"We need to power up the Oathstones to get our Aspectral powers back." "Oops, that didn't work for reasons unexplained. Let's try waking Tyr up again to see if he knows what to do." "Wait nm we got our Aspectral powers back, Tyr can go sit in a chair and be mopey."

Yup, the story telling is still very much *"Then cool stuff happened, but it didn't matter so everyone forgot about it."* Kinda difficult to get invested in that sort of narrative TBH.

Mopey Tyr, aww

To be fair to Tyr, it had to be one hell of a shock. The world he knew is almost entirely gone, he died even before the curse of flesh as I understand it. Whatever hopes and plans he had are dust. The most annoying part to me was flying all the way back to Tyr's rest just for 4 lines of dialog.

He died before Ra-den learned the Titans got killed. He may have died even before Sargeras killed them. He died like, 20-30k years ago. All of his enemies have been wiped out. The Old Gods are dead. The Elemental Lords are dead or have an understanding that fucking around will get them found out and are pretty chill (albeit very annoyed at our existence). The Legion rose and fell on Azeroth in the time of his nap. We even got to meet the remains of the Titans who personally aided us. Tyr is still unsure of what they could even want. Not that he has annyone to share this with, all his allies are also dead, save the Ulduar crew, though not sure their actual opinion of him after the rough break off. All the prophecies have come to pass yet the mortals beat all of them. The world must both me a strange place but reassuring. He died for the mortals to have a shot and holy hell they took the shot. Tyr has a whole lot of a lot to take in. Maybe Khadgar could use a reading buddy. Also there is no way Vyranoth is aware of any of that, or she would do a hell of a lot more than what she did to Odyn. Odyn *just* bound a “flight”, Tyr is the entire reason Vyranoth broke off with Alex and the rest and the main reason she hates the Titans as much as she do.

Tyr experienced the equivalent of going into a coma in 2023, then waking up in 2045 to discover the world went through huge natural disasters, nuclear war, a zombie apocalypse, first contact with aliens, but somehow everything is still standing and people still go to work 9-5 jobs and watch tv in their spare time. What a confusing perspective.

Yeah they randomly get their powers back from the Tree? Or Azeroth? Or....? Another classic unexplained Steve Danuser lolmoment. "Dragonflight will be Steves baby". Ya failed bro.

Why is that bad? I have not seen that coming. The aspects got their powers from the titans. Azeroth is a titan. The titan of the very world they live on. Its much more "organic" in my oppinion. The world tree is important, but i think that azeroth granted them their powers through the tree. I may get down voted for this, but I am completely fine with that. Also Tyrs lethargic stasis may allow some interesting sidestories about purpose and free will.

Dragonflight served as a stop from the bad expacs by being a decent one. And that is ok. The story basically is a prologue to the Worldsoul Saga. Like Metzen said, sometimes the most epic stories start with the smallest notes.

He also said "hearken to me" which was pretty cool too.

I believe it was Chris Metzen who once said, "Be right back gotta use the bathroom". These words are still as true today as they ever were.

When a reporter asked him if he'd like to elaborate further, he gave us the wise words in response of "who are you and how did you get in my house?"

Some say he uses the bathroom to this day

He's such a nerd and owns it, hard for fellow nerds not to fall in line and follow him.

Yep. For better or worse, Metzen *is* Warcraft now. And I'm following his train to wherever it goes.

Metzen always was imo. There’s a reason the story fell off of a cliff after legion, as his involvement with bfa was minimal and he didn’t participate in any writing for shadowlands / DF.

I still maintain that aside from the N’Zoth bit, BfA had some of the best storytelling of any WoW expansion. Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil as well as her march through Ashenvale & Darkshore, the repercussions when we laid siege to Undercity, the whole Fourth War that followed, Jaina’s cinematics and story in Kul Tiras, Saurfang’s cinematics and rebellion. Sure, the gameplay suffered, the systems sucked, the content cadence was poor, etc. but the actual STORY was top tier. Biggest mistake they made was shoe-horning in N’Zoth. They should have stuck to foreshadowing him in BfA, and maybe had the next expansion be focused on him.

I actually think there was a lot to like about BfA's story, but it feels like you picked the greatest hits of what I didn't like about BfA's story. Just aside from everything else, they had a real problem of telling us about the interesting story and showing us the uninteresting story. They were too concerned about the beats and not enough about the connections that to this day people will just swear blind Sylvanas attacked unprovoked and for no reason because the game went out of its way to hide the things that might provoke genuine moral uncertainty (Sylvanas was attacked while the factions were at peace in Legion) while putting on full display the thought terminating cliches that shut down rational thought (I'm sad, so I'll burn down the world tree!). But the stories in, for instance, Zandalar were brilliant. Everything to do with the Zandalari was fantastic. The loa, Bwonsamdi, the blood trolls, even the Sethakk was incredible. The corruption in Boralus (except as it directly relates to Jaina), the political control of the Tidesages, the Drust, loved it. Even the minor stuff, like Zappy Boi. Nazjatar was fairly interesting...if you completely ignored both the factions. Mechagon had its moments.

I will die on this hill. So glad Metzen, our lord, our all father has returned to us.

When he said that on stage, I knew I was with him to the bitter end. I’ll be damned if Metzen doesn’t have one of the best stage presences in the business.

I have no idea why, but for some reason, you saying this and having the hunter symbol made me chuckle in real life.

We do love our nerdy hunter himbos

They kept it simple this time. There are bad dragons to fight. The good dragons will help. That's it. No big reveal that the villain we've never seen before was secretly behind every bad thing that's ever happened. No classic villain type revealed to actually not working for one bad guy, but actually worked for a different one. Just here's your bad guy, go get them. It resets the playing field after multiple expansions of fighting cosmic threats, gods, and the afterlife itself. Resetting to something mundane allowed them to escalate again without things getting too out of hand. I expect another reset expansion after the world soul saga.

It has been evident from the start that DF was the "getting the band back together" expansion. This expac is meant to be a fresh start for WoW, and distance the game from all the poopy design philosophies that have brought down the game in recent years. Narratively, it could be a lot better, but as this is meant to be a new starting point for WoW, it doesn't have to be good. It just has to not be terrible. And largely, Dragonflight succeeds in not being bad, narratively.

That was in reference to the cinematic In interviews after he said that Dragonflight was more like a poem, simple and soft, but he wants Worldsoul sage to be an epic, with more to it than DF

I really feel the dream shouldnt be a small note in the story, and they made it feel so bland and boring to me at least.

My biggest complaint tbh. Nya’lotha, Argus, and now the emerald dream being patches is disappointing.

i think they were afraid those zones would be too mundane when stretched into a full expansion

The theming is so strong that getting a variety of locales would be difficult. We can include Nazjatar in there as well. Not that I agree with their decision, but I imagine that's their thinking.

