After we got Light Dreadlords I ain’t betting against it.
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It’s pretty much the same.
It’s terrific.
In the end, Merithra falls in battle and Ysera returns to the Shadowlands, pact fulfilled. Malfurion returns to lead the kaldorei while Tyrande ascends as Green Aspect, becoming a dragon by the power of the Dream and is crowned with Ysera’s crescent moon shaped diadem, the high priestess’ ultimate fate having been subtly hinted at all along since we first saw Ysera in Wrath (or whatever excuse they invent).
They can just be friends but I like the vibe of pan/poly Alex loving everyone and consequently breaking hearts, creating drama.
Actually nice, reminding me of primitivist d&d druids and hammering home how titan interference is basically an alien invasion and these “dragons” and their elf-visages are of another world entirely.
Softer skin…
Actually good, I’m just worried about the writers mishandling its potential and themes.
I missed something here. Knifey wifey corpse-mommy is back?
Abandon hope, all ye who enter England.
A man needs a hobby.
“New neutral race: Algaren, tall dwarves made of stone but have colored hair.”
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/060/350/369/large/mark-hretskyi-mark-hretskyi-oreadfemalewarpriest.jpg?1678367350
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/039/623/344/medium/alexander-davtyan-oreadmonk.jpg?1626434979
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This feels like someone looked at the leaked screenshots of the zones and made stuff up, using the vague info from screenshots as basis to make it sound more valid.
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That was the vibe I got too. But they didn’t put a lot of effort in.
Also as soon as they said “pamphlets” I was out. What company is producing pamphlets these days smh.
I cannot think of a thing more evil than the British
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Americans…
they were british once…
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CAM ON ENGERLAND
OI OI OI 
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Some of them were. But don’t be so unkind to the indigenous populace.
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French checking the Millenium interview:
At the end of the quest linked to the Dungeon of the Dawn of the Infinite (Patch 10.1.5), Alexstrasza informs us of Fyrakk’s imminent attack on Amidrassil and that we must warn Merithra. How can she know when at this point in history everyone was unaware that this was her plan?
Anne Stickney: "There is a cutscene that plays at the end of the dungeon during which Nozdormu talks with Alexstrasza, and Nozdormu mentions that he “only sees fiery clouds.” After that, Alexstrasza simply match the elements she has in her possession and supposes that these flames can only be those of Fyrakk, and that he would undoubtedly seek to attack the tree. This is why she believes that “We need to talk to Merithra soon, because if Nozdormu can see him then this is something we need to prepare for.”
Globally what it says, though I’d precise that " “ne voit plus que des nuées ardentes”" is more “he only sees fiery clouds anymore” (there’s an idea that there was other stuff before, but no longer.) But I’m nitpicking a little.
Bringing new customizations for playable races is a great addition to Dragonflight. However, this seems to bring a lot of “errors” to the NPCs in the game. For example, I have already seen many Blood Elf guards with blue eyes. Do you manage the implementation of NPC customizations to avoid errors? Can we fear that Man’ari Paladins will one day be visible by mistake, for example?
Katherine Bankson: “Blood Elves can have blue eyes now, it’s not just a customization available to players! Time has passed since the game’s debut, some Blood Elves have golden eyes now while others have returned to their original blue color. The fact that such guards exist is not only related to the customizations available to players, but also and above all to the fact that time has passed since Blood Elves found themselves infused with Fel, giving them this greenish eye tint.”
“In that sense, I think that if we place a Man’ari Paladin in the world of Warcraft then it will be a deliberate choice, and then after all… who says the Man’ari can’t defend the light ? I think this would be a very interesting character! If we were to add such a character into the game, it would not be a narrative error, it would be a deliberate choice on the part of one of our developers aimed at introducing an element that he considers interesting to develop. in the history of the game.”
Anne Stickney: “In Legion, there was for example a Nathrezim, Lothraxion, who chose to join the Army of Light. There are therefore indeed characters fel or infused by Fel who changed sides over the course of their lives. So it would truly be a deliberate choice .”
I think that one is a bit more clear in french. She’s explaining that the blood elf guards (in Silvermoon) with blue eyes were not an error, but a lore decision showing that it was not merely a customisation option for players (as opposed to the Man’ari.) That if they decide to create a NPC Man’ari Paladin, it’ll be a deliberate lore decision and then her thoughts wander about how it could be an interesting decision in the future, but at the moment. The point the translation didn’t caught well was the opposition between blue eyes for belves (customisation and lore canon) and the Man’ari skins (only customisation, there is no Man’ari paladin in the Alliance, etc.)
