Aside from the clean slate philosophy others are mentioning, thematically BFA started as a faction conflict while the Legion class halls were were about cross-faction cooperation. It didn’t fit the narrative for them to still be a focus.
(even if some of us would have preferred to sit out the faction conflict)
It is a missed opportunity, big time. They could have added content to them with every expansion. Same with Garrisons. It doesn’t even need to be anything huge or powerful, just something to keep the cobwebs off and not make everything feel like it is 1.5 years away from being abandoned forever.
The garrisons exist in an alternate timeline, and in the past of that alternate timeline.
It would have been difficult to reconcile the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff and keep them going, juggling present Azeroth moving forward, while also past alternate Draenor.
That’s not to say they couldn’t reintroduce the concept into the main setting of the game, but we haven’t had an invasion like that since, where we cut off from all our other resources and giant flying cities.
I was always under the impression that it was meant to be for only one expansion…
Likely, because you have been conditioned to see it this way. It was the perfect location to bring up new stories every time.
They do that with everything, from affixes to dragon flight.
It’s not really that they abandoned class halls. They just try new social space formats each new expansion. I think DF finally got it right.
TBC had Shat
Wrath had less crappy Shat
Cata was main city remaster
MoP had the agricultural area and crappier Shat
WoD had private housing
Legion had class halls
BFA we got a bare bones and highly inconvenient crafting and expansion features area
SL we got 4 PVE faction halls with expansion services plus crappiest Shat
DF we get Vald, a total main city replacement for both factions.
we know why and it’s a good reason. Mission table was horrendous excuse for content because they just couldn’t let it be, they had to always lock content behind it.
I know the electric bill in Valhalla must have been over the top.
Because that’s the cycle Blizzard decided to develop in. Instead of an ever expanding world, as one would expect for an RPG, they opted on having each expansion replacing everything which came before it instead, ensuring that none of the great concepts this game had that could have become just game features never lived past their expansions. Pretty much nothing exists within WoW beyond the current patch for the developers.
Having a class hall be the focal point of every expansion going forward would get a bit old.
Both in the physical/usage aspect, and having every story being limited to designed around class halls.
I’d rather see everyone on my server/shard than just 1/12th (well now 1/13th).
For the same reason Garrisons were abandoned.
flipside: imagine if we needed to still be grinding our legion artifacts, heart of azeroth, and covenants to remain relevant in df and beyond. there are definitely downsides to abandoning things so soon after they’re made but sometimes the upside is you don’t have to deal with em anymore after they’ve worn out their welcome.
That being said i did really like stuff like the garrison and heart of azeroth.
Each expansion they try a new idea.
Class halls were great but the artifact system was highly controversial and put mad pressure on them to balance the specs.
It was advertise you would get some legendary for your favorite spec, but some specs were just dead in the water so your passion meant very little if you were ousted for it.
Also some specs needing legendary armor pieces to perform also drove the spec stigma deeper.
Because the last thing this game needs is more busy-work requiring daily login and maintenance.
This is something that should always be kept in mind when it comes to garrisons. The mag’har allied race quest also shows that after whatever happened in WoD, going back to that time period is not an easy thing in-world. That and the quest itself was just a way to close the book on alternate Draenor and never bring it up again.
This depends on implementation. If you’d told me to keep artifacts or the heart of Azeroth, I would have just set them to grow off regular exp like player character levels. No AP grinds, just regular exp. Even if it means allocating accumulated amounts of EXP to level specific attributes (like how leveling worked in Zelda II), it would work as a parallel system of growth alongside player character levels and talents.
Can’t abandon what they never intended to survive the expansion in the first place.
it dosnt have to be that way, but it is always ganna be that way caz its easy to do the same and not change
What are you saying? Y’rel and the AU Draenei will be the upcoming antagonists in the Light VS Shadow expansion WoW has been teasing for a while. And they will likely pair them with Turalyon, so that Anduin will make his return as the rightful heir of the throne.