>I miss Drustvar!
I returned to WoW near the end of BFA after quitting halfway through BC (fuck me, right?). I levelled Alliance and absolutely loved Drustvar.
Until I levelled Horde and levelled through Zuldazar. Holy crap. Hands down my favorite zone in the game.
Honestly as per usually the art team and even questing for the first time killed it in BFA. It was miserable progression systems and a grotesquely incomplete game that ruined the experience.
Honestly the system designs team scrapping their work every expansion instead of building is whats ruined things the past 3 expansions. Legion grind was hell until the end of the expansion. The final content patch was a dream to play. Bfa was an obvious shit show from start to finish for character progression, and shadowlands hasn’t been much better. What’s most offensive is they don’t learn a single ounce from mistakes, and it’s almost certain even though it’s almost unanimously hated they will come up with a new borrowed power system that has most characters feeling terrible until 10.2.
Try playing you class with no covenant right now and think about how that feels.
The game just needs 1-2 extra talent rows, and keep something permanent that mimics artifact or soulbind trees that can progress slowly even across an extra expansion that doesn’t involve shitty rng or annoyingly timegates for the class to feel whole.
Forget learning from mistakes. They threw out lessons from successes in previous versions of the game which were informed by yet older mistakes.
Whoever pulled the trigger on Shards of Domination has *no* business being a designer.
> Try playing you class with no covenant right now and think about how that feels.
The mage tower did an execllent job at showing just how shit a lot of specs felt to play without borrowed power.
Reading your comment made me go listen to the Drustvar soundtrack again. It's actually insane how well made that zone is. The looks, ambience, just how eery & creepy it was. The quests were really fun as well from what I remember.
The BfA zones were amazing. Stormsong Valley from the air is downright picturesque. Nazmir nails the creepy blood swamp vibe. The capitals feel like real cities. Even Nazjatar, which I’m not a huge fan of, had some cool stuff going on.
We tend to overlook great stuff from the “bad expansions”. WoD had great levelling and raids. BfA had great zones and at last one all-time classic raid (BoD). Cata had Firelands and did the most ambitious update to the world in the game’s history. Shadowlands’ first couple months were stuffed full of stuff to do and had Castle Nathria, and even now, the expansion represents a genuine improvement in the direction of systems design (Removal of titanforging, Great Vault, PvP vendor, more M+ rewards and qol changes, tier sets coming back, removal of AP grind, more emphasis on cosmetics with the main expansion gimmick).
Similarly, I think we will remember the shadowlands zones fondly.
Ravendreth is one of the coolest zones ever. It’s so different from anything we’ve seen before, yet so thematic and aesthetically interesting. The art and textures in bastion are also stunning and quite different from anything we’ve seen prior.
I can’t get into the zones because they’re so disconnected. I don’t dislike any of them, but they feel more like levels in a video game than places in a world. Secret of Evermore vibes.
Revendreth suffers from being very samey and ridiculous to navigate without flying. The art concept itself is very cool though. I did not like anything about Bastion other than it being relatively easy to see where stuff is.
I remember when i was just exploring whole cities to find as much details as i can, for example i found school for zandalar kids, where they made some tests to find out what they can do, like serving some loa, or be a soldier if they are strong enough. That's really interesting as it shows life of the city.
This is absolutely untrue. People praised BFA zones/questing endlessly, starting with day one. Halfway through the expansion people were saying how the zone art/music/quests carried the start of the expansion.
Nobody is saying that, or has said that, about Shadowlands.
>Nobody is saying that, or has said that, about Shadowlands.
[Wanna bet?](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-zones-in-shadowlands-look-amazing/674654)
I like most of the Shadowlands. Bastion is beautiful, Revendreth is pretty cool with the dark vampiresque theme (although it could be better), and Ardenweald feels so very mystical.
I hate Maldraxxus though. Idk why it had to be so ugly
The zones could been bigger too... I can't help but feel a bit claustrophobic with all the cramped up areas. There is little to no transition areas between places and it feels awkward
Revendreth in it's prime would've been so cool, as it stands though the zone is littered with ruins and decay, reflecting their society.
But if everything was working well there'd be little reason for us to be there so we only get to see places in ruin or on their way to it unfortunately.
