A Retrospective on BFA (VERY LONG)

Now that the Shadowlands Beta is on the horizon and I literally have nothing better to do, it's time for me to write the comprehensive review of BFA that I promised to my stream about 6 months ago.



A fair warning: this will be very long.



An even more important warning: these are my opinions. Your opinion might be different from mine and that's okay. I always welcome reasoned discussion and discourse!



I'm going to try and break this up into categories and sections for those of you who are only interested in, lets say, PvP or the Heart of Azeroth. Also, I'll be covering literally every detail of the game that I can think of, from raiding to pet battles to transmog, so this is going to be a very, very long post.



Share with your friends if you agree, my main goal is to make sure that Shadowlands doesn't repeat the same mistakes as BFA and also Legion.



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When Battle for Azeroth was first announced, I was extremely excited about the idea of a faction conflict based expansion. After defeating a literal titan in Antorus and stopping Sargeras, the only thing that would make sense is for the next formidable opponent to be ourselves. After the announcement, the hype was only building when I saw the idea of Warfronts and how they would be playing out the original Warcraft II tech trees. Everything with the expansion looked great on paper, but unfortunately that was the most excited for BFA that I would ever be.



The reason I'm making this is because I don't want Shadowlands to turn out to be the same thing.





-------------QUESTING/LEVELING--------------



I'll be completely honest. I hate BFA leveling more than I've hated any other expansions leveling. I would rather pay the 60 dollars to boost from 110 to 120 than level the character myself. There's a number of reasons why BFA leveling was such a disappointment but I think the biggest one is that you actively feel your character getting weaker and more clunky to play as you level up. Losing your endgame secondary stat allocations (30+% haste etc) is something we're used to every expansion, but with BFA we also lost: Legendaries, Artifact Weapon, tier sets, and our trinkets (Convergence of Fates, Pantheon, etc).



The result of that was almost a feeling of dread every time you would level up, knowing that you were only 2, 1, or however many levels away from your character losing those awesome traits and abilities that made playing it feel great during Legion. Compound that with the loss of your artifact weapon traits and the addition of the GCD change and you've got a straight fucking downgrade in class feel from 110 to 120.



The most telling way to explain this is the fact that, when Blizzard announced that they would be removing XP-off for 110's there was a massive outcry from players because so many of them would rather play their 110's than their 120's.



The actual quests themselves were okay. Nothing exciting or challenging, but okay. Basically, Blizzard took all of the innovation that they had made with WoD questing and threw it in the garbage in favor of a bland, boring questing experience. Cool and challenging rares that drop quest items? Gone. Treaures that reward XP for finding them? Gone. Interesting choices that help you level up in that zone? FUCKIN GONE. Even the bonus objectives were awful because the time that it took to complete them made doing the quests more often than not the more time efficient choice. Instead of the dynamic bonus objectives in WoD and Legion that took a decent amount of time, you had BFA's bonus objectives where you had to kill 50 pigs.



Overall, BFA has had the worst leveling of any expansion and had many players questioning what the point even was in leveling up if it was going to be such a monotonous experience. I love questing and I love leveling, most expansions I get every character to max level, with BFA I only leveled half and all of them besides my main were leveled in Islands and not through quests, that's how much I hated it.



-------------WAR CAMPAIGN/MAX LEVEL QUESTS---------



Just like the leveling experience, I think Blizzard really dropped the ball on the War Campaign quests. In no way was it as bad as leveling but I view the max level quests as more of a missed opportunity than anything else. For me, I tried to pay attention to the lore but for the most part I was just mindlessly running through the quests going to the different map markers and killing the mobs that were lit up or the items that were sparkling. It was a very boring, bland, and meaningless experience. The quests offered no challenge, I could stand in the danger zones while fighting all of the quest bosses and not even go under 90% health. After completing the quests the only thing I really got out of them was AP, which didn't feel good either.



I would love if, in Shadowlands, the main questlines for max level were made to be more challenging and the bosses for the questlines were proper elite quests that required a formal group. I also think that removing the quest objectives and trackers from the map that assist you in completing the quests would be a huge improvement in improving player competency in the lore. While yes, there are addons that would do it, and yes it makes things take longer, I still think it would be an improvement and make the game better.



For a parallel, many of the people who played Classic understood the conflict between the Defias vs Stormwind and had an understanding of why it was happening and who Edwin VanCleef was. A big reason for that is because they had to actively read the quest in order to figure out what to do and in the process of doing that, they absorbed the lore. Having to read the quest forced players into learning the lore, and with max level storylines, that's a good thing.



