Same as Lanval, recruited some new friends and it’s been a pain having to explain the lore to them instead of having them experience it since the NPCs just stare at you not doing anything. It already took some convincing for them to try the game out and this is not leaving a good impression on them. It’s especially frustrating when you have to sit there for a few minutes when nothing is happening before you get the option to turn in the quest or pick up another. I really hope this is fixed for dragonflight.
7 Likes
This bug gives the game a TERRIBLE first impression for new players.
8 Likes
Only suggestion I might have is to direct new players to BfA rather than Shadowlands. I tried both expansions over the last week and Shadowlands is virtually unplayable if you want the story.
BfA is, for the most part, unaffected by this issue. It’s very rare. BfA content is still pretty modern for WoW standards and new players might get into the game through it.
Whether or not Blizzard deserves new subscribers after this level of disrespect to current/returning/new players for letting such a bug persist for months is another matter.
Another issue is that with the XP buff, they will outlevel BfA by hitting level 51-52. It’ll be a long string of mindlessly easy questing while waiting for Blizzard to deign to provide dialogue to central story NPCs in Shadowlands, but at least they’ll be able to have a story in BfA. You’ll also maybe want to explain to them that Azerite is no longer in the game and so all those fancy rare enemies scattered around BfA are mostly pointless.
4 Likes
This issue affects the entire game. It’s more noticeable from Legion onwards, including BfA. No point in redirecting new players anywhere.
7 Likes
True, but as I said, I’ve barely seen it in BfA whereas it is constant in Shadowlands. Playing through the Horde Vol’dun zone now and I haven’t experienced this problem a single time so far, nearly done with the zone. Nazmir, it happened once or twice. Same for Zuldazar.
Didn’t know it affected pre-BFA quests, though. Yikes.
3 Likes
On BFA I only noticed in the most interesting moments… Bwonsamdi / Rezan, Talanji’s coronation, Hearth of Azeroth and Saurfang rebelion… while it is technically playable its frustrating to miss the epilogue of every main quest chain…
6 Likes
Reposting my video I made to show how ridiculous this problem is.
9 Likes
I mean, when you get to the first location you’ll watch Cyrus stand there for a long while just staring at the fire. Why is he helping you after Jaina was arrested and you broke out of prison? Who knows.
6 Likes
Quests are a CORE element of WoW.
If Blizzard is okay with them being broken for months, than this company and this game deserves nothing from us. This bug is affecting the WHOLE GAME, not only Shadowlands, although it is much more noticeable in Shadowlands.
7 Likes
Sadly like others have said we just finished questing through BfA and the problems persisted in there and in Shadowlands. We could not choose a different expansion since they were a new account.
I am surprised this issue is not top priority, especially with the XP bonus they have occurring right now. It would be awful if this issue occurs in DragonFlight.
6 Likes
Subbed after missing this entire expansion, eager to get caught up in the story in prep for DF only to encounter this bug as soon as I got into the major city in SL. I can’t move forward since there is so much dialogue presented this way that I miss huge amounts of context and have no idea what it going on. Sad but I’m requesting a refund and honestly am unsure if I even want to play DF anymore.
5 Likes
We need to make this bug known to relevant content creators for them to make it public, especially those focused on game LORE, maybe then Blizzard decides to take some action.
7 Likes
I thought I’d finally finish the major BfA quests and at least do part of SL while it’s still current and then noticed almost all the dialogue was missing in The Treasury Heist. Same thing for another character trying to do The Old Knight.
This is completely game-breaking for me and clearly for many others, and I can’t say it makes me want to go buy DF. This bug deserved an all-hands-on-deck effort…2 months ago.
8 Likes
I was really hoping to take advantage of the xp buff and hit up some alts before dragonflight but like damn. 
7 Likes
The missing Dialogue, especially voiced lines, but also text-only RP, has been happening to me since Legion. This is not just Shadowlands and BfA. This has been happening for THREE Expansions now, and its only getting worse and happening more often as more and more of the game is voice acted or has a text RP scene play out.
