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    World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

    Game » consists of 1 releases. Released Aug 14, 2018

    The seventh expansion for World of Warcraft features new zones, Allied Races for both factions and a raised level cap to 120.

    BfA: how you feelin'?

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    rorie

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    I mentioned vaguely that the community stuff I've seen around BfA has been...muted, to say the best, on the Bombcast this week. More often I see things like this reddit thread that is pretty full of complaints. Personally I have no interest in the allied races so the grinds for those are not a big deal to me, but I definitely felt like the Alliance zones were sub-par in terms of questing (the Drustvar and Order of Embers stuff was the best storyline, but the other two were pretty mundane) and the ilvl grind when you hit 120 is a pain to play through unless you're mindlessly running dungeons. Warfronts would've been a good alternate to getting your alts up pretty fast, but hey: let's hotpatch in a 320 ilvl requirement for that!

    More and more I find myself logging in for 10 minutes, checking my war missions, and logging right back out. I don't feel super motivated to level up any alts at the moment (I might work on my Horde character since I hear those zones are better). The "Beta for Azeroth" nickname seems slightly unfair as I haven't run into as many bugs as other people have, but it definitely seems like the community is somewhat unsatisfied with what's on offer right now. I'm still going to keep my sub up, I guess, but at this point I'm mostly just playing to get through the rest of the LFR and then I guess I'll be waiting for 8.1 to hit before moving on with these characters.

    What are your thoughts on BfA at this point?

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    SirPsychoSexy

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    I played very hardcore in Vanilla, half of BC, and a small amount at the end of Lich King. I decided fuck it and came back when BfA came out to see where the game was these days.

    I was pretty impressed by the leveling compared to what it used to and some parts of the new zones are completely gorgeous. I also tried out the lvl 110 versions of several classes and some of them had pretty interesting play styles. I feel like alot of the actual gameplay is vastly better than what it used to be which is cool to see.

    However, there has been a lot of major bummers as I got deeper into the systems. First off, I really wanted to play a void elf which was new to BfA, but found out I had to go grind rep from the previous expansion in order to do so. What the fuck...

    The azerite armor system seems really bad. Half the time I get a better ilvl piece it does not have the trait I need and ends up being a downgrade or sidegrade. That is completely retarded game design. I also, really dislike having to level up the stupid necklace just to use some of the traits. I feel like I am playing some mobile game or something where I have to log in everyday and do my world quests just to be competitive. Another thing I always enjoyed was leveling alts, but the fact that I have to re-level the azerite necklace on each of them just sucks. Makes me not want to play them at all.

    The professions also seem incomplete or something. I remember there being a million more end game things to craft back in the day. Most of the best crafted stuff seems they can be replaced by raid/mythic dungeon drops. I enjoyed completing really great blacksmithing items in BC , which yes took a while, but they were top tier and lasted me a long time.

    I do want to say I like the focus on world pvp. I like that they have systems in place to encourage people engaging in it. World pvp was always a highlight of WoW for me. The rest of the Alliance vs Horde stuff, like the warfronts and island expansions seems boring as hell though.

    Maybe some of my criticisms are there simply because I already got everything I could out of playing WoW a decade ago. With that said, I have read many of the changes from legion and yeah it seems like they have made strictly worse systems for BfA. I really can't get over how much this game feels like a mobile game trying to get me to log in constantly to increase some number. Such a bummer.

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    Zurv

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    i sadly stopped playing 2 weeks ago. I maxed level in 2 days. Did the world quests, clear the mythics…. hrmm.. what else? purple in all slots? ok..i'm done. :)

    Other than the weekly mythic there wasn't anything else i could do with my peeps in this MMO... (i also don't care about the warzone stuff.) I left before the Mythic+ came out.. but i was "done."

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    uhtaree

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    I had to sit out this expansion, especially the early, obsessive grind, due to some new career training and I'm glad to hear this actually. It sounds like Warlords to me where once I was finished leveling I would log in and just be like I don't feel like playing this. I ended up having a blast in Legion but it could be a couple year break for me if this continues to sound flat.

