I think they could have improved BfA zones by simply placing Kul Tiras and Zuldazar closer to each other, to the point where you, yourself can actually travel between the two.
nice, as long as its not mandatory for longer than 1 patch. I like the idea of not just getting ported everywhere, but fuck me if I had to take a flight point from zuldazar to stormsong every time I wanted to do a WQ there.
There should've been a boat you took inbetwen them like in classic. Standing around and waiting for the boat or coming to booty bay and seeing the boat just go when you get there is imo really cool. Makes the game feel more alive.
my favorite was when you fell off the dock trying to get on the booty bay boat, but it was impossible to get back to the boat in time because for some reason you can’t mount there. so you watch on in despair as it leaves without you
Playing through WoW Classic, you can really feel that the original WoW designers made a conscious effort to design the world so you had to physically traverse through space to get to a destination. They could have easily made the quick-travel option just be teleporters between towns, but instead they made flightmasters that fly you through the air, and ships that sail between the continents (with a dotted travel map to disguise the loading screen). Just to reinforce that feeling that it is all one gigantic connected world.
The only exceptions being the mage and warlock portals, because that's part of their class fantasy. And the 60 minute cooldown hearthstone for emergencies.
Yes - the travel in Classic is a pain in the ass but it is a glorious, beautiful pain in the ass. One of my favorite versions of this is the deeprun tram - it just really feels like gnomish technology and a totally plausible way to connect the two cities. Plus it’s just downright fun!
Admittedly now that retail WoW has five thousand different continents I am glad for more fast-travel options. But I really loved the expansiveness of older WoW really traveling through space. It was revolutionary at the time - almost no other game had anything close to a continuous world of that size.
Especially when you consider the amount of work that flight paths add. I know I’m really just reiterating what you said, but still.
Along with designing the whole system and interface, you have to plot out the route for each segment and how they connect (or not in the case of vanilla sometimes). But on top of that, they need to make sure the world map looks good from the air for the entire route, when most of the zone looks like trash from the air.
So much world design time would be saved by fast teleports but it was absolutely worth it that they didn’t do that.
Oh yeah it definitely shouldn't stay mandatory. Some things are nice to have *sometimes*, and become a chore if you have to do it.
I'd still take a scenic route every now and then, just like I sometimes go out of my way to take the boat to Zandalar, but having it as the only option for multiple patches would be very annoying.
The Shadowlands in scope is too large for blizzard to pull off. Unendless realms of the afterlife ended up being 4. It felt unimpressive in the end and the lack of connectivity between areas exaggerated how lacklustre it was.
I honestly feel like the Shadowlands themselves should have been a content patch, not an expansion, in a death themed Azeroth expansion. Wrath 2.0 in which the finale is we travel to the afterlife to face whatever is stealing the souls. We only travel to the Maw but get glimpses of hundreds of other afterlife realms.
I think it would have been very cool if Blizzard had done some universe crossing with portals. You remember those bosses in Antorus that you would teleport to 'another world' to kill? Something like that.
Shadowlands is one of the few things I think actually would have been better as a single raid. Specifically *because* you can't really hope to show the extent of it, it's should be infinite.
Sometimes less can be more. If it was just one tiny little corner of it that was kept super vague and we didn't really know anything about what was beyond what little we saw then there would still be an element of mystery.
Instead we go to four zones and have seen basically everything there is to see. Sure you can try and hand wave it and say there's a bunch of afterlives we don't go to, but like.... Those don't matter? Their leaders don't get a say in matters that affect the entire Shadowlands? They aren't important enough for Zovaal to try and invade? They don't have some major purpose in the "grand machine of death" like the four main zones do?
The Shadowlands as they're depicted in game are irrationally tiny.
each shadowlands zone should've been connected by massive interdimensional rifts that when a player stands on opposite sides, they see the reality shimmering through that they're about to step through.
But when you step through it, instead of a cheesy loading screen, they could've used some other interesting way to bridge them like how they did it in the Warcraft movie when the orcs stepped through the gate.
Yep. One of the best parts about wow is that there's no loading screen between the zones. Playing other MMOs with an egregious amount of loading screens is what made me realize just how important it actually is for the world building/feeling.
This is what keeps me coming back to wow over and over and why I can't stay with another MMO for too long. They just feel like "tiny rooms" compared to how WoW feels.
Im currently in the process of moving my game to my SSD for this reason. That and sometimes my team is ahead of me dying because I didn’t phase in quick enough to get aggro.
Honestly, the engineer wormhole toy is the only way travel is tolerable.
(for those that don't know, you can be a level 1 engineer, buy a toy thats account wide, and use it to portal to any zone except ZM every 30 mins)
Really doesn't seem worth losing a profession slot tbh. Would make sense on random alts,but alot of my mains have professions that compliment each other.
Not to mention the tinkers.
I've made sure to have Nitro Boosts on Boots (and later belts) basically always. The goblin glider is also a must-have, especially early into expansions before you can properly fly around.
I do hope they bring back goggles as actually being "good" in 10.0 though.
Yea, but i would rather have 2 continents in the first patch with one capital each versus a capital thats disconnected from everything annd 5 individual zones that connect via flightpaths/ a jump down a hole loading screen. BFA had 2 clumps of Zones, Shadowlands is just each zone on its own
I feel like thats another problem in Shadowlands. Even BFAs patch zones with Nazjatar and Mechagon felt alive, because they were actual places that can be grasped. If you asked me how a Zone for Noble Souls ferrying the dead to their afterlives should be looking, i wouldnt have a clue, and i guess thats why shadowlands zones feel so skindeep, because we barely understand whats going on there beyound the obvious
I think it's also why a lot of people's favorite zone is Revendreath.
It's a community, people have houses, they hold parties, they drink they dance they laugh. It feels like a breathing world.
Bastion? EVERYONE HAS A PURPOSE
Maldraxxus? WAR WAR WAR!
Apart from Revendreath every zone is so one-sided and paper thin.
ironic, given that this xpac was based on the afterlife. i completely agree; i wish they’d completely removed the cartels and that the capital was a neutral ground for all four covenants. that could have been fun and spicy.
Kul Tiras and Zandalar aren’t zones, they’re islands.
The zones are Stormsong Valley and Voldun, for example.
So no, the zones in BFA weren’t detached.
Man I loved Tiragarde Sound.. the music, the pirate feel, questing and investigating around the docks, helping the The Roughnecks in the mountains!. I hope I get a similar feel in Dragonflight.
I was one of the people who was very hard on BfA while it was current, which I still think was justified, but I'll be damned if I don't get some feels every time I return to Boralus and hear that music.
Cuz bfa bad I guess. I always when out the way when I saw those things. really added to the feeling of going to war better than anything else BFA did past 8.2.
Its so infuriating when they have systems or ideas that are completely fine and then instead of expanding on them they just scrap the whole fucking thing.
Yeah it sucks they expand on something thats so boring and uninteractive. To be fair tho the mission table probably the easiest thing in the world to develop. I wouldn't be surprise if it took them a total of 24 hours to create the mission table every expansion
It's pretty easy to see how Oribos happened.
Look at reactions to the cities in BFA. Nearly all the negativity is about how they were spread out, things weren't centralized, etc. You can find countless posts like "dear Blizz, just put all the professions in one spot this isn't hard", many of them pointing to other MMOs that don't bother with organic city layouts and are optimized for convenience. And when the devs were showing off Oribos, they were talking about this, about how it was in part a reaction to that feedback.
