The trouble with a “new hook” is that it often ends up leading to very little, certainly not enough to make the original destruction feel worthwhile, and a lot of the time it boils down to taking away something people do care about and trying to get them to invest in things they don’t necessarily care about.
Teldrassil is a decent comparison, especially when you consider that in reality Blizz have never been that good at following up on these “shock” moments and it was only recently that some sort of replacement for Teldrassil came about, but even that is half the world away and not necessarily a good replacement.
It’s easy to say that it has loads of “potential” but at the end of the day more often than not it’s just a net-loss for the world. Destructive worldbuilding isn’t always popular, and honestly I suspect most would rather have classic locations than vague scattered plot hooks.
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Think there’s a datamined wheelchair NPC named Archmage Khadgar. Feels pretty telling.
RP has to evolve with the story. Part of the RP now should be the aftermath of what happened and finding somewhere new, sketched out in advance by players ooc. There are plenty of places in Azeroth that could replace it, and yes it is very sad as Dalaran had a wonderful vibe.
bit suspicious that jaina is around when a lot of these places get nuked
theramore, dalaran, undercity, dalaran again
anyone know if she was anywhere near teldrassil?
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she was SUSPICIOUSLY off-screen…
It’s Venetia’s time to rise.
(my headcanon Venetia is actually way cooler and also way crueller than Dalaran but hey, it’s still a mage city…)
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I always hoped they’d eventually put Dalaran back in it’s crater in Hillsbrad, but I think that dream is dead now.
https://i.imgur.com/o4NjauQ.png
The damage seems a lot more extensive this time versus what Archimonde did. A lot of square footage to collect rubble from.
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I think comparison between Dalaran and Teldrassil isn´t warranted due to entirely different circumstances around their destruction.
Teldrassil was destroyed by the other faction in a war that involved capture of night elven territory. Dalaran is destroyed by actions of Xal´atath that don´t result in capture of Dalaran´s territory (which is still safe and sound in Alterac Mountains, surrounding a big crater).
For night elves, to avenge Teldrassil, they would have had to take this vengeance on Horde, taking back their territory, killing the Warchief, burning Orgrimmar down…and since this is a game where Horde is a playable faction, their goals couldn´t have been achieved. The 100% Avenge Teldrassil game completion was never possible even if the story didn´t suck so much (game too, in Shadowlands, forcing cross-faction mechanics so Alliance wouldn´t die on all levels besides casual gameplay).
For Kirin Tor and friends, getting 100% completion of Avenge Dalaran involves killing Xal´atath, as the person that personally destroyed Dalaran. From Metzen´s interview, we know that she´s not just meant to be some raid boss we deal with by the end of the expansion. What that means for us is that we´ve got a villain that we can pursue for years and eventually bring down, avenging the city she destroyed. The story will lead us to Quel´Thalas (a place important for many of denizens of Dalaran) and possibly to Northrend later on (assuming she isn´t defeated in Midnight).
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Roleplayers that had characters actually related to the Kirin Tor and Dalaran’s lore seem quite unanimously stoked for what this plot will bring and have begun setting up hubs and storylines, and roleplayers that only used Dalaran as a backdrop for market roleplay with no real relation to its lore or current story are already planning to make a move to somewhere like Valdrakken or Pandaria for market roleplay with not much of a fuss about it.
I don’t see what the perceived problem supposedly is. I’ve yet to see one person particularly mad about what’s going on on either side of the fence. The only thing I’ve seen is uninvolved folks worrying and getting mad on behalf of a group of roleplayers that either don’t care or are excited.
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It’s a little out of the way, but in old world, there’s Hearthglen which would cater for the less high fantasy.
Eventually, I can completely see Mereldar being used. It looks beautiful and gives me Witcher vibes.
I think that it’s completely valid to be upset/frustrated about Dalaran getting deleted, even if I don’t particularly share the sentiment. Popular roleplay hub, very appealing both aesthetically and thematically. There’s nothing wrong with being disappointed to lose that and all it encompasses.
If you view this as part of a wider trend too, there’s a point to be made. Undercity still hasn’t had an adequate ‘replacement’.
For myself I think that it’s cool in the same way I thought Teldrassil being made a bit crispy was cool, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to dismiss concerns or unhappiness out of hand. Hopefully Blizzard designs something that fills the same niche going forward.
