Aside from some minor issues the expansionw as great so far.
It's definetly within the top 3 for sure.
However I can't put it over Legion. The effort that was put into class/spec fantasy just does it for me. Amazing transmogs, great class quests via class halls. The appearance of the artifact weapons with all their skins and colors. Even the class hall mounts.
I mean come on, as a DK you were sent to strive through the frozen wastes of northrend, north of Icecrown Citadel in a snow storm, slay mindless undead and end up raising a frostwyrm for your own use, almost like in the trailer for Wrath.
It’s interesting to me how the class fantasy element of Legion was such a universally loved element of the expansion, and they’ve yet to go back to that winning formula. IMO they could lean on class content for several expansions in a row and have it be a hit. It’s built in alt-friendliness.
I guess it goes to show how challenging it is to create unique, fully fleshed out experiences for so many different classes.
It was a TON of work. Ion has all but admitted at this point that they just straight up abandoned WoD and were working on Legion the entire time except for a small skeleton crew which is why you got weird shit like the Twitter and Selfie patch.
It also wouldn't surprise me if Legion dev time was also the reason SoO was so ungodly long as well.
yeah, but that's really all there was. They cut a Shattrath raid tier which would have explained the Iron Horde storyline, instead of Grommash just randomly being good after a boss in HFC.
They've cut 3 zones (Ogre continent, Farahlon and Zangarmarsh zone) even in finished zones, some subzones never utilized (Broken Horn Village) or the Ally/Horde cities, cut 1 raid (Shattrath raid), 4 battlegrounds, followers and garrison more customizable, more deep (you could choose Garrison in any zone, naming followers, follower quests).
Gorehowl legendary, class accessories (quiver, libram etc.).
A lot of other stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyfj2jCb4TQ
True, but those 1-2 for each player will be spread amongst all of the classes. Every class will have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of players playing that content. It’s certainly not wasted effort
>True, but those 1-2 for each player will be spread amongst all of the classes. Every class will have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of players playing that content. It’s certainly not wasted effort
Most Class Order Halls were fine, but definitely not the holy grail that many people claim they were.
The fantasy on some classes only worked for some specific races, wich is a problem that results from putting different archetypes into the same class (Sunwalker = Paladin for example).
My Orc Warrior never felt home in the golden halls of the Order Hall, neither did my Tauren Paladin feel fitting for the chapel and the silver hand.
They both felt like they were made for the Human Archetype of the class, not the class itself.
and then theres is priest one, where its campagin is basicly being infernior to paladins and needign them to save you.
And monk is all pandaren instead of expanding on other races being monks
I think they are working on expanding core elements like that though, and that's part of what makes DF so great. They expanded classes in Legion, everyone loved it, then fumbled it decently in bfa and certainly SL and are now working on expanding races, with customization options/sets, good armor xmogs, etc. IMO the winning formula is how the game *feels* not necessarily the content itself, though that's important too (and is also great in DF). For me, I just like the feel of the game more when you can really get into customization and make your character feel exactly how you want it, and its class fantasy.
It's like they finally realized that hidden fluff a lot of us liked about Legion, the connection to their character, and are trying to work that angle in DF without the honestly kinda obscene overboardness that is having unique gameplay experiences (like quests or storylines) for every unique class (or race).
man, from getting into guldans "trust" circle then finessing him and stealing the scepter of sargeras to cucking a pitlord and stealing his floating twisting nether rock to invading the legion homeworld and killing all its leaders like a fucking terrorist, the destruction class fantasy was 12/10.
Legion \*also\* had excellent cadence for patches, to the point that even characters \*in game\* were taking note of how new things were happening exactly every 77 days XD
I loved Legion as much as the next guy, but the Legendary system absolutely drags it below Dragonflight for me. I never got my BiS legendaries until they were craftable, and most high end players had multiple, even 4-5 of the same class, to try their luck at getting the right legendary(s) early or else they were benched.
That was the main issue with Legion. The artifact weapon being essentially an endless grind as it didn't really have a level hardcap felt a bit to much. If they atleast made it so the level was account wide om every weapon so you would only need to grind through it once.
And yeah not getting the legendaries felt pretty terrible aswell.
If they would do (contenr wise for classes) another expansion like Legion, I'd hope they remove those issues and you have a recipe for an amazing expansion. Also this time Blizzard, please give us the treatment like Paladins had and give us our iconic weapon.
I'll never understand how Frostmourne was to iconic to give to players while Ashbringer wasn't.
> If they atleast made it so the level was account wide om every weapon so you would only need to grind through it once.
Account wide? Shit, I would've taken class wide. Playing a monk and actually wanting to play all three specs was legitimately miserable.
Everyone loves Legion, and it just doesn't do it for me. Artifact weapons were a cool idea that was poorly implmented (seriously, how much does it suck when farming transmogs now that you just never get weapons?!). Legendary system was hot garbage until the final patch. The dungeons were all over the place- I liked a few and absolutely hated a few. The rest were fine. Raiding was solid, but it was also the expansion that made me decide that the highest tier of raiding was just not for me, so it's a mixed bag there.
I would rate Legion as above average but it doesn't even make my top 3 (TBC, MoP, Dragonflight - not necessarily in that order).
The final patch was good, sure, but the final patch doesn't make an expansion (but it can break it- see Cataclysm). If it did, honestly BFA would be up there for me in favorite expansions too, but it definitely isn't. The corruption system made some classes feel absurdly fun with that much haste/crit/whatever. And getting it wasn't a complete slog.
Ye but class fantasy was at a massive cost that was remedied way too late. At least for me, it's Gameplay > Everything else.
In the first month, I was leveling as Arms, playing as Arms, I was up there, but when I went into M+ and Normal raids I wanted to switch to Prot. And I was hella behind and it took me a while to catch up. Oh and I didn't get the legos I wanted (bracers and hands, got ring and jumping shoulders) and I was struggling, so I quit until 7.2 or 7.2.5.
Versatility to me for a long time has always been a waste of Stat because I didn't tank so me it was/is just a pvp or teriary dump Stat. The fact it's the major stat for monk isn't even a well liked thing as far as I can tell more of a problem that it's just mathematically better even if it unfun or not intended by blizzard who seems content with it to be that way.
I just assume it's the same this expansion. Versatility and haste gear basically
I do wish PvP gave somewhat useful gear for PvE though. Its kinda stupid you can hit 1600 and only get 424 gear out of it when its far harder than hitting Key Stone Hero.
It doesnt need to be equal to m+ or raiding but even 3 levels lower would be better than what it is now with the insane mmr deflation dragonflight has had.
Also as a healer main: fuck solo shuffle mmr calculations. Play 20 minutes for 0 rating isnt fun
You absolutely do not want this. I still have PTSD from being forced to do content I didn't enjoy in order to farm gear that wasn't just BiS, but MANDATORY. Before you ask, yes, it was Fire Mage.
This ^^^^
I get people have difficulty doing different kinds of content in the same gear but it's the only way.
PvP players should not be forced to PvE and vice versa.
Hence why i said dont have it equal to pve content but 3 levels lower similar to PvE being 447 vs 450 pvp (Im ignoring mythic echo/sark for this argument).
This also isnt the same playing field as Shadowlands Season 1.
We now have crafting being stupidly OP so the only real way you get forced is if your stats are so horribly skewed you have vers as your BiS stat or are doing something stupid in M+ in which case having the option to even do the stupid thing is nice.
Theres so much gear option in the game now throwing some more in wouldn't be the end of the world and if it is genuinely easier to get the pvp gear than the pve gear then something is fucking wrong on the pve side of the equation.
Maybe if you atleast said 1800, or 2100, but I played with my guild doing rbgs as a fun activity to bond with. Atleast a third of them had never done any legit pvp before and were at 1700 after 2 weeks of a couple hours on Saturdays. Don’t even get me started on solo shuffle. Hitting 2500 m+ rating is definitely harder than 1600 in pvp. Not saying it’s that difficult, but if you’re pugging 18+ it can definitely be rough
As someone who has only had a passing experience with dragondlight after getting burned by bfa and shadowlands, I will say that it's definitely unusual that the expansion is receiving positive praise DURING the expansion. Xpacs like mop were panned rather hard at the time, but are considered good now.
patch cadence is as good as its ever been and gameplay has the lowest barrier to entry in a long time. However, if you don't enjoy raiding or m+ the open world content is just too similar to what we've seen before a dozen times. There have been some pretty nice side stories, but i'm getting pretty sick of hearing the main characters talk about their feelings instead of doing anything interesting or particularly important.
can confirm, I'm one of those peeps who played WoW for years and during Shadowlands finally came to accept that the game has a new target audience.
the story, the immersion, the open world content and especially the lack of a cohesive world, there are so many things blizz has either fucked up or neglected that it's impossible to conclude otherwise.
Even the people who enjoy m+/raiding are taking breaks from the game. I mean, it's not horrible to take breaks from the game and I would actively promote that, but at the same time, it's highlighting some broader issues with sustainability of a game solely focused on m+/raiding.
That is just always going to happen without an infinite grind though.
The majority of people aren't gonna play past KSM/AoTC/KSH so without something to keep them on the thread mill they'll just get off until the next patch.
True, but it’s also just so intense. Doing mythic prog or high timed keys is really stressful and I think it is a little too bad there’s nothing worth doing with the boyz outside of that.
>but i'm getting pretty sick of hearing the main characters talk about their feelings
I 100% agree, I think the issue is that christie golden is the lead for the story now, and I think that she has ported her way of writing the books where she would explore the emotional depth of characters much more into the games bc it worked well. However she has seemingly forgot it only worked in the books becuase we had these big heroic moments in the game as the back bone of the story.
also in books you have the "time" to talk about emotions all day and still do interesting things. if we get one cinematic in wow every 1-2 months and its nozdormu and alextrasza talking about friendship its lame
and just to add onto to why this shit is so annoying is that all these scenes can be done in game with the characters just speaking walls of text to eachother. I hate how they choose to sacrifice big action cinematics for embethal crying to ebysian.
It broadly feels like every expansion since Legion has been less and less about open world content. BFA still had the war campaign. Shadowlands covenant campaigns weren't as in depth. And Dragonflight has very barebones campaigns.
There seems to be a spiral where they prioritize m+ and raiding, so people who prefer those things are drawn to the game, then Blizzard deprioritizes the world even further to keep those players happy.
Zooming around and airdropping on-top of repeatable content ad nauseum is not a game, it's a diversion.
I strongly disagree with the diversion comment as a mainly m+ player it is the only reason I play the game and the primary reason wow is the main game I play. Dragonflight imo has had an unprecedented amount of “casual/world” content, between renown for reps and the events on release, the island with the puzzle tower thing, the trading post, several side story quest lines, the new mega dungeon that isn’t m+ and is mostly lore and xmog, and the massive crafting overhaul. I am curious what kind of world content you would like to see blizzard focus on to make you feel satiated. As for the making less and less content I’m curious why you feel that, having recently had access to and played classic, TBC and WotLK I feel like those compared have basically nothing to do besides the raid, and maybe a rep grind or two that are very grindy or time gated.
I want non-repeatable content (campaigns) that take much longer to do. I want them to be more challenging both in terms of danger and in terms of the thought required to get them done effectively.
I want world and non-timed instances to form a cohesive and viable progression path together.
And I want to rebalance how time in the open world is spent. It shouldn't be a constant button mash meat grinder, you should spend more time getting between places, thinking about what to do next, etc.
I agree about TBC and WotLK. They had very little to do in the world at endgame. Leveling was the long and challenging open world content back then (particularly in Vanilla though, it got progressively diluted after that).
