Drakonid/Dragonspawn Are Hilariously Problematic, and It Didn't Have To Be This Way

Lore Story Forum
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When a corporate-controlled story refuses to acknowledge anything “political”, it often leads to hilarious situations of terrible writing and unintentional comedy.

I’ve heard a lot of conversations about this lately, especially when it comes to some of the (potentially) intriguing issues with dragon society.

Easiest one to point out are the Dragon-like creatures who serve the Aspects.

Originally, in the RPG, the Dragonspawn were descendants of mortals who worshipped dragons by choice. Over time, their exposure to dragons mutated them into dragon-like beings.

Now, this begs a lot of interesting ethical questions that come with a lot of nuance. What’s important here is that, at the very least, the people who originally became Dragonkin had agency in the matter, and didn’t come from a single race. I mean, can you imagine if they made it so Drakonid are literal race-slaves created through magical eugenics and bred to be loyal?

Fast forward to Dragonflight, and we learn that Drakonid are actually created by the dragons from a pre-existing species, “fashioned by their masters to be helpful and loyal”.

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Now, if this was an intentional decision written with these dark implications in mind, then it may be interesting. Hell, it could be a great angle for the story if the devs allowed the player to engage with these issues in depth.

But, Blizzard seems completely unprepared to tackle the ethical problems they’ve created in a meaningful and compelling way. Every time they’ve attempted to do so, it’s come off as tone-deaf and centrist. It feels more like Blizzard touches upon these issues out of obligation, not out of passion for the worldbuilding.

Sometimes I wonder if they’re just responding to player feedback, and they actually had no idea what they were doing until people pointed out these obvious issues.

So, not only does Blizzard keep falling into these narrative traps through careless retcons, they also refuse to reckon with these issues in a satisfying way. Because the writers simply do not have the freedom (or desire?) to explore the ethical themes that they’ve (accidentally) created.

This is what happens when new writers take over, don’t understand why lore decisions were made, think they can ignore it all because they’re too good for the setting, and end up making something hilariously tone-deaf.

So Blizzard: please, if you’re listening (you’re not), either THINK before you jump into an issue you’re not prepared to write about, or stop being p****** and actually show us what you stand for.

Because at the end of the day:

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Yep.

And tbf there’s a lot of stuff that’s cute in a RTS like the peons or peasant units.

“Lol the builders are doofuses”

That become concerning at best when viewed on the ground level.

“… Did they enslave the mentally disadvantaged”.

Ultimately though I guess I’m confused what ya’ll are expecting. This is an AAA commercial product going for the broadest possible audience imaginable. You’re in the wrong place if you’re looking for any message more substantive than generally agreed upon platitudes like “War is bad” or “Can’t we all just get along?”.

Activision-Blizzard is basically the Disney of gaming. They’ll do stuff like add in LGBT characters. But only in quest text or multimedia ancillary products like the “Terror By Torchlight” short story.

You know so they can be effortlessly edited out in international releases where LGBT inclusion is actually a radical political statement and not a fairly safe move only the perpetually aggrieved will take umbrage with.

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My thoughts exactly. Somehow the problem is amplified by the fact that the narrative is always fundamentally driven by the Big Characters, the ones from the main cast (either racial leaders, or, in this case, the Aspects themselves) : exploring the commoners’ perspective on the events that unfold is probably not deemed worthy of interest (in the MSQ, at the very least), and so we only ever get one side of the story, that of the rulers basically. That’s a staple of WoW writing.

One hilariously telling example from DF is that of the Black Dragonflight. Sabellian’s dragons make up for, let’s say, 98% of the Black Dragonflight. How do they feel about being led by some random unknown Dragon who spent his entire life living as a Tauren in secluded mountains, completely ignorant of what it means to be a Dragon, let alone a Black Dragon ? Wouldn’t they have a problem with the fact that Sabellian isn’t appointed Aspect when “the Black Dragonflight” essentially means “Sabellian’s flight minus Ebyssian and Wrathion” ?

Well, we’ll never know, because Sabellian’s flight was barely even mentioned in the Black Dragonflight storyline. Lol.

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Then don’t create these issues in your story if you’re not prepared to deal with them.

With peons, Blizzard has never fully explained this, but as someone whose played Horde for years you can piece together what peons (at least in the New Horde) are supposed to be:

Adolescent, uneducated laborers who tend to be much shorter and stockier than the warriors and craftsmen. When they grow up and become skilled enough, they become foremen (you can tell because they’r exactly the same height as peons), and their mental faculties are fine. They’re not mentally challenged, they’re just young, uneducated orcs.

This is an example of early WoW at least TRYING. Yet, here we are.

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I guarantee you you’re thinking about it harder than they ever did.

Genuinely I think the core problem here is trying to assign personhood to dragons. Mainly because doing it across the board makes the Dracthyr feel redundant and additionally because these things feel more to me like weird insects than anything else.

They lay eggs in massive clutches we’ve been tasked with eradicating before. And having a built-in caste system of subspecies is actually pretty par for the course for the insect world.

So they exist in this bizarre space where depending on what day it is we’re to view them as beasts to be slaughtered without mercy, animals we saddle up to ride, or analogous to human beings and thus deserving of all the dignity and empathy that implies.

Which is why the dragons don’t work for me. I’ve liked every other part of the new societies we’ve encountered or had further fleshed out like the Tuskaar or Centaur.

But the dragons just feel weird. They’re simultaneously raid boss fodder, weird horses and peers. One of these things is not like the other.

