"Opening the Way" In-Game Cinematic - Patch 10.1 Embers of Neltharion

[Biomega]

At some point you realize your overanalyzing a story that is the equivalent of the stuff they have in the line at a roller coaster that mearly exists to get you excited to ride the roller coaster

Oh I get that, by my initial point was that they've reached a tipping point and I'm now LESS excited rather than more, because they're playing it too coy. I WANT to get invested, but "we want power to defeat our enemies" doesn't help me get invested. It helps me get UNinvested, because it's just another generic villain line I can't muster any actual excitement for.

That's the problem.

To go with your rollercoaster analogy: it's like them hiding the rollercoaster from your eyes and ears, and when you ask them okay but what's the ride like they simply reply "it's thrilling, and it'll excite you!" instead of, you know, SHOWING you the rollercoaster or whatever to ACTUALLY get you excited for what's coming.

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The whole aim of the Primalists is to fight the Dragon Aspects because they have ideological differences. They disagree with Order ruling Azeroth, ie. the Titans' influence. They believe Azeroth should be free of the Titans' influence and therefore wants to get rid of the Titanic ruling powers, the Aspects. In particular they believe dragons should remain/return to their primal state as proto-dragons, not as Titan-evolved dragons as we know them. That's a very specific and clear ideological aim, far different from "reshape the universe" or "rule the world". They have a specific ideology which has been spelt out.

How do they want to do this? Kill the Aspects and their allies. How will they do that? Recover their own power first (based on their release cinematic and 1.0.7 cinematic). The Primal Incarnates need to wait and spend time recuperating after their imprisonment for 10,000+ years. They said as much upon their release (in a roundabout way). That was Razageth's mistake, not waiting and rushing into battle with us. That's why she died. Also, they want to let the Dracthyr become corrupted and see what damage they do by themselves (based on this latest cinematic). In addition, they know there is shadowflame (or they know there's at least some power) in the Zaralek Caverns. They want Fyrakk to absorb that power to become stronger.

All of this is pretty specific and clear in game. I get that the Incarnates as characters are generic (boomy dark voice, Winter Queen 2.0) but their actions and aims are, in WoW terms, refreshingly clear.

But none of that ACTUALLY explains anything, and half of it is conjecture and speculation - you say they want "dragons to return to their primal state as proto dragons" - HOW would they achieve that? Their ideology isn't "specific" at all, in fact it's just "we want things to be our way", they don't even give a real REASON why it's preferable to what the Titans did other than "we disagree".

They want the dracthyr to become corrupted - WHY? Other than to occupy their enemies and be a diversion. I don't recall shadowflame being mentioned by them anywhere, do you have a source? All I remember is "the liquid fire that powers Aberrus", whatever that is supposed to mean, and whatever that is supposed to accomplish other than for them to "gain power" - HOW? WHY?

It's answering one vague statement with another vague statement. That's not how plans or goals work, and that's not how you get excited for something, because you know neither the stakes nor the process - not beyond "they're evil and want to do evil things".

[Khaza-R]

WoW's issue ever since WOTLK ended is that the bad guys have no build up for the players to care about.
It's an MMORPG, but WoW lost the RPG aspect a very long time ago.

It's not interesting or entertaining when every expansion has a new BIG BAD GUY THREAT WHO CAME OUT OF NO WHERE AND IS GONNA DESTROY AZEROTH RAAGHH!!!
where the hell is Blizzard's imagination? what happened to their creation team. Stop turning WoW into DBZ.

Unfortunately you think it would of been something they learned over the years. Their most successful villains have always ones who were built up or at least had presence through multiple expansions.

At least these 4 are better than the Jailer, although that's not saying much. But still, I am getting serious Black Order vibes from them and have feeling Blizzard can't help themselves and there's going to be some surprise BBEG who ends up being the real villain.

[Calfredd]

But none of that ACTUALLY explains anything, and half of it is conjecture and speculation - you say they want "dragons to return to their primal state as proto dragons" - HOW would they achieve that? Their ideology isn't "specific" at all, in fact it's just "we want things to be our way", they don't even give a real REASON why it's preferable to what the Titans did other than "we disagree".