It goes without saying, but the rewards should also be increased so that the quests are compelling for players. 3000 Azerite power for fighting in the 4th War sucks. It doesn't feel good.



In Shadowlands, I'd like to see the max level quests not have quest trackers, be more challenging, and offer better rewards.



------------WORLD QUESTS-----------



World Quests in BFA release were a downgrade from Legion. They took longer and gave less rep. This was even a goal with Blizzard when they stated that it was a problem that traveling to a world quest took less time than actually doing the quest. If you remember, in Legion, the blue and elite world quests would give more rep than the normal ones. In BFA it was all the same. This slowed down the reputation gains and made the grind to Exalted take longer. I had a lot of fun in Legion being able to do an entire world quest in 1 pull, it was cool to test myself in that way. The problem Blizzard identified with world quests seems like more of a problem that game developers have with the game rather than players.



The 8.1 Incursion faction based world quests were basically the Legion invasions minus the cool Legion ships and transmog items. They were a nice addition but the rewards for completing the incursion were so awful that the only reason you'd do them is for the 7th Legion Service Medals. They also lacked the consequence that the Legion invasions had with how they would change the skybox and alter the zone much more when they were active.



In 8.2, Blizzard made a ton of HUGE improvements on world quests and made the Nazjatar and Mechagon world quests in general much more interesting and fun than their release counterparts. Even now if I'm in Naz or Mechagon I'll do a few of the world quests. The idea of lumping all the world quests into 1 in Mechagon was also really cool. The bejeweled world quests and the other mini-games in Nazjatar were fun too, I hope Blizzard ports them into Shadowlands, sparingly of course.



The 8.3 quests are fine too. Even though they're not world quests, they're dalies, which is basically the same thing. They're boring but not too annoying. I don't think I'll do them that often after I get exalted though.



In my opinion, the 8.2 Nazjatar and Mechagon dalies were the best iteration of daily content that we've had in BFA and even in Legion. They combined the Legion style world quests with the more traditional daily quests while at the same time having both of them feed into each other and overlap. They also added new types of goals and objectives that broke up the monotony of "go here and kill this/click that". I hope that they use 8.2 as a starting point when designing daily content in Shadowlands.



------------ISLANDS-----------



Oh boy.



The main reason why people disliked Islands is because they seemed mandatory for reaching Azerite armor breakpoints. If they were standalone content that just had cosmetic rewards, I think people would have had much less resentment towards them. Feeling like you "had" to do islands in order to stay competitive in raiding/pvp was one of the worst parts of the expansion. Even farming for traits in your artifact weapon with Maw of Souls was better because at least then you would also be able to hope for a titanforge. With Islands, unless you cared about mounts and cosmetics, the only reward was AP. With the amount of AP required decreasing every week, it felt like you were on an arbitrary treadmill that had no respect for the players time.



The actual gameplay of Islands was decent I guess, I've always been a fan of pulling everything in a dungeon and AoE'ing it all down in a massive pile so Islands were fun for me in that way. I still do them sometimes but after I get all the mounts I'll probably only do the weekly. The bonus objectives for the Islands always seemed like a waste of time after you got enough gear to just do big pulls. That's kind of a good thing but at the same time the barrier for doing that was so low that almost no one I know does the bonus objectives.



The doubloon vendor came way too late and by the time it did, people had already made their mind up regarding Islands. Also, Blizzard delaying the vendor for the mounts until 8.3 was another example of them not respecting players time. The vendors should have been in on release, if they were, I think many more people would have had a more positive outlook on Islands.



PvP islands were probably the biggest missed opportunity in all of BFA. It was the first time Blizzard actually made a game mode that incorporated PvP and PvE simultaneously where both contributed towards an end goal. The concept of PvP islands was great and had a ton of potential but was squandered by Blizzard with a lack of compelling rewards and competitive integration/support.



Overall, Blizzard did a good job improving Islands throughout BFA and I hope that in Shadowlands Islands or something similar will continue in a non-required way. Blizzard has a bad habit of iterating on content and effectively having the community beta test a feature for the entirety of an expansion only for it to be in a good state by the end of the expansion then be removed when the next one comes out.



------------AZERITE ARMOR----------



Remember what I said earlier about how Blizzard would release a feature and have the playerbase spend the entirety of an expansion beta testing it only for it to be in a good, playable state at the end of the expansion then be removed and forgotten entirely? Yeah. That's Azerite armor.



