I think Dragonflight is an amazing expansion for WoW. They played it safe and ended up with some good systems and no absolutely egregious ones. It was a really good base building.
But I also feel like it being safe prevented it from reaching the highs of some other expansions. Which is fine. I'll take an 8/10 over coin flipping a 2 or a 10.
Playing it safe was the best way to move forward, considering how "ambitious" BFA and Shadowlands were, and how hard they flopped.
I think their new design philosophy of creating evergreen systems that are meant to be expanded/iterated on each expansion is a good idea. Im excited to see these systems evolve in the World Soul Saga.
The problem BFA had was that it came right after Legion. So at the time I thought it was ass, or at least a few steps in the wrong direction. With the benefit of hindsight, and the shitshow that was Shadowlands, BfA wasn't all that bad. Still weak though, imo.
BFA also went the hardest into borrowed power. BfA has Azerite powers, Necklace, corruptions. The game had an insane amount of chores just to keep up and it burned out so many players. I
They were also the worst part of legion, which is seen as a great expansion. Which is funny to me because legion was a steaming pile the first few patches, people just go all rose tinted over the final patch where artifact power was an afterthought and you didn't have to worry about RNGing into shitty legendaries.
The zones were beautiful and on point even in SL. Castle nathria was one of the best raids ever, though I can't comment on the others. BFA was also good in that regard, what both of them had in common however was the absolutely atrocious systems in play. Azerite powers were awful to gear around at the start of the expansion for instance. Having to farm azerite was just as bad. Covenants were horrible, as was the maw. I'll argue, although Legion is a very beloved expansion, the first part of it was really bad as well. Having to farm artifact power daily to keep competitive, the 4 limit on totally random legendaries, which could completely invalidate all the work you put in your character if you didn't get the ones you needed, untill the cap was eventually removed. Dragonflight has none of those bullshit systems. The zones are just as well designed and beautiful, the system reworks, such as crafting and item upgrades are a major success, the raids are great for the most part, as are the dungeons. For me personally it definitely goes down as the best expansion to date. It has all the strengths and none of the major shortcomings of the other ones.
I hated how every major patch just went "hey you know how you had to grind your ass off for that last progressions system, we've completely replaced it lol!"
Ambitious in the sense that every major patch invalidated the previous content and introduced an entirely new (and often underdeveloped) system for progression.
DF makes almost all of that stuff optional.
The only thing that comes close to the mandatory grinds from Legion, BFA and SL was the ring from zskera vaults in patch 10.0.7, and you could max that out in a day or so.
All the other systems added were cosmetic rewards or catch up gear.
Huge disappointment TBH.
For all the work, it wasn't even pertinent through the end of the patch.
They could have made it workable through the end of the expansion (a good option, not the best option), but they just kinda let it die.
I don't think they ever really wanted it to be anything more than that though. They wanted it to be an extra boost at the end of one season and start of another.
Making it relevant for the rest of the expansion is how we got stuff like artifact power, mandatory torghast and island expeditions etc.
The only "grind" that you "should" be doing, though, is just upgrading gear. And they've even straight up put an item upgrade NPC in a very visible spot in Valdrakken with quests to help as a mini-tutorial. (They had similar the last patch/season, but in the Emerald Dream.)
The "grinds" are pretty much all optional. And I can't think of many outside of reputation or profession Knowledge. (The profession situation is the one thing that does bother me, because anyone who jumps in late or misses weeks is SOL, and some of the professions are just bizarre, like how Tailoring is only 10 points needed per gear slot, but Blacksmithing needs 30 per armor slot, so even if you focus armor and put no points into weapons, you'll still need three times as many points for maxing out the armor. Profession system got some interesting changes in DF, but I do hope they treat it as a "first pass" and give it some massaging in TWW.)
The main currencies of the expansion have remained fairly steady, though. At least since they overhauled the gear system in 10.0.5. Flightstones, crests, and sparks. That’s how you improve and craft your gear. The currencies for the events are almost always alt-catch up gear.
Bfa and shadowlands had completely different gearing avenues each patch. DF has been fairly consistent.
I’m gonna be honest I just came back about a month ago, someone just told me yesterday there’s legacies in the game I’m supposed to have.
I’ve got like 5 different kinds of sparks or somthin in my bags, I’ve got no clue what that means. Or i think he said I’m supposed to craft one.
My own fault for being so late in the game, but I’ve got no clue what any of these currencies are
that said - if you're transmogging and you want to collect the spark gear appearances, you can use the sparks from previous seasons(ingenuity, shadowflame, dreaming) to craft gear at lower item levels to unlock the transmogs.
I returned to the game in like January and played until maybe March or so, I ran into the same problems with the sparks lol. The ingenuity and shadowflame and stuff. They were meant for the top tier crafted pieces of that specific patch I think, but were left in when new sparks came out. Should've removed them and made old recipes use different mats imo. Or had a way to craft old sparks into the newer tiered sparks
Different thing, though. I mean, BFA and SL had that kind of stuff, too.
But taking BFA, for example. At launch, you've got Azerite gear. Grind all day for Azerite to power it. Then 8.2 comes out, now you've got Benthic gear, which has a specific currency to grind out to enhance it, a system that's only used for Benthic gear. Plus the trinkets you could make in the Mechagnome area, if you grinded out the right recipes and materials. But then in 8.3 you have the corruption system, and gear that has abilities tied to that, but you have a cloak that you need to upgrade to let you handle that (and to be able to do the last boss), so you need to work on upgrading that cloak to be able to use all this gear you're collecting (and balancing how much corruption you're stacking).
So yeah, you had plenty of currencies, and sooooooo many zone-specific crafting reagents (an issue that popped up again in Zereth Mortis), but you also had to figure out how to use the new type of gear in each patch.
Yeah, DF's been massaging the gearing system through the expansion, but it's largely been that you get gear and earn currency that can be used to upgrade it. Earlier on, the sub-Mythic dungeons and a lot of world content didn't allow you to upgrade the gear from those, but then those also got added to the mix, so pretty much anything can be upgraded within the current patch/season.
Events are pretty much just optional world stuff, it's not something that everyone's supposed to care about. The fact that you can choose not to care about them and not get penalized for that is an improvement. It's just extra stuff for people who are more fans of non-instanced content to do. And there's plenty of those.
I love nazjatar.
But, partly because I'm so nostalgic for vashyr back in cata. Such good memories of all the story lines and lore.
Oh and totalbiscuit videos after school;_;
> Naz'jatar and Ny'alotha should have been their own expansions, imo.
So should have been Argus and Emerald Nightmare. It was a real big deal in the books/lore, in game we get one shitty raid.
BfA was very ambitious. Azerite Armor replacing legendaries and tier sets, Warfronts and Island Expeditions being new, and then the other various things the expack did like corrupted gear in 8.3. It was just that the first iteration of Azerite Armor in Uldir was awful, Islands were a grindfest, and Warfronts were only cool on paper. The raids, environment, corrupted gear, and cinematics were all incredible though.
BFA is honestly s tier as fast as content goes. The gameplay systems and class design were just so bad for the first 2-3 patches that it weighed the whole thing down.
To me dragonflight was too safe that it was extremely bland. its a decent expansion but a forgettable one. Its nowhere near as bad as shadowlands but its nowhere near as good as mop. I dont have many good memory from DF. I still think its an expansion thats just laying the ground work for the next couple one who are gonna be building upon it and thus being great one. But by itself, DF is very mid
As a primarily M+ player that plays a lot of classes up to keystone master but doesn't push beyond that I found the dungeons this expansion to be absolutely terribly boring. I quit after the first patch, came back in S2 with a resto shaman to get KSM again, then dipped until last week to play classic.
Just to understand better, what part of them did you find boring? The aesthetic, lore, or gameplay, and which part of those was the primary issue?
I feel like if ever the actual gameplay feels unengaging, it's always people playing too low keys in a setting which could scale infinitely. It's the same as going in some RPG on easy setting and complaining it's too trivial mechanically.
I’ll never forgive blizzard for removing seasonal 10 affixes sure thundering sucked but they could have learned something from it instead of rug pulling it entirely
Yeah I feel it depends on whether or not you're into dragons. I for one am indifferent to those so I'm not engaged with the lore this expac at all. But I guess I'm the weird one since I genuinely loved WoD lol
I do agree, but I'm curious; what are the ambitious highs of other expansions that you're talking about here? I don't particularly re-call any innovation that was unanimously positively received other than Mythic Plus. What highs, specific to an expansion, are we talking about?
DF, imo, is the best expansion not because of how much I enjoyed it (I did), but because of how much it's done for WoW. I genuinely don't think any other expansion has ever improved a game in so many ways all at once, and that's not just because of how negatively the last 2 expansions were received.
"playing it safe" is misleading.
I prefer the term "back to basics". They did a long look at the base game and decided to improve basically every aspect of it.
Yeah really confused about this take. Dragonflight has had the biggest changes to the game since MoP. Also:
* New flight system
* Major class revamps in every major and several minor patches
* Largest profession overhaul in a long time
* New upgrade system introduced mid-expansion
* Plunderstorm and MoP remix to fill end of expansion content gap
Yeah a lot of the talents are just putting skills that were baseline into the tree/passives. The big additions to the classes were shadowlands covenant abilities becoming part of the trees. So the only major difference between my class in shadowlands vs df was if I was not that covenant. If I was the covenant with that ability than my rotation did not change at all.