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    Whitestripes09

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    #5  Edited By Whitestripes09

    This is my first time getting into WoW with a group of friends. My MMO experience is pretty limiting, with my most played games being Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV. Coming from those, I'm no stranger to grinding to get what I want. I popped my lvl 110 character boost on a Warrior and was deadset on getting to max. 3 or 4 days after getting the game I reached max level and I was already gearing up, finishing loose storylines, and starting world quests. After two and a half weeks, I am iLvl 340 and now am just getting picky over my gear so I can be at the same level as my friends.

    That may seem like a long time for "veterans" to get max level and gear up, but I've been playing this pretty casually due to having many work hours and I think I've barely broken the 25 hour mark after starting a month ago. I have been lucky because my friends have been giving me gear as well they don't need, but it sure seems like it didn't take long for me to level and gear. Which has led me to feeling like I'm pretty done with everything that this expansion has had to offered which is really underwhelming.

    My biggest critique is that the boss mechanics and dungeons are pretty boring and I feel like even with the added mechanics from heroic and mythic, the fights stay the same for the most part. Coming from FFXIV, which has a plethora of different bosses, dungeons, and raids and all with different mechanics, music, themes, and gimmicks. WoW feels really out of date in comparison.

    Last night I LFR'd with a few friends and I did the raid for the first time and it was such a let down. I couldn't believe how boring the final boss was and couldn't figure out for the life of me why they would release that whole encounter with that huge health pool and no additional mechanics. Mother was more difficult and interesting of a fight in comparison.

    So is this pretty much it for the expansion? Is grinding for the allied races really worth it? I know there will be more raids and the next one seems interesting, but I'm already getting that feeling of trying a new class after finding a few more gear pieces for my warrior.

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    deactivated-629ec706f0783

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    It's meh, but (so far) not the worst expansion start we've had in my 14 years of playing. I will say Blizzard is doing a lot of strange things that all come off as negative, while communicating next to nothing.

    Leveling was fine and since I'm only Horde I enjoyed it, but my time in the Alliance zones led me to the same conclusion that they just don't seem to have the same care as the Horde ones do.

    The raid seems fine so far but we have no word on a timetable in which to expect future content patches, so not sure how long it'll remain interesting. I'd like to try some Mythic bosses in there but currently the place is buggy as hell so I'll wait a few weeks and let the world first crazies kill themselves on incomplete encounters.

    A lot of what's going on does leave me with bad feelings, and I hope they reverse course and turn the ship around. I can easily see this being another Cataclysm and Warlords type expansion, and that just makes me real bummed coming off Legion, which was so damn great.

    As an achievement/collector insane person, it has been a good expansion for that. Lot's of new collectables and not much 120 content to do so I can go back to old stuff I'm still missing. That might be more negative then positive, depending on how you view stuff.

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    MeesterO

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    If I hadn't played up until the end of Nighthold in Legion I probably would be more impressed with this expansion. So far almost every system they created for Legion that came back as either the same thing or the same thing but with a twist has been making me feel like this is a watered down Legion. All the new editions are also kinda... thoughtless? The Island Expeditions are... honestly something I would expect FFXIV to add in terms of quality, they're incredibly boring. The Warfronts could be neat, but as it stands I pretty much join one and have the sense i'm not accomplishing anything because 19 other people are beating me to the objective.

    The leveling experience honestly was kind of a mess. My biggest pet peeve is doing mandatory story progression quests that are also leveling quests at max level, FFXIV does this a lot as well. By the time you're finished with 1 zone and a half you're already around the 119 mark, that just seems super jarring to me that you can almost ignore a whole zone during the leveling process, and you end up still having to do the zone anyway for particular reasons.

    Pugging mythic dungeons are exactly the same as they were in Legion as well, an experience I wish was better but at this point I just don't feel like anyone in game development is even trying to deal with toxicity. If I wasn't apart of a guild that was raiding I probably would have hung it up already.

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    glots

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    #8  Edited By glots

    @sirpsychosexy: About as soon as the requirements for Allied Races got announced, I pondered that it sure must be a great surprise for returning players who skipped Legion, to find out that they gotta do a bunch of basically outdated (for them) content for possibly weeks, depending on how much time they have to play, before getting any of the races.