Azerite armor was probably one of the biggest painpoints of the start of the expansion and now is probably one of the better features of BFA. I like Azerite armor in 8.3. Do I like it more than Legendaries at the end of Legion? No, but why not both? I think in general WoW needs another layer of customization for characters beyond just the talent point system, hopefully Shadowlands will explore that.



At the start of the expansion Azerite armor was extremely hard to come by and had a huge impact in determining how powerful your character was. Without the Residuum vendor, the only way you could get Azerite was through your weekly box via a random roll of the dice. The traits were wildly imbalanced and while some were really fun and gameplay-changing like Inevitable Demise and Test of Might, others were boring procs with overpowered damage (Thunderous Blast). If I remember right, it also wasn't tradable.



Around the time 8.2 came out, most of the Azerite traits were more in-line with each other and the gameplay changing ones tended to be the most powerful. This was a good change and began the redemption arc for Azerite armor. By the time Eternal Palace released, Azerite armor was in a good place and now, at 8.3, I'd say that I don't mind it.



The main thing I dislike about Azerite armor however is the fact that you need to have three different pieces for each spec. So for me, since I play all specs, I have to carry around 3 or 4 helmets, one for each spec and one for PvP. That's too much and I don't like the choice it forces you into making. I would also be okay with that choice if the respec cost for Azerite armor didn't literally double every time you wanted to make a change. If it capped at lets say, 5000 gold, I would be fine with having spec-specific Azerite.



Almost all of the changes that Azerite armor went through during BFA were changes that were suggested during the Beta for the expansion. If Azerite armor teaches Blizzard anything, it's that they should listen to their playerbase and be more agile with making changes. Releasing something that's generally disliked alienates players and some of them don't come back. Many people quit in Legion when they didn't get their BiS legendaries and couldn't find groups/lost their raid spot. Azerite armor I'm sure was no different.



First impressions are so important with anything, especially games, and BFA left the worst first impression possible on so many people with Azerite armor among other things.



-------------WARFRONTS------------



Coming from someone who was originally ecstatic about Warfronts because of my history growing up playing Warcraft II and seeing Warfronts use the same tech tree, I'd have to say that Warfronts were probably the biggest disappointment in BFA for me personally.



Everything about Warfronts could be used as a metaphor for what's wrong with Blizzard's current design philosophy. Random rewards. You can't lose unless you try to. Trivial difficulty in general. Random, meaningless, grouping. Time gating. Everything.



Sometimes it feels like Blizzard is afraid to let players lose. What they don't realize is when you can't lose, it doesn't matter if you win.



I could go on and on about how much Warfronts suck but I think almost everyone agrees with me, I also think a lot of people agree that heroic Warfronts were an improvement. They're still kind of lacking on difficulty however, in a perfect world I would have liked a third tier of difficulty. A pvp version of Warfronts could have been really cool too, something like Ashran with a more traditional Warcraft theme.



-------------THE HEART OF AZEROTH------------



Maybe I'm the only one, but I know the first time I got into the Alpha for Shadowlands I shift clicked my Heart of Azeroth to open it up the same way I would my artifact weapon. Little did I know that I'd have to wait 2 major content patches after the game was released in order to do that.



In it's current state with essences and only the last +5 ilvl increase being a grind for players to get in their Azerite armor, I don't hate the Heart of Azeroth.



The arbitrary benchmarks of Heart of Azeroth levels that you had to reach in order to unlock traits on your Azerite gear that you already had last tier is something that again, is insulting to players and disrespectful to their time. If a game ever makes you feel like you're wasting your time, that's a huge game design problem. There was never a point where I didn't feel like I wasn't wasting my time when leveling my Heart of Azeroth.



The Artifact Knowledge system that decreased the amount you needed for each level on a weekly basis also served to create a sense of futility and powerlessness. Why farm it now when you can just wait 3 weeks and do it in literally half the time? Conversely, imagine how raiders felt when they were compelled to farm Azerite levels knowing how much easier it would be in just a couple of weeks due to a completely arbitrary throttling system?



I felt good hitting 52 on my Artifact Weapon in Nighthold because I finished the grind and the AK had stopped at that point. If I had known that just a couple weeks after, everyone would be able to get 52 in half the time it took me, I would have felt stupid. While yes, resets and catch-up mechanics are sometimes needed, when they happen too quickly one after another, it makes players apathetic.



By the time 8.2 released, the Heart of Azeroth was in a good place and with the addition of Essences, I think it's a good system. However, I do wish there was a degree of customization you could have had inside of the Heart, similar to how traits worked inside of the Artifact weapon. I guess that's what Azerite armor was though.



