So I visited Valdrakken’s barbershop, and apparently its version is flavored as magic mirrors that turn you into your ideal self.
While it’s heartwarming to think that the existence of these mirrors makes a whole lot of problems of discomfort with one’s appearance, even down to gender dysphoria, a complete non-issue, the implications on worldbuilding are so staggering that I honestly struggle to conceive of them existing IC.
It makes the world feel too utopian, not to mention the impact it would have on security measures, spying, and so on if any joe shmoe could just completely change their appearance by visiting a magic mirror in Valdrakken.
It’s like Fantasia, except it can’t change race. And Fantasia explicitly doesn’t exist IC. And here I’m getting worried because the Warcraft writers have a history of dragging things into lore that should have remained mere gameplay mechanics.
(For the record, I have absolutely no issues with the concept of a fantasy world where such magic does exist, as long as the resulting social consequences are well-thought-out.)
Wish I lived in the world where people think this honestly, all I see in Dragonflight is the set-up for War-Within which is going full cosmic Void vs Light vs Titans universe-scale warfare. From the moment I get on these godforsaken isles I’m chilling with the Aspects and they’re telling me that if I don’t stop the Incarnates then more than just Azeroth will be destroyed in the process (including several other timelines) but that’s not even the end because then there’s also Iridikron with a direct hotline to an Old God and the Void Lords who’s teamed up with Xal’atath to herald in the next 3 expansions of Cosmic Warfare.
Having played through Classic before, and now Seasons of Discovery, I can safely say Dragonflight is so far removed from “Warcraft” storytelling and atmosphere that it may as well be a completely different game (a far worse one, at that).
That’s… not really the moment you get on the isles.
The first things are just an expedition and adventure, some big dragon who hates the Titans for reasons you don’t know yet, and a lot of your questing adventure is going around the Isles and helping the locals with their problems.
Pretty much like how the Classic questing experience was. Classic got cosmic with Titan facilities (Uldaman, Un’goro etc), lore about Titans, and Old Gods as well.
The Burning Crusade directly throws you into Outlands lol+lmao. Yet now people also regard it as a very Warcraft-y expansion.
Half-true I suppose, though within the first roughly 3~ minutes you meet the Dragon-Queen’s Majordomo, Khadgar, Wrathion etc. and within the first 10~ minutes you’re meeting with Alexstrasza herself who explains the incarnate situation. By the time you’re in the Azure Span you learn the Primalists are a big enough threat to be able to neutralize Wild Gods and Keep Kalec + Khadgar (The Guardian) at bay even with your direct help.
Tbh, the locals of the isles are incredibly boring, the Tuskarr had a brief cool moment with Kalec about family and passing on, but it sort of ends there and then they turn into a Gordon Ramsay meme reputation faction for the remainder of the expansion. The Centaur are. . .aesthetically cool and have some interesting ideas going on but absolutely none of them are really expanded upon in any way, shape or form. The Individual Dragonflights have the personalities of wooden planks and seem to be so boring they’re able to finish each other’s sentences because they all know the exact flat dialogue the others will say. At least Wrathion has a personality and individual characterisation but the rest? Sheesh.
This is sort of true, but in a very roundabout way that I think is unfair tbh. Classic has Titan ruins, and the lore we get is tiny, tiny fragments from different archaeologists and researchers who all have their own opinions and takes on what little information these Titan ruins contain. The Titans in vanilla are an almost complete mystery, they are these great universe-roaming Gods and that’s about all that you’ll ever learn in Vanilla, they’re kept intentionally mysterious to preserve the mythos and fantasy of the setting.
By the time of Dragonflight the entire mythos and fantasy has been deconstructed into a sad, cynical parody of itself and the Titans have been rewritten about 3 times by different Lead Narrative Designers.
Is the direct link where everything about Warcraft starts going horribly wrong.
I don’t have any great love for Outland but it was an established world with links at the very heart of Warcraft’s soul and lore and it had some very nice little stories and the Cosmic parts of it didn’t feel too overblown (looking at you Legion).
Tbh the reasons of the Primalists are poorly explained even today. They range from anything such as an old grudge to poorly defined hatred against arcane magic in general.
If it is the old grudge, then why are all the humanoids joining them? If it’s also about hatred against arcane and titan-blessed dragons, then what’s so special about it that would make Horde and Alliance races defect the factions that have defeated several other otherwordly gods?
They’re a placeholder villain that really doesn’t have half of the worldbuilding the mantids or the mogu had. And both mantids and mogu weren’t even the major villains in MOP!
That’s a hard no for me. Classic had a lot of emphasis on worldbuilding in a way which we don’t really have in Dragonflight. It is much more mythical whereas DF is more cartoony. You can see Classic draws inspiration from a different concept of fantasy, somewhat more similar to the works of Tolkien, whose pace is slower, whereas by comparison, DF does everything in a much more cartoony and ‘safe’ way, somewhat reminescent of today’s approach to fantasy from brands like Disney.