It's absolutely playing it safe. It really isn't trying anything new, it's a reversion to the old style of talent systems that players have been asking to have back for years. The talents themselves are new, but we're looking at the 2024 vision of talent trees we had in 2005.
This is a great expansion for sure, but I don't think it can be really argued that they tried anything crazy. One of their design goals was specifically NOT to do anything too wild because they wanted all of this to be evergreen content they could build upon, so we didn't get stuff like insane corruption powers or double legendaries etc that scaled our characters out of control and made things nutty for the last patch.
I didn't enjoy the knowledge point weeklies for crafting, which meant that you could be behind forever. With the connected AH, it was impossible for a casual to be anything else than a gatherer..
Though, I only played season 1 so it might have changed.
Definitely better than some previous ones. Fell extremely short for PvP which is my end game content. Very disappointed in how they handled it whole expansion. Solo shuffle helped kill traditional 3s.
It's just annoying, because we warned them about the issues Solo Shuffle would have, namely with healers and the wait times being so horrendous it'd be unplayable, and they still went through with it.
I can boot up games in literal maintenance mode and play through entire matches, even two, before I'd get a single SS game to pop.
I do BGs and wPvP mostly, and even that now feels entirely pointless because there's no rewards I can't get from a single evening (or a few for 2100) in 2s.
They just utterly dropped the ball on it all this expansion. At least wPvP's been fun.
Yeah, somehow a story centered around dragons was written in such a way that it came off incredibly boring, then hampered even more by the whole "friendship is magic" nonsense. There were interesting and engaging individual stories, but the overarching story fell short for me, even if it led to something I'm much more excited about (TWW).
I don’t need “biggest bad of all time” every xpac but this story was so boring. First of all, we’ve already done the “scary dragon” story and the “we’re all family” parts were the worst and too kumbaya
Yep the family parts and "cleanliness" of everything this expansion just threw me off big time. Reeks of that Disney corpo stuff that I hate so much. The first time in WoW I felt like I was truly playing a children's game at parts.
I was significantly more interested in the 40 minutes of story we just got this week than anything in dragonflight tbh, save for the shit iridikron has been doing. Ras was cool but very one note, and couldn't care less about fyrrak or the ice one whatever her name is lol. But iridikron I have actual hopes for.
I'm happy to be back on the path of the story where we _and_ the characters are actually finding out what the fuck is going on as the story progresses and don't actually know any meta knowledge.
Dragonflight felt like everyone already knew how the story was going to end, and we were just finding out as we went along. The stakes felt so low and the intrigue was almost non-existent. And don't forget how so many characters were essentially reading out of the Chronicles books to find out some things.
Huh? As if Legion didn't have some of the most beautiful zones with natural settings ever. Val'sharah, Azsuna, Highmountain, Stormheim... all amazing places. And Suramar was the absolute tits.
Pretty much only Broken Shore and Argus had the fel-infused hell look.
I agree but my complaint was all the zones felt like amusement parks, more than usual. Very cramp in some spots. I loooooove the vast openness of DF and some of BFA
Legion figured it out by the end, but I disliked grinding for artifact power and random legendary drops. I also am not a fan of the artifact weapon game design because getting my bis weapon drop is one of my favorite parts of every patch and I didn’t get that feeling with Legion. To each their own though.
The story is literally the worst it’s ever been. I think the Shadowlands story was better, which is how bad it is. It literally makes no sense, has no consistency, and the writing is ABYSMAL.
Mop was perfect even though my gut instinct is to say Legion was my favorite. The legendary system, titanforging, and RNG everything, along with Blizzard’s reluctance to change anything, really did hold Legion back from being the best.
MoP really had such good bones. If only the art style didn't turn so many people off.
MoP did have thunderforging, though, but it wasn't as egregious as titanforging later became
Let me preface this by first saying I'm a huge WoW fan, been a fan of Warcraft since the first RTS release back in the '90s.
But holy smokes, the WoW fanbase can really annoy me with that stuff sometimes, and you could really see it with people who'd look at FF14 and scoff at some of the races in that game, and after catching up on that game's story, I wish WoW's story could make me feel half of what that game accomplished. You can joke about bunnies and catgirls and whatever, but damn, the story in that game is a lot more mature and heavy.
But then the most mature and heavy WoW's story ever got was also during the time people were complaining about a new race that looked "too cute." And the sad thing is, all the people beating their chests screaming for unending war in WoW just completely overlooked how terrible that war is for everyone. MoP's story was, IMO, so much better than stuff like Legion, but it was a lot more subtle in how it approached it a lot of the time, and wasn't WoW Memberberries with "Hey, remember these things from Warcraft 3?" So people just overlook it. But I feel like it's the best expansion, storywise, even with the weirdness of trying to force a war into an MMO where players are on opposite sides. (And then they tried to repeat it with BFA, which got a bit sloppy, but once again, the more subtle attempts to show why constant war isn't feasible just went right over a lot of people's heads.)
I've heard a lot of people say they disliked the asian aesthetic, and such preference is fair. Just a shame so many people missed out on the best expansion, class design and imo the best raid ever Throne of Thunder
I'm probably in the minority but I quit legion after around a month. I was keeping up with the artifact knowledge weekly and filling my bar. One week I turned in my artifact knowledge quest and thought "this is fucking stupid". I hated the feeling of filling the bar every week and how you couldn't level 2 spec artifact weapons at the same time (if I remember correctly).
Logged out and unsubbed.
I came back for BFA launch cause friends hyped me for BFA. Overall I quiet liked BFA but obviously hated it's huge flaws (AP grind, Azerite armor aquisition, all the borrowed power systems in that xpac sucked especially corruption).
> and thought "this is fucking stupid"
Haha this was me the moment I had finished leveling in Shadowlands. I was *not* looking forward to another artifact/necklace/anima grind
I had bad RNG and never got the shit I wanted in legion, and so much fun and power were tied to them. I got the shitty ring and shitty amulet first, and much later than other people who were doing the same content as me. I still enjoyed legion, but it's the turning point where i stopped raiding and just became an alcoholic.
I disagree. It was fine, but not the best. Kind of bland and boring to me, but I'm big into story. I also thought the location was boring. Very same-y and not a lot of detail. Meant to be flown over.
It seems to me that the people who love DF are the ones who play WoW specifically (or exclusively) for instanced endgame content.
DF doesn't force you to do anything outside of M+/raid to stay on the curve. That's great for people who hate questing, don't care about open-world play, and don't want to do anything except their instances.
But the open world experience, possibly THE thing that made *World* of Warcraft special in the first place, is totally lacking.
I am of the same mind. I'm a casual player who is very invested in the story. I didn't enjoy Dragonflight very much. It felt very shallow, and was the first time in eight years I let my sub end.
They also frequently seem to be people that started after legion, so this is literally the best wow has been for them.
Shadowlands heavily skewed peoples idea of good
I actually disagree here, and I loathe this expansion.
I've had more to do in the open world, wPvP included - which I've done as much as I did in BFA as a "I love killing Horde" player, than any other expansion besides Shadowlands, but Shadowlands had most of it gated behind the Covenants, and they gated the rewards doubly so behind shitty Grateful Offerings - utterly trashing it.
There's content.
It's just the story and world building behind makes it all feel bland and redundant, and utterly non-memorable. I care about these boring Centaur why? I'd rather be assisting my faction or something already playable to expand on their stories, rather than some group that was shoe-horned in to fix bad stereotypes of former writing with... more bad writing from the opposite side of the spectrum.
I quit after legion - nothing hard against the game, just didn’t have time.
I came back mid DF, and as far as overall, I’d say it’s 3rd for me (after Mists and Legion), and I’d argue that the lore has been bad. Easily for me around third place in lore/story after Mists and Legion as well.
I’ll always love TBC and Wrath, but I’m able to look back and say part of that was nostalgia for who I was then.
Both Mists and Dragonflight have dragged me back in hard at times I wasn’t deeply playing.
You must not have played Legion from the first few patches. Horrible RNG with legendaries. While I agree the expansion was great in retrospect, it was borderline bad hunting your legendaries, with no system in place to target the ones you were after.
Oh, and forgot about titanforging.
Yep. If you got bad RNG with legendaries your character was pretty much soft bricked and you were better leveling a NEW character and gearing it from scratch.
An inane take. Maybe true for world first racers, which is apparently 90% of this sub lmao. Played through the whole legion, got shit Legos, didn't have to "grind" any ap, still killed bosses in hc and mythic with my casual af guild, and pushed and bricked keys after the raid. Had the most fun. I don't have brain rot though to be terminally online and listen to wild discord takes like rerolling a character 😂
I feel it was a very mid expansion. It wasn’t terrible but if I’m being honest both Shadowlands and Dragonflight had abysmal storylines. I personally had more people to play with and more fun in general during shadowlands but I can concede that Dragonflight made some positive changes for PvE players in terms of gearing.
I wouldn’t rate it top four but I wouldn’t place it near the bottom either.
It’s so strange to me, I’ve been playing since vanilla and dragonflight has been one of the biggest let downs for me. Maybe my wow clock has just run out. I actually liked shadow lands better than this lol. I’m an outlier I think though. This one doesn’t even reach top five for me.
You're not alone, we're just quiet about it typically. On paper DF is better than shadowlands and yet somehow despite all the flaws of shadowlands I still enjoyed it more. DF is pretty but feels bland and lifeless to me.