-------------ESSENCES-----------



I like Essences and I think they were a positive addition to the game.



I like that they require you to play different aspects of the game (PvE, PvP, M+, etc) and that they all matter. I consider having to do PvP for Blood of the Enemy a good thing. Most things that encourage interplay between PvPer's and PvEers is a positive thing in general.



I think WoW in the last few expansions has run into the problem of players wanting to only play one element of the game and thus expecting that element of the game to be completely all-encompassing ecosystems in terms of rewards. This has caused the community to self-segregate and create micro-communities that all have conflicting wants and needs.



HOWEVER, Essences should be account wide. Even if they don't want to make it a flatline account wide unlock, they should at least make it to where if you get a rank 4 Essence, rank 3 is unlocked on the rest of your account. Right now there's literally a 0% chance of me playing an alt seriously and a one big reason for that is having to relevel my Essences.



I hope the philosophy of Essences carries on into Shadowlands.



------------GEARING IN GENERAL (TITANFORGING/GEMS/CORRPUTIONS/TRINKETS)--------------



Blizzard removing Titanforging was what I had hoped for, Blizzard also removing Warforging was more than I could have hoped for. I'm so happy they did that, both of those were the reason why I stopped raiding and caring about my gear. Nowadays I'm trying to figure out a way to make a raiding team for my stream again so that I can get mythic gear.



For me, Blizzard gave me everything that I wanted with gearing in 8.3 and then some. Having the socket you can buy from Wrathion for Memento's was something I and many other people had asked for and seeing it was fucking awesome. More deterministic gear progression is a good thing!



Trinkets in BFA have been hit and miss, as a warrior, I've generally enjoyed the Ashvane/Oragoza trinket combo and I like trinkets that work sort of like a force multiplier for each other. In general I like trinkets that change the way you play or add an extra button that isn't "1000 more haste". Or trinkets that look badass like Deathbringers Will. I hope in Shadowlands they'll add more trinkets that enhance your character and change how you play rather than increase your stats by X.



Armor in general in BFA has been pretty boring though. Comparing the armor pieces I had in MoP to the ones I have now is depressing. There was so much more customization that went into them. Reforging, 3 gem sockets, Enchants, etc. It just doesn't feel right to get a pair of gloves and not have to enchant them. I'd like to see Enchants and Multiple gem sockets make their way back onto armor in Shadowlands too.



Another thing I like about 8.3 is the fact that there are still some pieces from Eternal Palace that are good. In a perfect world, I'd like to see more interplay between raids rather than when a new raid comes out, it replaces literally everything you have. Maybe having 2-3 pieces that are still relevant from the previous tier make the game feel more expansive to me.



The idea of corruptions on gear is a cool one, I even like a lot of the effects that corruptions do, but the problem with them as usual lies with their balancing and acquisition. When you have a trait like Infinite Stars that massively outperforms nearly all of the other traits that are in the same drop table you create a system of disappointment.



The problem also lies with how often Infinite Stars occurs on items. There have been plenty of examples in WoW's history where an item gives someone a massive damage increase. How many massive 2H weapons from the last boss of a raid gave someone a huge boost in their damage? I remember killing Heroic Ragnaros and getting Sulfuras and my damage went up by a huge margin, it was awesome.



The difference between that and Infinite Stars is the chance of it happening. When Sulfuras has an 8% drop rate from Heroic Rag, you can reasonably assume that, after a month or two of farming the item, you'll probably get one. When you start adding in extra levels of RNG, that's when problems happen and that assumption fades away.



Now, instead of only having you worry about a binary yes/no if an item drops, you now have:

-Did it drop?

-Was it corrupted?

-What it the right corruption?

-Was it the right tier of corruption?



All of these layers of RNG have to align and are dependent on each other. If the item doesn't drop then it can't be corrupted and if it has the wrong corruption then it doesn't matter what tier it is..



When 10k DPS relies on you correctly rolling 4 different level of RNG, a feeling of powerlessness and apathy begins to emerge. Why try when someone else has a massive advantage over you purely from being lucky?



Taking agency and control away from players and dealing it instead to the fickle hand of fate is a surefire way to make sure no one wants to play your game.



A short-term solution to the corruption problem would be to drastically increase the chances of corruptions on gear from Nyalotha to maybe even 100% (especially mythic). I know already some weapons have guaranteed corruptions so the idea is something Blizzard has done already. Another solution would be to make some sort of tool that you could use to apply corruptions to your gear, maybe at the end of a Horrific Vision.



