Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Jokubas]

I don’t know. I really think this is not how Shadowlands was supposed to be. Everything in 9.0 makes somehow sense, even if it’s just little (in the case of the Jailer), but after that it went downhill and the story became subsequently worse with each patch.

It's really hard to tell. I mean, I'm pretty sure we know the expansion didn't turn out the way they intended. We seemed to have lost the non-plot patch (to clarify, I mean how most expansions tend to have a patch that does a little detour from the main plot, like Ulduar setting aside the Scourge to deal with Yogg-Saron, or the Thunder King setting aside the war and the sha to deal with Lei Shen), but even the initial content is extremely inconsistent.

Right off the bat the story can't seem to make up its mind if the Jailer's real name has been lost to time or is common knowledge. The announcement trailer (until the end) and launch cinematic also showed the Jailer chained up like the Runecarver, only for him to be walking around freely in the expansion with no one ever questioning this. What I'm trying to say is that, from the beginning it felt like the expansion was working from three different drafts of the plot simultaneously.

Of course, that isn't to say any individual writer is that bad. Personally, I keep imagining someone on the team who had or knew of a really good plan for the expansion only to see it cut up like this and massacred by these overlapping drafts, and I feel really, really sorry for them. Like I've said before, I believe that this story really was built on leftover ideas from the past. An Ask CDev answer from 2011 said that Arthas and Ner'zhul were both holding back for some reason, but refused to elaborate as to why. Unfortunately, Zovaal using the Forge of Souls is one of the only times it's actually shown that he was planting seeds in past plots (and I legitimately wonder if the soul grinders were meant for something like this all along, because they were conspicuously unexplained despite being the set pieces of the dungeon), but I can imagine other ideas existed and it's super frustrating to anyone on the team who knew that and it didn't make it into the game.

However, reworking the story on the fly is a consistent problem for Blizzard. This isn't the first time there's an interesting setup, and sometimes even a dramatic payoff, but the problem is that by the time we get from the former to the latter, retcons have ensured that they don't actually line up anymore and the emotional investment is just gone.

I'm even more fascinated by that Jailer concept art now more than ever. That concept art makes way more sense with Zovaal's now-complete character arc. He was an Arbiter who was willing to sacrifice anything (even everyone else >_>) to save everything. He started out as a good guy and seemed to have continued to see himself that way. The more classical godly artwork for him actually makes perfect sense. I'm starting to wonder if the only reason he didn't end up looking like that is because the writers were overruled by suits who demanded that they capitalize on the Lich King's popularity by making Zovaal look like a cheap knock-off, despite it making absolutely no sense for his history or character.

Part of me really wants to see a real, not just PR, post-mortem someday, but the other part of me is worried it'll be depressing thinking how much better it all could have been.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

We are about to 100% get an increase to on Void leaks now that the tease kinda sounds like Void Lords. Crazy how that works

After all the speculation we're gonna end up right where we thought we'd be all along.

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Void Lords attack from the Dragon Isles!
Even fits the pre-vanilla concept art with the Old God temple!

Okay I'll throw one more wrinkle into it.

The Old God temple is related to Xal'atath.

[Vakir]

Void Lords attack from the Dragon Isles!
Even fits the pre-vanilla concept art with the Old God temple!

And it goes right back to the possibility of EoD's logo being legit.

Just gotta wait a month, yay.

[Harbour]

Do you guys still think the BIG BIG BAD Jailer talked about are Void Lords?
Accroding to Enclyclopedia (yes, not exactly canon, but not everything in is wrong) both Light and Void took the part into the cosmic creation. They are the parts of it.
And Jailer said that COSMOS divided has no chance against whats come.
Void and Light are parts of that divided cosmos.

I think the BIG BIG BAD isnt Void or Light, its something outside the BIG SIX forces.

And i also think that its NOT gonna become the main focus of 10.0. Its gonna be THE reason for Void/Light stuff to become the focus in 10.0. Like, we need to deal with them first so we can prepare themselve for what is come (in 11.0 or forward).

