I really hope it’s a placeholder, because if not, then that’s Ysera on the DF loading screen… and I really don’t want another Sylvannas-ed lore character. As much as I love Ysera, I kinda want her to stay in Ardenweald.
But because it’s Blizz, we’ll probably get low-budget b-movie writing again.
This is kind of a slap in the face for people that will play evokers and want to be something other than a modified belf or human.
Edit: Even if it is Blizzard just taking the simple route and giving the model night elf demon hunter horns.
The writing team has not changed at all since dust got kicked up last year. The same people who delivered Shadowlands’ plot is the same group of people doing Dragonflight. The only hope we’ve had is that there was corporate meddling may or may not be gone and/or Afrasiabi’s Dark Influence has ended (which I never believed was enough to produce the entire problems of Shadowlands).
It’s becoming clear neither things have solved anything as far as writing goes and no one at the top seems to think the story and lore matters enough to do something about the massive backlash it’s getting.
So this is it. We have to watch helplessly as more characters and stories are defiled for epic moments and cheap manufactured emotional scenes.
Give or take Merithra also is a fully fledged dragon, not these puny slim lizards.
Let’s be brutally honest here. WoW’s on it’s 19th Season when the major threat from the start was wrapped in Season 4. We’ve well and truly gone the Supernatural route here. This was always going to be where things ended up.
I just wish the Horde could get…something of a pay off but all their legacy characters either are dead or got hit with the villain bat…and then there’s Thrall. Green Jesus who was destined to die in Season 9 but the writer’s got cold feet and now he just…lingers.
At least us Alliance folks got to see Jania’s reckoning for her decisions at Theramore done in a not-terrible fashion.
I don’t really think “Ysera might come back” means the writing is definitely going to be bad. I’m not particularly optimistic about the writing, since we have mostly the same writers who thought spending a couple years in the afterlife was a good idea, but sidelining a minor character in favor of her dead mom is not a huge deal when I’m kind of used to death being a minor inconvenience for Night Elf gods.
And its funny to joke about Danuser having a crush on Sylvanas or Sean Copeland forgetting basic lore stuff like “when the war of the ancients happened” that any RPer would know, but there are some good people involved with the writing. For instance, I noticed that Anne Stickney, a roleplayer who did the lore watch podcast that I used to listen to, is now credited as a narrative designer on the game.
https://twitter.com/Shadesogrey
Like… that’s pretty cool, that there’s “one of us” on the writing team, since I recall her voicing basically the same concerns that we usually do back in BfA before she started working at blizzard.
So while the overall story might become some dopey cosmic struggle brought to you by mr danuser there might be some fun stuff at the quest level written by people who started by being rp nerds
I also view the hinted at return of Tirisfal and Gilneas to be a little exciting as potential areas of story that would have lots of emotional payoff for both the alliance and horde, and would allow the setting to actually advance in a way RPers could play with. But if that particular tease doesn’t go anywhere I will be sad
What the hell is even up with those feet though?
IKR. I read down in the comments and someone had the answer - they ran out of polygon budget.
Y’know how people who are learning to draw often struggle with hands? Dragon transformation magic is like that with feet
I know I’m probably on some manner of c/hopium but I feel like a living, growing world has more narrative longevity than character based TV series, imo. Characters can take back seats while others rise to more prominence and offers a natural flow for new stories.
You are right about all the major threats though. They could have extended it a bit by giving the Legion, Azshara, and N’zoth their own expansions, then lay more crumbs for other things to branch off. But that’s already on the past I suppose.
I still think they wouldn’t have to do major threats if they just kept leaning into the growth of the world. Look at BC, for instance. It was a story about the devastation done to Outland and the impact of the loss of the Sunwell than any real catastrophe, and I think there’s a lot of world building potential for stories like that. Gilneas needs to be reclaimed. There’s still a sword in Azeroth. A world tree that once housed great corruption has been burned off the coast of Kalimdor. The story never really ends if you keep following the dynamics of the world.
