I think Dragonflight and Shadowlands were much better than BFA and possibly many other expansions

Lore Story Forum
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Ok, so, story wise, in BFA, we basically got, “well, all those pent up things that have been going on forever, lets have it out… in the worst way possible.”

At least, that’s my take on BFA. Ok, not the worse way possible, in a 79 on metacritic sort of way. It was set up to be a return to WC2 with the whole “battle for Azeroth” but that had been all ret conned away as everyone knows so there hasn’t been a serious “battle for Azeroth” since WC2 really (and that was retconned, and so was WC1 in the movie so there’s basically never been a true battle for Azeroth between the factions) unless you count like, the first mission of WC3 human campaign.

I believe I stated some years ago here that I thought it ruined the basic identity of storytelling at Blizzard where the NPC heroes are in the background and provide identities for the characters and the players undertake most of the action, the world is the primary character.

However, BFA raised the stakes, well, really WoD did, but that was strictly for orcs mostly and in the form of character driven stories with players more adjacent to the NPCs than creating their own stories.

That could of gone well, but it went wrong, first in WoD by exclusively focusing on Orcs, and also on focusing on orcs in the wrong way. Legion was back to basics, but then IMO, BFA did WoD like character driven stuff again but mishandled like everyone but Kul Tirans, and even they kinda sucked IMO. However, Shadowlands and especially Dragonflight went character driven and totally right.

I can’t speak to any of the gameplay elements since I just played all 3 expansions in content in like a week and skipped whatever grindy things everyone did.

So that aside, what I observed was expansions that actually explained things and didn’t just race ahead to new things, and effectively dived deeper into interpersonal connections and relationships (although not as much in Shadowlands to be fair).

Dragonflight in particular it was cool to get to know all the flights, I want to say, at all, because really all I remember from Cataclysm and stuff was them just showing up and it’s like oh hey there’s Ysera yeah she’s queen magic of whatever, and at the end, well we need to help ya Thrall pop that bad dragon out of the sky.

Even Alexstraza in Wrath just sort of shows up in unannounced and it’s like, ok, I guess your cool because your giving me quests but there’s no real backstory and eventually all you get in Wrath is just “Galakrond” and that’s Dragon’s story in a nutshell.

Nozdormu was just “time guy” and Kalecgos I basically just would get confused with Rhonin because it’s like Wrath mage guy that’s always in Dalaran or something.

Dragonflight riffed on like everyone in a really cool way. Chromie was always cool but all her stuff was extra fun. Wrathion and Sabellian and the entirety of the Black Dragonflight situation was explained even down to the presence of Black Dragons in TBC of all things. Kalecgos got his own zone and kept mis teleporting the player around. The infinites were explained, (once again, cool in TBC as, well hey we need a villain, but never knew more than that) and gave Nozdormu tons of character in the process.

Night Elves, night elves galore, and not in a bad way, IMO.

There were weird things to be sure, Cenarius is alive! Forsaken helping retake Gilneas was a real off note IMO. A general disconnectedness of things like you start out Cata style with a few zany adventurers and then they just kinda turn up randomly later, and all the threads from the various new tribes and races aren’t always clearly connected to each other or the main plot, but I feel like that happens all the time anyway.

But anyway, the main point was clearly Dragons, and Dragon aspects, and we got that delivered rather righteously.

It seems to me WoW is actually on the way right track now again. I read somewhere someone said like the old writing team did big epic rock and roll things well and the new team did interpersonal stuff better, but now both teams are together so maybe we can get both which would be pretty cool.

Specifically, the character driven over world driven expansions can be a strong new direction for WoW if the story team realizes everyone kinda cares about the characters in specific ways and not in an old 80s “wanna be cool and epic and listen to metallica” sort of way.

Instead, it’s embrace the power of friendship and nobody should try to act cool anymore, and focus entirely on what the story seems to demand at any given moment instead. I wanted flying rainbow pixies out of that Fyrakk end cinematic. Forget the 80s, go 70s with pastel pink and purple and candyland.

It seems like a big adjustment for a Gen X company really but I don’t know stranger things have happened.

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This post is very cluttered and hard to figure out for me. First I expected the premise to lead into ideas and questions about specific things that could be found fun, interesting, or unique about the story or the game as a whole.

Instead it’s a weird half-review half-nerding out as if you were speaking to someone in person, telling them how much you like the newest expansions.

I can’t really put in any criticism, insight, or even comment, because I don’t really have any thoughts that I genuinely believe would be helpful.

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I’ve always said BfA was malicious writing, Shadowlands was inept writing, and Dragonflight was dull writing. So things got progressively better each time imo.

And in general
-You’ll hate BfA most if you care about the characters. (I’m here.)
-You’ll hate SL most if you care about world building/preserving the mystique of the afterlife.
-You’ll hate DF most if you care about being excited.

Gameplay for all 3 was completely fine (for me).

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the new characters were overall okay though; it was the old characters who got ruined.

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No, it really was the worst way possible. It made nobody happy and left everyone feeling like they’d been smacked around by the story.