[Jokubas]

I'm not convinced the Void Lords are what Zovaal was talking about. As early as the end of Legion it felt like Blizzard was already moving away from "Void as the ultimate evil" and more toward "all cosmic powers can be both good or evil", which also lines up with Zovaal says the cosmos has to be united to face whatever this other thing is.

Perhaps it's Time? That's a power that isn't really represented by any of the known cosmic forces, but has seen villains before in the Infinite Dragonflight.

[Super Dickmann]

I'm not convinced the Void Lords are what Zovaal was talking about. As early as the end of Legion it felt like Blizzard was already moving away from "Void as the ultimate evil" and more toward "all cosmic powers can be both good or evil", which also lines up with Zovaal says the cosmos has to be united to face whatever this other thing is.

Perhaps it's Time? That's a power that isn't really represented by any of the known cosmic forces, but has seen villains before in the Infinite Dragonflight.

For all that it's likely just a blanket Sargeras retread, I think there's only two main currents. One that's more likely and one that's more sensible and vaguely more interesting.

1. It's the Void Lords. They're the biggest bad before SL and still are in it. They're an established threat and we know that the Void has attacked the Shadowlands before. It's the Sargeras motivation but without a beard.

2. It's systemic collapse. The Bald Man's plan after all doesn't involve preparing reality as is for anything, it's using the world soul as fuel to merge the divided cosmic powers into a single one under his own control. It's permanent stasis. He sees dividing the powers into competing elements to be self-destructive when one is knocked off balance and he's saving it by uniting it as a singular machine.

The latter makes more sense with Firim's journal and what has been said in the expansion up to now but given how the main problem of this villain and why he fails is that they've no idea what to do with him, that doesn't have much predictive potential.

[KainneAbsolute]

So...Zovaal was able to align Zereth Mortis, Torghast, Icecrown Citadel, and the Forge of Souls...while trapped in the Maw.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I'm not convinced the Void Lords are what Zovaal was talking about. As early as the end of Legion it felt like Blizzard was already moving away from "Void as the ultimate evil" and more toward "all cosmic powers can be both good or evil", which also lines up with Zovaal says the cosmos has to be united to face whatever this other thing is.

Perhaps it's Time? That's a power that isn't really represented by any of the known cosmic forces, but has seen villains before in the Infinite Dragonflight.

WoW: The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe.

Ah who am I kidding of course Blizz would cop that one.

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So...Zovaal was able to align Zereth Mortis, Torghast, Icecrown Citadel, and the Forge of Souls...while trapped in the Maw.

I mean to be fair he had the Dreadlords, Arthas, and Sylvanas to help nudge things along and even then it took like 20 years to set it all up and it was a Bolvar and a Saurfang away from all falling apart.

Of all the things to complain about in Shadowlands, that one ain't it.

[Jokubas]

If there is a secret cosmic power and he wasn't just afraid of imbalance, I'm already starting to wonder if that secret power is the true, true allegiance of the dreadlords. It would be a good excuse to bring Denathrius back, and his line in this flashback could be read as "it's a shame you want to tear down my master" as much as "I'm totally not going to help you while you're imprisoned, wink wink."

Of all the things to complain about in Shadowlands, that one ain't it.

The awkward part to me is that we see the Azerite beam shoot from Icecrown into Torghast and then uses the glow to cut to the interior of the Sepulcher. Visually, that's communicating that Zovaal is in Torghast, which is probably just editing for the sake of the annoyingly short time most cutscenes have, but does make me wonder if Torghast's role in the expansion got moved around.

[KainneAbsolute]

Of course, that isn't to say any individual writer is that bad. Personally, I keep imagining someone on the team who had or knew of a really good plan for the expansion only to see it cut up like this and massacred by these overlapping drafts, and I feel really, really sorry for them. Like I've said before, I believe that this story really was built on leftover ideas from the past. An Ask CDev answer from 2011 said that Arthas and Ner'zhul were both holding back for some reason, but refused to elaborate as to why. Unfortunately, Zovaal using the Forge of Souls is one of the only times it's actually shown that he was planting seeds in past plots (and I legitimately wonder if the soul grinders were meant for something like this all along, because they were conspicuously unexplained despite being the set pieces of the dungeon), but I can imagine other ideas existed and it's super frustrating to anyone on the team who knew that and it didn't make it into the game.