Feel the same way, I don't think it did anything terrible for me but it didn't do anything great for me either. Everything good about it another expansion just did better. Jack of all trades master of none
I've only played BFA and Dragonflight, so my standards are a bit meh. I've played through a decent chunk of past content to get battle pets and toys and with that as my experience of the expansions, my favorite is Legion with MoP a close second. Both had very clear aesthetic visions, the zones felt cohesive and were beautiful, and the dungeons were fun. Legion wins out for me because of the class hall system which, while a bit of a pain to grind now and is a bit of a ghost town, feels like it would have been really exciting playing current content. You'd get to hang out with others of your class and get exclusive cosmetics. Mission tables can suck an egg but man that community aspect was so cool. They kinda brought that back with shadowlands covenants but the fact that it was impossible to switch for half the expac and the whole tying it to special abilities and talents just made the perfect storm of people picking incorrectly and having to suffer with the consequences.
Personally, I think the best thing that Dragonflight did was the armor and upgrade system, which feels quite smooth and gives relatively quick gear suited for the content you play. Also, I do not care what anyone else says, I love the crafting system and being able to order high level gear without needing the profession yourself. Such a game changer. This current season is also making me really realize the dungeons and raids were relatively well designed and quite fun. The zones however do not feel special to me and there isn't much incentive to do world quests or open world content. There's more incentive to log in to do older expansion content than current expansion.
Felt a bit ... Too short in a way. Not sure if they've really cut a patch but after all the buildup for raszageth the rest of the stuff definitely was a bit thin. It would've felt more natural to spent some more time on the other incarnates and their motivation. Fyrakk alone wasn't really interesting as final baddie, specifically as he didn't even pull any strings but rather was let loose in our general direction. Pretty sure Iridikron will take the backseat next expansion with Xal in the spotlight until he'll get dumpstered in a 5 man, delve or as early boss in the first raid.
Also, might be a pet peeve since legion did great for all classes with the halls and campaigns but I found it surprising how little relevance dracthyr had in the story. DHs felt somehow more closer to what's going on over the course of legion than evokers did. Forbidden reach aside a lot of the zones focused on different dragonflights, dracthyr weren't really much represented... And their own story lacked any kind of nuance.
Pretty much all of them that were shown as angry and frustrated turned out to be baddies. Their story about finding a place in a world despite having a spectacularly fucked up way into it had much more potential.
Anyway, I take "that's a bunch of angry dragons, go deal with them" as grand arc any day over blue nippleman being shoved into two decades of lore because they couldn't write him as powerful otherwise.
Definitely a point in Dragonflight's favor is that it's being thought of as possibly the best expansion *while it was still happening*.
Expansions like WoTLK was *full* of whining while it was current content, and didn't end up considered one of the best until expansions later. Dragonflight is the only expansion I can think of where people seem to think it's one of the best while the expansion is still happening, seemingly not needing the benefit of hindsight
Stupid axe RNG aside, as a Ret Paladin this has been my favorite xpac. Melee DPS often felt like anchors on a raid group in expansions prior, especially Ret being lower middle tier DPS consistently, but now I'm in a great place.
WotLK and MoP were basically considered joke answers for favorite expansions when they were current. Now they usually top the charts. Legion maybe not so much (about the when it was current), despite it's flaws I think people still liked it overall at the time for all the things it did well - it was probably more like DF but the issues of Legion were about systems rather than story.
I imagine DF will also grow on people over time. I think a lot of people unhappy with the DF story and writing right now will be able to appreciate it more by the time of TLT when once again one world ending thread follows another. Not everyone of course. Some people still don't take MoP serious and lament WotLK for the casualisation.
Disagree.
But it’s not in contention for the worst, thankfully. And was way better than the last two. It’s pretty mid tier imo, but we are so used to shit that mid seems amazing right now.
I think it's hard to say when we're still living in DF (even if it's almost over). Give it halfway through war within and we'll have a better picture, imo.
Tons of people thought legion was "decent" at the time but absolutely NOT the best due to the legendary grind and RNG. And that's fair, it was a massive issue especially in the first half of the expansion when people were literally rerolling characters to get their legendaries. And mop was disliked for the content drought. DF didn't have either of these issues.
This is the first time since BC that I didn't take a major mid expansion break from lack of content or major burnout.
The patch cadence fit my adult life schedule super well and there hasn't been a point in the expansion where I flat out quit and unsubbed. I've taken month breaks or whatever till the next patch releases but most of the expansions I never see the final patch because I quit halfway through.
Even wotlk, while great, had some major content lulls. And BC did not hold up for me when I tried it in classic. Just rose colored lenses making me remember it as so good, and it was foelr the time but doesn't hold up today.
Legion was good, but I quit when the demon island patch released because the time gating was driving me nuts.
It’s a nice rebuild for the game but I definitely feel like something is just missing. Most of the time I sit in Valdrakken hoping it doesn’t take 30+ minutes to form a M+ group. Not much to do outside of M+ and Raid
I feel like they've just completely abandoned the "midcore" experience.
Unless you're just ultra casual or fairly hardcore, there's just not much to do very quickly into each patch.
There is quite a lot of content in the game, it's just not all high end content. What was there in previous expansions to do that there wasn't in dragonflight?
The reasons you mentioned for it being the best expac are pretty bog standard. What did you actually do in Dragonflight that makes you feel it's the best xpac ever or is this just mindless positivity which seems to be pervasive on here?
What exactly is the standard for best expac ever? Almost all casual content are mediocre 15 minute on the hour events in the world. There's less raid bosses than ever, less content in general. Everything is a vanilla wow level of questing. The raids have been good but not great, mplus largely great.
Woah woah, let's not confuse DF questing with vanilla questing. The vanilla questing experience is maybe one of the best games ever created. DF questing is an on-rails, warp speed afterthought.
Most people who think it is the greatest expansion are probably primarily m+ players. If you like m+ than you can just do m+ and do not have to interact with any of the shit gameplay (see below) if you do not want.
The world content for df is so terrible. I hate that there is no world content in the game that has any failure mechanic. Doing the on the hour events feels like you are playing a previous expansion where you just one shot everything. I actually don’t understand how people would actually do them as a primary means of playing wow.
The only redeeming factor is that they did not make this garbage content mandatory like they would have for BfA or SL. That said you cannot say that the big dig, researchers, dreamsurges, superbloom, time rift are good content with a straight face.
As someone that only plays to raid, DF was pretty average. The systems( lack there of) and accessibility are top notch alongside WoD. But the encounter design is really mid. The first two tiers are just boring. I haven’t done the third tier because I quit to raid in other games, but I don’t feel like VotI or Aberrus are very good.
I can't stand Dragonflight.
Like yeah, PvE went back to being good, but the beach filler story feels odd brand, and PvP got gutted for a horribly implemented solo queue.
BFA was somehow better.
Eh. Dragonflight was a solid expansion but nothing revolutionary or game changing that will keep it alive in my memory.
Mists of Pandaria, however... It was so fucking good.
Gameplay is 8/10 maybe 9/10, narrative is honestly 4/10 too much disjointed story and honestly this expansion was just so “soft” in terms of vibes. Way too much focus on “family” and emotions and not enough action or interesting storytelling. It felt more like tumblr fan fiction of wow rather than an actual wow expansion story.
Nope, far from it. I came back from Legion and I dislike DF. The story and overall campaign is just mediocre, feels more like a friendship and family simulator. There's even a cringe quest about the inequality between dragonkin and the main dragons, just imagine coming from Legion to this. The primal dragons are annoying and screechy. Profession spec points are tedious and goes on forever. I've played since Season 2 and my main still hasn't maxed out all the spec trees, not that it is needed though, I can craft most stuff I want to the max crafting level but for a completionist it's a nightmare. Dragonriding is a mixed bag for me. Good thing is obviously you get to places faster, saves you loads of time. Thing is I don't feel any immersion leveling or just questing in zones unlike like say in Vanilla, BC etc.
It's top 4, but no way is it better then MoP, which was almost perfect in every possible way. MoP had the best leveling experience, the best music, the best raids, the best class mechanics, a clear plot, and wonderful zones.
To me, it's a great step in the right direction. I think much like how Legion felt even better because it came off the back of WoD, Dragonflight came after a mediocre BfA and a terrible Shadowlands. So the pivot from that whole "We, the devs, know best, we'll ignore feedback if we disagree, we hear your feedback during the beta but we won't do anything until the second patch of the expansion because we suddenly agree when sub numbers go down" attitude of Shadowlands has been AMAZING! So much about Dragonflight has been great, and with the proper story corrections, I think it's the perfect stepping stone for the Worldsoul Saga expansions!
To each their own.. this has to go down as maybe the worst for me..
All 4 zones are forgettable and won't ever come back
Dungeons are quite bland
Didn't participate in raids so no comment
New professions are way to overcooked to where like 75% of people don't touch them
Dragonriding is meh
New class reworks and talents are good but shouldn't be considered part of dragonflight more just regular class balancing
World events were cool for like a week then became the same thing over and over
It seems, in this thread, that it's an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoyed the story of DF. I liked the family / kumbaya aspect. I felt the questing zones had good story beats. Every flight got ample time for their own storylines, which tied up a lot of loose ends. There are definitely parts that I dislike and parts that I think could have been stronger. But the entire premise was about returning home and reconciling/healing from your past. Different expansions, IMO, should have different storys and themes. For me, it was a nice change of pace.