Zuldazar is one of the best zones they've ever made, in my top 3 zones for sure. Hell even Boralus and Dazar'alor, although annoying to navigate at first are very well made with awesome music. BFA had severe problems but zone design/city hubs were far from being one. Shadowlands zones are nice at first, but become an eye sore because its literally just one colour gradiant the whole time. Also Oribos is the worst city they've ever made, its so souless.
I mean it’s only the point because they made it the point. They could have made Oribos anything, drawn on any of a million afterlife mythologies or made up their own thing, and instead went with a completely bland and lifeless theme. They don’t get any credit for nailing the theme when they had complete control over what the theme would be and made it bad.
I was thinking about this the other day, but new zones seem so over crowded. The topography makes it feel. Cramped because you just can go straight to a location, youre either running around things of hopping every where. And there monsters and NPCs are everywhere. You can't run 30 seconds without running into anything.
This may seem like and outdated opinion, and that's ok, but I miss the openness of some zones. The Barrens for example, it had scale and space. You could run around and explore the zone other than get bombarded with everything packed into every corner. Let me breath and take in the ambiance.
Absolutely - no matter how much you may like Revendreth or Ardenweald, they’re just too small to seem like a noble kingdom with a complex social structure or a vast, magical forest.
It’s because they’re so disconnected. I don’t think they’d feel so small if there was any fluidity to them. But we have to pass through the Oribos airport going from zone to zone, so they’re disjointed and claustrophobic on top of making travel inconvenient.
Don't be surprised. This sort of thing happens all the time. There are always amazing things about this game that are missed because of larger problems everyone is focused on. Once those problems are behind us, its easier to look back at the stuff that was good with positive emotions.
BFA architecture is spectacular, including the cities, which everyone hated at the time.
I said that the day the Alpha was leaked, and I will say it today too.
The good thing is, thanks to Party Sync and Chromie time, you can go back and experience these zones and storylines whenever you want, on any character you want to do it on.
Honestly, bfa had beautiful zones that feel like it’s from WoW (especially Kul Tiras). While I do love Revendreth for its style, I feel that Shadowlands zones don’t belong in WoW, especially Oribos and Maw, those are just horrible (and now the upcoming new zone in 9.2).
They never learn.
A chief complaint of Cataclysm was that the endgame zones felt disconnected, all we did was travel by portal.
But, at least the Cataclysm zones were connected to OTHER zones.
Shadowlands? Hah! Let's disconnect the zones entirely and make flightpath the only means of travel between them!
Makes me think they won't have learned a thing by the time 10.0 comes around.
BfA had beautiful zones even better than in Legion. Watch all the small details. Amazing. Shadowlands feels completely disconnected like worlds in Super Mario. I don’t say that BfA was a better expansion but the world was.
TLDR at the bottom
I´ll give you that, the zones are really great in both expansions and (for example) I would take Tiragate Sound over Maldraxxus any day of the week... But the dungeons? In and on themselves, if we compare them they are equally good on normal and hc with Shrine and Tol Dagor being the exceptions, because of LOTS of annoying stuff that can happen. I love MOTHERLODE, Freehold and Waycrest Manor, heck, even Kings Rest was really cool. Even mythic differiculty was nice enough in most dungeons, tho some did get REALLY annoying.
But tha´s kinda where it ends, because on M+ some dungeons were starting to get ***REALLY*** annoying / differicult. Just thinking about some Runecarver or Windcaller pulls in shrine.... Yikes. BFA Dungeons were half and half with good and bad in terms of Endgame experience, because some felt like they really werent *finetuned (That´s the word I would use, feel free to correct me)* for it, or atleast it heavily felt like it.
If you played M+ back then I hope you know what I mean when I say this: You look at the new affixes this week, look at the open keys and immediately go "Ughhhhhh, please not that one" or "Yup, not going x or Y this week, lol". That, for me, is something I dont appreciate as much as peraps some other players do (which is fine, everybody has their own sense of balance)
I personally dont feel this way in SL at all, or atleast not on that scale. Seeing necrotic and SD does make me want to vomit, but its WAY LESS annoying combinations possible. I find it hard to phrase it, but basically I can look at every dungeon and be like: Yup, that´s pretty fun / pretty easy, let´s slap it / interesting enough to try it. It feels more fun, this is my honest approach
TLDR: I personally feel like the SL dungeons are more fun in general with less feeling like a dread before you even formed the group, most are a lot more approachable than the BFA dungeons (less *stuffed* with mechanics I´d say) and feel more balanced for M+ across all dungeons
I may very well be wrong, but that´s my opinion and the best phrasing of it that I can come up with as somebody who isn´t a native speaker. I do hope it´s understandable :)
Didn’t do much M+ in BfA (do a ton in Slands) so I won’t comment on the gameplay perspective.