    I have to imagine that they reduce/get rid of the requirements at some point, or give the players an alternative way to unlock those races, because it’s def a dumb idea now. Especially when they give you a lvl 110 boost with the expansion, basically telling you that you can just skip over the past expansions and get to the new stuff immediately.

    But all that beside (which doesn’t even concern me personally, because I did all that dumb grind during Legion), I haven’t really heard anyone praising this expansion to the point that I’d feel like diving back in. So my freedom from WoW continues!

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    sweep

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    #9 sweep  Moderator

    I've hit 120 and I've completed all the story missions in the 3 zones and I'm currently trying to hit the 305 iLevel so I can run heroics with my guild. I'm playing maybe one or two dungeons a night, which is pretty slow going, but I haven't been able to commit any more time to speed that up.

    I'm pretty torn on the expansion in general. I really like the return to horde vs alliance, the war mode is really cool, and the new zones are well designed. It's a relief to not have to fight any more fucking demons, too. However some of the class changes are a little weird - I'm happy with the amount of DPS i'm doing as a mage but my rotation has been dropped basically to two buttons, which is pretty mindless, and apart from that it's waiting on RNG procs and global cooldowns. Legion mage took a lot of care and thought to play, so I'm not crazy about this oversimplification of the class.

    I haven't run the dungeons enough times that they're boring yet, but I can see that happening pretty soon.

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    cikame

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    Lost my friends for another few months, feeling pretty lonely.

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    curiosus

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    I think the content was decent, I enjoyed exploring the new space but I'm basically done with 8.0 already, I'm already back to doing dailies from old expansions as i might as well grind while i grind. It was a good 3 weeks but thats all, I don't think they can wring much more out of a game thats nearly 14 years old, new content is the only interesting thing they can do, throwing in more grind and busywork without even changing up the systems significantly is just not worth talking about and not really worth playing (but I am anyway). Exploring Kul Tiras was pretty great while it was new. Got to ilvl 346 already and meh, not into the mythic+ treadmill.

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    bongchilla

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    #12  Edited By bongchilla

    I am going verrrrry slow but that’s due to lack of time, I still have not leveled to max yet. But when I do play I am enjoying it for the most part. I do agree that the necklace/armor system is not great. It’s kind of confusing at least to me.

    I only play horde so it’s kind of a bummer that the alliance leveling zones are not as well done because honestly I prefer that atmosphere to the Zandalar atmosphere you get on the horde side this expansion.

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    soulcake

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    Yeah Legion was a better content experience at launch. BFA has some great zones Horde wise but yeah the content is lack luster, world quest dungeons a raid, i had high hopes for warfronts but those are kinda meh. And the end of the Horde VS Alliance story is "shit we have to right a whole new story cya in a year when this is finished".

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    sombre

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    It's just flat out boring.

    The levelling content is excellent, at least on the Horde side. Saying that, I liked the Vulpera zone, felt indifferent about Zuldalar, and didn't like the swamp zone at all. The actual quest design is objectively better nowadays too. No longer are you going to the extreme north of a map to kill 5 pigs, then to the extreme south to farm for 11 bear noses, and so on. It's a lot more convenient that everything is now grouped together. The zones look stunning, the music is fantastic, and what little lore is there is interesting

    The endgame is probably the worst it's ever been. The grind for endgame gear is straight up boring. You gear up to get to heroics, then get one piece of gear if you're lucky. Azerite gear is too RNG depending on what random traits that happen to be on whatever piece of gear you find. I've played WoW since vanilla on and off, but the rep grind is absolutely bonkers at the moment. You've doing 40 quests a day for minimum rep gain and arbitrary rewards. You have to grind out Azerite, which is dished out in such small numbers (15 at a time) that it takes days to get up one level. Also there's no tabards that you can use in dungeons for rep, whereas every other EXP has had them. Maybe they added them in later, my mind is hazy, but not having them makes the grind unbearable.

    World PVP sounded good at the start, but it's already bad. Nobody ever does "world PVP". It's just roving gank squads of 4/5 enemies that stick together and kill people who are levelling.