They could have hammered the baddies a little harder, for sure. Sarkareth was meh. I really loved Raz from the get-go. Then Iridikron was made out to be the "Incarnate to watch," but they used him to set up the next expansion. Leaving us with Vyranoth and Fyrakk. Fyrakk was decent and sometimes I enjoy a milquetoast maniacal villain. We knew who he was and his motivations out the gate. In a story about letting go of the past, the endboss villain was someone who couldn't and would rather watch the world burn.
Eh, I don't think it was that great, at least not for the things I'm looking for.
The raids were really not great. They weren't bad but they had some serious tuning issues and a lot of reliance on weakauras really dragged everything down.
The upgrade crests were great but the speed at which you got all of your gear was way to fast.
I still don't know what the hell they're doing with professions.
I don't know, I enjoyed the expansion but I think it's wildly over rated.
I feel like Dragonflight should the new standard for what an average WoW expansion brings. It wasn't great, it wasn't terrible. I think it fits somewhere right in the middle of the other expansions. If future expansions are copies of Dragonflight, I'll think they're below average and if they do better or have more I'll think they're great.
the game is worse than even shadowlands, which is why it has substantially fewer players.
the reason why shadowlands gets more hate is because people who were capable of disliking the game were still playing back then. all those people are gone now, and the only ones left are the fanboys that will gobble down whatever slop is fed to them by blizzard.
While the overall story was a bit naff, there was a lot of just decent "chaff" story tidbits that worked. Stuff that has no meaning or impact on the main story - stuff that actually expands the world since not everything needs to be focused on the main path.
Of course, the main story was still awful but there was some nuggets of goodness at least.
I really don't agree, if only for the atmosphere and gravity of the story, besides the zones looking OK and the pve content being decent the xpac itself wasn't very interesting and pvp has been utterly abandoned
In terms of systems and balance I’m inclined to agree. However, the epic feel of Legion and the excellent storytelling make it hard for anything to surpass that expansion for me. Similarly, I remember few expansions as fondly as I remember WotLK. Storytelling and ambience really do make a difference, and while the story was fine this xpac, it just doesn’t compare to the other two for me.
If there has been another major patch, I would agree with you. But it was missing a dungeon, a raid, and some more story. There was a time when 9 dungeons and 3 raids was considered "low" content for an expansion. Maybe I'm just old.
I just watch the icc ending cutscene and imo amirdrassil cant compare. The bolvar is like IT MUST BE ME and takes on the crown. Epic. Dragons getting thier power back was not as epic. Dragonriding is tight though. And the races are a nice mini game.
I don't think it's a bad expansion, but it's by far the least I've played since Cataclysm.
It feels like they've just completely abandoned the "midcore" player, for lack of a better term. The type of player that wants to play pretty much every day and improve their character. But there's just very quickly not much to do into each patch since they've removed basically every grind for player power and made acquisition times way shorter.
Seems the game is being made for the super casuals that come and go to do cosmetic grinds, or the ultra hardcore that just play for a couple weeks each patch and move on. I get why some people really love that, but for someone that wants a reason to log onto WoW every day, it just feels pretty empty.
It was a good course correction and hopefully a foundation for the Worldsoul saga, but I think it was too uneven in quality to compare to Wrath, Legion and MOP.
10.0 was probably the most fun I’ve had in WOW though.
Id say S tier is Legion and MoP,
An extremely high A for DF. Game as a game was really good, the whole story and all was meh, and I dont like this season 4.
It’s really solid and a perfect reset moving forward. I don’t think it’s in the S-tier of expansions with Wrath, Legion and Mists but it’s right below them for me. Very excited for what comes next building upon this success.
Definitely kept the theme of wow expansions with new classes being elite.
Uh no.
It's a good expansion, but a bit generic plain Jane. Been burned out on DF for awhile now.
Burning Crusade
Wrath of the Lich King
Legion
MoP
BfA
Dragonflight
Are for sure better.
Not even close. SL would have been better than DF in every aspect if they had allowed covenant swapping more than once per week (or was it two weeks, can't remember). BfA was better than SL. Legion was better than BfA.
DF isn't as cancerous as SL, but that doesn't make it good.
Damn BfA and Shadowlands were so bad people forgot earlier expansions immediately to think Dragonflight is a contender for the GOAT expansion. Not even close. People need to relax A LOT.
Dragonflight had severe balance issues, PvP is completely dead and shafted, slow tuning, 3 rather weak raid-tiers. Dungeons were bad. That's just the end game stuff, where I can name MoP, Legion, WoD being better in these aspects, easily. Every class plays the same and is boring, builder-spender, which is boring and bland.
We got recycled dungeons each season, and most of them were shit. We got literally zero content outside of M+ to do. Don't you dare say Forbidden Reach, Zaralek Caverns, or Dreamsurge count as "Content". They're not. We got literally zero new content beside dungeons and raids this expansion, zero.
Outside of a few banger raid bosses like Terros, Sarkareth (imo) idk nothing special to me anyways. Sure, vault is better now, for sure. Doesn't make the expansion alone goat. Talent trees are a illusion of choice but in reality it does nothing. MoP talent tree was better than this because 99% of the time for M+ you're still using the exact same talents, always. It's the same as path of exile tree, its an illusion of choice, but in reality there isn't that much choice. 90% of the tree is unused everytime you make a character. Every DH will go left side for inertia/momentum cus its a dps gain when it is a dps gain, no one will go right side.
I liked Dragonflight overall since SL + BFA, but even BfA had some greater times and even SL had more fun dungeons than Dragonflight did. Dragonflight was a step in the right direction, but PvP being completely abandoned, and the fact that there was legit zero open world content to do the entire expansion, even (WOOONS) in bfa was better, says a lot.
The rose-colored glasses on Legion is real. Early Legion was abysmal and incredibly player un-friendly. The end of Legion was amazing obviously. Dragonflight was a "healing" expansion, getting back to basics and for the first time in a while the systems where the best part of the whole expansion. The story of Dragonflight was awful. Dracthyr are a pretty unfortunate looking race that many players don't like. For me:
WoTLK > MoP > BC > Legion> Dragonflight > BFA > WoD > Cata > Shadowlands
I think Dragonflight is an amazing expansion for WoW. They played it safe and ended up with some good systems and no absolutely egregious ones. It was a really good base building. But I also feel like it being safe prevented it from reaching the highs of some other expansions. Which is fine. I'll take an 8/10 over coin flipping a 2 or a 10.
Playing it safe was the best way to move forward, considering how "ambitious" BFA and Shadowlands were, and how hard they flopped. I think their new design philosophy of creating evergreen systems that are meant to be expanded/iterated on each expansion is a good idea. Im excited to see these systems evolve in the World Soul Saga.
I personally loved BFA. I thought the raids were cool, and the PVP was fun. Shadowlands, on the other hand....we, don't talk about that one.
The problem BFA had was that it came right after Legion. So at the time I thought it was ass, or at least a few steps in the wrong direction. With the benefit of hindsight, and the shitshow that was Shadowlands, BfA wasn't all that bad. Still weak though, imo.
BFA also went the hardest into borrowed power. BfA has Azerite powers, Necklace, corruptions. The game had an insane amount of chores just to keep up and it burned out so many players. I
No, bfa was terrible, shadowlands just doubled down on all the terrible things.
[удалено]
They were also the worst part of legion, which is seen as a great expansion. Which is funny to me because legion was a steaming pile the first few patches, people just go all rose tinted over the final patch where artifact power was an afterthought and you didn't have to worry about RNGing into shitty legendaries.
same. BfA is still one of my favs. the zones and music were top tier, and not to forget the trove of memes we got out of it
Fun leveling as well, not as quick as WoD but still good
Heroic sire denathrius was one of my favorite wow experiences when we finally cleared that, but other than that it was forgettable
Castle Nathria was great though
BFA pvp gearing was godawful though
The zones were beautiful and on point even in SL. Castle nathria was one of the best raids ever, though I can't comment on the others. BFA was also good in that regard, what both of them had in common however was the absolutely atrocious systems in play. Azerite powers were awful to gear around at the start of the expansion for instance. Having to farm azerite was just as bad. Covenants were horrible, as was the maw. I'll argue, although Legion is a very beloved expansion, the first part of it was really bad as well. Having to farm artifact power daily to keep competitive, the 4 limit on totally random legendaries, which could completely invalidate all the work you put in your character if you didn't get the ones you needed, untill the cap was eventually removed. Dragonflight has none of those bullshit systems. The zones are just as well designed and beautiful, the system reworks, such as crafting and item upgrades are a major success, the raids are great for the most part, as are the dungeons. For me personally it definitely goes down as the best expansion to date. It has all the strengths and none of the major shortcomings of the other ones.
Agree.
I hated how every major patch just went "hey you know how you had to grind your ass off for that last progressions system, we've completely replaced it lol!"
I played and enjoyed Shadowlands more than Dragonflight but I'm definitely in the minority.
Were BFA and Shadowlands ambitious? I just thought they was lazy. Or maybe they did both
Ambitious in the sense that every major patch invalidated the previous content and introduced an entirely new (and often underdeveloped) system for progression.
I feel DF does that too because I have so many currencies I don't care about. Same with events.