I’m kinda waiting for DF to wrap up so dragons can go back to being completely irrelevant again. Because they’re just a bizarre creatures even by the standards of this setting where ethnic cleansing is a freelance job you pick up wandering through town.

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Yeah, I am. And if they don’t wanna think about it that hard, then they should write something else for their game.

Edit: As you will see through the course of our conversation, Benediktion will continue to ignore the bolded part of this post.

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I do think that view is a little bit odd, for this reason:

Monstrous creatures who peasants are terrified of, whose heads and body parts are collected in quests and displayed as trophies, whose young are dangerous and thus casually viewed as combatants… and who are also people behind it all?

That’s the Horde.

That’s the theme this franchise took all those years ago which brought it its popularity. Now it’s applied to dragons, too.

I do wish there were more modern examples of the big scary monster-type dragons as well to show why the average person in the setting still fears them - the Incarnates are 4 individuals, and the proto-drakes are too uncommon and/or chill to be real menaces.

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Cool but they won’t. I’m just kinda confused here did ya’ll play the past few expansions?

At a certain point this is like going to a school Christmas play and being offended by the low quality of the preformances.

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Ok? I don’t get what your point is, here. You can say this about literally anything we talk about on the forums. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s hilariously stupid writing.

Yes. Previous mistakes are not an excuse for mistakes to continue. Ongoing products are supposed to improve over time. None of this is complicated, and I feel like you’re just being contrarian, here.

Except this isn’t a school play put on by children. This is a AAA MMORPG created in part by professional writers, set in a decades-old setting that we pay a monthly subscription for.

Your comparison is irrelevant.

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See though I think that should’ve been the Dracthyr’s role.

They’re humanoid dragonkin afterall stands to reason they’d be the middleground between these completely inhuman ageless monstrosities and normal humanoid denizens of Azeroth.

But instead their role barely exists. You’d think they’d have been diplomats, guides and interpreters to the factions who could guide us through these strange lands never designed to be tread by mortals.

But instead the dragons just already do that, and I’m still kinda confused what the Dracthyr’s point is. Like the DKs and DHs were fairly integral to the plots of Wrath and Legion but the Dracthyr don’t even get their own faction.

They’re just kinda there.

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Look bud I’ve been here awhile and I’m still here not despite but because of the

That’s not a bug it’s a selling point. If you want to hope the same company that gave us ‘Sylvanas’ is going to come out swinging with serious sociopolitical commentary then more power to you.

But hope into one hand, ish into the other, see what fills up first.

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…

Ok, dude.

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Reminder: A third of the vulpera recruitment quest involves union-busting the peons. What makes it so funny is that you do this by actually engaging in classical union-busting moves. I would say it was a brilliant satire if it wasn’t for the fact it’s played completely straight and even something that is framed as “needed” to be done.

At what point are fumbles like this just teenee tiny oopsies and not some of Blizzard writers self-reporting.

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Genuinely I saw that as a cry for help coming from inside the house.

Although after BFA I was relieved we weren’t made to play the role of Pinkerton and gun them down.

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In early datamining, I thought the Drac’thyr would be playable Drakonid/Dragonsworn - mortal races who pledged themselves to dragons and got cool powers and a scaly makeover in return. But now the Drakonids are retconned into purpose-made slave species, and the Drac’thyr are… there? Sometimes?

That’s why I can’t really get into playing a Drac’thyr as they turned out - they feel alien to the setting rather than the obvious choice with history in the setting that was right there for them to use.

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That’s a possible, if not frankly more depressing interpretation. For the record I wasn’t saying that specific storyline was a writer self-reporting. Just making the statement that the idea that every off-colored questline (which mind you we have gotten a lot of them recently) is a result of a poorly thought but honest mistake stretches my suspension of disbelief a little thin.

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Lol this is exactly my point.

When you try to avoid politics while writing a fantasy setting, something’s gonna leak out eventually, intentionally or not. Whether it’s corporate influence, subconscious beliefs, or a result of total ignorance of what you’re writing, you’re going to be communicating something either way. In Blizzard’s case, what they communicate is often centrist, toothless, spineless, and problematic.

Again, if Blizzard doesn’t want their story to tackle these issues, then write the story differently. You can’t have it both ways. they chose to re-write the dragonspawn this way.

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Thing is that doesn’t seem terribly uncommon in this setting. There were the little owl dudes and cockney muck guys in SL that existed in subservience. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief enough to accept there’s just creatures like this in that setting. Other species like ants or bees have subtypes purposely built for one task or another. Makes enough sense to me dragons would operate like that.

And that’s where the Dracthyr fall flat for me. You’d think all the humanoid sized buildings and libraries would be for them. Instead though they’re for the dragons themselves who I guess always took on vidages… even before there were humanoids that size.

Is it just like a real estate cost problem or what?

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Yeah that’s Corporate America for ya. We should probably do a labor movement about it.

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I am not entirely sure what your message about ‘writing politically’ is.

It seems to be a rather silly notion as far as I am concerned.

While I agree that politics is an integral part of world building and thus writing a story, I don’t think writing politically means anything about the stance that a person or a corporation have. It would merely be using politics to write a story, rather than using politics in the story to send a message - I would rather writers do the former rather than the latter which I think you suggest they do when they write ‘politically’?

This discussion is quite from the overall thread though I think.

Blizzard’s ability to story tell is very bad, yes.

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