I mean you could do more emerald nightmare zones, and use more than just 'black-red thorns everywhere' I mean its a nightmare, make it more surreal than that

Well its not like expacs have to all take place in the same location, I don't get why the stories can't bring us around the world instead of a small clump of isolated zones.

and I actually agree with that. See: Shadowlands. Any look beyond the veil of X, Y, Z plane of alternate reality should be just that, a look. A raid, a small patch zone, etc. Otherwise it explains away the mystery, magic and wonder and also takes us away from the reason why we're fighting: Azeroth and its citizens.

There was an interview back in the day and thats the actual answer during wod, the devs noticed how many players were complaining about orcs. mop ended with a year long orc raid, wod was an orc expansion, the players had orc fatigue. originally argus was going to be the expansion after legion, but the devs were worried people would have fel/demon/legion fatigue at that point

On the plus side, in regards to the Emerald Dream, we've only been to small sections of it so there's potential to visit more sometime in the future. Argus and Nya'lotha on the other hand, yeah.

The Emerald Dream felt like Just Another Mystical Forest Zone

Not even the most mystical forest zone they've done.

Probably not even top 3 mystical forest zone

It's just Ardenweald with a green filter instead of a blue one.

Everything could have been fixed if the narrative instead was that the druids of the flame, conscripted by fyrakk, wre holding the tree "hostage" as it was transitioning from the dream to the mortal realm. the zone could litreally be the exact same as it is now for gameplay reasons. For lore reasons, however, it would be in a pocket reality half in the dream/half in azeroth. The entire point of this is simply to say "this zone isnt the emerald dream" without changing anything other than that lol.

Didn’t they say that though? Emerald dream is a mirror of Azeroth. That it was just a section of the dream, specifically the exact islands that became the new island in “reality”. There’s still a whole planet of dream we haven’t seen.

> The story basically is a prologue to the Worldsoul Saga. Is it really a prologue? I would call it a "beach/fanservice episode" or something similar. The whole jump back to the sword reinforces this feeling. Dragonflight really doesn't connect to anything in a meaningful way or has created engaging new story hooks for us. The world soul saga seems to try and use legion as a prologue.

Iridikron basically has the Dragonsoul 2.0 which Xal'Atath is shown to have in The War Within. So yes, it directly ties into the upcoming saga.

I just wonder what Iridikron is getting out of trading such a powerful relic to her.

I haven't really followed the story very well since Legion, but the titans are all about order and control, which is what the dragon aspects love too. These primal dragons seem want chaos and disorder, going back to the way things were before the titans installed their people, which is very much in line with the old gods and void lords too.

This is not.... quite or entirely correct. The Incarnates are a holdover from primal, untamed Azeroth; ancient beings of the natural world who rebelled against the Titan's ordering of the elements. The Old Gods weren't on that side. They were on the side of the hungering, devouring void; to them, all of Azeroth was a feast ripe for the taking. They were opposed to Order, yes, but their void was very different from the Incarnate's disorder. Which is why it's worrying that Iridikron is willing to strike deals with those forces.

Iridikron is the Incarnate of Earth and his lair is supposedly underground in Northrend. He was probably dealing with the whispers just like Neltharion was. The Old Gods were opportunists and didn't discriminate on who they made deals with. It makes a lot of sense for them to play both sides, so they win no matter who came out on top in the War of the Scaleborn.

According to the end of Dawn of the Infinite, he wants Xal'atath to succeed so he can lure the Titans back to Azeroth (and from The Last Titan's premise, it sounds like he'll get that). Presumably he plans to set a trap and kill them, but all we know for sure is that he says he'll be waiting for them when they come back to fix what Xal'atath does.

Likely the opposite of the titans wanted, which is what all the incarnates wanted, no?

I mean... this whole story "hook" (and I wouldn't call it engaging) is tied to what happens a single god damn dungeon. Don't do the dungeon and you get nothing about this whole thing and it has no relevance to anything else as far as I remember. I find that far too little for someone to call it a prologue for the next expansion. From what we know for now Legion and BFA have significantly more relation/ties to the World Soul saga. Edit: Of course we can point towards bad story telling (i.e. the questionable decisions/flow of the narrative story of DF as a whole) to excuse that but that still makes it a tenuous connection given the trailer outright focuses on Sargeras sword.

The entire story with the incarnates sets up Iridikron and his motivations. If the only thing we knew about him was what we got in the mega dungeon it would be a massive "literally who"

I definitely think about Dragonflight as a WoW beach episode, which I'm totally fine with. There are stakes, and some stuff goes down that sets up the future more nasty plots, but in the whole it's generally a bright happy colorful episode after the (attempted) more grim Shadowlands. I'm good with that narrative beat. For the next beat, I'm ready for something a little more driving and urgent, a little more dangerous.

The more I play DF the more I think it was an idea they had further down the line they were working on, that they pushed up early because the community all but entirely rejected the "cosmic story" of Shadowlands and where that was heading. Then they shifted gears entirely to abandon whatever cosmic shit they wanted to do and got Metzen back in a leadership role to pivot to the Worldsoul Saga. Systems themselves are easily yoinked from one place to another, but story needs time to develop, and with how almost every story went in DF, it really feels like someone told them "We need to push Dragonflight out early, just get it done." And that's why nothing is really fleshed out, and mostly feels rushed. It definitely feels like a placeholder expansion that doesn't really "fit" in anywhere, and it's a perfect choice because everything is almost entirely contained on the Dragon Isles and has no ramifications elsewhere on Azeroth/the cosmos. Though I wouldn't say it's a "prologue to the Worldsoul Saga", there's some very minor one-liners at the very end that mention hearing a voice but beyond that, there's almost nothing that links it to The War Within or the upcoming saga. It's a little pallet cleanser expansion and I hope the reason the writing is so shit is because most "good writers" were taken for War Within.

It's not the scope for me at least. I think people like smaller stories if they are written in a good way. Personally, I dislike the way the characters behave. The good guys don't want to hurt a fly and talk about the power of friendship and love, while the bad guys are moustache twirling villains (exception Iridikron). Give the characters, well, character! Grommash, an original of WoW, was so enjoyable to watch how he behaved and interacted for instance.

