I’m really getting mighty tired of the sentimentality, the quasi emotional maturity, the themes of healing and nurturing, the softness, and the complete absence of the cool factor that made the franchise popular.
Every single character either is or is about to become humble and understanding like a Buddhist monk, most of the quests and storylines are characters reminiscing about their failures and then accepting them to become better people, ideally mentoring someone in the process as well. The whole expansion feels like a damn therapy session and I’m tired of it.
I will admit that more effort has gone into individual random side quests so that they do stand out as mini-stories rather than the glorified fetch quests we used to have (on average), but it’s all for nothing because the tone is off.
Shadowland’s story was garbage because it disrespected the actual existing story in attempts to retcon it to fit Wow into this lame, Destiny-esque new age fantasy that barely has any recognizable visual language from Warcraft 3.
Dragonflight was supposed to be a break from that by “taking us home”, but it still feels the same as Shadowlands only in a somewhat more familiar package. It disrespects the tone and the aesthetic of the IP if not the story itself like Shadowlands did.
This is a big part of why people aren’t playing the game, not because they were burned by Shadowlands. They see Spyro the dragon, they come in, and that’s exactly what they get along with the lamest race and class ever added (yeah I know). They aren’t gonna come back for quality of lie features, for a convoluted gear system, or for the exhausting and endless M+ that now also rotates so you have to be doing your homework anew every 6 months, they’ll come back if the game is COOL, and it’s not.
It’s just not gonna work out with this writing/design team because this is evidently the game they want to make. A fantasy game for moody, moping teenagers, with moles that bonk people on the head like we’re watching doggo videos on TikTok, and with none of the grit that was a core part of Warcraft.
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Have you seen the devs team?
These guys will get a heart attack if there’s no caramel in their pumpkin frappe. What “serious themes” are you talking about?
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I didn’t but that’s exactly how I imagine them
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When you hire people with purple hair who are very fragile when discussing reality you get garbage like DragonWoke. Also when you place Ion as lead it gets even worse
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The latest campaign quest was just…
Helping alextrasza investigate an issue so obvious we’ve known of it since we arrived in Valdrakken. Then having to explain discrimination to a 10’000 year old demigod while offering us inconsequental choices is a level of writing that could only be surpassed by a 10 year old with crayons.
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That’s literally the quest that triggered me into writing this if you’re talking about investigating the rebellion with Alexstrasza and talking to rebels lmao.
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Odyn was right all along the dragons are unworthy of the titan’s gift
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I think I and a lot of people dont even bother listening to the story these days, i used to read some text and watch every cutscene but i just skip everything since mid BFA. Even the most recently story, lil dragon boi gets absolutely destroyed by us on MULTIPLE occasions and still ended up being the final boss of the raid. Ive said it before and ill say it again 10.1 started with us chasing a fyrakk into the caverns after he melted a hole in the crust to stop him powering up…just for us to get bored and start a side quest.
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The very same.
The one from the cinematic trailer was enough. They zoom in close, he looks stupid, then he makes a big gesture like he’s gonna rain down fire (like the actually cool undead warlock and human mage from the Vanilla cinematic), and releases a wet fart of sparkles.
It was comedy.
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Which one is it, let me watch from internet.
Yup.
Same with myself and most people I play with.
Personally I stopped paying attention after wotlk. The story ended with Arthas imo.
The book quest at Wingrest embassy perfectly summed it up with the last option to the question: “the purpose of your visit”
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Imo they’re just as bad. For eons the titans have been “lending” us their power, forcing us to prove our worth over and over. Never giving us enough, always holding something back… No more! We will seize the means of production and give the power back to the people of Azeroth.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
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WoW story was never anything special but it still had those occasional cool moments. Now it’s pretty much just a no moment. I actually tried to keep tabs on the story at the start of the expansion but it became clear pretty soon that there was a whole lot of nothing going on so I kind of just stopped caring.
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IT’s good to have something positive sometimes 
You know some people watch scenes from games but never played them themselves? I kinda do that with WoW now. other than that, I mostly hang in goldshire standing on a fence while queuing for bgs and whatever people drag me to do with them.
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I think people tend to forget that SL was suppose to be a very dark multi-layered story and nobody like it. So they tone it down to simple story straight forward easy to understand, i feel like sometimes people expect Shakespeare levels of story telling here.
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Nah, df is a good change of pace, i finally started to notice that wow is actually FULL of darkness and grimness because of the contrast, after all this expacs wih epic orchestral music and insane genocidal cultists here, murderous demons there i simply became numb to story actually trying to evoke emotions, to be dark you need brightness, or it all just becomes subpar death metal album
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I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect main characters to not be idiots. Alextrasza has as much personality as a brick, which leaves no room for writers to put her in funny, smart or emotional scenarios.
DFs storytelling is like watching a documentary on how soap is made.
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Almost all characters are like that since wow vanilla, some characteres were bricked to put them in raid as loot pinatas, like kael, illidan and arthas
