It's been the opposite for me, mostly because I don't play a lot of alts.
There's just very quickly not much to do each patch if you don't want to play 5 different characters.
DF was the only xpac in all of WoW’s history in which I played through every patch at a high level. I also maxed all of my reps on multiple alts - also something that has never happened for me before.
Blizzard has set some awesome design precedents with this xpac. I purchased a 12 month sub (also a first!) in anticipation for TWW.
This is definitely on MoP/Legion level for me. Might be in my top 3.
Personally a 9.5/10 expansion, in terms of game design and philosophy towards what an MMO should be and respect for players' time.
BUT a "meh"/10 expansion, in terms of story telling. Idunno, I like big stakes, so sue me. Worldsoul Saga has me excited for where things are going though.
I tend to agree. I think some of the side quests like the blue dragonflight questline were really good, but I couldn’t tell you what actually happened through most of the main story.
Though after shadowlands, I don’t mind them taking a break from adding anything significant to the WoW canon. It’s better that they went back to basics and touched up the fundamentals of the game.
Sadly almost all of how's story is a meh/10. I still love this game and played all xpac, but in no way do I play it for the story. It's so aggressively bad lol.
Maybe TWW will change that? However blizzard hasn't released a actually good story in a very long time so I'll wait and see. Hope is high with TWW story.
even tho bfa pvp wasnt great, it was still better than what we got this expansion. we had the retpocalypse that killed the ladder. we had the "no changes to dh" season 3 coupled with massives rating problems that killed the ladder again. and now we have "no changes season", because fuck the players. honestly, id rather have corruption back, at least you could have some new fun with that instead of whatever it is we have right now
the difference is, in DF you have a good base game with bad pvp, while in BFA the game was absolute trash, but the pvp experience was ok.
Legion is the only time I ever came close to liking pvp. Gears in pvp is bullshit and so is pre-made. And lot of class are mainly design for pve.
Honnestly I would love to see blizzard take another pvp mode like plunderstorm but it's battleground blitz and you choose a your pre-made spec with less and slightly modified ability for pvp so the gamepaly flow better and no addon. No gears, levels talents, buff, items, racial or trinkets. Could be something like 8 to 12 ability and more action target ability for each class. (Like plunderstorm mana sphere for arcane mage)
Just to see how it goes. I have a feeling it would be really fun.
Going from Atal to Nokhud feels wild. There might be 2-3 important abilities in a pack in atal, where stopping them feels impactful.
I run Nokhud and the entire ground is green, layered with more random exploding green shit, everything has a cast bar, half the abilities don't matter, shit is exploding everywhere and every mob looks like a fucking horse.
Sometimes less is more.
It's not too bad anymore. Neither is Halls. I think RLP might be one of the harder keys because of how easy it is to screw up, wipe, and fail the timer.
The only thing wrong with Dragonflight dungeons is the amount of stops needed in normal pulls. Nokhud slaps for how fun the pulls are once you have interrupts down, it's just a massive barrier that isn't needed honestly.
Yeah the dragonflight dungeons suck and healer design/balancing this expansion has been awful but the seasonal rotation and gearing made it pretty fun for me.
No, it’s hard to find DPS who actually give a shit and learn more about the dungeon as a whole rather than just pew pew.
You know what’s interesting? Is that the higher level keys you go, the easier healing becomes. Because DPS’ are properly getting out of shit, properly using hard CC’s and soft CC’s like kicks/knockback, properly rotating defensives and understand WHICH boss or trash mechanics to use them for. If you ever get the privilege of running with 3k I/O+ DPS players (not from last season, EVERYONE got 3k last season) in a key, you’ll be on fucking vacation and the only thing you have to worry about is the mandatory damage. Then at that point I’d argue that tanking is the hardest.
>the higher level keys you go, the easier healing becomes.
Absolutely true, I have an easier time doing a +10 than a +5 because I can actually plan my heals. You still get one/two-shot in a +5 and if two people mess up at the same time it can be a wipe.
I gave up healing outside pvp and raids. I just couldn't in m+ anymore. I hated SS and wouldn't heal that either. Despise that mode.
And I was 1600+ each season with all the healing classes (except sham) in RBG and Arena. Which isn't to say I'm amazing or anything, I'm pretty casual, but obviously kinda know what I'm doing enough that m+ shouldn't be an issue.
The dungeons are good, however I think they suffer from 2 things
1. They’re long as hell. They’re a pretty big time investment and wiping feels super bad.
2. They are pretty damn hard, but in really annoying ways. A lot of the trash mobs in the dungeons are sooooo annoying to fight. They’re in big groups and they have lots of annoying mechanics that will CC you and then kill you if you’re not careful.
Dungeon feels hard because they squished the range of keys level.
Playing a +2 now is not like past season +2.
Yesterday I went pug on a Brackenhide +3 and it was a big fail, 48 deaths and depleted by a very huge margin.
I think I loved them all. As someone who got 2.5k in s1 and s3 I hated the dragonflight dungeon mechanics. Many times they felt overly punishing. Once you get them they’re not bad, but they aren’t fun to run over and over.
Pvp was great, but im sad that i *have to* take a break for season 4. I really did not enjoy the df dungeons. I log in think about having to play m+ to gear for raid and getting feelings of burnout cuz of that pool...
Its not a problem and my RL is understanding. But i dont wanna let my boys down :/
The pacing of the matches along with the changes to CC. Health bars ping pong too hard too fast, dampening ramping up faster feels really bad for healers (but all the classes have so much self sustain now that the match would never end without it) and I was not a fan of the combination of the reduction of CC duration and having a bunch of instant cast unavoidable CC added.
The state of healing in arena throughout the entire expansion has just been the worst I've ever seen due to all of the above imo.
Yeah, thinking about it, expansions have usually started with positivity in the community and ended with negativity or vice versa.
DF isn't perfect by any means, it has problems, but it started on a high and ended on a high and that's gotta be worth something, I think.
It's honestly been such a refreshing time for the game.
I can only speak for myself but this isn’t ever going to be remembered as “my favorite expansion”, but it will be remembered fondly for being good, and a return to form after SL.
“Favorite expansions” is reserved for MoP and Legion at this point, although the list is open to being modified should something come out to compete with those twos awesomeness.
My "favorites" are entirely nostalgia at this point and probably more to do with where my life was at the time, BFA and Wrath. I was in College (for Wrath). Life hadn't become a real reality at this point. Dragonflight is definitely up there though.
I've been saying this for years now. Most people's favorite expansions have nothing to do with the game itself but either the people they were playing with at the time or how much time they could dump into the game.
My favorite expansion in recent memory was BFA as well because I joined the first guild that I was a long time member and mythic raider in which in turn helped me make a lot of friends who I still play with/talk to even though the guild sadly no longer exists. I was also unemployed and was dumping 12+ hour days into the game and just having a blast.
I have been loving most of Dragonflight for similar reasons. I joined a new guild and it is such a good environment with good people and we've been climbing the ranks as a guild together with most of the people making it through all 3 tiers together. It's been awesome.
I definitely feel that bfa sentiment. I've almost forgotten how bad the azerite armor problem was but I wasn't pushing raid, prot warrior is my favorite tank, and I picked up havoc dh too which was very fun, easy, and strong as hell. I had some good friends that were playing with me too, so it was overall a really good time.
BFA gets treated like a horrible expansion simply because of Azerite Armour, which is probably the worse armour system ever imagined.
Had that system not permeated every aspect of gameplay I think people who think back fondly on BFA.
Obviously BFA had other problems, but I think they could have been overlooked had we been able to appreciate the good parts fully without azerite armour souring every moment.
Well BFA had problems, every expansion does. I think a lot of the negativity came from outside the game to be honest. If you take a step back at and actually look at BFA, it had so many good points. It had a bucketloads of content, good raids, good dungeons. Literally two leveling campaigns. Two full zones in one patch. Boralus is probably the best city they've made. A story centered around known established characters for the most part. And, well getting the keys for them was rough, visions were some of the best solo content they've done in a long time.
Even the less stellar systems like warfronts and islands were fun to do casually.
BFA's gonna be one of those expansions that in another few years down the road is gonna be looked fondly on. Mark my words.
DF will probably always hold a place of fairly high esteem for me just due to it being the first expansion (in a *very* long time) where Blizzard just cut the bullshit and focused on systems that could grow while still keeping fundamental aspects of an RPG in place.
Dragonflight has been the best expansion ever for me. I've played since Vanilla beta, not constantly, but I have played in every expansion for a minimum of one tier (and many for the whole thing). The changes in TWW look like it may give DF a very short reign in that spot, as it looks awesome, but I've never had more fun playing the game than I have in Dragonflight.
Dragonflight was overall a good expansion, but Blizzard needs to innovate more. Every season being the same thing is getting really old and boring. Blizzard needs to mix it up with some new ideas.
Not every zone needs to be a “timeless isle 2.0”. They need to try and find something different to do for the zones.
I’d love for them to split the raids up some as an example, and maybe add some of the “1 boss raids” again similar to Onyxias lair.
I’d also love to see mini raids make a return.
Other than the lack of innovation, I think it was overall a good expansion.
> I’d also love to see mini raids make a return.
I was watching a video recently about BFA raids, and they suggested that Blizzard's shied away from mini raids because they tried to make the one in BFA challenging enough to not be a pushover on Mythic but caused it to be overtuned badly instead, and the RWF was an absolute mess as a result.
To which I can only think: So what? Don't try to design the bloody raids around dragging out the RWF. Make them interesting, tied into the story, and actually plausible to beat (by which I don't mean "make them easy," I mean just don't release a damn boss that is legit impossible in the release version).
If Method, Liquid, Echo, whoever the heck is running those things ends up somehow plowing through a one or two boss raid in a day or two, so what? Worry about the game being fun for the people playing it first, not people watching someone else play it.
Exactly!!
If the raid is fun and has fun mechanics (doesn’t even have to be hard), and gives interesting and fun rewards I think it would be a rebounding success.
The mini raid in BFA was too difficult, but the items that dropped were very cool. The void stone absorbing healing and damage was a very cool idea and the item that stole HP from people around you was funny to use 😂
People act like because Liquid/Echo get through a raid quickly that the content isn't challenging yet they're running around doing normal and struggling. It's been that way as long as I've played WoW.
I don't believe this is accurate at all, there were massive participation issues with Crucible across all difficulties, I highly doubt their decision to stop making these has anything at all to do with RWF or even Mythic raiders.
The issue is where they place the raid and how it fits in with the rest of the season. You either make the loot better than existing content which is cannibalising those previous raids (just like ToGC did to Ulduar in Wrath), or you make it the same and people don't feel much incentive to run it. Obviously Crucible went with the latter and they tried to make it more appealing with some very interesting loot, but clearly it was not particularly effective.
I absolutely can see that if Blizzard tries to optimise how best to use their development resources to satisfy the most amount of players, that these smaller raids are *incredibly* hard to justify.