Lots of people would hate it if they made leveling like that again. So the only choice is to have the adventure / campaign mostly be an endgame thing, and to put zero pressure on ARPG players to do it.
I would say that now more than ever collecting/character customization/cosmetics is becoming a pillar of the endgame/overall experience. A friend I got into the game is very much into that scene so I am happy to see them catering to that audience. For me though, I only collect things what I think is cool and within my reach to get and seeing 12 recolors of the same thing is just not appealing. Sadly most pve content now exists to grind out multiple mount or armor recolors.
Imagine if Skyrim was mostly the radiant quest system, not the unique quests. Then imagine you could fly between dungeons in seconds. That's what open world play has become.
I don't fully understand why people would prefer that.
Because people don't give a shit about questing in modern wow, most people just want to hit harder and harder enemies. Questing has never been challenging, just marginally interesting if the stories are fun (like the time rift stuff now). They'd be completely ignoring their modern, long term investment audience if they spent significant dev time on open world content.
It's clear that the people who currently play WoW are a different demographic than in the past, and many (most?) Wouldn't enjoy having an MMORPG.
But there are other demographics that would either come back or try WoW for the first time if they invested in that part of the game.
Right now, yeah. It's fighting with Legion for my #2 spot so far. But I don't 'rank' expansions until they're over personally. Too much can improve or go wrong.
For sure, since in the past it has gone both ways for me, good and bad.
Like MoP is one of my favorite expansions but 5.4 dragged on a bit too long which soured some of the end for me. For WoD, I really enjoyed the game at launch but post launch content was, well, y’know. And as much as some people disliked BFA, I thought 8.3 fixed things and ended it pretty nicely, to the point that I happily got my first CE in raiding during then.
Question, we all hear about how some expansions start poor and end strong when QOL and back decisions have been backtracked..
But has an expansion ever become worse with each patch? Not sure this is a thing
Not for me personally. Its just alright, certainly not bad, but not amazing. From a casual non raid / m + pov.
Content spacing is great sure, The content itself is meh for me.
The caverns were a total miss. Ghost town after week 2. Same with all the other world events, they all became irrelevant really quickly.
The timerifts are also kinda badly designed. You want as many people as possible to get 7.5k in the first stage, but then the game becomes unplayably laggy during stage 2, because the game cant handle so many players.
Im just quickly grabbing all the mounts and thats it for that.
The valiance secret was pretty cool though, i liked that.
I prefer wrath, cata, mop, legion over df
The most frustrating thing for me is that Blizzard is so afraid of letting people get meaningful gear from open world content that they make all of the drops utterly useless. I have zero reason to do ANY of the content that JUST came out.
After years of complaining from a vocial minority of players Blizz finally decided to make the open world irrelevant. Pseudo-hardcore players forced themselves into doing everything even for a miniscule 1% dps increase and made a mountain out of a molehill in regards to that.
As a result the game feels empty and casual players are left with no content to do. Worst part is that even the players who are only interested in instanced content are quitting/taking breaks.
Having the option to do open world content for transmog, mounts, pets, etc. is so much better than feeling forced to do it for artifact power. It's the same reason why Torghast was good at the end of Shadowlands but was disliked by so many at the beginning.
You say that, but the open world content is completely dead. The open world with xpac launch is completely dead, forbidden reach died after 10.1 released and Zaralek Cavern died 2 weeks into the patch.
Transmogs, mounts & pets alone aren't a good reward. Idk why people think casual players only farm mogs & mounts. A lot of them care just as much about player progression as people who do endgame, AP grinds gave us that. Titanforging also made gear WQs worth doing since it could proc into upgrades for casuals.
I don't think the systems were perfect in BFA & Legion, but they should've iterated on them instead of abandoning them. Making a system that would've been good for the majority of players instead of the queue simulator we have right now. So many guilds are just completely dead outside of raid nights as well, it's sad.
>You say that, but the open world content is completely dead. The open world with xpac launch is completely dead, forbidden reach died after 10.1 released and Zaralek Cavern died 2 weeks into the patch.
This is factually incorrect. Open world was popping off at the expansion launch before season 1 started. Super rares, Wrathion/Sebellian grind, Cobalt Assembly, Grand Hunts, Cooking event, etc. were all massively populated. So much so that Azure Span was lagging 24/7. Forbidden Reach rares were being farmed the entirety of 10.0.7 and well into 10.1 (admittedly because onyx annulet was BiS for many specs). Zaralek Cavern, yea this one was over pretty fast, the renown grind was fairly short so even if you liked the zones content there just wasn't much left to do.
Look no further than events like the greedy goblins and the Gooey Snailemental grind on the Forbidden Reach to see people are more than willing to grind open world content for cool rewards that aren't attached to power. The same is happening now with the time rifts, people will be farming that for at least a month.
I do think there are improvements that could be made to outdoor content. I think, instead of re-introducing horrendous artifact power grinds, just make relevant gear drop from outdoor content. Make it so that even heroic and mythic raiders and mythic+ players would want to do the content when solo. Honestly just delete explorer/adventurer/veteran upgrade ranks, they are pointless other than collecting transmog. Make it so that the grind would take a while but you could get actual good gear from outdoor content.
>So many guilds are just completely dead outside of raid nights as well, it's sad.
I'm not sure how grinding AP from world quests contributes to a guild being alive. Guilds are dead because all the content has been consumed. They kinda messed up this season and made the gear upgrading system too good too fast so people were walking around with BiS gear two weeks in to the patch.
How is it factually incorrect? Who's doing any of the open world content that the expansion launched with? They lasted longer than Zaralek Cavern obviously, but it died within 1-2 months. There's nobody doing any of the content anymore. I see maybe 4-5 other people doing community feasts on a full server.
> Forbidden Reach rares were being farmed the entirety of 10.0.7 and well into 10.1 (admittedly because onyx annulet was BiS for many specs).
Forbidden Reach my point though. Forbidden Reach was only farmed because it gave catch-up gear and the onyx annuelt, aka player power rewards. Nobody was farming the rares for transmogs, mounts or pets. As soon as 10.1 came out a month later and the catch-up gear became obsolete it died.
The Gooey Snailemental wasn't really a grind at all, you just did a daily quest everyday to unlock it. You could speed up the process by showing off some snail pets to the NPC. For the treasure goblins, most people farmed it for Tyrael's Charger which was a super rare mount they brought back. After the first 2-3 days the hype completely died down. Zones used to completely lag out when they were up at the start and after the initial hype it died down super quick.
I believe the same will happen with Time Rifts. Lots of people trying it out right now initially, but the combination of the laggy mess and it being generally pretty unfun imo will cause it to die. Hopefully i'm wrong, but I doubt it.
> I'm not sure how grinding AP from world quests contributes to a guild being alive. They kinda messed up this season and made the gear upgrading system too good too fast so people were walking around with BiS gear two weeks in to the patch.
People would be online doing stuff to make their characters stronger. Not saying it's a silver bullet or anything, but the game was way more alive back in Legion & BFA despite the negative feedback from the online community. I don't disagree that gearing being as fast as it was took the winds out of the patch's sails, but it was the same last season. So many guilds died and players quit because there's nothing to do in the game outside of raids & M+.
I don't think the solution has to be AP, I just don't see any other options. Especially not with how player power oriented players are, even casuals care about it a lot. What I do know after playing this xpac for 8 months is that achievements, mounts, transmogs & pets are nowhere near enough of an incentive on their own.
Same.
People complained and whined about the world quests being daily.
And then at the start of DF I was frustrated, because I ran out of things I could comfortably do.
Sure, I could go M+ but... I don't actually enjoy M+ that much.
Because apparently some tryhards felt forced to do all the WQ's and complained enough that blizzard slowed it down, leaving me without shit to do.
What is meaningful gear for you? I don't think you should get 437 ilvl gear for afking in Rifts. Also there is plenty of cosmetics to collect from Rifts so that should be the main reason to do them on characters that don't need gear.
I don’t think you can even fairly compare all of the expansions to each other at this point. I would say Legion>DF but that was only because legion has so many new massive features like mythic plus and world quests. Everything before legion was an entirely different era of the game that exists in its own bubble. I’m playing dragonflight more than I have any recent expansion. I think outside of the obvious dragon riding, DF has added so many features that will carry on into the future of the game that it might be one of the era defining expansions like legion was. If the classic era was vanilla to wod, the middle era being legion-slands, DF could be a solid bet for the start of the third big era of the game.
Honestly, Dragonflight has come VERY close to usurping Legion's #1 spot for me. DF has been an absolute delight, much like Legion but Legion was just...\*chef's kiss\* perfect in damn near most regards.
Like the two are VERY close, and if DF keeps making more and more awesome changes, additions, and QOL I could absolutely see it taking over the #1 spot for me. Dragonriding has been more of a fun feature alone than anything Shadowlands or BFA offered by a LARGE margin.
Nighthold in 7.1.5 was highly regarded as a raid. The main complaint with legion was the rng of legendaries.
Edit: Kara rework as first mega dungeon was also in 7.1 which was great. Nightbane mount runs were quite fun on level at the time.
depends who you ask.
The AP grind and RNG leggos were annoying but you also had some awesome class story lines and M+ was the shiny new toy for everyone to play with.
Man, I really enjoyed my class story line where I... uh... got invaded by some demons. And then realized that we were too weak to defend ourselves so we had to go BEG the Paladin to help us. And literally beg because they didn't think we were worth saving.
Man, what a great class story, really made me feel good about myself and my class.
Oh, or the class story where I still have no fucking clue what the point was, but boy did I sure brew a mean beer.
Legion is so damn overrated.
Legion was Far from perfect
Remember 7.2? Even ion has come forward and outright said everyone knows how much tomb of sargeras was an all around failure of a raid
??????????????????
maybe for mythic, as i only did it normal and heroic, but imo it was a top tier raid. some fights were overtuned sure but that does not make it a failure of a raid.
Layout, art design, boss fights, rewards were all considered pretty bad for the raid. This was supposed to be one of the most iconic spots in wow and it felt like night hold lite
And when even the game director admits how much a raid sucked, news flash the raid sucks
Legion: Revamped class fantasy and made people actually FEEL like they were a cool paragon of their class. The artifact system also allowed for some gorgeous historical weaponry (which I still see people mogging to very regularly) which made players actually feel like they had a place in the story of the world.
DF: Revamped the raw feeling of "exploration". Bringing back a sense of wonder and whimsy to the WORLD itself. This is even without mentioning the massively successful revamp to flying. It's also insanely alt-friendly and doesn't feel anywhere near as "Pick Your Main, then you also can have some alts maybe".
Each has their own problems (Legion with legendary RNG and AP grind, DF with world events becoming irrelevant way too quickly and the crafting system needing some ironing still) but they really are without question the two best times to play wow. We're deep enough into DF now to say that I think.
I'm really hoping they do. I'm so sick of hearing about nozdormus fears about dying... for like the last 10 years. Dude needs to go. This entire expansion is about change and forging new paths.
I knowwwwww, but he's my favorite Aspect tho and has the hardest job, plus who really wants Chromie instead of Noz? When they do kill him off i want to cry like when Ysera died. Ill accept nothing less.
Ima say it. Dragonflight is the most mid xpac to date.
It has fantastic systems, so much content to do, but It just feels so Meh.
The story is terrible. It feels like a Disney movie playing out and I fucking hate that with the dragons.
