Yeah, I’m unclear on how the Arathi and Nerubs fighting furthered whatever Black Blood scheme she was pushing that … somehow enabled her to Dark Heart slurp Beledar? Maybe it was just corrupting Beledar into the void state so she could activate her Straw of the Void. I guess it doesn’t work on Light like everything else (Arcane, Void, Decay, at least).
It seemed pretty important, so I’m surprised an arrow cracked it open.
Or maybe Metzen was like “nah, that’s dumb, destroy it yesterday.”
WOW was always a character driven story. She is neither the first nor the last.
I just pray they don’t shove Alleria in Midnight again. Already tired of her.
If Anduin: The Windrunner Chronicles isn’t up your alley…
… thoughts and prayers
I did cherish Dalaran once upon a time, in WotLK. But destroying it didn’t do much for me. Maybe because they’ve made it clear that I was a second class citizen there in MoP and didn’t fix that in Legion (which was the last time we saw it).
Seeing as the Harronir were really freaked out about the black blood I feel like that’s going to be a lead in for them.
They didn’t spend that money on the cinematic budget for them to be irrelevant sidesters.
glances over at Bolvar
Yea destroying dalaran doesn’t really matter since everyone in it survived, horde players didn’t really have a reason to like dalaran anyway. it was just just a flat moment
She needs each Element for a Prophecy according to A Song of the Depths therefore she needs Galakrond’s Hunger and the Primal Rage of the Black Blood on top of the Arcane.
The Dark Heart being broken is part of the Prophecy though I imagine she assumed it already counted as broken(since Neltharion abandoned the thing in favor of the Dragon Soul) until it actually broke forcing her to discard it for whoever is supposed to get it(probably Azshara considering Dalaran’s power was drained).
This is why it’s damage changes nothing as the Prophecy is happening anyways just not in the way she preferred!
I’d probably care more about Dalaran being destroyed if I had any love left for the story at all anymore but I just don’t. BfA-Shadowlands completely broke the setting for me and it’s never recovered. I just go through the motions while questing now but I care about anyone or anything happening in those quests, for good or for bad.
Dalaran being disenchanted to me was a “Oh man, Khadgar is gone, RIP. Oh wait, DALARAN IS GONE! Anyway…” moment. No lost love for that place.
As for Xal, I like her. But then again I like sassy characters with a moral compass more crooked than my spine, so she’s right up my alley. Since this is a trilogy I expect to see more of her as time goes on, giving us the chance to bond further.
That’s coming from a DK main, though. I’m pretty sure Shadow Priest mains are already wondering what to make of their ex-gf rampaging through the land. I’m imagining dialogues like
Thrall: So… Who had the brilliant idea to bring a sentient Black Empire artifact back into play, again?
SPriest champion: Uhhhhhhhhh… Alonsus? Yeah, YEAH! Alonsus told me to do it!
Not quite everyone. Some familiar NPCs (mostly vendors) appear as corpses in the intro event.
The thing that does intrigue me about the destruction of Dalaran is, what happened to the Violet Hold? I sincerely hope that the city was destroyed in order to free some of the beings locked up in the Hold and that they’ll appear later in the expansion. If that plot point is just memory-holed, I’m going to be ticked off.
Yeah, there’s that too.
There is a trio of rotating rarespawns in the Dalaran debris that are escaped prisoners.
Three rares on the Isle of Dorn are Violet Hold escapees. They spawn in a rotation on a 30-60min respawn timer. There is also a side quest where you kill another escapee.
oh no not the vendors, anyway
You’re right, however…
I think that a lot of these stories are kind of necessary. They are the things that would have been told in the books or in an RTS narrative where we don’t even have characters. Then when we get to WoW we jump into that narrative in the open world and our faction NPCs stand in Stormwind and Orgrimmar and congratulate us on ending the threat.
But now they need to weave that story in an MMO where everyone is a different character with different motivations and you CAN’T weave a coherent narrative where Nathaniel Mawthorne the undead hunter is the main character. He’s small time. He just loves his priestess and his dark hound. He’s not even all that upset about Khadgar. Who cares about that guy?
Tbf, The lich king taunting you through dungeons was good stuff. Maybe they should have had more of that. But we aren’t the main characters in that story. Jaina, and Sylvanas were. Bolvar, I guess?
I mean they’ve shown they can do individual touches for classes, it wouldn’t be too hard just to have xal’atath makes some digs at us cause of what we did in legion or whatever, killing khadgar was the only thing that made me sorta care about the expac but he is just fine so now it doesn’t matter.
While having us front and center in cinematics is right out, there are hits and misses where I can imagine my character being there (like Kalec and Khadgar teleporting us out of the Vault of Incarnates right before we get ett) or I’m left wondering wtf my guy is doing (Sylvanas vs. Genn, Alleria vs. Xal’atath).
The Lich King is more akin to what I’m asking for, though maybe a little less 80s cartoon villainy in the “Nyaaah, fools! I’m going to point my sword at you, monologue, and step through a deathgate for the 17th time this zone!” A few interactions along the way to make the stakes a little more personal go a long way, and don’t demand an entire cinematic team to hammer out. We’ve already got most NPCs talking to us as floating heads/disembodied voices while we quest (get out of my head, get out of my head, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!). Even something as little as having her taunt, congratulate, or step on u… I mean… uh… that is… heh… have a good day.
Hey, it’s something. I appreciate the attention to realism.
Still, there should have been a lot more and a lot more powerful threats. If they don’t have plans for this, I’m going to be disappointed.
I suppose it entirely depends on where the Violet Hold wound up when the rest of Dalaran got disenchanted.
I disagree. She’s the first antagonist in awhile that has had some proper setup. She’s also unique compared to other WoW antagonists up to this point. And we didn’t really beat her, per-se. She set the Nerubians up to get roflstomped by the two main factions so she could absorb a crap ton of void energy from them, which she seems to have mostly accomplished before we stopped her from getting the last bit.
Blowing up Dalaran doesn’t really land, not because we don’t care about Dalaran, but because it was done in an honestly very dumb manner.
Oh WoW! The council member that has been missing for years and just happened to show back up is a villain in disguise? Incredible… and our PCs were dumb enough to do their bidding and weaken the shields around Dalaran like the stupid lemmings we apparently always are. Lame.
What’s his face should’ve been a red herring, Xalatath should’ve at least been disguised as one of the council members who have been present since Legion. Not like they’re the most important lore characters anyways.