Hey blizzard hope you can continue to keep the lore simple and focus on storytelling like you have done this first season of dragon flight. Vanilla vibes.
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The main plot is fine so far, but that’s not saying much, considering it’s in its infancy. Dragons having family issues concerning ancient decisions and not much more than that. That’s at least not punching too much above their weight as writers. So yeah, a largely good move. I’m not really sold on the dragon protagonists, though, and find it hard to care for any of the lizards.
The world-building is very mixed. The way they are dealing with the titans and their influence is intriguing for WoW-standards, and based on stuff that was actually established long before, so points for that. The setup for the expansion on the other hand is once again very underdeveloped. Primalists field a ton of troops out of nowhere, and while the Incarnates might have acceptable motivations, they didn’t manage to make them extend to their followers. The main enemy being staffed by random guys that are evil, because they hate how the world is, is neither new nor interesting. The centaur origin re-do was cheap and loveless. And the dragons just randomly calling all the mortals to join them in their newly recovered home island to build spas and dig through their history, wholly on undeserved trust, is just bizarre.
And while I do really like the idea of the adventure-theme, the reality doesn’t really live up to my idea of that. There just aren’t enough threats that make me feel the danger. Survival just doesn’t feel like much of an issue, when I can spent so much time saving the animals, playing with kids and helping romantic courtships. Another part of that may be that I don’t have the same empathy for some newly invented centaurs or dragonkin as I have for the playable races. Or it’s their stories that don’t really grip me? I’m not sure, but all in all the mood is in the uncanny valley for me. I can see how it tries to be vanilla, or at least cata… but it just doesn’t feel right. Which in some ways is worse than just not feeling like Warcraft at all, like SL.
So yeah, I might agree with keeping it simple and focussing on storytelling in the way they are doing. But for me that’s not enough, if the story is the wrong one. The addon still has quite some time to develop, and it’s likely that the main plot will actually be fine, especially compared to what came before. But if they don’t manage to make me feel some of that “War” in Warcraft, including some suffering and questionable decisions on all sides, it will still be a “meh” from me. I don’t want to be on Team Puppies&Rainbows.
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Over arching stories continuity build up and drama is what make the lore great we dont need world ending god mode raid bosses. A cool character with interesting motives and good lore is what keeps people interested and engaged. They seem to have scaled back on the stakes being higher with every season model and i like that personally.
I’d say the overall narrative of DF is an improvement though from the train crash that we had in SL that’s not saying much tbf.
The Primalists confuse me still, why are they there? Are they the Earthen Ring radicals? Are they the Twilight’s Hammer without the Old Gods? Like, they have no explanation, no build up. Kurog Grimtotem could have had some more backstory than a few throwaway Fashycore remarks in the Lorthemar/Thalyssra wedding story.
Also the not so subtle hinting that the Titans are AKSHULLY THE BAD GUYS, is a little peeving. Like sure you can have them being immoral and even possibly self-centered but I think this post-modernist philosophical relativism malarkey that danuser is pushing is utterly soulless, as about as soulless as his 9.2 Nier Automata rip off.
There’s nothing wrong with having “good guys” vs “bad guys”, because Blizzard loves doing it Alliance vs Horde. I’m fine with the whole Light vs Void being a bunch of moral greys because its a symbolism of dualistic faiths not having quite the whole picture.
But consider the Titans opposition on the cosmology is literally the Burning Legion, why are the Titans the bad guys when the opposite is -literally- the Warcraft version of Lucifer?
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I generally agree with you on all the above. Though I do believe we got to emphasize that it’s still very much the beginning of this new lore… I really hope they’ll explore the Primalists a lot more as on paper they’re very interesting.
Think of Dathea and Kadros as well as the night elf antagonist from O naran plains story… How does a night elf end up so radicalized? We can assume they’re night elves that got deeply disappointed by Elune and the alliance, and some opportunist took advantage of their grief and rage and convinced the join their ranks. It just seems like a too good a scenario to explore yet these kind of stories never get explored. I’m wondering if we’re going to see Magatha Grimtotem at some point as well… She’s still alive, I think last time she made an appearance was in the Shaman order hall campaign in legion? Is kurog a Grimtotem simply by title / tribe name? All we know is that he’s a “prised pupil” of Magatha’s…
It was the same with whatever the bastion villains were called. There’s all these great opportunities that blizzard keeps missing.
