That’s basically what Arthur… I mean Anduin is already… he even gets the feat for heavy armor, though perhaps he took a level dip in fighter?
The dev’s did mention that they once considered allowing priests to use plate armor as one of the Hero classes… but ultimately realized it’d be a nightmare with how they currently handle gearing.
I’m surprised we haven’t gotten something like the dynamic armor system from SWToR, in that game one of the most common types of armor varied in its defenses depending on your class/fighting style.
Very nearly exalted with Gilneas. So I’ll finally see their heritage quest and their side of the Gilnean Reclamation.
Actually can’t wait for that. I assume Gilneas like Tirisfal is going to be a janky mess not actually suited to player activity but I’m just looking for somewhere spooky to loiter.
Really can’t overstate my loathing of Stormwind. Orgrimmar’s far from my favorite but it’s at least interesting and atmospheric. It’s fun to write stories about in.
Had a fun story from awhile ago where Ben was being trailed by an assassin and couldn’t quite zero in on them because an Orcish city’s ambient thought waves are routinely filled with violent intent. It’s like trying to find a specific needle in a pile of needles.
Stormwind though manages to be both generic and exclusionary. The Worgen, Kaldorei and Draenei look out’ve place there. And the same could be said of a lot of Horde races and Orgrimmar but as the Horde’s such a tossed salad of fantasy styles and even genres it just works. When everyone feels out of place no one does.
A. Priests are the only caster class that can’t wield swords and,
B: A Priest’s powers are already pretty cinematic. They can become intangible, reave minds, create barriers with sheer willpower and zoom off into the damn sky on angel’s wings.
All that cinematic potential and they go with “Wack 'em with a sword”.
I have been spending the day and night doing organizing things. But not organizing anything. I got a new notebook to keep track of all of my project things, so I am writing those all down and thinking of new project things.
I’ve mainly just been leveling alts hoping some character will make DF click. Between my Orc Shaman and Worgen Druid I figure something in the story will be relevant.
It’s odd as mechanically this is one of my favorite expansions. You can just focus on your favorite end game content, having alts is feasible, the new talent system feels like a perfect update to the og style, and while I’m not the biggest fan of the new system making professions more complex than just grinding Health Potion or Magic Iron Daggers to make line go up is if nothing else a step in the right direction. And the dynamic flight system is my favorite addition to WoW, full stop.
But boy is it hard to get invested in a story about angry rocks and lizards as any number of undead. I’ve got a bishop of nightmares, a necrobiotic assassin, a baleful bard with three souls, a kung fu grandma, and a cowboy amongst others and not one feels like they’d give a ish about this beyond the usual general global call for concern. Especially with the pretty massive geopolitical changes in the North EK happening in the background.
The nice thing about all my dwarves is that where a dwarf shows up, there’s exactly where a dwarf should be.
I really, achingly, painfully miss my gryphons on my dwarves, though.
What’s the point of maining a Wildhammer in the flying expac when I can’t even dunk on the dragons by zooming by and showing them what, exactly, is up?
Seriously I just want to zoom around on Heidi the Plaguebat.
And I’m usually pretty good at inventing a reason for my characters to give a ish. Really figured the Expedition would figure into the story and being a RAS attaché to that could be interesting.
But it’s mainly been the personal issues of giant monsters and space rocks. Which just doesn’t do much for me.
Could’ve gone for more Gnolls. Im still mad I didn’t come up with the title Decatriarch.
I know that Rannan’s main purpose is to be a less annoying and also terrible version of Bud Neckred. I know that Toddi’s job is to be gonzo (and I love that for her), and that Nalieda’s job is to be earnest and have a kind of sultry but unthreatening voice.
But man, for as much time as we’ve spent with these characters, there’s not a lot of “in” with them. They don’t really have a lot of backstory or baggage, which, yes, that’s the point… But it still feels a bit weird. They’re very sanded down. I can’t imagine asking them what they were doing for the Fourth War. (Especially Rannan, where the answer is probably WARCRIMES but in a goofy voice so it’s funny.)