That's a fair enough point. Though with the new way that gear is scaled along a system, there's more wiggle room to do something like releasing a raid with maybe slightly higher on the Veteran, Champion, whatever track than the prior one, so it's technically starting higher, but won't raise to being more than the others and outshine it.
Making it slightly lower difficulty than the usual tier, or at least just around the first 3-4 bosses of a raid, would also mean it doesn't feel like a pushover ("welfare epics") or too punishing.
At that point, if you make it fun, and it ties into the story, it'd have a decent chance. It's just tricky trying to balance the difficulty, and gear that comes from it.
Although you *could* look to other potential rewards outside of just gear. Kind of like how you could run Trial of Valor for a specific transmog set. Toss in some transmog, maybe mounts, toys, whatever. Color variants for different difficulties. Depending on how it fits into the story, could drop some kind of currency to spend on the transmog/mounts/etc., or reputation with some faction. Gear's good and all, but there's more rewards you can add to something.
But yeah, all of this isn't really making a point of "It's so easy, why don't Blizz do it?" Because idea making is easy, actual execution of all these ideas and balancing them is a whole other thing. (And I could be here all day throwing out ideas for it. But that's just because I like coming up with ideas, not to rip on Blizz for "Why don't they do these things?")
I cant stand the current mythic raid tuning arms race its comically stupid and blizzard does an absolutely HORRIBLE job of trying to make it into an esport, so everyone’s experience suffers (even the wf raiders as they get stuck away from their families /homes for a week+ at a time) for virtually no benefit to blizzard as they dont invest in making it a big deal beyond a splash screen and a few social media posts.
Yea I agree. I'm sorry but mythic raiding, atleast the WFR should be an afterthought. There isn't enough mythic raiders to keep wow alive, that comes from casuals and normal/heroic raiders.
Stop balancing things for literally. 01% of the population. However that's one of my only real complaints other than story lol.
Yeah fair assessment. I think Delves is an interesting step. But yeah a mini raid that steps between dungeon and raid, maybe as a good way to get more casual people into a semi raid scene.
I really hope they bring back unique class quest lines that lead to some unique customisations/spell effects.
Agreed, delves are a good idea and I can’t wait to see how it plays out.
I’d also love class quest stuff to return, even if it’s just 1-2 classes at a time (would be a cool way for certain classes to get class skins).
Plus Hero Talents are looking exactly like I was hoping.
When they showed the first few I was like “so are they just passive effects?”.
But the overall messaging is their thematic nature and augmenting existing play styles, which is great.
The idea I could go out in the world, see a DK and know “oh, that’s an Unholy Rider” is a cool fucking concept.
Agree with all of this. Dragonflight feels like they're playing it safe at all times - but I really can't blame them. After the huge swings and misses with BFA and SL a conservative expansion that plays to their strengths is what they needed.
I don’t disagree. I think I read that tww is going to be shorter/fewer patch expansions. But they need to figure out the gap that leads into the next expansion. I like the idea in spirit of a “fated” season but 4, 5, maybe even 6 months of what we have now is a bit much.
So when we had the stream of dragonflight content I agree but this second iteration of a fated season is a bit anticlimactic.
Yeah everyone I know is planning to drop Season 4 and swap to Panda Remix when it comes out I’m so fucking stoked.
It’s an excuse to try a new class, level it to max, do raids while leveling, and all paired with one of my favorite continents + crazy new effects on gear.
What more could you ask for.
Panda Remix is going to be great for me because it's Classic-ish in an era where I didn't really play the game anymore. I didn't touch a single raid in Panda and I only barely touched the dungeons.
Panda Remix is basically the only thing stopping me from dropping my sub and playing catch up in FFXIV until Dawntrail launches.
I don't know, i get where you coming from, but if you aren't that much into leveling (especially when it is sped up), i don't think that Panda Remix will keep you busy for more than a month at best
I can see that, it’s hard to say without actually experiencing it for sure. I’m a raider first and foremost when it comes to WoW and I’m much more excited for doing the heroic remix raids then I am for anything about fated personally. And all the extra collectible stuff that’s gonna carry over is a nice incentive.
Compared to fated I’m not really excited about redoing the raids m, especially since we just did them and there’s nothing like affixes to get me hyped. The bullions are cool but I already had every item that I’m going to get with them so again not to interesting. Really just doing it for the collectables, and then having higher ilvl to start next xpac with whereas Remix I’ll be doing because I’m actually excited for the content.
At least were getting stuff like plunderstorm and mop remix to spice things up at the same time, but I do feel like theres a limit to how many “mini games” they can use to distract us from a content drought.
>I like the idea in spirit of a “fated” season but 4, 5, maybe even 6 months of what we have now is a bit much.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong - but one of the big draws for the sooner-than-expected TWW release is that this season *won't* last 6 months?
TWW - per the roadmap - should launch late summer/early fall. First day of fall is Sep 22 which would be pretty darn close to exactly 4 months.
I think 4 months (especially considering the Pandaria Remix event - which I assume if it goes well they will reprise in future end-of-expansion patches) is a pretty darn reasonable timeframe for an end-of-expansion Fated season.
Of course I'd love it to be shorter, but 4 months doesn't sound like an unreasonable "end of expansion content drought" (especially when it's not really a drought considering the stuff the new patch added + Panda Remix)
I think with the Pandaria remix the fated season isn’t as bad. Plus, I think it is good to give older content a second life. Vault is my favorite raid this expansion and I legit hate Amirdrassil due to the sour taste the Lego has left
I love the fated seasons and think its by far the best way to send off an xpac.
You get to relive all the day 1 patch drops each week, i have never seen an MMO more alive then s4 DF on a Tuesday.
Dragonflight didn't reach the highest highs that a lot of expansions did, but I did stay at a firm 7-8 for me the entire time and I can't say the last time an expansion kept me happy the entire way through. Maybe Wrath?
The Proletariat acquisition is looking really good for Blizzard. They're definitely playing it safe - and I absolutely can't blame them after BFA and Shadowlands - but this is the first time I've been optimistic about the long term health of the game in a long time.
Having flying from the first day AND not having the glyphs time gated (let's be honest, they could have easily made the whole system worse by only letting you unlock one glyph per week) made it a lot more enjoyable for me from day one.
Really like the gameplay. However I found this expansion thematically very generic, with few memorable moments and characters with little charisma. So in the future I think I'll remember it as "the expansion where I dragonride fast to do a thousand things".
I would say that it ignores people who quit early and never really cared to come back. Those players to be fair aren't as negative about the experience though it's hard to tell if it's just due to liking what was there but getting bored of it or it xould be just apathy to the game.
I quit dragonflught early on having a decent time with it. There are things I enjoyed and things I hated. Honestly though I can't tell what exactly has me so little invested in the game to bother even coming back to mess around like I would in the past as much as I use to and I'm a player that started way back in vanilla.
That said every xpac has this and a ton of those people who quit are... Very.. very active about complaining about WoW. And we didn't see that this time.
So to a degree I think the silence is a marked improvement over the rage we saw in previous xpacs. I can understand the apathy of some people around Dragonflight. I do think the apathy is an improvement from the vitriol. It means it's not utterly broken, it's just not appealing. That's a start.
The next xpac is where we see if DF was a fluke or they've really changed. I suspect a change, only because the goals, messaging and expansion of the team all seem to be in alignment with the DF style of doing things, rather than the BFA/SL attitude of "you think you do but you don't".
Its like the unofficial slogan of Dragonflight was no more bullshit and they delivered.
If you wanted to raid you could raid without all the extra bullshit. if you wanted to do M+ you could do that too and you didnt need to do any other bullshit.
I stand by dragonflight had the most mid world content ever. Time rifts being the exception because they were wacky and had actual diversity instead of only 2 different versions.
It has been hilarious to see 99% of my guildies pick up the weekly this week and go "WTF is a Time Rift? WTF is a Suffusion Camp?"
The World Content is the definition of mid. Only worth doing if you wanted to collect the cosmetics and such.
Dragon Racing has been pretty awesome though.
I don't think I agree. It had story beats, cinematics, an interesting rep grind that affected your professions, mount customisation and transmog. Quests were more coherent and you felt the world shifting with you. It took the decent bits out of BFA and Mists.
No that's fair, I do think they need to change rares to more 'unique' mobs and make rares actually 'rare' - been a gripe since mists. So I completely agree.
There's nothing to hate but my god it is the safest, most bland expansion yet. While I enjoyed the raids and M+ for the most part, each season's open world content just being new zone trying (and failing) to be Timeless Isle and a bunch of "fill up the bar" events every hour... incredibly uninspired.
To me dragonflight felt like the definition of mid. Unlike other expansions it didn't had anything that was atrotiously bad (Maybe private auras could be put here but I think they were worth the experimentation). We just had the best balanced classes in raid. But it didn't have anything that truely hit for me. We got tier sets back but they were pretty boring for the majority of the classes. We had 3 raids, but none of them was that great. We had new talent trees, but a lot of them were kind of left behind without any major touchup.
The expansion laid a lot of good foundation. And had decent content, but it's not even comparable to the other point of wow.
Also first half of dragonflight >>>> second half of dragonflight. It felt to me that the juice kind of ran out of mid way. And besides the designers who worked on healers this expansion (they really nailed mistweaver in my opinion) the cooking kind of stopped.
Then there's the augmentation thingy. I think it's great that they had this experiment and support specs could be a thing in the future. But that single spec impacted the way we play the game in a very bad way. I'm not talking about the meta and such. Details is useless any time you have an augmentation in your group. Whereas you could easily check stuff you wanted in quickly in the game you now have to wait till the combat is over and check logs (you also need to log all the time if you want any info). But even logs are completely fucked. Anytime something new comes to the game it has a big chance that the aug log hooks won't work with it (like how feral or assa tier set wasn't attributing dmg).
It's fine to experiment and such. But I hope the issues with this can be fixed as it made life a lot more miserable for very little upside.
I agree kind of, i dont think its so much of an issue that you cant see ur damage as aug as much of its an issue that you dont know if ur fucking up or if you are improving.
Powerful != interesting. Tiersets are usually tuned to be arround a 10-14% dmg gain. Because of this you' will obviously preffer characters with the tierbonus active.
A good tier bonus is something that alters the gameplay in a good way. Instead of playing the same way, it changes the way you use your spells making the season a lot more refreshing for the class. For positive examples look at the season 3 tier sets of both dps shaman specs or the season 3 mistweaver tier set (it was so impactful mws got the 2pc effect in their talent tree).
But most of the other tier sets were mainly passive and provided no decisions to make. You played the way you did previously you just did more dmg.
I think DF was a course corrections expansion, and I think it suffered for that. Instead of innovating and making some big exciting thing, it was a "okay, lets stop and turn things around" kind of deal. I have hopes that the world soul saga will start with the big hyped expansions again.
Also people were asking for a "lets go exploring and adventure and no high stakes!" expansion and lo and behold, it turned out boring haha. No one expected that!
