Isle of Dorn- decent enough starting zone. However Blizz really needs to stop introducing new characters and having them go out in a “heroic sacrifice”. I’ve only known Baelgrim for like an hour, not enough time for his sacrifice to really have any meaningful impact
Ringing Deeps- 4/10, I don’t really like how robotic they portrayed the Earthen this go around. We met Earthen before and they were basically just a normal dwarf just made of stone. Dargran doesn’t have a lot of consistency with his intelligence, he is either the smartest person in the room or the guy who walks up to the zombie mid turning. Main antagonist was pretty one dimensional
Hallowfall- by far my favorite zone. The Arathi intrigue me the most with how much we just don’t know about their circumstances and this Emperor. I hope we can have more exposition on them in later patches and don’t have to wait until Midnight to learn more. Faerin I can’t really get into. I have never been a fan over the character who can somehow inspire others and just have this leadership quality that goes above and beyond when it just happens too fast. Legit 5 secs into the zone and she is just like “I hope I can call you friends”, like you don’t even know us.
Azj-Kahet- also a very good zone. I don’t really like how it is basically reskinned Suramar, but I like the direction they went with the Nerubian’s motives and even their personalities. I also hope the trolls we met play a bigger part later. I’ am assuming these are dark trolls, which were the progenitors of Nelfs.
Alleria- I still don’t understand why Blizz needs to make the oldest characters the most impulsive and immature. Alleria is thousands of years old, technically more since her time with the Army of the Light, yet she still acts rashly and even endangers others because of her actions.
Anduin- I know some people think he has good character development, but I just don’t see it. Probably because his “character” technically started in MoP when we had real interaction with him, so that would be 12 years ago. If a character takes 12 years to develop then there is something wrong with them.
Xal’atath- started off pretty good. We actually see her pulling strings unlike Zovaal who just claims to be pulling strings. Now, however, she is becoming just another generic WoW villain. Claiming to know more than the heroes, calling other villains pawns, she even had her own “only a setback moment”.
After ruminating on the expansion a bit, the Expansion story is still a step up from the past few, and I do like the implementation of lots of Stay and listen moments , but it definitely still hits my main issues with modern WoW writing. Hopefully Midnight and TLT being in the old world mean they avoid the “Hey, meet this new previously unknown civilization that’s basically just here to be filler for the expansion instead of actually giving us non faction war based A/H stories” issue.
You get thrown into IoD way too quickly for sure. Baelgrim’s sacrifice lacked gravitas because we barely got to know him, plus it was for such a mundane reason that our characters almost certainly could have handled.
I compare it to AU Durotan’s brother sacrificing his life at the end of Frostfire and its night and day.
The bar for me is so low that it’s straddling hell but I liked him acknowledging that going full Varian (or his idea of Varian) in the wake of his father’s death was stupid, and its utterly rare for an Alliance character to actually admit fault so I’m giving him a gold star sticker regardless.
After ruminating on the expansion a bit more though, I really do think Thrall should have been the one to coach him out of his funk like expansion previews indicated, simply because he’s been there. There should have been no lack of pious goodhearted light wielders Anduin could have had do therapy with him at home if thats all it took.
She doesn’t have the luxury of reflective thought. Neither would you if you had Lovecratian voices going off constantly in your head. When she says that she is a danger to those around her… that’s not for dramatic effect.
Dagran was curious to see such a transformation happen in real time. He is a teenager remember. Were you consistent in your intelligence back then? Plus his idol is mainly his great uncle Brann. You know the one who almost destroyed the whole world because he pressed the wrong button?