Dragonflight. Playing it safe?

Lore Story
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Dragonflights main mission seems to be to strengthen the basics of WoW. They introduce profession. travel, reputation and talent systems that seem to be designed to add content not only for now, but for all addons in the forseeable future. In that context it is quite interesting to see what they are doing with the story and… well, we can’t comment on the main plot too much yet (though it seems inoffensive and unexiting for now), but I do feel the tone in the side quests is decidedly… safe.

Save the poor animals! Help this child get some confidence! Make funny noises at that Yeti! Help these children deal with a threat in a child-friendly way! Do a photo-safari! Help these lovers reconnect! Help these veterans with their mental pressures! Help these animals find love! Enjoy the spa! Prepare a marriage! Play with the doggo! Help with the gardening!

I mean… none of that stuff is new in WoW, nor is it wrong for any of it to be there. But I do get the feeling that this addon has a lot of it. Honestly, too much for me right now. The world seems designed to make Taliesin squeal gleefully, but I find it hard to find much, if any, edge to it. Fair enough, I don’t have to be the target audience of this stuff, and if I stuck through while they did the Shadowlands desaster, rainbows and puppies probably won’t offend me too much, either.

But it does make me wonder about the tactics here. Is this a real shift towards disney-fied WoW content, or have they just decided to play it safe, while Blizzard is still very much regrouping from scandal and bad decisions? Let’s not forget, this addon was made while Danuser still was the highest-ranking narrative designer, though they are looking to fill positions that would outrank him there. They aren’t playing with a full deck, and they can’t allow themselves to make great mistakes so might they just be playing it safe, until they actually have a team that can make heavier decisions again?

There were many addons that were called “filler addons” by the player base, but this time I feel that it might be exactly that. Just doing something while they are looking for better ideas. So… do you think the focus on cuteness is there to stay, or is it just a diversion for now? Will this addon drive the story, or just keep us distracted until they come up with a “real” one? Is WoW’s edge gone for good, am I just not seeing it, though it is there, or is it just temporary unavailable while the blade is getting sharpened?

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well you guys said you wanted to be farmer joe again no epic quests for you enjoy being just a “regular adventurer” again

also its pretty clear that blizzard rewards failure not punishes it so even this is the 3rd bad expansion in a row blizz won’t care because they already got your money

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That’s quite beside the point, though. The “regular adventurer” from back then savaged anyone that seemed like they might become threatening at any point in the future, and gathered heads on a whim. The power level has nothing to do with the grimness of the setting.

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ye but as i said they don’t really care they already got your money hundreds of thousands of mindless sheep have already pre-ordered for bfa 2.0

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They are still making decisions, though. And they have some reasoning for that. If it isn’t keeping customers happy (which is quite an assumption, I might add), you’d still have to provide an alternative to be able to explain their decisions.

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I’ve not kept up much with the stories of the zones, but it generally strikes me to fall into the same trap of taking previous stuff, with the only real twist being what if it was more exaggerated. Val-Sharah the druidiest of druidy zones, Stormheim Vrykuliest zone(with titan stuff), Suramar the elfiest city, Maldraxus the Eastern Plagueier lands, The Maw Icecrownier Citadel and on and on we go.

It’s being marketed as an Azeroth story, but i can already smell cosmic nonsense rearing it’s ugly head again.

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gratz for seeing the snake in the grass and not getting hoodwinked by bfa 2.0 where the story was proclaimed to be one thing but it changed into something else

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I’m not sure what you mean here in the context of Dragonflight. I mean, you can always make zone comparisons, and I guess the Northend vibe of the blue dragon zone is quite obvious, but that in itself doesn’t sound like the exaggeration of themes that you are talking about.

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There was a lot of Grizzly Hills 'member berries during the Azure Span presentation, then there is the broad steppe zone that’s basically Barrens 2.0 even down to the Centaur and such. That said I’m somewhat curious about what they’re going to do with the zones now that they’re once again designing themw ith flying in mind, as they’ve not really done that since WotLK-Cata era, which to be honest feature some of the best zones in my opinion.

It’S a concern based on the zone design of the past 3 or so expansions. I don’t know enough as of now to say for sure whether or not it’s gonna be the case and i hope not, but if there is anything current Blizz is a bit short on it’s benefit of the doubt.

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I don’t think Barrens is a good comparison for the plains at all but let’s say it is… I still don’t really get the problem. I mean, we can argue that it might be preferable, if they just updated the old zonesn instead adding unneeded new ones, but if they add new zones it feels quite obvious to me that they would in some ways resemble the many zones that have been there before. If one zone is like Grizzly Hills and one zone resembles a zone from launch Kalimdor that really doesn’t seem like a problem to me at all, it certainly isn’t a cleanly copied theme. Making Val’sharah more druidy than anyhing that has ever druided and putting Scourge and Lich King stuff into the Shadowlands, where they really had no buisiness being seem quite different from that to me.

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One of the best zones in the entire game was Drustvar and only due to story being quite dark with cursed villages, etc etc.
I believe it might be a bit tough to fit something like that in new zones, because it is initially dragon zone, with dragons being there apex predators while being also the very intelligent race, could it be the reason for them to do general story that way?

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