Done the last chapter only today. I wanted to do it the way you’re “supposed to”, kill Sarkareth first and then complete it. I only do the LFR, so I waited till today and finally got it complete. And as the title says… oh boy! I didn’t expect a lot, WoW’s story doesn’t tend to be good in recent years, but man was that cringe.
First the Black Dragonflight, the evil one that was supposed to be evil from the beguining, is suddenly all good. Wrathion who commited literal genocides and done terrible stuff, who was a spoiled brat for decades is all of a sudden a good guy who can do no wrong.
Sabellian got it even worse, a dragon who is a son of Deathwing (and brother to Nefarian and Onyxia), and who followed Deathwing loyaly for millenia (and some how didn’t know about Aberrus) is all of a sudden disgusted about what he saw in Aberrus and sees how bad Deathwing’s legacy was (despite both him and his siblings doing much worse things than we saw in Aberrus, but he was fine with that I guess).
And than all of a sudden, neither wants to be the aspect (despite the whole theme of the expansion being Wrathion vs Sabellian) and everyone agrees that it should be Ebonhorn, who spent the entire expansion (and a previous few all the way back to Highmountain story in Legion) doing nothing. So I guess that makes him best for the position… yep WoW is back to the Shadowlands tier writing.
Truth be told the only big difference between Shadowlands and Dragonflight in writing and storyline is that in Shadowlands they gave the current writing team the open hands to do whatever they want and run wild. So as a result we’ve got: Elune genociding the Night Elves to feed Ardenweald with souls not knowing they’re going to the Maw, Dreadlords working for the Jailor all along as the triple undercover agents, Night warrior horse, Jaina massacring legions of Jailor’s forces, Anduin and Sylvanas having a change of heart a dozen times while being mind controlled by every power possible, Pelagos the Arbiter and everyone being a robot in the end.
With Dragonflight Blizzard realized this problem, so they solved it by pretty much removing the story. They said to the writing team: “Look, just give us a reason to be on the Isles, do dungeons, raids and stuff there, and keep it as brief as possible.” And initially it worked, for Raszageth at least. Raszageth really turned out to be first good villain in a while. But after she was dead we were left with nothing and an SL like story in a reduced capacity.
We have this incarnates, who we’ve seen in 2 cinematics (6 mins combined + with Fyrakk occasionally shouting “You dare steal from my crucible little worms” a few times a day) and know pretty much nothing about, but who were supposed to be this big bad evil. We had Sarkareth plot who became this mega evil for some reason after encountering us a few times (literally a few times, once in Forbidden Reach and two times in Zaralek). And the Aspects, who as some other post said have had the character range of the teletubbies for this entire expansion.
And to make it worse, I actually liked SL story better, because there was lots of it. I couldn’t wait each week to log in and see what other nonsense thing are we gonna find out now… in DL I just don’t care cause I “know” we’re getting nothing.
Tl;dr just my rant on DF storyline.
cheesey and fun was about the best it got.