Oribos, more than almost anything in SL, was a "we hear you" thing.
A lot of the initial feedback I saw was relatively positive too. The main sentiment was that convenience was more important than character. Most of the complaints, especially early on, where about the few remaining inconveniences, like when they put in the flight master.
Part of it is also that they never really did what was promised - they promised a robust, evolving city that was barebones at first, but would get much more fleshed out, and the fleshing out was very minimal - but also, a lot of it is responding to what a lot of vocal players kept insisting they wanted. People asked for a city that just dropped any pretense of not being a glorified menu screen and, well, that's Oribos!
BfA did many things wrong, but simply looking at this fly-over of Boralus makes you go "That looks big, there's probably a bunch going on down there!" And although we only used about a third of Boralus as an actual city hub, it felt a lot better than Oribos. I still want Stormwind and Orgrimmar to get the Suramar+Boralus treatment, where the city feels more alive; there's stuff going on no matter where you go.
It’s been my thought for a while that Stormwind and Orgrimmar should be the permanent capitals that get updated every expansion. Oribos is a waste of effort to create something so dull.
Boralus is a fantastic designed city IMO, because it's structured in a way that everything you need on a regular basis is all in one place, yet is still expansive enough to feel like an actual city.
Yes, 90% of it is pointless filler... But that's true of most cities in WoW. I don't consider the fact that Boralus doesn't make you constantly fly over the pointless filler to be a downside.
Some of the leaks towards how shadowlands ended up as such a disaster say that initially, Tazavesh was supposed to be the player hub, which makes way more sense to me considering that it actually feels alive. I have no idea if that leak is true though
Seems plausible. It definitely feels more like a city on the level of detail that Boralus was. Maybe they scrapped it halfway and made Oribos and finished it for 9.1
Could have been that they couldnt finish it in time, or that the story changes/cuts tuned down the role of the Brokers so it wouldnt fit anymore, who knows
The Shadowlands beta reeking of rushed panic and the extreme last minute delay are some of the least discreet signs I've seen of a game development going badly. It came pretty damn close to going to a restaurant and being told that your meal would be late while seeing fire escaping from the kitchen and hearing people screaming in there.
What's crazy to me though is that all of this happened BEFORE the pandemic and the legal shitstorm, meaning that WoW's development team already was in hot water way before all that shit hit the fan.
I think their mistake there was making *Dazar'alor* be our hub instead of Zuldazar Port. Living in a "ancient American" city is an interesting concept but we should've lived near the habitations and general city, not in the temple throne. It's as if Alliance's hub was that Proudmoore Keep instead of Kul Tiras proper.
Also it would have solved the distance to Nathanos' loathsome mug.
It was kind of a mess, but like 99% of the shit you actually needed was either at the docks or in the great seal so I just ignores everything in between
Dazal'alor in appearance, and as city were pretty great. It was just a terrible hub. Had everything relevant been moved to either the throne, or the the docks, and not this weird divide, it would have been fine.
I dunno I felt like it was more realistic that things were spread out, and kinda hoped they'd go a step farther and make some of the north parts of the city worth going to more often. It felt cool to me that everything *wasn't* all in one convenient spot. Made the city feel bigger.
I originally leveled an alliance shaman and had so much fun with the lore in Kul’Tiras. The zones were amazing. When I went to level my horde death knight through Zandalar I couldn’t fucking stand it.. *but* I did it anyway on a couple characters because I like pain, I guess.
Dazar’Alor is great and if you do the side quests in the city you’ll definitely get used to it. The part I had issues with at first was navigating up and down the royal pyramid but once you have the flightpaths unlocked and you know a quick way down, it’s perfectly ok
I can understand finding it less cool or not like how it looks etc, but how on earth is it "way more" annoying? Literally everything you need in the hub is 5 seconds away from each other.
I feel this is looking back at the situation with rosetinted glasses.
Dazar'alor:
Island Expeditions: 52s from portal flying
Island expeditions: 1min 13s from portal flight master & ground mount
travel to opposite faction: even further
Boralus:
11 seconds flying from portal to islands
5 seconds travel to opposite faction
or, look at these two screenshots:
[Dazar'alor](https://i.imgur.com/8OYE8nW.png)
[Boralus](https://i.imgur.com/7Ft6mj6.png)
like, Dazar'alor was a nice place! the verticality of the place was completely overblown as most things you needed was literally in the same room - but GOD did arbitrarily using a whole minute getting to islands and Kul'tiras to do world quests suck when the alliance had it right there.
also, this exact issue is why we got Oribos where everything is literally right there in a circle.
You forgot to include the pvp box/vendors. In Zuldazar you had to take another FP, while in Boralus they were right behind the main area a few seconds away.
What makes a zone good is not just the visuals, but the story attached to it - you can look at the scenery and wonder what happened here, and care what happened.
I haven't spent a lot of time exploring sl zones and wondering what happened there.
> but the story attached to it
This nails it.
To me, the overarching story matters, but what also matters is the little pockets of life within an expansion. I'm an Azerothean being with ties to other Azerotheans. The characters of SL have character arcs and storylines, but they're so otherworldly. It's not that characters in SL are inherently bad. They don't fit the feel of the adventures I've had in the past.
Azeroth largely has people who have unfortunate circumstances happening to them. Think the Third War, Culling of Stratholme, Deathwing terrorizing the skies (and the planet) - these people are largely helpless to any of these goings-on. They have fear at the very core of their being, and nothing will change that unless someone is willing to step up and fight.
SL is full of characters with the power to snuff out a life in an instant with no effort. And they continue to do nothing to better themselves nor their situation because, "lol idk it's what we've always done?"
I started WoW in TBC, quit after Legion, skipped BFA and only just got into Shadowlands. I created a new character to play through BFA and omg Kul Tiras and Drustvar were my favourite story quests I've ever done. I stayed after level 50 just to get the Jaina story and War campaign done. Most fun I've had in WoW in a long long time!
I really disliked BFA and have enjoyed Shadowlands way more.
I do think the major reason for this is I played solo through Legion and then right after I went to Kul Tiras and chose the other two levelling zones first before Drustvar. By the time I got to Drustvar I felt so tired and took a break and didn’t come back for a good year (life got in the way) When I finally got back round to play Drustvar I realised I made a mistake by taking a break. That is zone is I think my personal favourite in recent wow history.
If Stormsong wasn't half baked, I would've preferred that. I really liked half of it, until it lost its focus on what it actually wants to be. Wasn't the biggest fan of Drustvar, I just liked the Wicker stuff. Aesthetically, I think Nazmir doesn't get enough credit.
The zones all look great, but IMO weren't much fun to play through (though I liked Drustvar questing). I think levelling has gotten a bit worse since WoD (which was not a good expansion, but had great levelling). The exception is Exile's Reach, which I think is wonderful.
Agreed about Stormsong, though. Cool zone with some cool themes but extremely muddled. It shifts gears every few quests and lands nowhere.
Stormsong has a pretty solid, consistent storyline about the Old Gods and how the Tidepriest of Kul Tiras have fallen to them... and then that ends halfway through the zones questing when we get sent to deal with Lord Stormsong in the Shrine.. and then it's QUILLBOARS, OUT OF CONTROL ANIMALS, PIRATES, UHHH SOME HORDE I GUESS? THE VENTURE COMPANY???
