Slowly, Cortyn is fed up as well. World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is, for many players, a beta and not a finished game.
Anyone who has actively played World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth in the past few days or even just followed the forums and social media knows that most of the discussion revolves around one topic: bugs, exploits, and other errors.
The most bugs an WoW addon ever had
The disaster began with an exploit that allowed some players to complete world quests an unlimited number of times. They could farm a lot of reputation and extremely good rewards. Here, one can certainly turn a blind eye and say it was the targeted exploitation of a small error. Bearable, as this happens in all smaller and larger MMOs from time to time.
Shortly thereafter, “Mythic+” dungeons were unlocked. To the surprise of many players, many characters on the US servers received strange rewards. They received items with item level 415 or even higher. Absurd keystones like “Shrine of Storms +22” were not uncommon. This is impossible to overcome with the current gear level.
A world quest in the dungeon Atal’Dazar also caused frustration among players. There was an “extra” mini-boss as a “bonus” that was the objective of the world quest. However, this boss – you can guess – had a major bug. It caused certain enemy groups to appear in double numbers. Instead of having to defeat six enemies, there were now trash groups with twelve enemies. Depending on the difficulty of the dungeon, this can be an absolute torture.
Many groups devised a plan to mow down one of the two enemies and then die to try again. This way, they “died” piece by piece through the enemy groups. And before the “Yeah, but back in Classic one had to” screamers come in: No, even controlling one of the two enemies made it only marginally better.
On September 9, 2018, the war fronts began in Europe. Players could finally sign up for the battle for Stromgarde on the side of the Horde if they were part of the Horde. At least in theory.
In practice, player registration ensured that the entire group finder was completely paralyzed for almost four hours. Not only could war fronts not be played, but also dungeon or island expedition group searches no longer worked for many players. By the evening, the error was fixed.
Unfortunately, one has to say it so harshly: Numerous new features that were unlocked over the weeks are bugged.
Hasty bug fixes with new problems
Although Blizzard usually pushes hotfixes quickly to fix the problems, they do not always work.
One hotfix that attempted to balance healers in PvP was supposed to reduce the mana regeneration of healers. However, the result was that healers now had negative regeneration and lost mana on their own during combat. At lower levels, mana was consumed almost immediately.
In another hotfix, a weapon was massively nerfed, only to be buffed again a few hours later.
Besides that, there are rather absurd bugs without wild consequences, such as upgrading a mount that suddenly is “warforged”.
All of this does not fit “my” Blizzard. This is not the game developer that has always stood for quality and elaborate systems. There is haste, poor testing, and rushed solutions.
WoW: Beta for Azeroth
Given all these errors and problems, it is hardly surprising that players have already built numerous memes and have simply renamed the game. Instead of “Battle for Azeroth,” they now call it “Beta for Azeroth.”
Hundreds of comments have piled up, and again and again the ironic question is asked whether anyone knows when Battle for Azeroth will finally emerge from beta. Others even go further and call WoW in its current state “paid beta servers.” And at least I can understand the origin of this impression.
Don’t get me wrong. Battle for Azeroth is beautiful. The landscapes are grand, I find the quests captivating, and the cinematics are amazing. The soundtrack sends chills down my spine. Visually, audibly, and story-wise, the game is a hit. But the gameplay mechanics cannot keep up at the moment because new bugs keep popping up.
Hardly a new feature is ready, it is already bugged. The game is far from “unplayable,” and most bugs are fixed promptly, yet it clouds the picture of a new, major WoW expansion massively.
Battle for Azeroth needed more time
It had already become apparent during the beta that Blizzard did not have enough time. After all, some classes, like the Shadow Priest, are downright boring and sleepy in playstyle. During the beta, the developers stated, that they would address these issues with Patch 8.1.
There was therefore not enough time to make a class truly fun, and as is now becoming apparent day by day, there was also a lack of fine-tuning for other features.
In this sense: I am really used to more from Blizzard. For the first time, it feels like core features were not extensively tested. Almost every day, new bugs appear, and even the hotfixes introduce new errors.
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth could have greatly benefited from three more months of development time. Because what is currently happening in Azeroth is simply unworthy of a company like Blizzard, whose philosophy has always been: “It is done, when it’s done.”
It would have been nice if Battle for Azeroth were truly “done.” Please take three more months next time – the game needed it and would not be driving away so many players now.
