Has WoW gotten "too" family friendly?

[sam86]

can we have an exp without melting acids from inside? U can find that quests in cata if u want....
i really like DF tune, a relax atmosphere, i don't want to feel 24/7 non stop for 18 years ending threats

[rayvio]

who gets to decide what dragons are supposed to be like?
sure, the original western myths have dragons as the terrifying creatures of devastation. but Warcraft has always tried to take inspiration from a wider pool than just western media and mythology. eastern mythology portrays dragons much differently and some of the dragons in Warcraft reflect that. the cloud serpents of Pandaria are much more visually like the chinese dragons, while the uncorrupted dragon aspects, although in appearance are more western, in behaviour and role they're more like the chinese ideas of benevolent dragon protectors

[Lolites]

who gets to decide what dragons are supposed to be like?

author, yet somehow OP thinks its HIS decision... funny thing is it havent even changed really, dragons in wow were always like that...
ive seen discusion about morphology and difference between dragon/wyvern/wyrm etc, and how "this is not a dragon bcs of this", and one guy said it best - "if author describes c*ck with wings and says its dragon, in his universe it IS dragon"

[Lochton]

In your complaint, then no, WoW has not gotten "too" family-friendly for it has never left the same stage since Vanilla. So, your complaint is just that WoW IS too family-friendly? Nothing has changed in the scene of Warcraft Dragons. The bad ones are either corrupted, tormented, or crazed, the good ones are serene and fighting to be in control (or to get out of control), and the middle ground is unknown factors from Dracthyr, Drakonids, and Dragonkins.

So, in conclusion, the dragon scene of the Warcraft universe is just not for you, as it is too "family-friendly".

It could be fixed slowly by making the Dragons actually be permitted to ruin player's gameplay in for example, taking their vengeance out on Death Knights.

"Hero, go seek out the Queen of Dragons, do keep your head down, they are not happy with previous actions of your kind".
*Random chance to be torched by Alexstrasza*

[Gaidax]

You just had a whole expansion of torture, screams, spikes, dungeons and death. And expansion before it wasn't much better either with impaled people on walls of a town, witches, blood and what not.

It's ok to have an edgelord detox from time to time.

[Ringthane]

We just got out of an expansion where everything was death, and decay, and misery, and destruction. And we heard about it for two years.

Now we have a lighter, freer, more fun expansion, that dares to do some things different than some of the populace would prefer. And it's being hammered for it.

Someone could hand some of you a million dollars and all you'd do is complain that they didn't bring it in in a big golden briefcase with a nice sash and keys to the city. You don't know what you want, you don't care what you get. You just want to complain about a computer game, and nobody knows why.

[Throwme]

No before WoW in any fantasy literature Dragons were bad asses. Not these nicey nice life giving good hearted creatures.

Dragonlance, the very much longrunning fantasy literature that many people have grown up with, have many friendly dragons. The dragons there are even aligned with either good or evil, depending on their colour. Metallic dragons are good, while chromatics are evil.

So..... you are wrong.

[jeezusisacasual]

This reads alot like the morons who screamed Kung-Fu Panda at MoP despite Kung-Fu Panda releasing in 2008 ( MoP in 2012) but obviously they did not read those quests much like they did not read these quests either. Wanting a WoW expansion to resemble a 80s action film showcases how out of touch that segment of the world really are its similar to those complaining about their favorite tv shows / cartoons being remade for a DIFFERENT audience ( you are not the apart of the club they are chasing your time is over for it ).

For those wondering why they feel this way go no further then reading the quest

Stay a While

https://www.wowhead.com/quest=70132/stay-a-while

But most importantly is how the opening bit of that quests dialogue is handled but this passage in it really stood out to me -

The reason I am here, looking over this alien landscape, is because for such a long time... I dreamed about returning here.
This is my home. I never expected we would be gone for so long. After a while, I never expected to return

You can probably remember where you grew up. Can smell your parents cooking, can remember playing with your friends who lived close by.
Now Imagine that you have forgotten how to get to your childhood home. You can never visit again, can never walk the paths of your childhood.

