The end cinematic of Dragonflight, and why the expansion feels ... unfinished?

Wyrmrest Accord
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At least in terms of story. We just kinda … I don’t know how else to feel about it, the final boss fight felt very unheroic, if you’ll pardon a Casual Couch Warrior like me using the term. Fyrakk got hyped up to be this massive disaster of a threat, a walking nuke overwhelmed by his own ego, lust for power, and consuming an energy field bigger than his own head, and instead it felt very …

The closest thing I can think of is the final boss fight in the Arrakoa Spires dungeon from Warbods of Dadnor. We did the safety dance, we dealt with the adds, we stood in the good things and moved out of the bad and then we got … a budget-decrease version of the Sailor Moon transformation sequence.

It didn’t feel suitably epic, the Aspects kind of just … sat there. Imagine if the second phase was Fyrakk takes off into the air, planning on expending all his power on a kamikaze attack, either he’ll win and corrupt the World Tree into a vessel of Shadow and Flame, or he’ll die but die satisfied knowing he’s taken us all out with him.

So the players all jump onto the back of one of the Six ‘Aspects’ and take into the air in the cinematic, and it is just the Aspects and the Players hurling themselves at Fyrakk, diverting his course and creating a knock-down drag-out brawl through-out the Emerald Dream where Fyrakk is getting pounded out of the sky, players crawling all over him and stabbing frantically or blasting at him with magical powers, Dragon Aspects meeting him blow for blow, his corporeal form tearing apart as tendrils of Shadow, Flame and mutating flesh come coiling out, of Fyrakk screaming for help from his sister, revealing he’s no longer under the mental control of the Void within the Shadow Flame, but his body is now entirely co-opted by this ‘Entity’ and it will complete its mission.

Something along the lines of the amazing TeaCommonShark on YouTube is what I envisioned the fight would be.

Or am I just ranting into a clear blue sky again?

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Didn’t we already do that with Deathwing, kind of?

Anyways, I haven’t done much raiding this expansion and where I’m not subbed now, I’m not about to log in and try Fyrakk. However, I looked at Team Liquid’s boss guide just now and I think the fight looks pretty complex. There’s a lot of death by fire and the need to protect the roots and seeds of the tree so the thing doesn’t die, all while dancing around random ground crap and area denial. The raider in me thought it looked pretty cool. I like fights like this that are filled with micro-mechanics and keep you on your toes.

The spectacle of the fight really isn’t there, though, so I agree with you on that.

Is a spectacular final boss fight required to make the expansion feel complete? The ending of any story is certainly important, but Fyrakk himself wasn’t the real antagonist all along. In fact, Fyrakk will probably rate pretty low as far as memorable final bosses go. Dragonflight has always been about discovery, healing, and maybe bringing order to chaos. Setting things right, or righting the wrongs of the past. Making amends, etc. Fyrakk and Raszageth were just symbolic figures who represented unpredictable and destructive forces that had to be put in their place. And finally now, with the new world tree, we can all be at peace. We’ve found equilibrium and can meditate, weightless, within the perfect circle.

Idk I think that’s as good as we’re going to get these days. Better ending than Shadowlands, anyway.

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If you ask me a year from now about Fryakk, I wouldn’t know him.

I mostly gave up on the “Follow the expac” story game a long time ago, so I’m not sure I’m the target audience at this point. I do generally remember the end game/end boss of each expac and most of what was going on.

Dragonflight was just adventure for me and that was that.

I’ve enjoyed TF out of it more than I have any other expac in recent memory, but I am so removed from the DF story itself, it’s bonkers.

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I think DF’s story was there if you wanted it, but not really compulsory. I’m guessing that most players had barely taken a step into Thaldraszus before they hit 70 and it was off the gear races and running around doing the hunts and assaults and cooking and whatever the heck else you wanted to do. This expansion capitalized on having players interact with all the zones for much longer and far better than any predecessor, which was really cool, but it also sends the message of “hey, this is a cool place to just hang out and do mundane things, like fishing! Or searching for kites or treasure.”

DF was a good experience that we all needed. It wasn’t some epic story saga, and it wasn’t an expansion that really juiced you up. But it was a fun and chill reset that I’m hoping has prepped us all for this new story we’re embarking on later this year. I’m ready for it.

