Dragons, anyone?

So… Even with the recent revelations and the more or less confirmed addon title, there is no interest in dragon speculation or prediction here? Just asking.

It’s pointless to speculate about something that could very well be a fake.

But let’s say it’s true. We still have preciously little to go on. We know next to nothing about Dragon Isles aside from Wrathion mentioning that they exist. We know that Cromatus is supposed to be the main villain there, but we don’t know how or by whom he will be brought back to life nor what his goals will be now that his master is gone. Probably to finish the job and bring about another hour of Twilight, but that’d just be retreading the Cataclysm plot.

It could be that we’d see Nozdormu and the bronze dragonflight getting corrupted and becoming the infinite dragonflight. That’s guaranteed to happen at one point, so they might as well do it in the dragon-themed expansion.

Potentially we could have the red dragonflight and Alextrasza being involved with Elune and the realm of Life, either by being made evil because realm of Life wants domination just as much as any other cosmic force or by helping Life fight against the forces of the Void led by Cromatus.

To be honest I’m personally more interested int he speculations, where Dragons don’t play as big of a role. The Dragonflights, aspects, etc. have had their story pretty much finished in Cataclysm, with the only meaningful story beats we know are eventually gonna happen being things such as the downfall of the Bronze Dragonflight into the Infinite Dragonflight.

Outside of that there is very little. Blue Dragonflight has been disolved, Red has lost all it’s whelps, Green has been nearly wiped out during legion and the Black are scattered few and far between. They might try to overturn their post-Cataclysm fortunes, but there isn’t really anything to go on regarding how.

That’s one reason I find that specific leak not particularly convincing. Chromatus is a bit of a nobody. If they’re going for a big bad reanimated dragon I’d bet on Galakrond. He needs the same amount of buildup, but is on a much higher level.

So an azerothian expansion with lots of time-travel? I’d welcome that, honestly. With the way things have been going, spending more time looking at the cool stuff in the past instead of dealing with the cosmically fecked up present sound quite nice to me, if they don’t ruin it too much.

It doesn’t just have to be the reds, though. While we do have the origin story of the dragon swarms, there is still room for the origin of the dragons/proto-drakes being tied to a cosmic force or the other. Or an elemental one, considering all the fire-spewing they are doing. I mean, they are pretty powerful creatures that even made an impression on the keepers and they do seem to be Azeroth natives. There is room here for a connection that’s not a retcon and not too forced. And Life would be a plausible influencing factor.

Speculation very often is. But if you like to think about something, it should be fun, especially in a group of likeminded people. If it isn’t… well, I find that interesting.

And while the addon leak from February is still likely fake, the title isn’t, which can be enough to speculate on where and how the story could or should be going.

Even when all signs point towards dragons coming if you like it or not?

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Well, I’d say that both are a rather big deal, but the issue with Galakrond is that he’s not really tied to anything or anyone, so what would his agenda be? Simply to devour everything?

It’s fairly likely, however just dragons never struck me as a self sufficient thematic, even their last expansion was largely overshadowed by the elemental upheaval. The thing I’d be worried about with Galakrond would be that the story would dive straight back into the cosmic diarrhea SL left us with.

Why not? Do we really need more? Afte the Jailer I’m not exactly expecting a great villain from Blizz, I’d settle for a simple one.

But apart from that… they could do pretty much anything, considering we are talking ancient history here. Now that they made the chronicles titan-aligned, they could very well cast doubt on their account of events there as well. The dragons have obviously been keeping stuff from us like the existence of the dragon isles, which they even tried to keep from Wrathion, so there might actually be a more favourable depiction of Gala to be had there. Apart from that… even if he is just a devouring monster, the people who brought him back could still have an agenda that uses him.

It’s not a lack of interest so much as it is the people behind the story of this expansion are the same people that wrote Shadowlands. I’m repeating myself obviously but they haven’t admitted to any mistakes, owned up to the fact the story/retconning was abysmal or made any attempt to show an ounce of humility. These people have no respect for the setting while actively resenting their own player base. They haven’t tried to gauge player reaction or understand why people think so badly of their writing, instead they’ve doubled down. They selectively pick what they want to see while ignoring overwhelming criticism they’re faced with.

Why speculate? They could have the best premise ever but that doesn’t mean these people will create an interesting story. Chris Metzen is gone. The people who made the game what it was, are gone and the people they have been replaced by have never sat down to play a TTRPG in their life. This expansion is just going to be them dredging up old lore they haven’t bastardized yet which will inveitably result in terrible retcons and the same awful narrative decisions we’ve seen in Shadowlands. What’s more as we’ve already established they kowtow to the hyper partisan side of twitter that can’t discern fiction from reality.

Why expect anything palatable? Why expect any mature themes? Or conflict? It’ll be a miracle if Alexstrasza’s history is even acknowledged because we wouldn’t want to have any bad themes, or connotations, or anything that might stir the absurdity of the internet known as twitter, would we? It’s going to be bland sterility all the way for the sake of peak optics.