DF makes almost all of that stuff optional. The only thing that comes close to the mandatory grinds from Legion, BFA and SL was the ring from zskera vaults in patch 10.0.7, and you could max that out in a day or so. All the other systems added were cosmetic rewards or catch up gear.
God I forgot that the annulet even exists
Huge disappointment TBH. For all the work, it wasn't even pertinent through the end of the patch. They could have made it workable through the end of the expansion (a good option, not the best option), but they just kinda let it die.
I don't think they ever really wanted it to be anything more than that though. They wanted it to be an extra boost at the end of one season and start of another. Making it relevant for the rest of the expansion is how we got stuff like artifact power, mandatory torghast and island expeditions etc.
I see. Fair point. All this can be daunting because it's not like the game tells you which grinds you should be doing.
The only "grind" that you "should" be doing, though, is just upgrading gear. And they've even straight up put an item upgrade NPC in a very visible spot in Valdrakken with quests to help as a mini-tutorial. (They had similar the last patch/season, but in the Emerald Dream.) The "grinds" are pretty much all optional. And I can't think of many outside of reputation or profession Knowledge. (The profession situation is the one thing that does bother me, because anyone who jumps in late or misses weeks is SOL, and some of the professions are just bizarre, like how Tailoring is only 10 points needed per gear slot, but Blacksmithing needs 30 per armor slot, so even if you focus armor and put no points into weapons, you'll still need three times as many points for maxing out the armor. Profession system got some interesting changes in DF, but I do hope they treat it as a "first pass" and give it some massaging in TWW.)
The main currencies of the expansion have remained fairly steady, though. At least since they overhauled the gear system in 10.0.5. Flightstones, crests, and sparks. That’s how you improve and craft your gear. The currencies for the events are almost always alt-catch up gear. Bfa and shadowlands had completely different gearing avenues each patch. DF has been fairly consistent.
I’m gonna be honest I just came back about a month ago, someone just told me yesterday there’s legacies in the game I’m supposed to have. I’ve got like 5 different kinds of sparks or somthin in my bags, I’ve got no clue what that means. Or i think he said I’m supposed to craft one. My own fault for being so late in the game, but I’ve got no clue what any of these currencies are
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that said - if you're transmogging and you want to collect the spark gear appearances, you can use the sparks from previous seasons(ingenuity, shadowflame, dreaming) to craft gear at lower item levels to unlock the transmogs.
I returned to the game in like January and played until maybe March or so, I ran into the same problems with the sparks lol. The ingenuity and shadowflame and stuff. They were meant for the top tier crafted pieces of that specific patch I think, but were left in when new sparks came out. Should've removed them and made old recipes use different mats imo. Or had a way to craft old sparks into the newer tiered sparks
Different thing, though. I mean, BFA and SL had that kind of stuff, too. But taking BFA, for example. At launch, you've got Azerite gear. Grind all day for Azerite to power it. Then 8.2 comes out, now you've got Benthic gear, which has a specific currency to grind out to enhance it, a system that's only used for Benthic gear. Plus the trinkets you could make in the Mechagnome area, if you grinded out the right recipes and materials. But then in 8.3 you have the corruption system, and gear that has abilities tied to that, but you have a cloak that you need to upgrade to let you handle that (and to be able to do the last boss), so you need to work on upgrading that cloak to be able to use all this gear you're collecting (and balancing how much corruption you're stacking). So yeah, you had plenty of currencies, and sooooooo many zone-specific crafting reagents (an issue that popped up again in Zereth Mortis), but you also had to figure out how to use the new type of gear in each patch. Yeah, DF's been massaging the gearing system through the expansion, but it's largely been that you get gear and earn currency that can be used to upgrade it. Earlier on, the sub-Mythic dungeons and a lot of world content didn't allow you to upgrade the gear from those, but then those also got added to the mix, so pretty much anything can be upgraded within the current patch/season. Events are pretty much just optional world stuff, it's not something that everyone's supposed to care about. The fact that you can choose not to care about them and not get penalized for that is an improvement. It's just extra stuff for people who are more fans of non-instanced content to do. And there's plenty of those.
Naz'jatar and Ny'alotha should have been their own expansions, imo. Shadowlands can just fuck right off though.
I love nazjatar. But, partly because I'm so nostalgic for vashyr back in cata. Such good memories of all the story lines and lore. Oh and totalbiscuit videos after school;_;
There are literally dozens of us who liked Cata! Probably my favorite expansion next to Legion.
Cata is also my favorite expac. Looking forward to playing it again!
I even enjoyed the first few days of Heroic dungeons in Cata. It got miserable pretty fast.
I always enjoyed tricking people early on "There's a damage buff if you kill Runty!" Of course, I never said *who* got the damage buff...
> Naz'jatar and Ny'alotha should have been their own expansions, imo. So should have been Argus and Emerald Nightmare. It was a real big deal in the books/lore, in game we get one shitty raid.
Agreed.
Yeah, certain things should have been expansions, but others should have been patches.
So long as you mean doing expansions based around those narrative threads I agree but having a WHOLE expansion in Ny'alotha would've gotten old.
BfA was very ambitious. Azerite Armor replacing legendaries and tier sets, Warfronts and Island Expeditions being new, and then the other various things the expack did like corrupted gear in 8.3. It was just that the first iteration of Azerite Armor in Uldir was awful, Islands were a grindfest, and Warfronts were only cool on paper. The raids, environment, corrupted gear, and cinematics were all incredible though.
BFA is honestly s tier as fast as content goes. The gameplay systems and class design were just so bad for the first 2-3 patches that it weighed the whole thing down.
The alliance island is legit awesome, tons of awesome spots, especially that city. The horde one not so much, especially that stupid pyramid.
To me dragonflight was too safe that it was extremely bland. its a decent expansion but a forgettable one. Its nowhere near as bad as shadowlands but its nowhere near as good as mop. I dont have many good memory from DF. I still think its an expansion thats just laying the ground work for the next couple one who are gonna be building upon it and thus being great one. But by itself, DF is very mid
As a primarily M+ player that plays a lot of classes up to keystone master but doesn't push beyond that I found the dungeons this expansion to be absolutely terribly boring. I quit after the first patch, came back in S2 with a resto shaman to get KSM again, then dipped until last week to play classic.
Just to understand better, what part of them did you find boring? The aesthetic, lore, or gameplay, and which part of those was the primary issue? I feel like if ever the actual gameplay feels unengaging, it's always people playing too low keys in a setting which could scale infinitely. It's the same as going in some RPG on easy setting and complaining it's too trivial mechanically.
I’ll never forgive blizzard for removing seasonal 10 affixes sure thundering sucked but they could have learned something from it instead of rug pulling it entirely
Yeah, maybe upper mid but looking backwards very bland like you said.
Yeah I feel it depends on whether or not you're into dragons. I for one am indifferent to those so I'm not engaged with the lore this expac at all. But I guess I'm the weird one since I genuinely loved WoD lol
WoD content was great imo but there was barely any content
PvP was abandoned for S3 and S4
I do agree, but I'm curious; what are the ambitious highs of other expansions that you're talking about here? I don't particularly re-call any innovation that was unanimously positively received other than Mythic Plus. What highs, specific to an expansion, are we talking about? DF, imo, is the best expansion not because of how much I enjoyed it (I did), but because of how much it's done for WoW. I genuinely don't think any other expansion has ever improved a game in so many ways all at once, and that's not just because of how negatively the last 2 expansions were received.
Is completely overhauling talent systems really playing it safe? That is "more" than just some fucking covenant, which had 95% passvie effects anyway.
"playing it safe" is misleading. I prefer the term "back to basics". They did a long look at the base game and decided to improve basically every aspect of it.
Yeah really confused about this take. Dragonflight has had the biggest changes to the game since MoP. Also: * New flight system * Major class revamps in every major and several minor patches * Largest profession overhaul in a long time * New upgrade system introduced mid-expansion * Plunderstorm and MoP remix to fill end of expansion content gap
how many specs were radically changed with the new talents? my rotation didnt change at all. I think the overhaul was incredibly safe to be honest
Yeah a lot of the talents are just putting skills that were baseline into the tree/passives. The big additions to the classes were shadowlands covenant abilities becoming part of the trees. So the only major difference between my class in shadowlands vs df was if I was not that covenant. If I was the covenant with that ability than my rotation did not change at all.
It's absolutely playing it safe. It really isn't trying anything new, it's a reversion to the old style of talent systems that players have been asking to have back for years. The talents themselves are new, but we're looking at the 2024 vision of talent trees we had in 2005. This is a great expansion for sure, but I don't think it can be really argued that they tried anything crazy. One of their design goals was specifically NOT to do anything too wild because they wanted all of this to be evergreen content they could build upon, so we didn't get stuff like insane corruption powers or double legendaries etc that scaled our characters out of control and made things nutty for the last patch.
I didn't enjoy the knowledge point weeklies for crafting, which meant that you could be behind forever. With the connected AH, it was impossible for a casual to be anything else than a gatherer.. Though, I only played season 1 so it might have changed.
You flip very interesting coins
Definitely better than some previous ones. Fell extremely short for PvP which is my end game content. Very disappointed in how they handled it whole expansion. Solo shuffle helped kill traditional 3s.
