Came in to Dragonflight about a month ago after a long hiatus, having done a brief stint in WoD but checking out before Legion (probably a mistake, given how well received it was).
There’s a lot to like in Dragonflight, namely Dragonriding, which feels to me like the only new feature of any legitimate substance in WoW since the introduction of…well, standard flying (Pet Battles and Garrisons are a bit of a joke).
But the way in which the story is delivered is an unqualified disaster. And it’s a shame because, apart from the Woke Centaurs storyline, which is a slog, there seems to be a lot to like.
But it’s impossible to follow! There’s not even a modicum of direction offered to the player. One minute Vyranoth is offering herself to the good guys, and playing on our team, and another she’s fighting alongside Fyrrak and Virikon. One day I’m questing around Zalarek caverns, then another I’m watching a cutscene of the 3 Primalists uncovering it, as if were a first time discovery.
None of it makes any sense. And I feel like it’s a betrayal of the writers, who clearly put so much effort into crafting the story, to have it be delivered to players in such a totally unstructured fashion.
Not to mention the negative effect this kind of thing has on player retention, particularly new ones.
It would be such an easy solution as well. Just gate certain quest chains. And have dungeons and raids be unlocked in the dungeon finder only after they’ve been completed “manually”, through whatever quest chain leads up to it.
Yeah the story doesn’t make sense if you don’t do questlines in their release order. Nothing gives you directions about what to do first or what happened before in case you skipped quests either.
And yeah the story is terrible, I hated the majority of the story, the Woke Centaurs part being the worst (They are basically a tauren copypaste and serve no purpose whatsoever to the plot). I even, for the first time in WoW, turned off voice sounds and started skipping through everything at some point in the campaign.
Why are you defending the writers at the end though? They’re responsible for this.
They’re responsible for the terrible Centaurs portion of the expansion, yeah. But they’re also responsible for some of the other good stuff that’s also there to be found, and unfortunately not able to be enjoyed because the developers have no respect for the mechanisms by which said story ought to be delivered.
I see. Well, Blizzard never really cared about enforcing story understanding onto players, which has its ups and downs. I’d rather have the current flexibility to choose, especially when the story is as sloppy as this, but I guess it would be nice to have some indicators about the questlines order.
In SL it was mandatory to complete the whole campaign line for renown, and while it had interesting moments, most of it felt forced, boring and irrelevant overall.
In DF I lost interest in it because of the lore and the storytelling. At this point I installed BeQuiet (best addon ever made) and skip all cutscenes. Makes the game so much more enjoyable.
For some reason, I had Wotlk in mind when I said that, while I’ve played Legion/BFA, which had storytelling order enforced if I remember correctly. It was nice overall but I’d really just have a choice and not be dependant on the writing quality.
I do. They would run the game to the ground, if they had their way.
Blizzard nearly has done so by listening to them over the years: convenience convenience convenience convenience who cares about story and anything else just give me mechanics and min/mazing, and free toys, and transmogs and insta-queue raid tiers.
Yet to finish the story but having a tough time trying to figure out the correct order of questlines. I’ve just completed all the areas now, so will see what questlines they offer at Valdrakken now. Just generally speaking the WoW story is very hard to follow for a newcomer especially
They act like hunters/warriors despite having no danger whatsoever on their plains, say contradictory garbage like mocking you if you kill small beasts for a hunt but then say “May your prey fly low and run slow”, and open themselves completely and blindly to strangers after 10.000 years of isolation. Why the hell are they even nomads in the first place? Literally nothing happens on their plains. It’s not even part of the main story.
The writers really need to get out and talk to people.
There is too much confusion, as soon you log into the game you get bombarbed with all the quest. Even when you try to follow the story linearly the game still pushes you to do the content of the current patch instead of allowing you to see the story as it played trought the expansion.
I doubt you are a new player. I came to dragonflight in November. It has been more linear than another expansion. The campaign quests tell you exactly where you need to go. They even give you the patches in chronological order and if you think dragon-riding is the only thing you haven’t been paying attention.
No, I doubt you are new. New players don’t have the level of cynicism you have shown.
The game objectively has a more structured story than it ever has. It holds your hand a lot more than it ever has. The story well being meh in terms of story points is also told better than any other wow expansions and uses a lot more tools to do so.
You seem like an older player who has issues with the game and who’s pretending to be a new player so you don’t get flamed.
You are also renowned 5 on Valdrakken Accord, you haven’t even done the story and you are 2/9 on LFR
I doubt many new players stick around with the disastrous way in which the story is delivered.
I’m as old a player as I told you. Came in for WoD (from SWTOR) because of the new player models. Caught the tail-end of MoP in preparation for WoD, but bounced out of WoW, and MMOs in general, just before Legion launched.
Came back to WoW because of Classic. Dabbled with Hardcore, which I really enjoyed, and am now taking Dragonflight for a spin.
This is the full extent of my experience with WoW, but feel free to speculate otherwise, Agatha Christie.
And from my limited experience, Dragonflight has by far the most disjointed story delivery of them all. MoP’s was easy to grok, even though I came in at such a late stage. WoD’s was disjointed, but I guess I made some sense of it because I stuck around from beginning to end. Classic WoW’s is water-tight.
