Gameplay's great, but a few story rants

[Amariw]

As all lore rants go, this is a personal taste sort of thing so others might feel differently, but here goes:

Loving dragonriding and new talents, and the plethora of ungated renown activities. Feels like how Shadowlands should have been.

Story-wise is...a bit less stellar though. It feels like cataclysm and shadowlands with this singular enemy faction that's responsible and manipulating everything bad that's happening (twilight/old gods in cata, jailer in SL, primalists in DF). That kind of singular threat makes the world feel smaller, in my eyes.

Better execution could be found WOTLK (both Yogg Saron and the Scourge as main threats), bfa (faction conflict, azshara and old gods), and of course Pandaria (Mogu, Nantid, the Sha, and Trolls as enemies, and the plethora of interconnected friendly cultures with rich histories such as pandaren and jinyu).

I know there's hints of the infinites becoming a big threat later in patches, but that still feels a bit too few for me. Could also be i'm just overwhelmed by too many dragons as unsurprisingly the expansion is focused on them with little else to explore (though the tuskarr soup maniacs are an awesome touch).

[Syegfryed]

Lore is bad after mop, but after wod it went awful, and every expansion is worse than the last.

You can find goo gems in small stories, questlines from leveling, small stuff like that, but overall main story and main campaign is atrocious

[Arikara]

Surely you did not just praise the BFA faction war. You must have mistyped, or perhaps you are being sarcastic.

Blizzard have been awful at setting up "the big set-pieces" in the forms of primary villains and conflicts for many years now. They have failed again and again. All the actual good writing is found in the small things.

[FAILoZOFF]

Its made by the same people that made Shadowlands. What did you expect?

[Oneirophobia]

My main issue is Azeroth seems to literally "be a prison" (thanks Sylvanas ) in that the plot has vault after vault, dungeon after dungeon containing world-ending mega threats who suddenly break free and cause problems because for one reason or another, we can't seem to bring ourselves to kill anybody who actually probably should get the death sentence (but mass genocide is an annual affair..). The Old Gods were all imprisoned, Jailer imprisoned, Hakkar was banished (I think? Which is fancy prison, really), we stuffed all the Demon Hunters in prison, the Dracthyr were in prison, Sargeras is in space prison. The list goes on.

We really need to get away from the "and then X escaped from a cell, which everyone forgot about!" as a plot device. It's waaaaay too frequently used.

[Aucald]

My main issue is Azeroth seems to literally "be a prison" (thanks Sylvanas ) in that the plot has vault after vault, dungeon after dungeon containing world-ending mega threats who suddenly break free and cause problems because for one reason or another, we can't seem to bring ourselves to kill anybody who actually probably should get the death sentence (but mass genocide is an annual affair..). The Old Gods were all imprisoned, Jailer imprisoned, Hakkar was banished (I think? Which is fancy prison, really), we stuffed all the Demon Hunters in prison, the Dracthyr were in prison, Sargeras is in space prison. The list goes on.

We really need to get away from the "and then X escaped from a cell, which everyone forgot about!" as a plot device. It's waaaaay too frequently used.

The "Sealed Evil in a Can" trope is pretty much endemic to fantasy, though I do agree it's an overused trope all the same.

[voidox]

We really need to get away from the "and then X escaped from a cell, which everyone forgot about!" as a plot device. It's waaaaay too frequently used.

yup, and this is an issue entirely of Blizzard's own making. They had so much established lore and characters to use and instead rushed through it all so Danuser could get more time for his Sylvanus :/

legion final patch - argus, titan revival, re-building the army of the light (and it being more than just some lightfored draenei, and made up of actual survivors of different planets), azeroth's forces using illidan's crystal to turn the tide on a Kil'jaden-less legion and assault legion worlds (instead of directly rushing to argus, argus should have been built up to and the grande finale, with more involvement by Velen/dranaei characters), turalyon/alleria story shown in-game than w.e the hell Blizzard did to tell their 1k year story, sargeras, Xe'ra, legion's end and so on.

I could go on and on, but basically everything in 7.3 is literally content for an entire expansion... yet Blizzard ran through it all in 1 patch.

Azshara, nazjatar, naga - wasted in one patch and a raid

Nzoth, Ny'alotha - wasted in one patch and a raid

blizzard had 3 full expansions right there, with story/characters/villains that were established in warcraft lore and were based in Azeroth.

and heck, BFA itself that focused entirely on the fourth war and without stupid Sylvanus/genocide... that's another full expansion right there when done right.

- - - Updated - - -

Its made by the same people that made Shadowlands. What did you expect?

ya pretty much... dunno how there were some people hyping up DF just cause "omg it will have smaller stories = lore is all fixed and will be great!" when we had red flags in the story from the literal expansion reveal stream (the centaur retcon, a staple of Danuser and co.)

it's the same writers who gave us the garbage of BFA/SL, DF is the same garbage writing/dialogue/story.