Would you understand better if I said "Horde versus Alliance"?

They want the dracthyr to become corrupted - WHY? Other than to occupy their enemies and be a diversion. I don't recall shadowflame being mentioned by them anywhere, do you have a source? All I remember is "the liquid fire that powers Aberrus", whatever that is supposed to mean, and whatever that is supposed to accomplish other than for them to "gain power" - HOW? WHY?

Dracthyr are created by a dragon and are considered abominations in their eyes so they're letting the dracthyr get corrupted by Neltharian's experiments to wreak havoc while they gather strength. And it's not shadowflame the Primalists are after, it's the magma and lava that powers the lab that houses the shadowflame. Fyrakk is a fire dragon and gains strength through things associated with fire which means bathing in lava is a power boost for him.

It's answering one vague statement with another vague statement. That's not how plans or goals work, and that's not how you get excited for something, because you know neither the stakes nor the process - not beyond "they're evil and want to do evil things".

Again, "Horde versus Alliance".

[Kyux]

Oh I get that, by my initial point was that they've reached a tipping point and I'm now LESS excited rather than more, because they're playing it too coy. I WANT to get invested, but "we want power to defeat our enemies" doesn't help me get invested. It helps me get UNinvested, because it's just another generic villain line I can't muster any actual excitement for.

That's the problem.

To go with your rollercoaster analogy: it's like them hiding the rollercoaster from your eyes and ears, and when you ask them okay but what's the ride like they simply reply "it's thrilling, and it'll excite you!" instead of, you know, SHOWING you the rollercoaster or whatever to ACTUALLY get you excited for what's coming.

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But none of that ACTUALLY explains anything, and half of it is conjecture and speculation - you say they want "dragons to return to their primal state as proto dragons" - HOW would they achieve that? Their ideology isn't "specific" at all, in fact it's just "we want things to be our way", they don't even give a real REASON why it's preferable to what the Titans did other than "we disagree".

They want the dracthyr to become corrupted - WHY? Other than to occupy their enemies and be a diversion. I don't recall shadowflame being mentioned by them anywhere, do you have a source? All I remember is "the liquid fire that powers Aberrus", whatever that is supposed to mean, and whatever that is supposed to accomplish other than for them to "gain power" - HOW? WHY?

It's answering one vague statement with another vague statement. That's not how plans or goals work, and that's not how you get excited for something, because you know neither the stakes nor the process - not beyond "they're evil and want to do evil things".

It's not conjecture and speculation if you have been paying attention to the quests in game and keeping up with datamining for 10.1. I don't know how the Incarnates want dragons to return to their primal state. I'm not an Incarnate. Presumably by not infusing dragon eggs with Order magic in the Ruby Life Pools. Maybe by just killing the already Titan-evolved dragons so only proto-drakes remain. We don't need detail that specific. It's like asking how Arthas planned to conquer Azeroth after resurrecting us as minions - would he start in Tirisfal Glades, or Winterspring? It's unreasonable to get detail that specific. Only the Incarnates would know that, or maybe they haven't figured it out that far.

The reason they want things to be their way is because it's free of outside influence. It's their natural state. See https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Pri...te_note-WotW-1 and the footnotes.

They want the Dracthyr to be corrupted because void-corrupted super soldiers would be quite destructive to us. Void is opposed to Order. So corrupted Dracthyr would oppose the Aspects. Even if the only purpose is to occupying their enemies that's a good one because it buys them time to recuperate. But any harm to the Aspects and their allies (us) is a benefit to the Incarnates. Maybe they don't know what the Dracthyr will do, but most likely it'd be something beneficial.

Shadowflame is a major part of 10.1. You can't miss it. Fyrakk gains power literally by sitting in it and absorbing it.

[Biomega]

Would you understand better if I said "Horde versus Alliance"?

No.