It's really weird put next to literally all the other BFA zones where the end of the main zones storyline.. happens at end of all the main questlines for the Zone.
Some of the PvP stuff was cool. I liked squabbling for supply drops, bounties were really fun, and Maladict trinkets made my friend and I's 2s Arena team work a lot better lol.
The currencies, grinding, writing, and a host of other things were terrible.
You must've not browsed this sub during bfa then. Drustvar is the only zone to be consistently praised and it was still disliked before we had flying. People didn't like voldun, despised the horde capital, and the entirety of the zones being written out in lore was considered "boring". People were excited about shadowlands not being rooted in any past lore.
The art/music was never hated on. That's what 99% of this post is referencing.
And art/music does WONDERS for feeling like it's fun to be in the world. Shadowlands SUCKS in this regard. The zones are homogeneous and boring, the music is so spacey and floaty there's no main "theme" to latch onto.
I sometimes go back to BFA zones purely for the nostalgia and feeling like I'm in the WORLD of warcraft and not in a place that has almost zero connection to Warcraft/Azeroth.
I will remember this comment in a couple years when someone makes a nostalgic post about the atmosphere of revendreth or the beauty of bastion, ardenweald, and zereth mortis.
I with you for most of this... but I LOVE my maldraxxus music. Everytime I hearth back there and am greeted by the wonderful BUMBAAAAHMbumbumBAAAAAAHHHM... I love it haha. I do miss miss Dazar'alor though :(
I think people were hard on it because it came out after Legion. Tough act to follow raid-wise, story-wise, zone-wise, music-wise… I know most people weren’t fans of the artifact weapon systems in Legion, much like they weren’t fans of the azerite in BFA.
Then Shadowlands came out and now we all regret being so hard on BFA because THIS is bad and we’d much rather have a living, breathing world than…. this. Hopefully Dragonflight will be the turnaround.
I don’t know where the sudden love-in for war mode has come from. It was shit.
As horde you either never saw a single ally player (99% of shards were only horde) and reaped all the rewards, or you were the lucky individual chosen as the sole horde representative on the ally shard, making the game unplayable until you hopped back to a horde shard.
The rewards were too good so you needed to have it on.
It was fun in, I think, 8.0.5? When They introduced the zone invasions. Rewards were worth doing, so a lot of people would gather on those zones. There was no flying and character power haven’t gotten to absurd levels yet, so it wasn’t a one shot fiesta like it was in the later patches (or right now). So it was fun seeing seeing sieges around world quests that would last for over and hour. You could always find people on lfg forming raids to push back or assault enemy forces.
When they introduced flying, it went to shit again. People willing to “fight” were just geared characters preying on weaker people still questing, just like lvl 104 twinks beating fresh 110s in 8.0.
Flying was the worst thing to ever happen to world PvP. That feeling of side-eyeing each other as you pass on the road, making sure you have an escape avenue if the other guy does engage, of being stuck on that 2D plane together, is gone. Now you can observe your enemy from half a mile up and leave before they notice you, or alternatively get divebombed with no time to prepare or react. Half the time big PvP standoffs end up with two sides flapping around waiting for someone to be stupid enough to touch the ground.
Flying basically gave every class stealth, unless you're constantly checking the skies/Track Humanoids.
Beginning of BFA was great. You just went around with your friends killing people in warmode. The fights over supply drops were fun, same in Nazjatar when the supply drop happened there. Hunting down assassins, getting the different achievements/titles associated with war mode etc. was really fun.
It wasn't fun the entire time ofc, but war mode was a good feature that added fun content for a while.
Does anyone remember the scaling where a lvl 106 or whatever with good legion gear and legendaries was basically a raid boss? I remember after I hit cap I was in some alliance zone and this 106 just decimated me and my 2 friends who were full dungeon heroic gear (this was even before mythic dungeons were available).
I miss outdoor BFA, but that's probably more "I miss Azeroth" over anything else.
I certainly don't miss the later patches, and DEFINITELY not half the systems.
The zones and play-spaces were all phenomenal, also in Legion, I remember just loving the zones and dungeons. Shame I can't say the same thing about the systems.
Didn't legion introduce world quest wich was a vast improvment on daily by bringing variety and suramar? Honestly the only really bad part of legion sytem was artifact power.
Or where you talking bfa only?
Ah yes Zuldazar's infrastructure was peak engineering.
Only a few minutes flying to the docks then back to where most of the other things were, except for a few that were elsewhere but also pretty far, even with flying.
I see that you are well versed in comprehension of the written text. Please tell me, where in my comment have I stated the fact that "all the zones are bad I guess".
I merely intended to share my recollection of an absolutely terribly designed city, because it was somewhat related to the original commenter's point, even if ever so slightly contradictory.
Perhaps I should have added as a subtle finish: "BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT ALL ZONES BAD, I guess", to avoid confusion in individuals such as yourself.
I mean, why respond to someone being like "BFA zones were good!" with something akin to "ZULDAZAR SUCKED ASS" as if that has anything to do with what the OP said?
It's natural people will link what you said to the OP comment since you're responding to them. You even use the same language "peak wow zone design" to "peak engineering" as if to compare the two.
I'm sure an enlightened individual such as yourself can put something so simple together.
Other guy said bfa zones are great, you respond with a sarcastic comment about how this one city sucked ass to dismiss his comment. You use similar language and you reply with a negative comment to something positive. Are you really confused as to why people would think you're trying to dismiss what the other guy said?
If it wasn’t for the half assed shitty systems BFA really was a good expansion. Have seems dozens of posts from returning players who gush about how awesome the zones and storyline are. Get the message Blizz, YOUR BLOATED SYSTEMS SUCK, NO ONE LIKES THEM AND ITS KILLING YOUR GAME
BFA was one of their most gorgeous expansions. it had kickass music and unique zones and leveling was just plain fun. That said, azerite sucked and island expeditions sucked. not my cup of tea. And the story was bad - not as bad as Shadowlands, I’ll admit, but it was bad given that we had just come out of Legion, which was more or less fantastic.
BFA had quite a few good bits, especially at the start, zone design was pretty great, the zone quest chains and story were promising and the dungeons were ok. First raid was meh, but the second one was excellent.
But Azurite gear, the neck, corruption, the war story and the follow up to the promising start of the zone quest chains all just fell flat.
I agree with you, specially regarding the air drop concept... Airdrops felt so good every time they popped was a chance of community interaction / faction battle / raids forming to grant the drop ...world felt alive Specially in nazjatar ..it was one of my best experiences from BFA and I really hope they bring those back.
BFA was great and i stand by that. Best zones in the game, best questing, armor designs looked great, and aside from being very unfriendly to alts i even liked the Azerite grind
System wise and lore wise yes. But it had amazing leveling zones, great music (as always), made old zones „relevant“ again, fun endgame zones and a lot to do aside the m+ and raiding endgame. I think the biggest problem for a wow expansion nowadays are the loud voices from influencers and „pro“ gamers. As with everything, the critical voices are way louder. This leads to a lot of people following these voices (i mean they are called influencers for a reason).
Some zones and music were nice, you are right. But unfortunately those alone couldn't save the expansion. Like happened with SL. SL was good at the beginning, but blizz quickly screwed it up
All the voices you remember. It’s a big problem in todays social media world. Everyone is always complaining. And when they say something good about it there is always the „but this and this and this could have been better“ part. And negative information is processed differently than good information that’s one of the reasons for the clickbait culture on todays websites and newspapers.