Just cause a quest here or there, a few lines of dialogue or a zone specific story feature some good writing/story/moments, doesn't change that. Even during the worst of BFA/SL, we had the small few good moments here and there (usually the small zone stories being overall good/decent).

and some people use the PR of "oh well DF is finally Danuser's story, no longer tied down by afrasiabi"... which is complete BS cause a lot of SL was completely on Danuser and co. and had nothing to do with what afrasiabi set up or wrote.

[Linkedblade]

The "Sealed Evil in a Can" trope is pretty much endemic to fantasy, though I do agree it's an overused trope all the same.

Especially when the world building is basically: "here's a continent sealed away by mists, or magic, etc"

[Steelangel]

Story-wise is...a bit less stellar though. It feels like cataclysm and shadowlands with this singular enemy faction that's responsible and manipulating everything bad that's happening (twilight/old gods in cata, jailer in SL, primalists in DF). That kind of singular threat makes the world feel smaller, in my eyes.

Agree/Disagree. I think the "single bad guy" faction isn't bad, but it feels like the pre-patch should have done more to show the Primalists being a threat. They seem to be a massive multiracial organization like the Cult of the Damned or the Old Gods' followers, but they just appeared suddenly without a sense that they were growing.

With that said though, I LOVE the fact that the primalists aren't "we're doing this because wE'rE eViL" they honestly think they are doing the right thing. It seems reasonable that they would have been founded after Legion as a response to the fact that the planet was stabbed by a Titan, Azerite was mucking up the natural world and the traumas felt by nature in the 4th war was palpable. They are basically radical environmentalists who instead of gluing themselves to the floor are calling for a return to the state of the world before even the Old Gods supressed the Elementals, and that kind of nuance is better than anything Blizzard has done since MoP.

[ohwell]

As all lore rants go, this is a personal taste sort of thing so others might feel differently, but here goes:

Loving dragonriding and new talents, and the plethora of ungated renown activities. Feels like how Shadowlands should have been.

Story-wise is...a bit less stellar though. It feels like cataclysm and shadowlands with this singular enemy faction that's responsible and manipulating everything bad that's happening (twilight/old gods in cata, jailer in SL, primalists in DF). That kind of singular threat makes the world feel smaller, in my eyes.

Better execution could be found WOTLK (both Yogg Saron and the Scourge as main threats), bfa (faction conflict, azshara and old gods), and of course Pandaria (Mogu, Nantid, the Sha, and Trolls as enemies, and the plethora of interconnected friendly cultures with rich histories such as pandaren and jinyu).

I know there's hints of the infinites becoming a big threat later in patches, but that still feels a bit too few for me. Could also be i'm just overwhelmed by too many dragons as unsurprisingly the expansion is focused on them with little else to explore (though the tuskarr soup maniacs are an awesome touch).

You claim mogu, mantid, sha, and trolls when in reality it was pretty much all the Sha. I could easily give the same spread of villains for DF as several were enemies without even needing the primalists. So your logic is very flawed there. Yogg was a VERY small part of anything in WotLK in terms of the actual mass lore as his presence was not felt throughout the leveling experience like the sourge even if you tried to make a stretch of lore. BFA was the only one listed that was actually spread out.

[Aucald]

Especially when the world building is basically: "here's a continent sealed away by mists, or magic, etc"

WoW's approach to world-building has always consisted of little actual building, and more whip-grafting of new content onto the old without much rhyme or reason. That's why the interstitial novels and short stories exist, more or less, but I agree that's a poor way to go about patching what apparent holes in the narrative there are.

[LordVargK]

I'm very annoyed by the enemies in DF: Like in SL, every Primalist dies with a "you are being mislead" or "you don't know what you're doing". Exactly like every Mawsworn in SL. And did that ever pay off? No. We just killed the jailer, no plottwist, nothing. And it will be the same with the Primalists.
Since 2 expansions now we get hints that the Titans are the bad guys, but nothing every comes from it.

[Cheezits]

I'm very annoyed by the enemies in DF: Like in SL, every Primalist dies with a "you are being mislead" or "you don't know what you're doing". Exactly like every Mawsworn in SL. And did that ever pay off? No. We just killed the jailer, no plottwist, nothing. And it will be the same with the Primalists.
Since 2 expansions now we get hints that the Titans are the bad guys, but nothing every comes from it.

We know what the problem is for the Primalists though: they don't like that the Titans interfered on Azeroth, and want to get rid of the Titan influence and return things to the Elemental/natural state of pre-Titan influence. They say this multiple times, some even on death.

We KNOW that the Titans weren't always on Azeroth. We KNOW that the Titans fiddled with things to make Dragons and titan structures.

If you don't like enemies talking you down when they die, that's another issue entirely.

