More Hearthstone characters have been found in Dragonflight! I want this expansion to just be a front for putting the Descent of Dragons plot into WoW so badly. If the final raid boss isn’t Galakrond I will riot!
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Fair.
I guess I would say (imo) that features that are very pointedly racial-specific (troll tusks, Draenei hooves, elf ears, etc etc) should probably stay that way, but we have barbershops. No reason that Jelinek can’t make his way to another city and learn some new styles.
There is now a 'fro in the game (not much of one, but they made an attempt). There is a questline in the game, (as I have mentioned too many times before) that refers to a Gnome Fro. How many hairstyles are canon? Why can’t Norman have his fro? It’s in a questline!
Trolls with beards exist in the game, but the players can’t have them?
Female dwarves with beards exist in lore, but the players can’t have them?
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Also I don’t mind the dracthyr hairstyles remain exclusive to them for the expansion but also if that means the dracthyr visage form could be any race in the game lmao
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I mean, this.
Dracthyr’s visages should be allowed to be any race.
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Honestly, I’d love to have a gnome dracthyr.
I want a Hozen Drakthyr named Monkeystrasza.
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I’m not sure why…
but this upcoming expansion gave me the urge to read Dragonlance again.
How about i do it any way? \dab
I only played Hearthstone enough to get the mount and card games are just not my bag man but I do love how much effort and care gose into that silly card game.
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All the excuse I need:
Seriously, just THIS would catapult WoW back to the top of the charts.
Just this one cinematic alone has a more engaging story that WoW has had since Legion, being generous. And I don’t even play Hearthstone.
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My only hope is they are as fun and enjoyable to be around as they are in hearthstone proper.
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I think they should get rid of WoW’s writers and bring in Hearthstones… those two trailers were more engaging than all the expansions since Legion. I dunno what the stories are like in that game, but they seem better than what we got.
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In all seriousness, for the past few years WoW has gotten lost up its own rear. WarCraft has always been a pop adventure universe. Outlandishness and over the top nonsense is legitimately part of the setting’s charm.
Think about it. We just had a expansion about going into the afterlife, and the general overall consensus I get from folks who partook is that it was boring. Self righteous, referential, and boring. Garrosh ended up being a highlight to most I’ve spoken to specifically because he wasn’t morose or lamenting, but still actively bragging about being a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain.
When you’ve ended up making Garrosh the best thing about your story simply because he’s unapologetically evil…maybe we don’t need to force Anduin to become the (never actually specified until the very end) new mortal host for Arthas’ corrupt spirit. Maybe you shouldn’t try to justify or explain Sylvanas suddenly becoming evil.
Not everything has to be high concept. Sometimes all people want is a story about a ragmuffin group of archeologists coming together to foil the evil plots of an evil archeologist that culminates in the revival of a threat that it took all the Dragon Aspects at their full power to stop.
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I just want blizz to stop trying so hard to be Discount Warhammer/GOT/Lotr. Go back to the campy stuff. Not everything needs to be world-ending apocalypses every expansion.
As stupid as it was, I rather enjoyed that silly quest in Lakeshire that was basically a riff on Rambo. And I absolute adore the murloc ecologist quests. Finding them and seeing the babies running around being all cute is the highlight of every expansion for me.
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I’m on the other side of the camp where I actually loathe all the super referential pop culture references. It completely kills a zone for me (Ex: Uldum and the Indiana Jones references).
I like WoW’s story when it’s NOT focused on the player character. Nothing quite feels like crap when you’re suddenly elated to a position that, quite frankly, feels bad to be put in. I don’t know a single person who thought being called “Maw Walker” for an entire expansion felt cool. Hell, I didn’t even like it when we were called Commander during WoD. Legion felt like it got a pass because there was multiple people banding together, each having their own “title” depending on the weapon/group you were hanging out with so it felt less egregious.
The best WoW stories, subjectively speaking, are the ones where your character is defaulted as another adventurer helping out the main cast of NPCs getting stuff done. The days of Murder Hobo were far more palatable to me than whatever the hell the writers are trying to do now.
Leave the “chosen savior” story to other games who do it better, Blizzard.
Anyways, in terms of the actual Alpha, I think it’s interesting that they tied the two starter zone NPCs as knowing each other and being downright friendly (even teaching their own children Orcish/Common).
Perhaps trying to edge into the faction conflict becoming a side thing? Who knows.
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I’m generally on your side here, though Redridge’s Rambo reference was probably the best executed of the Catacylsm reference design. Westfall is painful to this day (CSI: Miami, so fresh) and Uldum actively infuriates me because legit interesting lore gets sidelined in favor of Goblin Fascists.
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WoW is at its best when it can balance being serious and silly. I’ve compared it to Adventure Quest many times but it’s really the best plot comparison to Warcraft. Even during Wrath of the Lich King we got Operation Gnomeregon, obligatory poop quests and a whole friendly rivalry jousting tornament.
The current character roster for Dragonflight is promising for this to be a return to form, a plot that will have its chance to be fun and engaging. I would eschew all the spectacle if it means I care about the characters again.
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What’s great about the WoW setting is that even the highest concepts they have are like “what if robots controlled and ran the world like a program.”
Woah, Blizzard. Slow down there.
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I know this isn’t the thread for it, but one day when I care enough, I’ll make a thread ranting in my “get off my lawn” tone about everything Shadowlands could/should have been. It’s a long rant.
The 1st word that comes to my mind is not boring. It’s “disappointing”.
We went into the breach. We walked into death itself. If I’m exploring the afterlife/death universe of WoW, I am going to expect a whole lot of history, reminiscing, references and OMGREMEMBERWHENTHATHAPPEND!!111??? It wasn’t familiar, it wasn’t emotional. It wasn’t anything. It was tremendously disappointing.
I feel like all I really got was the party hat, without the party.
It should have been the expansion that brought us home to Azeroth. In every expac, I typically have a moment or a thing that I think to myself, oh. I’ll remember this!
I did not have that. If you asked me right now to tell you what Shadowlands was about, I have no idea. I genuinely don’t. I got my party hat and some lightbulb backpacks. That’s about it.
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It was about Anduin and giving Sylvanas redemption. That was the whole purpose I fear. 
Which is sad because like you said I was hoping Shadowlands was going to be a very moving expansion with moments that made us remember the deaths of iconic characters and seeing how their life was now that they were dead. We got none of that.
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Most expansions have stories with the potential to be fun which may or may not be executed well but going to the afterlife for 2 years was just a bad idea from the beginning and idk why no writer realized that.
But like Dardillien says the best possible incarnation of Shadowlands would have been a cavalcade of fanservice revisiting dead characters. That still would’ve been a questionable idea for a whole expansion, better suited to little caverns-of-time like adventures, but exploring afterlife realms themed around dead humans and dead orcs would’ve been more fun than exploring afterlives themed around god robots and double-death-necromancers or whatever the heck maldraxxus was
11 Likes