If I say "I'd like more details beyond 'evil does evil things', please", answering with "white vs. black, right?" is at BEST completely vapid, at worst being mockingly derisive because you can't come up with an actual retort.

It's not conjecture and speculation if you have been paying attention to the quests in game and keeping up with datamining for 10.1. I don't know how the Incarnates want dragons to return to their primal state. I'm not an Incarnate. Presumably by...

Come on, man -_-

Void is opposed to Order.

No it's not. Order is opposed to Disorder (of which Fel is a part) in the WoW cosmic forces. The opposite of Void is Light, not Order.

You're just making stuff up ;/

[Reive]

On azeroth Order is opposed to Void. Titans and Old golds are the 2 major cosmic influences on azeroth.

[tromage2]

No Horde or Alliance to be seen again….
This exp pack feels so far apart from the warcraft franchise, when we will actually see progress in the core factions you know the factions that actually matter and what made people start playing WoW in the first place.

[Scyth]

No Horde or Alliance to be seen again….
This exp pack feels so far apart from the warcraft franchise, when we will actually see progress in the core factions you know the factions that actually matter and what made people start playing WoW in the first place.

I'm more than ok to ignore "humans vs orcs" or factions for a while as I find this more interesting tbh. Not everyone likes Horde vs Alliance

Part of me really wants for at least one of the incarnates to surive as I find them cool but probably won't happen.
Poor Fyrakk though, looks like both Iridikron and Vyranoth know exactly what is going to happen to him.

[Daedius]

That fire dragon looked like a flying T-rex... big head and tiny arms, looks silly. XD

[exochaft]

Visually looks fine, but the dialogue... seriously, it felt like 95% of it was exposition dumping versus something that would naturally come up in a conversation. I can understand wanting to get out a little more information, however I think it could've been done in a much more clever way. As an example of a good WoW cutscene, the Wrathgate cutscene (despite its age) was done extremely well as it was the culmination of the zone questlines that moved the story forward in what felt like a natural way that didn't feel like an exposition dump.

The start of this new cinematic is perfectly fine, random person happens to catch movement, investigates, and gets wordlessly murdered for stumbling upon the group. However, after that, almost all that dialogue should not exist if you want a more believable dialogue. Just imagine you were searching for some hidden entrace with a couple of friends, it'd be more natural that the most you'd ask "Is this the place?" and/or "Doesn't look like much, you sure we're in the right place?", and a response would be pretty limited to just "yes" or "it matches up with the information we have", then proceed to opening the way with minimal dialogue such as "Like we planned, let's do this!" Obviously you can shift the dialogue's specific verbiage based upon character design and asthetics, but I'd have a super hard time believing any of them would just monologue like that... maybe some internal monologuing might be feasible, but that's it.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from WoW writers at this point, but the simple explanation is that the dialogue is a prime example of "more is less". However, if there's minimal buildup and you run out of time (which is typical of WoW writing as of late), you'll just resort to exposition dumping. I just have a sneaking suspicion that such writing is getting on people's nerves.

[Calfredd]

No.

If I say "I'd like more details beyond 'evil does evil things', please", answering with "white vs. black, right?" is at BEST completely vapid, at worst being mockingly derisive because you can't come up with an actual retort.

It's my fault to assume you were one of those people who didn't equate Horde with evil so of course my point flew over your head. Primalists vs Aspects isn't Good vs Evil, it's Ideology vs Ideology.

[Revamp Man]

That's not a plan, though. That's a broad-stroke simplification of pretty much ANY hero-villain dynamic: to defeat their enemy and gain power. But what does that MEAN? How and why do they want to do that? What's their larger goal? We need to KNOW this in order to have stakes that we can be invested in. We need SOMETHING more concrete than "they want power", that tells us absolutely nothing about anything.

Heck if it was even just as stupid as "they want the hidden Magic Gem of XYZ to become Immortal Mega Dragons that can eat the Titans" that'd be at least SOMETHING - it'd still be generic as fuck, but it'd be more than "they want power".