Un’goro isn’t a titan facility though, in all of classic I think there is basically just Uldaman which might earn the name of titan facility that you can somewhat explore.
I would say that Dragonflight feels “warcraft-y” in some ways, though it also makes subtle changes that I am not okay with.
For example, dragons feel much more humanoid than they have ever felt in all of Warcraft, to the point that they might just be humanoid X with ability to turn into dragon at this point.
Okay… ? And within the time you’ve reached Azure Span you’ve also dealt with a ton more grounded stories (often not really told as much in more recent expansions). You’ve dealt with locals with their own problems, or new problems created by the new circumstances that they’re now reacting to. You’re getting the perspective from grounded characters as well.
By the time you reached level 60 in Vanilla you learnt about the Titans with unimaginable power, Old Gods, Elemental Lords, all these big threats who have world-impacting consequences and that’s why you need to stop them.
And yet they’re far more expanded upon than any local in Classic ever was. If anything, the modern vehicles for storytelling let the writers to flesh everyone out far more than the NPCs in Vanilla could. You think they did a great job because your mind made up the rest from the CliffsNotes story you were told. The big named NPCs don’t have a personality in Classic.
They got a personality once they were used more, because that meant you were spending more time with them and the writers have to write more about them as well. Or you had books that used the characters. Or there was rudimentary characterization brought over from Warcraft 3. Why are you expecting new characters (by this I mean the locals of the isles) to be just as fleshed out as existing characters when they barely have any screentime?
Let’s not pretend the characterization of individual Dragonflights in this expac has been drastically different from the past, they did the same thing. This expac could’ve been the opportunity for Blizzard to make each Dragonflight more distinct from each other, but… hey - they’d be rewriting the characters now! That’s bad! That’s not what the characterization has been thus far!
And by the time of Wrath of the Lich King, the Titans just as much were deconstructed and demystified as they are right now. Yet Wrath is also highly regarded as the ‘true Warcraft’ expansion, despite you killing a Titan keeper in a dungeon and getting as Cosmic as you could before probably Legion.
For you, yet many regard it warmly (if not better than Vanilla).
Almost as if… the Warcraft’s soul and lore has had cosmic narratives tied in to its core. Damn! How dare Dragonflight try to have Warcraft’s soul and lore by having cosmic parts!
quite literally the first warcraft begins with orcs from a different cosmic planet coming to azeroth through a dimensional gateway, thanks to a cosmic entity lol+lmao
The point is that they’re crushed into the ground by also having universe-destroying threat questlines right next to them.
This is largely a complete misrepresentation and I’m not sure how anyone who has played Classic could confidently say this, since you don’t really find out any of this. You learn tidbits of the Titans from unreliable narrators. As you quest you learn about dark cultists making dealings with eldritch powers (Blackfathom Deep) and later Silithus with the ancient evil locked behind the Obsidian Gate being revealed to the world (and taking the efforts of the entirety of Azeroth to put down, Dragons, Alliance, Horde, everyone). The Elemental Lords you learn very, very little about, you see some of their servants and that’s about it. Its also never implied in Classic that you’d be killing any of these entities except perhaps the Old Gods, but I don’t think people even expected that frankly.
This is just a fundamental disagreement from me, personally. Again, seems like something being said out of a loathing for Classic rather than actual knowledge of Classic.
Not really sure about the tone of this? It feels tongue-in-cheek or sarcastic but, directed at who and why? Yeah, they should give them characterisation because this was the perfect expansion to do so, they should have expanded upon what was written in the books and Classic-WotLK, but they didn’t and they haven’t and that’s their own faults.
As much as I love Ulduar on an OOC note I do believe personally we shouldn’t have been fighting the Keepers who are previously described in lore as shaping continents. It felt odd. They could have handled this better and in a way less demystifying.
Outland being a different planet =/= Cosmic lore imho, the Outland lore we had in Classic-WotLK wasn’t focused on Void Lords, Light Lords, Zovaal, the Shadowlands and the Titans themselves being involved. It was about the various humanoid cultures that lived and thrived on Draenor/Outland.
Medivh, inhabited and corrupted by the whispers of Sargeras and communion with Gul’Dan. The tone just feels needlessly dismissive and aggressive in a lot of your post and I’m uncertain why, Sargeras was involved yes, but back then he was the mysterious Lord of Darkness and Evil of the Burning Legion and we only really knew that his mere whispers could sway even The Guardian of Tirisfal to evil.
I’m not sure if Cassia is just extremely easy to date or if it’s bugged.
Recruited her.
Immediately get prompted to go have a chat with her.
Flirt a bit.
When I go back to the bridge to chat there’s an option to ‘end the relationship’.
