Tilaurins’ thoughts on World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth
BfA has had it’s fair share of community backlash and drama, and with BlizzCon over for 2018 and 8.1 a month away, I wanted to voice some of my personal thoughts and observations on the state of the game. Most of what I’ll be saying here is anecdotal, and based on my own experience, but your mileage may vary. Keep in mind, too, I’m Australian, so I’m using The Queen’s English.
The Experience
It felt like the levelling and progression of BfA was a lot faster than previous expansions, particularly compared to Legion. Within the first day and a half I had hit level 120, not unexpectedly having taken time off from work, but surprisingly I found I had hit the maximum and rank 3 on all but one skill ranks of the two gathering professions I’d chosen — herbing and skinning. Again, compared to Legion that felt super fast. Even with flying when levelling alts in Legion, it felt like it took quite some time to hit the maximum of the profession, let alone all the rank 3’s.
The faction reputations felt similarly fast, but once I did get them they fell completely flat. I’d already gotten better gear than most of them had from dungeons, and given I’m playing Alliance I had a complete lack of interest in the varied recolours of horses that they gave access to. The mini siege tower from 7th Legion was cool, I’ll admit, and I did like getting the rest of the 7th Legion transmog — but then I got that from warfronts anyway in the end.
The war campaign was mostly great, and fun, but I didn’t really have any attachment to the NPC’s I unlocked as followers — only Falstad was familiar to me, and only thanks to Red Shirt Guy and associated memes. Not only that, but unlocking them only seemed to let me use them for missions, there was no real sense of progression or attachment to them as there has been followers in the past, something I really enjoyed.
Where the war campaign fell down though was the opening of the other outposts on the opposed faction island. As Alliance, I had dealt with hordes of goblins on the shores of Zuldazar, delved into blood troll caverns in Nazmir, and Fremen’d my way across the deserts of Vol’dun. Once I’d established the main Alliance bases there and immersed myself in all the quests, having the smaller outposts pop up as upgrades via the mission table seemed really neat, and I was looking forward to some customisation similar to WoD’s “zone ability” choices, but it was a real let down when all the quests resulted in was going to an area, clicking a button, and getting a new flight point. What a let down.
High End Content
The dungeons of BfA have mostly been fun and thematic, my own hatred of gnomes and THE MOTHERLODE!! aside, until we hit around Mythic +5. I do NOT like Shrine of Storms at all around that point, even at as a 370 iLVL Guardian Druid. More frustratingly, I feel the dungeons are less accessible in general than previous expansions, purely thanks to the split of Horde & Alliance islands. We don’t have the same ability to just hit our flight whistle, hop on a bird, and fly to the next dungeon we want to hit while going AFK for a quick drink and a slash (that’s a bio break to the uneducated), especially when we all seem to want to avoid specific dungeons for particular affixes. Obviously we can hearth to Boralus/Dazar’alor and then fly from there, but it’s still just that little bit extra effort that gets in the way and feels like it breaks up the journey somewhat — I’d welcome a flight path between the big islands, that’s for sure.
Another staple of end game content is world quests [WQ], which I loved in Legion. The lack of paragon reputation (where once exalted, you get a cool prize every so many thousand extra reputation for that faction) has completely killed my enthusiasm for WQ’s. They’re spread out (as we can’t fly), the rewards are useless (again, I’ve far outgeared them simply by playing), and frankly they’re just a bit boring. Some of the most fun WQ’s like pooping on the pirates come up far too infrequently, while others like the Pizza Hut Menu Maze of The Story of Loh feel quite patronising. Others like duelling with swords atop the pirate ship in Freehold come with no instructions/clues on how they work, but more frustrating than anything the most fun things just aren’t WQ’s
In Suramar we got to ride a T-Rex through a city and destroy demons, but in Zandazar the only dinosaur quests seem to be basic kill quests. On the broken shore we got to go through portals and be ridden by a little imp, or disguise ourselves as demons to steal their stuff, but in Storm Shrine Valley we are sent to collect rats. There’s plenty of content we did during questing that would have made great/fun repeatable quests, like Fragment of the Firelands, that have been completely overlooked as WQ’s.