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Silvermoon will go neutral next expansion so you can have a new aesthetically pleasing mage city.
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To be honest it’s worrying that people plan to just ignore the destruction of an entire city. We saw get blown to pieces with our own eyes, can see the wreckage of because there’s various things from across the city strewn about the crash site and a driving force for a lot of lore characters this expansion is vengeance for Dalaran. It feels almost disrespectful to the story of the game and the expansion for people to just pretend it never happened or it just got partially destroyed and got repaired.
There’s so much RP to be had involving the destruction of Dalaran that the community is already making amazing strides in creating, and I’m excited to see the new hubs that will pop up in the wake of Dalaran being destroyed even though I’m sad to see such a nice hub go.
I think that if Dalaran ever does return it will either be rebuilt on the ground maybe over the ruins of Theramore or in the Dalaran Crater or we’ll find out that its destruction was an illusion and that Xal’atath has been using it as her personal base of operations. She did say that it’s shameful for so much power to go to waste which might imply she wants it for herself.
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Nah it’s dead Jim, they’ll no doubt rebuild as they have done before. Just take quite a while to get there, I hear people are already attempting setting up new hubs anyway. Can’t just get Avada Kedavra’d and ignore it happened.
As much as I liked Dalaran, I can’t say I’m overly sad to see it go. See it as sort of next phase in the Kirin Tor’s story sort of thing.
Heheh remember Archimonde? >.> <.<
Could be worse, could be Gilneas.
Except it’s entirely different. Dalaran’s loss is the driving force of a storyline which we have been confirmed will go on until 2030. It is something we, for a fact, know is going to have a lengthy resolution and unleash a chain of events that will fill the creative coffers of the setting for nearly six years.
The Undercity’s loss, on another hand, was fruit of a storyline that abruptly ended midway through the same expansion in which it was lost, in a .5 patch at that. Then, Tirisfal and the city was reclaimed, but Undercity remained unaccessible, and the keep itself only had three bonfires with refugee NPCs, a few named NPCs only 4 of which had any kind of flavour text, and a city that is unserviceable for roleplay because it has 0 buildings or new additions, and a town that is unserviceable for roleplay because it’s surrounded by max level NPCs with guards that do not attack them - which stings just a bit more when you compare it to Bel’ameth.
Just look at the start of BFA. Beyond people being raving mad about Teldrassil’s loss, the Undercity getting scorch earthed drove the Forsaken community into overdrive, despite Brill having been used as the main roleplay hub since around a decade before the fact. It’s only when 8.2.5 was dropped onto the game like a bad habit that folks started REALLY mourning the loss of their roleplay zones with no update of the old world in sight.
tl;dr because I don’t know how to be succint; Teldrassil and Undercity sucked because they were sacrificed for a plot that abruptly ended after just two patches, with only the former getting a properly usable replacement two years after the fact, while Dalaran’s Fall has started a storyline that will go on for three entire expansions - without mentioning the fact that Teldrassil was mourned by Night Elf roleplayers, while the few times that Dalaran is mourned it’s by people who roleplay concepts absolutely detached from its lore and thus have no real ties to it beyond going https://youtu.be/rGQS524jc4M?&t=13 before moving on to market rp hub #9
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I think that it’s very early to say what Dalaran’s sacrifice will have been for narratively and whether the payoff will feel worth the loss of such an iconic hub/city – we only know what Blizzard have claimed.
You can also say that Teldrassil’s destruction and the ensuing story played out over three expansions (BfA → Shadowlands → Dragonflight). You’re right about the Undercity though.
Loss of a hub aside, the potential for character development is insane. There’s genuinely so much you can do with your character after this, so many different roads they can go down; are they going to wander aimlessly, lamenting the loss of their home in the bottom of drinks at every tavern they see? Are they going to “John Wick” over their pet dog nuffle who was bisected by the invading nerubians? Sky is the limit imo.
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Imagine playing a character that was caught in both destructions of Dalaran, like that bloke who was caught up in Hiroshima and then was also in Nagasaki when the bomb dropped there too.
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My night elf was on Teldrassil and will also have been at Dalaran. Oopsie daisy.
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New character concept: the unfortunate soul who somehow manages to end up in every town/city just before it gets wiped out, completely by coincidence.
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