Patch 10.2 clearly echoes Patch 4.2 of Cataclysm (Tindral replaces Fandral as leader of the Druids of the Flame for example). Where do you want to go with such a creative process for the story? Do you think legacy is about reproducing the past?
I’ll be honest, some of that english translation is kinda wobbly so I’ll retranslate it entirely. (Some of the sentences will be the same since they work.) Italic are my notes to clarify a choice of words.
I don’t know that it’s so much/really about « reproducing the past » rather than simply bring a new perspective while making a narrative arc evolve. We’ve vainquished Fandral in Cataclysm, but we never truly purged the ranks of the Druid of the Flame, they simply dispersed. Since then, they didn’t really had someone able to listen to them. Fandral was obsessed by his quest for immortality, and for him, it could only be done/accomplished by taking the Path of Fire.
After Teldrassil burned, a great number of Kaldorei found themselves more inclined to listen to what the Druids of the Flame had to say. The idea was to make the story progress (implied: with the consequences of what was done) rather than reproduce the past: since the Tree Amidrassil is present, that the intrigue very focused on the night elves, and all of this happening in the Emerald Dream, which is very connected to Druids, then it makes sense to bring back/(make [them] resurface) those antagonistes, show what became of them over the last years.
“Resurgir” really have that idea of something leaping from a hidden place that is kind of lost with “bring back” I feel. That’s the word you’d use to describe a hunting orca leaping from the water to grab a penguin after you’d lost track of it when it dove, if that makes sense? But it’s also mostly a little bit of nitpicking.
It’s really the first sentence that was wobbly, the rest was mostly understandable after re-reading.
I have the feeling that there are serious context issues in the initiation of certain expansions. For example, the context of the awakening of the Dragon Islands is non-existent in game even though Steve Danuser revealed it to me during a previous interview. Is this a voluntary narrative process?
Katherine Bankson: “I think we showed the awakening of the islands. You even played through it during the Dragonflight Pre-Patch. We revealed the intro cinematic for Dragonflight which represents the moment in which the islands awaken, but it wasn’t a brief moment after which it stopped: the islands continued to awaken as players set foot on them, the entire world continued to awaken even as we walk these lands. So showing what was happening was a deliberate process.”
Anne Stickney: “The introductory cinematic of the expansion, the one with Koranos, “Stony Tony” as the community calls him, presented the latter in sleep before we see a temporal transition revealing to us that the years have passed and the islands woke up after a long, long time after the cutscene started. This is a sort of prologue to a story, and we didn’t want to reveal all the details about it in a prologue. The goal was just to set the scene before letting the story be gradually revealed… And I think we were quite effective in that with Dragonflight!”
No comments for that one, the answer also seems a little bit off for the question in french. They may have not understood it (we’re going through several rounds of translation I think, they may not have been interviewed in french) or they disagreed that this was not enough leading up to the expansion.
The Primalists came out of nowhere with the Dragonflight Pre-Patch without any context in order to free the “big bads”. They are now replaced by the Druids of the Flame with the same problems. Why not consider them simple Primalists?
Anne Stickney: “We’ve spent the entire expansion dealing with the Primalists, there aren’t many left (although there are still some), but they’re no longer the invasion force they were represented at the start of the expansion. On the other hand, the Druids of the Flame have a certain interest in what is at stake in the Emerald Dream and on the side of Amidrassil. Are they working towards the liberation of “big bads”? No! They have their own goals, their own “agenda” so to speak. They are working for and with Fyrakk… for now! This is an important distinction to make: it is above all a question of an alliance of circumstances here! Contextually speaking, it seems to us to make sense to bring back these characters in order to make them evolve and show what has happened to them since our last meeting with them.”
Katherine Bankson: “The other thing to point out is that the Emerald Dream is a druidic realm. Therefore, Fyrakk had to find allies who could lead him into the Emerald Dream, and what allies are better placed to succeed in this task than Druids having a prior convergent interest? The powers of the Primalists are more shamanistic by nature, they could not have allowed him to enter the Dream, the Druids of the Flame are best placed for this precisely because they are Druids.”
