I don’t think I like Dragonflight and it’s making me a little upset.
Reason being that I think the gameplay is better than ever. This iteration of talent trees really works for me and I feel like my rotations are pretty exciting. The dungeons are extremely cool and I like how engaging the bosses are in terms of mechanics. Dragonflying is a lot of fun.
But wow, the story is…inappropriately soft? I understand that Blizzard wants to tell a different story than the nonstop suffering of BfA and Shadowlands. But I feel like they thought the suffering was coming from the themes and content as opposed to the normal Blizzard problems such as massive overcorrections. Like the one that comes from everyone celebrating a new home for the Night Elves while gingerly sidestepping all mention of why they needed a new home or who might be responsible for that.
I understand the pivot to peacenikery and centaur marriage, but damn, it doesn’t feel good to just all decide we were done with the massive genocide.
I have not been playing the world of warcraft very much lately as all my video game time is going to dwarf fortress at the moment.
Please enjoy this glimpse into my lovely town square
https://i.imgur.com/sb6Ys1M.mp4
reply to this post in order to have a dwarf (or goblin/elf if you prefer, I have several non-dwarf immigrants) named after you, and I shall inform you how you meet your end.
I was a little disappointed in Dragonflight. After a break, I leveled an alt to see how things are and it’s just a breakneck race to max. I didn’t even leave the first zone until I hit max. Dragonflying is extremely fun.
The Emerald Dream stuff was okay? I got in late, so I talked to Tyrande to see the half-dozen cinematics that explain the stakes. Unfortunately that, combined with the Wrathion/Sabellian stuff not amounting to much, and the big finale with the Aspects just made me feel like we’re being placated until the next expansion.
as a long-time draenei player, this is normal and expected. i don’t know why we thought the night elves would get any preferential treatment in this regard. the only genocidal monster given any sort of consequence in this game is Arthas Menethil, and everyone else just says “yo dude we’re sorry” and we’re expected to relight their sunwells.
honestly the problems with dragonflight don’t feel unique to me. i’m at least enjoying the smaller stories and the relaxed gameplay.
When BFA and Shadowlands came into the play. I stopped caring about WoW’s story, and figured how would my character’s stories play out more.
The NPCs and characters of blizzard lore are never really meaningful characters in my characters stories. I see so many folks RPing in character and responding to game lore and quests and cinematics and such, and that may be what their character’s stories are about.
For me though? I don’t have any interest in having any of my characters fanboy or fangirl over any of the big characters of WoW. Every single one of them only serve as inspiration to me into how the world reacts to things like races, wars, and cultures. Then I just kind of do my own RP for my characters based off that inspiration.
I feel somewhat similar, but at this point I’m on board because I think an expansion like this needed to happen. The stakes have been escalating out of control for so long that the story had to have a breather episode reset to not collapse under its own weight. Dragonflight does have good gameplay, and it’s at least inoffensive. The timeskip also FINALLY gives some closure and peace to twenty years spent in the state the world was in during 1943. For character stories to have any payoff I think we needed that.
tl;dr Dragonflight is a little boring but it doesn’t feel like it was made out of active hatred for players and their happiness and it provides a vital narrative pause so I’ll take it.
Raszageth had a personal grudge against the Dragons. I guess they all do, to some degree, but hers was more real. The remaining three are just more ridiculous “we gotta destroy the world because uhhhhhhh” crap, except for Vyranoth, which is the good one after having done nothing.
This is true, but it was also refreshing to see Fyrakk’s Chaotic Evil energy in action.
Like, the guy had a plan, it was a terrible, not well thought out plan, but it was still a plan.
It also had that effect of Fyrakk having a tiny bit of a issue Marvel had with Ultron. Fyrakk (Loki) was not even the original main antagonist but was having an absolute blast in pursing his plan to it’s fullest extent. The Jailor (Ultron) was the main guy pursing his own plan and honestly did not feel like he had that much drive for his own thing and was going through the motions.
Raszageth was the most motivated for the Incarnates and Primalist cause. Fyrakk however was still amusing to watch. Also praying for the rumor to be true that Fyrakk is actually our new Fire Lord.
This is exactly how I feel about Dragonflight. It was a breath of fresh air that the story desperately needed, though end of expansion blues have hit pretty hard and I’m really looking forward to pirates War Within.
That’s because the Horde and Alliance united to genocide Djaradin, Primalists and Druids of the Flame, all because dragons told them it’s a great idea.
Honestly, Fyrakk was a joy, and I’m going to miss him.
I think my only major complaint about this expansion is that it doesn’t really feel like anything meaningful changed with the Dragonflights? Other than Ebyssian becoming an aspect, which felt almost obnoxiously drawn-out for what felt like the most obvious choice from the very beginning… none of the others really got a chance to shine or do much at all.
The closest we ever get is with Kalecgos in the Azure Span while leveling, where he learns a Very Important Lesson about the true meaning of family. Merithra feels like she is barely even there for the Ohn’aran Plains questline because you spend 90% of it hanging out with the centaurs, and Nozdormu sends you to help Chromie before getting very sad about his inevitable fate, until he decides to stop being sad in a later patch.
Despite being the poster girl of the whole expansion, Alexstrasza is just kind of hanging around for the most part. She fights Razageth a little, then goes to chill out in Valdrakken for a year, which is why her big “I’m not alone!” moment with Fyrrak in the Emerald Dream feels so limp. Was that supposed to be her character arc for this expansion? Because I never got that sense from her scenes.
None of the story is outright bad to me, which is the weird part. It just feels… heavily abbreviated, without enough meaningful character moments to actually build an emotional connection to what is happening. Literally the only main character who feels like they have a full, fleshed-out story this expansion to me is Emberthal, who doesn’t even matter that much to anything going on in the grand scheme of things?
Congratulations Juspion there is a prestigious miner job available after my previous miners had a um accident. A new arrival who says he is a “thresher” has been renamed Juspion and given the desirable job of miner because I have no idea what a thresher is.
According to his character sheet his favorite food is great white shark (???) and his favorite animal is the humble llama
https://i.imgur.com/yeUfiO0.png
To celebrate his new job I had him carve himself a nice 3 room home and commissioned a special statue which I think he will enjoy. I wish him the best