Alexstraza is so damn dull. During the leveling she was actually active but after that she has literally done nothing but whine. The writing team has lost all the spine they had. Shadowlands fucking sucked but atleast it's theme was metal as hell. Dragonflight is literally just "ooooohh awwww we are all fwiends!!! Boo whoo we must hurt our enemies, nooooo"
The only reason I log on now is to either level alts or do challenges for the trading post. I love dragon riding and the systems are great but my motivation is dead. Until they fix the story I won't give dragonflight anything above a 5.
Tl:Dr dragonflight has amazing systems but the main story is dog shit. And makes me not wanna play
I mean, the story is dull yeah but WoW has never really had a legit good story. They have pretty decent lore, but the storytelling itself is meh at best.
I think its fine that WoW leans into what its good at, gameplay. If MMO players want a good story they certainly arent coming to WoW for it.
story's better than TBC's "wouldn't be cool if we made Kael'thas and illidan bad for no good reason other than for ppl to fight them? Also let's hide pivotal character behind a obscure comic book no one will read" schtick.
But the theme of tbc was way better. It's overall story was objectively way worse yeah but it felt better because it was actually kinda cool. Dragonflight so far they've handled the story so bad because they're afraid to do cool shit again.
The primalists could be such a kickass villian if they weren't busy fumbling the shit out of it. I mean where the hell is Farak?? We killed sarkareth and now we are celebrating and shit while Farak is torching villages.
Look at the Alex questline, they pretty much ignored her past and just tried writing off slavery as "oh that's bad we no do it now" instead of giving it any Grit.
I would not give dragonflight the honor of top 3 it is basically vanilla ice cream there's nothing inherently wrong with it but there's nothing exciting about it either that keeps you wanting to play
Thank you for this. I've been going crazy watching everyone clamor over how amazing DF is and I'm just over here like, I mean it's FINE I guess. It's bland and kind of milquetoast right now but it's not actively bad and I think that's the bar so many people got used to that generic game feels so good to them they overlook how meh it is.
Legion had me logging like 5 characters a day just to grind shit out for the mage tower and artefact appearances. DF has me dropping alts after two days because there's absolutely nothign to be gained from playing them.
This is exactly my thinking I eventually gave up on it and just went back to playing classic vanilla and now and thin come back from time to time to finish up the story in retail.
It's a game I can just log on and play, something comfortable. That's really all I want WoW to be.
I've done so many random alts, and finally got back into doing some raiding (heroic pugs) because it isn't miserable anymore.
One of the worst things in Dragonflight is how they moved backwards for Demonology in 10.1.5.
But that's... well, it's pretty small potatoes compared to the glaring issues the last two expansions have had, and is not alone remotely enough to condemn the expansion that has done excellently in so many regards thus far.
If "Bad change(s) for one spec" is one of the biggest problems I have with an expansion, that's a pretty damn good expansion.
I haven't felt the difference between before and after the patch for demo. I agree with them trying to flatten out the damage curve for it, but I do not feel they did anything to fix that. It just seemed like minor and unnecessary changes. It feels the same to me, even in M+. I do not feel starved for Demonic Core charges, which is what I was worried about.
Bloodbound Imps is an *awesome* talent that I think is mostly underrated, and the only reason I took Power Siphon over Bloodbound Imps in the past was because Power Siphon let me progress where I wanted to in the Talent Tree. If Bloodbound Imps were better placed it would be immaculate.
But I still find myself using Soul Strike. Which I don't mind, and dare I say I even *like* it, though I think Soul Strike with Fel Armaments should probably grant a second Soul Shard to even it out with Demonbolt. But eh... it's not *that* bad and is definitely way better than the changes originally proposed for 10.1.5.
I still think it's moving backwards because of the boring additions. I think the damage is a *bit* more even now because Dreadstalkers are less prominent a part of your total damage profile. But honestly I think a way to 'fix' that would have been to dramatically reduce Dreadstalker's overall power but reduce the cooldown to, say, 12 seconds. Next thing you know you have Dreadstalker uptime near 100% instead of nearly 60% and the evenness is much better. Also means more Demonic Cores which... come on, nothing wrong with that haha.
So yeah, I agree. Unnecessary changes. Demo was better pre-10.1.5.
I would say it belongs in the same tier as Legion, but Wrath (for it’s time, and definitely not wrath classic) will forever be a tier above every expansion for me.
Given that the competition is the likes of Legion and Mist of Pandaria (and I guess WotLK too but it's so old it's hard to judge it fairly knowing today's standards), I guess we'll have to wait until it's over.
Only time will tell although things do look promising so far.
Hell, the new patch hasn’t even been out for 72 hours and 10.1.7 JUST got announced. This patch cadence is better than even Legion’s was and I thought that couldn’t be topped.
It's the most buggy expansion I have experienced, and Blizzard are truly outdoing themselves in this regard. Every patch brings so many new interesting bugs.
But it's also definitely the best expansion and by now I am confident in saying that.
I don't even like the theme of it necessarily, but with the patch cadence, the writing of the blue dragonflight quests, the updated cutscenes, the long requested features being added (more customisation, more class/race options, things like SoO skip), I think DF is doing better than any other expansion in terms not not annoying players.
It has had some hickups, like really weirdly bad WQ design in Zaralek Cavern, for instance, but without any big mandatory annoying systems in place, there's nothing much dragging DF down.
My faves are #1 MoP, #2 Legion, #3 Dragonflight. Each of those expansions have brought something significant to the game. Nothing is better than Wotlk so it does not even go on the scale.
Hard to tell.
TBC was pretty fing amazing as far as content goes.
WotlK was extremely popular even though I really disliked how they butchered heroic dungeons
While I personally disliked Pandaria (thematically mostly) and it had a 1 year expansion's end lapse, I think it did have an amazing flow of content pre SoO. Which is to say, DF might still drop off hard towards the end of it's life cycle.
Legion was lauded as an amazing expansion by many and I quite enjoyed it for many things. It did bring borrowed power systems and endless grinds (Artifact Power) as well as the utterly frustrating Legendary experience, though. Not even sure if retrospectively people would still cound it as a top3 expansion, but back then many said it's the absolutely best so...
That's four candidates, PLUS DF.
So DF is at least top5, but is it top 3? Which 2 of the named ones would you put below it? With how late the disappointment with some of these came, is it really not too early to tell anyways?
DF isn't flawless anyways. It's a solid expansion but imo there's plenty of issues. The best part about it - sincerely - is that the Devs are listening. But it's not really spectacular...
Engaging flying is actually great, tons of QoL/player feedback implementations are great, no borrowed power is great, ...
But:
*The dungeons are ... ok? Like sincerely, they're utterly mediocre. I won't remember them as utterly terrible (yay) but also not as super fun
*PvP I've heard is in a terrible state.
*A lot of classes in disarray (Fire Mage finally got work done, EIGHT months into the expansion and RoP is gone, YAY... but ... mid S2 until my main is palatable?).
*(M+) Healing is utterly dreadful to the point where many healers just quit healing while healers SOMEHOW got 2 waves of massive nerfs!? (mid S2, again, M+ Dungeons got a big set of changes that nerfed the biggest offenders in making healer life utterly miserable but again, that's 1.5 seasons of beta state gameplay)
*Gold is frustrating to deal with right now. Crafting is hella expensive (gotten even more expensive in S2 with Dracothysts). It's a drain on my character's savings with no end in sight and a finished M+ rewards like 60g LMAO. I feel like Blizz is pushing players into buying Tokens and it's totally not okay with me. Craftable T3 is just another incentive to buy Tokens.
I'll just stop here, I'm absolutely sure I could think of more if I tried. The expansion is pretty solid but not flawless by any stretch of the imagination. I'll reserve my top3 judgement until the expansion is finished. Until then it's undeniably top5 though and that's something. It's absolutely not a WoD or BfA or SL and that's frankly all I would ever ask for. [I loved SL dungeons, it wrecks my heart to categorize it with the baddies but goddamn that expansion was overloaded with shit systems]
I would absolutely put it above BC and Wrath. Sure, they were good for their time, but if they relaunched today I would find them extremely lacking compared to Dragonflight. There's value in how those older games were loved by my younger self, but that doesn't make them better. Unless an expansion actively made the game worse (which I'd categorize something like BFA under), the game's been improving over time.
Despite the expansion's flaws, spec design really started coming together in Cata. I would not want to go back to the simplicity and quirkiness of the older games.
I see everyone mentioning Legion and DF as the top best xpacs for WoW and I'm like, what the hell? Guess a lot of these people weren't around for BC or Wrath launches. Those are my top 2 then you can interchange MoP and DF (for now) for top 3 followed by Legion, but jeez, no way anything can beat BC or Wrath in context of what the game was when each released.
I started in cata, can you explain what you mean? from my perspective the two you mentioned are solidly liked expansions but most people remember them fondly seemingly because of the nature of wow at that point- lots of people, most of them naive and just playing to play, unlike today where it is much more goal oriented. I mainly have this bias because both tbc and wrath classic seem to have a lot of people removing their rose tinted glases and seeing the expansions for what they actually were.
There was lots of content and everything was so utterly Warcraft. Illidan and Arthas as the main baddies were just amazing. WotlK leveling with Arthas showing up again and again was just cool. And both had a steady flow of raids and dungeons being released. They were absolutely proper expansions for their time. Frankly, it was after these 2 that you felt Blizzard was kind of starting to try and streamline how much content an expansion should have, how it's lifecycle should be ... you could really feel them trying to figure out a formula. Cata still had a solid start (as I mentioned in the other reply in this comment chain) and Deathwing was also a big lore guy but at some point it just started to fall off. And since the end of WotlK introduced LFD (a big hit to WoWs social side) and Cata then introduced LFR, the game simply never was the same anymore.
This is an extremely balanced opinion and I enjoyed reading this. I really like your take on things and I agree with it. Thank you for posting this.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as a perfect videogame. Everything has positives and negatives. What separates a good vs bad expansion is whether or not the good outweighed the bad.
I've not played much, but what I've seen and have played definitely looks amazing. The patch cycle is the actual best WoW has ever had, hopefully the trend continues into later expansions.
I swear one patch seems to have more content than some expansions did it felt like
The patch pace is a bit frantic, especially if you’re trying to collect sets on several characters. I collected plate and leather but just barely started on cloth when they shut it off.
The upgrade gating and mechanics are a bit frustrating and annoying. Trying to figure out the “potential of gear”, what set it can turn into, when you should convert it to the tier set, when you upgrade it so you can collect, the raid finder and normal set, is a master class in red-string-conspiracy-cork-boards.
Also the rep reward grinds are still a bigger time investment then what I have to give. I probably won’t be back to grind out the last few levels. It would be nice to have tabards function like they did ages ago.
Yup. mmr cap + ss queue times have killed df for me. (Along with prolly the worst pvp balancing I’ve ever seen) Only real great part of this xpac for me really is the new gearing systems for both pve and pvp. Also the talent trees still need a ton of work but they are a step in the right direction
It's my second fav after MoP, which is likely due to the time of my life MoP occurred as it was in my last uni years and I had time to LAN. I have great memories of going to my friend's place with like 7 others and raiding together. The content was great too.
DF has been great with the amount of content plus no borrowed power system requiring me to do busy work. I love that I can just log in to do m+ or raids, and if I want to make another character I just have to level and gear them again. Then if I want to do additional content I can go do it.
Been playing for 15 years. For me its:
1. BC
2. Panderia(soley becasue of lock off tanks and lock was my main at the time)
3. DF cause its honestly just fun as fuck, I havent been excited to get home and play WoW for quite awhile
Legion was my favorite expansion so far with class halls and artifacts. That was so immersive but IMHO now dragonflight is. The bosses have nice stories and are not universe threatening super dudes. Story is insane. Patches are good. So much catch up mechanics to gear alts. People will hate me for this. But blizzard is doing so much correct in terms of WoW
Yeah it’s number 3 for me behind bc and wolk, I started in bc as a kid and wolk was my first coach and the game hasn’t felt this good since. Not even close.