I’ve been having the vanishing Dialogue (especially voice acted lines, but text vanishes too) bug since Legion on my account. It’s not just one character, but its more obvious on characters I play more.
This needs to be addressed, especially if Blizzard wants to actually provide decent storytelling in game. And many times the quest dialogue is used to explain the steps in a quest, and when that bugs it makes completing the quest difficult and confusing for players. Most players assume a period of silent npcs means they’re done, so they run off without staying for the story, whether they mean to skip it or not.
I’ve submitted many tickets and bug reports, and it’s never been properly addressed. I usually get canned responses from Support, or they blame it on addons or say just turn in the quests and move on. I’ve tried everything on the standard list of ways to ‘fix’ issues. Reset the quest/RP, removed all addons, re-created cache, even re-installed the game. Nothing works to fix it.
Resetting the quest has very rarely caused some of the dialogue to re-appear, but I’ve spent hours resetting a quest to try to get all the dialogue to trigger and still had missing parts. This is not fun or good gameplay for the time wasted trying to enjoy the game. I’ve often had to go to Youtube just to see the entire quest dialogue, and sometimes I’ve seen it bug out on the Youtube videos, or the video ends before the RP plays because the player didn’t realize the RP even existed because it was missing for them too!
This bug is most obvious in voice-acted dialogue when there are long extended periods of silence as the NPC moves around as if they are talking, but say nothing. But I’ve seen it happen with text-only dialogue too during BfA. In Legion, even the popup talking head toast windows failed to trigger along with the voice acted lines.
The most memorable instances off the top of my head happened during major storylines:
- Legion Hunter Class Hall mount scenario. Odyn failing to talk during the Hunt, and his popup talking head window failing to trigger.
- BfA Horde questline in Ashenvale Zoram’Gar outpost during War of Thorns.
Sylvanas and Nathanos text RP lines failed. - Shadowlands Nightfae covenant questline to change/join covenant. The Boon of Shapes quest. Moonberry’s entire speech is missing while my character kneels.
- Shadowlands Zereth Mortis. Taelia and Bolvar’s ‘stay a while and listen’ voiced RP is mostly missing.
- Shadowlands Zereth Mortis, Help from Beyond quest. Droman Aliothe’s entire voiced dialogue is missing. She stares at me for a while in silence, then turns and runs off without saying a thing.
With more and more lines in game being voice acted, and with Blizzard focusing more on telling story through these RP dialogues inside the game, this needs to be fixed. This bug has existed since at least Legion without being addressed. It causes story beats to be missed, and results in a confusing story that doesn’t make sense to the players, who are missing chunks of the story but don’t even realize its missing.
Please fix this Blizzard. It’s only getting worse as you add more RP story dialogue to the game.
10 Likes
I had left this toon on the Lysonia’s Truth quest in Bastion about almost a month ago. I tried abandoning and retaking the quest just now to see if maybe the dialogue would show up for her first memory. But nope. It didn’t. I am not going to move on from this quest until this is fixed… It’s very sad that this is still not fixed AND there’s no communication on what is going on with this bug…
5 Likes
I have a level 50 toon sitting in org for the last 2 months just waiting until this is fixed. Bolvar is probably wondering why I am just standing there.
4 Likes
Do you have any further updates on this? I returned to the game and basically had no idea what was going on for a majority of Shadowlands quests. If this happens in Dragonflight then what’s the point? Might as well refund it
4 Likes
Disgusting how we keep watching Classic being patched day after day after day while Retail remains with game breaking major bugs.
Words cannot describe the amount of dissatisfaction Retail players are having right now.
5 Likes
This is happening to me too. Thought an addon was the cause at first until I realized the same thing was happening without addons as well. It’s super frustrating missing all the context to the quests, particularly since I like to understand the lore as I play. Even tried the workaround to no avail.
Why is this issue still ongoing!?
7 Likes