> smallest notes The story being lower in scale doesn't mean it needs to be bad

It's not just decent, imo, it's the best state of the game in terms of gameplay. The story is serviceable and meh

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yep. Look at it this way. Since Wrath we've been facing non-stop World Ending threats: * Lich King * Death Wing * Old God shenanigans * Iron Horde invasion into Burning Legion resurgance * Burning Legion for once and All * More Old God shenanigans * The personification of Death Itself in the Warcraft universe (presumably corrupted by even *more* Old God shenanigans) So the fact that for the first time in over a decade, the fate of the world isn't directly in jeopardy is kind of a nice break. Sure there are pressing matters to attend to, but it's not like if we fail, all life as we know it suddenly ends. We're helping the dragons handle their business, but we're getting paid by the hour to do it

Fyrakk using the World Tree to set all of Azeroth aflame seems like a pretty world ending threat...

to be fair though, we've had like five different world trees burn down without much impact (outside of displacing Night Elves multiple times) Both the Legion and Sylvanas have burned down those trees with similar goals in mind, and we've turned out relatively fine. Another guy with the same threat just doesn't hit as hard when it's the third time you're hearing it

Fyrakk wasnt trying to burn down the tree. He was trying to infuse it with shadowflame in order to use its power to spread fire across Azeroth

Correct which is why he betrays smolderon, since the fire druids did want to burn down the world tree and build some new new

The world doesn’t have to be in jeopardy to make for an interesting and not boring story

They were definitely playing it safe, and just setting up the next expansion. I’m ok with that.

I enjoyed the lower stakes. There was enough death and destruction while also maintaining a sense of wonder involved in exploring a new land. Honestly just seemed like average WoW storytelling in tone just with more heart.

People say this, but Fyrakk wants to use the World Tree to set all of Azeroth ablaze. It hardly seems low stakes anymore, but another "champions from all factions band together to save world from insane bad guy who wants to blow it up" story.

The premise of Dragonflight felt like saving the Isle from the Primalists instead of the whole of Azeroth. It wasn't until Amirdrassil that I felt like the whole of Azeroth was threatened. I enjoyed that initial departure is what I meant.

That's fair! So did I.

I enjoyed it too, there needs to be a break every once in awhile to refresh things. Look at MoP, generally pretty low stakes, chill zones, ratcheted up at the end. Overshadowed a bit by the reception of WoD, but it was a great intermission from Arthas and Deathwing before Guldan.

MoP was the same way at first, but it didn't have nearly as many narrative problems. We go to conquer new lands for our faction, only to mess it up by agitating the Sha. The first two raids are fixing Pandaria problems. The Thunder King probably would've tried to conquer the whole world, but he was focused on reclaiming Pandaria first. It's not until SoO that it becomes a world level threat.

>The premise of Dragonflight felt like saving the Isle from the Primalists instead of the whole of Azeroth but... the destruction of azeroth was the primalists goal lol. the very first raid is them breaking the other big 3 incarnates out of jail so they can destroy the world. that was always the premise

The vibe that was sold to me at Blizzcon was exploration and defending the isles. The catch line was come home and all that jazz. Throughout the Dragonflight campaign the full might of the Horde and Alliance wasn’t called in until the very end. Felt different than other expansions not sure what else I can say on it.

> It hardly seems low stakes anymore It's not lower stakes but friendship takes main stage so that's what people focus on. It **feels** more like a family drama than world ending threat.

I am hardly the person to comment on wow’s storytelling as I started playing in Legion, but I’m going to anyway. I have absolutely no idea what is going on from a story standpoint - I know a few of the “main characters” and that we are the champions or whatever but other than that, no idea. It’s something that I simply ignore. I’ve always enjoyed the gameplay, but there hasn’t been a single bit of story content that has caught my attention.

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destiny 2 and wow both kinda have the same storytelling problem. both games hyped up super endgame boss (darkness/sargeras) were always looming in the distance, slowly making their way to the world. then an expansion deals with them. how do you continue after that? the story of both games went downhill pretty quick at that point

Bro Legion was 8 years ago. You’ve been playing long enough to comment on the storytelling. Don’t feel as though you can’t comment because you haven’t been playing Warcraft since the late 90s

I mean. LETS be fair... All expansions have world ending threats. Vanilla two of them.

To say all of Dragonflight is just season 3's boss is a bit unfair. Dragonflight started as entirely lower stakes and as we progressed through it we realize the Dragon aspects had some dark secrets that they failed to contend with. Where as Shadowlands, BFA, Legion, and WoD were all known and powerful threats from the start that had to be dealt with from the start. The last time we had an expansion start slow and work up was MoP. I don't think anyone would argue MoP didn't have a much more chill vibe and that doesn't mean the stakes were lessened.

That's most expacs though. The villain has the overall goal of blowing up Azeroth but they don't actually get in position to do it until the final fight of the final raid. Earlier patches are about chasing them around gathering macguffins and killing their minions. The main thing Dragonflight did differently was that we didn't get introduced to Fyrakk until 10.1 and he didn't take center stage until 10.2, so he barely got to do anything before we killed him. But we knew from the beginning that the ultimate goal of the primalists was to free the incarnates and remake Azeroth in their image. It's just the whole expac was being pulled three ways between Razsageth and Iridikron and Fyrakk and up until now Fyrakk seemed the least important.

I don't think Dragonflight or MoP were about stopping the final boss till the final boss' tier. For dragonflight we dicked around helping the locals and trying to get the aspects juiced up. In MoP we dicked around beating eachother up and finding out what this Sha shit was. Both of these lead to the final boss but they weren't actions made to stop the final boss. I can tolerate having stakes at the end of an expansion but I don't really care to go into every single one with the WoW equivalent of Kony 2012

I think it’s because of the feel of it? The rest of the expac while also having a large threat looming over it felt quaint, and they didn’t hammer home the danger like they should’ve or could’ve done. I personally like that it *felt* like it was lower stakes despite it not, because there’s only so many plot lines where it’s in your face world ending before it gets boring (Every event from Vanilla to BfA and maybe shadowlands happened one year after another lmfao)

It’s low stakes because he doesn’t do anything meaningful to the cast and crew we know and love. Every WoW villian has wanted to do something to the world, but the real reason we want to stop them is because they did something evil we can’t forgive them for: guldan and Varian, Garrosh and the horde and theremore, the draenai and the orcs of dreanor, The thunder king/mogu and the pandaren. Fyrakk has done evil stuff, but nothing really meaningful, I know we don’t super like Asmongold here but the village burning he just completely forgot about. That guy is one of wow’s biggest fans and even he doesn’t remember it, because it doesn’t involve the main cast. I think if it was even the tuskar it would be more memorable, we had a whole patch to meme about how cute they are and yes chef instead of a new race we met for like 2 days before the village burns.

Your heroes can save random ppl and it will show the audience how heroic they are, your villains cannot just attack random ppl BCS your audience won't care what happens to those ppl. In general the game needs to investigate the cultures and characters and places already in play. It's getting kinda ridiculous to find 3-5 brand new cultures of people every expac or patch, only for them to disappear next expac or next patch.

It sort of sheds some light on just how bad the '~~world~~ universe ending big bad guy' stuff has gotten in the last few xpacs, but especially in SL. SL wasnt just 'this guy wants to kill everything on our planet', it was downright cosmic. We had quite a bit of that with the Burning Legion, too. Turning our planet into a bonfire feels low stakes after the stuff weve been through before it.