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No, but you could. You could create a wonderful scenario that inspires everyone who reads it and shows your love for the game world. It doesn’t have to be what you expect to happen, it could just as well be what you want to happen. But it isn’t, is it? That’s why I’m interpreting the lack of speculation as a lack of interest. That the product could or might even likely be bad doesn’t really change much for the fun that could be had in the speculation before.

And sure, bad writing is a good reason to lose interest. It certainly did for me, to some degree. But that’s kind of what I want to point out for whatever intern has the job of summarizing this little part of the forums to the guys that will summarize the opinions in the forums to the guys above them who might summarize them to someone who knows the the decisionmakers, or something like that. :wink: (Oh, and no offense, dear forum slave that might or might not read this.)

If there is some love left here in this forum, I’d like to partake in it. If there isn’t… well, I’d like to know that it’s noted by someone.

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It’ll probably be about restoring the power of the dragonflight to beat a big bad, it’ll avoid any of the overt themes of any characters backstory because this no longer the Warcraft we grew up with and it’ll go out of it’s way to make sure they avoid anything controversial to play it safe. Expect Wrathion to turn up to play a major role, as well other key characters and leaders of the flights. My guess is it’ll be the opposite ending to the Cataclysm that’ll involve exploring the Dragon Isles except there won’t be any kind of faction conflict like there was in pandaria or the intrigue that drove so much interest, just addressing corruption of some kind driven by the big bad. Expect modern political talking points that feel completely out of context to be sprinkled here and there to show that, yes! The writers are very virtuous indeed and can not seperate their hyper partisan politics from their writing like actual professionals.

We’ll have meme characters like Calia Menethil in the background and Baine will probably be sat in a different colour palette to last time. Both factions, as well as the conflict between them has been gutted, so the conflict will be between the Infinite Dragonflight, the big bad and whatever kind of alterior corruption they can fit in to pad the story. Maybe Tyrande will turn up at a trial of some character at the end to to monologue like a 21st century lawyer while other more interesting characters will become puppets for Christie Goldens (to steal someone else’s term) Anduinism.

As a side comment as much as I would to think they keep an eye on the EU forums they more than likely glance at mmo champion and keep a close eye on the US forums, despite how hilariously partisan and frankly absurd it is over there. If they are listening to the US story forum I wouldn’t expect anything good to come of the next expansion. Just cringe.

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No just no. I hate dragons. This is literally the worst theme they could have picked for any expansion. We need another faction war with Horde bias in it. That would be something I like to play.

it’s probably going to be a light-hearted filler expansion if it’s really about the Dragonflights (sorta like MoP was with Pandaren). I mean 10.0 was supposed to be big and important in the minds of a lot of players but since Blizzard realised that most people have now “cosmic fatigue” (they are tired of the cosmic themes like Shadowlands and cosmic apocalyptic threats as well), it makes sense the Light vs Void big expansion is probably be the next one after this new one. At least with a dragon-themed expansion maybe the Orcs could even redeem themselves for the Old Horde using Red Dragons during the Second War… :stuck_out_tongue:

Now that’s some optimism I’d like to hear! I mean, you could argue that if SL was their attempt to do a Wrath style addon then it’s questionable if we want to see their take on an MoP style addon, but I’d argue that these kinds of experiences take vastly different wrtitng approaches and that we can’t easily infer that they will suck at one if they sucked on the other. All other things being equal a small scale story is just harder to muck up than a large scale one. No dragon scale puns intended.

…and there goes the optimism… That’s what I get for trusting an elf…:wink:

Even more than orcs… imagine there being a covenant-like system for dragonflights and putting your Deathlord-DK in with the reds. Awwwwwkward!

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The Infinite Dragonflight will destroy our current timeline and send us all back to pre-Cata times (with Pandaria discovered, however).

Come on, Blizz. You can do it!

Stop living in the past. Classic is gone and will never return.

After some thinking on the topic. The story in Legion, with the Blue Dragons was pretty fun so there certainly are ways they could expand this thematic they briefly teased with Valtrois and Stellagosa, how they become more involved and how they would gel with the mortal races. Black Dragons stirring up trouble, Blue dragons being involved in mage business, Green dragons almost extinct after the Nightmare fiasco with Druids, etc.

Keeping the story grounded would be the key here, at least until the later phases of the expansion. Since people have been quite burnt out on the even bigger bad and the firster ones well Blizzard seems to continuously visit. North of EK seems to have been set up for quite the upheaval, between scourge resurgence under presumably Denathrius, Scarlet Crusade, Calia, the Forsaken, possibly Aliance humans and more. I certainly could see some sort of Prestor cousin trying to get their hands, on their family’s former holdings, for example.

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Classic will never die.

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Someone says “Dragons” and I see “Yay Elves!”

Honestly though, I don’t see Void Elves or Nightborne being heavily involved with Dragons. It will likely be Night Elves and Blood Elves (and maybe High Elves.)

Sorry to say but classic is pretty much dead at the moment.

Classic was dead on delivery day. Its over. Give up.