I love the Dragonflight vibe, like I said previously, but the story is really not doing it for me. The actual dragons can be so hit or miss in their portrayal and I’m not loving what they’re doing with them here.
A large % of it is this to be honest. Skipping three years into the future just to make everyone sing kumbaya together at Thalyssra’s wedding and forget the thousands of lives lost in the (supposed) biggest War against the Horde and Alliance was just utterly insane as a decision.
This would unironically take a 400-page novel for me so I’m going to surmise my thoughts as best I can on this because its my major point of contention about Dragonflight.
It feels so soft, so tamed, so cushioned and disneyfied. Every quest ends with a happy “we have solved all the problems of ‘x’ together with love, hope and harmony. We are Dragons, we will rise!”. The entire grim fate of Murozond is (currently) entirely cast-aside, a prophecy granted unto him by previousy omnipotent forces and a burden he readily accepted as a defender of Azeroth and now we have the Infinite Dragonflight holding hands with Nozdormu and understanding that. . .compassion above all shall triumph and that all is not always as it seems.
The previously evil, sinister vibe of the Infinites as subverters of time and heralds of a doomed fate has been replaced by the majority of them seemingly just being young Bronze Dragons who didn’t quite fully understand their duties and that sucks because its a massive piece of (if you’ll forgive me the word usage) grim lore taken away, a piece of the axe’s edge softened.
The Rebellion of the Dragonkin, built up as both a Primalist subterfuge but also the genuine concerns of the Dragonkin (concerns that previously never existed in any lore teehee extremely convenient) is solved by Alexstrasza taking the perpretator to the top of Valdrakken and. . .just talking to them, which leads to a [Speech 100] Skyrim moment because all she really said was, “wow, that’s crazy. . .I never knew that so sorry” and now the rebellion leader is instantly swayed by her and begins writing up a Bill of Rights for all Dragonkind under the watchful guidance of Alexstraza (what the hell).
The rivalry between Sabellian and Wrathion for Aspect is also completely dismissed for the Centrist of Centrists Ebonhorn and the rivalry seems to be largely dismissed post-zaralek as having been caused by Wrathion and Sabellian being uneasy due to the Forgotten One disguised as Neltharion luring them down below. To become a better aspect and legacy for the Black Dragonflight was a major part of Wrathion’s characterisation for years, so having it just swept away for Mr. Centrist the Central just because he can realise “nooo everyone should get along stop fighting!!!” is utterly baffling (not to mention the butchery done to Wrathion’s character in 10.1 to enable it).
Now in 10.2 we have the Forsaken forces and the Night Elf forces coming together in the dream under Amirdrassil to defend it, with Lilian and Shandriss working together and vouching for each other even against the Ancients of the Dream (who have been Night Elven allies for 10,000+ years) and so far none of the Forsaken present even ordain to mention the horror of Teldrassil or what Sylvanas did.
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My biggest disappointment was that there was not a LICK of rivalry between Reliquary and Explorer’s League, not even friendly rivalry, nothing. A missed potential for sure to have something going on. But instead it was just…
looook it duck
It didn’t feel like exploring a new land meeting new people, like it was in Jade Forest and onward.
But instead I was a tourist looking at a … whelp daycare.
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I would have objected less to flying restrictions in the past if Trash mobs weren’t thick as a carpet AND had the aggro range the size of an entire county.
Trash mobs and wasted time is not fun. Period.
Edit: also I feel it allows for much more realistic terrain/mapping, because not everything has to have a flawless/meta oriented ground access route.
I think if there’s one thing I did like about Dragonflight, atleast some of its areas, it’s that they were actually expansive. You could spend ages RP walking across the zone.
WoD had some of that, but after WoD, Legion onwards, all the new zones felt incredibly cramped and vertical.
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Argus left a VERY bad taste in my mouth, so agreed.
It may have been a new concern, but I thought it was a particularly interesting one. The Dragonkin are a complete underclass, so seeing some say “we want more than to be the dragon’s servants” seemed like a very intriguing conflict brewing. Heck, you get a pet in the mail because he’s not a “real dragon” so it’s your responsibility to take care of him.
My disappointment from that quest was more or less that it was solved within the span of fifteen minutes, with Alex saying “whoops, bit of an oopsie with my flightless slaves. Sorry bud. We cool?”
Never to be addressed again. It just felt like they were onto a valid conflict there.
I do want a Taran Zhu character. The man really hated your guts for most of the story. The only people who dislike you in Dragonflight are designated baddies. I guess that one Djaradin hidden away dislikes you, but Djaradin are Vrykul at home so they don’t count.
Eh, that’s inoffensive side content. I wouldn’t mind a few other side quests of that nature which provide miscellaneous things and some lore.
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I think it’s more to me that the “home of the dragons” didn’t FEEL like a fantastical place with its own culture, norms and areas shaped by the fact that these were all draconic creatures.
Doors were still roughly man sized, the buildings were the same as we’ve always seen them. They didn’t even have new foreign concepts. Day Care, beach resorts, etc.
I don’t know how to describe it, but I didn’t feel like I was in what arguably should be an alien place.
Edit:
I think one of the really weird offenders was the dracthyr in a wheelchair. Not the fact that it was a disabled dracthyr. But the fact they showed him into a humanoid wheelchair which from memory had his wings and tail clipping through. They didn’t stop to think what sort of a device could actually help a dracthyr. No accomodation for the extra limbs a dracthyr has. Another concept that came off really weird to me
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Was always weird to me that this same Dracthyr is pretty adept at Titan technology and has a deep understanding of it but instead of doing anything with that, e.g., a quest delving into a Titan complex on the Isles to help find technology to help him with the fact that his wings are crippled he’s just randomly stuffed into a stolen human wheelchair with 0x thought or care.
