characters, our faction or the game as a whole.

  2. Warfronts:
    Again, sounded like this would be a cool feature when it was announced. Something that would be a combination of Wintergrasp, Isle of Conquest and Alterac Valley. Vehicle combat, points to take/defend, leader(s) and base(s) to assault or destroy. Troops to muster and command. Instead, we got a boring snoozefest that left me thinking (after the first time I did it), “…this is it? Really?"

  3. Heart of Azeroth:
    A FAR lesser version of the artifact system. There is no lengthy/cool lore behind it, no appearances/tints to go chase after, no mage tower type scenario.

  4. Azerite gear:
    It was pretty bad. The gear was hard to come by, the traits were badly balanced. The response from Blizzard in regard to complaints about itwas “eh, it is what it is shrug.” That was rather awful. Granted, some things (eventually) got put in place/changed to make it less bad, but oof.

  5. The story:
    Up until that teaser trailer “terror of darkshore,” it felt bad being an alliance player. Anytime a victory seemed at hand… NOPE! Rug gets pulled out from under our feet. Anytime horde do something? Goes according to plan and alliance look like chumps.

  6. Corrupted gear.
    Again, seemed like a cool concept but like azerite gear, poorly implemented/executed. Zero control what effect would appear, what rank it would appear as or what gear slot it would be for. Additionally, the traits were horrendously imbalanced, as was how easily the negative effects could be dealt with from class to class (allowing some classes to wear more corrupted gear than others without being punished for it)

  7. The continued ruination of Sylvanas’s character

  8. Wasting N’zoth and Azshara. Both of them could (should) have had their own expansion but were effectively discarded in a couple of patches

  9. hordemode Warmode. Awful. just awful.

5 Likes
3

Abby Lewis had the best quest in the best zone of BFA.

2 Likes
4

To add to this:
10. Slowing of combat: Blizzard wanted to slow down combat, so they made most melee specs have lots of dead GCDs to make auto-attacks matter again, causing melee to become annoyingly boring
11. Adding GCDs to cooldowns: Blizzard put every cooldown on the GCD to stop people from stacking them, making your CDs feel bad to push and some specs feel terrible to play when you still had to stack your CDs anyway
12. AoE cap: Blizzard added the 5 target aoe cap, making AoE feel bad unless you were the 2-3 classes who were still uncapped for some reason.

1 Like
5

…did you play that expansion? Literally an Alli win farming simulator. You got a war campaign. We got Baine apologizing for us fighting back when Alli burned civilians.

The imbalanced shard system was a joke. The fact that you could pull in MULTIPLE RAID GROUPS and the other faction wouldn’t have any increase of players on the shard at all is insane.

Also pretending Horde was the only one that benefitted from WM is disingenuous. Alli got heroic raid gear for forming raid groups and sitting at FPs waiting to gank lowbies. And then there was BfN in 8.3… servers were crashed by certain alli guilds forming massive raid groups whenever they found the event was starting.

But the rest of your post I agree with, and would add on that titanforging/warforging was such an awful concept.

6

Yea. Lots of good things from bfa specially 8.3

7

Why BFA Was Good

It wasn’t.
/thread

2 Likes
8

I will say that the music was pretty good, and the cinematics were amazing. If nothing else, that was alright. Credit where it’s due.

1 Like
9

The siege of lordaeron alliance music, return to arms (call to arms remastered), the arathi basin remastered track, the 8.3 visions music and old godified zones music, the thumping BORALUS welcome track that wss nerfed, azhsars zone music with the elven chants.

BfA music was so good

10

I loved the old gods part of the expac. The fun builds with corrupt gear. My buddy had a warlock that could two hit people, but if they got hit once, dead.

11

BfA had some fantastic art and music. Even some storybeats were good despite the rest of the narrative’s shortcomings (Pride of Kul Tiras is still one of the best quest chains the game ever put out).

It’s a shame about the gameplay. I wanted to like BfA. I honestly did. It was just kind of… eh.

1 Like
12

I loved everything about BfA except for its core features and gameplay loops.

13

While the PvP was generally cancer, the one shining highlight was when a warlock had so much corruption that they could fit 2-3 chaos bolts into a 2 second window. And then you hit spell reflect on them. God I miss old spell reflect.