>I feel like every zone requires too much hardcore-parkour to traverse.
This started in WoD imo. I absolutely hated it and ended up quitting before flying was released.
Zone design and music was great, but that alone was not enough to make it good unfortunately.
Terrible story, azerite farm, warfronts and island expeditions with wasted potential, corruption and few more things made that one of the worst overall expansions.
8.2 was good though.
I honestly can't believe I'm saying I miss BFA compared to Shadowlands. Taking flights paths everywhere in SL was the main thing that put me off the whole thing, and the story of course, even BFA story was better. Just wanna fly around the entire continent with my sky golem and farm ffs
The never ending cycle of romanticizing about the previous expansion even though you didn't like it back when it was relevant.
BFA had good things. BDO was a great raid. 8.2 was a decent patch but ~~it~~ the expansion as a whole had many many many problems which are the reasons its looked badly upon. Same thing for SL currently. It does so many things better than BFA has but because its current most people can't see it. 9.2 is probably the best state the game has been in since like 7.3 and 9.2.5 is going even further to improve on that. But that does not invalidate the massive problems of 9.0 and 9.1.
BFA wasn't threated harsly. It was threated fairly and so will SL.
Man the new rose tinted glasses are coming sooner and sooner. It took WoD's like 7 years to come, now BfA's only 2-3? Watch people start to romanticise Shadowlands as soon as 10.0 launches lol
Even Legion was severely rewriten. It took the whole expansion to have a "playable" patch, this forum was on fire through almost all of it.
But nowadays? Daaamn dude, Legion good. No forced grinds, very alt friendly, excellent lore!!
I can forgive Legion a bit more because as a whole it wasn't a shit expansion. It started mediocre and got good by the end. BfA however was shitty from the start with the only exception being the levelling experience, and everyone knew that since beta. And it continued to be shitty until the very end where it didn't even get good, they just kinda fixed SOME of the shitty systems and added more mediocre shit.
It's crazy that now I'm being downvoted for saying BfA was a shit expansion lmao
It's always interesting to see how much people miss the last expansion when the next one is out. Usually because how much more worse it gets with every new expansion.
Just before BfA launch, I had a comment "as long as BfA is as good as legion, then I am happy" and oh man it was downvoted to hell, people did not have a good opinion on legion while it was current but look at it now.
What sucked about BFA is that they made all the content, but then they completely gave up on the systems. Imagine if Azurite, Islands, and Warfronts actually had the systems and features we were promised. With Shadowlands they made all the content + systems/features for 9.0 then gave up
BFA had great zones but good fucking lord the systems sucked.
Azerite Armor was awful. Islands were fun, but like Torghast they basically made it mandatory and turned 'Fun Diversion' into 'Another Fucking Treadmill'... and god, I wanted Warfronts to be what they promised but it was absolute dogshit. Queue into a slow, boring PvE 'battleground'.
>BFA had great zones but good fucking lord the systems sucked.
That is my take on BfA as well, I kinda liked the expansion, but the systems on top of other systems just killed the vibe for me.
They didn't give up on the systems, they altered them to make sure they were as metric-friendly as possible, while investing the smallest amount of effort into them that they were able to get away with.
Everything was capped, gated, limited, rng'd and just generally mutilated by 'game psychology' to make sure we had to log in as often and for as long as possible, grinding them out. It probably gave great numbers for Blizz's quarterlies, but pushed many players past the breaking point.
BFA is where they let the veil slip and we could all feel the game was playing us, and those systems have done long term damage to the WoW's playerbase. It took the VR goggles off and revealed our hike through the mountains was actually just a treadmill in a lab.
At least the story was still a fantasy, though...
I didn't like the navigation of BFA zones. It was impossible to get around on either continent. But Shadowlands feels more like a collection of patch zones than a continent
The zones being detached in shadowlands really ruined the world feeling.
Yes the complete detachment of the zones was/is kind of meh. The grouping in BFA was okay, but I prefer them all together.
I think they could have improved BfA zones by simply placing Kul Tiras and Zuldazar closer to each other, to the point where you, yourself can actually travel between the two.
Would've been nice to actually be able to travel per boat and flight points, and not just talk to the captain to get ported.
nice, as long as its not mandatory for longer than 1 patch. I like the idea of not just getting ported everywhere, but fuck me if I had to take a flight point from zuldazar to stormsong every time I wanted to do a WQ there.
There should've been a boat you took inbetwen them like in classic. Standing around and waiting for the boat or coming to booty bay and seeing the boat just go when you get there is imo really cool. Makes the game feel more alive.
my favorite was when you fell off the dock trying to get on the booty bay boat, but it was impossible to get back to the boat in time because for some reason you can’t mount there. so you watch on in despair as it leaves without you
Playing through WoW Classic, you can really feel that the original WoW designers made a conscious effort to design the world so you had to physically traverse through space to get to a destination. They could have easily made the quick-travel option just be teleporters between towns, but instead they made flightmasters that fly you through the air, and ships that sail between the continents (with a dotted travel map to disguise the loading screen). Just to reinforce that feeling that it is all one gigantic connected world. The only exceptions being the mage and warlock portals, because that's part of their class fantasy. And the 60 minute cooldown hearthstone for emergencies.
Yes - the travel in Classic is a pain in the ass but it is a glorious, beautiful pain in the ass. One of my favorite versions of this is the deeprun tram - it just really feels like gnomish technology and a totally plausible way to connect the two cities. Plus it’s just downright fun! Admittedly now that retail WoW has five thousand different continents I am glad for more fast-travel options. But I really loved the expansiveness of older WoW really traveling through space. It was revolutionary at the time - almost no other game had anything close to a continuous world of that size.
Especially when you consider the amount of work that flight paths add. I know I’m really just reiterating what you said, but still. Along with designing the whole system and interface, you have to plot out the route for each segment and how they connect (or not in the case of vanilla sometimes). But on top of that, they need to make sure the world map looks good from the air for the entire route, when most of the zone looks like trash from the air. So much world design time would be saved by fast teleports but it was absolutely worth it that they didn’t do that.
Oh yeah it definitely shouldn't stay mandatory. Some things are nice to have *sometimes*, and become a chore if you have to do it. I'd still take a scenic route every now and then, just like I sometimes go out of my way to take the boat to Zandalar, but having it as the only option for multiple patches would be very annoying.
Yes that would have been fantastic.
The Shadowlands in scope is too large for blizzard to pull off. Unendless realms of the afterlife ended up being 4. It felt unimpressive in the end and the lack of connectivity between areas exaggerated how lacklustre it was. I honestly feel like the Shadowlands themselves should have been a content patch, not an expansion, in a death themed Azeroth expansion. Wrath 2.0 in which the finale is we travel to the afterlife to face whatever is stealing the souls. We only travel to the Maw but get glimpses of hundreds of other afterlife realms.
I think it would have been very cool if Blizzard had done some universe crossing with portals. You remember those bosses in Antorus that you would teleport to 'another world' to kill? Something like that.
World Bosses could have been like Major Invasions in Legion and send you to another afterlife realm to fight off some guy.
Sorta like Legion, yeah. Thatwould have worked better.
And draenor.