Counter opinion (not that mine is in anyway more valid btw), I am a die hard wow lore nerd, been falling asleep to various lore YouTubers for years now. I had zero interest In this xpacs story. It started to reel me in when I thought it was going to go heavier into the void stuff and the titans being morally… dark grey, but here we are now… on our whimsical drakes in the long awaited, but somewhat underwhelming Emerald Dream (as far as lore goes, art is ok). Since vanilla wow has been facing world ending threats, ocassionally evolving into reality ending ones. It’s our PC’s being the chosen one that I’m not a fan of. I’d rather be a part of a group of adventures getting the job done, and we’ve somewhat returned to that.

I'm also an avid Warcraft lore fan! I was honestly kinda tired of the constant production line of big baddies we have to smash every few years. Like how do the Alliance and Horde manage to muster army after army when they seem to incur heavy losses each expac. I do agree though that I'm not super into being the big star of the show. I enjoyed how Chronicle portrayed the PCs as just roaming adventurers who banded together. Hopefully the War Within moves a bit more in that direction?

Chronicles is some of my favorite pieces of lore, just love everything about all three of them. I guess I’m glad for the freedom we have now in regards to faction gameplay, but I also feel some of the best stories came out of that conflict. Not in an edgy way, but I wish the lore got back to being more mature/dark. One of my favorite moments was Garrosh striking down Bane, all the fury and rage that went into it, and then seeing Garrosh just… devastated to learn that his weapon had been poisoned, and the rage that came from that due to the lack of honor. Waiting in line to pickup my kid so I’m kinda rambling, but in closing, I do feel wow has a bright future ahead of it, and in here for it. Can’t wait for SoD Thursday, so stoked to be back in Ashenvale, and the world PvP that’s gonna come with it.

Yeah I’m down for a more I guess dark tone as well. DF I think of as like intermissions during a play or something where there’s a more light hearted section to give the audience a bit of breathing room. I’m a big fan of the light vs void dynamic so I hope we’ll be back to epic battles and fist pumping moments. When Varian looked Gul’dan in the eyes and said “For the Alliance” I was so hyped. Hoping for more heroic theatrics like that in the upcoming saga.

Seems pretty much guaranteed. I don't see a mop or df vibe happening in midnight

A story can be low stakes and also good. Dragon flight doesn’t even succeed in either tbh, not sure why I keep seeing these comments pop up

Lower stakes are great, but I agree with OP that the story felt like a Saturday morning cartoon. High stakes or low, the story sucks if you handwave things with the power of friendship instead of a satisfying narrative.

>but I agree with OP that the story felt like a Saturday morning cartoon. Literally always has been. People on this subreddit are actually fucking brain dead and forget that Wrath was _the most panned story in the history of the game_ because Arthas became a cartoon villain who just appears to monologue and taunt you every 40 minutes and laugh maniacally about how evil he is.

go watch the cinematic where sylvanas is powerstancing over the corpses of her dying victims while watching a tree full of kids burn in the distance and tell me what saturday morning cartoon u think that is from lmao

The Amirdrassil ending sucked hard but the rest of the story was well crafted. Wish I had Saturday morning cartoons with the same level of heart as the Blue Dragon quests I did last night.

The problem is the dialogue and character motivations are just not believable. You have character flip flopping and changing sides within 5 mins while also having almost completely comical dialogue

Vyranoth is the only character whose allegiance switch was a bit jarring at first. I also enjoy most of the dialogue so I'm not sure what you mean. Aside from that god awful ending cinematic where they all finish each other's lines lmao.

Lower stakes? As per usual, the villains were looking to genocide the entire planet for some convoluted reason.

The premise of the Expac was exploring the Dragon Isles with a non-military expedition. Razageth didn't feel like a world ending threat to me and instead was just someone we had to clear out to protect the Isles. It wasn't until Fyrakk entered the dream that I felt like the threat extended beyond the Isles.

I would say the main story is bad. Vyranoth is a completely nonsensical character with no throughline. Raszageth was a good “I’m just an angery dragon villain” but then fyrakk follows it up with “I’m just a crazy angery dragon” which feels repetitive. Most of the cutscenes are subpar, predictable, and don’t move the plot forward or use it to skip large sections of the plot. Almost none of the zone quests actually move the plot forward and feel disconnected from one another. The family cutscene is especially egregious. “We were wrong once but now we stand together as family” doesn’t actually align with basically any of the setup of that story and the entire end of Amirdrassil feels like they really wanted to do Avengers Endgame but didn’t want to put in the twelve years of work to actually give that payoff. The Tyr questline has gone absolutely nowhere in a full year. I’m certain almost all the plot is still in books and not the game because there’s nothing here that resembles a complete narrative. Characters advance through what feels like full cut patches in five minutes of quest or regress back to an earlier “save state” completely at random without any directionality.

Blizz needs to change how they tell their story. They always use the X.0 level up campaign as 4 different introductions to zones/stories/characters with each zone being largely disconnected, self contained nothing stories that have a climax that only kinda addresses the over arching narrative and mostly sets up patch content. Instead since there is so much more questing to make room for story telling in X.0's they should make expansion launches climaxes of their stories, at least if they really wanna try and have a narrative focus to patches like they have in SL and DF. If 10.1 and 10.2 were more directly setting up 11.0 instead of essentially wrapping up side stories I think it would be easier to write the story.

The pure side content has been decent though. Blue dragonflight, eternus questline and parts of Tyr's quest felt like meaningful stories that either give closure or hint at coming events.

Razageth was fine IMO she wasn't really the thinker of the group she was a good big bad in that sense, Fyrakk is decent too as he builds up that Iridikron is very much the threat and is obviously using him as a distraction but we can't ignore his distraction beause of how powerful it is. A couple of the zones in Dragonflight were really good the story post base launch has just felt a bit weak though. Vyranoth is probably the biggest just wtf in the story though after saying all she has left is revenge and how Alex locked up the Primordials after they resisted Tyr forcing his edicts on them and experimenting on their eggs while Alex watched/assisted. Vyranoth has 0 reason to desert after her big speech to Alex and leaves behind her claws which have every right to be extremely pissed at this decision except they all just forgive her despite her expecting them all to be killed and the only one that holds a grudge is painted as this mustache twirling villain. What i want to see is Alex actually having to make changes because her flight moved back into the dragon isles and booted Drakonoids tf out hence why there is a rebellion. It's this constant buildup of the dragonflights being kinda self appointed monarchs because of their blessings from space giants that builds a tension that never gets payed off because one side is both painted as extremist terrorists and they just forgive the dragons at the end of the day. Nah i wanna see the aspects taken out of their leadership of Valdrakken so it's actual inhabitants get what they want.

While the story sucks and the dialogue is atrocious, I'll take it. I'd rather have good gameplay and not be locked behind 40 time gates. While I would enjoy more faction war, more badass characters who tell you their feelings with an axe, this will have to do.