[baskev]

snip

In Dragonflight. We have all these friendly dragons we deal with, a few who aren't so friendly but none that are truly terrifying. Dragons are supposed to be awe inspiring, terror inducing entities that radiate power, not your next taxi upon a quest-leg

because the story keeps talking about secrets "our" dragons have. And the fact that we just killed 1 out of 4 of the "big bad" dragons most likely means they are not the end boss of this expansion. Just the precursors for whats to come.

And "our" dragons have always been nice. That has not changed.
The enemy dragons...lets see....i just flew past some hanging dragon corpses. Ohhh and 1 raid boss is just thrown away when she gets empored by the "big bad" of this expansion.
So...maybe its where you have been/question.
And WoW has never been "Scary" like that.

Yes 80's movies where brutal.....WoW has had its touches. But never that brutal...might i add again: we see dragon corpses everywhere. And people getting killed by them.

And Vox...yeah they are brutal but again....thats a other based on a other game/media. with other target audiance.


As for disney dragons.....WoW has always had big bads like that. And again....sigh....if you listen to the lore...there is more going on here. Talking about betrayl, secrets etc.

And again, other media does dragons/story different. Thats why we watch it. If all movies where the same. we only watch 1 movie.

sighhh...............Our dragons have ALWAYS been hippies like that. WotLK we have or lady alexstraza flying and healing people. Ysera's has always been a dreamer. You are mad, because WoW's dragons have been acting like WoW dragons for the last 20 years...okay.

ooohh and they where made by the titans to do fill those functions.


You are "mad" or not "happy" with WoW dragons not being hardcore melting dragons.
Whats next...you going to be made that pokemon do not claw each other to death?
Or in the next John wick he does not kill every one on screen?

WoW has always been like this. Yes there have been more scary boss, and less scary ones.

I feel a lot of forced its weak sauce stuff coming from this. Do not like it? stop playing. that easy.

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No before WoW in any fantasy literature Dragons were bad asses. Not these nicey nice life giving good hearted creatures. I remember watching one of the Nixxiom videos. He was talking about the Dracthyr race. He was saying they are OK but he always wanted to kill dragons not BE one. Look it is what it is, I don't want to go off on a tangent but Dragons in lore have always been evil. Some dragons from eastern culture had benevolent ways but by and large even going back to the Bible dragons were bringers of doom. Terrible Winged nightmares to bring about death and calamity. Movies and TV shows in the past 20-30 years have tried to make dragons kid friendly ever since puff the magic dragon.

ahahahahahahaha

friendly dragons before wow:
- pete's dragon **
- dragonheart ( kevin cos movie)*
- falkor ( never ending story)**
- shreck ( hell the dragon was so nice, it mated with a donkey)*
- pokemon dragons ** ( i think)
- dbz dragon **
- dragon from mulan *

To name just a few. And most of them where BEFORE WoW. Hell some where even from before your time frame .
the ones with * are between 20 to 30 years old
the ones with ** are older.
And these are just from the top of my head. I think if i google it i will find many more.

So dude.....you are projecting your "manly" feelings about things being to nice for "taste" . And blame it on a culture shift.

In that case:
- why are elves horde: in most stuff they are nice
- why are orcs nice and have a faction they are evil in most old lore
- same goes for trolls, goblins, tauren etc etc.
- why do we have warlocks, mages, druids etc in game. Those are evil according to the bible. And in old movies warlocks, people like deathknights etc are also evil.

and again, WoW has always been like this. And it always has had rougher, scary Expansions. And then lighter expansions to "refresh" . And again, its what you want to see. You still see npc's die, see corpses of dragons lying around. Or hanging on meat hooks in obisidian place.

[Bladesyphon]

Gotta love how to so many people, the only thing that's "Mature" is gratuitous amounts of violence, gore, and destruction, it's like some people have never grown up, or are just now old enough to start being allowed to watch rated R movies, or something similar.