1 Like
14

BFA had phenomenal art and music design. However, gameplay design was all over the place. They bet big on Warfronts and Island Expeditions being a hit, but they were a complete dud. Sadly, when two of your big aspiring features are fails, all people were left with was the standard stuff, raids and mythic+, with Azerite Grinding in WQ’s. This made that initial patch of BFA feel like a huge slog after the launch hype.

Then narratively speaking, it was doomed from the start. The faction war setting is simply choosing to make your entire playerbase hate you. Because each side will cry favoritism and bias, which is what indeed happened all throughout BFA. Heck, it took Blizzard years (to end of DF) to finally reach some form of appeasement for the nelves. Then there’s the whole Sylvanas villain bat debacle, yeah, not happy times.

1 Like
15

couple of good songs doesnt make a good expansion… from the game pov it was a dumpster fire and it was about to get much much worse on the next expansion (shadowlands)

1 Like
16

I liked BFA. I did a little of the Alliance side, and I thought the art work creating the capitol city and smaller villages was some of the best in WoW. I did have to hold my nose to rescue Jaina but I got through it.

I really liked the Horde side of BfA. I had a really good time questing out of the troll empire of Zandalar. I loved the loa stories. Bwonsamdi is one of the best characters in WoW.

Of course the one thing you have to remember, “Stay away from the Voodoo Mon.”

17

horde opening: 5 horde wander stormwind with impunity and set the city ablaze with a single torch, despite Jaina, Anduin and Genn being present (as well as Stormwind guards/army). The Stormwind fleet gives chase and is promptly sunk in an ambush attack by the zandaari

Alliance opening: oh cool, we’re going to recapture the undercity. The army gets plague bombed and it takes a deux ex machina from Jaina to save them. Alliance wins the battle and confront Sylvannas. Oh, but that played right into her hand. She escapes, contaminates the city in the process and nearly kills 4 major alliance leaders, requiring a second deux ex machina from Jaina.

Alliance infiltrate, attack and kill Gallywix. NOPE hurr hurr hurr it was a decoy! :roll_eyes:

While i dont really play horde, it is my understanding that, through questing, there was some actual leadup/purpose for the horde to explore/infiltrate Uldir.

Alliance reasoning: well… we saw the horde go int here so I guess we better as well.

1 Like
18

I liked BFA better than many here. I think the leveling journey is great as both Alliance and Horde (though the Horde War Campaign stinks) and you’re introduced to some great characters. Boralus and Dazar’Alor are both amazing cities, though Dazar’Alor less-so if you can’t fly, which as we all know, you initially could not. Mechagon and Nazjatar were both great additions.

But the systems were terrible. Azerite armor was a menace. And the story framing the expansion with Teldrassil, Undercity, Saurfang, Nathanos, and Sylvanas did major harm to an already weak setting. Pathfinder. Ugh.

I am happy to run alts in BFA any time, but I don’t think I’d really say BFA was good at the time.

1 Like
19

you forgot the ridiculously arduous rep-grinds required for allied races. you needed to be exalted with their faction, which at 75 rep per world-quest with 10 rep from contracts, and the occasional 150 from world-quests that only gave rep, was a living nightmare.

to go from neutral (or low-friendly, depending on quest rewards), through friendly, to revered, and finally to exalted at like, 10k-ish rep per rep-level, only to make a new new character that starts at level 20 (which at the time, the cap was 120) was an insult to us players time.

i’m never, ever, going to forgive blizzard for this. ever.
…and not just cause i was hoping vulpera were gonna go alliance. blah, blah, blah, alliance burned their caravans, blah, blah, blah, look, pre-bfa’s release, we did’nt know where they were goin, and i was hopeful, okay?? i wanted goblin-esque bodies on the alliance dangit!

2 Likes
20

I was retired from PvP for 3 expac by then, but I had to try it on my blood dk. The way some of that corruption worked, as a non pvpr being unkillable cause you got lucky with a corruption drop was fantastic. Spam blood boil and heal, and just continusiosly staying at full health against 4 people reminded me of bc era tank wasting gulch matches.