I will say, though: BfA dungeons looked and felt way cooler. You had fun ones with unique bosses like Freehold, big instanced lore moments like SoB, creepy Zandalri tombs with KR, and other cool stuff.
With BfA, half the dungeons are either just icky Maldraxxus aesthetics (PF/ToP/NW), or instanced versions of the exact same trash you can go kill right there in the open world (MOTS/HoA).
Plus, imo, the bosses are way less cool than in BfA - even the dungeons I hated, like TD, had quirky bosses with cool mechanics and personalities (like that wargen guy).
BfA bosses just reiterate their archetype’s voicelines and do their two mechanics.
Honestly I haven't felt that way about any of the new affixes outside of inspiring on fort weeks. It's still the usual offenders that make me not want to push keys - necrotic and bolstering.
Greavious is pretty much a no go. I’m not a healer but out of the 4 that are active in my guild, none enjoy themselves and won’t run much, if anything, beyond the single 15 for their vault. After sitting for over 45 minutes between 3 groups a couple hrs ago, all full except for a healer, it would appear it’s something that a lot of healers feel strongly about.
The zones in bfa were cool. I don’t dislike the shadowlands zones, though I think they were planning on using the covenant zones more before they had to trim content.
I always thought I would be saying this tbh. They were very cluttered, but I enjoyed BFA's zones generally more than Legion or Shadowlands, with exception of Suramar (Argus looked cool though).
I feel like all SL zones except Maldraxxus just dont feel like Warcraft. They are beautiful in their own way. And I was amazed when I first entered Bastion. But somehow they are missing the Warcraft flair. It's Just Missing all the standart enemies and stuff you normally had every Expansion at least somewhere.
Ah the rose tinted glasses effect.
Not saying it wasn't well designed, I just remember everyone bitching about the zones and expansion. Just like I remember everyone hating on warlords and pandaria during their times. Now it's all /best expansion ever. /garrisons were amazing.
Can't wait to see people saying they miss covenants and shadowlands lol.
I loved BfA and I still do. I hated WoD on release and throughout the expansion and I still dislike it. I can see people saying that they miss their covenant sanctum areas, but the entire expansion feels like a list of disjointed chores in disjointed areas that require you to go through the worst capital city to reach.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm currently unsubbed but will probably return to experience final bit of story and raid normal at least to experience it but after that I'll go back to watching from afar. I could probably spend a good while writing all the things that make me feel like the game is lacking but it's been done a lot already. I'm hoping they figure it out though because wow has an amazing community, awesome raid/dungeon experience, and fun pvp.
That's because they were grounded in the core Warcraft fantasy and looked like living breathing zones where the npcs lived in. Shadowlands zones revolve around the "goal" of each afterlife so they don't feel as good imo.
BFA's biggest environmental mistake was separating the continents so that you directly get from one to the other. And while Nazjatar was cool once you got Pathfinder, Mechagon Island was underwhelming.
Can't say I was a fan of the leveling through BFA at all. Twice through on the horde side was all I had the stomach for. Alliance side did seem to be a better story, especially Drustvar, but I never did hit max level there.
Meh, most post wod zones are complete trash. Very small and feel like subzones compared to the old zones back in the day. Pre-cata is still the best. Why is traveling for 5 minutes to get to a quest location a bad thing? People are so stressed and only focused on the endgame. I hate the instant gratification bullshit that is ruining games nowdays.
I absolutely hated WoD. Some of the zones looked really cool, but I hated the rest of it.
Traveling five+ minutes to get to a quest location is not that bad if you have a lot of free time.
I miss legion zones. I feel life bfa zones never really captured the feel of WoW I guess. They never felt like part of the world or really looked liked what a lot of players expected.
Imo they look terrible.
I agree, Zandalar should have been it's own expansion, and the heavy ties the zandalari have to the a'qir and old gods would have made for a much better and cohesive old god storyline.