They want revenge for the aspects essentially turning against the natural order
In order to do this they need the source of Aberrus which is the blood of the Djaradin elders who are void touched
By sending fyrakk into Aberrus and having him absorb that power they accomplish 3 things
1. Get their brother a power up
2. Release ancient enemies of the aspects
3. Get the aspects and their allies to turn their full attention to Aberrus and the now free to do whatever fyrakk while iridikron and the other one do stuff on the surface

It's a classic misdirect making the aspects think they know the end goal but in reality it's just a small step

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No Horde or Alliance to be seen again….
This exp pack feels so far apart from the warcraft franchise, when we will actually see progress in the core factions you know the factions that actually matter and what made people start playing WoW in the first place.

Did we not just have 2 heritage quests and the Tauren stuff?

[Biomega]

It's a classic misdirect making the aspects think they know the end goal but in reality it's just a small step

But my point is we don't KNOW their actual end goal, at least not beyond the general "gain power, defeat enemies" paradigm. It's a completely generic "we want the world to be our way" scenario with nothing more behind it, and no way to get invested as a result.

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It's my fault to assume you were one of those people who didn't equate Horde with evil so of course my point flew over your head. Primalists vs Aspects isn't Good vs Evil, it's Ideology vs Ideology.

And I didn't say "good vs. evil" anywhere. Are you assuming that's what I meant by "black vs. white"? "Red vs. blue", then. "Orange vs. purple". It doesn't matter beyond an arbitrary binary, and it DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING more, either.

"Two opposing ideologies" yes thank you, I got that much from heroes vs. villains. It could not BE more generic and nondescript.

I guess you're just confirming everything I've said, at least, so there's that.

[Calfredd]

And I didn't say "good vs. evil" anywhere. Are you assuming that's what I meant by "black vs. white"? "Red vs. blue", then. "Orange vs. purple". It doesn't matter beyond an arbitrary binary, and it DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING more, either.

"Two opposing ideologies" yes thank you, I got that much from heroes vs. villains. It could not BE more generic and nondescript.

I guess you're just confirming everything I've said, at least, so there's that.

Confirming that you are blind and illiterate? I said nothing of the sort.

[Biomega]

Confirming that you are blind and illiterate? I said nothing of the sort.

Nice try, but insults won't dig you out of this You've already admitted you have no clue what's going on either, yet somehow you're celebrating that instead of lamenting it.

Which, fair enough, that's a take.

[Kyux]

Come on, man -_-


No it's not. Order is opposed to Disorder (of which Fel is a part) in the WoW cosmic forces. The opposite of Void is Light, not Order.

You're just making stuff up ;/

It is not conjecture that the Incarnates oppose Order and want dragons to remain in their primal state. They have said as much.

It is conjecture on my part how they would possibly reverse evolve dragons to proto drakes, if that is part of their plan. I don't know. But I am not speculating about their overarching ideology which has been very clear in game. Finer details which might occur further down the track - I don't know and in-universe they probably don't know either.

Yes, on the cosmological chart Order is opposite Disorder. However, in the history of Azeroth the Titans fought the Old Gods, Order against the Void. "Opposed to" =/= "opposite". I am not saying they are opposites, but two things can be opposed to one another without being opposites. Revendreth showed us that the Light fought with Death, but Light is opposite Shadow. The War of the Ancients involved Azeroth, and the Ancients, fighting the Burning Legion = Life vs Disorder, but they aren't opposites either.

The Void is definitely opposed to Order in Warcraft.

[Darsyek]

But my point is we don't KNOW their actual end goal, at least not beyond the general "gain power, defeat enemies" paradigm. It's a completely generic "we want the world to be our way" scenario with nothing more behind it, and no way to get invested as a result.

Not knowing their actual end goal isn't in and of itself a bad thing. Not all villains need to exposit their grand master plan like a Bond villain. In fact in many ways, not knowing what the villain is planning adds to the intrigue because it leaves you guessing. Them not dumping exposition is not generic, it's actually quite the opposite. What you apparently want is a Sunday morning cartoon villain who explains their plan from start to finish in front of the titular character so they know exactly how to stop them. Having a bit of mystery to the villain of a story is not a bad thing, what matters is how it pays off in the end which we have yet to see.