All they have to do is divorce themselves from the Azerothian Soap Opera formula.
What you’ve said helps a lot to hear. I’m super happy for Anne, too. To become part of the writing team for the game you roleplay on is a dream I think for most of us. That said, I’ll acknowledge that the zone writing and smaller scale stories are often phenomenal, but my dread is main story arcs which decide what we experience for years to come.
This really hurts the narrative. Ysera’s death was emotional. Helping her find an afterlife that fits her was emotional. Helping Merithra come to terms with her new responsibilities was emotional. It’s quite likely being swept away, deleted. Don’t cry for Ysera, she’s just going on a short trip and probably coming back. Why?
Someone wants her to. And they’re taking the cheap character-sacrifice-for-a-made-up-arbitrary-reason route to do it.
We saw the same thing happen with Sylvanas. We saw a redemption arc coming a mile away. Based on everything that happened, by all means it didn’t make sense for her to get one. But she got it anyways because someone wanted her to and that was that.
A writer, in the end of the day, decides what the characters do. But for heaven’s sake, you need to hide those puppets’ strings with immersion and character motivation so that it’s not so obvious. This is where it starts to break some vital story laws and I simply don’t see why it won’t keep occuring whenever someone wants something else for a character, regardless of surrounding story and characterization. It will be so hard to feel immersed if this is the feeling hanging over our heads, that nothing matters or has consequences.
I have no doubt I’ll enjoy small scale adventures and plots delivered by the lower rank writers. 10.0 will be the best for that, but subsequent patches tend to be more “A-Plot” heavy and that’s where I’m worried. I don’t want another Korthia where we take the sigil to the Jailer or get tricked by dreadlords we’ve already gotten good at detecting.
Heck, I’m also just crabby that it seems like the Shadowlands is being inserted into the plot just to remind us that no matter how much we hate the lore and story it produced, it’s still there and we have to deal with it. I want to forget it ever existed.
I apologize for the negativity, and also making a broad statement about “the writing team”, because I know there’s a lot of people in it who are doing a bang up job. I’m just disappointed seeing potential repeats of previous mistakes happening in an expansion that’s supposed to be the “lessons learned” expansion.
Absolutely that is the case.
However WoW creators have decided to do Burning Crusade 2.0 in Legion, Mists of Pandaria 2.0 in Battle for Azeroth, and finally Wrath of the Lich King Immortal in Shadowlands.
Holy crap this definitely needs to be how we all know Shadowlands as lmao.
I find it safe to say that, WoW jumped the shark back in Legion. Or perhaps they successfully ended the show, and then had one successful spinoff and then tried to keep momentum going, but we got Stargate Universe instead.
And while it’s cool that Anne - an RPer - is now in the writing pool, it’s like like throwing a pebble at a flood of 
and expecting it to redirect the course.
WoW’s “Jumping the Shark” moment was when Thrall became the new Aspect of Earth and used the Dragon Soul to defeat Deathwing (Yeah yeah we fight him in the Maelstrom but that Dragon Soul blast to his undefended backside really is what took him out).
And it ends with Alexstraza touching Thrall’s totally-been-here-the-whole-time wife’s belly.
Sorry, I just re-ran Dragon’s Soul for the first time in forever and I’d forgotten how bad it was. Not just mechanically or from a voice acting perspective (“Praise the Titans!”), but the story is…woof.
Also Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves are there for…reasons.
Fine, fine, you win. 
These are two of the biggest things I hate about Cataclysm. I hated how Thrall just became this weird messiah, and how Aggra was introduced to have babies basically. The writing in Cataclysm was honestly bad in a lot of fronts, and some of the best writing was an accident (thanks, Stonetalon mountains).
I still cannot and will not ever get over the writing of Silverpines. The sheer hypocrisy of hearing Sylvanas’ speech about how undeath is a horrifying curse while also raising people in the same breath actually got me to switch over to Alliance permanently (Fun fact, Wolf was originally an Orc Rogue before I tried him out as a Worgen/Pandaren).