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I disagree. I have a soft spot for BfA simply because of Kul Tiras. You do not understand how much I enjoyed questing in Kul Tiras and savouring every aspect of that fantasy kingdom. So many fond memories of BfA and Kul Tiras, also becaues the unravelling of the Horde fanbase was very entertaining to watch in real time.

Kul Tiras is by far the best region that Blizzard ever created. Everything - the scenery, the world-building and background lore, the characters, the music, the cinematics and cutscenes, the dialogue, the quest design - everything in Kul Tiras was perfect.

Shadowlands and DF are whatever. They exist, but they do not feel like Warcraft.

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There is a saying I have always liked:
Never ascribe maliciousness to something that can be just as easily be blamed on incompetence.

People often apply malicious intent to things that aren’t. It has happened a lot in WoW.

Blizzard does not have any incentive to be malicious to the players. Quite the opposite in fact. They have every reason to want to tell a good story. I firmly believe they thought they were telling a good story with BfA. They even tried to listen to people some. That was the whole point of the loyalist vs rebel story direction choice Horde players had. Blizzard was trying to give players what they thought would make them happy. They just failed, miserably.

Personally, I think BfA was them trying to wrap up the themes and get the Horde where they had intended them to be at the end of Garrosh arc. There were interviews towards the end of Cata and beginning of MoP that hinted they had originally planned a longer arc for Garrosh. But all the negative feedback for Cata, and even the toxicity that spread outside the game, made them decide to wrap it up early and move on. But that left them not quite where they wanted the Horde to be. So, years later they used BfA to revisit a lot of the same themes. BfA let them end with the Horde the way they wanted to originally. And, when you combine what is really a bad idea from the beginning with ‘rewrite’ in the middle of the story it is not going to be well received. In short they had a bad idea they thought was good, failed HARD in the first try implementing it, then skipped several year and tried to finish it off. It was never going to work out well. But it was them failing, not trying to be malicious to anyone.

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Given all of the background office animus that was part of BFA, being better than it was not a high bar.

I was really hoping for some decent storytelling for both factions, and I was all onboard with the Burning of Teldrassil as an opening chapter.

Players of both factions got cheated.

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Hard disagree - Shadowlands was great for worldbuilding. In fact, as far as world building goes, I’d say its up there with MoP as some of the best we’ve seen (in expansions).

I’ve also never understood why people care about this. The afterlife is a place, a place is meant to be explored. Mysteries exist for people to find their answers.

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Kind of depends on if we want to believe the claims from “sources” that Afrasiabi steered Sylvanas that way out of spite for how Garrosh wound up or not. It’s easy to buy given his other, um…misdeeds towards women, but I suppose it’s entirely possible he was just an incompetent writer.

In general though, I agree. The vast majority of devs are just trying their best and want the best for players.

Depends on where you look, in my opinion. I think the covenant zones and cultures were phenomenal, particularly Revendreth and Ardenweald. Zereth Mortis/First Ones stuff started to get iffy for me. And I don’t think anyone is a fan of Zovaal retroactively having his hand in so much of WoW history.

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That always felt a bit more like a conspiracy theory.

Which is what makes it such an appealing ‘conspiracy theory.’ And a terrible person makes a very tempting target to blame things you are upset about on.

I don’t think the timing lines up. He was around well before, during times people liked Sylvanas direction. He was around for Garrosh arc, so it seems likely he would have had a decent weight of voice. And getting upset about Garrosh arc and then waiting 6 years to ‘get revenge’ seems like a dubious claim.

Also, I haven’t seen much to suggest he was actually upset about Garrosh. Nor do I see any connection in Sylvanas being his ‘pay pack’ even if he did have issues with Garrosh arc.

And it would seem really weird to be ‘taking revenge’ on her while also adding in all the ‘see how powerful she is’ moments. Things like taking on Malfurion (one of the strongest characters in lore), outsmarting the Alliance and nearly killing all the leaders, wrecking Bolvar, etc. The game did a lot to try and tell us how clever and powerful Sylvanas was. I find that hard to square with the story being all about her being a ‘revenge target.’

It just seems like you have to make more than a few big stretches to apply malicious motive to Sylvanas arc.

I would be pretty confident is saying BfA’s failures were just that, failures.

I am less bothered by him having a hand in the history as much as the ‘super genius’ that planned out all this miniscule details every step of the way. It was treated as though he predicted what people, who were millennia from even being born when he started everything, would do.

I would have felt much better about his part if it had been more of him just sending out parts and pieces of plans, just hoping. Imagine if we had found he had sent myriads of threads out hoping something would break for him and all of the other failed except the one. And if the chain of events that lead to Sylvanas dying, meeting him, the Val’kyr being able to send her back, and then working for him had been more a lucky break in his 14,000,605 try.

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It was years ago so I might be misremembering, but the first person who was vocal about Sylvanas’s character being sabotaged came from Alleria’s voice actor, which set off a small firebomb on Twitter at the time. Almost right after that, Red Shirt Guy admitted that he heard the same thing from 3(?) different, unconnected anonymous sources within the company.

So like, it’s not provable and it makes sense for some to doubt it because of that, but it’s the closest that fiasco will ever get to it.

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BfA and Shadowlands were both garbage heaps of horrible writing.