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Having the Horde threaten reality (again) and the integrity of the afterlife really would have had the protectors of Azeroth team up to permanently stop a chaotic faction that clearly cannot govern itself. What’s really the final straw when your mandate is to make sure Azeroth thrives but this one polity keeps wrecking things?
Management taking the union leader up to the ivory tower for a “talk” and then they never striked again! 
Wishful thinking from the suits made into a quest as a “reminder” to those implementing said quest.
Dumb and demonstrates both are unfit and Ebyssian is just the moderating factor. It’s obvious that Sabellian is best as General, Wrathion as Spymaster and Ebyssian as keeping things together and they really ought to work together as he needs them to understand the world beyond highmountain. But one has to be Aspect, I guess!
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Heaven forbid they actually progress and advance to different phases of governance based on past experiences.
I think this is also the fault of Blizzard… not doing anything moderately, ever. As I said, they shift from extreme to extreme. We ended MoP (and the general perception of the expack being kumbaya soft fluffy disney fun) and pivoted to Warlords that got marketed as really savage and gory and totally return to Warcraft bro!!! commit war crimes is #justwarlordthings!!!
The Cataclysm - MoP - WoD tonal shifts are pretty much the same as BfA - Shadowlands - Dragonflight, really. The real problem is the timeskip - even if I feel like it was extremely needed for the game’s health - and the problem with it is only the devs fumbling the execution of it. You don’t see any actual timeskips happen, the world is still the same, so you’re left feeling like you’re jumping into Dragonflight right after BfA (as we all suppressed our memories of Shadowlands happening anyway). Even though, in lore… that’s not the case.
I mean sure, it might feel a little too much like this at times, but Dragonflight also is the only expansion that has done it thus far. In my opinion, it’s actually sort of refreshing that there are happy endings to stories, and most of the stories are low stakes so who cares. We solved the problems of two Tuskarr with love, hope and harmony!
That being said, patch lore I cannot comment on as I haven’t played, I do agree with Vyranoth’s story being really boring, but the main topic was Dragonflight leveling/questing. I suppose it’s unfortunate, since the leveling did actually set up potentially good story threads f.e. your examples with Wrathion/Sabellian/Ebonhorn, they just manage to take the worst choices as per usual.
That’s really absurd and I hope you’re pulling my leg. But yeah, I moreso meant the leveling zones and their stories being very grounded and if they’re a bit too disney, I didn’t mind it. Whatever the following patches have done I cannot really speak on, but most of the leveling in my opinion was done really well.
To me, it did feel like
After all, MoP also had its fair share of ‘tourists looking at a daycare’ even in Jade Forest, with the Monastery stuff.
I’d say WoD was the start of this problem, since that was when their way of designing zones changed from expansive areas with a lot of empty spaces, to very arcade-y ‘there’s things on every step to do!’. The leveling zones may have been slightly less extreme, but Tanaan Jungle already was in full gear of this that carried over into zone design for Legion.
I guess that’s in line with what I mentioned felt like were problems with the questing, in that some quests just ended too early. They could’ve easily drawn out some stories to make certain things have more gravitas to them, but instead it ends after a ‘ok im sorry, lets be friends now?’ resolution.
The problems of modern WoW storytelling just revolve around having to fit in all character progression and story developments into quest texts and some few books you can miss, so you lose out on the nuance and whatever Danuser’s trying to sell to you, you’re only getting the Sparksnotes version of it anyway. Shadowlands could’ve been interesting, but all the hyping of his fractals and whatnot we didn’t even see in the quests, really.
I’m not sure if it needed to feel like an alien place anyway? Why do you think that was something they tried to do? To me, Dragonflight felt like Azeroth because it’s on Azeroth, so you’re going to get Azerothian concepts, with some Draconic twang to it at times.
I mean, wasn’t one of their wings paralyzed and whatnot, a wheelchair seems pretty apt? Maybe some of their limbs were similarly affected. I kindasorta like that we don’t get like, a full overview of what their disabilities were, they simply needed a wheelchair. Wings clipping through feels more of a game limitation. Who knows - maybe the wheelchair was made by the Explorers and not the dracthyr themselves!
Low-key but having a story about a disabled character whose entire story doesn’t revolve around their disability is… unfortunately a groundbreaking concept today. I’m actually sort of glad that they’re doing something else or have different goals other than ‘I need to fix my disability’.
(oh god why did this get so long)
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/582505402143604737/1152281430307643534/7d3481bdddaad4eea1e4636b6efab1d1.png?ex=651653f5&is=65150275&hm=a5fe0ccc183b3656eaa229207b28beb12022c81c8e82c4e791337260ae2709a8&
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/582505402143604737/1152281461777514547/7c2b442fc4c673dbf538d31026f682a0.png?ex=651653fc&is=6515027c&hm=39e42767fc8da178aa0baeeff5239512e5e47cedf5b0ebe62b259ba6d836deae&
General player response to Nathanos being a bit rude and dismissive shows that people can’t handle that.
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how do I downvote
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You must suffer as I now suffer.
You were so close to Sira’s actual quote
Suffer as I have!!!
Wasn’t Delaryn that one Night Elf who was inexplicably mega-British?
Can Blizzard stop trying to make her a thing? Pretty please?
That’s gross…
At least the dark rangers of a nelf persuasion are standing away from everyone else due to unpopularity and complaining about getting judgemental stares from the living ones.
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I wish they did make her a thing, but then her thing became a Dark Ranger instead. The Forsaken can keep her now.
(Don’t remember her being British or whatever)
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