Neltharion being a good guy pre-corruption is good writing. Makes him tragic rather than inexplicably just always kind of a baddie schemer. And if Neltharion pre-corruption was good, then it stands to reason the black dragonflight was too.
Writing them pre-corruption as the more intellectual and gay “boundary pushing” does give a nice throughline to their evil-mode being schemers instead of brutes.
This little nugget, whether it’s capitalised on or not, is also something for all three four (with Emberthal) earth warder candidates to link to. Sabellian presumably knew this heritage, and lost it when he was left on Outland and needs to reconnect to it, while Wrathion and Ebyssian never knew it. Emberthal - even knowing Neltharion “pre-corruption” - only ever saw the ‘warlike’ side of the black dragonflight, so learning about it might offer a new perspective on their creator.
Of course they might not do anything with it. Could just be a little bit of flavour text that goes nowhere. You never know with blizz.
Am I also by proxy calling the other four dragonflights unintellectual?
I prefer DW as the eternal narcissist who got driven mad by the impossible task the titans gave him.
Alex got the power and responsibility to rule over all life and rebirth.
Noz got the power of timetravel and responsibility of keeping the timelines intact.
Ysera got the power to not only at will stay in dreams but weave them too.
Malygos the awesome power of magic
And what did DW get? The job of Atlas Titan, essentially. Making sure the earth stayed stable. Oh, and his bosses also forgot to mention to him that in addition to the insane burden of the task, there were old gods that could/might try and escape.
But then… Did Black Dragons become insanely more powerfull due to the corruption?
I always thought(headcanon’d?) That Black Dragons where physically the strongest… And intellectual, Bronze and Blue’s were supposed to be at the top? Cause Magic and everything
Or is it a case of, a Blue Dragon can be physically as strong as a Black Dragon, and a Black dragon can be intellectual as smart as a Bronze who sees al timeways, etc etc? And it thats the case, then whats the use for Dragonflights? Then they would choose based on x or y instead of color?
But Steve Danuser’s short story “Visage Day” shows us that the black dragonflight were cruel and vain and emphasized dominion over others way back when they were still mingling with the other flights.
Also take a shot every time a dragon in DF mentions the concept of family.
I sometimes think they get paid for mentioning certain keywords. Like a googleads kind of setup. $0.10 to your paycheck everytime you write a keyword into the dialogue.
It really doesn’t have to be factionwarfactionwarfactionwar all the time for it to be Warcraft. There have been plenty of other wars.
More like Hades, custodian of the Underworld, prison warden of Tartarus. Maligned for his work and feared yet the most reasonable and fairest of the Hellenic pantheon.
Except what Karinar was responding to was about black dragons not actually having legacy of being the warrior dragonflight, but rather artists and philosophers.
While I´m not 100% onboard with the interpretation of this taking war out of the game, if you interpret it that way, it becomes a case of Blizzard removing an aspect of war that isn´t at all connected to Alliance and Horde.
He literally felt the weight of the entire planet constantly.
Did the black dragonflight ever really have a legacy of being the warrior dragonflight exclusively? Most of what we know about them is that they’re schemers (Onyxia, Wrathion, Deathwing pre-Cata (remember when he was going to marry Calia Menethil?)) and kinda scientists (Nefarian). Those sorts of intellectual pursuits tapering into a pre-corruption culture of philosophy, deviantart dot com, and the like works.
They’re still big dragons, and old Red does say that “courage” (a typical warrior trait) was still a major part, just that their courage wasn’t only expressed through the brute strength that Sabellian had apparently emphasised during his stay in Outland.
All that scheming and science was largely bent towards conquering/destroying kingdoms and creating armies of super soldiers. Profoundly militarist objectives.
It´s more in terms with what is said in the linked screenshot, where one dragon says how it was important part of what they were, only for the red dragon to say “umm, aktchually, you were artists”. Also, dracthyr, as others have mentioned.
Hence why I mentioned I´m not 100% onboard with the idea that this takes the war out of the story.
However, it´s a bit weird that, in discussion about martial/artistic identity of black dragons and how it might narratively be taking war out of the game, the guy instantly started acting as if the discussion was about people wanting to focus WoW on faction war only.
Black dragons have since early Warcraft been established as the rough, tough earth warders/violent stereotypes with a penchant for inhuman (indragon?) research, a bit like Cerberus from Mass Effect. DF wants to go further and say not all of them particularly enjoy being in a constant state of warfare but this could arguably be extended to any warrior race (orcs, centaur), but they do care about adhering to some manner of martial code. A warrior can also be a philosopher and vice versa.
Time will tell I guess but I’m not trusting the writers to come to a coherent conclusion any time soon, see Old Horde, New Horde, Garrosh Horde, Iron Horde.
It’s just that nobody really enjoys having the main theme so obtusely smacked into their face. I’m almost expecting one of the NPCs to turn in direction of the screen, winking while having just said the word family. It’s not nearly as repeated as the last animated series of Ducktales thankfully.
That’s pretty much every WoW expansion, though. It’s just Blizzard’s default style – (some) people are just unhappy because it’s not FACTION WAR being thrust in our face on repeat this time.