There is barely anything to do outside of raid and mplus. The story and dialogue are embarassing. Outside of raid and mplus, there is no ambition and the content being praised is showing up to nearly identical scheduled world events.
Plunderstorm was great, Panda remix lools to be good. In game, we are missing a 4th raid tier and have crumbs of undercooked vanilla quest level content instead. We also still have classes and specs that play poorly and lack a proper class tree. Next to zero pet and world pcp content. No structured instanced content akin to visions or mage tower or something new. Nothing.
I agree. I feel like this sub gaslights me into thinking DF was a crazy good expansion or something. M+ and raiding is good like you said, but outside of that the zones are pretty lame and the world events are boring. We're still doing Soup and Hunts after like 2 years and it's really not that engaging at all.
Unpopular opinion, but I honestly had more fun grinding my covenant
There's no chance the ridiculous positivity sticks around. Remember that people were nuclear level negative about MoP and it's remembered pretty fondly now. There's no way anyone is going to be pining for the days of filling the bar at the dream blossom where you can't lose and nothing you do matters.
I do think if the side events like Plunderstorm (which I think was a great time for what it was) and Panda Remix and whatever else there is (possibly one more significant event I think) all pan out well, those will be remembered positively.
I would agree. I think many people are hesitant to call current times "the good days" but DF is very exceptionable in maintaining a strong rhythm throughout and it will likely age well years later when nostalgia for older expacs hit. The biggest critiques seem to center around vague "I just didn't like the content" or "the story was shallow" but these are pretty much minimal compared to controversies in past expansions.
Im so tired of seeing people act like blizzards writing was ever even phenomenal, at best is was passable at worst laughable.
Half the people complaining about the story probably skip through every cutscene anyway to push m+ or raid as fast as possible (because this is what i do) if i want phenomenal writing ill pick up a book not a mmorpg.
The story complaints only really started when people started comparing it to ff14, you know the story driven mmo.
Wow's overarching stories have always been meh at best. Even back in wc3 Arthas was just darth vader. Where wow has always excelled though is smaller stories within the expansions, even ones with meh stories, and world building in general. Unfortunately though I think worldbuilding has also suffered this expansion.
I don't have an overall negative opinion of Dragonflight, but it's probably the expansion I've ended up playing the least since Cataclysm.
I totally get why some people love having no "need" to log in, but I just found very little reason to log in very quickly into each patch outside of scheduled raid time. Doesn't help that I have little desire to play more than 1-2 characters. I'm not sure TWW is going to be much better in that regard as it seems like they're really leaning into alts as the primary method of stretching out content.
Who was negative about Legion at the end? There's always someone, but I think the general sentiment was that it had been a pretty great expansion.
Same with Wrath, and TBC, MoP too I'd wager.
It has been more than a decade though so, maybe I'm forgetting lol.
It’s by far the least I’ve played of any expansion since wrath. I primarily play arena. I recognise that the people who are playing it seem to be enjoying it though
Not only that, but Legion was far from perfect at the start with the artifact weapon grind locking you into a spec and the abysmal legendary system.
DF did have a few issues but none so glaring and none that lasted over half the expansion's duration.
I always have to sit and think for a moment any time people remember Legion fondly. This is entirely because I gave up on that expansion shortly after launch because the AP grind made alts terrible. I came back after BFA was announced and the grind was gone so I can see WHY people enjoy it, but it absolutely was not beloved at launch.
Legion was great. Yes, grind was an issue at start.
But the first patch landed like a month and a half after release and we got to play in Suramar. I think plenty would be interested to see it redone as a capitol to live in like Silvermoon will be in Midnight.
Then you had a bit of a lul with the timegated 7.2, but once Argus came along and you had that big ass planet covering half the sky... it was good. Some things got fixed a bit, notably the RNG legendaries got a currency.
Yes, it was still suboptimal for altoholics and multi-spec, but we were far gone in the expansion that we didn't need to grind that much for the main spec, so we could do another.
The story was awesome, albeit segregated with different class halls.
For people who want 5+ equal power characters, I can see why it sucked. But for people that just love to pour all their effort into one or two characters, Legion was cracked.
There was just always stuff to do. And it was just a really fun expansion with great dungeons and raids.
People that love legion either love grinds or are just remembering the last patch or 2. Nothing was fixed until the last couple of patches, but man was the legion high fucking high when everything was sorted out.
i liked that my effort directly lead to power gains, and that you could do absolutely anything in the game that you wanted to do to work for it, i was happy to not need alts to find something worthwhile to do until i truly wanted to play them
the legendary system started off ridiculous, them and AP being extremely multispec unfriendly was insanity but the pros ended up severely outweighing the cons, it was hard to stay mad at anything when content came out so fast and it being so good
Not me, I hate grinding for player power, I'd rather one not exist. But blasting +2 Maw with friends with actually fun classes and 5 different legendaries to swap throughout the dungeon was significantly more fun than any DF content including its M+ seasons.
7.3.5 wipes peoples memories of early legion. At launch legions was one of the worst expansions they've released. Terrible class redesigns, awful legendary acquisition, more meaningless professions, the broken isles were a HUGE lore retcon, suramar was divisive at best, emerald nightmare was a joke of a raid, the AP grind was awful, ect.
Then 7.1 came out and nighthold was okay, but it was mostly just more suramar.
7.2, a terrible mid patch zone with 11 weeks of tutorial quests, a forgettable dungeon, an okay raid at best. Invasions were fun I'll admit that (or was that in 7.1? It's been a while haha), and one stand out feature in the mage tower.
7.3 was argus with an again okay raid, another forgettable dungeon, and an open world that dried up incredibly quickly, and the nether crucible which was just entirely forgettable. Then 7.3.5 came out and was just entirely fixes at the final stages of the game. It's where the "fix it in the final patch" meme started.
When people remember legion fondly, they're remembering the mage tower, the like, 2 good class campaigns, and the games state in 7.3.5, literally at the end of the expansion.
Legion's honestly one of my least favourite expansions, sitting there with SL and WoD
Dragonflight was the first expansion where I was actively subbed for the entire time. I wouldn’t say it has the more engaging or cohesive story but all in all I really enjoyed it bookend to bookend.
I'm glad people enjoyed it, I'm honestly really surprised. Blizz is doing a ton to keep people engaged but I feel it's all outside of the main game. Df has done so much good for the game but I hope they have something in the pipe to really make it great again.
To me df felt very mid the entire time. I am mainly a raider but this is the first expansion I didn't love any of the raids or even a boss. It's also the first one that made me quit pvp and not get a 2200 season in. Heroic every tier was a joke and that felt bad, mythic was ok but too many people just can't put in that time anymore so now i raid with friends and in s mythic group for my fix. Nothing felt great to do but nothing felt horrible ether.
I did not like any of the df dungeons except the mega and only did m+to keep up with mythic raiding which feels like a huge miss.
I am disappointed in the final patch, not because it's bad but because I don't feel like we've had a super awesome one since bfa. Corruption and visions were some of the most fun iv had in the game. Fated seasons are hopefully here to stay to give us less content droughts but that doesn't mean I look forward to doing repeated raids. Ironically, I was hoping they'd give us ToT as a season 4 and we're kinda getting it. I hope fated seasons do turn into more old raids getting a face lift but that might be wishful thinking.
No great dungeons, most were meh.
Evoker tainted the entire expansion for me, be it the Pres dominance S1, or the unholy abomination that is Aug.
Add to that the terrible legendary acquisition, they legit managed to make it worse than Shadowlands and early Legion.
Dragonriding does nothing for me too.
One of my main games is Trackmania, so it just feels too slow to really make up for the hassle of having to actively press buttons instead of flying tabbed out with old mounts or flight masters.
Annoying crafted system(coming from someone who has all their toons on the same server, which is mostly Horde and I play Alliance too)
This isn't gonna be my least favorite expansion, but it's close.
Did get a few good months out of it though.
> Add to that the terrible legendary acquisition, they legit managed to make it worse than Shadowlands and early Legion.
Im not a fan of how they did legendaries this xpac, but to say its worse than early legion is just flat out not true.
>make up for the hassle of having to actively press buttons instead of flying tabbed out with old mounts or flight masters.
I feel like youre being overdramatic here, but even if this is your complaint, theyve made it so you can use old flying again. Also, FPs were always in the game if you wanted 'automated' flying.
There's a "dragonflight is the best" post every single day on this sub and none of them elaborate on why it is the best. This is manufactured at this point. "I barely played DF but oh man it feels incredible". Okay? I mean it's not bad but this is a bit ridiculous.
You're totally on point, my only disagreement is the quality of the non-pvp/mplus/raid content (so the world content). I just wish the expansion had its own actual unique stuff to do, it felt like a lot of fixes for prior expac's problems without its own substance to truly elevate it for me.
So fucking weird to me seeing people claim the world was “lacking in content” certain they’re stuck in the cycle of just afking for a group in cities like wow has always been.z
Literally every reset the world quest would have you out and about doing stuff for a shot at heroic raid gear so id have to wager these people didnt play remotely seriously
All of the toxic folk were drawn to /r/classicwow for Season of Discovery. As fun as SoD has been, the toxicity in that community (even outside of the sub) has been something else.
I think there was definitely some non positive points that a large majority of the player base weren’t happy with.
Rushed content, leading to bugs. It’s happened since pre-patch of Dragonflight, they actually removed things or just never fixed them over the course of the expansion.
Even with the rushed content we had points where it felt like a drought. This was due to the content being released was shallow or boring.
I think top 5 is way too safe of an estimate.
Remove SL, BFA and Wod and you only have 6 others to choose from. Not being top 5 means it's the worst of the expansions that were not widely despised.
I think, apart from pvp players, top 3 would be a reasonable estimate for more than half the playerbase, remove nostalgia as well and it would be pretty cemented in there. That's not even counting the people who missed the first few xpacs or people like me who skipped legion
MoP >>>> Legion >>>>>>>>> Cata > WoD >>>>>>>>>>>>> DF > WotLK/Classic/TBC >>>> SL >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BFA
It's top 5 but in terms of distance from cracking top 4, it's really not saying much
It has its downsides like the amount of scrapped content and the ability pruning + removal of snapshotting, but on average it was much more fun to play than the ones behind it IMO. The dungeons and raids were top-notch and the tier sets actually changed the way I played.
DF: pretty weak world content that amounts to filling meters, less major content patches than usual, weak raids & dungeons, classes aren't exceptionally fun to play. just firmly mid
WotLK/Classic/TBC are too dated, classes aren't that interesting yet, leveling's too slow, lot of old RPG mechanics that I'd rather have actual challenge than.