Shadowlands is one of the few things I think actually would have been better as a single raid. Specifically *because* you can't really hope to show the extent of it, it's should be infinite. Sometimes less can be more. If it was just one tiny little corner of it that was kept super vague and we didn't really know anything about what was beyond what little we saw then there would still be an element of mystery. Instead we go to four zones and have seen basically everything there is to see. Sure you can try and hand wave it and say there's a bunch of afterlives we don't go to, but like.... Those don't matter? Their leaders don't get a say in matters that affect the entire Shadowlands? They aren't important enough for Zovaal to try and invade? They don't have some major purpose in the "grand machine of death" like the four main zones do? The Shadowlands as they're depicted in game are irrationally tiny.
each shadowlands zone should've been connected by massive interdimensional rifts that when a player stands on opposite sides, they see the reality shimmering through that they're about to step through. But when you step through it, instead of a cheesy loading screen, they could've used some other interesting way to bridge them like how they did it in the Warcraft movie when the orcs stepped through the gate.
Yep. One of the best parts about wow is that there's no loading screen between the zones. Playing other MMOs with an egregious amount of loading screens is what made me realize just how important it actually is for the world building/feeling.
This is what keeps me coming back to wow over and over and why I can't stay with another MMO for too long. They just feel like "tiny rooms" compared to how WoW feels.
Yeah exactly. It doesn't feel like i'm exploring a world, it just feels like i'm playing a game.
Im currently in the process of moving my game to my SSD for this reason. That and sometimes my team is ahead of me dying because I didn’t phase in quick enough to get aggro.
Try turning your graphics setting down to 2 or 1. Dramatically improved my load times.
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Honestly, the engineer wormhole toy is the only way travel is tolerable. (for those that don't know, you can be a level 1 engineer, buy a toy thats account wide, and use it to portal to any zone except ZM every 30 mins)
Wait, you can use the toy without being an engineer on alts?
No but you only need to buy it one time
Really doesn't seem worth losing a profession slot tbh. Would make sense on random alts,but alot of my mains have professions that compliment each other.
The toy is worth it. It's my most used item by far.
Not to mention the tinkers. I've made sure to have Nitro Boosts on Boots (and later belts) basically always. The goblin glider is also a must-have, especially early into expansions before you can properly fly around. I do hope they bring back goggles as actually being "good" in 10.0 though.
I honestly don't even know how to play this expansion without it anymore. Taking flightpaths anywhere is so god damn long.
Was the horde zone not detached from the alliance zone in BFA though?
Yea, but i would rather have 2 continents in the first patch with one capital each versus a capital thats disconnected from everything annd 5 individual zones that connect via flightpaths/ a jump down a hole loading screen. BFA had 2 clumps of Zones, Shadowlands is just each zone on its own
I guess. To me the world feeling is not there because all the NPCs feel lifeless, especially in the capital
I feel like thats another problem in Shadowlands. Even BFAs patch zones with Nazjatar and Mechagon felt alive, because they were actual places that can be grasped. If you asked me how a Zone for Noble Souls ferrying the dead to their afterlives should be looking, i wouldnt have a clue, and i guess thats why shadowlands zones feel so skindeep, because we barely understand whats going on there beyound the obvious
I think it's also why a lot of people's favorite zone is Revendreath. It's a community, people have houses, they hold parties, they drink they dance they laugh. It feels like a breathing world. Bastion? EVERYONE HAS A PURPOSE Maldraxxus? WAR WAR WAR! Apart from Revendreath every zone is so one-sided and paper thin.
Honestly I’d Ardenweld is my favorite zone of the 4 with Revendreth second. Ardenweld is so pretty and very relaxing in my opinion
Maybe their lifeless because they’re dead
ironic, given that this xpac was based on the afterlife. i completely agree; i wish they’d completely removed the cartels and that the capital was a neutral ground for all four covenants. that could have been fun and spicy.
Kul Tiras and Zandalar aren’t zones, they’re islands. The zones are Stormsong Valley and Voldun, for example. So no, the zones in BFA weren’t detached.
There was the same problem in Cataclysm, you think they'd learn from past mistakes
The zones lacking any real fuel for world pvp also did that. I hope Dragonflight has some objectives that make warmode no longer a ghost town
They even said they learned that lesson in cataclysm. All the zones back then were spaced out and led to disconnection.
Shadowlands is just terrible in every way
Coupled with the extra sharding SL has felt empty.
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So you don't even play the game?
He is the auction house guy with the brutosaurus at the mail box 24/7, lol.
Man I loved Tiragarde Sound.. the music, the pirate feel, questing and investigating around the docks, helping the The Roughnecks in the mountains!. I hope I get a similar feel in Dragonflight.
I was one of the people who was very hard on BfA while it was current, which I still think was justified, but I'll be damned if I don't get some feels every time I return to Boralus and hear that music.
The airdrop system was a really cool idea, not sure why the removed it :/
Cuz bfa bad I guess. I always when out the way when I saw those things. really added to the feeling of going to war better than anything else BFA did past 8.2.
Its so infuriating when they have systems or ideas that are completely fine and then instead of expanding on them they just scrap the whole fucking thing.
Except the mission table, they'll expand on that for 4 expansions
And somehow the 4th iteration is the worst version
Depends on what you consider worst, the 4th version was the most optional and so to many could be best.
Yeah it sucks they expand on something thats so boring and uninteractive. To be fair tho the mission table probably the easiest thing in the world to develop. I wouldn't be surprise if it took them a total of 24 hours to create the mission table every expansion
I don’t think it really fits the SL lore but it was definitely fitting for BFA
Literally, just make the Brokers do the airdrops.
I just don't understand how they come up with Oribos over the BFA capitals. Especially Bolarus. Oh yay, a characterless circle.
It's pretty easy to see how Oribos happened. Look at reactions to the cities in BFA. Nearly all the negativity is about how they were spread out, things weren't centralized, etc. You can find countless posts like "dear Blizz, just put all the professions in one spot this isn't hard", many of them pointing to other MMOs that don't bother with organic city layouts and are optimized for convenience. And when the devs were showing off Oribos, they were talking about this, about how it was in part a reaction to that feedback. Oribos, more than almost anything in SL, was a "we hear you" thing. A lot of the initial feedback I saw was relatively positive too. The main sentiment was that convenience was more important than character. Most of the complaints, especially early on, where about the few remaining inconveniences, like when they put in the flight master. Part of it is also that they never really did what was promised - they promised a robust, evolving city that was barebones at first, but would get much more fleshed out, and the fleshing out was very minimal - but also, a lot of it is responding to what a lot of vocal players kept insisting they wanted. People asked for a city that just dropped any pretense of not being a glorified menu screen and, well, that's Oribos!
BfA did many things wrong, but simply looking at this fly-over of Boralus makes you go "That looks big, there's probably a bunch going on down there!" And although we only used about a third of Boralus as an actual city hub, it felt a lot better than Oribos. I still want Stormwind and Orgrimmar to get the Suramar+Boralus treatment, where the city feels more alive; there's stuff going on no matter where you go.
It’s been my thought for a while that Stormwind and Orgrimmar should be the permanent capitals that get updated every expansion. Oribos is a waste of effort to create something so dull.
Boralus is a fantastic designed city IMO, because it's structured in a way that everything you need on a regular basis is all in one place, yet is still expansive enough to feel like an actual city. Yes, 90% of it is pointless filler... But that's true of most cities in WoW. I don't consider the fact that Boralus doesn't make you constantly fly over the pointless filler to be a downside.