Also no comment, the translation is not missing anything blatant. They think it was more interesting in the context of an Emerald Dream related story beat to bring back the Druids rather than use the Primalists, what with accessing the Dream and the fact the players have murdered their way through the Primalists’ ranks all expansion long.
There has been some criticism recently about the quests in Dragonflight, particularly about the quality of writing of some of the quests in the expansion, with many being considered too focused on humor and not enough on the evolution of the game. 'plot. In your opinion, hasn’t the balance of this part of the narration been broken in favor of a little too much humor?
Katherine Bankson: “WoW has always had humor, even in Vanilla! Humor and less serious quest lines are necessary because they offer a break, a way to breathe and settle down for a little while. A narrative that does not take the time to pause between all the serious intrigues that it involves can be felt as very, very stifling, not to mention the fact that if the players are too regularly confronted with the same narrative process they become get used to it and eventually get bored. So, if you are serious all the time, how do you tell your players that what is happening before their eyes is very, very serious? It is necessary to have a certain rhythm allowing serious elements to be put in place and then offering a break, before starting again. The offbeat quest sequences offer players a way to take a little break and contrast the narrative a lot to allow them to appreciate more greatly still the serious events that are approaching.”
“We have a lot of quests relating to the evolution of the narrative of the expansion, the campaigns in particular which turn out to be rather serious. But even within these campaigns we need to offer these moments of respite to allow serious events to have a real impact.”
Anne Stickney: “I would also like to add that it was a real joy working on Dragonflight for everyone who contributed to it. So you can really feel this very joyful approach in everything that was created! So, if anyone wanted to create a quest that was fun and even a little crazy we just said “Sure, go for it!”, the same way as if someone suggested we create something very sincere and deep. I think that all this humor is an excellent reflection of the joy that everyone was able to take in the design of this expansion.”
Katherine Bankson: “And to talk about the Bronze Dragon Flight for example, you are often dealing with this slightly ambient madness with completely offbeat quests and interactions. I think that when we have in our hands something so fantastic and wonderful that time it would be a shame not to exploit it in a light way, without forgetting some more sincere and serious elements, in order to allow the most important and heartbreaking elements to be highlighted in relation to the rest.”
Overall correct, will nitpick on some word choices.
I wouldn’t have used “offbeat quests”, the idea in french was more “the questlines that shift expectations (in that they’re surprising, or amusing, etc.) allow players to take a small break and contrast greatly with the narrative (I think she means the overall narrative, the overall story) so they can appreciate all the more greatly the serious events coming.”
Again that use of “offbeat” for “décalé” in the last Bankson’s answer which is just not quite that. Think more… Quirky I guess? Quirky humor quests and interactions, for the Bronze Flight.
We have a whole Dragonflight story arc aimed at resurrecting Tyr, so a flashback. While the theme of heritage is central to this expansion, what purpose would such a story bring?
Anne Stickney: "I can’t say too much about where this whole story is going since, you know…spoilers! Tyr and his involvement with the Dragonflights has been a big thing since the Flights’ inception long ago, he helped out and created the Silver Hand even! He has a certain relationship with dragons, and we had to talk about that if we chose to talk about dragons. The Aspects were infused in part thanks to Tyr! His influence is therefore present everywhere on the Dragon Islands, so… why not bring him back? He is a Watcher, a creation of the Titans! If you can restart a Watcher, why not do it? Even more, if you can reboot a Watcher who was involved in what you are, why not do it? I have the feeling that the involvement of Vyranoth and other characters similar could allow them to ask a lot of questions to Tyr that they have kept within them for a long time. Will he have any answers to give them? It will no doubt be interesting to find out!”
They tried to translate a pun, enough said.
(No I’m kidding, I’ll translate more.)
" Tyr et son implication avec les Vols Draconiques est quelque chose d’important depuis la création des Vols Draconiques eux-mêmes il y a bien longtemps, il y a donné un coup de main… de Main d’Argent même !"
“Donner un coup de main” is an expression to say helping. So she’s joking “He gave a hand (he helped)… A Silver Hand even!”
“He had an important/peculiar relationship with dragons, and we had to talk about it if we choose to talk about dragons.”
I’m not sure if that one has been translated automatically, or if they tried to go word-for-word translation, there’s some Choices in there. Probably automatic since you got restart and reboot for the same word, in two sentences next to each other.
