You think this is an intermission before the real “fix” comes in 11.00?
They are probably working on it now while the 10.00 patches arebeing finalized for the next 2 years.
They have apparently already set up a ten year plan for the major story beats, so I do not think Dragonflight is an intermission. It might be the proverbial “opening band” for whatever they have planned afterwards, though. While I enjoy Dragonflight, I will not deny it is an exceedingly safe expansion. That is likely a good thing, though, as they could not afford to go out on a limb again and have it blow up in their faces. They needed to come back and kind of reset things. Try and fix a lot of stuff if they broke recently and get people’s general trust back as the brand name is presently trashed.
In some ways I think how Shadowlands went humbled them a bit. They will likely not try anything as out there as the Shadowlands for a long time. The most exotic I can imagine them trying atm is if they sent us to somewhere like K’aresh for a void expansion. Which… I have wanted to visit since BC so I’d be on board with it but… yeah.
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Can you two just 1v1 each other already?
The winner faces me.
No doubt 10.3 will set up 11.0 in some measure. I’m not sure I really buy the whole “10 year plan” thing as it was pitched. Instead, I take it to mean the story is not going to get the leash yanked in a different direction while the game director and higher ups play spin-the-wheel on selecting which one of four planned expansions is up next.
When I see Metzen’s name back in the ring, I’m left wondering what prompted it and what the goal would be. Seems to me that, if they’re looking to bring in the creator for an advisory role, they’re likely looking to return closer to the creator’s vision in some way. That is going to involve setting up a lot of faction stuff. Dunno if I would go so far as to say I expect another world revamp, but I don’t think just pretending the Horde and Alliance have buried all their hatchets is going to cut it.
I don’t think the cosmic stuff can be salvaged after SL. It seems impossible to come back from claiming “unreliable narrator” about the book written by the top creatives to be the immutable setting/history information book and replacing it with robo-pantheons. Short of just straight up admitting they flubbed it and establishing that Zovaal and the Totally-Not-Ethereals-Wink just got everything completely wrong, I don’t see a path back for that aspect of the setting.
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I just wish they would retcon the titans to be the first ones and they simply invaded and ordered the shadowlands to what they best thought and then left to take care of the world souls. Then keep the other domains their own thing.
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I disavow this guy. He is not part of my faction.
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Be nice if he stopped following me. It’s all I ask. 
That’s not gonna be me anymore. I feel bad in the past for exchanging long term credibility for short term validation and belonging.
I’m just easily bored and the story has been so painfully thin that it’s hard to enjoy it without the constant feeling of “what’s next? Give me more!” And not in a good excited way, in a dangerous lack of stimulation kind of way. And the painfully slow rollout feeling like getting a single page of a book every 6 months.
It’s grating.
Hmm … honestly? I get the feeling that their use of “10 year plan” is more a corporate response to FF14’s lead dev claiming the same. I kinda believe 14 on that, given they literally, and more or less successfully, just completed a 10+ year story arc in an absurdly story intensive game. I’m not sure I can believe that same sort of statement, even in a general sense, from WoW. At least not in its current state.
Bluntly, I don’t think current WoW has the ability to stick to a 10 year plan … even if they had one. Because they’re too beholden to corporate will, and any major pushback they get to a story beat early in that plan, they’ll likely overreact to and send the pendulum wildly spinning in the other direction to overcompensate. On top of the fact that they’re still doubling down on the “retcons not to expand to world, but merely support the newest content” philosophy. How do you support any 10 year story plan on that sort of quicksand foundation?
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That’s honestly just how Blizzard tells it’s stories with Warcraft. Because very little tends to happen from the leveling process, the actual story begins in earnest at cap and only after prolonged weeks of some rep grind, provided the current expansion has it.
That said, based on their recent track record, I’d honestly say a slow roll out of nothing particularly ground breaking is preferable to a slow roll out where everything is always on fire.
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Aethas approaches Jaina, index fingers pressed together as he looks down at his feet to avoid eye contact.
"H-hey Jaina.
I’m sooooooo sowwy fow making uwu commit the puwge.
I’m sowwy i made uwu impwison awnd enabwe the hawming awnd muwdew of innocent peopwe.
I-I-I took the most impowtant Bwood Ewven awtifact awnd gave iwt tuwu dawawan!
B-but if thawt’s wasn’t enough, then I’ww get uwu sowme wandom music box uwu wost.
Cause i’m sooooooooo sowwy!"
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I am going to draw an MSpaint voodoo doll of you and cut-and-paste you into pieces with the select tool for this.
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Aethas’ face as he says all this. Which is hilarious to picture now 
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It wasn’t always like this.
This is a very very slow drip of story. At least in the early days of wow the story came out all at once, which allowed a lot of time for people to dissect and react to the whole story. This new way of story telling is WoD getting progressively worse.
OMG, I just realized … Jaina’s currently single, isn’t she?
Now I’m seriously wondering if they’re seriously going there.
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Oh Lordy if that’s true, but I don’t think they’ll do it so soon after just announcing they’re lowering the faction barrier over time. But yeah, I think Jaina is single again.
Alexa, play Bad Romance by Lady Gaga 
I’d argue it’s always been like this with WoW. We’ve never been given the full story of any piece of content until the very last patch, and more often than not didn’t get the full story anyway because parts of it either got dropped never to be seen again, or treated as “bread crumbs” for another plotline years down the line. The only exception I’d say would be the random oneshot raids, like the troll raids but even those just kinda pop up and then sputter into nothing for years.
To give a bit of credit, MoP up at a minimum at least gave the hint that if a plotline was started in one patch, it’d actually be continued until the Expansions end. (Though how that ended up working has been…/gestures vaguely at everything)
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Okay but the point was, it’s like being handed a page of a book at a time 6 months apart, it’s absolutely mind numbingly tedious and i don’t think it’s sutainable and that could explain why this game has experienced a drop in subs even a month after new content drops. There’s not enough story to sustain people’s interest, this is indisputable.