As for Uldir, well, I’m torn. I’ve never been a big fan of the titan aesthetic, but plated in the gold of the Zandalari it’s grown on me. The fights are mostly fun, but they’re overtuned for small groups — last week I read that only Zul has been defeated in heroic by groups of 12 only 112 times, and it’s quite common for my raid to barely get enough to raid at all let alone hit a dozen warm bodies. We’ve got gear out the wazoo (that means a lot), we’re all decently skilled, it just feels like a pure numbers game of not having enough people to stand in pools, dispel gribblies, and so on — it’s really demoralising. This week marks the first week since Uldir opened that we haven’t raided at all, we had six people show up Wednesday night and only nine last night, so there was just no point. Obviously finding a larger guild/pugging extras is one option, but being unable to progress past a part of continent using the minimums it’s been designed for feels pretty harsh — and much like it hasn’t been designed that way at all.
The Numbers Game
One thing that’s getting a lot of chatter around the place is subscribed numbers. It’s hard to comment much on that without any solid information, but it also feels like it’s hard to ignore. Our guild has seen some of our most regular players just give up in boredom this expansion, and that feels quite bad. It’s like inviting friends to your house for D&D night, only to have them decided they’d rather stay home and watch Friends. I’m not suggesting BfA is ruining the community, but it’s also not doing a lot to keep it together, and I’m finding that really disappointing.
I feel like the numbers game applies a lot to the actual content available as well. For me, one of the things I was most excited for in BfA was the allied races — Zandalari trolls looked awesome, and to finally have someone my own size in a game as a human? Spank my fat ass and call me Kul Tiran — especially as a druid! The Kul Tiran druid forms are the main reason I switched to druid for BfA, and according to BlizzCon info they’re still not coming until next year. This is a feature that was advertised as a main part of the expansion, to my mind both allied races should have been in about a month after launch, not six months! It’s really depressing to be told you’re getting a shiny new toy but then be repeatedly told “oh, not just yet”, and it’s really pulling the wind out of my sails.
Worse in my mind is that I’m actually spending as much time working on old content as I am the current expansion. I hadn’t finished Balance of Power on my druid, so I’ve been going back through Legion to unlock the cool spirit bear. I have absolutely no story content left to complete on my main (I haven’t since week two of the expansion), the repeatable content of dungeons, world quests, and warfronts feels very bland, and then there’s the big elephant in the room…
Azerite
No discussion on BfA can leave out the “worst itemisation in the games history” of the Azerite debarcle. I’m not going to analyze the linked post, or go over the endless debate on the issue, I’m just going to talk about it from my personal point of view and experience. I will also, however, voice a really acerbic and potentially spurious judgement first.
I could not give a fat rats crack about the Heart of Azeroth, and that’s where all the azerite power goes.
Now, that may sound rather harsh, and it’s kind of intended to, because let me tell you about artifact power in Legion (being fully aware that you likely know all about it already). In Legion as a Frost Deathknight I had the Blades of the Fallen Prince, reforged from the ruins of Frostmourne, the swords Frostreaper and Icebringer. When equipped, as I wandered around the broken isles Arthas himself would occasionally appear and talk to me, an essence left lingering in the sword. As a Blood Deathknight I had the Maw of the Damned, a vicious, bloodthirsty axe bound with the essence of the demon Netrezaar, and NPC’s were afraid of it. They commented as I walked past. “That axe looks hungry” they’d say, and they weren’t wrong.
I loved those weapons. I loved hunting down the extra appearances for them, exploring their quirks and nature, and moreover I ***WANTED*** (and I can’t emphasize that enough) to power them up, to make them stronger, and unlock the abilities in them.
Now I have a sparkly necklace that does nothing.
Oh, sure, the abilities of the Azerite Armour I keep scrapping are unlocked thanks to the power in the Heart of Azeroth, but to me that’s like the importance of flour to a cake — you want the cake, you don’t give a crap about the flour. It’s a key or a threshold of sorts, and in of itself that’s not a bad thing — but it’s not one I care about at all.
When you add the issues with Azerite Armour (which, as mentioned, I am endlessly scrapping because of endlessly crap combinations of traits) it makes a huge negative experience to me, so I’ve just mentally disconnected from it and literally do not care. I’ve been doing the Azerite missions on the mission table over the others — but only because those others grant reputation, and I CAN’T GET ANY MORE. I like the mechanic of the mission table, the little matching game of followers to missions, but it’s a simple matter of choosing the least crap reward of whats on offer.
