“World of Peacecraft-”
You want boring? This is boring. It’s not just boring, it’s stupid. Ignorant of the writing, the story arcs, as bland as as empty-headed as blooming American Football. Rah rah, up the reds, up the blues, rah rah, yay sportsball.
I should be paid for every time I have to read that stupid sentence. Repeat after me; you can have Conflict, as a narrative vehicle, without having a War that makes no sense based on what came before and what was the natural narrative trend.
In context, Tolkien is not claiming that peace is boring. He’s lamenting how humans, apparently by nature, find lasting goodness boring and desire to ruin things just for the sake of novelty (which, in-universe, resulted in the rise, and subsequent discovery and overthrow, of a new cult of darkness in Gondor).
The point of the full quote is that the time after Sauron’s defeat didn’t contain events that would make an interesting story, and that’s why Tolkien decided not to write about that time period instead of shoehorning forced conflict into it.
I can agree, BFA was stupid. However, DF being full hugs, family and friendship was cringe. If you want to move on, sure, but you can’t just dismiss entire conflict in a second.
See, on this we agree. The way that, after the absolute Cluster that was the end of BFA and then SL, the devs seem to just be sweeping it under the carpet is… -sigh- I both hate it, because it’s just glossing over what came before, and also like it because, oh thank god I minimally have to acknowledge SL even existed.
Edit: I’m just Actually Still Salty about how easily they could have not ruined Sylvanas’ character, not had Shadowlands, and moved into a Void Expansion, or even a prelude to a Void Expansion and the world would have been better for it.
Edit edit: I actually swore aloud when I found the small Night Fae area in the Emerald Dream. Someone get me the RAID and an electric flyswat…
I’ve had issues with some parts of DF, but I think this is being very unfair to it. Calling it cringe is not really something I agree with at all.
Also personally, much like with MoP, it is nicer to have a bit of lighter experience following the heavier storylines of doom and gloom that was both BfA and Shadowlands.
Azeroth being constantly on the brink of destruction and war every single year makes it exhausting as a setting without some breathing room.
Again, I do think this is a disservice to Dragonflight.
My issue has mainly been that some of the questlines in certain zones has felt rather rushed and very easily resolved. But to call it “My Little Dragons” is unfair to it.
Overall I think the DF has writing has been decent enough. And there’s still certainly been conflict with the Primalists. The stories focusing on peaceful efforts are far less than you might be remembering, there’s only a handful of quests and storylines that directly included this in DF. Most of them are also sidequests.
And I also think those are mostly fairly well done. It’s refreshing to see things being resolved beyond just killing the bad guy.
I like DF as an expansion overall. Fun features, pretty fun content and a decent enough expansion story. Nothing especially noteworthy but serviceable.
@Lintian I’ve a question concerning the Legendarium. I read the Silmarillion last summer, and there’s a passage in the Akallabêth concerning the Númenorians and the dark deeds they did under Sauron’s influence:
But the fear of death grew ever darker upon them, and they delayed it by all means that they could; and they began to build great houses for their dead, while their wise men laboured unceasingly to discover if they might the secret of recalling life, or at the least of the prolonging of Men’s days. Yet they achieved only the art of preserving incorrupt the dead flesh of Men, and they filled all the land with silent tombs in which the thought of death was enshrined in the darkness.
I assume Tolkien meant embalming in that quote, which fits with his thematic association of Numenor with Ancient Egypt.
There almost certainly were mortal necromancers. The Black Numenoreans, of whom the Mouth of Sauron was one, practiced dark sorcery, and it was assumed the Necromancer of Dol Guldur was a mortal man until Gandalf discovered he was Sauron.
Seeing Chromie behave like a little child and then literally have a Saturday morning cartoon version of herself as a villain really made DF feel like a story for little kids (and not a good one at that).
The story overall had many problems and some laughably bad and tonedeaf stuff in it. Primalists weren´t developed at all, Dragonscale Expedition was a weird amalgamation of random researchers with zero identity besides “we go take photos and look into old ruins”, and while it´s good that “kill the bad guy” wasn´t the default solution, there were so many cases where everyone just sat together, talked, and magically solved the problems and removed any potential for tension or interesting long-term conflict that it made the story feel extremely bland.
Good thing is, the people who were in charge of that expansion´s story seem to be gone.
It´s literally the current expansion, people aren´t complaining about story that Blizzard did years ago, it´s the newest version of WoW we have.
Literally who? Ah wait those wierd bad guy shamans we still know pretty much nothing about? They could have more, the Incarnates got all the focus.
After SL the bar is quite low already.