You're right, OP, Dragonflight doesn't have characters exploding in a shower of gore as jagged rocks impale them from an Earth Dragon, or have someone screaming as their flesh melts from their bones, their eyes bleeding out of their sockets as they collapse into a fleshy goo of what was a once-man, or an entire city being razed by the flames of a black dragon as it's inhabitants run screaming out into the streets as the air fills with the scent of burning flesh mixed with hair...Because the game doesn't need that, because it's juvenlie as all hell.

What I just wrote was cringey as hell, and something a thirteen year old would come up for their first D&D Campaign against a dragon they created called "Terrinax the Hope Breaker". It has no substance, it has no style, it's just edgy violence to make it's self look mature. What Dragonflight does have, which I'm sure you've completely glossed over in search of "So Metal" violence is the dialogue and quest lines that actually have an emotional impact on the player and character that doesn't involve gratuitous violence.

Blizzard has done a far better job this expansion at characterizing almost every NPC we interact with this time around, giving them more depth than just "This guy gives me a reward, yay!". They event went so far as to throw shade at the player as a murder-hobo with Broodkeeper Diurna's pre-fight dialogue, reminding the player that every boss and NPC we kill may have been more than just a generic loot pinata for us to beat open for our goodies inside.

Frankly I'll take that over watching Terrninax over there melt someone's face off with his face-melting breath attack - he can keep that nonsense to stories and worlds that would rather forsake character depth and story telling for a thirteen year old's wet dream in violence.

[crusadernero]

Dragonflight is literally full of Pixar crap ripoffs. If you quested through this expac you can’t seriously tell me it wasn’t intentionally dumbed down to some dumbdumb friendly pile of happy rainbow sunshine friendship land. It’s nauseating, especially the voice acting. My god every time I fly over one of those Instagram river raft world quests and hear that blood elf talking about “fluffy animals” I lose 10 brain cells

you mean like the quest in BfA were we gotta save the turtles?

wow is literally filled with silly quests like this, always has been.

But, you can perfectly fine ignore them in DF. Couldnt in a xpac like BfA, cause that gave AP. AP = player power.

So I would suggest dont do them.

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We just got out of an expansion where everything was death, and decay, and misery, and destruction. And we heard about it for two years.

Now we have a lighter, freer, more fun expansion, that dares to do some things different than some of the populace would prefer. And it's being hammered for it.

Someone could hand some of you a million dollars and all you'd do is complain that they didn't bring it in in a big golden briefcase with a nice sash and keys to the city. You don't know what you want, you don't care what you get. You just want to complain about a computer game, and nobody knows why.

The one thing SL did good was that everytime I played, I felt that I was in the death world. Not really a positive thing when it lasted for 2 years, but it did hit the death spot lol.

DF is a great breath of fresh air with color and not all doom & gloom were every NPC yells out "THIS IS THE END OF EVERYTHING YOU WILL DIE DARKNESS SHALL CONSUME US ALL!!!" while standing in some dark corner.

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In Dragonflight. We have all these friendly dragons we deal with, a few who aren't so friendly but none that are truly terrifying. Dragons are supposed to be awe inspiring, terror inducing entities that radiate power, not your next taxi upon a quest-leg.

Look at movies like Dragonslayer from the 80's where it actually felt like Vermithrax (the name of the dragon antagonist), was something to be feared. When his anger was incited he bathed the countryside in blood and fire.

(Spoilers)

Look at season 2 of the new animated series Vox Machina in the first episode I was like now that's how dragons are supposed to be, as I watched a maruding band of 4 chromatic dragons obliterate the capital city.

All the while not sounding ANYTHING like the disney-fied dragons in WoW "Your monuments shall fall! Your civilization erased! Here me insects! You live out of mercy! Fight or flee and you forfeit that mercy!" All the while each dragon launched it's personal devestation upon the city and it's people.

One Dragon literally breathed gouts of poisons gas melting some from the inside. Yet another belched acid breath literally melting the castle ramparts. The frost dragon launched volleys of tremendous ice shards ripping apart the countryside. The leader's flame breath put Deathwing to shame. his fire basically turned into a giant molten beam of destruction vaporizing the main castle to it's foundation.