I’m hoping they start saying other side, but important stories progressively through patches. For example the desolate council, Menethil lady and Undercity… Are we just going to show up on a patch at some point, everything will be sorted? The reclaiming of Undercity or Gilneas, could very much be a secondary story plot that could span over 2 expansions. Every patch we get something new. Not every story needs to follow the core of the expansion.
It would give great opportunities to revisit older parts of the map so it doesn’t feel again as “world of current expansioncraft”
Isn’t the idea that the cosmology chart is essentially breaking the “1v1” idea and slowly trying to establish a “6v6 deathmatch” instead? Maybe the Disorder and the Legion is problematic, but ordering everything, will piss off the void, light, life and death? I don’t mind a more classic approach of good vs evil, but a bit of nuance isn’t a problem. I think it’s not so much “Titans are the bad guys now” but more so “Titan Keepers veered off and started doing their own thing”. Also Odyn not being the nicest guy around to put it very mildly, isn’t a new idea. If we get to find out more about Tyr and Odyn’s politics that would be cool.
That’s my thinking, fanatics gonna fanatic.
Either that or they’re infiltrating the Primalists at the behest of a certain primal of earth, as we know that Iridikron has made terrible bargains, presumably with the void and his siblings don’t know (and maybe a lot of the Primalists).
Let’s also not forget that as far as the game has been concerned, the 6 powers actually haven’t been actors at all. We didn’t fight Chaos, we fought Sargeras’s Legions - using chaos sorcerers like Illidan in the process. We didn’t fight the Void, we fought N’zoth, with some vague involvement of Xal’atath. We didn’t fight Death, we fought the Jailer, with the help of the other rulers of the realm of Death. And we’re not getting foreshadowing about Order being evil, we are learning that the Prime Designate (that the rest of the keepers turned away from at some point) is quite a butthole. Which isn’t even new information, we’re just learning more about his past dealings.
All that cosmic power talk actually didn’t impact as much as it seems, Danuser and friends just can’t shut up about it. If they didn’t try to push the idea on us, it would just be some weird background lore, which is why I’d suggest we treat it like that. Right now it is still a conflict with characters, not with cosmic forces, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Indeed, this specific conflict might actually lead up to a conflict between keepers, considering Tyrr is stirring.
I’d contrast this to the Druids of the Flame, who were disciples of Fandral Staghelm dissatisfied with how Malfurion and Tyrande ran things for a very long time. Taking advantage of the immense backlog Warcraft has.
Meanwhile Kurog and the other chumps are too dead to answer any questions and that’s not even accounting for stuff like the non-incarnate primalist proto dragons popping up out of thin air, why Alysrazor turned into a bird or why the proto-dragons are suddenly intelligent, when they were pitched as the feral cousins of the flight dragons.
A few reasons for that. The law of diminishing returns, lack of the more bestial side of dragons and the fundamental inability to not have it clash with other contemporary much more important problems.
In the waking shore, as an example you’re sent to deliver Wrathion’s plea to help against the Djardin, which Alex doesn’t seem to give a 
about lumbering you with comparably menial tasks, until Raszageth blows up a mountain, kicks her butt and Wrathion loses his with her to the point he is going to attempt it on his own and is only saved by the contrived and rather fortunate arrival of Sabelian.
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I guess its good that they stepped away from the ultra bad guy and god level adventurers, but honestly that is all .
I feel like all npc’s I met are basically kindergarten or early teens pretending to be grown up . Sorry , but merrily running trough a jungle taking pictures at the “cute” critters . Have the writers even seen a normal forest , let a lone a jungle ? Most of these characters don’t convince me that they would survive 30 minutes in the “wild untamed isles” , let alone live to take pictures .
Not to mention everyone with their emotional drama , its like watching a soap opera from the 90s . Equally unrealistic drama and more so unneeded .
10000 year old dragons with abandonment / insecurity issues … seriously ??? And it takes us the 20-50 year old adventurer to teach them about life . I guess they spent 9999 of their years putting fingers up their<> and whining constantly … None of the “dragons” feel like DRAGONS at all .
