My conclusions after Dragonflight

First of all yes this is an Alt char because the topic i am starting here might be controversial and with the toxic state of the community i don’t want to get harassed ingame. And yes i am aware of the irony.

But back to the matter at hand. Was DF a good expac imo? Yes i had a lot of fun with it.
From a gameplay and well lore perspective it was an expac of healing and i guess we all needed that after the lets just say controversial expac Shadowlands.

But if you ask me about a memorable moment in DF i cannot for the life of me name one.
Not that there would have not been candidates but all which come to mind where just too similar. The entire expansion was filled with friendship forgiveness and healing. That is not a bad thing but it was way to redundant for my taste. Less would have been more.

What i was missing and i don’t want that to come out wrong was a real badass moment something that sticks something that moves something that was memorable it does not have to be a death scene or self sacrifice of some kind. The moment with Ysera and her daughter came very close but then where other scenes that just where basically the same.
Would have loved to get to know Iridikron better to get more of his point of view. He was way to one dimensional. Yes i get it he will most likely be end up a raid boss in TWW or Mightnight but there was kind of wasted potential here. And i hope TWW will be better in that perspective. Again i don’t mind the new theme but a little more variety in how it is been told would be good.

From a gameplay perspective it was definitely among the best at least for me because i could really enjoy the game only the need of forcing myself to play the game in order to keep up. That was good and i do hope it will be the same with TWW.

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This is about my take on it as well, would have worded it a little different but the message I agree with

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I think DF is just very…meh. Not as bad as Shadowlands, but it just wasn’t…interesting, per say.

We were doing a bit of everything, but the overall conclusion was just getting the night elves a new home. So we had a bit of Void, bit of Elements and then “to the Dream!”

It was all just a bit…boring. Nowhere near as bad as Shadowlands, let’s not kid ourselves on that front…but not quite exciting either.

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Hey Dwalik, Tbh i think the stuff with Iridikron will be adressed later and are saving him for something big. As for everything else the expasion was OK but that might just be because it was coming off of SL which was absolutely misserable.

I think DF will be remembered for giving us the extremely cool character of Iridikron. He’s actually well liked for being a cool villain, unlike Sylvanas and the Janitor from Shadowlands, who were so bad and cringeworthy.

Dragonflight can be best described as the colour beige, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the colour beige. its just shrugs shoulder, beige

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Here’s a curious detail:

We never really interact with Iridikron in Dragonflight.

He hardly even appears in the game at all.

If you remember him, it’s because you remember him in the cinematics.

But the other detail:

To remember him like that and not interact with him, does a lot for the character and the way he’s written.

Not every bad guy needs to be shoved in our faces. “Less is more” as my boss states and she’s always 100% correct.

Does it?

What do you remember him for?

Like I said, then he really only appears in the cinematics.

And all he does is talk.

He talks.

He’s not written into the player experience at all.

He talks. With others. To others. About others. In cinematics.

I think it’s a bit cheap, in terms of delivery.

And compare that to the Janitor.

Involved with the first few quests in the Maw. Seen throughout the expansion, talking to Sylvanas and Anduin. Really, in our faces for the whole time and…well, me calling him “the Janitor” is evidence enough…

Iridikron is just a far more intriguing villain because we don’t know the full script. It’s like the Witch King of Angmar…we don’t much about him, as a mortal man, but people are intrigued about his evil as a man and a wraith before, during and after the Third Age.

I would have compared him to Gul’dan in Warlords of Draenor, as he’s similar in being the orchestrator of evil schemes and plans that surrounds the story.
But there was a lot more meat on the bone with Gul’dan, so to speak.

Gul’dan is a name that people knew from the lore. So he always had an advantage over Iridikron.

The fact that the Dragon is on the same level as Gul’dan speaks volumes about how much better he is than say, Sylvanas and the Janitor.

Hell, N’Zoth and Azshara were better, but were wasted in 2 small patches.

Azshara, Xal’atath and Iridikron are the main reasons why I’m playing this Saga.

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That’s not my point. My point is that he’s part of the gameplay experience. He’s part of the questing. You see him, fight him, hunt him. He has voice lines and he’s part of the raid and cinematics and so forth.

Iridikron only exists in a handful cinematics. That’s cheap delivery. Regardless of how much promise he may hold for the future.

Cheapness doesn’t have any factor in overall customer response.

You may consider him “cheap” but it’s the customer response to him that Blizzard will view. Not how they use him in his introduction expansion.

He has been received well by the community. How he was introduced holds no bearing.

I can only say one memorable moment and it was not even from retail.
It was cata in 2016 private server killing heroic Firelands for the first time.
And even that moment is memorable because of people…
And when i came back in legion my only memorable moments within game are always with people i played with not from game itself :smiley:

I don’t see him being a raid boss until The Last Titan, he’s on an anti-titan mission.

I disagree.

When we defeated Raszageth and got the cinematic where the other 3 Primal Incarnates broke free of their prisons, everyone and their mom across the entire WoW playerbase looked at that and went:

“Yep, that’s our 3 raid-ending bosses right there. Fits with the number of patches we expect to get. And the boss – Iridikron – is the main villain of the expansion and the final raid encounter.”

That was everyone’s take. That was how Blizzard presented it and set it up. That was the expectation across the community.

How many of those 3 Primal Incarnates did we get to fight?

Blizzard totally underdelivered.

You have cutscenes where Alexstrasza talks about Iridikron and how he’s the worst of the worst, and she’s totally setting the player up for this guy being the big baddie that we need to deal with and that this is what we’re here to do on the Dragon Isles. Because why else are we there at this point?!

But nothing comes of it.

Iridikron just collects a McGuffin that Deathwing apparently had lying around, that also happens to have some very convenient attributes, and then out of nowhere sets up the next expansion by handing the McGuffin over to Xal’atath who’s been nowhere for 4 years and who can seemingly use the McGuffin for the wildest stuff ever.

C’mon. That’s a level of storytelling I was able to produce in 6th grade when I had to write a fantasy story as homework.

Don’t worry Dwalik-ArgentDawn nobody will ever know your true identity.

Anyways, for the most part I agree with you, the only memorable time I can remember is the emotional meeting after Emerald Dream campaign ending.

None of the battles felt epic, the story overall was kinda meh, thematically I couldn’t care less about dragons because the cool ones weren’t even here (they all dead lol), the OST wasn’t great either, Zaralek Caverns was a pain in the butt and died within 2 weeks, and so many things that my brain erased from my memory to prevent me from quitting this game.

Was DF better than Shadowlands? Thematically no, gameplay-wise absolutely yes (except cancerous season 2). I really hope they nail everything on TWW.

Agree to disagree.

Less is more for me, always has been and I’ve always been proven right with that mindset.

Sure.

I still don’t get it though. Even from the perspective of holding promise for the future, I just don’t see it.

I cannot imagine that when we get to The Last Titan that he’ll be the main cast in any way. Even now he basically has no role in the plot. He just waits for The Titans to arrive? And then what. Geez, let me think. I think he’ll be a raid encounter and not much else, because what should he be? The Last Titan – by its very name – already comes with an expectation of so many iconic characters taking center stage that a Dragon guy from 5 years ago that only appeared talking in a couple of cinematics is going to be as irrelevant as Lady Ashvane was by the time Nazjatar came out.