SL: raids and dungeons weren't that great, player power grinds, covenant restrictions, conduit energy, uninteresting classes, weak world content
BFA: actually awesome raids, but miserable state of the game (GCD change, RNG corruption vendor, azerite, essences, benthic gear, the amount of daily/weekly chores)
I liked dragonflight for the most part, but my rng on my main was so bad the entire first season that it drove me nuts and kind of ruined retail for me a bit, like I had to wait for the creation catalyst to even get my first piece of tier because it wasn't dropping in raid or from my vault, I ran so many CoS to get my trinket that by the time I got it I didn't really wana do m+ any more.
I think I'm just over this same gameplay loop we're stuck in with retail
Mop, but df is probably 2nd with legion being 3rd. I think there is only 1 complaint i had about mop and its scenarios, just not working out and how they affected dungeon development, but thats it. Literally, everything else was fire. With df my complaint, it is not that there is too much to do but that there is too much to do multiple times that visually and from a gameplay experience overwhelms you. Df if the case for a good amount of content if its account bound progress. In the grand scheme though its not bad, and it already at its base did so much right where bfa shadowlands and even legion fumbled.
It's had the least pain points since honestly MoP, but other expansions had way higher upsides that made me a lot more positive about whichever one than DF.
It's a C+ expansion overall - I'd be more willing to forgive the middling world content if Season 4 wasn't such an unforced error.
The biggest issues with DF were honestly all the bugs along the way. It was possibly the buggiest expansion to date and definitely one of the first where there were just massive bugs that hampered usability of features.
All the latest expansions had one thing that I really disliked (AP in Legions and BFA, Anima/Covenant BS in SL) but there is nothing in SF that I really disliked. It's the only expansion since Wrath that I have played from launch until the end.
When I look back at expansions and rate them I usually separate narrative/story and gameplay into different categories and completely discard the duration of the xpac, so its purely on the content.
That said DF had a similar cycle for me, strong S1 cleared heroic Raz... then periodically came back towards the end of s2 and s3 for a week or two. I am coming back for MOP remix but will likely give S4 a miss (maybe gear up alts as much as I can in whatever transition event takes place).
With the above in mind.. I can easily see it rating toward the bottom of the top 5 for sure.
I liked MoP the best because how much fun I had with monk and how much I enjoyed the expansion from every point of view.
DF if OK but it's just that just OK personally I don't like the story at all and the gameplay of some of the classes I play feel just way bloated with buttons that could easily just be merged.
I think i would agree with this. Legion had huge hate with the lego rng and first raid boss tuning issues. Legion was more fun but also more bold in designs. I think wow needed this type of EXP though. DF kind of just needed to not suck. Outside of maybe the aug release patch, it has been mostly positive for sure.
I just wished the raids were better, or stood out from each other, or we got another. Aberrus was one of the most bland raids I've ever done and it felt like all 3 of the raids were the exact same theme. You didn't really get a huge break from the dragons where most expansions have a little variety.
The way the areas felt alive with nature is my favorite thing this xpac. It reminds me of RDR2.
I even spent some nights just making a camp in the woods and looking at the stars until early morning. Some people even came across my camp and sat with me taking in the ambience without many words spoken.
This was a great xpac. My second favorite after MoP. It really came at the right time for me because I've had a rough few years.
I've said this before but, I didn't particularly love Dragonflight. The zones were nice and dragonflying is pretty cool, but I absolutely did not care about the story or characters at all.
However, even so I can appreciate DF overall, because in my opinion it has laid the foundation for a better WoW. I started playing during Cata and the game has never had such a consistent content / update schedule before. They're trying out exciting new stuff, like Plunderstorm and WoW Remix, the latter of which I'm very excited for. And maybe, with a storyline properly planned out, we will actually get some decent writing soon as well. Here's hoping.
Not really. It only seems that way because most of even the last few who were willing to give the game another chance after the Shadowlands dumpsterfire have all gone. All that's left is the people who will eat up whatever garbage blizzard serves up no matter what.
Dragonflight made some nice additions/improvements like the talent trees and dragonriding, as well as some decent experimentations with the gearing process. The raids were decent and while I didn't bother with M+ in season 1 before quitting(i.e. raidlogging for season 2 just long enough to get AotC then sub cancelling) I've heard it was decent as well.
But it also made many mistakes. Evokers(still-incomplete transmog, lacking classes they should logically have had access to from day 1, terrible implementation of visages, and augmentation existing in general), new class combos like lightforged/mag'har warlocks shattering established worldbuilding(and all the even worse ones they have lined up for the future), the story in general being just as if not *worse* than shadowlands, etc. And everything else outside of that was just "eh." It's there but doesn't do anything special.
It's at best a "safe" expansion that doesn't remotely feel like Warcraft and has done nothing to fix the things that were really causing players to jump ship.
Dragon flight objectively has been such a good expansion but for some reason it just doesn't click with me at all, now season 4 has been fun thus far and I'm really looking forward to panda remix. Overall however the expansion has been a miss for me even though I understand and think the improvements it made have been really good and needed. For all its flaws I loved the last season of BfA and legion before antorus, and MoP is still my all time favourite, but that might because it was my first expac
I don't think that marks it as a masterpiece, but i still agree with a way.
DF started pretty solid and..stayed that way. It never felt stellar to me the way vanilla, most of MoP, WotLK or even some parts of Legion did, but it stayed consistent and never really made me feel terrible about it.
My biggest peeve i think is the removals of m+ seasonal affixes. I know a bunch sucked, but some of the kiss/curse ones were super fun (awakened/tormented/encrypted/shrouded). Felt like blizz was at the cusp of realizing low risk fun buffs makes for an awesome season and then gave up on it to soon because community had enough.
They added flair to a season and it's sad to see it go with just timewalking seasons to replace it.
Also Bowsamdi's Reaping trolls from bfa s2 were incredibly fun to aoe.
These dungeons feel like they were designed to support the MDI, not actually be fun.
My only complaint, really. M+ has really screwed up dungeons for those of us that don't do it.
Except now with seaosn 4 or Season of buggy mess where they messed up so much they had already established, like world currency gear and world event gear cant be made into tier anymore.
Yeah, IMO the gameplay stayed fun and varied. Especially for someone like me who doesn't know a single person that plays so I play solo. Though IMO the story was still meh to me. I dunno where those primals came from but they just felt like Anime Villains to me. Also the ice one (I cant remember any of their names) was just able to say "whoops sorry" and they forgave her attempted genocide.
Same level for me as BfA (I enjoyed BfA but it was worse than Legion) but with way way better class design. I had fun playing it, sometimes I didn't have time to. Felt a bit on the rails as a whole.
I just came back to the game after a break in shadowlands and agree.
This is my favorite expansion for many reasons, but I also found my favorite quest chain I have ever played. I thoroughly enjoyed the bronze dragonflight quests and traveling through time and alternate timelines. It was a lot of fun!
WOTLK and MOP had that vibe more imo. Currently I am on break from DF due to ran out of things to keep me interested until MOP remix as I don’t see the appeal in S4.
Legion did.... I dont think DF is the best thing to ever happen to wow like the rest of this sub. Its not bad but i wouldnt call it amazing. People are not bored because they are not stopping content for a year while they work on next xpac. The expac itself was okay. Wasnt a fan of the dungeons, new race and class or story or pvp.
I seem to recall reading a while back that Dragonflight is unique among all WoW expansions in having more active players at the end of it than at the beginning. That says something about Dragonflight.
Dragonflight was passable. It didn't blow me away with anything, but at the same time it didn't drop the ball too hard on anything either. Story and the open world content has been a bit lacking, but it's not the end of the world. It's biggest flaw was lack of meaningful "midcore" content I think. Wasn't enough to take it down though. I think it's good compared to SL, but it's not up there with my favourites for me.
Edit: I'll also add on though that DF has held my attention the least amount of recent expansions, even SL. Once you were done your dungeons/raids for the week, there just wasn't much to do.
Since legion only the last patch before a new expansion has been the good one! Dflight was decent right from the get go probably because of the lack of borrowed power shenaningans. Raids have been decent as well minus a few shit designs (fu sennarth).
The story involving green flight and night elves is so cool.
Makes race choice matter, lorewise and background history, again.
Made me want to play my night elf druid?hunter again.
The weird thing is that Dragonflight has its own set of shortcomings that still did not trash the quality of the expansion. An example of this would be the (main) story feeling cutshort and ending in a similar situation as WoD. DF was able to get through that and still be a great expansion!
Yep dragonflight has definitely kept me interested (off/on) for the longest of any expac
It's been the opposite for me, mostly because I don't play a lot of alts. There's just very quickly not much to do each patch if you don't want to play 5 different characters.
Better than an endless grind for borrowed power scaling on just one character
Do you push m+? Mythic raid? Gladiator in pvp?
DF was the only xpac in all of WoW’s history in which I played through every patch at a high level. I also maxed all of my reps on multiple alts - also something that has never happened for me before. Blizzard has set some awesome design precedents with this xpac. I purchased a 12 month sub (also a first!) in anticipation for TWW. This is definitely on MoP/Legion level for me. Might be in my top 3.
Yes, this is my most played xpac since maybe ... vanilla? Lol
Personally a 9.5/10 expansion, in terms of game design and philosophy towards what an MMO should be and respect for players' time. BUT a "meh"/10 expansion, in terms of story telling. Idunno, I like big stakes, so sue me. Worldsoul Saga has me excited for where things are going though.
I tend to agree. I think some of the side quests like the blue dragonflight questline were really good, but I couldn’t tell you what actually happened through most of the main story. Though after shadowlands, I don’t mind them taking a break from adding anything significant to the WoW canon. It’s better that they went back to basics and touched up the fundamentals of the game.
Sadly almost all of how's story is a meh/10. I still love this game and played all xpac, but in no way do I play it for the story. It's so aggressively bad lol. Maybe TWW will change that? However blizzard hasn't released a actually good story in a very long time so I'll wait and see. Hope is high with TWW story.
Some very good story was to be found in Wrath and Legion.
Dragonflight is probably my favorite expansion from a PvE perspective (M+ specifically) and my most hated expansion from a PvP perspective.
I could have sworn people hated pvp the most in BFA
And you'd be right. The pruned mess that was BfA really didn't feel like WoW PvP anymore.
I complained about PvP far more in BfA, but I stopped complaining and quit PvP in DF (as did most of the people I used to PvP with)
even tho bfa pvp wasnt great, it was still better than what we got this expansion. we had the retpocalypse that killed the ladder. we had the "no changes to dh" season 3 coupled with massives rating problems that killed the ladder again. and now we have "no changes season", because fuck the players. honestly, id rather have corruption back, at least you could have some new fun with that instead of whatever it is we have right now the difference is, in DF you have a good base game with bad pvp, while in BFA the game was absolute trash, but the pvp experience was ok.