The only thing I kind of liked in this expansion are some of the titan related quests and Dungeons . Like for instance Uldaman . That was great , Finally a dungeon and not a Pandaria scenario . Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate scenarios , but they are NOT dungeons . Something the devs seem to misunderstand . (probably could have done without the dwarves at the start though)
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Oh yea and the dracthyr … Damn . They are the epiphany of preteen vegetables grown in a bottle . Half of them are angry brats and the others kindergarteners . You are gonna learn about the world , will you ? Yea so how about you calm down , watch , and learn instead of running around like kids causing issues trying to prove yourselves. OOOH look a shiny power outlet , I’m sure I will prove my self if I put my finger in it .
They are supposed to be trained warriors right ? Yea belivable … Guess we know why Deathwing caged them . After what - a millennia of training , they are still incapable of growing and only causing trouble .
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Consistant and varied characterisation has been their weak point for some time. One could admittedly track the roots of this problem all the way back to TBC’s blelf ending, if not Warcraft 3 itself. ahem Thrall ahem Obviously it has only gotten worse and a great deal more pervasive since then, especially fell off a cliff when Anduin rose to prominence and nobody could genuinely not see eye to eye with him, without being evil, wrong and secretly worshipping space satan, for good measure.
Now i agree it’s gotten to the point it genuinely makes it difficult to buy into the fantasy and storylines, even if you don’t pay attention to slight details like Syndragosa making a Simulacrum based on a demographic that wouldn’t exist for another 3000+ years, at minimum or Centaur popping up 9 000 years or so, at minmum, before the conception of their species.
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Yes but what i like about the previous expansion it was not this over the top titan god lore like what it is now they need to move away to interesting characters and twists that happen in azeroth. Birthing new big bads that we could face in the new expansion that we have been wanting to kill for like 3 expansions
BfA had the potential to do that, if Anduin wasn’t the god emperor of mary sues and Azsara/Old Gods got their own xpac later. Outside of that glimmer of hope the last time they did that sort of thing well since MoP and even that had it’s distinct hits and misses.
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Agreed season 1 of bfa had potential they should have expanded upon the ghuun lore rather then killing it off in the first raid. Same with sire denathrius they make and interesting villain and kill them off to soon this is why they are delving into bigger and better all the time they should just spend more time with what they have created and build it up.
Tbh there isn’t much more they could ahve done around G’huun save perhaps some more glimpses into ancient troll stuff. Where they dropped the ball was the faction war, where they failed to utilise the existing grievances, had characters forgetting their entire belief systems on a whim, dropped plot points on a whim and engaged full plot armor, whenever it looked like there could be some stakes for team Golden boy.
SL was also a complete narrative mess. The interesting villains got axed immediately or did bugger all before becoming good again through titanic contrivances and pretty much all of them besides mr. male pattern baldness ended up becoming vindicated making us looks stupid in the process.
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Haha so true hopefully blizz can finally get back to what made this game great and start putting big effort into the lore and writing again.
Vanilla lore was awful. Stop living in the past.
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lol just lol
Can’t you just be happy? 
Best bit of lore in DF so far is the dragon sitting on the ledge talking about the past and that is very unfortunate. The lore has been bland and lacks any sort of layers. It lacks sacrifice and darker themes. Right now DF feels like Jurassic park if it was made by Nickelodeon.
As stated above, compared to Sl, Df is an improvement for me. I would like to hear more about primalist and their reasonings and the supposed taint of the titans though then again we are still early in the expansions so I am still waiting on that.
I don’t mind npcs being happy go free in a dangerous island, they are not humans they have magics. Hell they can conjure food, water, heat, and even items and buildings in lore xD Surviving under those circumstances would be easy.
Taking a break from the faction conflict, while an unpopular opinion, I dig it. I love faction conflict when it is done right (I adored eso’s version of it for instance). But in wow?
"Fought against legion on another world, defeated the king of the undead, held a world together during catacylsm, fought off against a UNIVERSE ENDING ENDLESS ARMY OF DEMONS, before riding across the stars to defeat them in their own home plane. Ventured into the afterlife itself…And…They…still wage war for what?
In vanilla there were reasons, espeially for orcs, durotar was a barren wasteland…But now they have allies they can offer them such supplies…with relative ease. Magic and capabilities of characters had been increased greatly is what I am getting at, to a degree where faction conflict needs more of a reason…And no…an elf chick wanted to make a bald nipple guy happy isn’t a good enough of a reason xD
I much rather have a quality story with quality villains to fight (said the person who prefers pvp over pve) over the train wreck of a bfa to shadowlands was.