Battle for Azeroth: Opinions and Hindsights

TL; DR: Dungeons rocked, raids were okay, everything else sucked.

So Blizzard has announced that the PVP season is ending, which means the expansion will soon have the twilight patch, and Shadowlands is coming in 5 weeks making the thing history.

So what did I think of it?

The Leveling

Leveling was changed (again) in the BFA prepatch in Legion if I remember correctly, introducing scaling leveling zones in old expansions that was supposed to let you quest there and get the whole story without outleveling it. That didn't work out too well, especially with the xp buff we've had during the entire covid crisis. While I leveled a lot of alts, almost all of that leveling came through random dungeons, and most of them had some kind of healer/tank blamegame with people being toxic, leaving, kicking or griefing. Considering its super easy to do, it has been kinda funny how the playerbase REALLY wants to hate each other.

The leveling zones in BFA were pretty good, especially Nazmir and Drustvar that I think has been peak WoW zone design. In both the narrative having a beginning and end (sort of) there, and general atmosphere and ok geography for when you didnt have a flying mount.

The leveling never felt like anything but a time tax however, since the talent system is the same it has been in since Cataclysm, which is super boring and the choices either being blatantly unbalanced each tier or situational. So leveling is just something you do to get upscaled items. Or something. Having leveling in this game has felt so outdated for so long since they dont actually give you anything for doing it, its only a prerequisite. Still worst in the genre.

The Dungeons/Raids

The dungeons and raids has been the staple for me the entire expansion. I started it with the goal of whipping myself through all the dungeons on mythic +0 and do Uldir LFR, and expected to just burn out on pve again after that.

But unlike every expansion since Wrath, the dungeons kinda stuck this time. Most of all I liked the themes: Atal'Dazar, King's Rest, Waycrest Manor, Shrine of the Storm, The Underrot, Freehold, Temple of Sethraliss were all really cool. And Tol Dagor and Siege of Boralus was ok. As a comparison, I think I liked Tol Dagor better than every Legion dungeon. They also lasted through 4 seasons of m+, with Tol Dagor's constant bugs being the only really negative thing to say about them. There's a lot of problems with the m+ affixes in regards to some being kinda hopeless to do during certain combinations of them, but that has only meant I do less of them on bad weeks rather than not to them at all.

I hadn't raided anything but the odd LFR before joining at the tail end of Battle for Dazar Alor, and while I did not find that raid all too fun (just being baggage for bosses already learned by everyone else), I had some fun with both Eternal Palace and Nyalotha. I never did finish Uldir even in LFR, which is kinda amusing, having AOTC for the last 3 raids. Xanesh was the only annoying boss in NYA, while Eternal Palace had some really annoying ones like Azshara herself, which didnt exactly tempt one into joining farm runs for a long time. It was allright, I guess, which is an improvement over NO WAY which was the thought I had about raids when starting the expansion. So high regards?

But the main problem with dungeons and raids remain, which is not tied to expansion. When "progress" happens, like the start of the raid tier especially, friction happens between various interests when it comes to both the raids and the dungeons. While I really enjoy the guild I am in and doubt Id ever leave and might quit again if it somehow managed to get itself in such dire straits it would disband, it had some difficulties. Some of them caused by me, I guess. The difference between hardcore casuals and actual casuals is kinda big. Especially once the key you needed for max weekly chest for m+ was changed to 15, there was a lot of friction between including as many as possible and people fixing groups up front. And what was expected from people in raids, while also letting everyone play that wanted to. Kinda dread going back to this at the start of Shadowlands, but to avoid causing friction I will lay low at the start and hope nothing bad happens.

This also felt like a problem at the start of the expansion, only I was somewhere between hardcore casual and casual. Blizzard can do as much as possible to make it possible for people to play together, but it seems needs and wants of the people playing crashes in spite of it.

The Chores

A staple of post Warlords of Draenor seems to be the idea you have to grind something on a daily basis to have a character that is functional for anything over a heroic dungeon is "fun". BFA really went all out with this idea.

Not pictured but super important at the start was farming artifact power for unlocking the azerite traits that Helm, Shoulder and Chest pieces had. In the first season it was very grind intensive, the armor pieces themselves had few traits, acquiring them was a hassle and the traits were super not balanced. The grindyness stopped in season 2 for regular players sort of, but for the hardcore people it meant doing endless Island Expeditions and such. Getting azerite pieces got better with a currency from the weekly m+ chest and such, but the traits was sorta "balanced" early on, so some classes had some super good ones they always wanted while some had just really bad ones. All in all about as interesting as the talent system, and just felt bad not getting the one you wanted. And it just affected numbers, never the actual gameplay. Good riddance, hope I never see this system again.

Island Expeditions was closely knit into the Artifact Power grind. The first few weeks of BFA I was super stoked about islands, and thought doing mythic/pvp islands was what I was actually going to do this expansion. After 3-4 weeks it got super dull and I barely ever did them again except with a fresh 120 for some easy neck levels. I had kinda hoped for a bigger place you spent some time exploring in, instead of drowning in mobs to aoe down and click things, I guess. Good riddance.