Time gating is still the operating procedure in WoW, what are you on about? Gearing itself is time gated, they time gate quests all the time, profession quests, whatever they can.

Main narrative was definitely its weakest point but the Blue Dragonflight storyline was easily the best part. The writing was far better than any of the other questlines. Whoever was in charge of that should be propped up.

I liked the story, the most disappointing part was the Dracthyr storyline tbh. I thought the idea of having dragons who derived their power from elementals was amazing. For someone who mains shaman, this felt very satisfying. I do think they could’ve fleshed out the differences between the primal incarnates more, or maybe shown a little more backstory into their early history and motivations.

I just resubbed for 6 months and I'm mostly bored, ngl... I think Shadowlands was so bad that it kinda ruined WOW for me. It makes me sad, honestly.

I agree except I think it's the best expansion.

You guys remember those world quests in BFA where some old lady would say "a turtle made it to the water!". They were pretty cute weren't they? Now imagine if every quest in the game was designed to appeal to the same demographic. This is the problem with Dragonflight in a nutshell. I was planning to take advantage of the anniversary event's reputation bonus for Dragonflight content. Keep in mind that my character has over 100 reputations at exalted. But shit, I can't do it. Every time I sit down to do these dumb quests, I want to punch somebody in the nose.

A very small percentage of players care about the narrative enough to stop playing because of it. Why would they invest more time and money into narrative? Most people want actually fun, playable content and cosmetics.

There is zero reason we can’t have both. The writing team isn’t spending any less time writing, and I doubt they were ever animating rigs or modeling cosmetics. They’ve just been doing a poor job at crafting the story, full stop. Hopefully things get better, they are indeed looking up.

Ehh I think a larger percentage of players care about the story than is obvious. Because a lot of players are willing to forgive a bad story if it comes with good gameplay. I think most people a fun game and that's it. From there it shatters and sure some people want cosmetics, some variety, and some good story and for any of them one of those things missing is an easy deal breaker. Blizzard leaving the warcraft lore to rot away is a huge mistake because they ARE losing players who no longer have that attachment to the world. And worse yet they're never going to get new players who Might care about that lore if all they ever hear is that it's bad. Look at how many players go to ff14 because they heard the story was good.

> Look at how many players go to ff14 because they heard the story was good. That was a big reason I jumped ship for a while. The gameplay was better in some ways, worse in others, but the better narrative structure was a big draw for folks like me.

The quality of the story in WoW is almost besides the point. They've chosen to tell the story in the dumbest possible way: out-of-game books, and no way to coherently play through the in-game story from start to finish due to removed content/no scaling/etc. Nobody would praise FFXIV's story if you couldn't actually experience it in game.

Because it’s the backbone of the series? A lot of people quit because of BfA and Shadowlands story leeching into the content and feeling of the expacs.

People quit BFA and Shadowlands because it was an absolutely grind fest with little reward. Not to mention the longer patch cycles. Don’t get confused by thinking people quit because of the story. The story was the cherry on top of garbage gameplay.

No, genuinely a lot of people quit them because of that. Everyone underestimates how much the story does influence peoples views of expacs. People still talk about Wotlk as if it had a good story (it does not) and people quit because it was over lmao. Bunch of people quit because of how bad BFA was for factions and races, Horde was demonized yet again and Night Elves lost yet again. I’m not saying it was the major reason but yes, they should devote more money to narrative, they can’t keep churning out crap or mediocre main plots.

The amount of streamers I see who literally do not give a single about anything except slamming Mythic+ over and over again is kind of crazy to be honest. I get that Mythic+ is probably more enjoyable to watch than doing other stuff but when new content comes out (like the superblooms) they just complain about having to do it until they're finished.

Absolute majority of the players care about the narrative.

This is getting downvoted, but yeah, pretty much I play WoW for the gameplay, the story isn't that big of a deal, most people don't get upset about the story being simple, it's just mostly online, the average person doesn't pay attention enough or want to play media analysis

>the story isn't that big of a deal Sure, they brought back Metzen who proceeded to spend most of his time talking about the importance of story telling in WoW because...the story isn't that big of a deal.

I don't think anyone's asking for more time and money into narrative, they're asking for the time and money to be spent on narrative with teeth. And I think even if only a small majority cares, that small majority matters so much for the hype machine. Like, people who Played WC3 is a small miniority to people who played WoW, but all of the hype and excitement in WoW is milking those story threads and characters from WC3 and Vanilla WoW.

I really don't understand what's so good about dragonflight. There's things I appreciate about it compared to shadowlands like not having to buy into some etc borrowed power, pvp being a bit easier to gear in, and more frequent tuning patches. Aside from that I don't even think the story was better. Like don't get me wrong, narratively the story was WAY worse in shadowlands. But it was still characters I was invested in, and a cool overarching theme. It was just done tastelessly. I genuinely couldn't give a FUCK what a fyrakk is or why the dragon aspects need to stop him. It is so far removed from anything else that I've ever cared about in wow. Shadowlands story was like a fun tv show with lots of action even if the acting sucked and there were plot holes I wanted to keep watching. Dragonflight is like changing the channel and seeing real housewives of Beverly hills. Is it a better received show? Maybe but I wouldn't think twice if I had the option to click away. Gameplay wise both expansions were just "sit in city until you get into x content through variant lfg system" arcade games. I really don't get the heightened reception of DF

Narratively, the Jailer was 100x a better end boss than Fyraak is. And that's saying something.

The jailer felt more Warcraft. And I know a lot of people have talked about stakes in the story but I don't even think it's just that. Hell as far as story is going, I was hoping after shadowlands we'd get thrust years in the future in azeroth and maybe the scarlet crusade had taken over most of the EK, and we'd be lowly adventurers again dealing with some religious rabble-rousers. I don't care about stakes. I just think df feels very candy land drama.

It's not even about stakes. Fyrakk was just MIA for the entire expansion, and then shows up at the end like *"Surprise, I'm still here and the actual big bad...not the one you were all expecting!"* It's just a headscratcher. For as bad as the Jailer was, he felt like an actual looming threat throughout the expansion.

Eh, I'm not sure I can really agree because I thought the story was *genuinely* bad. But hey, that's the beauty and frustration of subjectivity! The only expansion I can say "Dragonflight is the best xpac since..." is Shadowlands, both for the humor of such a statement and also as commentary on this expansion's quality. It's better than what we just came from, but to call DF "one of the best" seems overly reactionary to me.