Also didn't helped that PvP was forced onto PvE only people in BFA
I feel azerite and corruption definitely played a role in that.
wPVP in BFA is the best in the history of the game. Nazjatar <3 <3 <3
God that zone was so freaking fun for wPvP. Even as alliance on whatever unlucky shards I got in lol
Legion is the only time I ever came close to liking pvp. Gears in pvp is bullshit and so is pre-made. And lot of class are mainly design for pve. Honnestly I would love to see blizzard take another pvp mode like plunderstorm but it's battleground blitz and you choose a your pre-made spec with less and slightly modified ability for pvp so the gamepaly flow better and no addon. No gears, levels talents, buff, items, racial or trinkets. Could be something like 8 to 12 ability and more action target ability for each class. (Like plunderstorm mana sphere for arcane mage) Just to see how it goes. I have a feeling it would be really fun.
Yeah this. Basically make overwatch/league/etc but for WoW PvP. You queue, chose a class/spec and have a loadout.
Exactly what I had in mind. I would absolutely love it.
M+ seasons pretty good, but I found most of the dragonflight dungeons lacking.
Going from Atal to Nokhud feels wild. There might be 2-3 important abilities in a pack in atal, where stopping them feels impactful. I run Nokhud and the entire ground is green, layered with more random exploding green shit, everything has a cast bar, half the abilities don't matter, shit is exploding everywhere and every mob looks like a fucking horse. Sometimes less is more.
I joined after season 1 and I have yet to enter Azure Vault. Is it as bad as I've heard?
It was one of the hardest in S1 because the timer was tight, and the last boss scales hard into high keys, but right now I would say it is the easiest
It's not too bad anymore. Neither is Halls. I think RLP might be one of the harder keys because of how easy it is to screw up, wipe, and fail the timer.
I did NOT remember the first boss being so hard in s1 (in RLP) but RN I think have more wipes on her than every other boss put together.
RLP season 1 was the hardest key of all time tbh. they nerfed it like 15 times in a row
First boss in RLP was incredibly harder in s1. It's honestly a joke now that the shield doesn't last nearly as long and the vortex happens less.
Second Boss is and will probably stay an absolute WALL on tyrannical.
CRISPY
The crystal with the shield on last fuckin hurts, kill it. Stay out of the very obvious frontal the dogs do, or stun them out of it if you can.
The final boss has been nerfed hard. It's more of an afterthought nowadays
The only thing wrong with Dragonflight dungeons is the amount of stops needed in normal pulls. Nokhud slaps for how fun the pulls are once you have interrupts down, it's just a massive barrier that isn't needed honestly.
To be fair, court of stars and other past dungeons have been similarly bad, so its not a DF dungeon exclusive problem. But yeah.
Yeah the dragonflight dungeons suck and healer design/balancing this expansion has been awful but the seasonal rotation and gearing made it pretty fun for me.
Oh 100%
It's harder to heal m+ than playing dark souls nowdays
No, it’s hard to find DPS who actually give a shit and learn more about the dungeon as a whole rather than just pew pew. You know what’s interesting? Is that the higher level keys you go, the easier healing becomes. Because DPS’ are properly getting out of shit, properly using hard CC’s and soft CC’s like kicks/knockback, properly rotating defensives and understand WHICH boss or trash mechanics to use them for. If you ever get the privilege of running with 3k I/O+ DPS players (not from last season, EVERYONE got 3k last season) in a key, you’ll be on fucking vacation and the only thing you have to worry about is the mandatory damage. Then at that point I’d argue that tanking is the hardest.
>the higher level keys you go, the easier healing becomes. Absolutely true, I have an easier time doing a +10 than a +5 because I can actually plan my heals. You still get one/two-shot in a +5 and if two people mess up at the same time it can be a wipe.
You also don't have to heal because people just die instantly, there's no patching up mistakes, mistakes just kill you.
SHHH IF THEY HEAR YOU THEYLL NERF HEALING BY 10%
I gave up healing outside pvp and raids. I just couldn't in m+ anymore. I hated SS and wouldn't heal that either. Despise that mode. And I was 1600+ each season with all the healing classes (except sham) in RBG and Arena. Which isn't to say I'm amazing or anything, I'm pretty casual, but obviously kinda know what I'm doing enough that m+ shouldn't be an issue.
The dungeons are good, however I think they suffer from 2 things 1. They’re long as hell. They’re a pretty big time investment and wiping feels super bad. 2. They are pretty damn hard, but in really annoying ways. A lot of the trash mobs in the dungeons are sooooo annoying to fight. They’re in big groups and they have lots of annoying mechanics that will CC you and then kill you if you’re not careful.
Dungeon feels hard because they squished the range of keys level. Playing a +2 now is not like past season +2. Yesterday I went pug on a Brackenhide +3 and it was a big fail, 48 deaths and depleted by a very huge margin.
I hated all the DF dungeons.
I think I loved them all. As someone who got 2.5k in s1 and s3 I hated the dragonflight dungeon mechanics. Many times they felt overly punishing. Once you get them they’re not bad, but they aren’t fun to run over and over.
Pvp was great, but im sad that i *have to* take a break for season 4. I really did not enjoy the df dungeons. I log in think about having to play m+ to gear for raid and getting feelings of burnout cuz of that pool... Its not a problem and my RL is understanding. But i dont wanna let my boys down :/
Yeah I have been primarily a PvP player since Wrath. I now M+. Fuck Arena, its in the worst state its ever been, that's not even considering shuffle
I have never liked PvP but what makes you not like it specifically this expansion? Is it abilities or something else?
The pacing of the matches along with the changes to CC. Health bars ping pong too hard too fast, dampening ramping up faster feels really bad for healers (but all the classes have so much self sustain now that the match would never end without it) and I was not a fan of the combination of the reduction of CC duration and having a bunch of instant cast unavoidable CC added. The state of healing in arena throughout the entire expansion has just been the worst I've ever seen due to all of the above imo.
Yeah, thinking about it, expansions have usually started with positivity in the community and ended with negativity or vice versa. DF isn't perfect by any means, it has problems, but it started on a high and ended on a high and that's gotta be worth something, I think. It's honestly been such a refreshing time for the game.
I can only speak for myself but this isn’t ever going to be remembered as “my favorite expansion”, but it will be remembered fondly for being good, and a return to form after SL. “Favorite expansions” is reserved for MoP and Legion at this point, although the list is open to being modified should something come out to compete with those twos awesomeness.
My "favorites" are entirely nostalgia at this point and probably more to do with where my life was at the time, BFA and Wrath. I was in College (for Wrath). Life hadn't become a real reality at this point. Dragonflight is definitely up there though.
I've been saying this for years now. Most people's favorite expansions have nothing to do with the game itself but either the people they were playing with at the time or how much time they could dump into the game. My favorite expansion in recent memory was BFA as well because I joined the first guild that I was a long time member and mythic raider in which in turn helped me make a lot of friends who I still play with/talk to even though the guild sadly no longer exists. I was also unemployed and was dumping 12+ hour days into the game and just having a blast. I have been loving most of Dragonflight for similar reasons. I joined a new guild and it is such a good environment with good people and we've been climbing the ranks as a guild together with most of the people making it through all 3 tiers together. It's been awesome.
I have good memories of WoD because the guild I was in at the time was awesome.
I definitely feel that bfa sentiment. I've almost forgotten how bad the azerite armor problem was but I wasn't pushing raid, prot warrior is my favorite tank, and I picked up havoc dh too which was very fun, easy, and strong as hell. I had some good friends that were playing with me too, so it was overall a really good time.
BFA gets treated like a horrible expansion simply because of Azerite Armour, which is probably the worse armour system ever imagined. Had that system not permeated every aspect of gameplay I think people who think back fondly on BFA. Obviously BFA had other problems, but I think they could have been overlooked had we been able to appreciate the good parts fully without azerite armour souring every moment.
Well BFA had problems, every expansion does. I think a lot of the negativity came from outside the game to be honest. If you take a step back at and actually look at BFA, it had so many good points. It had a bucketloads of content, good raids, good dungeons. Literally two leveling campaigns. Two full zones in one patch. Boralus is probably the best city they've made. A story centered around known established characters for the most part. And, well getting the keys for them was rough, visions were some of the best solo content they've done in a long time. Even the less stellar systems like warfronts and islands were fun to do casually. BFA's gonna be one of those expansions that in another few years down the road is gonna be looked fondly on. Mark my words.
DF will probably always hold a place of fairly high esteem for me just due to it being the first expansion (in a *very* long time) where Blizzard just cut the bullshit and focused on systems that could grow while still keeping fundamental aspects of an RPG in place.
Dragonflight has been the best expansion ever for me. I've played since Vanilla beta, not constantly, but I have played in every expansion for a minimum of one tier (and many for the whole thing). The changes in TWW look like it may give DF a very short reign in that spot, as it looks awesome, but I've never had more fun playing the game than I have in Dragonflight.
really good expansion but mediocre lore, and that's alright pvp sucked doe
Dragonflight was overall a good expansion, but Blizzard needs to innovate more. Every season being the same thing is getting really old and boring. Blizzard needs to mix it up with some new ideas. Not every zone needs to be a “timeless isle 2.0”. They need to try and find something different to do for the zones. I’d love for them to split the raids up some as an example, and maybe add some of the “1 boss raids” again similar to Onyxias lair. I’d also love to see mini raids make a return. Other than the lack of innovation, I think it was overall a good expansion.
> I’d also love to see mini raids make a return. I was watching a video recently about BFA raids, and they suggested that Blizzard's shied away from mini raids because they tried to make the one in BFA challenging enough to not be a pushover on Mythic but caused it to be overtuned badly instead, and the RWF was an absolute mess as a result. To which I can only think: So what? Don't try to design the bloody raids around dragging out the RWF. Make them interesting, tied into the story, and actually plausible to beat (by which I don't mean "make them easy," I mean just don't release a damn boss that is legit impossible in the release version). If Method, Liquid, Echo, whoever the heck is running those things ends up somehow plowing through a one or two boss raid in a day or two, so what? Worry about the game being fun for the people playing it first, not people watching someone else play it.
Exactly!! If the raid is fun and has fun mechanics (doesn’t even have to be hard), and gives interesting and fun rewards I think it would be a rebounding success. The mini raid in BFA was too difficult, but the items that dropped were very cool. The void stone absorbing healing and damage was a very cool idea and the item that stole HP from people around you was funny to use 😂
People act like because Liquid/Echo get through a raid quickly that the content isn't challenging yet they're running around doing normal and struggling. It's been that way as long as I've played WoW.
I don't believe this is accurate at all, there were massive participation issues with Crucible across all difficulties, I highly doubt their decision to stop making these has anything at all to do with RWF or even Mythic raiders. The issue is where they place the raid and how it fits in with the rest of the season. You either make the loot better than existing content which is cannibalising those previous raids (just like ToGC did to Ulduar in Wrath), or you make it the same and people don't feel much incentive to run it. Obviously Crucible went with the latter and they tried to make it more appealing with some very interesting loot, but clearly it was not particularly effective. I absolutely can see that if Blizzard tries to optimise how best to use their development resources to satisfy the most amount of players, that these smaller raids are *incredibly* hard to justify.
