The last time I felt engaged with the story was this moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td0pUwrBWjc
Illidan killing Xe’ra. This was a really epic moment for me because here the protagonist became the antagonist. Xe’ra, in the name of the Light, wanted to take away Illidan’s free will, the freedom of his choice, the freedom to be who he wants to be instead of what others expected him to be.
To me this was a deep moment that awakened a catharsis, a lot of deep thoughts and I’ve been waiting for Blizzard ever since to give us a good and meaningful storyline with Light fanatics. We’ve got bits and pieces of the Scarlets in the past but imagine if all the Light fanatics united, took over Stormwind, banished all warlocks, Ebons, shadow priests, worgen, void elves, etc from town or hunted them down in the name of the holy Light.
Now that would be an expansion I would totally buy!
You need to understand that not every person is “emotionally intelligent” and can FEEL what you guys feel watching those cutscenes to begin with
Having said that, most of the cinematics in Dragonflight are about two people emotionally talking. There are 0 badass characters, cinematics or dialogue in Dragonflight, absoutely nothing gets me hyped at all. Every previous expansion had at least one memorable moment or quest chain. Seeing Galagrond is the only cool thing i can recall, and i have 12 alts and read quest text.
Raszageth is lame, Wrathion and Sabellion are lame, Alexstrasza is lame af. I thought the gnolls would be cool but they turned out lame as well.
If they are going to try to appeal to both audiences, they need to throw a bone every once in a while to the folks that are not into cutsie, emotional stuff. Like in the middele of a Chromie dialogue, have Garrosh jump out of a time rift, smash some skulls or something and dissapear. Is that so hard?
Tbf dawn of the infinites with irikrond and the other cut scenes was badass af. The sarkareth cinematic at the end was mediocre, but the quest at least was nice. The cinematic of alexstrasza made her appear more “vulnerable”, which is a good thing, since originally she was always a vulnerable character. She is a character, who fell in love with the previous black dragonflight aspect for example (forgot name), so her having sentimental moments similar to jaina proudmoore is perfectly fine. Alexstrasza should be an emotional character. She is the aspect of life. Everything about her just screams passion/emotion/etc. Now, ofc, I want characters like Broxigar too. Badass warriors, who don’t feel fear in front of a titan and just charge, even if they die after. The first mortal, who wounded sargeras. There is no character more badass than broxigar, and I’d like to see more of these too.
Varian is also in the category of insanely badass characters, where he tried to solo the entire legion to save the alliance.
Illidan is insanely cool too. Same with turalyon outside of him being so weak compared to illidan. However, I don’t see a single character of similar strength and badass-status in dragonflight.
Fyrrak could be as cool and badass as illidan though, if they give him a cool story, and develop some pre-ancient lore about primalist trolls
That absolutely makes sense for Alexstra as a character and Dawn was pretty cool im not denying that. Just that the whole start of the expanion was meh, like the core fantasy is weak and they just built on the whole legacies and moving forward thing.
Mists of pndaria was lame on the surface, then we go there its like bruh… the Mantid are vicious, the Ally/Horde war is popping off with major casualties for the natives, Thunder king etc…
And if you dont like any of that, or want some more dark fasntasy vibes, go do the revamped Scholomance which is great.
In Dragonflight not a single thing scratches that specific itch they went all in on this theme and its just not landing with me. We have a patch to go so maybe 10.2 will blow my pants off, we shall see
I think what makes it most noticeable how lacklustre the story is, is how very few people really praise the story. I have experienced plenty of times in games where a new patch or expansion releases and a community has got genuinely excited over the plot. Things like “whoa, I really wasn’t expecting that!” and “this game has such an incredible story!” and lots of theory crafting over what might happen next. There’s actual excitement.
With certain games, it feels like a patch releases with new story and people simply complete it and discuss other things. They brush over it. It was alright, it was a game story. And no one notices the lack of enthusiasm. They just assume it’s normal, after all the story was “alright”, it’s “fine”, shouldn’t expect too much. Once in a while someone criticizes it and a few people will jump through hoops trying to reason why it’s fine and you should enjoy it.
Dragonflight falls into this category. It’s safe, bland and “alright” but certainly not great.
sorry if it sounded like that but i obv. share my own experience here. i don’t feel anything after following df story so i find it dull but that’s obviously my own opinion.
WoW story telling has always been trash. Dragonflight just didn’t change anything in that front.
The only expansion that was a bit better in story was Legion with class campaigns and Suramar. Unfortunely, they discontinued such content.
The format they use to tell stories with average quests and voice lines being fed to you plus 2 minute cut-scenes at the end of the raid is never going to allow for good storytelling.
If they want to tell good stories they need to keep them contained, not gates and with beggining, middle and end outside the raid to keep pace and make it feel personal. It needs solo scenarios where you party up with lore characters, interact with them and ideally make choices. Our character would have to be more than just an anonymous champion, it would have to be someone the other characters recognise as the same one they interacted with before.
That is simply not WoW. So, story will always be bad until they put that much effort into it.
Dragonflight story is better than, like, 70% of wow stories because it’s actually functional, you think about it more than 2 minutes and it doesn’t falls apart like a house of cards
it was mainly the gameplay which i enjoyed for a time.
but i feel as though even the gameplay has got too diluted and has not really evolved as much as i feel it should of in the number of years this game has existed.
to a point if i play wow now i still kind of feel like im playing wow from nearly 20 years ago with a more child friendly narrative.
they went all in on this theme and its just not landing with me. We have a patch to go so maybe 10.2 will blow my pants off, we shall see