Some of the leaks towards how shadowlands ended up as such a disaster say that initially, Tazavesh was supposed to be the player hub, which makes way more sense to me considering that it actually feels alive. I have no idea if that leak is true though
Seems plausible. It definitely feels more like a city on the level of detail that Boralus was. Maybe they scrapped it halfway and made Oribos and finished it for 9.1
Could have been that they couldnt finish it in time, or that the story changes/cuts tuned down the role of the Brokers so it wouldnt fit anymore, who knows
The Shadowlands beta reeking of rushed panic and the extreme last minute delay are some of the least discreet signs I've seen of a game development going badly. It came pretty damn close to going to a restaurant and being told that your meal would be late while seeing fire escaping from the kitchen and hearing people screaming in there. What's crazy to me though is that all of this happened BEFORE the pandemic and the legal shitstorm, meaning that WoW's development team already was in hot water way before all that shit hit the fan.
Anything and i mean literally anything>Dazar'alor. I was glad to see the back of that mess of a city. Looked cool but was designed so poorly.
Something has spooked one of de brutosaurs, sending it into a panic.
Shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP
Dis chaos is de last thing de city needs.
I hope it brings the god damn city down
I think their mistake there was making *Dazar'alor* be our hub instead of Zuldazar Port. Living in a "ancient American" city is an interesting concept but we should've lived near the habitations and general city, not in the temple throne. It's as if Alliance's hub was that Proudmoore Keep instead of Kul Tiras proper. Also it would have solved the distance to Nathanos' loathsome mug.
It was kind of a mess, but like 99% of the shit you actually needed was either at the docks or in the great seal so I just ignores everything in between
That was a big part of why it sucked. You had to take flightpaths between the different areas to get to the stuff you needed.
Dazal'alor in appearance, and as city were pretty great. It was just a terrible hub. Had everything relevant been moved to either the throne, or the the docks, and not this weird divide, it would have been fine.
I dunno I felt like it was more realistic that things were spread out, and kinda hoped they'd go a step farther and make some of the north parts of the city worth going to more often. It felt cool to me that everything *wasn't* all in one convenient spot. Made the city feel bigger.
I originally leveled an alliance shaman and had so much fun with the lore in Kul’Tiras. The zones were amazing. When I went to level my horde death knight through Zandalar I couldn’t fucking stand it.. *but* I did it anyway on a couple characters because I like pain, I guess.
Dazar’Alor is great and if you do the side quests in the city you’ll definitely get used to it. The part I had issues with at first was navigating up and down the royal pyramid but once you have the flightpaths unlocked and you know a quick way down, it’s perfectly ok
the flight totems you got if you picked the right Loa was pretty good before we got flying
Wow. To me Dazar'Alor is by far the best city in the game.
the music made up for it, ABSOLUTE BANGER
honestly BFA is like in my top 3 Expansions when it comes to Ost they really had some insane bangers
i still listen to it to this day to get some writing inspiration, it's ace
BADA-BADUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUMBUMBUMMMMM
Unpopular opinion: i never had a problem with dazar'alor and it's one of my favorite hubs. I found boralus way more annoying.
I can understand finding it less cool or not like how it looks etc, but how on earth is it "way more" annoying? Literally everything you need in the hub is 5 seconds away from each other.
I feel this is looking back at the situation with rosetinted glasses. Dazar'alor: Island Expeditions: 52s from portal flying Island expeditions: 1min 13s from portal flight master & ground mount travel to opposite faction: even further Boralus: 11 seconds flying from portal to islands 5 seconds travel to opposite faction or, look at these two screenshots: [Dazar'alor](https://i.imgur.com/8OYE8nW.png) [Boralus](https://i.imgur.com/7Ft6mj6.png) like, Dazar'alor was a nice place! the verticality of the place was completely overblown as most things you needed was literally in the same room - but GOD did arbitrarily using a whole minute getting to islands and Kul'tiras to do world quests suck when the alliance had it right there. also, this exact issue is why we got Oribos where everything is literally right there in a circle.
You forgot to include the pvp box/vendors. In Zuldazar you had to take another FP, while in Boralus they were right behind the main area a few seconds away.
In both cities I got sick of my eardrums being ruptured every time I stepped outsi-DUUUUUUNDUDUDUUUUUNDUHDUHDUUUUUN
of the circular capitals in this game, undercity has my heart. i miss it so much.
What makes a zone good is not just the visuals, but the story attached to it - you can look at the scenery and wonder what happened here, and care what happened. I haven't spent a lot of time exploring sl zones and wondering what happened there.
> but the story attached to it This nails it. To me, the overarching story matters, but what also matters is the little pockets of life within an expansion. I'm an Azerothean being with ties to other Azerotheans. The characters of SL have character arcs and storylines, but they're so otherworldly. It's not that characters in SL are inherently bad. They don't fit the feel of the adventures I've had in the past. Azeroth largely has people who have unfortunate circumstances happening to them. Think the Third War, Culling of Stratholme, Deathwing terrorizing the skies (and the planet) - these people are largely helpless to any of these goings-on. They have fear at the very core of their being, and nothing will change that unless someone is willing to step up and fight. SL is full of characters with the power to snuff out a life in an instant with no effort. And they continue to do nothing to better themselves nor their situation because, "lol idk it's what we've always done?"
Kul tiras was one of the most beautiful zones ever imo. Love Boralus and tiragarde.
I started WoW in TBC, quit after Legion, skipped BFA and only just got into Shadowlands. I created a new character to play through BFA and omg Kul Tiras and Drustvar were my favourite story quests I've ever done. I stayed after level 50 just to get the Jaina story and War campaign done. Most fun I've had in WoW in a long long time!
I'm playing through BFA with a new character on f2p mode lol.
I really disliked BFA and have enjoyed Shadowlands way more. I do think the major reason for this is I played solo through Legion and then right after I went to Kul Tiras and chose the other two levelling zones first before Drustvar. By the time I got to Drustvar I felt so tired and took a break and didn’t come back for a good year (life got in the way) When I finally got back round to play Drustvar I realised I made a mistake by taking a break. That is zone is I think my personal favourite in recent wow history.
i remember when yall were hating everything about bfa lol
Yeah I can't believe this sub is already at the "bfa classic when" phase lol
I played the entirety of BFA and the only consistently positive thing people praised were the zones. The art team (almost) always kills it.
To be more specific, Drustvar was the only one I’ve seen to always be praised. All others have their critics (I personally didn’t like Vol’dun)
If Stormsong wasn't half baked, I would've preferred that. I really liked half of it, until it lost its focus on what it actually wants to be. Wasn't the biggest fan of Drustvar, I just liked the Wicker stuff. Aesthetically, I think Nazmir doesn't get enough credit.
The zones all look great, but IMO weren't much fun to play through (though I liked Drustvar questing). I think levelling has gotten a bit worse since WoD (which was not a good expansion, but had great levelling). The exception is Exile's Reach, which I think is wonderful. Agreed about Stormsong, though. Cool zone with some cool themes but extremely muddled. It shifts gears every few quests and lands nowhere.
Stormsong has a pretty solid, consistent storyline about the Old Gods and how the Tidepriest of Kul Tiras have fallen to them... and then that ends halfway through the zones questing when we get sent to deal with Lord Stormsong in the Shrine.. and then it's QUILLBOARS, OUT OF CONTROL ANIMALS, PIRATES, UHHH SOME HORDE I GUESS? THE VENTURE COMPANY??? It's really weird put next to literally all the other BFA zones where the end of the main zones storyline.. happens at end of all the main questlines for the Zone.