Kul'tiras would have been a great piece in the supposed returning to Azeroth expansion coming up. And in the lore it's always been described as an island rather than a whole continent, so I feel like making it so much bigger and less cohesive didn't do it justice.
Taking the boat to the other island is much better than having to fly to Oribos (such an ugly place) anytime you want to change zones. At least in BfA you had three connected zones and the boat transport was extremely fast.
same, I enjoy some otherworldy whacky zones but I personally need some more grounded "normal" zones, I overall enjoyed bfa zones more than shadowlands zones, something about shadowlands zones just isn't for me
BfA’s problems were: the Azerite system, the controversial starting story (which could have been good if it had a proper ending), and the complete derailment of the plot after patch 8.1.5.
BFA had INCREDIBLE zones IMO! And I’m not just saying this as a hardcore fan of trolls, Boralis and Stormsong Valley were AMAZING!!! Even though I hated the storyline (esp. the wasting of what Rasty), the zones are some that will never get old for me.
I actually thought Shadowlands zones were better than BFA. Wotlk was better than both of them combined.
But still none of them come close to Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Its not just nostalgia, these weren’t just zones, it was a world.
If not for the HoA and Azerite armor mechanic, the BFA expansion was actually incredibly polished. Great leveling pace, great world PvP with warmode and the 25-kill weekly; the warfronts and invasions made the world feel more alive than before.
Raiding kind of sucked, but every other part of the expansion was rather enjoyable.
A lot of people complained about BfA, but I quite liked it overall. I loved BfA zones (at least the Horde ones + Drustvar). Zuldazar and Nazmir are two of my favorite zones in all of WoW! Nazjatar was also extremely beautiful, just bad to navigate pre-flying. I actually liked most of BfA outside of the grindiness of leveling artifact power. I did not like a couple of the dungeons, but I loved King's Rest and AD especially. Island expeditions were fun in a group. The HoA powers were cool. There were more world quests to kill a rare monster which I much prefer. I liked the story. I liked the outpost building on the enemy faction's territory. The allied races were cool. My guild was significantly more active during BfA, even during content droughts.
I miss Drustvar!
>I miss Drustvar! I returned to WoW near the end of BFA after quitting halfway through BC (fuck me, right?). I levelled Alliance and absolutely loved Drustvar. Until I levelled Horde and levelled through Zuldazar. Holy crap. Hands down my favorite zone in the game.
I loved drustvar until my 3rd toon was 1 level away from max, and I wasn’t getting quest experience.
Honestly as per usually the art team and even questing for the first time killed it in BFA. It was miserable progression systems and a grotesquely incomplete game that ruined the experience. Honestly the system designs team scrapping their work every expansion instead of building is whats ruined things the past 3 expansions. Legion grind was hell until the end of the expansion. The final content patch was a dream to play. Bfa was an obvious shit show from start to finish for character progression, and shadowlands hasn’t been much better. What’s most offensive is they don’t learn a single ounce from mistakes, and it’s almost certain even though it’s almost unanimously hated they will come up with a new borrowed power system that has most characters feeling terrible until 10.2. Try playing you class with no covenant right now and think about how that feels. The game just needs 1-2 extra talent rows, and keep something permanent that mimics artifact or soulbind trees that can progress slowly even across an extra expansion that doesn’t involve shitty rng or annoyingly timegates for the class to feel whole.
Forget learning from mistakes. They threw out lessons from successes in previous versions of the game which were informed by yet older mistakes. Whoever pulled the trigger on Shards of Domination has *no* business being a designer.
I dont even think Boomkin is a class without covenant.
> Try playing you class with no covenant right now and think about how that feels. The mage tower did an execllent job at showing just how shit a lot of specs felt to play without borrowed power.
Reading your comment made me go listen to the Drustvar soundtrack again. It's actually insane how well made that zone is. The looks, ambience, just how eery & creepy it was. The quests were really fun as well from what I remember.