The worst of the early chores were the warfronts. It was an easy way to gear up, but it was just run around clicking things and zerg the mobs let you at any given time. In season 3 heroic warfronts became a thing, still a good gear piece to get early but had to join a premade group to get in instead of just handing it out for free, and "heroic" means just it took longer normally. This was really dull, so dull I cant even remember if I did any of them since the first week of heroic arathi. Also good riddance.

Season 3 brought 2 new zones; Mechagon and Nazjatar. That you had to grind rep in to get flying and some of the patch power; essences. Mechagon and Nazjatar was the opposite of the release zones, really horrid and filled with repeatable content and barebones storyquests. And made to make you feel bad for not having flying. I know a LOT of people that might have burned out on wow for good after visiting these zones. The essence system which gave you extra passives and a new active was to me pretty fun as you got it out of things I already did, like m+, the raid and casual pvp. It was obviously super unbalanced (best m+ essence for a lot of people was from rated pvp, best pve essence for a lot of physical dps was from grinding honor an so on) and it was tied to characters, so it meant doing super long grinds on the alts you might want to play too. The idea here I liked, but Blizzard forcing people to play in a degenerate way for... reasons? Was not so cool. Good idea, bad implementation for the essences. Good riddance to the zones.

The last patch brought a grindable legendary cloak that lets you equip gear that was "corrupted", which was some kind of bonus effect. That appeared fixed on some raid loot, randomly on everything else. The chores was you had to do some "fill the bar" stuff in two revamped old zones, which was super not tuned for months on ptr, made it to live, alienated a lot of people, got fixed eventually. Then that let you buy keys for horrific visions that you had to do to upgrade the cloak. To use corrupted gear you may or may not have had. The chores was the worst Ive ever seen in any game ever at the start. Some adjustments were made during the 9 month lifespan of the patch, but oh my.. They put in an old god themed patch, and you kill tentacles, click tentacles and hunt rare mobs in two old zones ad nauseum, with horrific visions being filled with super annoying affixes making it feel super bad. No exploration of the Black Empire, no questlines delving into the nature of it, just 2 fill the bar zones and scorched/leaden feet limited entrance visions. Was both super dissapointed about what wasnt included and what was included. Good riddance!

The corruption system was just silly the first few months, with some of them being insanely good... So the people that had them just won the dps meters and arena matches. The rest just felt bad. Blizz said they would never put them on a vendor. Which they did months later. On a rotation. I really hated the corruption at the start, and I think nearly everyone I play with have hated it almost the entire patch. After the vendor thing, I kinda turned on the entire thing. For the first time since Wrath with the Valour and Justice badges and the amount of sockets on gear, it felt like I had control of customizing my character instead of just getting random drops from here and there. Combined with buying sockets from the horrific visions currency I could go all out on actually customizing my characters. That I will actually miss. So I am kinda mixed on all of this. I just wish Blizz didnt want to grief the players all the time with these chores. Had they put ALL the corruptions on the vendor from the start, removed the rng corruptions entirely but kept some select items with a unique corruption in the raid and perhaps one item in each dungeon it would have been a different story. I liked what it turned into, but the whole implementation was just so, so, SO bad.

Conclusion

So with all of that said, and having played for the entire expansion except 3 months, making it my most played "part" of World of Warcraft, I quite enjoyed BFA, in opposition to what seems like everyone else. And in spite of the chores being so horribly boring and aggrevating.

The main reason being that the dungeons were fun and I had fun people to play with, I think. The Ruthe/Krissie/Champ/Ulan/Viator setup at the start of the expansion was fun until it kinda unraveled because we barely played with each other, and did different things.

The post raiding season 2 was the first consistent m+ group I ever played with, and lacked the drama of getting groups in the actual m+ season - this was mainly Bubbles/Tara/Saraelya/Lan/Dom, but it was more of a "get a 10 for all alts" thing than a pushgroup. It didnt have much in the way of drama either.

The post raiding season 3 ended up being a horde side m+ thing, with Avangialine/Whitey/Viator and 1-2 spots being some odd person or a pug. This was a lot more relaxing than the alliance m+, people generally played in peace and music instead of voice and being opionated. I reall enjoyed this. But once progression at the start of season 4 was a thing different opinions and playtimes made it... Hard to continue after a while.

Post raiding season 4 was alliance again, mostly after Ruthe here started playing again. With me tanking, Ruthe healing and Tara + 2 other guildies normally (Saraelya, Caco, Kalthalos, Grongle, Alshah being the most common other guildies it seems) it was the only real time period we tried to push keys. In a manner. With the +18 Snek most likely being our best key. Had the corruption system not driven people away or made them not want to do the chores, could have been even better I think.

In an ideal world I'd take screenshots of these groups more as memories, but just like Blizzard has been bad at implementing systems this whole expansion, I have been bad at logging memories. So instead here is the one screenshot I took from the whole +18 Temple of Sethraliss run as a goodbye to BFA.