That's a fair enough point. Though with the new way that gear is scaled along a system, there's more wiggle room to do something like releasing a raid with maybe slightly higher on the Veteran, Champion, whatever track than the prior one, so it's technically starting higher, but won't raise to being more than the others and outshine it. Making it slightly lower difficulty than the usual tier, or at least just around the first 3-4 bosses of a raid, would also mean it doesn't feel like a pushover ("welfare epics") or too punishing. At that point, if you make it fun, and it ties into the story, it'd have a decent chance. It's just tricky trying to balance the difficulty, and gear that comes from it. Although you *could* look to other potential rewards outside of just gear. Kind of like how you could run Trial of Valor for a specific transmog set. Toss in some transmog, maybe mounts, toys, whatever. Color variants for different difficulties. Depending on how it fits into the story, could drop some kind of currency to spend on the transmog/mounts/etc., or reputation with some faction. Gear's good and all, but there's more rewards you can add to something. But yeah, all of this isn't really making a point of "It's so easy, why don't Blizz do it?" Because idea making is easy, actual execution of all these ideas and balancing them is a whole other thing. (And I could be here all day throwing out ideas for it. But that's just because I like coming up with ideas, not to rip on Blizz for "Why don't they do these things?")
I cant stand the current mythic raid tuning arms race its comically stupid and blizzard does an absolutely HORRIBLE job of trying to make it into an esport, so everyone’s experience suffers (even the wf raiders as they get stuck away from their families /homes for a week+ at a time) for virtually no benefit to blizzard as they dont invest in making it a big deal beyond a splash screen and a few social media posts.
Yea I agree. I'm sorry but mythic raiding, atleast the WFR should be an afterthought. There isn't enough mythic raiders to keep wow alive, that comes from casuals and normal/heroic raiders. Stop balancing things for literally. 01% of the population. However that's one of my only real complaints other than story lol.
Yeah fair assessment. I think Delves is an interesting step. But yeah a mini raid that steps between dungeon and raid, maybe as a good way to get more casual people into a semi raid scene. I really hope they bring back unique class quest lines that lead to some unique customisations/spell effects.
Agreed, delves are a good idea and I can’t wait to see how it plays out. I’d also love class quest stuff to return, even if it’s just 1-2 classes at a time (would be a cool way for certain classes to get class skins).
Plus Hero Talents are looking exactly like I was hoping. When they showed the first few I was like “so are they just passive effects?”. But the overall messaging is their thematic nature and augmenting existing play styles, which is great. The idea I could go out in the world, see a DK and know “oh, that’s an Unholy Rider” is a cool fucking concept.
I’m pretty excited about the hero talents haha. I can’t wait to see how they feel in-game
Agree with all of this. Dragonflight feels like they're playing it safe at all times - but I really can't blame them. After the huge swings and misses with BFA and SL a conservative expansion that plays to their strengths is what they needed.
DF may not be perfect, but it is *exactly* the kind of expansion this game needed, for both the devs and the community.
Let's go for two in a row, baby!!!!
I don’t disagree. I think I read that tww is going to be shorter/fewer patch expansions. But they need to figure out the gap that leads into the next expansion. I like the idea in spirit of a “fated” season but 4, 5, maybe even 6 months of what we have now is a bit much. So when we had the stream of dragonflight content I agree but this second iteration of a fated season is a bit anticlimactic.
Your mistake is planning on 6 months of fated rather than Panda Remix.
Yeah everyone I know is planning to drop Season 4 and swap to Panda Remix when it comes out I’m so fucking stoked. It’s an excuse to try a new class, level it to max, do raids while leveling, and all paired with one of my favorite continents + crazy new effects on gear. What more could you ask for.
Panda Remix is going to be great for me because it's Classic-ish in an era where I didn't really play the game anymore. I didn't touch a single raid in Panda and I only barely touched the dungeons. Panda Remix is basically the only thing stopping me from dropping my sub and playing catch up in FFXIV until Dawntrail launches.
I don't know, i get where you coming from, but if you aren't that much into leveling (especially when it is sped up), i don't think that Panda Remix will keep you busy for more than a month at best
I can see that, it’s hard to say without actually experiencing it for sure. I’m a raider first and foremost when it comes to WoW and I’m much more excited for doing the heroic remix raids then I am for anything about fated personally. And all the extra collectible stuff that’s gonna carry over is a nice incentive. Compared to fated I’m not really excited about redoing the raids m, especially since we just did them and there’s nothing like affixes to get me hyped. The bullions are cool but I already had every item that I’m going to get with them so again not to interesting. Really just doing it for the collectables, and then having higher ilvl to start next xpac with whereas Remix I’ll be doing because I’m actually excited for the content.
Yeah, all in all i think we are in agreement, in the end it is up to personal preference
Take shorter patch cycles w a grain of salt. We’ve heard the same thing each expac since wotlk
Except they've actually followed through in dragonflight so far.
The roadmap has honestly been amazing so far for WoW, I hope they continue it within TWW and beyond as well
we have content every 8 weeks, that never happend, no salt needed
At least were getting stuff like plunderstorm and mop remix to spice things up at the same time, but I do feel like theres a limit to how many “mini games” they can use to distract us from a content drought.
>I like the idea in spirit of a “fated” season but 4, 5, maybe even 6 months of what we have now is a bit much. Someone correct me if I'm wrong - but one of the big draws for the sooner-than-expected TWW release is that this season *won't* last 6 months? TWW - per the roadmap - should launch late summer/early fall. First day of fall is Sep 22 which would be pretty darn close to exactly 4 months. I think 4 months (especially considering the Pandaria Remix event - which I assume if it goes well they will reprise in future end-of-expansion patches) is a pretty darn reasonable timeframe for an end-of-expansion Fated season. Of course I'd love it to be shorter, but 4 months doesn't sound like an unreasonable "end of expansion content drought" (especially when it's not really a drought considering the stuff the new patch added + Panda Remix)
I think with the Pandaria remix the fated season isn’t as bad. Plus, I think it is good to give older content a second life. Vault is my favorite raid this expansion and I legit hate Amirdrassil due to the sour taste the Lego has left
I love the fated seasons and think its by far the best way to send off an xpac. You get to relive all the day 1 patch drops each week, i have never seen an MMO more alive then s4 DF on a Tuesday.
Dragonflight didn't reach the highest highs that a lot of expansions did, but I did stay at a firm 7-8 for me the entire time and I can't say the last time an expansion kept me happy the entire way through. Maybe Wrath? The Proletariat acquisition is looking really good for Blizzard. They're definitely playing it safe - and I absolutely can't blame them after BFA and Shadowlands - but this is the first time I've been optimistic about the long term health of the game in a long time.
It was great—I just really disliked how involving the professions became. I’m someone who needs to be saved from myself by devs.
I’ve been having so much fun with Dragonflight.
Having flying from the first day AND not having the glyphs time gated (let's be honest, they could have easily made the whole system worse by only letting you unlock one glyph per week) made it a lot more enjoyable for me from day one.
Really like the gameplay. However I found this expansion thematically very generic, with few memorable moments and characters with little charisma. So in the future I think I'll remember it as "the expansion where I dragonride fast to do a thousand things".
I would say that it ignores people who quit early and never really cared to come back. Those players to be fair aren't as negative about the experience though it's hard to tell if it's just due to liking what was there but getting bored of it or it xould be just apathy to the game. I quit dragonflught early on having a decent time with it. There are things I enjoyed and things I hated. Honestly though I can't tell what exactly has me so little invested in the game to bother even coming back to mess around like I would in the past as much as I use to and I'm a player that started way back in vanilla.
That said every xpac has this and a ton of those people who quit are... Very.. very active about complaining about WoW. And we didn't see that this time. So to a degree I think the silence is a marked improvement over the rage we saw in previous xpacs. I can understand the apathy of some people around Dragonflight. I do think the apathy is an improvement from the vitriol. It means it's not utterly broken, it's just not appealing. That's a start. The next xpac is where we see if DF was a fluke or they've really changed. I suspect a change, only because the goals, messaging and expansion of the team all seem to be in alignment with the DF style of doing things, rather than the BFA/SL attitude of "you think you do but you don't".
Its like the unofficial slogan of Dragonflight was no more bullshit and they delivered. If you wanted to raid you could raid without all the extra bullshit. if you wanted to do M+ you could do that too and you didnt need to do any other bullshit.
I stand by dragonflight had the most mid world content ever. Time rifts being the exception because they were wacky and had actual diversity instead of only 2 different versions.
It has been hilarious to see 99% of my guildies pick up the weekly this week and go "WTF is a Time Rift? WTF is a Suffusion Camp?" The World Content is the definition of mid. Only worth doing if you wanted to collect the cosmetics and such. Dragon Racing has been pretty awesome though.
I don't think I agree. It had story beats, cinematics, an interesting rep grind that affected your professions, mount customisation and transmog. Quests were more coherent and you felt the world shifting with you. It took the decent bits out of BFA and Mists.
I am separating the world content from story and quest content when I say that, sorry. I'm talking rares, events, collectibles, ect.
No that's fair, I do think they need to change rares to more 'unique' mobs and make rares actually 'rare' - been a gripe since mists. So I completely agree.
the story this expac was its one massive weakness
There's nothing to hate but my god it is the safest, most bland expansion yet. While I enjoyed the raids and M+ for the most part, each season's open world content just being new zone trying (and failing) to be Timeless Isle and a bunch of "fill up the bar" events every hour... incredibly uninspired.
To me dragonflight felt like the definition of mid. Unlike other expansions it didn't had anything that was atrotiously bad (Maybe private auras could be put here but I think they were worth the experimentation). We just had the best balanced classes in raid. But it didn't have anything that truely hit for me. We got tier sets back but they were pretty boring for the majority of the classes. We had 3 raids, but none of them was that great. We had new talent trees, but a lot of them were kind of left behind without any major touchup. The expansion laid a lot of good foundation. And had decent content, but it's not even comparable to the other point of wow. Also first half of dragonflight >>>> second half of dragonflight. It felt to me that the juice kind of ran out of mid way. And besides the designers who worked on healers this expansion (they really nailed mistweaver in my opinion) the cooking kind of stopped. Then there's the augmentation thingy. I think it's great that they had this experiment and support specs could be a thing in the future. But that single spec impacted the way we play the game in a very bad way. I'm not talking about the meta and such. Details is useless any time you have an augmentation in your group. Whereas you could easily check stuff you wanted in quickly in the game you now have to wait till the combat is over and check logs (you also need to log all the time if you want any info). But even logs are completely fucked. Anytime something new comes to the game it has a big chance that the aug log hooks won't work with it (like how feral or assa tier set wasn't attributing dmg). It's fine to experiment and such. But I hope the issues with this can be fixed as it made life a lot more miserable for very little upside.
I agree kind of, i dont think its so much of an issue that you cant see ur damage as aug as much of its an issue that you dont know if ur fucking up or if you are improving.