Gameplay wise yes, it’s blast. Writing? Well, it didn’t tried to be big bad who always was here, somehow, and rectonned entire lore for it (SL) nor it tried to put multiple plots into one expansion doing disservice to the all. (BFA) Narrativerly it returned to linear Legion narrative which is easy to follow and is the way to go.
But overally the writing seems to me watering down everything, turning everyone into BFFs and “humanifying” every walking and talking thing, so I am not endorsing this xpac either. It was… mid.
Literally the thing I enjoyed the most in terms of writing this xpac was Draenei heritage, which isn’t even related to anything else in this xpac…
I did find parts of DF a bit too… Insistant I guess would be the word? On the concept of friendship/family/together to a point that feel unatural and/or unpleasant. I’ll add for context that I do wish in part for the end of the factions War (or at least the active, BfA-like.)
The Gilneas questline for example was one such where the way the Horde is involved feels weird. Why is Genn thanking me, a blood elf? Had he reluctantly accepted the help, that is still being reluctant after his first protest, I feel it’d have been better. (But I had to see Calia so I was already grumpy, granted)
I don’t remember who said it but I agree. Peace is a good objective but, we should see the work that led to it after the last years. Not just swap it under the rug “but we’re friends now” because no, absolutly not, you’ve not shown us become friends and I perfectly well remember our last interactions with the guys on the other side being at each other’s throat. Do it with baby steps and maybe soooome subtility? Just a lil’?
The frustrating part is, conceptually, I like Chromie and the Expedition.
I just think they absolutely did Not stick the landing. At all.
Some of that was voice direction. No shade to the voice actors themselves, you can only work with how you’re directed. Whoever was in charge of voice direction did, imo anyway, a terrible job. So many incredibly aggrevating voices, and whoever continues to make Gnomes ONLY Whacky & Zany Wahoo™ needs a stern talking to.
If I never hear Cataloger Wulferd speak ever again, it will still be too soon. Naleidea Rivergleam isn’t much better; she sounds like she uses ‘lovely’ in sentences 200% more than necessary…
Like, yeah. I like Dragonflight, overall. I actually look forward to playing, to doing quests, to RP, etc. Which is a huge step up from what came before.
But good grief can I get frustrated thinking about the myriad Misses…
Dragonflight was a breath of fresh air, it is true. Personally I liked just exploring a new continent again where you seemingly were just a random adventurer again. And gameplay wise it was an extremely solid expansion imho.
Storywise I liked things alot, like sitting down with Veritistrasz and just hearing him talk about his former black dragon friend and love. Malygos and Sindragosa finally being able to rest easy. Ohn’ara and the centaurs were really fun, as was Azure Span being a loveletter to Northrend.
But it had some flaws aswell. Apart from the Primalists having had no development beyond “Hey these guys fought the dragon aspects long ago, and now somehow they have mortal followers who found it an extremely solid idea to return the world to an elemental hellscape.” It’s never been explained how Kurog even found Raszageth’s vault after the mist parted, or knew she was even there.
Then there’s the story of Aberrus and Deathwing’s corruption. For some reason the game seemed really, and I mean -REALLY- determined to call him Neltharion instead of Deathwing, and in similar vein another odd thing I noticed is that the game REALLY did not want to name the Old Gods, despite them being responsible for Neltharion’s fall from grace ( as much as they later wanted to spin it as due to him experimenting with shadowflame too much and eventually reaching out for the Void.)
The Infinite Dragonflight started out well, it was nice to suddenly see them in Uldaman and foil our plan of recovering the Disk of Tyr, aswell as them not having given up their plan to create Murozond.
But then the megadungeon came, and the story suddenly acts as if we’ve stopped Murozond for good ( when the story and true timeline literally dictates for Nozdormu to eventually fall as well). We saw him in one -very- short cinematic and that was it.
Not to mention how they also seem to want to sweep under the rug that the Infinites literally fought on the side of the Old Gods during Cataclysm by trying to kill Thrall through the use of an alternate timeline Blackmoore. Aswell as stopping us from recovering the Dragon Soul from the past.
This is the core of the issue and the reason why I think so many people still want faction war. The story that replaced it simply isn´t up to par and doesn´t make sense. We don´t see Azeroth being rebuilt together, sins of the past being adressed, and treaties made to make sure that nothing like Fourth War ever happens again. Instead we get forced friendship between Alliance and Horde through Dragonscale Expedition and weird tone-deaf stories such as Gilneas questline.
Give people good story and they will stop asking for return to the old stuff. Give people Shadowlands and Dragonflight and they will never be willing to move on.
And yes, BfA was bad story too, but its theme of Alliance vs. Horde felt much more close to people than themes of Shadowlands, or themes of DF. Hopefully, World Soul Saga, with its return to old world will give people stuff they feel invested in.