There’s so much about DF I SHOULD like, but I’m just NOT invested. I was somehow more invested in Shadowlands immersion-wise and that’s pretty sad, TBH. The mechanical additions are great, talent trees, dynamic flying, easily accessible mog sets/appearances etc. All of those things are what is keeping me playing.
I’ve just had a really hard time feeling like any of my characters are connected to the Dragon Isles or even give a hoot what’s going on there. Somehow Dragons and Titans are some of the most boring parts of Warcraft for me, and this expansion really has no shortage of that. I mained my Shaman through this expansion for the first time since BC hoping that the Primalist plot would go somewhere or at least there was more elemental lore but alas.
It’s sad too that for as long as we waited for the conclusion to the Night Elf arc, it was almost like a ‘too late’ situation for me. I was so over seeing Night Elf content by the time we got Amirdrassil that it felt more of a THANK GOD I CAN SEE THE END OF THIS, rather than something I could feel immersed in and enjoy. It also feels like a really odd end-cap to an expansion about dragons. Almost feels like they added the whole ‘AMIRDRASSIL BLESSED THE ASPECTS’ just to make it feel relevant to the expansion.
It’s weird too because the characters they tried to force on us feel hollow and uninteresting but the ‘smaller’ characters like Myritt, Scaps and Rupert (among others) were way more enjoyable this expansion than the ones we were supposed to be invested in.
I like to think of Dragonflight as the “inoffensive expansion”. Nothing about it can offend, because nothing about it feels big enough to be offended by.
Oh, the Primal Dragons kind of have a point in how they were treated? Well, let’s make two of them crazy-evil, one sinister-evil, and the girl dragon becomes our friend because friendship is magic. Nothing to be offended by here, because now the aspects also agree they did a bad and the non-evil one said it’s okay and we can be besties again.
And… That’s it, that’s the closest to anything with some bite.
I’m not complaining; complaining would require a degree of offense, and there’s nothing worth being offended by. I’m just noting it, which is what the story deserves because it is just kinda there.
At least we saved the tree. This tree did not burn.
Yeah after the double whammy of BFA and SL took the plot in violently stupid directions I can see why they had us doing dragon tail shenanigans.
Genuinely though I don’t think I’ve been really loving the story since the first stretch of BFA. Yeah the Blood War (I refuse to designate that clustertruck as the 4th War) was dumb but I really loved getting to know the Zandalari and Kul Tirans.
DF had that in bursts. Loved the Tuskar, thought the Centaurs were alright, and the dragons are certainly there being dragony. But it all felt rather inconsequential. Kul Tiras and Zandalari were big lore topics that had been named dropped since Vanilla. As were the Dragon Isles but dragon society isnt all that terribly interesting to me. Because it’s some strange combination of entirely alien and way too human simultaneously.
My big hope is that we get a tameable version of the new golden retriever/lab/floppy eared yellow dog model.
Because I WILL roll a human hunter for that and give her an extremely basic mog and a name like Jan or Betsy and then run only the most extremely high fantasy content.
Yeah, this pretty much hits the nail on the head. Which is fine, and good actually considering the mess of BfA and SL. It was a nice change of pace, but “fine” is kinda where it stays. (For me, anyway) It was nice to have a feelgood expansion after a lot of ‘not feel so good’, but they were so heavy-handed with that it felt forced and stringent in the positivity department in some ways.
I think the biggest miss for me is the lack of class fantasy or core race worldbuilding. Aside from Amirdrassil and Gilneas, we didn’t see a lot of impact to our player races or add anything to class fantasy. This would’ve been an ideal expansion to introduce Shaman or Druids to every race or even Paladin to an extent. Even Dracthyr got shortchanged in their own launch expansion… they had so much potential and were relegated to the whole ‘20,000 year nap’ shtick which really deflates the fun of creating a character with an interesting backstory.
In the spirit of positivity at least it ends a very long drawn-out saga that I know a lot of us are eager to be done with. I did really enjoy parts of it like the Azure Span, The Tuskarr (and their soup!), The Winterpelt, The Gnolls, The Niffen as well as both the Black and Blue Dragonflight campaign stories. (Sindragosa!)