    That's all I can think of for now.

    TL;dr- Levelling experience is good, endgame is torturous

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    doctordonkey

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    #15  Edited By doctordonkey

    The only well designed idea this expansion is War Mode. Everything else is pretty awful. The RNG on top of RNG with azerite gear is horrific, having to hope for a drop and then HOPE that the actual traits are good. You could have a 370 piece drop and actually be WORSE than a 325 if one has good traits and the other has bad ones. That's a 45 ilvl difference. Absolutely insane. Sometimes you'll even get a piece of azerite gear that would be better, but it's gated behind an arbitrary number that you have to grind WQs for, so you have to grind for that drop to actually matter. What?

    The azerite system itself is terrible, very few abilities are actually interesting, most are just passive things that boost damage/healing/survivability. Keep in mind, this is the system that is suppose to replace item set bonuses, artifact powers and legendaries. They removed a truckload of class flavor and abilities with the artifact system, real baby with the bathwater scenario. For a lot of specs, generic traits are the best. There's always a statistically superior trait, and stacking that x3 is always the best thing to do. It's the entire reason they removed the (fantastic, deep) talent tree system after WotLK, and they just implemented it. The only time it might get slightly more interesting is in PvP, where things flow much differently than PvE and thus some traits have a lot more value. Even there it's less "Oh wow, this trait would be good for PvP" and more "Hmm, this trait would actually be awful for PvP, better use something else".

    Warfronts are horribly boring because of a couple reasons. First reason is that you can't actually lose them. Well, I guess technically you could but you'd have to have the entire raid afk, because one person can win the entire thing given enough time. You can spend the entire time just running around collecting resources for like 15 minutes and then fight for 2 minutes at the gate and win. This would be tolerable, except that you can get geared for Uldir if you farm this for a couple days. Literally doing nothing. Mythics are at the very least challenging, and you aren't even guaranteed a piece from running one. Warfronts give you a 370 piece (mine titanforged into a 385) for doing one the first cycle, and then mythic equivalents every time. Guaranteed. Broken system, obviously.

    Island Expeditions...oh god. They introduced a Diablo 3 style map system with none of the reasons people play Diablo 3. People are doing 5-6 of these for the weekly azerite in like an hour and then ignoring it until it resets. My god is that hour the most boring shit you've experienced.

    That's it. I've listed the new features of this expansion. War Mode is great, the rest is abysmal. You could even say there are zero good things this expansion, if you don't like world PvP. It makes a great first impression with the leveling (just like WoD did, hmm) and then once you hit max level and start getting into the end game, you realize how horrifically shallow and poorly done it all is.

    My sub runs out on the 25th. I'm not renewing.

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    deactivated-6357e03f55494

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    Besides the rep grind for allied races and the imo step back with the Heart of Azeroth, I don't really see that big of a difference between this and warlords(which a lot of people liked).

    The leveling experience was fantastic, and end game is well, WoW endgame. I don't find in remarkably worse or better than previous installments(with the exception of class hall stuff for legion). Sure the new stuff they added(warfronts, island expeditions) don't add a lot but that still doesn't make any worse than previous expansions. Content patches will add plenty and this just seems to be a run of the mill form of progress for WoW.

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    morningstar

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    Canceled my sub. Its dull as bricks once you hit the level cap, and it feels like they released it too early. Azerite gear can fuck right off.

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    geirr

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    Me and my partner have a (for the time being) big, active guild and BfA has some of that
    "This is kinda boring/broken but at least we're bored/broken together!" vibe.
    Complaints aside, I'm still having fun but I'm also not overdoing it. An hour a day and then a few more come Raid nights.
    Besides if the most current content isn't appealing there's so much else to do.

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    deactivated-5d1d502761653

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    As someone who played fairly hardcore during Legion (cutting edge mythic raider) I decided to not renew my subscription after 30 days of BfA.

    Belular's 2 part series sums up my opinion on BfA's shortcomings fairly good:

    - New system fall flat (azerite armor, warfronts & island expeditions)

    - Established systems carried over are solid but also not exciting after 2 years of legion at this point (world quests, mythic plus dungeons)

    Loading Video...