I'm okay with randomness as long as there's a reasonable way to offset that randomness by putting in more effort or rolling the dice more times. I was okay with Benthic gear being very strong because the chances of getting the right Benthic item were high enough to where someone who rolled the dice enough times was able to reasonably expect to get the item they wanted. WIth corruptions and Titanforging before then, that wasn't the case.



While I think corruptions are an upgrade over Titanforging in general, there are some extreme outliers that make that a hard point to sell. If Infinite Stars was nerfed to be more in-line with the rest of the corruptions and they were common enough to where you could expect to get them via drops or though applying them to gear in some way, I'd say the system was a success.



The fact that Blizzard has let certain corruptions be overpowered for this long is a fucking disgrace. It's almost as if they don't care.



----------CLASSES----------



After losing tier sets, Legion legendaries, Artifact Weapons, and adding in the GCD change, it's no surprise that most classes don't feel great. Almost everyone I've talked to agrees that Legion and even WoD had better class design than BFA. Losing out on all of those things above all at the same time left a huge void that unfortunately Azerite armor couldn't fill. Warriors got a lot of changes in BFA and in general fury is one of the better specs to play but even I would trade it all away for a chance to play fury in Nighthold again.



A huge problem with classes right now is that so much of their damage comes from involuntary sources. If you're playing the game right now, go to a target dummy or next time you do a boss, afterwards open up your damage breakdown and look to see how much of your damage is applied directly through a spell you press and how much is random procs, dots, and everything else.



One thing that Classic did right is that it makes you feel like when you hit your Mortal Strike button, you SEE the damage it deals. In BFA I never feel that way because so much of my damage breakdown is made up of random procs and uncontrollable damage. Think about how much better it would feel if instead of those random procs, your main abilities did 30-40% more damage? For me personally, there's at least 5 random damage procs that come into play every time I hit my target.



One of the things I really enjoyed about parsing and trying to compete for logs back in the day is that I was on a pretty even playing field with the other people I was competing against. In Siege of Orgrimmar, everyone on the top 100 had pretty much the exact same gear. While Warforging was in the game then, everyone had farmed the tier for so long that we all pretty much had all mythic Warforged BiS. In BFA, the amount of Titanforging/socket RNG made parsing for me much less interesting and enjoyable. Corruption is the same thing, I'm sure if I had a rank 3 Infinite Stars 460+ item I'd be more willing to do it, but it wouldn't feel as good because I'd know I was beating people based on luck and not skill.



Blizzard has this fixation with randomness to muddy the water between a good player and a bad player but what it ends up doing is make players care less about which one they are.



In Shadowlands, I hope Blizzard can move away from random procs and modifiers that are out of the players control and instead move towards building the damage kit of classes directly into their spells, rather than procs that are tied to them.



A small note--MAKE WHITE CRITS BIG AGAIN. LIKE IT WAS IN VANILLA-WOTLK. DO IT.



Bring back tier sets too.



------------RAIDS--------------



The raids in WoW are always good. I forget the last time that Blizzard released a genuinely bad raid. BFA has been no different.



I'll admit though, my raiding experience, mythic at least is not what it once was so my opinions on raiding beyond Uldir should only be applied to heroic and under as I didn't do the mythic fights when they were relevant or challenging.



I suppose instead of rating the raids, I can explain why I quit raiding. Honestly, the biggest reason was time and burnout. At that point I was streaming WoW 6 hours a day, then I'd raid for 4 more hours plus another hour for administrative stuff given that I'm the GM of my guild. 11+ hours a day is too much, a lot of days I play for 11 hours but it's all on my own terms and not required.



The second reason I took a break was that the rewards weren't compelling enough. Hall of Fame was a great idea and great addition to the game but the fact is that there are so many titles in the game now that none of them really mean anything outside of old school titles like Scarab Lord and Rank 1's from arena. The gear was nice but other people could get the same gear by putting in 5% of the effort in heroic and being lucky. Before anyone comments on this, yes, I do want a unique power advantage for completing mythic content.



To me, I've always played and worked towards goals that have a sense of exclusivity. My goal every tier is to get BiS. Since WoD, this was impossible and it's no coincidence that's when I stopped enjoying raiding. Titanforging and increased randomness on gear made me feel like my time spent raiding was wasted and and I felt stupid investing over 10 hours a week on a schedule to be 5 ilvls higher than a heroic raider.



