Perhaps I gave Shadowlands too much crap, but going through Dragonflights quests and cutscenes, I can appreciate SL’s plot much more. DF’s plot is all about Dragons, blah blah blah. Who cares? Why pick the least interesting topic in Warcraft? At least SL dealt with the First Ones and had some degree of mystique. I don’t feel the urgency like in Legion or Wotlk. It all feels really safe and grounded, more relaxed
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I’d think the same thing, too, if I couldn’t read the quest texts.
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I do not know what they were doing but it was poorly executed disaster. It’s akin to the Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) of all the expansion.
Meaning its a sign no expansion like story route akin to TBC, WotLK, WoD, and Legion is not guarantied to appear, as a good omen from the Perspective of a Dragonslayer, and the bad omen from the perspective of a Demonslayer.
This will result in not seeing Supernatural themed expansions for Decades to come.
A darker dragon theme would have been nice, but maybe thats when wow is in its death roes and the dragons are nearing extinction we can see concepts like torture which were introduced in the shadowlands, cross with the living, akin to the dragonmaw clan and the scarlet crusade.
The only expansion with a solid pre first patch was cataclysm, even being as disconnected as it was, it was more similar to shadowlands in that each zone represented a different struggle against a similar overarching theme.
Dragon isles literally feels like blizzards way of balancing future leveling for newbs as either you are this edgey death punk pre teen and you head off to shadowlands, or you’re a plush loving softmonger who wants to find a place among those who “have it figured out”
Shadowlands had fine plot points. The problem was how the story was told. We needed to know Sylvanas’ situation way earlier. The forge of origination needed better explaining. Zovaal needed considerably more up front screen time if he was truly just a villain.
Actually, the more that I think on it… knowing sylvanas’ situation way earlier was a BFA problem. Shadowlands should have not stretched this out longer. BFA needed to show off her situation.
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At least shadowlands have fate of thread.
DF for those who have many alts probably is a nightmare. For me, I don’t want to do the same campaign 50 times…
You don’t have to do campaign though? Not only that but 60-70 is much quicker than Threads was
Sure, if you don’t need those things locked behind campaign…
Like what? Nearly if not all of what you get from the campaign is unlocked with the adventure mode for alts, even Sparks of Ingenuity and Dragon Shards of Knowledge. Is there something still locked to it that I dont know about?
That’s like picking between trash and garbage.
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sounds to me like you’re not a fantasy fan but a sci fi fan. different strokes for different folks but I prefer stuff like dragonflight.
Well, keep in mind that a lot of the major story lines in game are dead or stepping back a little, so Bliz is kind of trying to come up with new storylines at this point.
I feel like it’s time for another Azeroth revamp after this (kind of like Cata). But I also want Bliz to start looking into VR tech.
But then again, the second this game goes VR, I’m probably going to need a catheter.
The only good thing about SL, was it ending. Not THE ending, but it ending.
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Just another day on the forums with random posters sparking controversy against widely accepted opinions.
Yeah, if adventure mode is just type “ADVENTURE” then I’ll take it. But no, adventure mode is just like campaign and is not some actually skip we used have.
Have you tried it? It was automatically turned on for me the moment I set foot in the Dragon Isles. I didnt even have to click “accept” on a quest. The story is all still there, ya, but you don’t have to actually do any of it as far as I know.
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I’ve been burnt out on end of the cosmos next big bad omg this is the worst villain ever expansions.
SL story was just a mess and linking sylvanis back to legions war blah blah blah was boring.
I think SL’s story had more potential than DF’s seems to at the surface right now. The issue was where that story went, the dragging, and the lack of explanation on anything until the end… which left more questions. Had ‘who broke the arbiter’ been answered earlier, Sylvanas’ motivations been explained in 9.1, the ‘I’ll never serve!’ moment not been done and it communicated more clearly to the players why she was suddenly done supporting the jailer… Well, there’s just so much that could have been done better from a story telling perspective. The jailer even saying something like “All of my plans… thwarted” when he died instead of alluding to yet another big bad and turning into a robot would have been an improvement.
I’m looking at DF as an experiment in dialing back the BIG story to experiment / implement better story telling tools. It’s a story that is likely easier to tell on WoW itself, and hopefully teaches some lessons to the devs/story team and leads to some new tools for them to use in the future for more elaborate narratives.
I think Shadowlands story on paper wasn’t bad, and had potential but the execution was God awful. That aside, like there is no story with DF…Story looks to be going nowhere. And Blizzard didn’t exactly win anyone over by barely including any major lore characters in any of the zones outside of Khadgar. Shadowlands was this very very high fantasy story, yet the characters were familiar and relatable. There isn’t any attachment to the DF story. And as I said in different post, Blizzard did a terrible job on the questing/leveling experience to get us interested in this story. Very boring and uninspired quests.
Where is the phasing? Where are the event quest lines with major storyline beats going on and cutscenes showing pivotal storyline moments? It’s just not there. Blizzard either doesn’t care or doesn’t want to provide the resources to make the story as good as it could be. It’s too bad.
Such a terrible path downwards in terms of storytelling and leveling experience from WoD/Legion and then onwards. It’s gotten worse with each expansion.
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Eww, no.
Dragonflight got so much better. Not trying too hard, being easy-going with stuff that aren’t meant to be immediate threat. WoW had this problem of everything being dangerous and awful, edgy, so it’s nice to take a break from all of that.
There’s also the fact it’s more akin to Burning Crusade and Wrath. There’s no intro scenario, it feels more like an open world which you can explore at your own pace.
Shadowlands had some interesting concepts, but that’s about it.