If anything close to this happened in WoW I honestly wouldn't know what to do. But instead we have nice dragons in WoW who help us plant flowers and find new homes for frogs...

Two yeears of SL does that. I for one am glad we can travel in a world with.. Colors and not literal death in every corner.

[chrisisvacant]

can we have an exp without melting acids from inside? U can find that quests in cata if u want....
i really like DF tune, a relax atmosphere, i don't want to feel 24/7 non stop for 18 years ending threats

Go play in your MOP farm then. Endgame should be about threats.

[mbit2]

I don't know how people could look at the art Samwise did for these games, or click on a peon a few times and hear its silly voice lines, and think that this series is some grimdark fantasy. Warcraft has always counterbalanced whatever darker tones it has with bright, colorful, and cartoony characters, scenery, and dialogue.

DF is really no different tonally from anything that's come before, apart from generally having a bit more of a chill adventuring vibe compared to some of the more recent storylines focused on world-ending threats.

Jokes go well with Grimdark. Gotta have highs to accentuate lows. If its all depression you just lose interest and it has no punch.

Wotlk had the plague attack. WoD had shattered hand. Shadowlands qualifies almost entirely. Seems like other poster said - after grimdark xpac you get now a regular fantasy one. Maybe next one its back to grimdark.

[Illusions]

I mean, when WoW dragons have attempted to be scary and threatening, they've almost always been borderline corny and comedic. Ultraxion had some good lines on paper, but considering Ultraxion was a middle-of-the-raid boss it was really funny instead.

Raszageth has been perfectly adequate as a Dragon villain. Even in raid, how coldly she regards Dathea, basically telling her that her gift will kill her, and she just has to be useful and kill the raid before the power kills her. That's actually rather dark if you'd think about it.

But it's one line, for a middle-of-the-raid boss, so you don't think about it further.

[TigerOfPTS]

Dragonflight is literally full of Pixar crap ripoffs. If you quested through this expac you can’t seriously tell me it wasn’t intentionally dumbed down to some dumbdumb friendly pile of happy rainbow sunshine friendship land. It’s nauseating, especially the voice acting. My god every time I fly over one of those Instagram river raft world quests and hear that blood elf talking about “fluffy animals” I lose 10 brain cells

Thank the lord I don't have to listen to anything like this from anyone in real life. Can you even imagine?

[Beefhammer]

Yeah exactly. Which is why I actually shortened my initial post. I was saying how WoW kind of was making their game and Dragons by proxy more kid/family friendly since when. I'm not saying that the game has to go full Elden ring or something but to me it's kind of bland and play-it-safe storytelling to make all these dragons so neutered within the narrative.

You have some serious inferiority complex issue going on worried about things being kiddie.

[Zodiark]

You have some serious inferiority complex issue going on worried about things being kiddie.

Honestly not even sure how you derived that from what I wrote. But I assure you that I have no such inferiority complex lol. Some of these comments make me laugh.
I'm an adult, I grew up feeling like Dragons were a dangerous threat. I get it that it's cute to have nice friendly dragons. But seriously my dude... think about it. We are literally like two steps away from Blippi-Dragons at this point. At least games like Skyrim tried to bring back that old school feel that Dragons were winged terrors. Forget about how easy they became later on in the game. (I actually modded them to be almost unkillable.) But the people who encountered them were actually afraid.

They weren't like "oh hey Mr Dragon can you help me pick a bouquet for my husband? I'll go shoo away those pesky ladybugs for you...

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you mean like the quest in BfA were we gotta save the turtles?

wow is literally filled with silly quests like this, always has been.

But, you can perfectly fine ignore them in DF. Couldnt in a xpac like BfA, cause that gave AP. AP = player power.

So I would suggest dont do them.

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The one thing SL did good was that everytime I played, I felt that I was in the death world. Not really a positive thing when it lasted for 2 years, but it did hit the death spot lol.

DF is a great breath of fresh air with color and not all doom & gloom were every NPC yells out "THIS IS THE END OF EVERYTHING YOU WILL DIE DARKNESS SHALL CONSUME US ALL!!!" while standing in some dark corner.