I guess I’m not complaining, exactly, but damn, we haven’t even killed any Chaos-doers together side-by-side yet. How are we meant to solidify the relationship if we don’t experience time slowing down as we catch each other’s eyes in a hail of bolter fire? If we haven’t been thrown off our feet by an explosive cannon shot only to roll together in the scorching hot debris before locking eyes as we come to a stop in each other’s arms? If we haven’t leaned on each other and struggled against the malicious illusions and conjurations of the warp?
It’s like we’re skipping the most important part of building a relationship: Killing heretics together.
To be fair it does seem like both of you are just talking at each other rather than discussing (not that that’s uncommon on the internet/these forums), with written tones that read as being quite blunt/entrenched.
Radical centrist I am, because you both make good points that come down to subjective experiences of Classic and Dragonflight. Sounds like you both want different things out of the game and that’s okay.
Worth noting that of course you’re gonna get into the meat of Dragonflight’s story much more quickly than Classic because the player character is a renowned hero and has met people like Alexstrasza multiple times already. It’s also an expansion of 10 levels, not the OG 60 levels of vanilla.
I was trying not too, but I think the way I speak and type is just inherently blunt, I hope Nera wasn’t thinking I was poking fun at him or Dragonflight, entirely wasn’t my intention.
This is a large part of it as I’ve found out replaying in SoD, it is a very slow progress and you’re mostly just learning about the world as you go through.
I can’t remember if Nera likes Dragonflight or not (hard to keep up with who enjoys what) but you did roll into the discussion and just slamdunk on the entire expansion in pretty uncertain terms. Probably what sparked a heated response.
I should clarify I really like the gameplay of Dragonflight !!!(even if I myself really enjoying SoD’s even more currently). The gameplay changes have all been genuinely good and positive (except for completely killing monk as a class).
It’s probably because instead of saying stuff like “I didn’t like this bit” or “I thought this was bad/lame” you said that it is bad. Objective language without mincing words.
Need to overclarify absolutely everything like me out of fear that someone will misconstrue what you’re saying.
The internet would be a much better place if everyone just assumed that people mean “I think that this is bad” when they say “this is bad,” or something similar.
People shouldn’t have to over-clarify, but unfortunately, a lot of people just get defensive and combative whenever they read “objectively worded” comments on any subject.
The only real difference between modern warcraft and classic (world of) warcraft is that you now quest with named characters who have some impact in the storyline, rather than being some random Marshal who passively sends you out on quests. In the strategy games, ‘you’ don’t exist at all so it’s not really comparable except to modern WoW with persistent named characters being involved.
The tone has always been high fantasy of whatever the fantasy equivalent of space opera is, with ramping stakes and cosmic forces after the first couple of zones - the difference is in Blizzard working to try and attach people to their characters rather than them being glorified bulletin boards with barely any personality shown. That’s why Burning Crusade was so heavy with WC3 character raid bosses - Blizzard were not sure how else to showcase them, which they then had to fix in Legion with Illidan’s resurrection.
It’s fine to dislike whatever you like - art’s subjective and I’m not your dad - but do make sure it’s the right things you dislike and for the right [thought-out] reasons.
I don’t see that. Quite honestly, during all of Classic you do not have a lot of high stakes until you reach the last zones, and even most of them don’t have a lot of high stakes until we get into the latest patches, such as Ahn’Qiraj and Naxxramas.
The rest of the previous end-game content is often related to “lost” lands, where the hostility is usually contained: Felwood, Dire Maul, the Plaguelands, Un’goro Crater… all these places are not threatening the world, they have rather self-contained storylines.
To make further examples, in Classic you do not kill a drake until you’re in your late fifties. And all drakes are strong elites which you have a hard time to solo: they often require a party of two or more people (let alone fully grown dragons that are always bosses). Likewise, compare it to the way in which a lich is treated in Classic (high end boss, surrounded by an army) to SL (a standalone elite) and you can see another difference. Classes have the same thing going on: the idea that a warlock summons five middle/high level demons and then twelve imps is raid-tier material, yet in DF is not so outlandish. This makes killing a lich feel like an actual feat in Classic, whereas in SL, for example, it’s just your daily business. The same goes in DF: you kill massive dragons in your average questline activities without any effort.
I do not mind the idea of high stakes myself, depending on how it is done, but saying that the tone of the story hasn’t changed except for a couple of named NPCs is inaccurate.
Wanting to try and make progress on Amirdrassil so I can unlock the mog on my Nelf.
Not wanting to raid, even LFR, because the Winter and work is turning my brain into scrambled egg.
I just about bumble through solo content, having to deal with a cluster of (other) muppets who don’t know what they’re doing sounds like a headache waiting to happen.
Just want purdy mog :<
I was trying not too, but I think the way I speak and type is just inherently blunt, I hope Nera wasn’t thinking I was poking fun at him or Dragonflight, entirely wasn’t my intention.