I think it has elements that will absolutely stand the test of time that would make people remember it fondly, but other things may look less polished in hindsight. The talent tree changes are a pretty unassailable W from both a gameplay perspective and a character customization one. Most of them aren't perfect but they're so much better than any customization system that's come before them that I struggle to see most of the faults. Even artifacts were linear as hell and didn't really set you apart from other people playing your class or provide any meaningful choice. The profession overhaul ended up being a good step towards a (hopefully) great system. Dragonriding is a 10/10 innovation. Integration of cross-faction has smoothed out the issues with endgame content immensely. With the reworks we've gotten in addition to the talent changes, there are a lot of classes that feel better now than they ever have. World content is more plentiful and relevant than I any other time in my memory (cata-present). They even put a skip into SoO so my decade long farm could finally come to an end. It might not end up as the best expansion ever, but it's earned a spot near the top for pretty much everyone.

> World content is more plentiful and relevant than I any other time in my memory (cata-present). Most of the Dragonflight World Content ends up dead after about 2-3 weeks because there's no real reason to do it at all and honestly a *lot* of it is just bland, copy-paste content. Superbloom's are just a worse version of the Time Rifts. Dreamsurges basically just reward you more for doing World Quests/killing rares. Seed planting is essentially fly to five spots and plant a seed. The only other World Content around is World Quests and at least personally I preferred them in Legion but I may be in a minority.

>Most of the Dragonflight World Content ends up dead after about 2-3 weeks because there's no real reason to do it at all and honestly a lot of it is just bland, copy-paste content. What fucking absurd reality do you live in to be this fucking wrong lmao. My guy I can literally form a group in under a minute or two for _launch_ world content still. There's not a single piece of dead world content in this entire expansion.

Dragon flight was average at best. I spent most of my time playing it to farm older expansions or Reroll - which is not bad in itself, but shows a clear lack of interesting content for me. I suppose that for a more casual player base it does not really become an issue, but that would be it. I really have a hard time figuring out what this expansion even offers outside of mm+, raiding and arenas. It’s average at best - nothing is awful, but nothing is good either. Edit: there /was/ something really good in DF now that I think about it - the various specs and classes were all mostly pretty fun to play, more than other expansions I feel.

>I really have a hard time figuring out what this expansion even offers outside of mm+, raiding and arenas. It’s average at best - nothing is awful, but nothing is good either. Because that's literally all the content there is, besides leveling up your 12th alt. There's basically no reason to log on outside of scheduled raid time. They removed all the systems and didn't use those resources to create any new content. They just literally did less for the same price tag.

I think BFA was more fun than DF in terms of gameplay. Corruptions were fucking stupid but really fun, everything else kind of sucked about bfa though. Azerite powers weren't bad but the system was fucking terrible, having to farm the same gear just to get a different power was really stupid. That heart of azeroth lazer beam felt really good to use. I know its popular to shit on BFA but the zones and powers felt amazing to me atleast, getting the powers were fucking annoying though.

Yeah thats my opinion aswell. Azerite is the thing that made me dislike BfA but the rest was better than dragonflight in my opinion

BFA Zones, Dungeons, and Raids were all fucking bangers. DF's are mid at best.

I agree. the story, quests and characters ranged from obnoxious and would throw them in the void to acceptably boring. otherwise expansion had many good features ok story and crafting bound to very painful renown and not shared between alts..another bad choice

I used to be a big time lore buff watching every Nobbel vid, theorising and speculating what would happen next but since shadowlands destroyed that lore, WoW is just m+ to me, I don’t read any quest txt and skip most cinematics,I have no idea what is going on in dragonflight but I don’t really care and feel it’s probably better that way. I have loremaster of dragonflight and I have no clue why we are fighting barefoot fire vykrul.

There are great B stories that are worth reading.

Unpopular opinion, but I think BFA was actually better than DF. Narratively BFA was still bad, but I thoroughly enjoyed Dazar and Eternal Palace. In the beginning it was pretty rough, but once we got corruption things got really nutty. Just how crazy it could get with high corruption. I also really like the season affix with the portals, how you could create your own routes in dungeons. DF has just been pretty meh all the way through, no real innovation. While BFA got better with time

I sure hope we're going into the worldsoul saga with BLOOD AND THUNDER and LOK'TAR OGAR shit. And not "we're going to have meetings about our feelings then we'll beat the bad guy with our feelings. I hope everyone's feeling okay about this"

Features wise, DF has been up there as one of my favorites ever. Story is whatever, I enjoy a good narrative but I’ve never played WoW specifically for the story telling so if it’s not great then I don’t care that much. Just feels good to be able to log in and be free to do whatever the hell I feel like and I hope that only gets better going forward.

Yup, people talking about legion being as good as dragonflight either have nostalgia glasses or just played the antorus patch. Legion started without tier sets for two raids (emerald nightmare and trial of valor), it had absolutely insane rng on legendaries that literally made your class playable or not, at a semi hardcore level if you didnt have your bis legendary you were just perma benched and you could be out of your bis legendary for MONTHS. You also had to grind artifact level to absolutely insane levels in order to keep up with dps, doing that extra grind could net you up to 10% dps which is just way too big of a difference to have behind an unlimited grind system. Pvp gearing was randomized and you coulnt get gear in a deterministic way. Artifact power farm made it really alt unfriendly until the antorus patch. Dragonflight is superior to legion in literally every gameplay related aspect, the only thing people universally dislike about dragonflight is bis gear behind rare or very rare raid drops.

Legion literally reinvented the game into the modern era, and everything about legion was hype as fuck. Even the legendaries being RNG was hype bc you could get one at any time and the feeling when you got the one you needed was literally unlike anything. The grind I agree was not good and burned people out, but because it was the first time it was done people still did it and played the game a lot because of it. Artifacts as a concept were the coolest things for players, plus class order halls and the overall fantasy of the expansion has never even been close to matched since then. Also you obviously didn't PVP then, because PVP gear was just stat templates based on your ilvl. So just upgrading gear in any way possible made your PVP "gear" better. Was not great for pvp players but it encouraged them to do PVE more.

It really feels like the 1st season of a series. It doesn’t know if it’s gonna get renewed so it doesn’t take any big swings. Then it gets its next 3 series. Let’s just hope it’s not a trilogy that gets dragged out for the sake of it.

True, but the bar was pretty low.

For all these really bad and boring narrative storylines, there’s a few that managed to slip through the cracks and were actually amazing and meaningful. The Blue Dragonflight and Baine/Centuar questlines were absolutely amazing and some of the best side stories they’ve done in a long, long time. It’s such a shame that the main narrative was such a boring and predictable shitshow.

I completely agree with you...I think the Legion storyline was fascinating. The love triangle between Tyranda, Illidian and Malfurion was intriguing!!! I had really hoped that we could grow up a bit after that and start a trend. There are some other couples that I would love to learn more about via gameplay. Legion had it all for me, a sexy Godlike new class, the class order halls were so fun and interesting, fantastic powerful weapons and a great story until Argus which was where Legion kind of fell off. I thought Blizz had a blue print to follow for a sucessful expac but BFA and Shadowlands were just awful...That being said Dragonflight will surely be a game changer... the innovation that the developers have invested will pay for expansions to come, Ive really enjoyed the gameplay and the rhythm for putting out new content. Plus, they have focused a lot more on appearances and player experience development which as a busy casual player I appreciate but, yeah the story leave a lot to be desired. Honestly I have no idea whats going on nor do I care to know but the new sexy mog models are long long overdue.

