Legion was my favorite expansion for a number of reasons - between the introduction of the second hero class (echoing my previous favorite,) the very clear sense of stakes that were particularly missing in the previous expansion, and the cool class-specific content that really made you feel like you were playing a character who had chosen a certain way of life, there was a ton going for it.
But possibly my favorite was the introduction of a true max-level zone in Suramar.
We had seen previous attempts at this - starting with Burning Crusade, we had gotten new zones for max-level players, but these tended to be hubs for daily quests or other repeatable and low-canon-impact activities. If you wanted the kind of thorough story arcs and plots and the quests to support them, you really only got that while leveling up.
But Suramar gave us enough quests that it seemed to have even more content than leveling zones like Stormheim or Highmountain. The ongoing story of the Dusk Lily Rebellion felt truly epic because we saw it grow from such a small seed to a total overthrow of the corrupt collaborator regime.
Of all the Allied Races, the only one that has really troubled me is the Nightborne, and I think that's because they did such a good job of making us feel invested in the efforts of Thalyssra, Oculeth, Valtrois, Silgryn, and the others. Canonically they decided that it had been the Blood Elves who put in more effort to aid in the rebellion, but as someone who played through both the 7.0 and 7.1 plots three times on Alliance characters, the Nightborne's loyalty to the Horde and opposition to the Alliance feels like a painful and unexpected betrayal.
Still, complications of canon when you have two player factions aside, the Suramar story during Legion felt great. It took the successes of the 5.1 story quests and enhanced them by building an entire zone to support them - not to mention several other questing hubs that told other stories in the zone but still expected a max-level character.
We really haven't seen anything quite like it since. Argus had its story quests, but these felt like less of a continuous story and more like a small handful of quick chapters that primarily served to introduce zones for world quests. Don't get me wrong - I think Argus was spectacular and a really exciting place to take the game (especially as a big Draenei fan.)
But in BFA, we've gotten very little in the way of this sort of questing. The War Campaign is meant to play a similar role, but it feels much more like 5.1's quests than anything of Suramar caliber. In part, the two-continent system for the expansion, while in most regards a really successful feature, is partially to blame.
Part of the concept of BFA was that the other faction's continent is a set of max-level zones for you.
But the quests don't really go into a ton of detail about the zone's stories. For example, Alliance characters ultimately learn nearly nothing about the Blood Trolls in Nazmir - you know that the Blood Trolls are evil and that an Alliance officer sent to the swamp went crazy and joined them, but there's no mention at all of G'huun or of the massive Titan facility that is the source of all this madness. There is some interesting dramatic irony that one can infer from the fact that the Horde might think the Alliance is willing to tolerate the corruption of Lord Stormsong, but ultimately there's very little story to these incursions into the other faction's zones.
Dazar'alor and Boralus appear to provide some of the urban adventuring that we got in Suramar (which, granted, with its stealth-based gameplay might have felt frustrating for those not used to playing a Rogue) but we don't get a ton of it. Horde players do go to the Zanchuli pyramid a couple times in Zuldazar quests, as well as the Amani and Farraki neighborhoods, but Alliance players do very little questing in the non-instanced version of Boralus. There are plenty of neighborhoods and regions that I haven't seen used for anything.
The key is that the story dries up a bit. Horde players get a bit more once they hit revered with the Zandalari Empire, but most of the plot for both factions feels largely resolved not long after hitting the level cap.
As such, the main motivation to play characters who have hit that cap is just standard gearing, which of course has always been part of the game, but it has left me feeling more motivated to level alts than work much on anyone other than my main for each faction to work on reputation grinds for allied races. So while my Human is now gradually churning through Proudmoore Admiralty (having already hit exalted with 7th Legion and unlocked Dark Iron Dwarves - the Warlock is now level 45) and the Tauren is picking up Emissary quests for Honorbound and Zandalari Empire, there's not a ton of stuff to do for those who are content to have LFR-quality gear for now acquired far more consistently through Warfronts.
I don't want to throw blame at one my favorite aspects of BFA - namely the entirely separate leveling experiences (give or take a few familiar quests when first glimpsing your opposing faction's continent) - but I do wonder if the need to create three rather large zones with enough content to take you through roughly three levels each (making up for the tenth level through those excursions to the other continent and some of the introductory quests) twice over due to the two continents might have taken away from some of the energy to create a significant amount of max-level story content.
It's possible that they wanted to pace it differently and that we'll get more in 8.1, but it's also possible that they're simply not planning anything as extensive as the Suramar experience in this expansion.
If true, it's a bit of a shame. For me, the core of my enjoyment of the game is the story and the sense of my character's place in the world. I want to gear up and maximize my player power because that makes the characters feel like the badasses they're supposed to be. Without story, it's all just a bunch of flashing numbers.
And I don't mean to say that there's no story in BFA - on the contrary, it's packed with a lot of interesting stuff. Are there some inconsistencies and weird story choices they've made? Sure. But that was true in Legion as well (like, if the whole reason Mardum existed was because demons naturally regenerated in the Twisting Nether, what was the point of Antorus? That's never addressed in-game.) But it does feel that, to a large extent, outside of mythic dungeons and world quests, there's not a lot of reason to leave Boralus or Dazar'alor, and the story feels pretty stalled if you've done the short chains like Pride of Kul Tiras and finished the rather small number of War Campaign quests.
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