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I feel with Fyrakk, he ended up being just a generic Dungeon Boss in terms of feel (albeit I am talking as a LFRitalin Raider, so take my opinion with some salt) and if there was ever a time to echo the spectacular end of Deathwing, it would be the idiot who tried to be Deathwing 2.0 and physically consumed, and wallowed in, the magical substance that even minor exposure to started Deathwing’s death-spiral into madness and corruption.

The Aspects have to relive the horror of such a degeneration, and Vyranoth gets a front-seat experience of what the Void will do to Azeroth, in addition to what she knows the Titans already have done, and the players don’t get the Budget Safety Dance boss-fight. Yes, the mechanics force people to stay on their toes and keep their spacing, and I’ve gone OOM so many times because people won’t decurse and move out of the fire because ‘muh rotation’, but mechanics and the LFRitalin Scene don’t often play well with story-beats.

Better than Shadowlands is our new warcry. Oh God, kill me now!

I will admit, before we started getting clobbered over the head with the “Fyrakk is so dangerous you must save the Woons Emerald Dream, Champion!” stick, I loved the :poop: outta this expac. I just … Blizzard keeps thematically blue-balling me, and I’m tired of it.

It was the ‘Baby come back, I’ve changed’ expac and for that, I love it. But there really was a complete lack of tension for the most part that felt … wrong, if I can call it that? It was like trying to do a complicated dance and the music was way out of tempo, if that makes sense?

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I liked Dragonflight more than Legion, if that’s a barometer.

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I think part of it was at the beginning of the expansion, no one was expecting Fryakk to be the final boss.

Prior to release, when we mostly just knew we were getting a Dragon Expansion, everyone was saying the final boss would be Murazond! A resurrected Galakron! That Tiamut-ripoff from that one book that came out a dozen years ago!

Once the expansion got started, Iridikron was framed as our expansion Big Bad. He was named dropped in the pre-patch cinematic. At the end of the first Raid when we’re introduced to the remaining Incarnates, he’s the last and central figure. The next few patches frame him as the one in charge, we’re told by the Aspects he’s the leader and most dangerous.

Then he bounces half-way through the expansion to set up the next expansion. He just recently showed up again and implied we won’t see him again until The Last Titan. And then bounces once more.

I like Fryakk, but I thought we were throwing hands with Rock Vader at the end of all this.

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How do you tell a story that is about dispensing our spirits of the conflicts of the past, the mistakes that were made, and the residual hatred that someone tried to get out of our systems recently but didn’t do such a great job of, and not have it be an awkward, non-linear amalgamation that from a distance looks like a Katamari ball? And keep in mind, by the way, that Blizzard did not bludgeon us to death at every step with this message, as can sometimes be their norm when they’re telling their story (though by the end they did kinda sink back into it.) We were put on this path under the guise of adventure and discovery, and they subtly told us along the way that restoration is possible, even if we are flawed mass-murderers.

They could have made it easier to digest if, like in the past, we had a companion character who acted as a narrator and let us know how they wanted us to feel about these disparate conflicts and feelings. But we’d be rightfully bashing them for that, so I suppose I kinda prefer what they did this time?

I know what you mean and I’m not trying to give Blizzard too much credit here, but the whole thing wasn’t so bad now that I think on it.

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I remember the rumors about Galakrond and I paid attention, because that was an end boss with a history. The rumor was quickly dispelled and I lost interest as usual.

These end game bosses that keep getting introduced during the expac where they are the end boss? I don’t know who they are and I typically never buy in. None of them have ever hooked me like an end boss that has history in this universe. It does nothing for me and it’s probably a chunk of why I am not as invested in the story as I have been in the past.

Fyrakk
Fryakk
Fry bread
Freeke

DF: I showed up to a land that had been hidden from us by the mist…oh no wait. That was the other expac.

DF: I got some cool hats. I went fishing and hung out with the Tuskarr.

DF kept me busier than just about any other expac. Nice pacing of content releases. Tons of cosmetic type things. Lots to explore. It was just enjoyable.

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My favorite part of this was when we grew a new tree after the old one mysteriously burned down and no one was responsible for it. It was a good thing we were able to do it by going to the Ruins of Theramore, which somehow exploded due to the actions of no one.

There was just so much setting things right, you know? It felt good to finally move on past those events that occurred totally without cause and not by anyone’s hand.

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Hush Tyrande

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It’s also neat that, in all the time we had to pretend that the Horde are sweet and innocent babies, we also could squeeze in another Orc feeling guilty about something completely unrelated to the atrocities that led to this whole rancid mess.