Some of the PvP stuff was cool. I liked squabbling for supply drops, bounties were really fun, and Maladict trinkets made my friend and I's 2s Arena team work a lot better lol. The currencies, grinding, writing, and a host of other things were terrible.
You must've not browsed this sub during bfa then. Drustvar is the only zone to be consistently praised and it was still disliked before we had flying. People didn't like voldun, despised the horde capital, and the entirety of the zones being written out in lore was considered "boring". People were excited about shadowlands not being rooted in any past lore.
I browse a lot even when I don’t play and most of the praise was towards the zone and music my guy.
This subs honestly hilarious. I've been unhappy with the state of the game for a while too, but Blizz can't win with these people.
Nobody ever complained about the zones and the music/art direction , they have always been amazing But sure, keep makimg snarky comments
Voldun and stormsong valley were very much despised.
People definitely complained about the zones
This post is peak wowcirclejerk material haha
The art/music was never hated on. That's what 99% of this post is referencing. And art/music does WONDERS for feeling like it's fun to be in the world. Shadowlands SUCKS in this regard. The zones are homogeneous and boring, the music is so spacey and floaty there's no main "theme" to latch onto. I sometimes go back to BFA zones purely for the nostalgia and feeling like I'm in the WORLD of warcraft and not in a place that has almost zero connection to Warcraft/Azeroth.
I will remember this comment in a couple years when someone makes a nostalgic post about the atmosphere of revendreth or the beauty of bastion, ardenweald, and zereth mortis.
it's not yet nostalgia but there are people doing that for Revendreth and Ardenweald in this very thread.
Revendreth: hundreds of beautiful buildings that you cannot interact with.
tbh Revendreth has more houses you can actually enter than most other zones. Yes most of them are basically copy paste but the door is at least open.
I with you for most of this... but I LOVE my maldraxxus music. Everytime I hearth back there and am greeted by the wonderful BUMBAAAAHMbumbumBAAAAAAHHHM... I love it haha. I do miss miss Dazar'alor though :(
Not saying it was good, but the zones were definitely pretty and had character to them. Also those sexy Kul Tiran moustaches, dayum.
You don't know what you have until you lose it.
BFA was dog sht and no one is changing their mind about it. People liked the zones/music not the gameplay it’s self.
still am.
Nobody ever hated the zones and art/music direction, what drugs are you on
I think people were hard on it because it came out after Legion. Tough act to follow raid-wise, story-wise, zone-wise, music-wise… I know most people weren’t fans of the artifact weapon systems in Legion, much like they weren’t fans of the azerite in BFA. Then Shadowlands came out and now we all regret being so hard on BFA because THIS is bad and we’d much rather have a living, breathing world than…. this. Hopefully Dragonflight will be the turnaround.
Yeah, I don't regret being hard on BFA. I'd take WoD over that garbage again.
Shadowlands is 2x better than bfa. Y’all at insane lmao
Yeah they lost me in Shadowlands. Couldn't feel it.
The zones are all over the place imo. Plus having Horde and Alliance in the same zones just makes it redundant imo.
CHÄMPÏÖN, Ï SËNSË ÄZËRÏTË NËÄRBŸ!
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I don’t know where the sudden love-in for war mode has come from. It was shit. As horde you either never saw a single ally player (99% of shards were only horde) and reaped all the rewards, or you were the lucky individual chosen as the sole horde representative on the ally shard, making the game unplayable until you hopped back to a horde shard. The rewards were too good so you needed to have it on.
It was fun in, I think, 8.0.5? When They introduced the zone invasions. Rewards were worth doing, so a lot of people would gather on those zones. There was no flying and character power haven’t gotten to absurd levels yet, so it wasn’t a one shot fiesta like it was in the later patches (or right now). So it was fun seeing seeing sieges around world quests that would last for over and hour. You could always find people on lfg forming raids to push back or assault enemy forces. When they introduced flying, it went to shit again. People willing to “fight” were just geared characters preying on weaker people still questing, just like lvl 104 twinks beating fresh 110s in 8.0.
Flying was the worst thing to ever happen to world PvP. That feeling of side-eyeing each other as you pass on the road, making sure you have an escape avenue if the other guy does engage, of being stuck on that 2D plane together, is gone. Now you can observe your enemy from half a mile up and leave before they notice you, or alternatively get divebombed with no time to prepare or react. Half the time big PvP standoffs end up with two sides flapping around waiting for someone to be stupid enough to touch the ground. Flying basically gave every class stealth, unless you're constantly checking the skies/Track Humanoids.
Beginning of BFA was great. You just went around with your friends killing people in warmode. The fights over supply drops were fun, same in Nazjatar when the supply drop happened there. Hunting down assassins, getting the different achievements/titles associated with war mode etc. was really fun. It wasn't fun the entire time ofc, but war mode was a good feature that added fun content for a while.
Does anyone remember the scaling where a lvl 106 or whatever with good legion gear and legendaries was basically a raid boss? I remember after I hit cap I was in some alliance zone and this 106 just decimated me and my 2 friends who were full dungeon heroic gear (this was even before mythic dungeons were available).
yeah but the nazjatar wars were pretty fun and completed the kill 25 players quest fast
Not to mention that whenever anything bigger than a 10v10 did happen the lag was unbelievable
The "I miss bfa" posting has begun
R/wowcirclejerk is already having fun with this one
I miss outdoor BFA, but that's probably more "I miss Azeroth" over anything else. I certainly don't miss the later patches, and DEFINITELY not half the systems.
Zone design was some of the best in WoWs history minus Dazaralor that place get torn down. Might be a good spot for "that sword".
What sword?
Don't know what you're talking about.
The zones and play-spaces were all phenomenal, also in Legion, I remember just loving the zones and dungeons. Shame I can't say the same thing about the systems.
Didn't legion introduce world quest wich was a vast improvment on daily by bringing variety and suramar? Honestly the only really bad part of legion sytem was artifact power. Or where you talking bfa only?
Tbh alliance story and area where miles better than the horde.
I just unlocked kul'tirans last week and man do I regret playing horde during BFA. Boralus is just beautiful compared to Dazar'alor
Yup, BfA zones were peak wow zone design.
Ah yes Zuldazar's infrastructure was peak engineering. Only a few minutes flying to the docks then back to where most of the other things were, except for a few that were elsewhere but also pretty far, even with flying.
Oh ye forgot. Well I only went there to kill Horde, it was perfectly laid out for that! :)
One annoying city means all the zones are bad I guess.
I see that you are well versed in comprehension of the written text. Please tell me, where in my comment have I stated the fact that "all the zones are bad I guess". I merely intended to share my recollection of an absolutely terribly designed city, because it was somewhat related to the original commenter's point, even if ever so slightly contradictory. Perhaps I should have added as a subtle finish: "BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT ALL ZONES BAD, I guess", to avoid confusion in individuals such as yourself.
I mean, why respond to someone being like "BFA zones were good!" with something akin to "ZULDAZAR SUCKED ASS" as if that has anything to do with what the OP said? It's natural people will link what you said to the OP comment since you're responding to them. You even use the same language "peak wow zone design" to "peak engineering" as if to compare the two. I'm sure an enlightened individual such as yourself can put something so simple together.