My goal in raiding is gear. The prestige in it is nice but I'm not willing to invest the time into being that serious about the game to reach a level of prestige that I'd be proud of.



Another thing that has become more common in raiding, specifically in Tomb of Sargeras is mechanics that, when one person fails them, the entire raid wipes. I hate mechanics like that because they add a level of stress and when you finally overcome them there's more relief than satisfaction.



The biggest problem to me with raiding is actually something that has to do with the entire game which is when a new patch comes out, everything before that patch is irrelevant. the badass gear you had in Eternal Palace is replaced with normal mode gear in Nyloatha. Same with Mythic+ and everything else related to gear progression.



In BFA and also Legion, you didn't play the expansion, you played the patch.



While I see why Blizzard wants to approach it from that direction, personally I dislike it because I feel it removes content from the game. If someone just starting BFA now had to go though Uldir, BoD, and TEP that would create a lot more content for that player to work towards rather than repeating the same raid 4 times.



In a perfect world I'd love to see something like what they did with Terrace of the Endless Spring. You had your Normal Mode, Hardmode, then on top of that you had a Hard Hardmode with Protectors of the Endless having an elite mode on top of that. Ulduar too.



Overall I think we need a reduction in raid difficulties down to 3 but ideally 2. Not only would it be a better experience for players coming into the expansion late but I think it would also help with the ilvl inflation problem that makes people who take one tier off feel like they have to start all over again.



From my heroic raider perspective, raiding has been fine but I would defer to someone who's mythic raided for the entire expansion for a more nuanced evaluation.



A quick note I also just remembered, I really liked what they did with gear in Crucible of Storms. Almost every item had some sort of buff or effect that it created and things like that make gearing in raids more interesting in general. I hope Blizzard adds more of those in the future.



-----------DUNGEONS/M+-------------



BFA dungeons have been good. Mechagon however I think has been the best dungeon Blizzard has made since maybe Classic BRD. It's better than Return to Karazhan even. The implementation of the mega dungeons I also think is great. Mythic only with a hardmode, I love it.



If I had to choose, I'd say that I enjoyed Legion dungeons more though. While Mechagon is my favorite out of the two expansions, Legion had more dungeons that I liked in general. One big reason for that I think is that the main way I interface with dungeons is through Mythic+ and the way that the affixes for Legion were ported over to BFA felt lazy.



It's clear to me that the affixes for Mythic+ were designed for Legion dungeons/mobs and not for BFA. In most cases, this isn't really a problem but some affixes do not work well with certain dungeons and mobs. An example is the amount of mobs in BFA that stand still and perform an action. Whether that's something like shooting a gun, applying a buff to themselves, or casting an uninterruptable spell. While there are some mobs like that in Legion, there are many more in BFA. Dealing with mobs like that on weeks with Sanguine creates some very frustrating situations.



There's counterplay for it, of course, but just because something has counterplay potential doesn't mean that it's a good mechanic or interaction. Also when that outplay potential is only available to people who are in lets say the top 5% of players or groups, 95% of people have a frustrating experience that's created by an unplanned interaction.



Another example is Sanguine again in a dungeon like Tol Dagor. Taking a mechanic from Legion dungeons, many of which were open and expansive and applying it to a claustrophobic dungeon like TD creates again, frustrating situations. There are good and bad kinds of frustration, from my perspective, that's the bad kind.



The seasonal affixes, like Reaping, Infested, etc I think were a great addition to M+ and they really served to spice things up and make the dungeons more interesting. I really enjoyed Reaping and Awakened and thought Beguiling and Infested were annoying. In general I like things that accelerate combat rather than slow it down or throttle it.



Gear from Mythic+ is in kind of a weird spot right now. I think Blizzard has struggled to balance M+ gearing because of how much more accessible it is vs mythic raiding and the fact that it's repeatable. Doing a M+15 is probably as hard as doing some of the mythic bosses but I'd say doing something like a +18 is extremely challenging, much moreso than most of the mythic raid, at least that's how it was when I was raiding. It would be nice if there was a way to get more than one mythic raid level piece of gear per week from M+ but it's a tough balance to strike.



I hope that in Shadowlands Blizzard can re-imagine the M+ system and it's rewards. The 8.3 addition of the +15 mount and title was a great start. More rewards built around M+ and progressing through the levels is a good thing. What if there was a feat of strength for completing a +20 or all +20's that rewarded you with a title like "Keymaster"? That would be really cool.



Mythic+ should have a lot more rewards than what it currently has, I think almost everyone who does the content agrees with that.



