Note: I have completed the basic campaign, but I have not completed the entire story up to Amirdrassil, so maybe I’m just missing stuff?
But one would think that the premier Organization of Shamans on Azeroth would be somehow more involved in this, considering the types of powers the Primalists venerate and use. The Primalists seem to be a faction of wannabe Shamans (or even some legit ones?).
What am I missing?
Because they have no place in the final night elf story who can’t be shamans.
can you stop trying to make literally everything about your stupid faction wars for like…5 minutes.
But it’s true. As a major enemy the druids of the flame are personal business of the night elves at large. This expansion isn’t specific for elementals either since it was about dragons coming home.
I’ve completed, I think, all of the main campaign and side campaigns. There might be a handful of random side quests I haven’t done.
But, I can say that the Earthen Ring is virtually non-existant in an entire expansion about the re-awakening of the elements. I found maaaaybe three Earthen Ring NPCs in all of the Dragon Isles and they were just tucked away in a cave doing F all.
As a shaman main, it was really disheartening to see how little the class seems to matter in the narrative. We’re almost as forgotten about as Monks. I mean, hell, our main dude isn’t even a shaman anymore.
The Earthen Ring in Dragonflight is focused on the elementals and Dragonscale Expedition which became rivals to the Sundred Flame. 
What does worry me is if Vyranoth will replace the organization with her remaining Primalists. 
At least they showed up for the party. 
Oh, Azeroth!
Vyranoth is too focused on dragonkind to actually care for the primalist shamans or the earthen ring
I hate to say it but I think this is the single reason these forums are not really used that much anymore.
You’re not seeing the Earthen Ring because none of the writers’ pet characters are shamans right now. I recognize that that sounds kinda bitter, but that’s not the intention. I can’t remember if it was through an interview or tweet or some such other channel of information, but it came out that the writers basically jockey for what characters they want featured in an expansion rather than the characters that make sense.
Now, that may have changed, but you’d imagine that the shaman organization would logically be interested in taking care of a group of people throwing the elements into chaos, no?
That wasn’t the expansion’s theme… it was about the reawakening of the Draogon Isles specifically. Life went on as normal for the Elementals in the rest of Azeroth.
If we want to be real, the Earth Ring is probably like the UN. A place to send people you are tired of. They have no power and nations only pretend to listen.
Well, not entirely. There’s the part where to the players’ involvement was preceded by the Primalists instigating elemental invasions in parts of Kalimdor and the EK.
Dragonflight isn’t entirely the isolated vacation expansion that people like to say it is. It was basically kicked off by the Primalists causing a bunch of elemental upheaval outside of the Dragon Isles, in effect tipping their hand about what they intended to unleash across Azeroth once the Incarnates were freed, and justifying the outside world sending its champions along with their civilian exploratory missions to keep the threat contained. The premise of the Primalist and Incarnate agenda was that if things got out of hand and they got their way on the Dragon Isles, we’d quite likely be looking at Cataclysm-era or worse levels of elemental unrest soon afterward.
That said, the Earthen Ring’s minimal presence also fits with the way that WoW is extremely cagey and inconsistent about the elements as a force in particular. As fundamental parts of the shaman/spirit dynamic, the Earthen Ring in particular and really shamans in general are supposed to be extremely invested in preserving the elemental balance and preventing large-scale abuse of the spirits and their power, but in practice they rarely seem to actually care enough to do anything about it.
The storytelling is also highly inconsistent about just when and why the elements arbitrarily allow themselves to be slung around for any old thing without a fight or consequences. Like how the Horde’s shamans and Earthen Ring adopted a “just shrug and quietly lament it” stance when the Horde under Garrosh was recklessly torturing and weaponizing the elements. The orcs lost their connection to the spirits before for warring against the draenei, but in modern WoW apparently nothing they do is so heinous that the spirits will object to being used for it.
Tbh things like this is why I kinda wish we still had some faction-specific storylines in the expansions main campaign. I feel like Blizzard’s ‘unified’ narrative isn’t landing very well in a game that has a faction system built into the very game system. Like peace is fine, but I think there’s still a need to expand on faction storylines.
Featuring the ER would mean Horde races get some attentions since most their NPCs are those and we can’t have that in world of allianecraft.
Erevien there are a couple of other threads on the story forums lately that were not made by you that are not talking about the factions. Just giving you a heads-up, I didn’t want you to miss any.
Unfortunately, it feels like the Earthen Ring was forgotten in the story planning.
Though it also feels like the Primalists were a half-dropped concept themselves.
The Primalists are composed of lots of recently world-exposed races (vulpera, etc), so they had to either have formed recently or have been actively recruiting recently - but there’s no story about it.
They constantly say things like “If only you knew what the Titans had done, you’d join us” but then never tell us what the Titans have done or ask us to join them.
I feel like this was supposed to be part of an overarching Titan plot, that would tie in with the also-dropped Oathstones story and the return of Tyr, but which was put on hold for some reason.
(Writing-wise, if this was meant to be a ‘setting up breadcrumbs for a future story’ rather than a dropped plot point, there should be some indication that the characters have not forgotten these topics - like the Mother Oathstone/Razsageth questchain ending with a ‘we’ll set our best scholars to research this and call on you, hero, if we need your aid again’, or ending with the Dragons commenting bitterly that without theoathstones, their Aspect quest is over (which would give some more weight to the Amirdrassil ending) - rather than letting the story thread drop off the face of the earth without mention.)
It would have been really fun for more shaman characters to be involved, either to police the Primalists’ use of the elements or for a more in-depth story about the Earthen Ring investigating why so many elements are willingly working with the Primalists. On that vein, it would also have been really fun for shaman player characters to have a questline where the Primalists try to recruit them, so that shamans get a little bonus storytelling and insight into this element-heavy expac.
And another dead Firelord for no reason. They always go evil.
I mean.
Thrall is the malfurion of shamanism and he’s no where to be seen.
He and the largely horde presenting earthen ring are missing.
Why is that?