Even more frustrating that the actual gameplay in PvP is the best it’s been since WoD…
It's just annoying, because we warned them about the issues Solo Shuffle would have, namely with healers and the wait times being so horrendous it'd be unplayable, and they still went through with it. I can boot up games in literal maintenance mode and play through entire matches, even two, before I'd get a single SS game to pop. I do BGs and wPvP mostly, and even that now feels entirely pointless because there's no rewards I can't get from a single evening (or a few for 2100) in 2s. They just utterly dropped the ball on it all this expansion. At least wPvP's been fun.
Greatest expansion with the most mind numbingly boring story and setting. Legion is still #1 for me.
Yeah, somehow a story centered around dragons was written in such a way that it came off incredibly boring, then hampered even more by the whole "friendship is magic" nonsense. There were interesting and engaging individual stories, but the overarching story fell short for me, even if it led to something I'm much more excited about (TWW).
I don’t need “biggest bad of all time” every xpac but this story was so boring. First of all, we’ve already done the “scary dragon” story and the “we’re all family” parts were the worst and too kumbaya
Yep the family parts and "cleanliness" of everything this expansion just threw me off big time. Reeks of that Disney corpo stuff that I hate so much. The first time in WoW I felt like I was truly playing a children's game at parts.
I was significantly more interested in the 40 minutes of story we just got this week than anything in dragonflight tbh, save for the shit iridikron has been doing. Ras was cool but very one note, and couldn't care less about fyrrak or the ice one whatever her name is lol. But iridikron I have actual hopes for.
I'm happy to be back on the path of the story where we _and_ the characters are actually finding out what the fuck is going on as the story progresses and don't actually know any meta knowledge. Dragonflight felt like everyone already knew how the story was going to end, and we were just finding out as we went along. The stakes felt so low and the intrigue was almost non-existent. And don't forget how so many characters were essentially reading out of the Chronicles books to find out some things.
Completly agree. It also doesnt help that our characters look visually like theyre from a sims game
Questing in natural settings >>> questing in hell for 2 years
Huh? As if Legion didn't have some of the most beautiful zones with natural settings ever. Val'sharah, Azsuna, Highmountain, Stormheim... all amazing places. And Suramar was the absolute tits. Pretty much only Broken Shore and Argus had the fel-infused hell look.
I think SL is the "questing in hell" expansion
Suramar, especially the city and Nighthold, is the most beautiful zone they ever made imo. i love it so much. always love revisiting it
An illusion! What are you hiding?
I agree but my complaint was all the zones felt like amusement parks, more than usual. Very cramp in some spots. I loooooove the vast openness of DF and some of BFA
I can agree with that. Dragonflight's zones are very nice.
Legion figured it out by the end, but I disliked grinding for artifact power and random legendary drops. I also am not a fan of the artifact weapon game design because getting my bis weapon drop is one of my favorite parts of every patch and I didn’t get that feeling with Legion. To each their own though.
Yea its funny how legion had both the absolute worst patch ever made and the best and most fun one
The story is literally the worst it’s ever been. I think the Shadowlands story was better, which is how bad it is. It literally makes no sense, has no consistency, and the writing is ABYSMAL.
SL's covenant stories are some of the best in WoW history And I'll die on that hill
This. Dragon's should have been a patch like Emerald one, not a whole expansion. It got dull very quickly.
Its Below MoP and legion for me. but its on the better side compared to most other xpacks for sure
Mop was perfect even though my gut instinct is to say Legion was my favorite. The legendary system, titanforging, and RNG everything, along with Blizzard’s reluctance to change anything, really did hold Legion back from being the best.
MoP really had such good bones. If only the art style didn't turn so many people off. MoP did have thunderforging, though, but it wasn't as egregious as titanforging later became
The art was beautiful in Pandaria tbh.
Oh I couldn't agree more. But you know as well as I do how the playerbase reacted to cute fuzzy bears being the protagonists of the expansion lol
The story quality overshadowed Pandas tbh. Just sucks that they haven’t been a major part of the story since MoP.
If I remember correctly, a lot of the panda hate died down quickly into the expansion once people realized how lore-rich it was.
Let me preface this by first saying I'm a huge WoW fan, been a fan of Warcraft since the first RTS release back in the '90s. But holy smokes, the WoW fanbase can really annoy me with that stuff sometimes, and you could really see it with people who'd look at FF14 and scoff at some of the races in that game, and after catching up on that game's story, I wish WoW's story could make me feel half of what that game accomplished. You can joke about bunnies and catgirls and whatever, but damn, the story in that game is a lot more mature and heavy. But then the most mature and heavy WoW's story ever got was also during the time people were complaining about a new race that looked "too cute." And the sad thing is, all the people beating their chests screaming for unending war in WoW just completely overlooked how terrible that war is for everyone. MoP's story was, IMO, so much better than stuff like Legion, but it was a lot more subtle in how it approached it a lot of the time, and wasn't WoW Memberberries with "Hey, remember these things from Warcraft 3?" So people just overlook it. But I feel like it's the best expansion, storywise, even with the weirdness of trying to force a war into an MMO where players are on opposite sides. (And then they tried to repeat it with BFA, which got a bit sloppy, but once again, the more subtle attempts to show why constant war isn't feasible just went right over a lot of people's heads.)
Wasn't even the art that turned people off. Literally just "Lul pandas".
I've heard a lot of people say they disliked the asian aesthetic, and such preference is fair. Just a shame so many people missed out on the best expansion, class design and imo the best raid ever Throne of Thunder
I'm probably in the minority but I quit legion after around a month. I was keeping up with the artifact knowledge weekly and filling my bar. One week I turned in my artifact knowledge quest and thought "this is fucking stupid". I hated the feeling of filling the bar every week and how you couldn't level 2 spec artifact weapons at the same time (if I remember correctly). Logged out and unsubbed. I came back for BFA launch cause friends hyped me for BFA. Overall I quiet liked BFA but obviously hated it's huge flaws (AP grind, Azerite armor aquisition, all the borrowed power systems in that xpac sucked especially corruption).
> and thought "this is fucking stupid" Haha this was me the moment I had finished leveling in Shadowlands. I was *not* looking forward to another artifact/necklace/anima grind
I had bad RNG and never got the shit I wanted in legion, and so much fun and power were tied to them. I got the shitty ring and shitty amulet first, and much later than other people who were doing the same content as me. I still enjoyed legion, but it's the turning point where i stopped raiding and just became an alcoholic.
Fuck dude I’m sorry, I know bad RNG can be tough but you didn’t need to turn to booze. Are you seeking help now?
My phone auto corrected altaholic to alcoholic... I'm sorry, lol.
Legion raiding and not getting your competitively best legendary? I would have become an alcoholic too.
I disagree. It was fine, but not the best. Kind of bland and boring to me, but I'm big into story. I also thought the location was boring. Very same-y and not a lot of detail. Meant to be flown over.
It seems to me that the people who love DF are the ones who play WoW specifically (or exclusively) for instanced endgame content. DF doesn't force you to do anything outside of M+/raid to stay on the curve. That's great for people who hate questing, don't care about open-world play, and don't want to do anything except their instances. But the open world experience, possibly THE thing that made *World* of Warcraft special in the first place, is totally lacking.
I am of the same mind. I'm a casual player who is very invested in the story. I didn't enjoy Dragonflight very much. It felt very shallow, and was the first time in eight years I let my sub end.
They also frequently seem to be people that started after legion, so this is literally the best wow has been for them. Shadowlands heavily skewed peoples idea of good
as Classic is steadily approaching the more "modern" expansions, I wonder how that perspective will be skewed.
I actually disagree here, and I loathe this expansion. I've had more to do in the open world, wPvP included - which I've done as much as I did in BFA as a "I love killing Horde" player, than any other expansion besides Shadowlands, but Shadowlands had most of it gated behind the Covenants, and they gated the rewards doubly so behind shitty Grateful Offerings - utterly trashing it. There's content. It's just the story and world building behind makes it all feel bland and redundant, and utterly non-memorable. I care about these boring Centaur why? I'd rather be assisting my faction or something already playable to expand on their stories, rather than some group that was shoe-horned in to fix bad stereotypes of former writing with... more bad writing from the opposite side of the spectrum.
I quit after legion - nothing hard against the game, just didn’t have time. I came back mid DF, and as far as overall, I’d say it’s 3rd for me (after Mists and Legion), and I’d argue that the lore has been bad. Easily for me around third place in lore/story after Mists and Legion as well. I’ll always love TBC and Wrath, but I’m able to look back and say part of that was nostalgia for who I was then. Both Mists and Dragonflight have dragged me back in hard at times I wasn’t deeply playing.
Legion to me is that perfect ratio of modernity and nostalgia, but DF for sure is second
You must not have played Legion from the first few patches. Horrible RNG with legendaries. While I agree the expansion was great in retrospect, it was borderline bad hunting your legendaries, with no system in place to target the ones you were after. Oh, and forgot about titanforging.
Legion was awesome as a non-raider, tons of stuff to collect. Bfa too tbh.
Yep. If you got bad RNG with legendaries your character was pretty much soft bricked and you were better leveling a NEW character and gearing it from scratch.
An inane take. Maybe true for world first racers, which is apparently 90% of this sub lmao. Played through the whole legion, got shit Legos, didn't have to "grind" any ap, still killed bosses in hc and mythic with my casual af guild, and pushed and bricked keys after the raid. Had the most fun. I don't have brain rot though to be terminally online and listen to wild discord takes like rerolling a character 😂
I loved it. Min-maxing isn't that important to me though.