As to the traits themself, they remind me of the end of Legion, something I’ve not heard anyone else refer to. Remember The Vindicaar? Remember how Artifact Relics went from “hey, that’s neat” to “ugh, I have to go check if this is worth using, and it probably isn’t”? That’s right, it’s the Netherlight Crucible problem, that of picking the lesser crap choice, and/or sifting through available choices that you can’t see at the time of looting.
Having random abilities as the primary customisation mechanic within main pieces of gear was absolutely awful at the end of Legion, and I doubt I’m alone in saying that I couldn’t have cared less about relics when the Netherlight Crucible changed how they worked. For me WoW has always been a goal orientated game, the epitomy of which was the Artifact Traits. A semi linear/semi choice based set of abilities, slowly unlocked through personal progression. That’s the essence of RPG’s to me, and really to most gaming these days in general.
Imagine in D&D if when you finally hit level 5, instead of being able to choose Fireball or Lightning Bolt, you randomly got Wind Wall. That’s what the Azerite Armour feels like to me. I get something, and I should feel glad I got it, but then it’s a massive let down and I’m just left wanting something else.
Solo Progression
My last thoughts are on the solo challenges we are completely lacking — things like the mage tower, hidden artifact appearances or armour sets, and the class order hall. These were all fun, without a doubt, and great features in Legion. Why on earth they haven’t been mirrored in BfA is completely beyond me.
The War Campaign feels like an attempt to mirror the class order hall, but it’s not as personal and very two dimensional — everyone on your faction has the same experience, and if you want to level any alts to have the same access to content then you repeat it and it’s exactly the same again (I’m currently on my second alt going through it, and I couldn’t be less thrilled). Compare that to “Hey, I’m gunna level my mage, and see what’s in the mage class order hall” or “You know what, I always like the druid aesthetic of Warcraft III, let’s see boost one just to do the class order campaign”.
For our mains, most of us have played the same class for the majority of our WoW life, so those class order halls spoke to us, for example the shaman order hall was the culmination of 110 levels of my orc shaman and his struggles. I found characters I hadn’t seen in years, met new and interesting characters, and saw several different takes on the same theme of how I had played my class. The war campaign does none of that, it just doesn’t have the same personal feel to it, and it’s quite a let down compared to the class order halls, which were almost a perfect evolution of the garrison system of WoD.
(Speaking of which, in WoD I commanded a fleet that could sink Lady Ashvanes mongrel pirates without spilling a drop of orcish ale, yet all the agency of defeating said pirates was completely removed plot wise as Jaina summoned someone elses fleet to do it in BfA? Please, stop disconnecting me from the plot!)
I appreciate the focus on the faction war, I do, but not at the expense of my own interaction with the story. I feel like I’ve gone from being a general or similar in WoD to a rank and file soldier in BfA, and that’s just not fun. Nothing I’m doing really feels like it’s truly improving my characters or bringing more depth to them, merely ticking off some boxes on someone else’s list. I’m glad we saved Jaina, she’s awesome (and in fact BfA has turned my opinion on her from boring Mary Sue to being glad my partner wanted to name our new cat after her), and I really want to get in amongst the Zandalari in the Horde and roar with them in defiance…
But that’s not how it feels, is it? It’s just feeling like we’re on the side lines, following some orders, and drudging through the mud. I guess that’s a great metaphor for the reality of war, but I’m not after reality thanks, I want my savage Worgen Druid to be as far from reality as it possibly can be.
Looking Forward
I’m glad 8.1 has been revealed, but I’m really, really disappointed in the lack of volume to the content. Waiting until 8.15 for the new raid(s?) and the allied races I expected several months ago is really despiriting. I haven’t even begun to talk about professions or island expeditions, I don’t see anything about professions getting much better, and island expeditions are very limited by their actual nature and I don’t think they’ll change a lot.
I’m much more excited for the content of 8.15 and 8.2 than I am the minute amount that’s coming for 8.1, it feels like a real non event. Najatar? Sign me up. Battle for Darkshore? Fuck yes. Will it all be too little too late? God I hope not, I’m not here to shag spiders, I’m here to play WoW and I’m really, really beginning to feel like it’s going downhill too fast for the coming rise to fix. I’m quite concerned our guild won’t make it to 8.2, which I guess happens and isn’t really life or death, but at the end of the day WoW for me is about having fun playing a game and having fun playing that game with friends, and the longer it all takes to improve the less either of those things happens.
