I have no real beefs with the plot. It’s pretty standard “find the four items that will allow the plot to progress” storytelling, along with some interesting lore and character design. The characters here are more likable (in some cases) than the ones from Shadowlands. The Primalists are interesting enough bad guys, even if they are basically just the Twilight Hammer again.
And yet…
I can’t help but notice that the dragons are all basically the same personality and temperament. There aren’t many grumpy dragons or taciturn dragons–green dragons don’t behave any noticeably different than black dragons, except for their hobbies. All of them are basically the same vein of slightly positive, slightly helpful.
The Maruuk feel very…out of place. Your first encounter with them is kind of hard-nosed, but then you meet them and it turns out they’re kind of wimpy. I don’t know, the whole “get some rest” thing they all say comes across as kind of pandering.
That might be my cynicism, though. I feel like Dragonflight is going pretty heavy on the goodness and positivity and espousing wholesome bog standard politics as a way to try to redeem their image. Which I suppose they had need to do, but it makes the game feel very much like not Warcraft.
The Iskarr kind of stink, too. I know the ones from Northrend weren’t exactly fleshed-out, but I appreciated that they had a rugged way of life with an eye to the future. These ones feel way too ham-fisted in their talking about community and soup.
We just had an expansion where we beat up the Devil and shut down Super Hell with the help of Regular Hell. The expansion before that was an all-out war consisting of genocide, regicide and global infestation. The expansion before that featured the complete destruction of the most lethal force we’d fought since the beginning.
And now we’re getting lectured to go rest more by a centaur after we complete a quest to give him a basket of deviled eggs or something.
I’m willing to be alone in this sentiment, since I Don’t Like Anything, but I wanted to share my thoughts.
You’re right but I like it, it’s nice. It’s more… “world ending problem but like, you can ignore it if you want” and the locals are nice and just happy to be around.
It’s a nice change of pace if they’re setting us up for another “world is going to end, hell is real and it’s here”
It’s not great, no; it’s barely good. Maybe I’m just cynical but I’m no longer able to expect more than that from Warcraft storytelling.
To be honest this whole thing so far feels like an apology from Blizzard. Which…has points for and against. They definitely owed everybody an apology and it’s nice to receive one, but getting a nice apology when you expected a Warcraft story is kinda like getting somebody else’s order from doordash.
I’m still gonna eat it. This isn’t what I wanted, but in the end I shouldn’t’ve been supporting this evil corporation anyway and none of the options are good for me, so…eh. Six of one.
The best way I can describe it is “comfortable” — where there has been very little to get me truly excited, but I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing because I’m not a member of the “Warcraft is at its best when it is as bombastic and intentionally stupid as possible” school of thought where you aren’t supposed to take anything seriously.
I do agree that the centaur and tuskarr feel very strange in hindsight, where it feels like a lot of that time spent with them during the leveling process was wasted when that could’ve been much better spent on the Aspects, and especially the Dracthyr who feel like they barely even matter for most of this expansion outside of Zaralek Cavern and Aberrus.
I have really enjoyed DF? But like- I also very deeply know that Warcraft is no longer following a Lotr esque genre like it was in Wotlk, and is now instead very deeply following a Monty Python genre. And like- thats okay! We are all high powered adventurers now. No one is just some adventurer helping farmers in westfall or killing boar in the Barrens. I think what we needed was an expansion where we are helping nobodies again, and we are nobodies again. A place we can go where we arent known by all our allies. And can just- tend soup and hunt with centaur if thats all we really want to do. I think after SL? This is almost exactly what was needed.
Honestly I’ve had a lovely time in this expansion and been enjoying it greatly. It does have the world ending threat, but it feels much more relaxed in it’s story than the previous expansions did.