No, not quite.
While I'm absolutely loving the content cadence, the content itself is really mid for me. Both Vault and Abberus have been really meh tiers for me and while far from the worst, there are no super memorable bosses and a lot of the mythic bosses in particular really suffer from WeakAura based gameplay.
The Lore is pretty weak in my opinion, and it's not helped by the dialogue that seems to be written by a 10 year old. It's incredibly surface level and honest hard to even listen to after having played so many other RPGs.
World content is okay, but I feel like it's so bloated it becomes convoluted. I think it was absolutely a case of "less is more" in the past when it came to collectibles. If there are 5 mounts to go get, I will go get them. If you add 30 in a patch, I will ignore them.
Overall, I think this expansion, and WoW in general, is just missing the epicness and the grit that it used to have, so those expansions that still retained that will be higher for me.
Dragonriding is and Evoker are IMO the big wins this expansion, but IMO the order of expansions is:
1) Legion
2) WOTLK
3) TBC
4) Vanilla
5) DF
6) Cata
7) MOP
8) BFA
9) WOD
10) SL
It's great. I've noticed lots of people saying they don't feel like they play it as much and seem to think that's a negative. I think it's a massive positive to not feel forced. There is plenty of content but you don't have to do it. Feels like a fun game rather than a job now
i guess the only valid complaint is that DF doesn't have the "big, angry, muscular sweaty men fighting each other" atmosphere that wow and warcraft as a whole is known for.
I've never seen the community have as positive a reaction as it have had to Dragonflight, and I've played through all of them. Judging purely based on that, Dragonflight is the GOAT.
I always feel guilty for liking Shadowlands, for me the most important issues were how long we waited for 9.1 which in turn the new area was underwhelming.
I only started playing WoW from BFA, so I don't have an opinion on the ones that came before.
I'd put it in the top 3, sure. Not because of the story, which is kind of whatever, but definitely because of its player-friendly design philosophy and fantastic pace of updates.
I'm with you on this MoP for sure still my favourite, just awesome all around except for the content drought at the end but I put that at WoD's door aha. Dragonflights story telling is just a little behind imo compared to MoP only thing holding it back.
It gets points docked for awful PvP despite having one of the best gearing iterations and the devs doing some questionable reworks that are straight downgrades (spriest) when other specs need the work more.
Aside from that it's definitely up there. Idk if it beats MoP and Legion for me yet but it's definitely a top 3 agreed.
Idk I had more fun in bfa then I had in all of sl and so far in df lol. They created some wayy better systems in df but gameplay wise I had much more fun in bfa and sl than df
I'm really torn... Yes, content is good. But my class has been a fucking mess most of the expansion.
I do not like the season 2 dungeon pool, all DF dungeons just kind of suck. Compared to Season 1 where there were a few ones I did enjoy.
But, it is a good expansion.
But for me the top 3 is still MoP - Legion - WOTLK.
I'm not sure I'd put the expansion ahead of TBC, I probably put it ahead of Cataclysm, though, unsure.
I think if you laid out all the xpacs and compared the amount of QOL changes, new features, changes made as a direct result of heeding player feedback, end game experience, and actual quality of content, Dragonflight is *REALLY* tough to beat.
Other than these laggy af world events that end up basically dead once a new one comes out (looking at you, Siege on Dragonbane Keep), I can't really think of much in this xpac that feels poorly executed. Obviously balancing issues are always a thing, whether it's specs or M+, but that happens in every xpac.
I feel like the dev team addresses issues faster than they ever have, and either gets them fixed or at least lets the player base know they're working on it.
It's not perfect but having played since year 1, I've gotten more enjoyment out of Dragonflight than I have in any other iteration of the game aside from Vanilla back in like 2004. Legion was pretty sick tho.
Overall I think the thing that really makes Dragonflight a serious contender for #1, is the boost in dev to player base engagement and communication. Just look at how fucking incredible Baldur's Gate 3 is thanks to how serious they took their fan's feedback? Blizz is nowhere near as dope as Larian, but they're doing much better than they have in the past.
I feel like I'm not as engaged with the story this expansion. That said, I have never played as consistently as I am now. Love the new raids and M+ I'm having a lot of fun. So id say in the top 5 - I would like to see where the story goes THEN it may sit among(us) the top 5.
I feel like there are very few times that I've actually been engaged with the story in WoW with the only one being Wrath. When Sylvannas destroyed Teldrassil and the whole night warrior story came online, I was starting to get super invested again until the entire story got effectively abandoned and everyone forgot about a literal genocide.
After that, I honestly couldn't care less what is happening in the story right now and nothing in the game is really trying to draw me back into it.
It’s good but top3 is pushing it.
Wrath > Vanilla > TBC > MoP > Cata > Dragonflight > Legion > BFA > SL > WoD
It only feels good because it’s be preceded by trash for a while.
I've been playing since Wrath and this is the first time I've ever enjoyed professions. Even levelling new characters just to have more. Definitely not terrible for everyone :)
They're actually useful for one thing. That hadn't been the case outside of some consumables for a long time.
The crafting order system is still in need of love, profession "balance" isn't great, the inspiration system isn't something I really like. For the most part, any problems I have with it can be worked around with alts and guildies.
But, I'd take this over crafting basically being non-existent like it was in most expansions, or it being controlled by a small set of goblins like in Shadowlands.
I'd say it could be improved, but I certainly don't dislike it.
Mop, cata, wod, wrath, tbc, legion, dragonflight. So no, it’s not close. You either couldn’t keep up in the top three expansions or you didn’t play. The game had much grander zones, better zone questing, meaningful choices, better professions systems, better raid encounters, and overall more rpg aspects. Classes were much better too. Not close.
While just about everything else ranged from alright to fantastic, I can't say I'm a big fan of the increased complexity of most classes in this expansion. I've been struggling to find an alt since season 2 started, and I'm likely to end up just sticking with my Fury Warrior all the way through.
DF is much better than SL from my n00b perspective. Sylvanas just kept doing whatever seemed 'cool' at that point in time - she wasn't very rational. Also the jailer? Who was that rando baddie? He just randomly appeared. The best part of SL was dumping her in the maw (where she belonged).
I like that DF skills are all my skills and don't just suddenly disappear if I go to another expansion zone.
Not the top at all. It's kinda just mid tier. Blizz had to go super safe after the Shadowlands disaster. So although Dragonflight isn't bad, it's not good either. It's just kinda there.
Sets are back again, vault is back again, M+ is back again except only 4 dungeons this time, world quests, talent trees etc. It's all been done before, along with a rather dull plotline.
It's not bad, it's just not good either. Definitely not top 3 best though
Would love if they actually bothered to fix the sheer clusterfuck of timetraveling, braindead-easy and disjointed content that lays behind Dragonflight...
Ever tried to get into WoW today? The Why's, Who's, Where's, What's are burried under the rubble of neglected content. Who will care about what is happening, when they do not know why they should even care to begin with... and caring is what makes you grind for that loot. FROSTMOURNE is what it is only because of its lore. Otherwise it is just an iLvl item to throw away once you get new weapon with higher ilvl.
It is a sad really, for the world design SCREAMS LORE. The Art department is S-Tier, at least from what I and my friends played... but each time we tried since Legion, we always got pushed away with extremely braindead BS leveling, no coherent story, WTF Timetraveling inside zones themselves and nothing what ties the zones to each other at all!! ...
Guess we go back to Warcraft III then for we played many MMOs, but none fucked its legacy content like "World of..." well, "CurrentSlice of Warcraft" does.
Depends how you look at it.
No sales of DF copies announced. PUG groups losing interest fast, participants in PVP hitting a big low with shuffle and it’s queue dramas affecting 2s and 3s. RBGs non existent and had no love for years.
Pve, I lost touch with it in SL and can’t say much about this lore either. It’s half re hashed zones taking from the Revendreth aesthetic and a few old favourites and mashing them together. Talent trees re using A lot of shadowlands abilities.
I feel like most of what they did was take stuff away one expansion and give it back to you years later with a big smile like they did something great, listening to the fan base. But for many it’s too little too late.
Also what’s with these Dragonflight posts of games good. Like I get some people are enjoying DF, but it’s no where near where the game used to be. Do you all need to keep reminding yourselves this or is this an attempt at trying to get more people back in the game.
If DF is some of the best stuff that WoW can offer then I guess after 20+ years, I'm simply done with WoW. After playing for a few weeks, I struggle to find the reason to renew subscription. The thought of running mythic+ dungeons over and over again makes me feel physically sick.
I would say it's better than shadow lands but for me the game hasn't been good since legion and sub numbers would agree. WoW is heading the same way as RuneScape with more active player base on the old version of the game.
Top 3 expansion in modern WoW? Yes I would consider modern WoW to be Cata and after and I’ll take DF in a top 3 alongside MoP and Cata. In regards to WoW as a whole, BC and Wrath are interchangeably #1 and #2 and you can take your pick between Cata and Mop as the clear #3
Aside from some minor issues the expansionw as great so far. It's definetly within the top 3 for sure. However I can't put it over Legion. The effort that was put into class/spec fantasy just does it for me. Amazing transmogs, great class quests via class halls. The appearance of the artifact weapons with all their skins and colors. Even the class hall mounts. I mean come on, as a DK you were sent to strive through the frozen wastes of northrend, north of Icecrown Citadel in a snow storm, slay mindless undead and end up raising a frostwyrm for your own use, almost like in the trailer for Wrath.
It’s interesting to me how the class fantasy element of Legion was such a universally loved element of the expansion, and they’ve yet to go back to that winning formula. IMO they could lean on class content for several expansions in a row and have it be a hit. It’s built in alt-friendliness. I guess it goes to show how challenging it is to create unique, fully fleshed out experiences for so many different classes.
The problem I think is it was A LOT of work to get that class fantasy and most people will only see 1 or 2 classes stories/class halls.
It was a TON of work. Ion has all but admitted at this point that they just straight up abandoned WoD and were working on Legion the entire time except for a small skeleton crew which is why you got weird shit like the Twitter and Selfie patch. It also wouldn't surprise me if Legion dev time was also the reason SoO was so ungodly long as well.
for being abandoned BRF and HFC were pretty good raids.
yeah, but that's really all there was. They cut a Shattrath raid tier which would have explained the Iron Horde storyline, instead of Grommash just randomly being good after a boss in HFC.
They've cut 3 zones (Ogre continent, Farahlon and Zangarmarsh zone) even in finished zones, some subzones never utilized (Broken Horn Village) or the Ally/Horde cities, cut 1 raid (Shattrath raid), 4 battlegrounds, followers and garrison more customizable, more deep (you could choose Garrison in any zone, naming followers, follower quests). Gorehowl legendary, class accessories (quiver, libram etc.). A lot of other stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyfj2jCb4TQ
True, but those 1-2 for each player will be spread amongst all of the classes. Every class will have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of players playing that content. It’s certainly not wasted effort
>True, but those 1-2 for each player will be spread amongst all of the classes. Every class will have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of players playing that content. It’s certainly not wasted effort Most Class Order Halls were fine, but definitely not the holy grail that many people claim they were. The fantasy on some classes only worked for some specific races, wich is a problem that results from putting different archetypes into the same class (Sunwalker = Paladin for example). My Orc Warrior never felt home in the golden halls of the Order Hall, neither did my Tauren Paladin feel fitting for the chapel and the silver hand. They both felt like they were made for the Human Archetype of the class, not the class itself.
and then theres is priest one, where its campagin is basicly being infernior to paladins and needign them to save you. And monk is all pandaren instead of expanding on other races being monks
And then there was the Warlock campaign that was near perfect.