I did a post long time ago that the "soul machines" belonged to the jailer: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...nd-Shadowlands

I ended the post with the following theory: "In the Shadowlands, the memories and experiences of the souls are harvested to maintain this realm. What if the Jailer's sin was to instead consume the whole souls? What if the biggest prize is to consume the soul of a Titan, like Azeroth?"

[username993720]

So... we'll be uniting the different cosmic forces, right?
We dealt with Fel in Legion and Death in Shadowlands. Does that mean we are left with Void, Light, Life and Arcane? It pretty much lines up with the expansion themes left to be explored...

I, personally, can't wait to see a proper Cosmic War feature him front and center leading his own agenda instead of being shackled to the Bald Man. He is a much more fun and interesting representative of Death than Zovaal, and I'd rather see him leading it.

I think all of us do.

[Jokubas]

I did a post long time ago that the "soul machines" belonged to the jailer:

Wasn't there one of those things at the beginning of the Maw intro as well? Either one of the things we sneaked past or one of the things Jaina killed.

To pre-emptively re-clarify my point, I don't think that Blizzard has been building up to this story for over a decade. I do, however, believe that during Wrath of the Lich King they developed ideas for places they might go with the Scourge/Lich King/Death later on, only to ultimately shelve those ideas in favor of the expansions that came after. A decade later, they took those notes back off the shelf, dusted them off, and decided to steer the story back in a direction where they could be used in a new story.

In that fashion, I'm convinced that someone on the writing team had some really good ideas for this expansion using all these loose plot threads, but whether due to bad writing, real life events, or the inability to resist re-drafting the story even after it's been released, all of that potential was squandered.

So... we'll be uniting the different cosmic forces, right?
We dealt with Fel in Legion and Death in Shadowlands. Does that mean we are left with Void, Light, Life and Arcane? It pretty much lines up with the expansion themes left to be explored...

It's almost certainly going to tie into the cross-faction stuff and thus "uniting" the factions as well. I've wanted that to happen for a long time, but I admit I'm rolling my eyes a bit at this. We should be ending the faction war because it's the right thing to do, not because it's an event required to save the universe. That sort of dilutes the message and the event itself.

I think all of us do.

I don't. I mean, I agree that Denathrius had a million times more personality than Zovaal and we had way more context to what he was doing and why. However, to me the only value in a villain as arrogant and smug as he, is in the moment you get to wipe that smirk from his face. So far, he might as well have won for as little actual setback he faced, and that just annoys me. I don't get rooting for villains who get do to horrible things, get away with it, and then rub it in your face. Him being imprisoned and forced to face the exact recompense his realm existed for to begin with was deliciously karmic, or at least it should have been, but him being casually rescued completely destroyed any sort of satisfaction in that plot and I was afraid that would happen from the moment he made it through the fight alive.

Incidentally, that's related to one of the things that doesn't just bother me about Zovaal's fate, but a lot of recent villains in both Warcraft and other series. We don't just get to put an end to a bad person's evil anymore. If they don't just plain get away to preserve a popular character, they end up sympathetic, secretly good, or there's some message that everyone can change, which apparently also means that anyone will if you just ask them, and we'll just ignore what they did to all their victims. I want a villain again who's just a bad person we can feel good about stopping, and I want some catharsis in the ending. The closest thing I can think of to that recently in Warcraft was Nathanos' death, but even he got to act smug about it and the closest thing to actual catharsis didn't come in until we saw Sylvanas' surprised reaction to learning about it (which itself was ruined by Sylvanas ultimately being victorious there). Maybe I should stop looking forward to the apparently inevitably deflating climax of the plot, and embrace pre-patch cutscenes. :P

Thrall sums up my feelings about this expansion;

I would love for that to be indicative of next expansion, but I'm so nervous. Thrall's little text box is easy for them to throw in there to reflect what they've seen in the fandom. The cutscene implies we're in for more escalation, and that's something they have to commit more resources to.

