The Treadmill Effect
In many ways, everything on this list comes back to the feeling that grind is the central component or feature of Battle for Azeroth. Of course, that comes with the caveat that all MMOs feature grind in one fashion or another, but BfA has taken things to such a ridiculous extreme that fun has literally been stripped out of expansion content almost completely. Everything and we do mean everything, feels as if it is purely present to keep players locked into the game to grind away which, of course, means a monthly subscription in most areas of the world. After all, the new metric that matters most to Activision-Blizzard is “Monthly Active Users”.
The problem is that nearly everything that can drop or be earned in BfA requires a massive time commitment and it has simply sucked the joy of the game out of the new content altogether -- or at least content that comes after the first character or two has hit cap.
The problem is that there’s no real fix for this either other than to provide players with measurable goals, something to shoot for that isn’t behind an RNG chance. Reputation gains, while coming in slowly, are something that players can watch as they progress toward a defined end goal. In opposition, the gross RNG nature of pet drops in Island Expeditions, for instance, boggles the mind of a play who may want to obtain all or some of the 28 pets.
RNG has even leaked into class combat through the Heart of Azeroth / Azerite Gear systems. The traits that players can choose at specific levels on their shoulder, chest or head slots are often “percent chance” to fire off leading many to feel that they are “rented abilities” (see above) rather than passive or active abilities that can be counted on in any given situation.
Signature Features - War Mode, War Fronts & Island Expeditions
Before release, BfA boasted three new unique features coming with the expansion: PvP War Mode, 20-man PvE War Fronts and Island Expeditions. Not long after launch, it has become obvious that all these systems are lacking in one way or another.
War Mode suffers from poor sharding: many an Alliance player has found themselves fighting against multiple Horde enemies at the same time, which leads to fewer Alliance players having the mode turned on. The problem has become more extreme over the short period of time. Is there a way to entice players who are normally un-interested in world PvP into participating in War Mode without making it feel required for the provided bonuses? No one knows for sure, but there is no achieving that without fixing the sharding first.
War Fronts have had a rather rocky start with Horde players having free access to Arathi for a period of time while the Alliance saw the requirements in gear level to participate. Players were unhappy over the prospect of only one side having the access to the Arathi rares at a time, depending on who holds control over the location.
With the rewards being a 340 ilvl gear (that can warforge) for winning and 370 ilvl piece for completing the quest, War Front: Arathi has become something you do once every two weeks, scour the Rares for mounts, toys, and pets, defeat the World Boss and stop caring for it until the next time it is available to your faction.
The rotation will be spiced up with the addition of a new War Front: Darkshore in patch 8.1. This way each faction will have a War Front to attack and another one to defend. 8.1 will also add the new special currency to War Fronts that can be spent on the mounts, transmogs, and pets so Blizzard is already taking active steps to increase the popularity of War Fronts.
Island Expeditions started rather unpopular with the community as well. While the drops include a wide variety of pets, mounts, transmog, and quests, the rate of seeing these items was so pitiful at first that players simply stopped caring. Add the ambivalence about the Azerite rewards - which is listed as the main reasons for running the islands - and the expeditions have found themselves with a lack of adventurers.
Blizzard has been working on the problem since the release, ramping up the experience you get on alts, the drop rates (twice!) and adding a vendor for Doubloons (the Island Expeditions’ special currency) in the upcoming patch 8.1. While the vendor only sells a couple of transmogs, pets, toys, and a single mount, it is a great start.
Honorable Mentions
Mythic raiding is locked to 20-players only which locks smaller guilds out of Mythic progression. Mythic 10 needs to make a comeback.
The story in BfA is a convoluted mess. Of course, we don’t know the entirety so far, but we are at the point where some things will not, no matter how they are resolved, be concluded in such a way as to please one group or another….or even anyone! There are contradictions to existing lore and characters whose personalities have been vastly altered and much more. Devs have shown some willingness to tweak the story lately, but it remains to be seen how much they can in any significant way.
The Faction War has absolutely torn the WoW community apart. It’s even gotten to the point of becoming a literal “team sport” or an “us-vs-them” competition. Just search for “Horde bias” or “Alliance bias” on the official forums if you don’t believe it. While the faction conflict is as old as WoW itself, in this day and age, it simply feels bad in the context of the story that has been presented so far.
Bugs - The quality of the BfA launch was abysmal, but the team has continued to iterate on fixing them through hotfixes. They need to keep it up. This also includes the general technical state of the game - There’s a reason many called it “Beta for Azeroth”.
Professions have not felt rewarding in several expansions. Either throw them out or go back to the drawing board for a complete revamp.
PvP vendors need to come back.
Flying and the continued requirement for players to complete a long (and tedious?) series of quests and achievements in order to unlock it. This is easily solved by cutting the requirements for older expansions in order to streamline the process.
Class tuning needs to happen across many classes and specs. There are far too many that are not viable anywhere. It needs to go deeper than flat percent changes to damage. Asses why a class/spec isn’t working and fix it through smaller, nuanced, TARGETED changes.
Battle for Azeroth has a lot of room for improvement. There’s no question in our minds that the expansion can be “saved”, but will it be too little too late as the pressure to push out the next expansion comes to bear? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to seeing how systems will change over the course of the next couple of years.
What system or feature do you feel most needs to be reworked? What suggestions would you make in that regard? Leave us your thoughts in the comments!