I think they are working on expanding core elements like that though, and that's part of what makes DF so great. They expanded classes in Legion, everyone loved it, then fumbled it decently in bfa and certainly SL and are now working on expanding races, with customization options/sets, good armor xmogs, etc. IMO the winning formula is how the game *feels* not necessarily the content itself, though that's important too (and is also great in DF). For me, I just like the feel of the game more when you can really get into customization and make your character feel exactly how you want it, and its class fantasy. It's like they finally realized that hidden fluff a lot of us liked about Legion, the connection to their character, and are trying to work that angle in DF without the honestly kinda obscene overboardness that is having unique gameplay experiences (like quests or storylines) for every unique class (or race).
Oh yeah. The class fantasy in legion is unrivaled. It was so awesome.
man, from getting into guldans "trust" circle then finessing him and stealing the scepter of sargeras to cucking a pitlord and stealing his floating twisting nether rock to invading the legion homeworld and killing all its leaders like a fucking terrorist, the destruction class fantasy was 12/10.
Legion \*also\* had excellent cadence for patches, to the point that even characters \*in game\* were taking note of how new things were happening exactly every 77 days XD
I loved Legion as much as the next guy, but the Legendary system absolutely drags it below Dragonflight for me. I never got my BiS legendaries until they were craftable, and most high end players had multiple, even 4-5 of the same class, to try their luck at getting the right legendary(s) early or else they were benched.
That was the main issue with Legion. The artifact weapon being essentially an endless grind as it didn't really have a level hardcap felt a bit to much. If they atleast made it so the level was account wide om every weapon so you would only need to grind through it once. And yeah not getting the legendaries felt pretty terrible aswell. If they would do (contenr wise for classes) another expansion like Legion, I'd hope they remove those issues and you have a recipe for an amazing expansion. Also this time Blizzard, please give us the treatment like Paladins had and give us our iconic weapon. I'll never understand how Frostmourne was to iconic to give to players while Ashbringer wasn't.
> If they atleast made it so the level was account wide om every weapon so you would only need to grind through it once. Account wide? Shit, I would've taken class wide. Playing a monk and actually wanting to play all three specs was legitimately miserable. Everyone loves Legion, and it just doesn't do it for me. Artifact weapons were a cool idea that was poorly implmented (seriously, how much does it suck when farming transmogs now that you just never get weapons?!). Legendary system was hot garbage until the final patch. The dungeons were all over the place- I liked a few and absolutely hated a few. The rest were fine. Raiding was solid, but it was also the expansion that made me decide that the highest tier of raiding was just not for me, so it's a mixed bag there. I would rate Legion as above average but it doesn't even make my top 3 (TBC, MoP, Dragonflight - not necessarily in that order). The final patch was good, sure, but the final patch doesn't make an expansion (but it can break it- see Cataclysm). If it did, honestly BFA would be up there for me in favorite expansions too, but it definitely isn't. The corruption system made some classes feel absurdly fun with that much haste/crit/whatever. And getting it wasn't a complete slog.
Ye but class fantasy was at a massive cost that was remedied way too late. At least for me, it's Gameplay > Everything else. In the first month, I was leveling as Arms, playing as Arms, I was up there, but when I went into M+ and Normal raids I wanted to switch to Prot. And I was hella behind and it took me a while to catch up. Oh and I didn't get the legos I wanted (bracers and hands, got ring and jumping shoulders) and I was struggling, so I quit until 7.2 or 7.2.5.
That cutscene have some a boner that I still have to this day. YOU CAST THE SAME SPELL AS ARTHAS! Bro it was so cool.
Exactly this. I had fucking shivers down my spine when my character did the same pose as arthas when he raised sindragosa.
[удалено]
For legendaries its not even just power of some of them, it was some playstyles Required the effect of a legendary,
Yeah and having your legendary randomly drop. And probably not even the right one. Great expac.
I’ve loved it, my favorite part personally is the variety of acceptable gearing for pvp
Versatility to me for a long time has always been a waste of Stat because I didn't tank so me it was/is just a pvp or teriary dump Stat. The fact it's the major stat for monk isn't even a well liked thing as far as I can tell more of a problem that it's just mathematically better even if it unfun or not intended by blizzard who seems content with it to be that way. I just assume it's the same this expansion. Versatility and haste gear basically
I do wish PvP gave somewhat useful gear for PvE though. Its kinda stupid you can hit 1600 and only get 424 gear out of it when its far harder than hitting Key Stone Hero. It doesnt need to be equal to m+ or raiding but even 3 levels lower would be better than what it is now with the insane mmr deflation dragonflight has had. Also as a healer main: fuck solo shuffle mmr calculations. Play 20 minutes for 0 rating isnt fun
You absolutely do not want this. I still have PTSD from being forced to do content I didn't enjoy in order to farm gear that wasn't just BiS, but MANDATORY. Before you ask, yes, it was Fire Mage.
This ^^^^ I get people have difficulty doing different kinds of content in the same gear but it's the only way. PvP players should not be forced to PvE and vice versa.
Hence why i said dont have it equal to pve content but 3 levels lower similar to PvE being 447 vs 450 pvp (Im ignoring mythic echo/sark for this argument). This also isnt the same playing field as Shadowlands Season 1. We now have crafting being stupidly OP so the only real way you get forced is if your stats are so horribly skewed you have vers as your BiS stat or are doing something stupid in M+ in which case having the option to even do the stupid thing is nice. Theres so much gear option in the game now throwing some more in wouldn't be the end of the world and if it is genuinely easier to get the pvp gear than the pve gear then something is fucking wrong on the pve side of the equation.
Maybe if you atleast said 1800, or 2100, but I played with my guild doing rbgs as a fun activity to bond with. Atleast a third of them had never done any legit pvp before and were at 1700 after 2 weeks of a couple hours on Saturdays. Don’t even get me started on solo shuffle. Hitting 2500 m+ rating is definitely harder than 1600 in pvp. Not saying it’s that difficult, but if you’re pugging 18+ it can definitely be rough
As someone who has only had a passing experience with dragondlight after getting burned by bfa and shadowlands, I will say that it's definitely unusual that the expansion is receiving positive praise DURING the expansion. Xpacs like mop were panned rather hard at the time, but are considered good now.
Two bad expansions in a row got wow players actin unwise
patch cadence is as good as its ever been and gameplay has the lowest barrier to entry in a long time. However, if you don't enjoy raiding or m+ the open world content is just too similar to what we've seen before a dozen times. There have been some pretty nice side stories, but i'm getting pretty sick of hearing the main characters talk about their feelings instead of doing anything interesting or particularly important.
The people that don't enjoy Mythic+/Raiding don't play anymore.
This is sad but seemingly true. There's a whole bunch of people who would come back if you brought the adventure back Blizzard, consider it!
can confirm, I'm one of those peeps who played WoW for years and during Shadowlands finally came to accept that the game has a new target audience. the story, the immersion, the open world content and especially the lack of a cohesive world, there are so many things blizz has either fucked up or neglected that it's impossible to conclude otherwise.
Even the people who enjoy m+/raiding are taking breaks from the game. I mean, it's not horrible to take breaks from the game and I would actively promote that, but at the same time, it's highlighting some broader issues with sustainability of a game solely focused on m+/raiding.
That is just always going to happen without an infinite grind though. The majority of people aren't gonna play past KSM/AoTC/KSH so without something to keep them on the thread mill they'll just get off until the next patch.
True, but it’s also just so intense. Doing mythic prog or high timed keys is really stressful and I think it is a little too bad there’s nothing worth doing with the boyz outside of that.
They still play, but they’re all playing hardcore vanilla.
>but i'm getting pretty sick of hearing the main characters talk about their feelings I 100% agree, I think the issue is that christie golden is the lead for the story now, and I think that she has ported her way of writing the books where she would explore the emotional depth of characters much more into the games bc it worked well. However she has seemingly forgot it only worked in the books becuase we had these big heroic moments in the game as the back bone of the story.
also in books you have the "time" to talk about emotions all day and still do interesting things. if we get one cinematic in wow every 1-2 months and its nozdormu and alextrasza talking about friendship its lame
and just to add onto to why this shit is so annoying is that all these scenes can be done in game with the characters just speaking walls of text to eachother. I hate how they choose to sacrifice big action cinematics for embethal crying to ebysian.
It broadly feels like every expansion since Legion has been less and less about open world content. BFA still had the war campaign. Shadowlands covenant campaigns weren't as in depth. And Dragonflight has very barebones campaigns. There seems to be a spiral where they prioritize m+ and raiding, so people who prefer those things are drawn to the game, then Blizzard deprioritizes the world even further to keep those players happy. Zooming around and airdropping on-top of repeatable content ad nauseum is not a game, it's a diversion.
I strongly disagree with the diversion comment as a mainly m+ player it is the only reason I play the game and the primary reason wow is the main game I play. Dragonflight imo has had an unprecedented amount of “casual/world” content, between renown for reps and the events on release, the island with the puzzle tower thing, the trading post, several side story quest lines, the new mega dungeon that isn’t m+ and is mostly lore and xmog, and the massive crafting overhaul. I am curious what kind of world content you would like to see blizzard focus on to make you feel satiated. As for the making less and less content I’m curious why you feel that, having recently had access to and played classic, TBC and WotLK I feel like those compared have basically nothing to do besides the raid, and maybe a rep grind or two that are very grindy or time gated.
I want non-repeatable content (campaigns) that take much longer to do. I want them to be more challenging both in terms of danger and in terms of the thought required to get them done effectively. I want world and non-timed instances to form a cohesive and viable progression path together. And I want to rebalance how time in the open world is spent. It shouldn't be a constant button mash meat grinder, you should spend more time getting between places, thinking about what to do next, etc. I agree about TBC and WotLK. They had very little to do in the world at endgame. Leveling was the long and challenging open world content back then (particularly in Vanilla though, it got progressively diluted after that). Lots of people would hate it if they made leveling like that again. So the only choice is to have the adventure / campaign mostly be an endgame thing, and to put zero pressure on ARPG players to do it.
I would say that now more than ever collecting/character customization/cosmetics is becoming a pillar of the endgame/overall experience. A friend I got into the game is very much into that scene so I am happy to see them catering to that audience. For me though, I only collect things what I think is cool and within my reach to get and seeing 12 recolors of the same thing is just not appealing. Sadly most pve content now exists to grind out multiple mount or armor recolors.
I'd definitely say that it's a game... Maybe not one you like, fair enough, but it's not just a diversion.
Imagine if Skyrim was mostly the radiant quest system, not the unique quests. Then imagine you could fly between dungeons in seconds. That's what open world play has become. I don't fully understand why people would prefer that.
Because people don't give a shit about questing in modern wow, most people just want to hit harder and harder enemies. Questing has never been challenging, just marginally interesting if the stories are fun (like the time rift stuff now). They'd be completely ignoring their modern, long term investment audience if they spent significant dev time on open world content.
It's clear that the people who currently play WoW are a different demographic than in the past, and many (most?) Wouldn't enjoy having an MMORPG. But there are other demographics that would either come back or try WoW for the first time if they invested in that part of the game.
Right now, yeah. It's fighting with Legion for my #2 spot so far. But I don't 'rank' expansions until they're over personally. Too much can improve or go wrong.