We've heard Blizzard claim things are going to calm down before, and it's never really turned out that way. I don't even think they're necessarily lying, just that they look at it differently than we do.

I don't even mean to sound cynical about it, but the story has tended to be fairly straightforward. The Legion expansion starts with a Legion invasion, ends with a visit to Argus and Sargeras himself being defeated. Battle for Azeroth starts as a war expansion with some Void meddling, ends with a visit to Ny'alotha and the last Old God put down. We get a tease that Sylvanas has a secret master, the next expansion goes there and defeats him. I totally would not be surprised to see next expansion initially appear more grounded, but by the end we're traveling to the Seat Beyond Time and defeating the seventh cosmic power source.

[username993720]

I don't. I mean, I agree that Denathrius had a million times more personality than Zovaal and we had way more context to what he was doing and why. However, to me the only value in a villain as arrogant and smug as he, is in the moment you get to wipe that smirk from his face. So far, he might as well have won for as little actual setback he faced, and that just annoys me. I don't get rooting for villains who get do to horrible things, get away with it, and then rub it in your face. Him being imprisoned and forced to face the exact recompense his realm existed for to begin with was deliciously karmic, or at least it should have been, but him being casually rescued completely destroyed any sort of satisfaction in that plot and I was afraid that would happen from the moment he made it through the fight alive.

He'd be the equivalent of Kael'thas.
Did you hate to see him come back for another encounter in TBC?

Incidentally, that's related to one of the things that doesn't just bother me about Zovaal's fate, but a lot of recent villains in both Warcraft and other series. We don't just get to put an end to a bad person's evil anymore. If they don't just plain get away to preserve a popular character, they end up sympathetic, secretly good, or there's some message that everyone can change, which apparently also means that anyone will if you just ask them, and we'll just ignore what they did to all their victims. I want a villain again who's just a bad person we can feel good about stopping, and I want some catharsis in the ending. The closest thing I can think of to that recently in Warcraft was Nathanos' death, but even he got to act smug about it and the closest thing to actual catharsis didn't come in until we saw Sylvanas' surprised reaction to learning about it (which itself was ruined by Sylvanas ultimately being victorious there). Maybe I should stop looking forward to the apparently inevitably deflating climax of the plot, and embrace pre-patch cutscenes. :P

Like Garrosh? He never apologizes for his actions.

[Jokubas]

He'd be the equivalent of Kael'thas.
Did you hate to see him come back for another encounter in TBC?

I hated that Kael'thas was a villain at all in Burning Crusade, because it completely betrayed his character from the Frozen Throne. He was the token good guy on Illidan's team in Frozen Throne and had good relations with the other heroes, then he's suddenly the token mole to the bigger bad guys, with no explanation. It took them until Shadowlands to finally try to fix that debacle.

Like Garrosh? He never apologizes for his actions.

Garrosh did make a good villain. Unfortunately, he got off easy in his raid fight (much like the other options I listed), and his actual death was relatively anticlimactic and had other issues (like Thrall acting like none of it was his responsibility, another thing the writers had to fix years and years later).

[username993720]

I hated that Kael'thas was a villain at all in Burning Crusade, because it completely betrayed his character from the Frozen Throne. He was the token good guy on Illidan's team in Frozen Throne and had good relations with the other heroes, then he's suddenly the token mole to the bigger bad guys, with no explanation. It took them until Shadowlands to finally try to fix that debacle.

Well, i think that's what separated High elves from Blood elves. The magic addiction that made them turn bad.

Garrosh did make a good villain. Unfortunately, he got off easy in his raid fight (much like the other options I listed), and his actual death was relatively anticlimactic and had other issues (like Thrall acting like none of it was his responsibility, another thing the writers had to fix years and years later).

Yea... he had to lead us into the next expansion.
That's why Sylvanas survived BfA and i guess why she survives Shadowlands as well.

[Jokubas]

Yea... he had to lead us into the next expansion.
That's why Sylvanas survived BfA and i guess why she survives Shadowlands as well.

I used to want the expansions to lead into each other, but it definitely feels like a "be careful what you wish for" situation.