[LordVargK]

We know what the problem is for the Primalists though: they don't like that the Titans interfered on Azeroth, and want to get rid of the Titan influence and return things to the Elemental/natural state of pre-Titan influence. They say this multiple times, some even on death.

We KNOW that the Titans weren't always on Azeroth. We KNOW that the Titans fiddled with things to make Dragons and titan structures.

If you don't like enemies talking you down when they die, that's another issue entirely.

I know why the Primalists hate the Titans. That's pretty obvious. But we as player characters are decendants of Titan creations (as far as established lore goes). A mixture of Titan and old gods. So why would we side with the anti-titan factions?

[Cheezits]

I know why the Primalists hate the Titans. That's pretty obvious. But we as player characters are decendants of Titan creations (as far as established lore goes). A mixture of Titan and old gods. So why would we side with the anti-titan factions?

Considering the people on twitter complaining that it's icky that the Titans influenced the dragons/meddled with the world/the Dragons created Drakonids as thralls, the reasoning is already somewhat understandable. And not all races are Titan creations (see Tauren and Trolls/Elves, and the big two humanoid primalists are a Tauren and a Nelf on purpose).

Now the main reason they aren't joinable is because, as in the Primalist Future, the world turns into an elemental-ridden hellhole. But in their mind that's better than a manipulated/controlled world.

[Super Dickmann]

Now the main reason they aren't joinable is because, as in the Primalist Future, the world turns into an elemental-ridden hellhole. But in their mind that's better than a manipulated/controlled world.

Something to be said about the calibre of WoW's villains when this is the most moderate possible endpoint of an expansion villain victory in the game's entire lifespan. In the Primalist future people and the world still exist pretty much as is, but they're all assholes and the weather is poor.

[Khaza-R]

I'm very annoyed by the enemies in DF: Like in SL, every Primalist dies with a "you are being mislead" or "you don't know what you're doing". Exactly like every Mawsworn in SL. And did that ever pay off? No. We just killed the jailer, no plottwist, nothing. And it will be the same with the Primalists.
Since 2 expansions now we get hints that the Titans are the bad guys, but nothing every comes from it.

More like 3 expansions now. N'zoth also pulled the whole vague "we are blind" crap as well.

I think it all goes back to one of WoW's biggest problems over the years which is telling rather than showing. This has always been an issue in the narrative but its a bit more glaring in recent storylines because they are trying to make the enemies more nuanced without putting in the actual work to properly show them having convincing motivations.

This of course could turn around in the next patch or two. I guess depending on how much they show the titans and their impact on Azeroth. They've at least laid the seeds a bit. But it could also be another Jailer arc where they allude to something but never touch on it.

[Cheezits]

Something to be said about the calibre of WoW's villains when this is the most moderate possible endpoint of an expansion villain victory in the game's entire lifespan. In the Primalist future people and the world still exist pretty much as is, but they're all assholes and the weather is poor.

After BFA had people sincerely arguing that Blizzard were pro-fascists and baby eaters because they didn't let the players kill Sylvanas at launch, I can see why they don't really want to make the villains look good. If the Primal Future was a beautiful idyllic lush paradise (probably something like the Waking Shore vs Oharan) then people would be screaming.

Twitter already had a pissing fit about the Tyrhold/Drakonid reveals as Titan-lovers were no longer "the bestest goodest guys".

[loras]

More like 3 expansions now. N'zoth also pulled the whole vague "we are blind" crap as well.

I think it all goes back to one of WoW's biggest problems over the years which is telling rather than showing. This has always been an issue in the narrative but its a bit more glaring in recent storylines because they are trying to make the enemies more nuanced without putting in the actual work to properly show them having convincing motivations.

This of course could turn around in the next patch or two. I guess depending on how much they show the titans and their impact on Azeroth. They've at least laid the seeds a bit. But it could also be another Jailer arc where they allude to something but never touch on it.

To be fair: N'zoth did warn us against the jailer, who for all his poor writing was indeed the greater threat.
It's just that he wasn't very convincing because he himself was so terrible. But he didn't lie.

[Super Dickmann]

After BFA had people sincerely arguing that Blizzard were pro-fascists and baby eaters because they didn't let the players kill Sylvanas at launch, I can see why they don't really want to make the villains look good. If the Primal Future was a beautiful idyllic lush paradise (probably something like the Waking Shore vs Oharan) then people would be screaming.

Twitter already had a pissing fit about the Tyrhold/Drakonid reveals as Titan-lovers were no longer "the bestest goodest guys".

Eh, it wouldn't fit either way. The whole point of their take is that the world'd be back to being survival of the fittest, constantly changing based on the power of the people involved. In as much as they've an appeal it's that the weak will no longer get a leg up from outer powers interfering with this natural selection process.

The people upset about the Titan thing while glossing over all prior Titan lore except Legion have been a highlight of 'tarded positions thus far.