Also, these stories are still needed since if you do not have some relaxed stories more directed at rebuilding, you wont have anything to knock down with the shock factor eventually.
the most frustrating bit for me was that df, like shadowlands, is another adventure into a pocket realm of non-playable peoples which will not have a permanent impact on the setting. Hobnobbing with Tuskarr/Centaur/Dragons doesn’t feel much better than hanging out with blue angel and afterlife vampires, in terms of wanting to invest myself in their culture or aesthetic. The only group which will matter going forward will be Dracthyr I guess, since they are playable, but got the weird backstory of time-lost amnesiacs without a culture of their own who are about as foreign to the events of the expansion as any other playable race is…
playing it as an RPG, it is never very fun to have to contrive a reason for why your character would care about the affairs of some remote walrus people on an island somewhere, it is a lot more fun when the plot has obvious relevance.
And there are plot threads which would be extremely relevant to us which are unresolved! Remember that tease for restoring Lordaeron and maybe Gilneas which happened in Shadowlands? Are we gonna do that? I kinda wanna resub just to try the Eredar questline but also like redeeming demons and dealing with the aftermath of Sargeras’ defeat could be a whole expansion, and one which would be a lot of fun to play through as a draenei, rather than just a random brief sidequest in the dragon expansion.
That complaining aside I did find DF to be pleasant. Yeah, verging on overly gooey positivity at times, but it is fun to wander around a place where life is sort of normal I guess. It doesn’t actively annoy me like Shadowlands did, so um good job
I don’t have any real feelings towards the story, good or bad. It’s whatever and I don’t really think that is a bad thing. I do think that something this tame is what the game needed, but it has left no lasting impression on me and there aren’t really any memorable plotlines, characters or even encounters that I will look back on once next xpac comes around.
I don’t mind Dragonflight, but I’m noticing the dearth of interesting characters among the dragons and major players in the developing story. All in all, it feels like much of what we find in the Dragon Isles should be more fun and interesting than it is in execution. I’ve often logged in, started questing (because I’ve been playing very off and on/casually this expansion and still have many storylines I haven’t finished) and felt invigorated by the beautiful zones and the prospect of the potential for worldbuilding here. Then I start reading the quest text, paying attention to the NPCs and what they say and do and the developing storylines, and eventually just sort of… check out.
I’m not quite sure what it is, but I’ve read a lot of what’s been said in this thread and related to the sentiments. Zaralek Cavern was probably the worst it’s been; I didn’t find the zone particularly fun to play in (it of course being a cave and therefore lacking many of the breathtaking vistas that we get above ground) and the Loamm Niffen were… excruciating to deal with. Everything about that zone and story, including the Wrathion and Ebyssian stuff, was just such a painful slog for me to get through.
I just feel like Blizzard accomplished this same goal before and with much better results with the Pandaren.
They were basically Hobbits, to be sure, but they at least acknowledged the necessity of martial arts. They wanted peace but were ready to fight to protect themselves. Meals felt like a part of their culture and they were way less obnoxious about it. They had edge, so they fit into Warcraft.
Not to mention Pandaren basically differed from zone to zone in terms of attitudes. They were a diverse cast with a lot of viewpoints while fitting in their general theme. The Dragons, by contrast, don’t really seem to differ despite all being entirely different species.
War was a big theme in the expansion, but so was tranquility, discovery and exploration. Dragonflight does these much better mechanically, but thematically? It feels really ham-handed and clumsy.
The dracthyr are pretty varied to me. It’s mostly the dragons that seem pretty similar to me, and it’s really the one of no name heard of characters that show a difference. The old dwarf black dragon making friends with the elf dragon. Greens during that one quest. And I can still see attitudes and general differences
There are a few characters I would be interested in seeing developed further, but for the most part, DF gives us the equivalent of easy listening background music. I don’t hate it. It’s soothing. But it’s not really rule of cool, if that makes sense.
I think it was almost needed after SL, though.
And now all I can hear is the Pandaren cub dialogue, “I’m growing a beard.”
I would love more dragon characters with an attitude similar to Taran Zhu: wary and mistrustful without being an outright baddie. I enjoy those gruffer characters—not everyone with misgivings has to go the way of the Sundered Flame or the Primalists.
I’m doing the Forgotten Reach (Forbidden Reach?) and the Dracthyr are honestly embarrassing in how tedious they are. True to WoW form, their most interested qualities got tampered down by a Tauren lecturing about good vibes.