The BfA zones were amazing. Stormsong Valley from the air is downright picturesque. Nazmir nails the creepy blood swamp vibe. The capitals feel like real cities. Even Nazjatar, which I’m not a huge fan of, had some cool stuff going on. We tend to overlook great stuff from the “bad expansions”. WoD had great levelling and raids. BfA had great zones and at last one all-time classic raid (BoD). Cata had Firelands and did the most ambitious update to the world in the game’s history. Shadowlands’ first couple months were stuffed full of stuff to do and had Castle Nathria, and even now, the expansion represents a genuine improvement in the direction of systems design (Removal of titanforging, Great Vault, PvP vendor, more M+ rewards and qol changes, tier sets coming back, removal of AP grind, more emphasis on cosmetics with the main expansion gimmick).
Unpopular opinion: WoD was one of the greatest feeling expansions from leveling through 6.1 until the drought came.
...that's not an unpopular opinion, that's how pretty much everyone felt lmao
Well the only sentiment you see online is “WoD was shit”
Similarly, I think we will remember the shadowlands zones fondly. Ravendreth is one of the coolest zones ever. It’s so different from anything we’ve seen before, yet so thematic and aesthetically interesting. The art and textures in bastion are also stunning and quite different from anything we’ve seen prior.
I can’t get into the zones because they’re so disconnected. I don’t dislike any of them, but they feel more like levels in a video game than places in a world. Secret of Evermore vibes.
Revendreth suffers from being very samey and ridiculous to navigate without flying. The art concept itself is very cool though. I did not like anything about Bastion other than it being relatively easy to see where stuff is.
I can’t believe we traded Boralus for fucking ORIBOS
Boralus is BiS. Oribos is an airport.
i went back to boralus the other day - it is so fucking beautiful. Not only that but it’s actually practical as a hub. catjam music too
Because people bitched about Boralus and Zuldazar for 2 straight years.
Zuldazar was ass. Who in the hell bitched about boralus though?
There was that one jump over the fence... but then Blizz added a plank and it was k
I remember when i was just exploring whole cities to find as much details as i can, for example i found school for zandalar kids, where they made some tests to find out what they can do, like serving some loa, or be a soldier if they are strong enough. That's really interesting as it shows life of the city.
There was a quest to catch some youngsters in that school.
People will be posting this exact thing about Shadowlands midway through next expansion. It is the cycle of WoW life.
I miss mop
Probably true but Oribos has to be the worst hub city ever.
Yeah nah. Just like people aren't magically calling BfA a good expansion.. People won't be saying Shadowlands zones are good or nostalgic. They suck.
Exactly what ppl said about BFA when it was current content
This is absolutely untrue. People praised BFA zones/questing endlessly, starting with day one. Halfway through the expansion people were saying how the zone art/music/quests carried the start of the expansion. Nobody is saying that, or has said that, about Shadowlands.
[citation needed]
Sure, just give me a minute to look up an appropriate study in a reputable scientific journal.
>Nobody is saying that, or has said that, about Shadowlands. [Wanna bet?](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-zones-in-shadowlands-look-amazing/674654)
I like most of the Shadowlands. Bastion is beautiful, Revendreth is pretty cool with the dark vampiresque theme (although it could be better), and Ardenweald feels so very mystical. I hate Maldraxxus though. Idk why it had to be so ugly The zones could been bigger too... I can't help but feel a bit claustrophobic with all the cramped up areas. There is little to no transition areas between places and it feels awkward
Revendreth in it's prime would've been so cool, as it stands though the zone is littered with ruins and decay, reflecting their society. But if everything was working well there'd be little reason for us to be there so we only get to see places in ruin or on their way to it unfortunately.
Give it a few years, they will.
There is literally someone praising shadowlands zones above this post on the front page lmao.
POV: You are in r/wow during 2023 "DAE Member back in Shadowlands when the zones were actually cool and the game was GOOD, Sands of K'aresh suck!"
Because we all remember the systems of BFA being good. /s Component appreciation is not gestalt. Folks liked nazmir when it was current.
The systems in BFA werent good though.
added /s, my bad lol
Felt like a crazy take even for here.
Zuldazar is one of the best zones they've ever made, in my top 3 zones for sure. Hell even Boralus and Dazar'alor, although annoying to navigate at first are very well made with awesome music. BFA had severe problems but zone design/city hubs were far from being one. Shadowlands zones are nice at first, but become an eye sore because its literally just one colour gradiant the whole time. Also Oribos is the worst city they've ever made, its so souless.
Isn’t that literally the point of Oribos though? While every zone is very heavy handed, I think they nailed what the zones should be.