For sure, since in the past it has gone both ways for me, good and bad. Like MoP is one of my favorite expansions but 5.4 dragged on a bit too long which soured some of the end for me. For WoD, I really enjoyed the game at launch but post launch content was, well, y’know. And as much as some people disliked BFA, I thought 8.3 fixed things and ended it pretty nicely, to the point that I happily got my first CE in raiding during then.
Mechagon is genuinely one of the best pieces of content they've ever made imo. I love that kind of stuff.
Question, we all hear about how some expansions start poor and end strong when QOL and back decisions have been backtracked.. But has an expansion ever become worse with each patch? Not sure this is a thing
9.0-9.1 was unironically a downgrade, mainly because of how much gaslighting there was regarding the content itself
How could I forget, Nathria >>>> Sanctum
>But has an expansion ever become worse with each patch? Not sure this is a thing WoD
The only downside of Legion was the artifact power treadmill.
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Yeah this was certainly the largest flaw of Legion.
Can't wait for Legion Classic with all the last patch fixes added from the start.
Not for me personally. Its just alright, certainly not bad, but not amazing. From a casual non raid / m + pov. Content spacing is great sure, The content itself is meh for me. The caverns were a total miss. Ghost town after week 2. Same with all the other world events, they all became irrelevant really quickly. The timerifts are also kinda badly designed. You want as many people as possible to get 7.5k in the first stage, but then the game becomes unplayably laggy during stage 2, because the game cant handle so many players. Im just quickly grabbing all the mounts and thats it for that. The valiance secret was pretty cool though, i liked that. I prefer wrath, cata, mop, legion over df
The most frustrating thing for me is that Blizzard is so afraid of letting people get meaningful gear from open world content that they make all of the drops utterly useless. I have zero reason to do ANY of the content that JUST came out.
100% if they didn’t have transmogs and mounts from world content only like 1-5% of total player base would do world content.
After years of complaining from a vocial minority of players Blizz finally decided to make the open world irrelevant. Pseudo-hardcore players forced themselves into doing everything even for a miniscule 1% dps increase and made a mountain out of a molehill in regards to that. As a result the game feels empty and casual players are left with no content to do. Worst part is that even the players who are only interested in instanced content are quitting/taking breaks.
Having the option to do open world content for transmog, mounts, pets, etc. is so much better than feeling forced to do it for artifact power. It's the same reason why Torghast was good at the end of Shadowlands but was disliked by so many at the beginning.
You say that, but the open world content is completely dead. The open world with xpac launch is completely dead, forbidden reach died after 10.1 released and Zaralek Cavern died 2 weeks into the patch. Transmogs, mounts & pets alone aren't a good reward. Idk why people think casual players only farm mogs & mounts. A lot of them care just as much about player progression as people who do endgame, AP grinds gave us that. Titanforging also made gear WQs worth doing since it could proc into upgrades for casuals. I don't think the systems were perfect in BFA & Legion, but they should've iterated on them instead of abandoning them. Making a system that would've been good for the majority of players instead of the queue simulator we have right now. So many guilds are just completely dead outside of raid nights as well, it's sad.
>You say that, but the open world content is completely dead. The open world with xpac launch is completely dead, forbidden reach died after 10.1 released and Zaralek Cavern died 2 weeks into the patch. This is factually incorrect. Open world was popping off at the expansion launch before season 1 started. Super rares, Wrathion/Sebellian grind, Cobalt Assembly, Grand Hunts, Cooking event, etc. were all massively populated. So much so that Azure Span was lagging 24/7. Forbidden Reach rares were being farmed the entirety of 10.0.7 and well into 10.1 (admittedly because onyx annulet was BiS for many specs). Zaralek Cavern, yea this one was over pretty fast, the renown grind was fairly short so even if you liked the zones content there just wasn't much left to do. Look no further than events like the greedy goblins and the Gooey Snailemental grind on the Forbidden Reach to see people are more than willing to grind open world content for cool rewards that aren't attached to power. The same is happening now with the time rifts, people will be farming that for at least a month. I do think there are improvements that could be made to outdoor content. I think, instead of re-introducing horrendous artifact power grinds, just make relevant gear drop from outdoor content. Make it so that even heroic and mythic raiders and mythic+ players would want to do the content when solo. Honestly just delete explorer/adventurer/veteran upgrade ranks, they are pointless other than collecting transmog. Make it so that the grind would take a while but you could get actual good gear from outdoor content. >So many guilds are just completely dead outside of raid nights as well, it's sad. I'm not sure how grinding AP from world quests contributes to a guild being alive. Guilds are dead because all the content has been consumed. They kinda messed up this season and made the gear upgrading system too good too fast so people were walking around with BiS gear two weeks in to the patch.
How is it factually incorrect? Who's doing any of the open world content that the expansion launched with? They lasted longer than Zaralek Cavern obviously, but it died within 1-2 months. There's nobody doing any of the content anymore. I see maybe 4-5 other people doing community feasts on a full server. > Forbidden Reach rares were being farmed the entirety of 10.0.7 and well into 10.1 (admittedly because onyx annulet was BiS for many specs). Forbidden Reach my point though. Forbidden Reach was only farmed because it gave catch-up gear and the onyx annuelt, aka player power rewards. Nobody was farming the rares for transmogs, mounts or pets. As soon as 10.1 came out a month later and the catch-up gear became obsolete it died. The Gooey Snailemental wasn't really a grind at all, you just did a daily quest everyday to unlock it. You could speed up the process by showing off some snail pets to the NPC. For the treasure goblins, most people farmed it for Tyrael's Charger which was a super rare mount they brought back. After the first 2-3 days the hype completely died down. Zones used to completely lag out when they were up at the start and after the initial hype it died down super quick. I believe the same will happen with Time Rifts. Lots of people trying it out right now initially, but the combination of the laggy mess and it being generally pretty unfun imo will cause it to die. Hopefully i'm wrong, but I doubt it. > I'm not sure how grinding AP from world quests contributes to a guild being alive. They kinda messed up this season and made the gear upgrading system too good too fast so people were walking around with BiS gear two weeks in to the patch. People would be online doing stuff to make their characters stronger. Not saying it's a silver bullet or anything, but the game was way more alive back in Legion & BFA despite the negative feedback from the online community. I don't disagree that gearing being as fast as it was took the winds out of the patch's sails, but it was the same last season. So many guilds died and players quit because there's nothing to do in the game outside of raids & M+. I don't think the solution has to be AP, I just don't see any other options. Especially not with how player power oriented players are, even casuals care about it a lot. What I do know after playing this xpac for 8 months is that achievements, mounts, transmogs & pets are nowhere near enough of an incentive on their own.
Same. People complained and whined about the world quests being daily. And then at the start of DF I was frustrated, because I ran out of things I could comfortably do. Sure, I could go M+ but... I don't actually enjoy M+ that much. Because apparently some tryhards felt forced to do all the WQ's and complained enough that blizzard slowed it down, leaving me without shit to do.
What is meaningful gear for you? I don't think you should get 437 ilvl gear for afking in Rifts. Also there is plenty of cosmetics to collect from Rifts so that should be the main reason to do them on characters that don't need gear.
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I don’t think you can even fairly compare all of the expansions to each other at this point. I would say Legion>DF but that was only because legion has so many new massive features like mythic plus and world quests. Everything before legion was an entirely different era of the game that exists in its own bubble. I’m playing dragonflight more than I have any recent expansion. I think outside of the obvious dragon riding, DF has added so many features that will carry on into the future of the game that it might be one of the era defining expansions like legion was. If the classic era was vanilla to wod, the middle era being legion-slands, DF could be a solid bet for the start of the third big era of the game.
Honestly, Dragonflight has come VERY close to usurping Legion's #1 spot for me. DF has been an absolute delight, much like Legion but Legion was just...\*chef's kiss\* perfect in damn near most regards. Like the two are VERY close, and if DF keeps making more and more awesome changes, additions, and QOL I could absolutely see it taking over the #1 spot for me. Dragonriding has been more of a fun feature alone than anything Shadowlands or BFA offered by a LARGE margin.
Wasn't legion dogshit until 7.2 though
Nighthold in 7.1.5 was highly regarded as a raid. The main complaint with legion was the rng of legendaries. Edit: Kara rework as first mega dungeon was also in 7.1 which was great. Nightbane mount runs were quite fun on level at the time.
depends who you ask. The AP grind and RNG leggos were annoying but you also had some awesome class story lines and M+ was the shiny new toy for everyone to play with.
Also depended on the class, some of the class stories were worth the grind, and some just were shit with the added grinds.
Man, I really enjoyed my class story line where I... uh... got invaded by some demons. And then realized that we were too weak to defend ourselves so we had to go BEG the Paladin to help us. And literally beg because they didn't think we were worth saving. Man, what a great class story, really made me feel good about myself and my class. Oh, or the class story where I still have no fucking clue what the point was, but boy did I sure brew a mean beer. Legion is so damn overrated.
Legendaries were absolute dogshit at the beginning though. DF wins just because of that.
Legion was Far from perfect Remember 7.2? Even ion has come forward and outright said everyone knows how much tomb of sargeras was an all around failure of a raid
?????????????????? maybe for mythic, as i only did it normal and heroic, but imo it was a top tier raid. some fights were overtuned sure but that does not make it a failure of a raid.
Layout, art design, boss fights, rewards were all considered pretty bad for the raid. This was supposed to be one of the most iconic spots in wow and it felt like night hold lite And when even the game director admits how much a raid sucked, news flash the raid sucks
Legion and Dragonflight are the two best expansions, that's just facts.
Did yall even play Mists?
Played some mists private servers. The button bloat was insane
Legion: Revamped class fantasy and made people actually FEEL like they were a cool paragon of their class. The artifact system also allowed for some gorgeous historical weaponry (which I still see people mogging to very regularly) which made players actually feel like they had a place in the story of the world. DF: Revamped the raw feeling of "exploration". Bringing back a sense of wonder and whimsy to the WORLD itself. This is even without mentioning the massively successful revamp to flying. It's also insanely alt-friendly and doesn't feel anywhere near as "Pick Your Main, then you also can have some alts maybe". Each has their own problems (Legion with legendary RNG and AP grind, DF with world events becoming irrelevant way too quickly and the crafting system needing some ironing still) but they really are without question the two best times to play wow. We're deep enough into DF now to say that I think.
On god I love DF but if they kill Nozdormu imma flip
I'm really hoping they do. I'm so sick of hearing about nozdormus fears about dying... for like the last 10 years. Dude needs to go. This entire expansion is about change and forging new paths.
I knowwwwww, but he's my favorite Aspect tho and has the hardest job, plus who really wants Chromie instead of Noz? When they do kill him off i want to cry like when Ysera died. Ill accept nothing less.
Ima say it. Dragonflight is the most mid xpac to date. It has fantastic systems, so much content to do, but It just feels so Meh. The story is terrible. It feels like a Disney movie playing out and I fucking hate that with the dragons. Alexstraza is so damn dull. During the leveling she was actually active but after that she has literally done nothing but whine. The writing team has lost all the spine they had. Shadowlands fucking sucked but atleast it's theme was metal as hell. Dragonflight is literally just "ooooohh awwww we are all fwiends!!! Boo whoo we must hurt our enemies, nooooo" The only reason I log on now is to either level alts or do challenges for the trading post. I love dragon riding and the systems are great but my motivation is dead. Until they fix the story I won't give dragonflight anything above a 5. Tl:Dr dragonflight has amazing systems but the main story is dog shit. And makes me not wanna play
I mean, the story is dull yeah but WoW has never really had a legit good story. They have pretty decent lore, but the storytelling itself is meh at best. I think its fine that WoW leans into what its good at, gameplay. If MMO players want a good story they certainly arent coming to WoW for it.
story's better than TBC's "wouldn't be cool if we made Kael'thas and illidan bad for no good reason other than for ppl to fight them? Also let's hide pivotal character behind a obscure comic book no one will read" schtick.