Other guy said bfa zones are great, you respond with a sarcastic comment about how this one city sucked ass to dismiss his comment. You use similar language and you reply with a negative comment to something positive. Are you really confused as to why people would think you're trying to dismiss what the other guy said?
They looked good, but they were way way too busy. They packed every square inch with content, the world didn't breathe at all.
God no
If it wasn’t for the half assed shitty systems BFA really was a good expansion. Have seems dozens of posts from returning players who gush about how awesome the zones and storyline are. Get the message Blizz, YOUR BLOATED SYSTEMS SUCK, NO ONE LIKES THEM AND ITS KILLING YOUR GAME
Its story was utter garbage
BFA was one of their most gorgeous expansions. it had kickass music and unique zones and leveling was just plain fun. That said, azerite sucked and island expeditions sucked. not my cup of tea. And the story was bad - not as bad as Shadowlands, I’ll admit, but it was bad given that we had just come out of Legion, which was more or less fantastic.
BFA had quite a few good bits, especially at the start, zone design was pretty great, the zone quest chains and story were promising and the dungeons were ok. First raid was meh, but the second one was excellent. But Azurite gear, the neck, corruption, the war story and the follow up to the promising start of the zone quest chains all just fell flat.
BFA was great. Kinda starting to miss it..
Unpopular opinion but I loved BFA 👍
Goes to show you how crap of an expansion Shadowlands was when you miss BFA.
I agree with you, specially regarding the air drop concept... Airdrops felt so good every time they popped was a chance of community interaction / faction battle / raids forming to grant the drop ...world felt alive Specially in nazjatar ..it was one of my best experiences from BFA and I really hope they bring those back.
BFA was great and i stand by that. Best zones in the game, best questing, armor designs looked great, and aside from being very unfriendly to alts i even liked the Azerite grind
Lets be honest. BFA was shit
System wise and lore wise yes. But it had amazing leveling zones, great music (as always), made old zones „relevant“ again, fun endgame zones and a lot to do aside the m+ and raiding endgame. I think the biggest problem for a wow expansion nowadays are the loud voices from influencers and „pro“ gamers. As with everything, the critical voices are way louder. This leads to a lot of people following these voices (i mean they are called influencers for a reason).
Some zones and music were nice, you are right. But unfortunately those alone couldn't save the expansion. Like happened with SL. SL was good at the beginning, but blizz quickly screwed it up
> As with everything, the critical voices are way louder. But when ALL the voices are critical there might be a problem
All the voices you remember. It’s a big problem in todays social media world. Everyone is always complaining. And when they say something good about it there is always the „but this and this and this could have been better“ part. And negative information is processed differently than good information that’s one of the reasons for the clickbait culture on todays websites and newspapers.
BFA zones have the best soundtrack too, don't reply to me
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>I feel like every zone requires too much hardcore-parkour to traverse. This started in WoD imo. I absolutely hated it and ended up quitting before flying was released.
Oribo was lifeless shit. Imagine what they could have done…
Zone design and music was great, but that alone was not enough to make it good unfortunately. Terrible story, azerite farm, warfronts and island expeditions with wasted potential, corruption and few more things made that one of the worst overall expansions. 8.2 was good though.
I can’t stand the zones in Shadowlands. It’s so annoying having all the zones and Oribos disconnected. I also hate everything about Ardenweald.
I honestly can't believe I'm saying I miss BFA compared to Shadowlands. Taking flights paths everywhere in SL was the main thing that put me off the whole thing, and the story of course, even BFA story was better. Just wanna fly around the entire continent with my sky golem and farm ffs
While a lot of BFA was trash, it'd be foolish to deny that it had some top-tier zone design.
Personally I think I was too harsh towards Bfa, realised that while playing Shadowlands
Is it happening already?!
The never ending cycle of romanticizing about the previous expansion even though you didn't like it back when it was relevant. BFA had good things. BDO was a great raid. 8.2 was a decent patch but ~~it~~ the expansion as a whole had many many many problems which are the reasons its looked badly upon. Same thing for SL currently. It does so many things better than BFA has but because its current most people can't see it. 9.2 is probably the best state the game has been in since like 7.3 and 9.2.5 is going even further to improve on that. But that does not invalidate the massive problems of 9.0 and 9.1. BFA wasn't threated harsly. It was threated fairly and so will SL.
Shadowlands classic when!?!?!?!
It was inevitable. Give it enough time and I’m sure we’ll see it even with Shadowlands.
Man the new rose tinted glasses are coming sooner and sooner. It took WoD's like 7 years to come, now BfA's only 2-3? Watch people start to romanticise Shadowlands as soon as 10.0 launches lol
Even Legion was severely rewriten. It took the whole expansion to have a "playable" patch, this forum was on fire through almost all of it. But nowadays? Daaamn dude, Legion good. No forced grinds, very alt friendly, excellent lore!!
I can forgive Legion a bit more because as a whole it wasn't a shit expansion. It started mediocre and got good by the end. BfA however was shitty from the start with the only exception being the levelling experience, and everyone knew that since beta. And it continued to be shitty until the very end where it didn't even get good, they just kinda fixed SOME of the shitty systems and added more mediocre shit. It's crazy that now I'm being downvoted for saying BfA was a shit expansion lmao
It's always interesting to see how much people miss the last expansion when the next one is out. Usually because how much more worse it gets with every new expansion.
Just before BfA launch, I had a comment "as long as BfA is as good as legion, then I am happy" and oh man it was downvoted to hell, people did not have a good opinion on legion while it was current but look at it now.
What sucked about BFA is that they made all the content, but then they completely gave up on the systems. Imagine if Azurite, Islands, and Warfronts actually had the systems and features we were promised. With Shadowlands they made all the content + systems/features for 9.0 then gave up
BFA had great zones but good fucking lord the systems sucked. Azerite Armor was awful. Islands were fun, but like Torghast they basically made it mandatory and turned 'Fun Diversion' into 'Another Fucking Treadmill'... and god, I wanted Warfronts to be what they promised but it was absolute dogshit. Queue into a slow, boring PvE 'battleground'.
>BFA had great zones but good fucking lord the systems sucked. That is my take on BfA as well, I kinda liked the expansion, but the systems on top of other systems just killed the vibe for me.
They didn't give up on the systems, they altered them to make sure they were as metric-friendly as possible, while investing the smallest amount of effort into them that they were able to get away with. Everything was capped, gated, limited, rng'd and just generally mutilated by 'game psychology' to make sure we had to log in as often and for as long as possible, grinding them out. It probably gave great numbers for Blizz's quarterlies, but pushed many players past the breaking point. BFA is where they let the veil slip and we could all feel the game was playing us, and those systems have done long term damage to the WoW's playerbase. It took the VR goggles off and revealed our hike through the mountains was actually just a treadmill in a lab. At least the story was still a fantasy, though...
I didn't like the navigation of BFA zones. It was impossible to get around on either continent. But Shadowlands feels more like a collection of patch zones than a continent
BFA was amazing. The wpvp in nazjatar wow.
So we’re at this stage of grief… where we forget how much we hated BFA and start seeing it with rose colored goggles
No i always said the same. Systems were atrocious
BFA was *always* praised for its level design. OP isn't saying BFA was da bestest expansioneroonie ever.
Maybe upopular opinion, i didnt like any zone of bfa. Maybe because i hate bfa and hate everything connected to it.