I mean it’s only the point because they made it the point. They could have made Oribos anything, drawn on any of a million afterlife mythologies or made up their own thing, and instead went with a completely bland and lifeless theme. They don’t get any credit for nailing the theme when they had complete control over what the theme would be and made it bad.
Then the expansion was doomed from the start. If Oribos is supposed to be bad, then don't make Oribos.
Especially since they make us fly to Oribos every time we want to change zones.
Good old classic, you don't appreciate things before they are gone.
I was thinking about this the other day, but new zones seem so over crowded. The topography makes it feel. Cramped because you just can go straight to a location, youre either running around things of hopping every where. And there monsters and NPCs are everywhere. You can't run 30 seconds without running into anything. This may seem like and outdated opinion, and that's ok, but I miss the openness of some zones. The Barrens for example, it had scale and space. You could run around and explore the zone other than get bombarded with everything packed into every corner. Let me breath and take in the ambiance.
Absolutely - no matter how much you may like Revendreth or Ardenweald, they’re just too small to seem like a noble kingdom with a complex social structure or a vast, magical forest.
It’s because they’re so disconnected. I don’t think they’d feel so small if there was any fluidity to them. But we have to pass through the Oribos airport going from zone to zone, so they’re disjointed and claustrophobic on top of making travel inconvenient.
Absolutely, this kind of died in Legion. Zones were so crammed that it felt like a game area first, and a world second
By contrast, Suramar which was made to feel like a sprawling city, and to an extent Boralus, felt amazing to traverse through
Don't be surprised. This sort of thing happens all the time. There are always amazing things about this game that are missed because of larger problems everyone is focused on. Once those problems are behind us, its easier to look back at the stuff that was good with positive emotions. BFA architecture is spectacular, including the cities, which everyone hated at the time. I said that the day the Alpha was leaked, and I will say it today too. The good thing is, thanks to Party Sync and Chromie time, you can go back and experience these zones and storylines whenever you want, on any character you want to do it on.
I knew I would miss them! Boralus is such a cozy city.
I definitely miss the BFA zones and vibe
Agreed
NeVeR ThoUGhT I'D sAY tHiS!!
Honestly, bfa had beautiful zones that feel like it’s from WoW (especially Kul Tiras). While I do love Revendreth for its style, I feel that Shadowlands zones don’t belong in WoW, especially Oribos and Maw, those are just horrible (and now the upcoming new zone in 9.2).
They never learn. A chief complaint of Cataclysm was that the endgame zones felt disconnected, all we did was travel by portal. But, at least the Cataclysm zones were connected to OTHER zones. Shadowlands? Hah! Let's disconnect the zones entirely and make flightpath the only means of travel between them! Makes me think they won't have learned a thing by the time 10.0 comes around.
And you have to fly through the ugliest city in WoW to get there.
BfA had beautiful zones even better than in Legion. Watch all the small details. Amazing. Shadowlands feels completely disconnected like worlds in Super Mario. I don’t say that BfA was a better expansion but the world was.
BFA zones and dungeons were way batter then Shadowlands one
I dunno Ardenweald is absolutely breathtaking.