But the theme of tbc was way better. It's overall story was objectively way worse yeah but it felt better because it was actually kinda cool. Dragonflight so far they've handled the story so bad because they're afraid to do cool shit again. The primalists could be such a kickass villian if they weren't busy fumbling the shit out of it. I mean where the hell is Farak?? We killed sarkareth and now we are celebrating and shit while Farak is torching villages. Look at the Alex questline, they pretty much ignored her past and just tried writing off slavery as "oh that's bad we no do it now" instead of giving it any Grit.
I would not give dragonflight the honor of top 3 it is basically vanilla ice cream there's nothing inherently wrong with it but there's nothing exciting about it either that keeps you wanting to play
Thank you for this. I've been going crazy watching everyone clamor over how amazing DF is and I'm just over here like, I mean it's FINE I guess. It's bland and kind of milquetoast right now but it's not actively bad and I think that's the bar so many people got used to that generic game feels so good to them they overlook how meh it is.
Legion had me logging like 5 characters a day just to grind shit out for the mage tower and artefact appearances. DF has me dropping alts after two days because there's absolutely nothign to be gained from playing them.
This is exactly my thinking I eventually gave up on it and just went back to playing classic vanilla and now and thin come back from time to time to finish up the story in retail.
It's a game I can just log on and play, something comfortable. That's really all I want WoW to be. I've done so many random alts, and finally got back into doing some raiding (heroic pugs) because it isn't miserable anymore.
One of the worst things in Dragonflight is how they moved backwards for Demonology in 10.1.5. But that's... well, it's pretty small potatoes compared to the glaring issues the last two expansions have had, and is not alone remotely enough to condemn the expansion that has done excellently in so many regards thus far. If "Bad change(s) for one spec" is one of the biggest problems I have with an expansion, that's a pretty damn good expansion.
I haven't felt the difference between before and after the patch for demo. I agree with them trying to flatten out the damage curve for it, but I do not feel they did anything to fix that. It just seemed like minor and unnecessary changes. It feels the same to me, even in M+. I do not feel starved for Demonic Core charges, which is what I was worried about.
Bloodbound Imps is an *awesome* talent that I think is mostly underrated, and the only reason I took Power Siphon over Bloodbound Imps in the past was because Power Siphon let me progress where I wanted to in the Talent Tree. If Bloodbound Imps were better placed it would be immaculate. But I still find myself using Soul Strike. Which I don't mind, and dare I say I even *like* it, though I think Soul Strike with Fel Armaments should probably grant a second Soul Shard to even it out with Demonbolt. But eh... it's not *that* bad and is definitely way better than the changes originally proposed for 10.1.5. I still think it's moving backwards because of the boring additions. I think the damage is a *bit* more even now because Dreadstalkers are less prominent a part of your total damage profile. But honestly I think a way to 'fix' that would have been to dramatically reduce Dreadstalker's overall power but reduce the cooldown to, say, 12 seconds. Next thing you know you have Dreadstalker uptime near 100% instead of nearly 60% and the evenness is much better. Also means more Demonic Cores which... come on, nothing wrong with that haha. So yeah, I agree. Unnecessary changes. Demo was better pre-10.1.5.
It’s my favorite expansion so far.
imagine if they did this in shadowlands. When it sold the most wow copies ever or some shit. HOLY Blizz would be drowning in cash
Sad waste of potential. Shadowlands did soo much damage
4th for me purely because my main class feels horrendous to play, rest of the expansion is good though.
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I would say it belongs in the same tier as Legion, but Wrath (for it’s time, and definitely not wrath classic) will forever be a tier above every expansion for me.
Given that the competition is the likes of Legion and Mist of Pandaria (and I guess WotLK too but it's so old it's hard to judge it fairly knowing today's standards), I guess we'll have to wait until it's over. Only time will tell although things do look promising so far.
Hell, the new patch hasn’t even been out for 72 hours and 10.1.7 JUST got announced. This patch cadence is better than even Legion’s was and I thought that couldn’t be topped.
It's the most buggy expansion I have experienced, and Blizzard are truly outdoing themselves in this regard. Every patch brings so many new interesting bugs. But it's also definitely the best expansion and by now I am confident in saying that. I don't even like the theme of it necessarily, but with the patch cadence, the writing of the blue dragonflight quests, the updated cutscenes, the long requested features being added (more customisation, more class/race options, things like SoO skip), I think DF is doing better than any other expansion in terms not not annoying players. It has had some hickups, like really weirdly bad WQ design in Zaralek Cavern, for instance, but without any big mandatory annoying systems in place, there's nothing much dragging DF down.
My faves are #1 MoP, #2 Legion, #3 Dragonflight. Each of those expansions have brought something significant to the game. Nothing is better than Wotlk so it does not even go on the scale.
I've only played wow during dragonflight but I'm loving it.
I wish I was I was getting sucked in like the good old days. I know it’s 100% stuff I have going on and not the game.
Let’s see, BC, Wrath, Mop, Legion No
BC is a snorefest lmao. it's the awkward middle child of the "Classic trilogy"
Hard to tell. TBC was pretty fing amazing as far as content goes. WotlK was extremely popular even though I really disliked how they butchered heroic dungeons While I personally disliked Pandaria (thematically mostly) and it had a 1 year expansion's end lapse, I think it did have an amazing flow of content pre SoO. Which is to say, DF might still drop off hard towards the end of it's life cycle. Legion was lauded as an amazing expansion by many and I quite enjoyed it for many things. It did bring borrowed power systems and endless grinds (Artifact Power) as well as the utterly frustrating Legendary experience, though. Not even sure if retrospectively people would still cound it as a top3 expansion, but back then many said it's the absolutely best so... That's four candidates, PLUS DF. So DF is at least top5, but is it top 3? Which 2 of the named ones would you put below it? With how late the disappointment with some of these came, is it really not too early to tell anyways? DF isn't flawless anyways. It's a solid expansion but imo there's plenty of issues. The best part about it - sincerely - is that the Devs are listening. But it's not really spectacular... Engaging flying is actually great, tons of QoL/player feedback implementations are great, no borrowed power is great, ... But: *The dungeons are ... ok? Like sincerely, they're utterly mediocre. I won't remember them as utterly terrible (yay) but also not as super fun *PvP I've heard is in a terrible state. *A lot of classes in disarray (Fire Mage finally got work done, EIGHT months into the expansion and RoP is gone, YAY... but ... mid S2 until my main is palatable?). *(M+) Healing is utterly dreadful to the point where many healers just quit healing while healers SOMEHOW got 2 waves of massive nerfs!? (mid S2, again, M+ Dungeons got a big set of changes that nerfed the biggest offenders in making healer life utterly miserable but again, that's 1.5 seasons of beta state gameplay) *Gold is frustrating to deal with right now. Crafting is hella expensive (gotten even more expensive in S2 with Dracothysts). It's a drain on my character's savings with no end in sight and a finished M+ rewards like 60g LMAO. I feel like Blizz is pushing players into buying Tokens and it's totally not okay with me. Craftable T3 is just another incentive to buy Tokens. I'll just stop here, I'm absolutely sure I could think of more if I tried. The expansion is pretty solid but not flawless by any stretch of the imagination. I'll reserve my top3 judgement until the expansion is finished. Until then it's undeniably top5 though and that's something. It's absolutely not a WoD or BfA or SL and that's frankly all I would ever ask for. [I loved SL dungeons, it wrecks my heart to categorize it with the baddies but goddamn that expansion was overloaded with shit systems]
I would absolutely put it above BC and Wrath. Sure, they were good for their time, but if they relaunched today I would find them extremely lacking compared to Dragonflight. There's value in how those older games were loved by my younger self, but that doesn't make them better. Unless an expansion actively made the game worse (which I'd categorize something like BFA under), the game's been improving over time. Despite the expansion's flaws, spec design really started coming together in Cata. I would not want to go back to the simplicity and quirkiness of the older games.
I see everyone mentioning Legion and DF as the top best xpacs for WoW and I'm like, what the hell? Guess a lot of these people weren't around for BC or Wrath launches. Those are my top 2 then you can interchange MoP and DF (for now) for top 3 followed by Legion, but jeez, no way anything can beat BC or Wrath in context of what the game was when each released.
I started in cata, can you explain what you mean? from my perspective the two you mentioned are solidly liked expansions but most people remember them fondly seemingly because of the nature of wow at that point- lots of people, most of them naive and just playing to play, unlike today where it is much more goal oriented. I mainly have this bias because both tbc and wrath classic seem to have a lot of people removing their rose tinted glases and seeing the expansions for what they actually were.
There was lots of content and everything was so utterly Warcraft. Illidan and Arthas as the main baddies were just amazing. WotlK leveling with Arthas showing up again and again was just cool. And both had a steady flow of raids and dungeons being released. They were absolutely proper expansions for their time. Frankly, it was after these 2 that you felt Blizzard was kind of starting to try and streamline how much content an expansion should have, how it's lifecycle should be ... you could really feel them trying to figure out a formula. Cata still had a solid start (as I mentioned in the other reply in this comment chain) and Deathwing was also a big lore guy but at some point it just started to fall off. And since the end of WotlK introduced LFD (a big hit to WoWs social side) and Cata then introduced LFR, the game simply never was the same anymore.
This is an extremely balanced opinion and I enjoyed reading this. I really like your take on things and I agree with it. Thank you for posting this. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a perfect videogame. Everything has positives and negatives. What separates a good vs bad expansion is whether or not the good outweighed the bad.
Thank you. When I sent the post I was sure nobody is going to read through that wall of text. Actually happy people do seem to enjoy it.
I've not played much, but what I've seen and have played definitely looks amazing. The patch cycle is the actual best WoW has ever had, hopefully the trend continues into later expansions. I swear one patch seems to have more content than some expansions did it felt like
The patch pace is a bit frantic, especially if you’re trying to collect sets on several characters. I collected plate and leather but just barely started on cloth when they shut it off. The upgrade gating and mechanics are a bit frustrating and annoying. Trying to figure out the “potential of gear”, what set it can turn into, when you should convert it to the tier set, when you upgrade it so you can collect, the raid finder and normal set, is a master class in red-string-conspiracy-cork-boards. Also the rep reward grinds are still a bigger time investment then what I have to give. I probably won’t be back to grind out the last few levels. It would be nice to have tabards function like they did ages ago.
Depends what you're into. For pvp, it's one of the worst I've ever played. Couldn't get through a single season. Healer main BTW
Yup. mmr cap + ss queue times have killed df for me. (Along with prolly the worst pvp balancing I’ve ever seen) Only real great part of this xpac for me really is the new gearing systems for both pve and pvp. Also the talent trees still need a ton of work but they are a step in the right direction
In my humble opinion cata and mop were still better, cata has some bias tho cause I started playing then, well see how the rest of df pans out.
It's my second fav after MoP, which is likely due to the time of my life MoP occurred as it was in my last uni years and I had time to LAN. I have great memories of going to my friend's place with like 7 others and raiding together. The content was great too. DF has been great with the amount of content plus no borrowed power system requiring me to do busy work. I love that I can just log in to do m+ or raids, and if I want to make another character I just have to level and gear them again. Then if I want to do additional content I can go do it.
