… I was wrong to doubt Ebyssian’s ascension to the throne.
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Yeah, I saw it coming a mile away. Blizzard wanted to take the ‘safe’ route in Dragonflight’s storytelling because of being gun-shy from the dud that was Shadowlands. Still didn’t stop them from completely forgetting Alexstrasza should have addressed that there’s still a shadowflame-infused dragon terrorizing the Dragon Isles.
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Ebyssian has nothing to do with the “safe route” and everything to do with the Black flights original purpose.
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Same here. 
I was convinced the Throne was perfect for a Dracthyr.
But we all learned this important lesson: never go down the path of darkness.
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Either of the others could have used the opportunity to grow past their previous visions and trauma over the dark truth of Neltharion’s “legacy”.
Ebyssian is shoehorned in because he was already a humble, peaceful figure.
He was always made out to be a character that didn’t want to be involved in worldly events. The call of the Dragon Isles lumps almost (the snooty blue with a distaste for Kalecgos for example) every other dragon into the same, unfortunate narrative that DESPITE any other possible motivations they have, it’s something that goes against living the peaceful, quiet life he had previously been enjoying in Highmountain.
Radical changes like this don’t make sense.
May as well have Wrathion go back to the bar in Pandaria and seek inner peace while we’re at it. Maybe Sabellian could become a diplomat and seek to secure ties with Azeroth’s various ogre clans since they don’t have gronn here.
I mean, sure! It’s fine. IT’S FIIIIIIIIIIINE.
If the process was more gradual and wasn’t generic involvement which could have had the story play out in ANY direction, I could have seriously considered Ebyssian.
As they did it, though, in reality? No, it’s phoned in, “safe”, and arguably outright lazy writing.
Edit: (holy moly, thank goodness there’s an undo button, I didn’t want to delete this, just put in one last note that the writing is STELLAR in several areas of this game but it’s not a slam-dunk to every aspect, ha pun, and this is certainly one of the weaker examples of it)
It wasn’t trauma or visions. And they did come to a realization that they see things differently.
So he’s been shoehorned since Legion?
You do know all of this was addressed, yes? Lots of conversation with Ebyssian in cutscenes.
It’s not a radical change. Neither of those two were ever going to be Aspect. They were both too engrained into their “RAWR BLACK DRAGON” egos and everything needed to be seen for the real Black flight and what it stood for. Those two just aren’t it. One is a child with an ego the size of Alaska. The other is a power hungry warmonger. Both learned that’s not how things should be, but they weren’t what the true flight really was all about.
It was pretty well spelled out what was happening and the growth of the characters. But keep in mind that it’s difficult to do such in depth character development in such a short time frame in this type of game.
We all see things differently and that’s totally okay. You’re allowed to not like it!
My main issue with this storyline is they undid all of the character development they’ve given wrathion since MoP in order to shoehorn Ebonhorn into the Aspect position.
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what is it about wrathion having such a punachable face? its like he has a constant smirk on his face.
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Their vision for the future of their flight. I didn’t mean hallucinations. As for the trauma, it is banter and quest text of a decent portion between them and general understanding of their previous appearances. They’re reflecting about things based on said trauma.
Sabellian was thrust into the position of something to the ilk of ‘trying to do right by father’ as well as keeping the flight alive, in general. Wrathion is literally an experiment with self-awareness of this fact even before he hatched and then proceeded to commit GENOCIDE. He wasn’t happy about doing that, mind you. Granted, he was angry about borderline everything at the time but hey, that’s reasonable for youth trying to figure their way in the world with no guidance and personal set of moral guidelines.
Ebyssian’s involvement in anything the character does in Highmountain is minimal. He is more or less used as a prop to get to a titan artifact which making it plausible for the thematics on said artifact. Combine that with the fact they threw in so many characters or references to characters (Ebyssian is the latter) to ignite a sense of nostalgia and take the sting out of the lingering disdain that WoD left on a large portion of the playerbase? He is absolutely a byproduct that just happened to be convenient for the black dragonflight leadership narrative.
The addressing of these issues SCREAMS of similarity to Saurfang saying to Thrall: “We don’t get to hide.” They’re copy/pasting old material and framing it as insightful, albeit putting a slight twist of context and intent to it.
It certainly IS radical of a direction to go in, given what we’ve gone over now.
So yeah, I feel that it would have been far more appropriate that the two rival brothers grow to learn from their past and reflect on what they SHOULD do to step up to the plate, one of them conceding to the other through thoughtful introspective by the end of it. Ebyssian was a LOGICAL choice for the sake of in-universe reasoning but he was not a GOOD choice for the sake of narrative direction. It is just yet another case of setting precedent that you don’t need character growth if there’s a way to just conveniently plop in an easy answer to just move things along.
I will concede that in the whole overarching sense of time that expansions must EVENTUALLY get to the point of their stories, pacing is extraordinarily difficult.
To cap things off, agreed that we don’t have to agree. I am very passionate about certain aspects to this game and storytelling in general and it was very difficult for me to look past patterns I have seen over everything from multiple franchises, be they novels, games, tv shows, and movies. If I listened to radio drama series, I’m sure there’s plenty there, too. 
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I rooted for Sabellian, or at least I did until Blizzard assassinated his character. It almost felt as though Blizzard went, “oh no, we made Sabellian look too competent… uh, actually, Sabellian is a total jerk who sees other dragons as nothing more than tools/abominations!”
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I doubted it’d happen because it just seemd too obvious.
I find ebyssian kinda boring, just another calm placid tauren without much depth. (to be fair, it’s not like many wow characters have much depth)
was kinda hoping wrathion and sabellion would be co-aspects or something.
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Might have something to do with the blood elf model?