Why aren't there legendary keys?



----------HORRIFIC VISIONS------------



Good. They're good. I like them.



Horrific visions are to BFA what the Mage Tower was to Legion. Challenging solo content. Where the Mage Tower was more geared towards doing on all your characters, the visions are focused on a progression system for one character. While having an entire tech tree for just a patch feature might seem a bit excessive, I do like how the ecosystem of corruption works together.



Corrupted gear, the legendary cloak upgrades, and the visions come together to incentivize each other and make each other relevant and useful. The visions also by extension make character progression in general matter by allowing you to complete more of the objectives with more masks.



The visions themselves I think are fun to do, I've done them so far with 3 masks and it was pretty easy, I think next week or the week after I'll go for 5. The masks were a great idea and I also like how different points in the tech tree unlock big benchmarks for player power. For example when I got the bottom capstone talent I went from being able to full clear a vision to being able to full clear a vision without even using a sanity orb.



The only problems I have with visions is that I don't like the Alleria fight. You spend too much time waiting for her to cast abilities and run to you. Because you're on a timer it creates a lot of frustration having to wait for her to move out of one of the danger zones.



The rewards from visions are good too. I like that there's only 1 cosmetic reward rather than dozens so that players are more incentivized to upgrade their get rather than just buy more and more cosmetics.





*****************************PVP SECTION*****************************



----------WORLD PVP/BATTLEGROUNDS-------------



To say that world pvp is laggy dogshit ass garbage would be an insult to laggy dogshit ass garbage.



Never before in the history of video games have I encountered such a dysfunctional and embarrassing excuse of a pvp system as the current state of open world pvp. Battle for Nazjatar is unplayable. In groups larger than 15-20 you can already start to feel your abilities lose their responsiveness and input lag begin and by the time you hit 30 people, world pvp loses all sense of functionality and turns into an embarrassing mess that would humiliate even indy developers but somehow, Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar company can't seem to be bothered with the fact that you can't have a war in World of Warcraft.



It seems with every expansion and every year the servers get worse and worse. Even doing TM vs. Southshore is unplayable and that's a 40v40 that Blizzard created. The interesting question to me, however, is why do so many people feel like the servers have gotten worse over time? Have they? I'll be the first to say that I'm not a network engineer, I don't have a degree in server tech, and I don't really know what I'm talking about so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.



I think the reasons why the servers have deteriorated over time is the massive increase of spells, effects, calculations, and numbers that goes into pvp in general nowadays. Anyone who owns a computer knows that when you have like 100 tabs open in your web browser, your computer slows down. Metaphorically, I think PvP has too many tabs open.



One of the biggest problems I have with pvp in general right now is how it seems that the entire game is balanced around 3v3 arena. Most of the playerbase doesn't do 3v3 arena. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when you create a balancing strategy around 3v3 arena then extrapolate that to every other element of the game, you're going to have some disconnects.



For example, try killing a healer in a battleground. Unless they're very very bad, you're probably not going to be able to. A big reason for that is the mechanic that throttles healers in 3v3, dampening, isn't in BG's. There are of course times when I've killed a healer solo in a BG, but usually that's because of myself outgearing him, lucky procs, or them just being very bad. There have been many times where I've done a BG and had 3-4 people on a healer and they couldn't get a kill. That would be okay if there was some degree of skill involved, but the situations that I'm mentioning are when the healer is just literally jumping around in circles spamming instant casts without dying. There's not a lot of counterplay to that and it makes tying to kill them a frustrating and unfun experience.



Lets say you're some sort of crazy person and you like fighting against healers in BG's and world pvp. You'd have to be absolutely insane to feel the same way about tanks. From my perspective, I don't see any value in having tanks in a battleground when that battleground doesn't have a flag. There's never been a time where I played against a tank in a BG or in world pvp that I enjoyed. I don't really think tanks have any place in BG's outside of flag carriers and serve no purpose in arena. Tanks in BG's and arena usually exist primarily to extend the duration of the game or somehow cockblock the other team. Personally I don't think that's good gameplay and I think it actively makes the BG and arena experience worse for everyone else.



Overall World PvP and BG's don't feel good or fulfilling. Damage feels too low until someone gets 1 shot.



Another big problem I have with pvp right now is the backend balancing system they ninja-implemented into BFA. If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically if you are 470 ilvl and you hit someone whos 420 ilvl for 50k damage, it may show 50k on your screen but the other player only takes lets say 30k. Personally I don't think anything like this should be present in a gear-based MMO. Especially when it's basically lying to the players to make them feel good about doing damage that's not even real.