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Two yeears of SL does that. I for one am glad we can travel in a world with.. Colors and not literal death in every corner.

I totally understand where your coming from about the whole Shadowlands thing. I've been playing since 05' this game has taken some weird turns. Even SL though wasn't at all what I had pictured literal DEATH being like. I mean the Maw tried. I'll give them that. But even so, I imagined things going much differently but that's a post for another time.

Anyhow, yes Dragonflight does feel like a breath of fresh air. I just wish sometimes that blizzard wouldn't be so set on playing it safe. Years ago when I played the first Diablo game it had a totally different feel. Was much darker and more mature in theme. I was just a teenager at the time but that game is what got me into computer gaming in general. Even Warcraft Orcs vs Humans was more gritty narratively than modern WoW.

[McNeil]

Its certainly a lot more goofier than most recent expansions which was also apparent with that How To Train Your Dragon trailer they had. Not my cup of tea but I could give it a pass if the expansion was at least somewhat more interesting and engaging. I find it hard to find stories and characters that are any interesting so I don't really pay attention at all unless its from the main story campaign (like the recent Ysera story that I got to complete). I do prefer my Warcraft to be more gritty as I grew up with the RTS games which despite the cartoony graphics knew how to deliver the necessary amount of grittiness. I also don't believe that any of the OG's has overseen anything for DF which may explain the huge turnover for going into a much lightier and family friendlier theme.

[Steelcryo]

"How they're supposed to be"

Why are gamers always so entitled that they think what they want is the "correct" way to do things? Seriously, it's insane how often this happens. Dragons have always been mostly friendly in Warcraft, the major dragons have always been the good guys. In over 20 years of Warcraft, the dragons have been good. This is Blizzards world, not yours, you don't get to decide how things are "supposed to be". Blizzard has said that the major dragonflights are the good guys, the protectors of Azeroth. THAT is how they are supposed to be.

You sound like one of the Rings of Power writers that thinks they can do fantasy better than Tolkien...

[Zodiark]

because the story keeps talking about secrets "our" dragons have. And the fact that we just killed 1 out of 4 of the "big bad" dragons most likely means they are not the end boss of this expansion. Just the precursors for whats to come.

And "our" dragons have always been nice. That has not changed.
The enemy dragons...lets see....i just flew past some hanging dragon corpses. Ohhh and 1 raid boss is just thrown away when she gets empored by the "big bad" of this expansion.
So...maybe its where you have been/question.
And WoW has never been "Scary" like that.

Yes 80's movies where brutal.....WoW has had its touches. But never that brutal...might i add again: we see dragon corpses everywhere. And people getting killed by them.

And Vox...yeah they are brutal but again....thats a other based on a other game/media. with other target audiance.


As for disney dragons.....WoW has always had big bads like that. And again....sigh....if you listen to the lore...there is more going on here. Talking about betrayl, secrets etc.

And again, other media does dragons/story different. Thats why we watch it. If all movies where the same. we only watch 1 movie.

sighhh...............Our dragons have ALWAYS been hippies like that. WotLK we have or lady alexstraza flying and healing people. Ysera's has always been a dreamer. You are mad, because WoW's dragons have been acting like WoW dragons for the last 20 years...okay.

ooohh and they where made by the titans to do fill those functions.


You are "mad" or not "happy" with WoW dragons not being hardcore melting dragons.
Whats next...you going to be made that pokemon do not claw each other to death?
Or in the next John wick he does not kill every one on screen?

WoW has always been like this. Yes there have been more scary boss, and less scary ones.

I feel a lot of forced its weak sauce stuff coming from this. Do not like it? stop playing. that easy.

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ahahahahahahaha

friendly dragons before wow:
- pete's dragon **
- dragonheart ( kevin cos movie)*
- falkor ( never ending story)**
- shreck ( hell the dragon was so nice, it mated with a donkey)*
- pokemon dragons ** ( i think)
- dbz dragon **
- dragon from mulan *

To name just a few. And most of them where BEFORE WoW. Hell some where even from before your time frame .
the ones with * are between 20 to 30 years old
the ones with ** are older.
And these are just from the top of my head. I think if i google it i will find many more.