Tier sets “boring” for most classes wtf? They’re literally so good it guaranteed a raid spot early on in patches if you had a set bonus.
Powerful != interesting. Tiersets are usually tuned to be arround a 10-14% dmg gain. Because of this you' will obviously preffer characters with the tierbonus active. A good tier bonus is something that alters the gameplay in a good way. Instead of playing the same way, it changes the way you use your spells making the season a lot more refreshing for the class. For positive examples look at the season 3 tier sets of both dps shaman specs or the season 3 mistweaver tier set (it was so impactful mws got the 2pc effect in their talent tree). But most of the other tier sets were mainly passive and provided no decisions to make. You played the way you did previously you just did more dmg.
I think DF was a course corrections expansion, and I think it suffered for that. Instead of innovating and making some big exciting thing, it was a "okay, lets stop and turn things around" kind of deal. I have hopes that the world soul saga will start with the big hyped expansions again. Also people were asking for a "lets go exploring and adventure and no high stakes!" expansion and lo and behold, it turned out boring haha. No one expected that!
There is barely anything to do outside of raid and mplus. The story and dialogue are embarassing. Outside of raid and mplus, there is no ambition and the content being praised is showing up to nearly identical scheduled world events. Plunderstorm was great, Panda remix lools to be good. In game, we are missing a 4th raid tier and have crumbs of undercooked vanilla quest level content instead. We also still have classes and specs that play poorly and lack a proper class tree. Next to zero pet and world pcp content. No structured instanced content akin to visions or mage tower or something new. Nothing.
I agree. I feel like this sub gaslights me into thinking DF was a crazy good expansion or something. M+ and raiding is good like you said, but outside of that the zones are pretty lame and the world events are boring. We're still doing Soup and Hunts after like 2 years and it's really not that engaging at all. Unpopular opinion, but I honestly had more fun grinding my covenant
There's no chance the ridiculous positivity sticks around. Remember that people were nuclear level negative about MoP and it's remembered pretty fondly now. There's no way anyone is going to be pining for the days of filling the bar at the dream blossom where you can't lose and nothing you do matters. I do think if the side events like Plunderstorm (which I think was a great time for what it was) and Panda Remix and whatever else there is (possibly one more significant event I think) all pan out well, those will be remembered positively.
Wait. Patch 10.2.7 is about to land. It might prove you wrong. EDIT: Speaking of the devil: https://youtu.be/jOgHVEQvUvw
I often feel like Dragonflight has been a narrative break and reorientation for WoW and a field test to see what kinds of dailies we'd do most.
It was also set up to be the leveling expansion for new and returning players, so they went a bit generic
Shadowlands being ass definitely helped Dragonflight. I don’t think the Dragonflight original dungeons are that great.
I would agree. I think many people are hesitant to call current times "the good days" but DF is very exceptionable in maintaining a strong rhythm throughout and it will likely age well years later when nostalgia for older expacs hit. The biggest critiques seem to center around vague "I just didn't like the content" or "the story was shallow" but these are pretty much minimal compared to controversies in past expansions.
Im so tired of seeing people act like blizzards writing was ever even phenomenal, at best is was passable at worst laughable. Half the people complaining about the story probably skip through every cutscene anyway to push m+ or raid as fast as possible (because this is what i do) if i want phenomenal writing ill pick up a book not a mmorpg.
The story complaints only really started when people started comparing it to ff14, you know the story driven mmo. Wow's overarching stories have always been meh at best. Even back in wc3 Arthas was just darth vader. Where wow has always excelled though is smaller stories within the expansions, even ones with meh stories, and world building in general. Unfortunately though I think worldbuilding has also suffered this expansion.
I don't have an overall negative opinion of Dragonflight, but it's probably the expansion I've ended up playing the least since Cataclysm. I totally get why some people love having no "need" to log in, but I just found very little reason to log in very quickly into each patch outside of scheduled raid time. Doesn't help that I have little desire to play more than 1-2 characters. I'm not sure TWW is going to be much better in that regard as it seems like they're really leaning into alts as the primary method of stretching out content.
Who was negative about Legion at the end? There's always someone, but I think the general sentiment was that it had been a pretty great expansion. Same with Wrath, and TBC, MoP too I'd wager. It has been more than a decade though so, maybe I'm forgetting lol.
Prob goes down as best xpac since Legion but that's not exactly.... yea. It's ok!
Yeah mechanically the DF dungeons are pretty good, but man they just feel too long imo
Professions are trash, but overall its good xpac
It’s by far the least I’ve played of any expansion since wrath. I primarily play arena. I recognise that the people who are playing it seem to be enjoying it though
Not only that, but Legion was far from perfect at the start with the artifact weapon grind locking you into a spec and the abysmal legendary system. DF did have a few issues but none so glaring and none that lasted over half the expansion's duration.
I always have to sit and think for a moment any time people remember Legion fondly. This is entirely because I gave up on that expansion shortly after launch because the AP grind made alts terrible. I came back after BFA was announced and the grind was gone so I can see WHY people enjoy it, but it absolutely was not beloved at launch.
Legion was great. Yes, grind was an issue at start. But the first patch landed like a month and a half after release and we got to play in Suramar. I think plenty would be interested to see it redone as a capitol to live in like Silvermoon will be in Midnight. Then you had a bit of a lul with the timegated 7.2, but once Argus came along and you had that big ass planet covering half the sky... it was good. Some things got fixed a bit, notably the RNG legendaries got a currency. Yes, it was still suboptimal for altoholics and multi-spec, but we were far gone in the expansion that we didn't need to grind that much for the main spec, so we could do another. The story was awesome, albeit segregated with different class halls.
Oh God don't remind me of the Suramar timegating and grind. Hated that, Still my fav expansion
For people who want 5+ equal power characters, I can see why it sucked. But for people that just love to pour all their effort into one or two characters, Legion was cracked. There was just always stuff to do. And it was just a really fun expansion with great dungeons and raids.
People that love legion either love grinds or are just remembering the last patch or 2. Nothing was fixed until the last couple of patches, but man was the legion high fucking high when everything was sorted out.
i liked that my effort directly lead to power gains, and that you could do absolutely anything in the game that you wanted to do to work for it, i was happy to not need alts to find something worthwhile to do until i truly wanted to play them the legendary system started off ridiculous, them and AP being extremely multispec unfriendly was insanity but the pros ended up severely outweighing the cons, it was hard to stay mad at anything when content came out so fast and it being so good
Not me, I hate grinding for player power, I'd rather one not exist. But blasting +2 Maw with friends with actually fun classes and 5 different legendaries to swap throughout the dungeon was significantly more fun than any DF content including its M+ seasons.
7.3.5 wipes peoples memories of early legion. At launch legions was one of the worst expansions they've released. Terrible class redesigns, awful legendary acquisition, more meaningless professions, the broken isles were a HUGE lore retcon, suramar was divisive at best, emerald nightmare was a joke of a raid, the AP grind was awful, ect. Then 7.1 came out and nighthold was okay, but it was mostly just more suramar. 7.2, a terrible mid patch zone with 11 weeks of tutorial quests, a forgettable dungeon, an okay raid at best. Invasions were fun I'll admit that (or was that in 7.1? It's been a while haha), and one stand out feature in the mage tower. 7.3 was argus with an again okay raid, another forgettable dungeon, and an open world that dried up incredibly quickly, and the nether crucible which was just entirely forgettable. Then 7.3.5 came out and was just entirely fixes at the final stages of the game. It's where the "fix it in the final patch" meme started. When people remember legion fondly, they're remembering the mage tower, the like, 2 good class campaigns, and the games state in 7.3.5, literally at the end of the expansion. Legion's honestly one of my least favourite expansions, sitting there with SL and WoD
Dragonflight was the first expansion where I was actively subbed for the entire time. I wouldn’t say it has the more engaging or cohesive story but all in all I really enjoyed it bookend to bookend.
I'm glad people enjoyed it, I'm honestly really surprised. Blizz is doing a ton to keep people engaged but I feel it's all outside of the main game. Df has done so much good for the game but I hope they have something in the pipe to really make it great again. To me df felt very mid the entire time. I am mainly a raider but this is the first expansion I didn't love any of the raids or even a boss. It's also the first one that made me quit pvp and not get a 2200 season in. Heroic every tier was a joke and that felt bad, mythic was ok but too many people just can't put in that time anymore so now i raid with friends and in s mythic group for my fix. Nothing felt great to do but nothing felt horrible ether. I did not like any of the df dungeons except the mega and only did m+to keep up with mythic raiding which feels like a huge miss. I am disappointed in the final patch, not because it's bad but because I don't feel like we've had a super awesome one since bfa. Corruption and visions were some of the most fun iv had in the game. Fated seasons are hopefully here to stay to give us less content droughts but that doesn't mean I look forward to doing repeated raids. Ironically, I was hoping they'd give us ToT as a season 4 and we're kinda getting it. I hope fated seasons do turn into more old raids getting a face lift but that might be wishful thinking.
No great dungeons, most were meh. Evoker tainted the entire expansion for me, be it the Pres dominance S1, or the unholy abomination that is Aug. Add to that the terrible legendary acquisition, they legit managed to make it worse than Shadowlands and early Legion. Dragonriding does nothing for me too. One of my main games is Trackmania, so it just feels too slow to really make up for the hassle of having to actively press buttons instead of flying tabbed out with old mounts or flight masters. Annoying crafted system(coming from someone who has all their toons on the same server, which is mostly Horde and I play Alliance too) This isn't gonna be my least favorite expansion, but it's close. Did get a few good months out of it though.
> Add to that the terrible legendary acquisition, they legit managed to make it worse than Shadowlands and early Legion. Im not a fan of how they did legendaries this xpac, but to say its worse than early legion is just flat out not true. >make up for the hassle of having to actively press buttons instead of flying tabbed out with old mounts or flight masters. I feel like youre being overdramatic here, but even if this is your complaint, theyve made it so you can use old flying again. Also, FPs were always in the game if you wanted 'automated' flying.
There's a "dragonflight is the best" post every single day on this sub and none of them elaborate on why it is the best. This is manufactured at this point. "I barely played DF but oh man it feels incredible". Okay? I mean it's not bad but this is a bit ridiculous.
[удалено]
You're totally on point, my only disagreement is the quality of the non-pvp/mplus/raid content (so the world content). I just wish the expansion had its own actual unique stuff to do, it felt like a lot of fixes for prior expac's problems without its own substance to truly elevate it for me.
So fucking weird to me seeing people claim the world was “lacking in content” certain they’re stuck in the cycle of just afking for a group in cities like wow has always been.z Literally every reset the world quest would have you out and about doing stuff for a shot at heroic raid gear so id have to wager these people didnt play remotely seriously
All of the toxic folk were drawn to /r/classicwow for Season of Discovery. As fun as SoD has been, the toxicity in that community (even outside of the sub) has been something else.