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    Trilogy

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    #20  Edited By Trilogy

    Way more positive than most apparently. It's another Legion and I thought very highly of Legion. The low point would definitely be Azerite armor. I don't like that it cant titanforge, have any secondary stats, and I HATE that it doesn't drop from Mythic+ dungeons. I've heard the reasoning on that last one from Blizzard and I think it's a lame reason. That being said, I've been really enjoying the questing (stories and voice work are stronger than they've ever been imo), and the dungeons and raiding have been really fun as well. I'm in love with Waycrest Manor especially. That place is dripping with an aesthetic that I'm a sucker for.

    Island expeditions and Warfronts both have potential, but it's not being realized just yet, imo. I'm not willing to completely write them off. Overall I've kind of eye rolled the backlash to BFA. A lot of it feels like gamers revolting because they want to revolt. It's the kind of developer blame-y attitude I can't stand. There's some real issues with BFA and the lack of messaging around it, but people have taken this shit way too far. Not necessarily in this thread since I haven't read it. Just talking about what I've seen on Blizzard's forums.

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    SarcasticMudcrab

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    Got to level 117 then gave up, log in once a day to buy low and sell high, mostly anchor weed. I've literally become a weed dealer in WoW. Made 200k in 2 weeks from 10 mins a day, nothing compared to the pros but I'm happy with it. Have nothing to spend it on might just buy a token and get BO4.

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    Efesell

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    #22  Edited By Efesell

    I just cancelled and resubbed to FF14 instead.

    So not great about this but pretty excited otherwise.

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    Zomgfruitbunnies

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    I enjoyed my time with it. It's more WoW, for better or worse. I only have about three weeks for WoW every year due to work and whatnot, so maybe I just end up having to stop before the monotony kicks in.

    To echo the common sentiment, Azerite armor sucks. The system seems fundamentally flawed for PvE. Not sure if they stopped to consider the balancing nightmare this system is or even tested the skill, because as it stands right now stacking certain skills causes huge fluctuations in performances that renders ilevel differences meaningless. That's some hot nonsense. I can literally get a piece of gear that's 10 ilevels better than my current slotted item and wearing it causes my performance to suffer because I replaced the primary skill that has the biggest impact on play. Like, what? I understand maybe the idea is to provide more room for min-maxing, but the way they implemented it is terribad.

    Leveling the necklace is also a chore. Grinding Azerite is the worst. Then Bliz comes out and says it's supposed to be bad because it's timegated. Could have been more clear about that from the beginning. The least enjoyable part of the expansion was doing Island Expeditions. Never again.

    World quests are still what they are from Legion. Could be more varied. Arguably the best way to gear up after hitting level cap. Instance drop rates are horrible, or maybe I just have bad luck. Heroics seem really easy? Didn't have time for Mystic so can't really comment on that.

    Leveling was pretty fun, although some mobs could use some tuning. Horde side only, didn't do Alliance.

    I'm really glad the follower stuff got toned down. Thank fucking Christ. Didn't like it during WoD, didn't like it during Legion.

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    makari

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    If you're one to rule out mythic+ and raids as endgame options, WoW will always feel a little scant at max level. They are the main repeatable sources of progressing your character. The warfront and its associated 'island' provide a more casual catch-up but they aren't very compelling. The island expeditions were an interesting diversion at first, but I'm rather sick of them at this point. They recently upped the rate of rewards, but a lot of pets and toys aren't really my thing.

    The Azerite system feels wonky. It, in some ways, punishes casual players for getting gear upgrades if they don't play enough to keep up with their necklace levels. If you're not one to be blasting through content and doing all your world quests every day you will inevitably find yourself behind on requirements for high ilvl gear pieces. I don't think they need an AP system in the game anymore. It doesn't keep people playing. People who are hardcore for endgame will grind anything, making it moot, and those that don't will feel held hostage by it. I hope they do away with it next expansion.

    The dungeons and raids are good this expansion. The art and questing experience are fantastic. The endgame is WoW endgame... if you aren't busying yourself with it all it can feel unrewarding, but busying yourself with it all can lead to burn-out.

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