So dude.....you are projecting your "manly" feelings about things being to nice for "taste" . And blame it on a culture shift.

In that case:
- why are elves horde: in most stuff they are nice
- why are orcs nice and have a faction they are evil in most old lore
- same goes for trolls, goblins, tauren etc etc.
- why do we have warlocks, mages, druids etc in game. Those are evil according to the bible. And in old movies warlocks, people like deathknights etc are also evil.

and again, WoW has always been like this. And it always has had rougher, scary Expansions. And then lighter expansions to "refresh" . And again, its what you want to see. You still see npc's die, see corpses of dragons lying around. Or hanging on meat hooks in obisidian place.

I'm in my mid 40's so I remember a lot. There were always a few outliers with Dragons on screen but Movies like Shrek I watched as like a joke. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Mulan wasn't my cup of tea. I was into Heavy metal and anything "Badass" which was why I was attracted to the First Diablo game and Orcs vs Humans. Falkor was a luck dragon which was a rarity that's why Atreyu when he first encountered him was at first defensive upon seeing a Dragon because previously the only dragons he had heard of were the ones that ate people, which was why his first comment was "Falkor: I like children Atreyu: For breakfast?"
Dragonheart was stupid and I never really got into that movie and just wrote it off. Even though Sean Connery was one of my favorite actors I thought he just took that part for a paycheck.
DBZ I only watched a few episodes here and there never really got into that even though it was pretty cool it was basically an Anime series not to be taken too seriously.

Now if you want to know the types of Anime that I WAS into that backup my POV about dragons then check out (Record of the Lodoss War) It was a Dungeons and Dragons based anime series where dragons were depicted as frightening creatures of untold destruction.

Which brings me to another point. I was a big Dungeons and Dragons player in my teens. Our Dungeon Master was really good, he was strict and by the books and didn't just throw dragons at us as sword fodder. When we encountered one it wasn't until we were either much higher level or he used them as unsurmountable obstacles at lower level that we would have to use creative roleplaying to avoid. When we got unlucky enough to feel the wrath of one of these creatures it made for some tense moments as he would literally fill a small cup with d6 dice to roll out the damage of their breath of death.

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Its certainly a lot more goofier than most recent expansions which was also apparent with that How To Train Your Dragon trailer they had. Not my cup of tea but I could give it a pass if the expansion was at least somewhat more interesting and engaging. I find it hard to find stories and characters that are any interesting so I don't really pay attention at all unless its from the main story campaign (like the recent Ysera story that I got to complete). I do prefer my Warcraft to be more gritty as I grew up with the RTS games which despite the cartoony graphics knew how to deliver the necessary amount of grittiness. I also don't believe that any of the OG's has overseen anything for DF which may explain the huge turnover for going into a much lightier and family friendlier theme.

Yeah I totally agree with you on this point.

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"How they're supposed to be"

Why are gamers always so entitled that they think what they want is the "correct" way to do things? Seriously, it's insane how often this happens. Dragons have always been mostly friendly in Warcraft, the major dragons have always been the good guys. In over 20 years of Warcraft, the dragons have been good. This is Blizzards world, not yours, you don't get to decide how things are "supposed to be". Blizzard has said that the major dragonflights are the good guys, the protectors of Azeroth. THAT is how they are supposed to be.

You sound like one of the Rings of Power writers that thinks they can do fantasy better than Tolkien...

I actually hated rings of power so try again. It IS blizzards game but I came into it from original Warcraft where things were much more gritty. We didn't even find out about dragons being "protectors" and all that until after WC3 when Richard Knaack started writing WoW books. Yes it's their game but I can still have an opinion. I play because I largely try to overlook how things have changed over the years and enjoy the bits I do still enjoy. If I hadn't played for almost 18 full years now and had previous experience with the Warcraft series then I probably wouldn't even play WoW as a totally new player these days.