[Biomega]

Not knowing their actual end goal isn't in and of itself a bad thing. Not all villains need to exposit their grand master plan like a Bond villain.

No, but in return things build up in a meaningful way by working towards something. You need motivation, and you need purpose - we have neither, because all these villains are is "we were wronged and now we're mad and we'll destroy your world", which is an absolute black hole of emotional vapidity that doesn't give us anything to latch on to. Everything is an exposition dump. We're told these things, but they're inorganic and detached. We have not built a relationship, because we didn't have time to do that.

The "slow burn" villains only work if you take the time to develop them and make us get to know them. You can't do that in three cutscenes. For someone like Arthas it took two games and two expansions to get us hooked. Even someone like Garrosh had a long, gradual arc. If you have that, you can afford to be vague about the endgame, because these are companions we can understand and get invested in.

Our Anime Villain Trio wasn't even there from the beginning of DF. They're brand new. They get dumped all over us with with a bunch of generic information about what happened way back when and what may or may not happen who knows when, with every detail left unspecified and completely vague - and all we get now is equally vague one-liners of villain-speek that serve as nothing more than promotional sound bites.

You can't get invested like that. If you want to do a rapid exposition dump, you have to outline the stakes. You have to tell us why we MUST care, in some concrete, relatable way.

That's why for example in Avengers: Infinity War, despite the fact that the main villain AND the plot device were both built up over a very long time in many movies, they tell us right at the start what Thanos' goal is: kill half of the universe. They don't just string us along with "he wants power" and "he wants to realize his plan" to then reveal at the very end what the snap actually does - they TELL US FROM THE START, because that way, we know what's at stake, we know what the concrete, specific goals and motivations of the villain are, and we can actually get invested in what the heroes are doing because we can directly stack it up against known and looming consequences. This is important to make people CARE about what's going on, rather than just have them be passive onlookers that let the unspooling story rain upon them. It's a key narrative technique.

Blizzard is bungling this with almost amateurish abandon, which is doubly infuriating because we've just come off an entire expansion of this - and nothing even got resolved there. WHY was the Jailer doing all this? What was the deal with the Sepulcher? Why, how, what the heck even? Nothing. No payoffs, no explanations, no resolutions. I guess we need to wait until the NEXT expansion, after DF, to MAYBE find out. Those of us who'll still be around by then, that is.

This is not how you tell an engaging story and get people invested in your narrative.

[Le Conceptuel]

But my point is we don't KNOW their actual end goal, at least not beyond the general "gain power, defeat enemies" paradigm. It's a completely generic "we want the world to be our way" scenario with nothing more behind it, and no way to get invested as a result.

I thought it was fairly explicitly spelled out from the beginning of the expansion?—we know they want to reverse the Titans' influence over Azeroth and return it to its state prior to the arrival of either the Old Gods or the Titans, which entails a state of permanent elemental chaos as we are directly shown at one point. Although there's plenty to say about these characters being cliché and generally unremarkable, and the future we're shown is hardly riveting, I think it's fairly clear what their long-term objectives are and precisely what they would entail. There's nothing remotely ambiguous about the nature of their objectives and how that would manifest.

It's hardly good writing – Dagoth Ur from Morrowind remains the best example of a good villain with clearly-defined and compelling motives in the genre, so that's the point of comparison I'd probably want to use – but I certainly don't see the problem you're perceiving here.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Basically Shadowlands continued, people are just not as mad because it massacres less of the preexisting lore.

Though you have to wonder why these dragons have the powers rivaling those of Elemental Lords like Ragnaros or Al'akir, and why the elemental lords are MIA during all of this.

The elements lords could make volcanoes rise or the ground split wide enough to swallow whole army’s by simply being in an area, it takes all three dragons to dig a hole to the new zone in comparison.

The lords should be way stronger then them and they should also still be bound to there elements plains so unless some one wants to summon them it’s not like they can just show up.