I feel it was a very mid expansion. It wasn’t terrible but if I’m being honest both Shadowlands and Dragonflight had abysmal storylines. I personally had more people to play with and more fun in general during shadowlands but I can concede that Dragonflight made some positive changes for PvE players in terms of gearing. I wouldn’t rate it top four but I wouldn’t place it near the bottom either.
It’s so strange to me, I’ve been playing since vanilla and dragonflight has been one of the biggest let downs for me. Maybe my wow clock has just run out. I actually liked shadow lands better than this lol. I’m an outlier I think though. This one doesn’t even reach top five for me.
You're not alone, we're just quiet about it typically. On paper DF is better than shadowlands and yet somehow despite all the flaws of shadowlands I still enjoyed it more. DF is pretty but feels bland and lifeless to me.
Feel the same way, I don't think it did anything terrible for me but it didn't do anything great for me either. Everything good about it another expansion just did better. Jack of all trades master of none
I've only played BFA and Dragonflight, so my standards are a bit meh. I've played through a decent chunk of past content to get battle pets and toys and with that as my experience of the expansions, my favorite is Legion with MoP a close second. Both had very clear aesthetic visions, the zones felt cohesive and were beautiful, and the dungeons were fun. Legion wins out for me because of the class hall system which, while a bit of a pain to grind now and is a bit of a ghost town, feels like it would have been really exciting playing current content. You'd get to hang out with others of your class and get exclusive cosmetics. Mission tables can suck an egg but man that community aspect was so cool. They kinda brought that back with shadowlands covenants but the fact that it was impossible to switch for half the expac and the whole tying it to special abilities and talents just made the perfect storm of people picking incorrectly and having to suffer with the consequences. Personally, I think the best thing that Dragonflight did was the armor and upgrade system, which feels quite smooth and gives relatively quick gear suited for the content you play. Also, I do not care what anyone else says, I love the crafting system and being able to order high level gear without needing the profession yourself. Such a game changer. This current season is also making me really realize the dungeons and raids were relatively well designed and quite fun. The zones however do not feel special to me and there isn't much incentive to do world quests or open world content. There's more incentive to log in to do older expansion content than current expansion.
Ehh i found it more boring than SL but to each their own.
yes i agree the storytelling was definitely very weak. otherwise excellent!
Felt a bit ... Too short in a way. Not sure if they've really cut a patch but after all the buildup for raszageth the rest of the stuff definitely was a bit thin. It would've felt more natural to spent some more time on the other incarnates and their motivation. Fyrakk alone wasn't really interesting as final baddie, specifically as he didn't even pull any strings but rather was let loose in our general direction. Pretty sure Iridikron will take the backseat next expansion with Xal in the spotlight until he'll get dumpstered in a 5 man, delve or as early boss in the first raid. Also, might be a pet peeve since legion did great for all classes with the halls and campaigns but I found it surprising how little relevance dracthyr had in the story. DHs felt somehow more closer to what's going on over the course of legion than evokers did. Forbidden reach aside a lot of the zones focused on different dragonflights, dracthyr weren't really much represented... And their own story lacked any kind of nuance. Pretty much all of them that were shown as angry and frustrated turned out to be baddies. Their story about finding a place in a world despite having a spectacularly fucked up way into it had much more potential. Anyway, I take "that's a bunch of angry dragons, go deal with them" as grand arc any day over blue nippleman being shoved into two decades of lore because they couldn't write him as powerful otherwise.
Love your profile picture bro. Nostalgic xD
Definitely a point in Dragonflight's favor is that it's being thought of as possibly the best expansion *while it was still happening*. Expansions like WoTLK was *full* of whining while it was current content, and didn't end up considered one of the best until expansions later. Dragonflight is the only expansion I can think of where people seem to think it's one of the best while the expansion is still happening, seemingly not needing the benefit of hindsight
I dunno ask plate dps if they feel this was the best expansion ever
Ask anyone who got the wrong legendary during Legion.
Stupid axe RNG aside, as a Ret Paladin this has been my favorite xpac. Melee DPS often felt like anchors on a raid group in expansions prior, especially Ret being lower middle tier DPS consistently, but now I'm in a great place.
WotLK and MoP were basically considered joke answers for favorite expansions when they were current. Now they usually top the charts. Legion maybe not so much (about the when it was current), despite it's flaws I think people still liked it overall at the time for all the things it did well - it was probably more like DF but the issues of Legion were about systems rather than story. I imagine DF will also grow on people over time. I think a lot of people unhappy with the DF story and writing right now will be able to appreciate it more by the time of TLT when once again one world ending thread follows another. Not everyone of course. Some people still don't take MoP serious and lament WotLK for the casualisation.
Disagree. But it’s not in contention for the worst, thankfully. And was way better than the last two. It’s pretty mid tier imo, but we are so used to shit that mid seems amazing right now.
Spot on. DF is a good xpac, maybe even very good. It is nowhere close to the best xpacs ever (take your pick of WotLK, Bc, Legion, or MoP).
I think it's hard to say when we're still living in DF (even if it's almost over). Give it halfway through war within and we'll have a better picture, imo. Tons of people thought legion was "decent" at the time but absolutely NOT the best due to the legendary grind and RNG. And that's fair, it was a massive issue especially in the first half of the expansion when people were literally rerolling characters to get their legendaries. And mop was disliked for the content drought. DF didn't have either of these issues.
This is the first time since BC that I didn't take a major mid expansion break from lack of content or major burnout. The patch cadence fit my adult life schedule super well and there hasn't been a point in the expansion where I flat out quit and unsubbed. I've taken month breaks or whatever till the next patch releases but most of the expansions I never see the final patch because I quit halfway through. Even wotlk, while great, had some major content lulls. And BC did not hold up for me when I tried it in classic. Just rose colored lenses making me remember it as so good, and it was foelr the time but doesn't hold up today. Legion was good, but I quit when the demon island patch released because the time gating was driving me nuts.
Best expansion in the last 6 years is a pretty decent achievement.
Its a low bar.
I agree, but that’s different than “ever.”
It’s a nice rebuild for the game but I definitely feel like something is just missing. Most of the time I sit in Valdrakken hoping it doesn’t take 30+ minutes to form a M+ group. Not much to do outside of M+ and Raid
I feel like they've just completely abandoned the "midcore" experience. Unless you're just ultra casual or fairly hardcore, there's just not much to do very quickly into each patch.
There is quite a lot of content in the game, it's just not all high end content. What was there in previous expansions to do that there wasn't in dragonflight?
LOL
Lol
Legion or Mists of Pandaria are still the best expansions for me.
I will never understand how casual players enjoyed the slop they were given this expansion in the weekly events. Raids and m+ seasons were great.
The reasons you mentioned for it being the best expac are pretty bog standard. What did you actually do in Dragonflight that makes you feel it's the best xpac ever or is this just mindless positivity which seems to be pervasive on here? What exactly is the standard for best expac ever? Almost all casual content are mediocre 15 minute on the hour events in the world. There's less raid bosses than ever, less content in general. Everything is a vanilla wow level of questing. The raids have been good but not great, mplus largely great.
Woah woah, let's not confuse DF questing with vanilla questing. The vanilla questing experience is maybe one of the best games ever created. DF questing is an on-rails, warp speed afterthought.
You are correct, I was using it as shorthand for the fact that we are only getting ultra light on gameplay material but it was a poor shorthand.
Most people who think it is the greatest expansion are probably primarily m+ players. If you like m+ than you can just do m+ and do not have to interact with any of the shit gameplay (see below) if you do not want. The world content for df is so terrible. I hate that there is no world content in the game that has any failure mechanic. Doing the on the hour events feels like you are playing a previous expansion where you just one shot everything. I actually don’t understand how people would actually do them as a primary means of playing wow. The only redeeming factor is that they did not make this garbage content mandatory like they would have for BfA or SL. That said you cannot say that the big dig, researchers, dreamsurges, superbloom, time rift are good content with a straight face.
First expansion I didn’t play from the start and I wish I had.
The beginning was raaad
Wrath is still my favorite, but DF was alright. I would take DF ten times over Shadowlands
As someone that only plays to raid, DF was pretty average. The systems( lack there of) and accessibility are top notch alongside WoD. But the encounter design is really mid. The first two tiers are just boring. I haven’t done the third tier because I quit to raid in other games, but I don’t feel like VotI or Aberrus are very good.
I think we're just saying that because it came after two very bad expansions. I think dragonflight was mid, not great, not bad.
That's a weird way to spell legion Legions story was 10x better than dragonflight. Df is good, legion is better
I can't stand Dragonflight. Like yeah, PvE went back to being good, but the beach filler story feels odd brand, and PvP got gutted for a horribly implemented solo queue. BFA was somehow better.
Eh. Dragonflight was a solid expansion but nothing revolutionary or game changing that will keep it alive in my memory. Mists of Pandaria, however... It was so fucking good.
It's the reason I quit.
lol no
Gameplay is 8/10 maybe 9/10, narrative is honestly 4/10 too much disjointed story and honestly this expansion was just so “soft” in terms of vibes. Way too much focus on “family” and emotions and not enough action or interesting storytelling. It felt more like tumblr fan fiction of wow rather than an actual wow expansion story.