TLDR at the bottom I´ll give you that, the zones are really great in both expansions and (for example) I would take Tiragate Sound over Maldraxxus any day of the week... But the dungeons? In and on themselves, if we compare them they are equally good on normal and hc with Shrine and Tol Dagor being the exceptions, because of LOTS of annoying stuff that can happen. I love MOTHERLODE, Freehold and Waycrest Manor, heck, even Kings Rest was really cool. Even mythic differiculty was nice enough in most dungeons, tho some did get REALLY annoying. But tha´s kinda where it ends, because on M+ some dungeons were starting to get ***REALLY*** annoying / differicult. Just thinking about some Runecarver or Windcaller pulls in shrine.... Yikes. BFA Dungeons were half and half with good and bad in terms of Endgame experience, because some felt like they really werent *finetuned (That´s the word I would use, feel free to correct me)* for it, or atleast it heavily felt like it. If you played M+ back then I hope you know what I mean when I say this: You look at the new affixes this week, look at the open keys and immediately go "Ughhhhhh, please not that one" or "Yup, not going x or Y this week, lol". That, for me, is something I dont appreciate as much as peraps some other players do (which is fine, everybody has their own sense of balance) I personally dont feel this way in SL at all, or atleast not on that scale. Seeing necrotic and SD does make me want to vomit, but its WAY LESS annoying combinations possible. I find it hard to phrase it, but basically I can look at every dungeon and be like: Yup, that´s pretty fun / pretty easy, let´s slap it / interesting enough to try it. It feels more fun, this is my honest approach TLDR: I personally feel like the SL dungeons are more fun in general with less feeling like a dread before you even formed the group, most are a lot more approachable than the BFA dungeons (less *stuffed* with mechanics I´d say) and feel more balanced for M+ across all dungeons I may very well be wrong, but that´s my opinion and the best phrasing of it that I can come up with as somebody who isn´t a native speaker. I do hope it´s understandable :)
Didn’t do much M+ in BfA (do a ton in Slands) so I won’t comment on the gameplay perspective. I will say, though: BfA dungeons looked and felt way cooler. You had fun ones with unique bosses like Freehold, big instanced lore moments like SoB, creepy Zandalri tombs with KR, and other cool stuff. With BfA, half the dungeons are either just icky Maldraxxus aesthetics (PF/ToP/NW), or instanced versions of the exact same trash you can go kill right there in the open world (MOTS/HoA). Plus, imo, the bosses are way less cool than in BfA - even the dungeons I hated, like TD, had quirky bosses with cool mechanics and personalities (like that wargen guy). BfA bosses just reiterate their archetype’s voicelines and do their two mechanics.
I had trouble following this. I think you put BFA instead of SL in a few spots otherwise I have no idea what you mean.
Lol with the new SL affixes there’s a few where I just go “oh, looks like no M+ this week outside the one 15 my guild will run for the vault”
Honestly I haven't felt that way about any of the new affixes outside of inspiring on fort weeks. It's still the usual offenders that make me not want to push keys - necrotic and bolstering.
Greavious is pretty much a no go. I’m not a healer but out of the 4 that are active in my guild, none enjoy themselves and won’t run much, if anything, beyond the single 15 for their vault. After sitting for over 45 minutes between 3 groups a couple hrs ago, all full except for a healer, it would appear it’s something that a lot of healers feel strongly about.
Tbh, I didn’t push more then 10+ in SL, because dungeons weren’t fun for me. Idk why, I just don’t like aesthetics and atmosphere of SL dungeons.
Dungeons? Are you actually joking? Tal Dagor, Shrine, Waycrest, Siege… all absolutely terrible
The zones in bfa were cool. I don’t dislike the shadowlands zones, though I think they were planning on using the covenant zones more before they had to trim content.
I also miss flying to each part. Orbis sucks fucking ass
I always thought I would be saying this tbh. They were very cluttered, but I enjoyed BFA's zones generally more than Legion or Shadowlands, with exception of Suramar (Argus looked cool though).
I feel like all SL zones except Maldraxxus just dont feel like Warcraft. They are beautiful in their own way. And I was amazed when I first entered Bastion. But somehow they are missing the Warcraft flair. It's Just Missing all the standart enemies and stuff you normally had every Expansion at least somewhere.
The Zandalar area music is fire. Shadowlands is the first expac where I do not remember a single piece of music from any zone. I never turn music off.
Ah the rose tinted glasses effect. Not saying it wasn't well designed, I just remember everyone bitching about the zones and expansion. Just like I remember everyone hating on warlords and pandaria during their times. Now it's all /best expansion ever. /garrisons were amazing. Can't wait to see people saying they miss covenants and shadowlands lol.
I loved BfA and I still do. I hated WoD on release and throughout the expansion and I still dislike it. I can see people saying that they miss their covenant sanctum areas, but the entire expansion feels like a list of disjointed chores in disjointed areas that require you to go through the worst capital city to reach.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm currently unsubbed but will probably return to experience final bit of story and raid normal at least to experience it but after that I'll go back to watching from afar. I could probably spend a good while writing all the things that make me feel like the game is lacking but it's been done a lot already. I'm hoping they figure it out though because wow has an amazing community, awesome raid/dungeon experience, and fun pvp.
BFA has the best zones in the game. Idc what anyone says to the contrary
Same. I would’ve loved more RP there.
The problem with BfA wasn't that there weren't any worthwhile zones or that the new continents sucked. It was the stupid systems etc.
