Zachary Chen

Speaking as a former Cutting Edge raider and MMO veteran: I'll give them credit, by 9.2 catchup mechanics made things nicer and the return of tier sets FINALLY feel...nice and give more casual players motivation to raid again. Plus the catchup ability to craft tier pieces is appreciated for what it is. I also did appreciate being able to change covenants at will But...that's about it Classes are still stripped of a lot of power and flavor and given some back in the form of borrowed power via the covenant system. The fact that there has to be a borrowed power covenant system is a big drawback to me. It isn't as ridiculous as BFA thankfully, but it's still very noticeable. I know some might like it, but I do not. The class should be designed first and the system around the classes. NOT the other way around. Some classes can function decently without their covenants, while others are completely reliant on their covenants. The balance between the covenants has improved, but the fact that classes would feel terrible without them in the first place is not good for me I do not enjoy the fact that classes have kinda been homogenized into simple 3-4 button specs. Where are all the unique abilities? Either gone or put into talents on the same row as similar abilities, and some are blatantly weaker than passive talents The story writing is terrible, possibly one of the worst ever. I strongly disagree that MMO stories need to be bad/mediocre in exchange for content, look at MMO's like FF14: Amazing story, great characters, but still solid content. WoW's lore was once incredible with a lot of effort into world building, character development, etc. But now? All that thrown out the window, the main villain is laughable and their final attempts to make him seem sympathetic were just as laughable Many of the improvements in 9.2 should've been built in from the start and content added as they went. Notably transferring of legendary materials, tier sets, and the ability to change covenants at will. Of course, the final note wouldn't have been a problem if the borrowed power covenant system wasn't there to begin with. Legion order halls were far superior, were they perfect? No, but they were better than what we have here I give patch 9.2 a 3.5 stars, it's about what you'd expect at this point out of a meh expansion with a decent end patch. There were some solid improvements compared to launch and some things that people asked for were finally given...but I give Activision/Blizzard's regular roller-coaster treatment of its fans a 1. The fact that it takes the end of an expansion to finally have feedback heard and implemented on top of a lawsuit just isn't it man. I'm moving on to greener pastures. If you are a massive fan of Warcraft then by all means give this a try if you haven't played WoW in years, but I cannot recommend this current expansion and patch otherwise