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I think part of this is a flaw/stagnation in the design of WoW’s end-game PvE content.

It’s served as seasonal content and influenced by the ~ race to world first ~ where we get a dungeon pool and a linear raid. The raid is subversively time-gated rather than outright via nerfs to bosses/buffs to classes throughout the patch/season’s lifecycle.

Then you have the last two legendaries, which require you to farm the last boss each week – by the time you get the thing, you don’t really need it anymore. Or, it’s only value is to push to 3k and beyond for M+.

I think the whole thing would be better if you had to gear from the raid over time to even think about fighting the last few bosses, and the legendary of that tier was almost required – and attainable before prog saw you full clearing – and the whole thing took longer.

I say this in relation to the unfinished feeling because the raids being a joke/trap is part of why the last boss feels that way IMO, and also why the narrative flounders.

People want to full clear heroic ASAP, after which a portion of your best people quit until next season while the rest farm out of boredom, habit, duty or legendary FOMO. The raid isn’t epic anymore, so the story isn’t, either – this time, it’s because they fragmented the antagonists and put the main one who-knows-where, made one flip to our side, and made one a literal loot pinata.

I guess in an ideal version of this game I’d rather have longer prog, tied more to the narrative, and something epic for central baddies.

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I told you I’d do the dishes when I got to them. Now I just wanna burn down another tree.

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Go ahead. Burn it. I won’t stop you. I’ll just watch. I’ll light my cigarette off the embers and smoke, one arm folded, eyes narrowed to thin, judgmental slits. And you’ll burn another tree and another tree and every time you do, I’ll just sigh like I never expected anything else and little by little your soul will be ground to powder.

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War doesn’t make you happy, peace doesn’t make you happy… You’ve been speaking with your mother again, haven’t you? You know she hates me.

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I apologize you didn’t like a callback to a dragon storyline from WC2 about a Dragonmaw in this dragon-oriented themed expansion about dragons called Dragonflight and that we didn’t talk about elves enough.

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What was wrong with our cold, tense neutrality? I liked that!

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Touching on that quest, it was quite hidden, didn’t really get much in the way of visuals unless you were trawling for lore or exploring every nook and cranny, but it was honestly one of the most heartfelt quests I’ve seen in an MMO.

A villain who has come to see the people they’ve hurt and oppressed, to make sure they never will be again, who doesn’t want mercy, or forgiveness, and fully believes they can never atone for what they’ve done … and still finds some sort of peace in the end, even as they never forgive themselves for what they’ve done.

It was bitter-sweet and painted the Orc in question as a monster, and should be a ritual for all Orc RPers who want to embrace the race, and the heritage that goes along with it. The Draenei, Queen Alexstraza, her consorts and their children, the Eastern Kingdoms, and now the Kaldorei, the laundry list of victims is as wide and vast as the Path of Glory, and the resentment and hatred of the Orcs is both well deserved at this point, as for every Thrall and Saurfang, we’ve had two more Blackhands, Gul’dans and Garroshes who got to be in charge by abusing the might-makes-right society of their people.

The only way the questline could have been better was to have Alexstrasza come to visit the gardens and see the Orc, and see the interplay between them. The Dragon Queen who can’t find it within herself to forgive, and the former Dragonmaw who tells her he doesn’t deserve it, he’s just here to make sure no more Whelps feel the taste of a lash, or an axe, ever again, to know that the Reds have a future that is their own again. A moment where the Dragon Queen can vent her rage and grief at a target who’ll gladly weather it all, both because they deserve it, and they want Alexstrasza to find peace as well.

The whelp following the Old Orc’s companion onto an adventure is also quite touching. I loved the whole theme of the quests, that the horrors of the past cannot, and should not, be forgotten, but they must also never be repeated. It was owning that dark and horrific past and trying to make sense of the madness that allowed it to happen by somebody at the end of their life, somebody who was desperate to make sure the same tragedies never happened again. It didn’t lionize any part of it, the Orc wasn’t noble, he was sad, tired, broken and full of self-loathing and -hatred, and the only selfish part of his story was that he wanted to know, to see, for himself, that the nightmare of his former victims was really at an end and their children would know a better, brighter future.

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I feel like this would have been seriously overdoing it and would have been eyeroll-inducing for being heavy-handed. I like that it was small. Not everything has to include everything and act like a wikipedia article.

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