I guess I don't think Legion was too bad. Sargeras stabbing the planet had consequences that Battle for Azeroth picked up on, but that's all they were. Sargeras didn't get to sneak out of his expansion and he didn't deflate our victory by implying something else was already coming.

I am starting to heavily prefer standalone stories in general though, not just Warcraft. I like a good beginning, middle, and satisfying end, rather than being strung along for an indeterminate amount of time.

[Varodoc]

Next expansion is not Void, it's too soon.

They'll keep the Void Lords for the final expansion and ultimate, definitive culmination of the saga that is World of Warcraft.

[username993720]

I am starting to heavily prefer standalone stories in general though, not just Warcraft. I like a good beginning, middle, and satisfying end, rather than being strung along for an indeterminate amount of time.

We all do.

[Revamp Man]

We are about to 100% get an increase to on Void leaks now that the tease kinda sounds like Void Lords. Crazy how that works

See I’m not sure it’s the void
Yeah the void called him the enemy of all but the eternals said the same more or less

Void is part of the cosmos that has to stand against what is coming

Now what could that threat be?? Well we have something that is an enemy to all forces and is from an unknown source…devourers.

They serve a force sealed away by the first ones, a force too primal to exist with the other cosmic forces. They are from the cosmic force opposite reality and we shall face them soon.

[Sondrelk]

The awkward part to me is that we see the Azerite beam shoot from Icecrown into Torghast and then uses the glow to cut to the interior of the Sepulcher. Visually, that's communicating that Zovaal is in Torghast, which is probably just editing for the sake of the annoyingly short time most cutscenes have, but does make me wonder if Torghast's role in the expansion got moved around.

Seems like a stretch considering the cutscene would have had to be made extremely early, in addition to the Sepulcher room looking nothing like what we have seen in Torghast.
Though then again, the cineamtic was likely made very early to free the animators up to make the next trailer or what have you, so maybe.

My guess would be that the Azerite in the boss room is supposed to visualize it leaving Azeroth and going into Torghast, though I did wonder what the Jailer intends to do with it when it is so far away, though I guess that could be explained with the whole "Eternals are connected to their realm" thing.

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I used to want the expansions to lead into each other, but it definitely feels like a "be careful what you wish for" situation.

I guess I don't think Legion was too bad. Sargeras stabbing the planet had consequences that Battle for Azeroth picked up on, but that's all they were. Sargeras didn't get to sneak out of his expansion and he didn't deflate our victory by implying something else was already coming.

I am starting to heavily prefer standalone stories in general though, not just Warcraft. I like a good beginning, middle, and satisfying end, rather than being strung along for an indeterminate amount of time.

I have long had a theory that the reason the writing is so bad has less to do with inherent lack of talent with the writers, and more to do with the story being built ramshackle to meet deadlines. The beginning of SL has to be built from the backlash of BfA, but is also severely limited by what will have to happen when the story ends. WoW isnt like a book where you can just go back and redraft something, doing so here would require bringing back VAs for retakes, and possibly even remaking bosses or even models.

So when we see Sylvanas be redeemed at the end of Sanctum of Domination and rightfully complain about how horrible this turn is, the writers hands are already tied. The story in 9.2 has already been mostly written, and the cinematic that shows Bluevanas is possibly already made. So the best Blizzard can do is try to soften the landing, which itself might be near impossible given how much focus is already put on her. The book is already announced and written, they can't change the turn players disliked, and doing an even more drastic heel turn and removing Syylvanas in-between 9.1 and 9.2 isnt going to solve much more than make the story even more pointless.
So in the end Blizzard has to defeat Zovaal, and Sylvanas has to be there. Their best option at that point was probably just to ride it out and then wash their hands clean of it afterwards and hope noone cares once we get into 10.0.


If I were to fix the story it would probably start by making a filler expansion that deliberately doesnt try to have one big overarching villain, but rather stays firmly put on Azeroth solving smaller local problems like what we had in Vanilla. This should ideally give the writers some time to deconstruct the Jenga tower and start fresh instead of needing to throw more plot on top to ensure the patches come out in time.