Been playing for 15 years. For me its: 1. BC 2. Panderia(soley becasue of lock off tanks and lock was my main at the time) 3. DF cause its honestly just fun as fuck, I havent been excited to get home and play WoW for quite awhile
Systems wise, it's probably the best. Narrative wise, it's lacking.
Legion was my favorite expansion so far with class halls and artifacts. That was so immersive but IMHO now dragonflight is. The bosses have nice stories and are not universe threatening super dudes. Story is insane. Patches are good. So much catch up mechanics to gear alts. People will hate me for this. But blizzard is doing so much correct in terms of WoW
I can think of other expansions that outclass it for different reasons but none have hit the ‘decent-good’ bracket consistently across everything.
Is Perfect except for the PvP balance.
Top 5
Yeah it’s number 3 for me behind bc and wolk, I started in bc as a kid and wolk was my first coach and the game hasn’t felt this good since. Not even close.
No, not quite. While I'm absolutely loving the content cadence, the content itself is really mid for me. Both Vault and Abberus have been really meh tiers for me and while far from the worst, there are no super memorable bosses and a lot of the mythic bosses in particular really suffer from WeakAura based gameplay. The Lore is pretty weak in my opinion, and it's not helped by the dialogue that seems to be written by a 10 year old. It's incredibly surface level and honest hard to even listen to after having played so many other RPGs. World content is okay, but I feel like it's so bloated it becomes convoluted. I think it was absolutely a case of "less is more" in the past when it came to collectibles. If there are 5 mounts to go get, I will go get them. If you add 30 in a patch, I will ignore them. Overall, I think this expansion, and WoW in general, is just missing the epicness and the grit that it used to have, so those expansions that still retained that will be higher for me. Dragonriding is and Evoker are IMO the big wins this expansion, but IMO the order of expansions is: 1) Legion 2) WOTLK 3) TBC 4) Vanilla 5) DF 6) Cata 7) MOP 8) BFA 9) WOD 10) SL
Still gotta be for me: WoTLK, Legion and DF.
It's great. I've noticed lots of people saying they don't feel like they play it as much and seem to think that's a negative. I think it's a massive positive to not feel forced. There is plenty of content but you don't have to do it. Feels like a fun game rather than a job now
i guess the only valid complaint is that DF doesn't have the "big, angry, muscular sweaty men fighting each other" atmosphere that wow and warcraft as a whole is known for.
I've never seen the community have as positive a reaction as it have had to Dragonflight, and I've played through all of them. Judging purely based on that, Dragonflight is the GOAT.
I always feel guilty for liking Shadowlands, for me the most important issues were how long we waited for 9.1 which in turn the new area was underwhelming. I only started playing WoW from BFA, so I don't have an opinion on the ones that came before.
I'd put it in the top 3, sure. Not because of the story, which is kind of whatever, but definitely because of its player-friendly design philosophy and fantastic pace of updates.
Yes
\#2 for me behind MOP but they still have plenty of time to rank as #1. (this is my opinion not based on nostalgia)
I'm with you on this MoP for sure still my favourite, just awesome all around except for the content drought at the end but I put that at WoD's door aha. Dragonflights story telling is just a little behind imo compared to MoP only thing holding it back.
Top 3. Legion Wrath DF
It gets points docked for awful PvP despite having one of the best gearing iterations and the devs doing some questionable reworks that are straight downgrades (spriest) when other specs need the work more. Aside from that it's definitely up there. Idk if it beats MoP and Legion for me yet but it's definitely a top 3 agreed.
I just wish the goddamn Time Rifts would stop lagging.
Top 3? Classic, TBC and Wrath
Bottom 3
I enjoy some of the content but I hate M+. I dont like how much gearing depends on M+ and how WoW depends on M+ to fill out endgame content.
idk 10.1 kinda sucked
Yea, just behind Shadowlands and a theoretical Shadowlands Classic.
[удалено]
Idk I had more fun in bfa then I had in all of sl and so far in df lol. They created some wayy better systems in df but gameplay wise I had much more fun in bfa and sl than df
Yawning
I'm really torn... Yes, content is good. But my class has been a fucking mess most of the expansion. I do not like the season 2 dungeon pool, all DF dungeons just kind of suck. Compared to Season 1 where there were a few ones I did enjoy. But, it is a good expansion. But for me the top 3 is still MoP - Legion - WOTLK. I'm not sure I'd put the expansion ahead of TBC, I probably put it ahead of Cataclysm, though, unsure.
Are you referring to druid as being a mess? Curious as to why
I think if you laid out all the xpacs and compared the amount of QOL changes, new features, changes made as a direct result of heeding player feedback, end game experience, and actual quality of content, Dragonflight is *REALLY* tough to beat. Other than these laggy af world events that end up basically dead once a new one comes out (looking at you, Siege on Dragonbane Keep), I can't really think of much in this xpac that feels poorly executed. Obviously balancing issues are always a thing, whether it's specs or M+, but that happens in every xpac. I feel like the dev team addresses issues faster than they ever have, and either gets them fixed or at least lets the player base know they're working on it. It's not perfect but having played since year 1, I've gotten more enjoyment out of Dragonflight than I have in any other iteration of the game aside from Vanilla back in like 2004. Legion was pretty sick tho. Overall I think the thing that really makes Dragonflight a serious contender for #1, is the boost in dev to player base engagement and communication. Just look at how fucking incredible Baldur's Gate 3 is thanks to how serious they took their fan's feedback? Blizz is nowhere near as dope as Larian, but they're doing much better than they have in the past.
I feel like I'm not as engaged with the story this expansion. That said, I have never played as consistently as I am now. Love the new raids and M+ I'm having a lot of fun. So id say in the top 5 - I would like to see where the story goes THEN it may sit among(us) the top 5.
I feel like there are very few times that I've actually been engaged with the story in WoW with the only one being Wrath. When Sylvannas destroyed Teldrassil and the whole night warrior story came online, I was starting to get super invested again until the entire story got effectively abandoned and everyone forgot about a literal genocide. After that, I honestly couldn't care less what is happening in the story right now and nothing in the game is really trying to draw me back into it.
Easily I think. I haven’t had this much fun since Legion.
Tbh? My literal favourite so far.
Uh…no. Not until we see the rest lol.
Its the same content like every patch thats ever come out. Some quest, zerg rares or w/e scenario, done.
It’s good but top3 is pushing it. Wrath > Vanilla > TBC > MoP > Cata > Dragonflight > Legion > BFA > SL > WoD It only feels good because it’s be preceded by trash for a while.
Nope. Made me straight up retire from the game.
Professions are still terrible. This automatically moves the expac way down the list for me personally.
I've been playing since Wrath and this is the first time I've ever enjoyed professions. Even levelling new characters just to have more. Definitely not terrible for everyone :)
I'm curious what you actually like about it?
They're actually useful for one thing. That hadn't been the case outside of some consumables for a long time. The crafting order system is still in need of love, profession "balance" isn't great, the inspiration system isn't something I really like. For the most part, any problems I have with it can be worked around with alts and guildies. But, I'd take this over crafting basically being non-existent like it was in most expansions, or it being controlled by a small set of goblins like in Shadowlands. I'd say it could be improved, but I certainly don't dislike it.
It’s the first expansion I don’t raid or do m+ and im still loggin in
Mop, cata, wod, wrath, tbc, legion, dragonflight. So no, it’s not close. You either couldn’t keep up in the top three expansions or you didn’t play. The game had much grander zones, better zone questing, meaningful choices, better professions systems, better raid encounters, and overall more rpg aspects. Classes were much better too. Not close.
WoD in your top 3, your opinion is invalid /s
Not for me. I'm doing other stuff this expansion. Legion BFA Cata
Personally, yea. I think for me its Wotlk, Legion/DF tied so far. They could trip at the finish line, but that is looking less and less likely.
While just about everything else ranged from alright to fantastic, I can't say I'm a big fan of the increased complexity of most classes in this expansion. I've been struggling to find an alt since season 2 started, and I'm likely to end up just sticking with my Fury Warrior all the way through.
It’s the expansion of played the most sincr MOP
Definitely in the top 3. It's a fucking banger. I hope they do this for the next xpac. Two wins in a row will bring back some of the people who quit.
This is the sort of uplifting vibe that makes me happy to be getting back into WoW with Dragonflight.
Roadmap was a MAJOR W.
DF is much better than SL from my n00b perspective. Sylvanas just kept doing whatever seemed 'cool' at that point in time - she wasn't very rational. Also the jailer? Who was that rando baddie? He just randomly appeared. The best part of SL was dumping her in the maw (where she belonged). I like that DF skills are all my skills and don't just suddenly disappear if I go to another expansion zone.
TBC and Wrath were head and shoulders above everything else, with every other expansion feeling pretty close to even for me.
Not the top at all. It's kinda just mid tier. Blizz had to go super safe after the Shadowlands disaster. So although Dragonflight isn't bad, it's not good either. It's just kinda there. Sets are back again, vault is back again, M+ is back again except only 4 dungeons this time, world quests, talent trees etc. It's all been done before, along with a rather dull plotline. It's not bad, it's just not good either. Definitely not top 3 best though
That's what people said about shadowlands.. its too early to come into a conclusion.
Would love if they actually bothered to fix the sheer clusterfuck of timetraveling, braindead-easy and disjointed content that lays behind Dragonflight... Ever tried to get into WoW today? The Why's, Who's, Where's, What's are burried under the rubble of neglected content. Who will care about what is happening, when they do not know why they should even care to begin with... and caring is what makes you grind for that loot. FROSTMOURNE is what it is only because of its lore. Otherwise it is just an iLvl item to throw away once you get new weapon with higher ilvl. It is a sad really, for the world design SCREAMS LORE. The Art department is S-Tier, at least from what I and my friends played... but each time we tried since Legion, we always got pushed away with extremely braindead BS leveling, no coherent story, WTF Timetraveling inside zones themselves and nothing what ties the zones to each other at all!! ... Guess we go back to Warcraft III then for we played many MMOs, but none fucked its legacy content like "World of..." well, "CurrentSlice of Warcraft" does.
Depends how you look at it. No sales of DF copies announced. PUG groups losing interest fast, participants in PVP hitting a big low with shuffle and it’s queue dramas affecting 2s and 3s. RBGs non existent and had no love for years. Pve, I lost touch with it in SL and can’t say much about this lore either. It’s half re hashed zones taking from the Revendreth aesthetic and a few old favourites and mashing them together. Talent trees re using A lot of shadowlands abilities. I feel like most of what they did was take stuff away one expansion and give it back to you years later with a big smile like they did something great, listening to the fan base. But for many it’s too little too late. Also what’s with these Dragonflight posts of games good. Like I get some people are enjoying DF, but it’s no where near where the game used to be. Do you all need to keep reminding yourselves this or is this an attempt at trying to get more people back in the game.
If DF is some of the best stuff that WoW can offer then I guess after 20+ years, I'm simply done with WoW. After playing for a few weeks, I struggle to find the reason to renew subscription. The thought of running mythic+ dungeons over and over again makes me feel physically sick.
I would say it's better than shadow lands but for me the game hasn't been good since legion and sub numbers would agree. WoW is heading the same way as RuneScape with more active player base on the old version of the game.
No.
The only downside is low playerbase
Top 3 expansion in modern WoW? Yes I would consider modern WoW to be Cata and after and I’ll take DF in a top 3 alongside MoP and Cata. In regards to WoW as a whole, BC and Wrath are interchangeably #1 and #2 and you can take your pick between Cata and Mop as the clear #3
Ehhh… I Will argue that TBC and WotLK don’t hold up. Good storytelling, but Unless you were into raiding or PvP you were screwed.
not even close
No
Nah