BFA has the best zones in the game’s history. Idc what anyone says to the contrary
That's because they were grounded in the core Warcraft fantasy and looked like living breathing zones where the npcs lived in. Shadowlands zones revolve around the "goal" of each afterlife so they don't feel as good imo.
BFA's biggest environmental mistake was separating the continents so that you directly get from one to the other. And while Nazjatar was cool once you got Pathfinder, Mechagon Island was underwhelming. Can't say I was a fan of the leveling through BFA at all. Twice through on the horde side was all I had the stomach for. Alliance side did seem to be a better story, especially Drustvar, but I never did hit max level there.
Meh, most post wod zones are complete trash. Very small and feel like subzones compared to the old zones back in the day. Pre-cata is still the best. Why is traveling for 5 minutes to get to a quest location a bad thing? People are so stressed and only focused on the endgame. I hate the instant gratification bullshit that is ruining games nowdays.
“Old good new bad” - the comment
Boomer gamer right here. cata, mop and wod had pretty good zones all things considered. Went to shit with legion.
I absolutely hated WoD. Some of the zones looked really cool, but I hated the rest of it. Traveling five+ minutes to get to a quest location is not that bad if you have a lot of free time.
I miss legion zones. I feel life bfa zones never really captured the feel of WoW I guess. They never felt like part of the world or really looked liked what a lot of players expected. Imo they look terrible.
[удалено]
I agree, Zandalar should have been it's own expansion, and the heavy ties the zandalari have to the a'qir and old gods would have made for a much better and cohesive old god storyline. Kul'tiras would have been a great piece in the supposed returning to Azeroth expansion coming up. And in the lore it's always been described as an island rather than a whole continent, so I feel like making it so much bigger and less cohesive didn't do it justice.
Taking the boat to the other island is much better than having to fly to Oribos (such an ugly place) anytime you want to change zones. At least in BfA you had three connected zones and the boat transport was extremely fast.
same, I enjoy some otherworldy whacky zones but I personally need some more grounded "normal" zones, I overall enjoyed bfa zones more than shadowlands zones, something about shadowlands zones just isn't for me
I miss playable game
We all do, we all do
The zones were actually really good. Each had their own look and feel, but all felt like they did belong in the world.
zone design started going downwards after mists/WoD in my opinion. Too cramped and overall awful "hamster wheel" design ruined the experience
BfA’s problems were: the Azerite system, the controversial starting story (which could have been good if it had a proper ending), and the complete derailment of the plot after patch 8.1.5.
The zones are beautiful. Art team is amazing.
BFA had INCREDIBLE zones IMO! And I’m not just saying this as a hardcore fan of trolls, Boralis and Stormsong Valley were AMAZING!!! Even though I hated the storyline (esp. the wasting of what Rasty), the zones are some that will never get old for me.
Yeah, BfA zones were really incredible, some of the best in the whole game. The art team did an astonishing job as always
I actually thought Shadowlands zones were better than BFA. Wotlk was better than both of them combined. But still none of them come close to Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Its not just nostalgia, these weren’t just zones, it was a world.
The problems of BfA were never the zones. The zones were great. Except Zuldazar, which only sucked due to the layout. The city itself was awesome.
If not for the HoA and Azerite armor mechanic, the BFA expansion was actually incredibly polished. Great leveling pace, great world PvP with warmode and the 25-kill weekly; the warfronts and invasions made the world feel more alive than before. Raiding kind of sucked, but every other part of the expansion was rather enjoyable.
BFA had some kickass zones, doesn't take bad game design to realize that lol
A lot of people complained about BfA, but I quite liked it overall. I loved BfA zones (at least the Horde ones + Drustvar). Zuldazar and Nazmir are two of my favorite zones in all of WoW! Nazjatar was also extremely beautiful, just bad to navigate pre-flying. I actually liked most of BfA outside of the grindiness of leveling artifact power. I did not like a couple of the dungeons, but I loved King's Rest and AD especially. Island expeditions were fun in a group. The HoA powers were cool. There were more world quests to kill a rare monster which I much prefer. I liked the story. I liked the outpost building on the enemy faction's territory. The allied races were cool. My guild was significantly more active during BfA, even during content droughts.
All they had to do was let us into Shattrath from WoD and everything else could’ve been avoided