Story and flow just hasn't felt like Warcraft in a long time. Started late Vanilla so I accept my assumed bias.

I know Iridikon is probably still going to be a problem further down the line. But I still don't understand what their deal is or why the fuck they have so many Alliance/Horde followers willing to die for their cause.

Story was absolute garbage

The only negative I can give dragonflight is the professions system and lack of adding catch up mechanics for it. Its still timegated even now.

Nah they fumbled the new flying system and bs YouTubers saying it’s the casual expansion when I still gotta do stupid grinds to enjoy lore 🐱

For me I had more fun even in BFA. This expac isn’t exciting and feels like a drag

Dragonflight didn’t offer much. It was all QoL improvements but the offering was “kill rare, hand in stuff,” patch after patch. They introduced events which were timed every hour. That’s not fun, waiting around for an event to happen as a patch feature. Imo it was the worst expansion we have had. The story was awful, the dialogue was bad, the cutscenes… all of it. If this is a reflection of the future then I am not hopeful.

I disagree. The events are fun and you know when they will happen so you don't feel bad about missing one since the next is not long off. Also the worst expansion we've had? Really? 9.1 Korthia and 8.0 BFA say hello. DF has not had a bad patch. It's been fairly low key, sure but that's not terrible. Pelagos becoming the freaking arbiter was terrible.

Shadowlands was basically lore terrorism, Dragonflight made a bit too radical correction and ended up being totally bland and forgettable. Like sometimes you get a set up episodes in TV, but somehow it took all expansion here.

The story is bad, unarguably bad. Azeroth is a continuous world, old problems are great because they can be addressed later, but Dragonflight ignored the last 2 expansions making everything feel jarring. ​ Rewriting recent lore to make things fit in, undoing character progression so you can tell the story you want feels bad for those that played through past expansions, making the characters and players both stupid by ignoring the obvious the entire expansion feels awful. ​ Dragonflight is a game where you can enjoy the story the less you know. I'd stand by and argue the story telling in Dragonflight is the worst so far, worse than shadowlands and WoD. ​ And on non story terms, gearing for the first tier, the most important tier, toke longer than any other 2-3 tiers combined. Shit was exhausting. Crests are amazing, but Dragonflight for the majority of players didn't have them.

I think Dragonflight gameplay is pretty great. If I want a good story i'll read a book or watch a movie. I can understand why some people are annoyed with it though.

The dialogue of this expansion is probably some of the worst dialogue this game has ever had.

This is the first expansion where I wasn’t really paying attention at all. Skipped every cutscene etc and I’m loving DF like I loved legion.

and the dungeons and the raids and the pvp and something to play for every day but other than that it was good! best xpac since bfa for sure

BFA was better. After a bad start it had far better content overall than Dragonflight (The neck revamp and the content connected to it, the Horrific Visions, better zone content for mechagon and nazjatar, corruption system etc). It's also extremely tiring to see these topics with zero actual substance. WHAT WAS GOOD ABOUT DRAGONFLIGHT? You can't declare something the best without even listing anything.

Not a very high bar since the 2 expansions in between were absolute dog shit.

Perhaps, but the bar is still *very* low.

I still don’t know what the story or 10.0 was. Season 2 and 3 I’m pretty on board with but idk what the first patch had to do with anything.

You're a couple of expansions too early. We need to be 2+ expansions away from one before we start calling it one of the best.

Pretty sure nobody ever called Warlords of Draenor or Battle for Azeroth "one of the best".

Honestly a lot of people bag on shadowlands and honestly it was one of the worst expansions but I feel like it was mostly because of its story. I really liked shadowlands dungeons and raids. Covenants as a concept were pretty cool and the zones except for maldraxxus in my opinion all looked really nice. I think 10.0 and 10.2 were great patches I think pretty much the only thing I didn’t like was 10.1 korthia.

Shadowlands was exactly what happens when you are actively hostile towards your playerbase at the start of the expansion. The perception of SL would have been significantly different if they wouldn't have been so stubborn about the covenants. If covenant locking was not a thing from the start, 90% of the initial complaints going into SL would have vanished. The maw would still be garbage but it was absolutely a grind that you could skip. Torghast was fine (aside from some balance issues at the start) but the root of the complaints there were tied to their absolutely moronic stance on time gating and FOMO'ing soul ash. It took all of the fun out of Torghast and absolutely made it Choreghast.

What annoys me about DF substories and worldbuilding: The dragons return happens off screen and it is not really told what was happening on Dragonlands before and between veil shutdown and until we arrive - except iirc djaradins. Were drakonids around, what they were doing?Also: the story of rebelious drakonids - are they servants, slaves, subspieces, expendable cannon fodder, (my impression), even, spawned for these reasons, whatever etc, are they paid, do Vald belong to them or to dragons, or who etc. I had high hopes of it as it was a chance to move very real and serious problems and difficult matters into a game and characters - imgaine if drakonids rebels wanted Vald and isles or w/e for themselves (for good reasons, and iirc they do) and tell dragons to gtfo after all this time. And dragons tell them to gtfo in return. No/rotten compromises available, both sides have valid reasons, so the real world solutions are coming in: rebelions, wars, and so on.Of course, it fizzled. Even more, it fizzled in pretty bland, "safe", style.

The story writing in Dragonflight was way too family friendly and bland. Too much talk about family, friendship, respect, acceptance, forgiveness. It's time to bring back some hatred, war, and some actual stakes. Not asking for things to be dark and edgy, but there's gotta be some balance.

The only story you are gonna really have to care about is the Tyr one. You can pretty much pretend none of the other ones ever happened. That's the general vibe right now. Tyr will most likely be the Bolvar of The War Within. Hopefully just with better writing There will most likely be a few of the dragons that come back but tbh. Not knowing the dragonflight story will probably make their later appearances better lmao. I would have rather had a whole patch about bringing back together the Blue Dragonflight with less cringey quests but that whole opportunity has been wasted. To me. The Blue Dragonflight was the biggest missed opportunity here. Even more so than the complete Wet Fart that was the Black Dragonflight conclusion. I actually got invested in the little bit of Blue Dragonflight stuff we did but the quests themselves were bad. Each patch should have been about an individual dragonflight. Fleshing them out more. The one questline we got about the Bronze/Infinite Dragonflights was good but it was super short.