I think there was definitely some non positive points that a large majority of the player base weren’t happy with. Rushed content, leading to bugs. It’s happened since pre-patch of Dragonflight, they actually removed things or just never fixed them over the course of the expansion. Even with the rushed content we had points where it felt like a drought. This was due to the content being released was shallow or boring.
I think top 5 is way too safe of an estimate. Remove SL, BFA and Wod and you only have 6 others to choose from. Not being top 5 means it's the worst of the expansions that were not widely despised. I think, apart from pvp players, top 3 would be a reasonable estimate for more than half the playerbase, remove nostalgia as well and it would be pretty cemented in there. That's not even counting the people who missed the first few xpacs or people like me who skipped legion
MoP >>>> Legion >>>>>>>>> Cata > WoD >>>>>>>>>>>>> DF > WotLK/Classic/TBC >>>> SL >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BFA It's top 5 but in terms of distance from cracking top 4, it's really not saying much
I'm curious as a fellow secret wod enjoyer, how come it's in your top 4?
It has its downsides like the amount of scrapped content and the ability pruning + removal of snapshotting, but on average it was much more fun to play than the ones behind it IMO. The dungeons and raids were top-notch and the tier sets actually changed the way I played. DF: pretty weak world content that amounts to filling meters, less major content patches than usual, weak raids & dungeons, classes aren't exceptionally fun to play. just firmly mid WotLK/Classic/TBC are too dated, classes aren't that interesting yet, leveling's too slow, lot of old RPG mechanics that I'd rather have actual challenge than. SL: raids and dungeons weren't that great, player power grinds, covenant restrictions, conduit energy, uninteresting classes, weak world content BFA: actually awesome raids, but miserable state of the game (GCD change, RNG corruption vendor, azerite, essences, benthic gear, the amount of daily/weekly chores)
BC was pretty sick
It was fine, if a little boring. Probably top 3 for me alongside MoP and WoD.
Dragonflight is the only expansion I didn’t play for a few months before quitting. I mean I didn’t play it at all didn’t pique any interest
Pretty good.
You didn’t see all the hysterics about how terrible the expansion was when the last raid cinematic came out
I liked dragonflight for the most part, but my rng on my main was so bad the entire first season that it drove me nuts and kind of ruined retail for me a bit, like I had to wait for the creation catalyst to even get my first piece of tier because it wasn't dropping in raid or from my vault, I ran so many CoS to get my trinket that by the time I got it I didn't really wana do m+ any more. I think I'm just over this same gameplay loop we're stuck in with retail
Mop, but df is probably 2nd with legion being 3rd. I think there is only 1 complaint i had about mop and its scenarios, just not working out and how they affected dungeon development, but thats it. Literally, everything else was fire. With df my complaint, it is not that there is too much to do but that there is too much to do multiple times that visually and from a gameplay experience overwhelms you. Df if the case for a good amount of content if its account bound progress. In the grand scheme though its not bad, and it already at its base did so much right where bfa shadowlands and even legion fumbled.
It has seemed that way from an outsiders perspective who quit playing retail. At the start of dragon flight, but still kept an eye on Reddit.
Wotlk and Bc had a strong showing though probably second to DF
It's been so nice just playing the game instead of having to do mandatory power grinds through single player quests.
It's had the least pain points since honestly MoP, but other expansions had way higher upsides that made me a lot more positive about whichever one than DF. It's a C+ expansion overall - I'd be more willing to forgive the middling world content if Season 4 wasn't such an unforced error.
The biggest issues with DF were honestly all the bugs along the way. It was possibly the buggiest expansion to date and definitely one of the first where there were just massive bugs that hampered usability of features.
It remained until Tindral.
All the latest expansions had one thing that I really disliked (AP in Legions and BFA, Anima/Covenant BS in SL) but there is nothing in SF that I really disliked. It's the only expansion since Wrath that I have played from launch until the end.
I loved the direction its going gameplay wise and loved the dragon isles. But the story seriously just felt like a big filler episode.
When I look back at expansions and rate them I usually separate narrative/story and gameplay into different categories and completely discard the duration of the xpac, so its purely on the content. That said DF had a similar cycle for me, strong S1 cleared heroic Raz... then periodically came back towards the end of s2 and s3 for a week or two. I am coming back for MOP remix but will likely give S4 a miss (maybe gear up alts as much as I can in whatever transition event takes place). With the above in mind.. I can easily see it rating toward the bottom of the top 5 for sure.
I liked MoP the best because how much fun I had with monk and how much I enjoyed the expansion from every point of view. DF if OK but it's just that just OK personally I don't like the story at all and the gameplay of some of the classes I play feel just way bloated with buttons that could easily just be merged.
I think i would agree with this. Legion had huge hate with the lego rng and first raid boss tuning issues. Legion was more fun but also more bold in designs. I think wow needed this type of EXP though. DF kind of just needed to not suck. Outside of maybe the aug release patch, it has been mostly positive for sure.
I think they didn't take much risks this time it felt bland and uninteresting after a while for me.Not saying its bad tho.
I just wished the raids were better, or stood out from each other, or we got another. Aberrus was one of the most bland raids I've ever done and it felt like all 3 of the raids were the exact same theme. You didn't really get a huge break from the dragons where most expansions have a little variety.
The way the areas felt alive with nature is my favorite thing this xpac. It reminds me of RDR2. I even spent some nights just making a camp in the woods and looking at the stars until early morning. Some people even came across my camp and sat with me taking in the ambience without many words spoken. This was a great xpac. My second favorite after MoP. It really came at the right time for me because I've had a rough few years.
I've said this before but, I didn't particularly love Dragonflight. The zones were nice and dragonflying is pretty cool, but I absolutely did not care about the story or characters at all. However, even so I can appreciate DF overall, because in my opinion it has laid the foundation for a better WoW. I started playing during Cata and the game has never had such a consistent content / update schedule before. They're trying out exciting new stuff, like Plunderstorm and WoW Remix, the latter of which I'm very excited for. And maybe, with a storyline properly planned out, we will actually get some decent writing soon as well. Here's hoping.
Not really. It only seems that way because most of even the last few who were willing to give the game another chance after the Shadowlands dumpsterfire have all gone. All that's left is the people who will eat up whatever garbage blizzard serves up no matter what. Dragonflight made some nice additions/improvements like the talent trees and dragonriding, as well as some decent experimentations with the gearing process. The raids were decent and while I didn't bother with M+ in season 1 before quitting(i.e. raidlogging for season 2 just long enough to get AotC then sub cancelling) I've heard it was decent as well. But it also made many mistakes. Evokers(still-incomplete transmog, lacking classes they should logically have had access to from day 1, terrible implementation of visages, and augmentation existing in general), new class combos like lightforged/mag'har warlocks shattering established worldbuilding(and all the even worse ones they have lined up for the future), the story in general being just as if not *worse* than shadowlands, etc. And everything else outside of that was just "eh." It's there but doesn't do anything special. It's at best a "safe" expansion that doesn't remotely feel like Warcraft and has done nothing to fix the things that were really causing players to jump ship.
Dragon flight objectively has been such a good expansion but for some reason it just doesn't click with me at all, now season 4 has been fun thus far and I'm really looking forward to panda remix. Overall however the expansion has been a miss for me even though I understand and think the improvements it made have been really good and needed. For all its flaws I loved the last season of BfA and legion before antorus, and MoP is still my all time favourite, but that might because it was my first expac
I don't think that marks it as a masterpiece, but i still agree with a way. DF started pretty solid and..stayed that way. It never felt stellar to me the way vanilla, most of MoP, WotLK or even some parts of Legion did, but it stayed consistent and never really made me feel terrible about it. My biggest peeve i think is the removals of m+ seasonal affixes. I know a bunch sucked, but some of the kiss/curse ones were super fun (awakened/tormented/encrypted/shrouded). Felt like blizz was at the cusp of realizing low risk fun buffs makes for an awesome season and then gave up on it to soon because community had enough. They added flair to a season and it's sad to see it go with just timewalking seasons to replace it. Also Bowsamdi's Reaping trolls from bfa s2 were incredibly fun to aoe.
These dungeons feel like they were designed to support the MDI, not actually be fun. My only complaint, really. M+ has really screwed up dungeons for those of us that don't do it.
Except now with seaosn 4 or Season of buggy mess where they messed up so much they had already established, like world currency gear and world event gear cant be made into tier anymore.
Yeah, IMO the gameplay stayed fun and varied. Especially for someone like me who doesn't know a single person that plays so I play solo. Though IMO the story was still meh to me. I dunno where those primals came from but they just felt like Anime Villains to me. Also the ice one (I cant remember any of their names) was just able to say "whoops sorry" and they forgave her attempted genocide.
Same level for me as BfA (I enjoyed BfA but it was worse than Legion) but with way way better class design. I had fun playing it, sometimes I didn't have time to. Felt a bit on the rails as a whole.
I just came back to the game after a break in shadowlands and agree. This is my favorite expansion for many reasons, but I also found my favorite quest chain I have ever played. I thoroughly enjoyed the bronze dragonflight quests and traveling through time and alternate timelines. It was a lot of fun!
DF was so much better than SL most of us haven't recovered from the whiplash yet.
I liked the systems but I felt like the overall narrative was a bit poor.
WOTLK and MOP had that vibe more imo. Currently I am on break from DF due to ran out of things to keep me interested until MOP remix as I don’t see the appeal in S4.
Legion did.... I dont think DF is the best thing to ever happen to wow like the rest of this sub. Its not bad but i wouldnt call it amazing. People are not bored because they are not stopping content for a year while they work on next xpac. The expac itself was okay. Wasnt a fan of the dungeons, new race and class or story or pvp.
I have really enjoyed dragonflight it's been a great experience and expansion no complaints
I seem to recall reading a while back that Dragonflight is unique among all WoW expansions in having more active players at the end of it than at the beginning. That says something about Dragonflight.
Dragonflight was passable. It didn't blow me away with anything, but at the same time it didn't drop the ball too hard on anything either. Story and the open world content has been a bit lacking, but it's not the end of the world. It's biggest flaw was lack of meaningful "midcore" content I think. Wasn't enough to take it down though. I think it's good compared to SL, but it's not up there with my favourites for me. Edit: I'll also add on though that DF has held my attention the least amount of recent expansions, even SL. Once you were done your dungeons/raids for the week, there just wasn't much to do.
Since legion only the last patch before a new expansion has been the good one! Dflight was decent right from the get go probably because of the lack of borrowed power shenaningans. Raids have been decent as well minus a few shit designs (fu sennarth).
The story involving green flight and night elves is so cool. Makes race choice matter, lorewise and background history, again. Made me want to play my night elf druid?hunter again.
Totally agree on this 🔥
The weird thing is that Dragonflight has its own set of shortcomings that still did not trash the quality of the expansion. An example of this would be the (main) story feeling cutshort and ending in a similar situation as WoD. DF was able to get through that and still be a great expansion!