“I’ve the feeling that the involvement of Vyranoth, and other similar characters, could allow them to ask a great deal/many questions to Tyr, that they had been keeping to themselves/in themselves for a while.”
If you discovered what turned out to be a narrative error after the fact, how would you go about fixing it?
Katherine Bankson: “When we see this type of inconsistent element, we always wonder if it’s a narrative error or an unreliable narrator. Many stories in WoW were written by the Titans or from the perspective of the Titans or those who have only heard one sound of the bell. Recently and as we evolve the world of Warcraft we discover different points of view which contrast with what we’ve always been told. Is this an opportunity to show the world from a different perspective, or is it a pure contradiction preventing us from doing anything with it altogether? So we evaluate based on of this and seek the most suitable solution. These different perspectives sometimes allow us to create a more vibrant, more interesting world.”
“WoW is a living world, it is not static. Therefore, certain elements may sometimes have been perceived as errors and we try to transform them into opportunities in order to create something coherent.”
Anne Stickney: “As a Narrative Designer, I’m regularly in touch with my colleagues in quest design who pitch me their ideas. Sometimes they pitch me great things but there’s an element of the game’s story that contradicts what they are proposing. So I explain to them that we will have to get around this problem which often turns out not even to be that huge… How? Already, I don’t see the “narrative errors” like real mistakes. Like Kathy said when talking about the different perspectives, who was the narrator for example? Where did that piece of the story come from that you think is a mistake? Is that something we can work around or incorporate into the story, or is it really weird? And if it’s so weird, do we really want to highlight that weirdness?”
"There are lots of ways to look at what you consider to be “mistakes” without necessarily seeing them as such. It’s often more about opportunities to be seized than mistakes!”
I think that one is overall correct but I’ll retranslate it just to be sure I didn’t miss something when reading in diagonal. Italic mine.
Q: If you were to discover something, that happened to be a narrative error, how would you proceed to correct the problem/mistake?
KB: When we observe that kind of incoherent element, we always asks ourselves whether it’s really a narrative error or if the narrator was unreliable. Many stories (Histories? Same word in french but you generally capitalise for History) have been written by the Titans or from a Titan’s perspective, or by those who had only ever heard one version. Recently, as we make the world of Warcraft evolve, we are discovering other points of view/perspectives, contrasting with what we’ve been told. Is it an opportunity to show the world in a different light/perspective, or is it purely a contradiction, keeping/forbiding us from doing anything with it? So we consider/evaluate in regard to [that question] and search for the most suitable solution [between using it or correcting an error.] Those differente perspectives/points of view allow us, among other things, to create a more vibrant world, more interesting.
WoW is a living world, it’s not static. So, some elements can sometimes have been perceived as errors, and we try to transform them into an opportunity to create a coherent ensemble.AS: As a Narrative Designer, I am often in touch with my colleagues from quest design who propose me theirs ideas. Sometimes, they propose great things but there’s an element of the game’s story that contradict it. I explain to them that we’ll need to get around that obstacle, which is often not even that big… How? Well, I do not see “narrative errors” as true errors. As Kathy said when talking about different perspectives, who was the narrator for example? From where do that story bit you think is an error came from? Is it something that we could go around, or incorporate to the story, or is this truly weird/off? And if it is that weird/off, do we really want to lampshade/put the projector [overall meaning: to bring attention] to that weirdness/error?
There are many ways to consider what you think as “errors” without necessarily viewing them as such. More often than not, they’re opportunities to take rather than errors!
There. Poke me if there’s any questions about my translations or something is unclear with my own.
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Think you’re forgetting about the D*tch. It was New Amsterdam before it was New York.
In fact rarely will you find any American claiming British heritage. For the whities it’s always stuff like Irish or Italian. Running from themselves…
i know a lot of americans who claim to be scottish
very amusing
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Also thank you for clarifying Narms!
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My pleasure! It’s fun to do.
Thanks for going through it.
Glad it cleared up the Man’ari thing a bit
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Maybe even roommates?
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Just to ruin your day.
Amidrassil
Amir = prince in arabic
Drasill = old norse for horse
Amirdrassil is the prince’s horse.
Or symbolically so his gallows where he hangs, as was the case with odin.
Words have meaning, fantasy writers.
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historians will record them as gal pals
nay, perhaps even…besties.
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In certain countries.
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