----------PVP GEARING-----------



Starting out in BFA, I really liked pvp gearing. It was competitive with raiding and it was good enough to where a lot of people who didn't normally pvp were getting into it because the rewards were so lucrative. It reminded me a lot of BC when the arena gear was so good that it got almost everyone into queuing their 10 games for the week.



I like the idea of incentivizing pve players to do pvp and vice versa.



I think the end of match gear rewards should be slightly buffed from where they're at now. At this point I get less than 1 item every hour almost from queuing arenas which makes it less competitive than M+ when M+ has gear trading and also more targeted loot farming.



The weekly loot reward for filling up the conquest bar seems too low as well, 445 isn't competitive with anything at this point so I'd like to see more rewards that pvp players can deterministically work towards over the course of a week.



Also--Shadowlands needs pvp vendors. There's nothing that crushes the competitive spirit faster than an unfair playing field.



----------ARENA---------



I don't do arena seriously enough right now to feel confident in making a judgement on it. Listen to one of the more serious arena guys on this one!





********************MINOR FEATURES THAT STILL DESERVE TO BE DISCUSSED********************



-----------FLYING----------



Pathfinder has been a great idea for WoD and Legion but at this point I think people are getting tired of regrinding for the same exact thing every expansion. From personal experience, my mom, who's been an avid WoW player since Vanilla stopped playing and is on "strike" because of the way Blizzard makes players regrind for the same thing they had in the previous expansion.



Personally I don't mind grinding for Pathfinder because I get it organically just from doing the content but for a lot of people it's cumbersome and having the expectation to do it every expansion is a bit much. Maybe in Shadowlands they could give players flying for a nominal amount of gold (20k or 100k or something) and tie Pathfinder into something like faster speed.



---------MOUNTS----------



The mount problem with BFA and also with Legion is that when Blizzard releases a mount type, certain variants are substantially easier to get than others. You might think this is an irrelevant thing but mounts and other cosmetic items are one of the biggest ways people have to distinguish themselves from others and when that distinction is diminished, so is the visual representation of their accomplishments.



So, for example, when some of the mindworms are very easy to get while some are very hard, the visual distinction a player gets for having one is diminished. I think when Blizzard designs tiers of mounts, they should try to keep the mounts all within the same general difficulty level. An example is the proto-drakes in WotLK. Every proto-drake was difficult to obtain in it's own way, yes some more than others, but there was no free super ez proto-drake when WotLK released. This made having a proto-drake in general a prestige accomplishment.



Mounts in BFA have been decent though. The mythic Jaina and now the mythic N'zoth mounts are unique enough to where they stand out and the gladiator mounts are the same thing.



--------PET BATTLES----------



Blizzard has done a great job with pet battles this expansion. They've made tons of new pet battle dungeons as well as added nearly a hundred new pets you can go out and catch and find. Also making a daily pet battle for the reputation as well as how they gave you quest items for even more rep in Nazjatar when you'd win a pet battle is a good thing. It gives people who want to interface with the mini-games that small tiny minor advantage that makes the idea of doing pet battles a bit more compelling to the people who haven't done them.



I'd like to see pet battles get an added layer of complexity but I worry that it will only come in the form of an arbitrary expectation to maybe level pets to 30 or something that's purely designed to make players repeat the same content.



--------FEATS OF STRENGTH-----------



Capstone level feats like Champion of Azeroth and The Faceless are great for the game because they give those who are high end players something to work towards and show off. I'd like to see more high-end feats of strength added into the game that give those players something they can have to distinguish themselves.



---------TRANSMOG-----------



Transmog options in BFA have been pretty great overall. The biggest negative for transmog in BFA is also the biggest part of transmog however: tier sets. Lets say you don't like the Uldir plate set because you don't want to look like a stone soilder who smokes too much weed? You're fucked. That's the only set that tier. Class tier sets also gave players tons of other options regarding transmog and I hope Blizzard brings them back for no other reason than to give players more transmog options.





****************************************************************************************************



Wow...that was long lol. Okay, I think I've covered everything, or at least I hope I have. I put a ton of work into this so I hope a lot of you guys got something out of it, if you've made it this far, thanks!



As I said at the start, my main goal is to make sure that Shadowlands is a good expansion. So when Alpha, Beta, or the actual game comes out and you get the chance to play it, make sure to let Blizzard know how you feel and give good constructive feedback!



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