Dragonflight was just kind of boring and boring is leaps and bounds better to the absolute trash we got the previous 2 expansions.

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I really adored DF and its story. I thought most of the characters were pretty good. There was little to no faction involvement until the last patch and I also happen to love dragons, so it was a big plus for me

But that’s just me.

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I am not sure who started it. I remember it being a big discussion back in the day. There were a number of sources that said he was behind the choice of her direction. As I recall none of them were primary sources (though I could be misremembering as well). They were all a case of someone told them. But, while there is some question and you are correct it is not provable, it does seem likely he was at least partially behind the choice of her direction.

The problem I think is the word: “sabotaged.”

That is the part I remain skeptical of. That was entirely people reading in an intent without a real basis for it. And so many parts of it don’t really make sense. It always felt to me like someone was looking for a reason for a story arc they did not like.

Everyone involved in her story direction had motivation to make a good story. That is after all how they make money. And I REALLY doubt Afrasiabi was the kind of person to intentionally mess the game up, thereby lowering his income. And I certainly doubt he cared enough about Garrosh to even think about hurting his money over it.

BfA’s bad choices were FAR, FAR more likely to come from just poorly thought out choices than any kind of sabotage.

I agree. I think it was a pretty good expac all said and done. There might be some recency bias, but I would say it will likely settle somewhere in the top 3 for me.

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I honestly didn’t have a problem with the writing of Wod and legion which afrasiabi was creative director of(other than draenor is free moment). I do think there was an attempt from the new team that took over writing to butcher his story and change the direction of wow going forwards.

Now not to say he wasn’t a terrible person for the things he did in the office but I think he had a better understanding of writing and direction than danuser ever had.

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BfA absolutely was malicious writing. It was the last hurrah of the worst of the Cosby suite crew before he left.

I’m in the first two points you described, though I’ll add caring about characters as a reason to hate Shadowlands (Arthas… look how they massacred my boy!)

Dragonflight is okay. It had good moments and for me, it was as good as BfA and did so without relying on pandering to nostalgia or milking fan-favorites. I’d be happy to see, for example, Irridikron scheming alongside Azshara.

Warchief Sylvanas and the Burning of Teldrassil were his ideas. As was the edgelord fanfic “I am my scars!” moment with Illidan and Jaina’s rage-quit as well as the “Draenor is free!” moment. His understanding of writing was wasted to insert his worst traits into the story.

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I would say that only applies to Revendreth and maybe Bastion.

Maldraxxus and the Maw were simply “hey remember the scourge from WC3 and WotLK, well they are back. Have some 'member berries”. It also kinda ruined the Nerubians because the scourge got their WC3 architecture from the Nerubians after the War of the Spider (WC3). The Nerubians got theres from taking it from the Tol’vir in Northrend and making it spider themed instead of cat themed (Chronicles vol 1). But with Maldraxxus it is more like “the Nerubians just stole it from Maldraxxus or maybe Ner’zhul did who knows”.

Ardenweald caused problems with the Emerald Dream and its relation with the Wild Gods of Azeroth. Even if you say, “only the Wild Gods that didn’t take part in Freya’s binding ritual go to Ardenweald” that does not explain how Ursoc got there or even Ashamane. Both of whom we know took part in Freya’s binding ritual to anchor their souls to the Dream. We even fought Ursoc in the Emerald Dream in Legion. As for Ashamane, she ended up in the Maw via rejecting Mueh’zala’s offer. And she was in Ardenweald when he made it.

All Revendreth did that was a retcon was placing it as the birthplace of the Dreadlords and how they were spies for Daddy D and Uncle Z.

And don’t get me started with Zerith Mortis and the First Ones.

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I honestly didn’t mind the burning of Teldrassil it is the highlight of the expac that was going to fundamentally changed the direction of the story. I hated how it was handled afterwards though with the Alliance becoming the pacifist faction after one of its member groups was almost genocided.

Jania rage quitting the kirin tor was absolutely correct thing for her character to do, In fact the Kirin tor should have conceded that she was correct, and they shouldn’t have trusted the Horde. What doesn’t make sense is her complete heel turn in BFA to forgiving the Horde for no reason.

The Whole I am my scars line is in line with the character Illidan is, corny yes but fits the character and what was happening with him.

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I would have had Baine and the other Horde leaders learn of the Burning of Teldrassil at Lordaeron and swiftly oust Sylvanas with certain Forsaken members like Master Apothecary Lydon(who would learn of Warden Stillwater’s resurrection by Sylvanas) deciding to join them in the ousting.

I would also include a scene of the Horde leaders rounding up everyone who manned a Catapult that fired at Teldrassil at Darkshore and have them summarily executed.

I would have Tyrande return to Darkshore only to find it abandoned by the Horde Soldiers and the Heads of everyone who manned the Catapults that fired on Teldrassil as well as those who committed War Crimes put on spikes with written notices of their War Crimes posted right next to the Heads as well as Wanted Posters demanding Sylvanas and Nathanos’s Heads being sent to the Horde Council in Orgrimmar being posted everywhere in Darkshore.

The resulting confusion from the Night Elves will be interesting to say the least.

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