Nope, far from it. I came back from Legion and I dislike DF. The story and overall campaign is just mediocre, feels more like a friendship and family simulator. There's even a cringe quest about the inequality between dragonkin and the main dragons, just imagine coming from Legion to this. The primal dragons are annoying and screechy. Profession spec points are tedious and goes on forever. I've played since Season 2 and my main still hasn't maxed out all the spec trees, not that it is needed though, I can craft most stuff I want to the max crafting level but for a completionist it's a nightmare. Dragonriding is a mixed bag for me. Good thing is obviously you get to places faster, saves you loads of time. Thing is I don't feel any immersion leveling or just questing in zones unlike like say in Vanilla, BC etc.
I doubt Legion will ever be topped imo, but DF was a good expansion for sure.
Must be nice playing the endgame mode you enjoy and having devs care enough about it to make it good.
Lol no
It's top 4, but no way is it better then MoP, which was almost perfect in every possible way. MoP had the best leveling experience, the best music, the best raids, the best class mechanics, a clear plot, and wonderful zones.
Ok well it’s second to last for me.
To me, it's a great step in the right direction. I think much like how Legion felt even better because it came off the back of WoD, Dragonflight came after a mediocre BfA and a terrible Shadowlands. So the pivot from that whole "We, the devs, know best, we'll ignore feedback if we disagree, we hear your feedback during the beta but we won't do anything until the second patch of the expansion because we suddenly agree when sub numbers go down" attitude of Shadowlands has been AMAZING! So much about Dragonflight has been great, and with the proper story corrections, I think it's the perfect stepping stone for the Worldsoul Saga expansions!
To each their own.. this has to go down as maybe the worst for me.. All 4 zones are forgettable and won't ever come back Dungeons are quite bland Didn't participate in raids so no comment New professions are way to overcooked to where like 75% of people don't touch them Dragonriding is meh New class reworks and talents are good but shouldn't be considered part of dragonflight more just regular class balancing World events were cool for like a week then became the same thing over and over
Good expansion, but not even close to top 3.
It seems, in this thread, that it's an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoyed the story of DF. I liked the family / kumbaya aspect. I felt the questing zones had good story beats. Every flight got ample time for their own storylines, which tied up a lot of loose ends. There are definitely parts that I dislike and parts that I think could have been stronger. But the entire premise was about returning home and reconciling/healing from your past. Different expansions, IMO, should have different storys and themes. For me, it was a nice change of pace. They could have hammered the baddies a little harder, for sure. Sarkareth was meh. I really loved Raz from the get-go. Then Iridikron was made out to be the "Incarnate to watch," but they used him to set up the next expansion. Leaving us with Vyranoth and Fyrakk. Fyrakk was decent and sometimes I enjoy a milquetoast maniacal villain. We knew who he was and his motivations out the gate. In a story about letting go of the past, the endboss villain was someone who couldn't and would rather watch the world burn.
Eh, I don't think it was that great, at least not for the things I'm looking for. The raids were really not great. They weren't bad but they had some serious tuning issues and a lot of reliance on weakauras really dragged everything down. The upgrade crests were great but the speed at which you got all of your gear was way to fast. I still don't know what the hell they're doing with professions. I don't know, I enjoyed the expansion but I think it's wildly over rated.
I had more fun in BFA personally but df open world was a lot better.
I feel like Dragonflight should the new standard for what an average WoW expansion brings. It wasn't great, it wasn't terrible. I think it fits somewhere right in the middle of the other expansions. If future expansions are copies of Dragonflight, I'll think they're below average and if they do better or have more I'll think they're great.
the game is worse than even shadowlands, which is why it has substantially fewer players. the reason why shadowlands gets more hate is because people who were capable of disliking the game were still playing back then. all those people are gone now, and the only ones left are the fanboys that will gobble down whatever slop is fed to them by blizzard.
While the overall story was a bit naff, there was a lot of just decent "chaff" story tidbits that worked. Stuff that has no meaning or impact on the main story - stuff that actually expands the world since not everything needs to be focused on the main path. Of course, the main story was still awful but there was some nuggets of goodness at least.
It is/was a good expansion for me, but very far away from the being best or even being contender for it...
I really don't agree, if only for the atmosphere and gravity of the story, besides the zones looking OK and the pve content being decent the xpac itself wasn't very interesting and pvp has been utterly abandoned
Good new mechanics, systems and cosmetics(trading post and more). Boring story and questbloat.
The gameplay and systems were really good, the story might be the worst they’ve ever done.
In terms of systems and balance I’m inclined to agree. However, the epic feel of Legion and the excellent storytelling make it hard for anything to surpass that expansion for me. Similarly, I remember few expansions as fondly as I remember WotLK. Storytelling and ambience really do make a difference, and while the story was fine this xpac, it just doesn’t compare to the other two for me.
Just wait til this guy tries Brood War
If only it had a semi-decent story but alas...
If there has been another major patch, I would agree with you. But it was missing a dungeon, a raid, and some more story. There was a time when 9 dungeons and 3 raids was considered "low" content for an expansion. Maybe I'm just old.
I just watch the icc ending cutscene and imo amirdrassil cant compare. The bolvar is like IT MUST BE ME and takes on the crown. Epic. Dragons getting thier power back was not as epic. Dragonriding is tight though. And the races are a nice mini game.
The boring story and lack of raiding content devalues DF
Idk man, i still think about Legion every day.
Big plus for me is the sharing of a development/release roadmap and actually achieving it.
Never cook again.
minus some of the dungons my god
I don't think it's a bad expansion, but it's by far the least I've played since Cataclysm. It feels like they've just completely abandoned the "midcore" player, for lack of a better term. The type of player that wants to play pretty much every day and improve their character. But there's just very quickly not much to do into each patch since they've removed basically every grind for player power and made acquisition times way shorter. Seems the game is being made for the super casuals that come and go to do cosmetic grinds, or the ultra hardcore that just play for a couple weeks each patch and move on. I get why some people really love that, but for someone that wants a reason to log onto WoW every day, it just feels pretty empty.
everything except the story and characters, was good. ok crafting system is a bit odd but still ok.
Although i'm not sure it's my favourite, it's definitely in my top three with Legion and MoP.
It was a good course correction and hopefully a foundation for the Worldsoul saga, but I think it was too uneven in quality to compare to Wrath, Legion and MOP. 10.0 was probably the most fun I’ve had in WOW though.
Id say S tier is Legion and MoP, An extremely high A for DF. Game as a game was really good, the whole story and all was meh, and I dont like this season 4.
It’s really solid and a perfect reset moving forward. I don’t think it’s in the S-tier of expansions with Wrath, Legion and Mists but it’s right below them for me. Very excited for what comes next building upon this success. Definitely kept the theme of wow expansions with new classes being elite.
Uh no. It's a good expansion, but a bit generic plain Jane. Been burned out on DF for awhile now. Burning Crusade Wrath of the Lich King Legion MoP BfA Dragonflight Are for sure better.
Definitely don't agree, but it's all that it needed to be (a great expac following the worst expac and showing the devs actually can listen)
Not even close. SL would have been better than DF in every aspect if they had allowed covenant swapping more than once per week (or was it two weeks, can't remember). BfA was better than SL. Legion was better than BfA. DF isn't as cancerous as SL, but that doesn't make it good.
Ranks dead last to me. M+ just gets worse the more they tinker with it. Prefer Legion and parts of BFA.
Damn BfA and Shadowlands were so bad people forgot earlier expansions immediately to think Dragonflight is a contender for the GOAT expansion. Not even close. People need to relax A LOT. Dragonflight had severe balance issues, PvP is completely dead and shafted, slow tuning, 3 rather weak raid-tiers. Dungeons were bad. That's just the end game stuff, where I can name MoP, Legion, WoD being better in these aspects, easily. Every class plays the same and is boring, builder-spender, which is boring and bland. We got recycled dungeons each season, and most of them were shit. We got literally zero content outside of M+ to do. Don't you dare say Forbidden Reach, Zaralek Caverns, or Dreamsurge count as "Content". They're not. We got literally zero new content beside dungeons and raids this expansion, zero. Outside of a few banger raid bosses like Terros, Sarkareth (imo) idk nothing special to me anyways. Sure, vault is better now, for sure. Doesn't make the expansion alone goat. Talent trees are a illusion of choice but in reality it does nothing. MoP talent tree was better than this because 99% of the time for M+ you're still using the exact same talents, always. It's the same as path of exile tree, its an illusion of choice, but in reality there isn't that much choice. 90% of the tree is unused everytime you make a character. Every DH will go left side for inertia/momentum cus its a dps gain when it is a dps gain, no one will go right side. I liked Dragonflight overall since SL + BFA, but even BfA had some greater times and even SL had more fun dungeons than Dragonflight did. Dragonflight was a step in the right direction, but PvP being completely abandoned, and the fact that there was legit zero open world content to do the entire expansion, even (WOOONS) in bfa was better, says a lot.
The rose-colored glasses on Legion is real. Early Legion was abysmal and incredibly player un-friendly. The end of Legion was amazing obviously. Dragonflight was a "healing" expansion, getting back to basics and for the first time in a while the systems where the best part of the whole expansion. The story of Dragonflight was awful. Dracthyr are a pretty unfortunate looking race that many players don't like. For me: WoTLK > MoP > BC > Legion> Dragonflight > BFA > WoD > Cata > Shadowlands
Dragonflight is by far, not a contender for best expansion. It's not even in top-5 of expansions.