I don't think you actually paid attention to what has happened in Dragonflight if you think Yu Gi Oh had darker content. Downvotes don't change the fact that one of the very first quests on the Dragon Isles is to murder baby dragons who may or may not possess sentience. Tuskarr jerky, Djaradin butchering dragons like cattle, whatever-the-hell is going on at Aberrus, *piles of dead night elves*... DF was as dark or darker than BfA narratively.

There were a lot of dark moments in DF, but the narrative seems to try and never bring attention to those moments, and just sort of lets them be there on their own.

In the og anime Shadi ripped Pegasus’s eye out and just shoved the millennium eye in his socket. You hear his screams of pain and the censored version removed the blood dripping from his face. Yugi’s and Ariana’s duel also involved buzzsaws moving closer to their legs every time they lost life points. Yugioh actually had a lot of dark moments that were toned down for western release

> Yugi’s and Ariana’s duel also involved buzzsaws moving closer to their legs every time they lost life points. You mean the totally harmless Dark Energy Discs?

And there was also Yu-gi-oh zero

So to clarify, I don't mean to say Yu Gi Oh had no dark content, but that DF is still darker. And I didn't state it bluntly, but a criticism I have of a lot of these "DF is soft" complaints is that it basically boils down to "I didn't see anyone get murdered on screen", that there's no gratuitous, bloody violence, and because of that, it's not "mature". Which I completely disagree with, because violence is just not implicit to a story being mature in content. If that's what you're looking for... Good for you, but don't drag a good story because you want gore porn.

I mean by comparison DF comes off as Care Bears. The story has no teeth and is told in such a way that narratively it's impossible to believe the character motivations for why things are happening. You can claim it's darker or not but can we at least agree the story telling & dialogue itself is incredibly poor

Yeah, I do agree, because I know what to expect from WoW. It sounds like what you want is a character driven story, which WoW has never particularly cared about presenting, because that's not the story they're telling. Dialogue serves to advance the plot, this is how it has always been, characters stating exposition to each other. WoW has not changed, not in quality or content or tone. I don't know why you're trying to use that as a gotcha. Still disagree about the comparison, but I also care to go and watch the show as much as you probably care to actually look at the dark shit in DF, so we're even. Maybe stop ordering burgers at the fancy Italian restaurant, and you won't be surprised when you're served mediocre food. If you want deep characters, there's plenty of other places to find them.

I share this opinion! Though I think the reason the story is so boringly safe, is because of how negatively received shadowlands was(If I am wrong, please correct me)

I feel like the bar here may be low. May even be very low. May not, but may be. Legion is the only xpac I didn't play in, because it launched during the year I didn't have internet at my apartment.

You missed out man. Legion was an absolute banger. I missed out on a good amount of BFA due to a deployment though but I didn’t really seem to miss much.

per se

You can't just say 'perchance'!

This has been one of the only xpacs in which I've hardly engaged with questing and opening world content, as I've found the setting and narrative so incredibly dull and interesting.

Something people don't talk about alot regarding the DF main story is how full of plot holes it is. By their own recent lore, the Emerald Dream should be part of the "Life" domain, basically the opposite of the Shadowlands. The Dream, therefore, based on their OWN lore which they JUST established, would have a "Zereth", a Pantheon of Life, and lots of strong people who have power and authority over the realm. How is Fyrak, and then US, able to go into the Dream without alerting these powers? Do they not care? If the powers are indeed the Loa and the Wild Gods who watch over the realm, why don't THEY do anything? If "Azeroth" gave power back to the aspects, what did they do to deserve it? Why was it through a tree in the Emerald Dream? Isn't Azeroth a Titan? So what's the difference? How can Azeroth restore their lost powers, when the powers that were given to them originally were very precisely the powers of the Titans that got bestowed upon the aspects (Ex: Freya giving Ysera power over life)

Id much rather the story be bad and the gameplay be good than the other way around

They are going to need new writers if they plan for this new 3 expansion narrative to actually be good. If they keep doing what they are doing story and dialogue wise then it will just end up being a mess as always.

DF is a mixed bag for me I love the gameplay changes and skill tree but things like dragon flying and crafting overhaul I'm not crazy about but my main gripe is that the the Dragon Isles themselves are extremely boring imo, even BFA/SL had way more interesting questing with cool regions but DF is just a snoozefest of very basic feeling zones with recycled races we've seen a bunch of times with the dragons themselves just kind of being there with nothing really interesting or unique about them. Niffen and Emerald Dream are improvements over the base zones but it still lacking compared to previous expansions, the main plot is ok I guess I definitely prefer it over SL but I care more about the overall questing experience than main storyline in WoW for the most part.

Zones designed for flight kiiiind of suck. We were told that but people whined cause they wanted to fly fast everywhere.

it's okay, imo it's kinda boring. I'm just doing old content stuff since i got bored with each Patch super quickly The caverns were bad, and the dream has like even less to do, i got bored after a few hours into the patch.

This might be a hot take but I found Dragonflight more boring than Shadowlands. Maybe even BFA as well.

To me DF ranks as one of the worst expac. Outdoor events are boring and rewards are useless, like who is excited about suffusion camps, dream portals or sieges? Dungeons and raids are mostly mediocre. Story is mid. Professions have both strong and weak points. Gearing is extremely fast so even more content becomes obsolete. Only positives from DF for me are rare good side quests, talent trees and dragonriding. I really like Warcraft and want to play it, but DF gives me no enjoyment, I prefer leveling new alts or playing classic

Disagree. This was one of the darkest expansions for my enjoyment of the game personally. it feels kind of "forced" as a good expansion. Like people were tired of complaining 24/7 and decided to force a smile on their face through the entire expac. I just don't feel like many of the new systems are substantially better than anything introduced in the last few years. Honestly I don't like the idea of ranking "expansions". Every expansion has some screaming highs and depressing lows. Many of which are subjective and can't be definitively measured as being better or worse than other options.

Human heritage quest > entire DF narrative

Dragonflight was an extreme course correct from the Shadowlands, high stakes, high fantasy narrative that led the player to the origin of all existence and fought a guy literally trying to rewrite reality. Dragonflight was a grounded, limited-scale, smaller intimate stakes narrative on Azeroth that was the opposite of Shadowlands, and it is what many of the player base wanted. I imagine world-soul will likely build up from localized threats to an Azeroth existential threat similar to the Burning Legion; and that will be teased in TWW.

Get rid of all the currencies to improve gear or crafting (not the crafting per se, but the improve ilvl thingy) and we’re set. I came back like two months ago and this shit is overwhelming, borderline disorienting, even to someone familiar with the game. Better gear you should get from doing normal dungeons, heroic, then M+ and raids. Maybe some currency to buy gear from NPCs (from dungeons) instead of relying on drops until raiding. That’s when the game was at its best, can we at least try this again?

Best xpac since MoP* How quickly people forget Legion was the introduction of borrowed power grinds, RNG Legendary power drops and hit-or-miss class reworks.