It was just the last 28 seconds that was the title card + promotion.
I think it was pretty alright, nothing super exciting but a pretty solid brick laying of how-why-where. The Art was fantastic as always and usually what I watch it for anyway, curious to see if there’ll be an Earthern one.
mfw my daughter turns my entire race into hunky elf spiders
This again feels a bit like wasted resources, with Ansurek being our entry raid loot pinata.
Her mum’s blood would barely dry on her dagger by the time we loot it.
I liked it. One thing that stood out was the almost horror movie style movements of Xal.
Was it groundbreaking? No. Did I enjoy watching it? Very much so.
It was fine.
Loved Xal’atath. Pop off, mommy.
Just because we get a x.0 raid boss clip doesn’t mean the resources on it are wasted. It gives some little bits of story for Xal + characterization for our main loot table at the start of the expac.
If they did not drop any material on her ya’d be whining that blizzard is not doing any character work on our enemies.
It’s good that she’s getting stuff, it’d just be nice if maybe she stuck around. We all remember how disappointingly swiftly Kurog Grimtotem and Razsageth were removed from the board.
That was good stuff. The only thing I need now is for none of the villains to get cold feet and get redeemed or some other boring dragonflightian thing.
Didn’t vibe that much with the cinematic. Nothing but praise for the visuals… The substance however, I know I’ve seen this template numerous times already with minimal variations.
Oh no, an insulary kingdom is facing ressource, cultural and political turmoil that I must fix through a revolution and commit regicide alongside slaying the Grima Wormtongue placeholder of the expansion who kickstarted it.
Gazes back and Sylvanas/Jailer, Elisande/Gul’dan, Kael’thas/KJ, Denathrius/Jailer like the Avatar TLA scene
It’s really a favored pattern of Blizzard.
The elfdom and it’s consequences
I think for me its the fact that currently Xal’atath’s entire shtick is just Jailer (Female Elf) at the moment. Step-for-step she is, functionally, the exact same character as Zovaal, just tied to the Void instead of Death.
Ancient Evil 
Locked Away for the Safety of the Universe
Has A Plan For Azeroth to Destroy the Universe
Talks Ominously About Unseen Threats That Justify Their Evil
Monologues About How Long Their Plan Has Been Planned
Monologues About How Much Better They Are Than All Those Other Villains
Monologues About How They Are Misunderstood And We’re The Bad Guys Actually
Convoluted Manipulation Plot That They Will Insist Was Masterfully Planned
Has A WoW Elf Ranger Chasing Them Down And Also Maybe Serving Them
The WoW Elf Ranger Takes Increasingly Extreme Actions For/To Stop Them
Was Somehow Here All Along Planning For Millenia
Somehow Never Did Anything During Their Millenia of Planning
“a cosmos divided will not survive what is to come” - xal’atath at the end of 12.2’s raid
Jokes on you she didn’t even wait to blow that load, she dropped it right out of the gate in Legion when she was still just a funny little weapon (why do none of the other artifacts get any lore attention, huh? If I have to fight the blade at least give me the Ashbringer back so that I can just walk up to her and watch her distintegrate instead of having to hit her with [Nerubian Soldier’s Sword Ilvl 610])!
I think the cinematic was fine (cool art!) but it all felt like very familiar ground / that’s already been treaded
But we know what Xal’atath was up to over the years while being our favourite knaifu.
I disagree with the above comparison to the Jailer, I believe that a lot of those bullet points are either cynical predictions about the future or just factually inaccurate or imagined.
But the criticism about this being a repeat of the same old story is accurate. “Misguided and/or malicious ruler embraces evil in order to sustain their rule over a declining civilisation and/or empower it” has been done with the blood elves, the mantid, the nightborne, the venthyr… It happens every other expansion, really.
Aesthetically neat, seems interesting that they chose the Ny’alotha orange-and-purple aesthetic for the Void in this trailer when Xal’atath has gone full cosmic purple in all other depictions. The story is nothing special though.
Does the fact that N’zoth couldn’t wrangle the nerubians into service during BfA diminish him after the fact
A little. The fact that the aqir offshoots can choose to spurn the Old Gods if they want to does undermine the Old Gods just a little.
We do know already that the nerubians were the bug person offshoot that had already broken free of Old God control, since that’s the case with the ones in Northrend too.