Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Shadochi]

I seriously don't understand the fascination with this theory. All it does is add an extraneous level of convolution that really doesn't make the plot any better. All it does is add another layer of scheming villainy to the layers of scheming villainy, and this villain is only moderately more interesting than the others. It is also very contingent on all sorts of presumptions and stretches of the imagination. Why not just let a bad plot be a bad plot rather than accidentally make it even more nonsensical by trying to fix it?

Its one of the more interesting theories that we've seen stuff point to in recent times (has way more evidence than "we are still in N'zoths nightmare"), so it is interesting to discuss. Also the fact that everything points to that there was at some point in Shadowlands development some change between the characters of Zovaal and Primus, with Primus being nothing as described in ingame lore (actions, mind) and The Jailer originally looking completely different than now, and looking more like Primus. They were probably at first just one character before Blizzard changed things (also the fact that Runecarves helmet is similar style to what the Jailer in armor helmet looks like, but that can be just because its a domination helm)

[Sondrelk]

I dont really think she is worse than Arthas. Yes she did Teldrassil, but still I think Arthas did way worse things and more suffered because of him (both before and after officially becoming the LK). Both did terrible things but Arthas did worse IMO. If you look the end goals of each character then sure her was worse (she was consciously working for reality while Arthas probably didn't know or didn't have control), but that was never accomplished.

This brings me to something else about the Jailer that people have been bashing how he planned all of this and knew it would go perfectly to bring him to this point. I am more under the impression as that he set off a lot of stuff in hopes that something would lead to this. If you look at the individual stuff he took credit for you can see that those could also lead in different ways to his goal. For example setting up a lich king, his goal was probably to get rid of life on Azeroth so that he could complete his goal without an issue and have an army of the material plane. Probably have the LK destroy the helm to open the veil after all of Azeroth is under the scourge.

Sylvanas orchestrated a war and an Old God breakout for the purpose of sending the souls to hell to fuel the armies of an entity intending to destroy the universe.

The real kicker to her story is that we still have no idea what she even wanted from the Jailer, or what the Jailer told her HE wanted that in turn was betrayed for a hidden agenda.
So essentially we have to take the story at face value, and that just so happens to be Sylvanas accepted a bargain with a master of domination commanding a vast army of the damned, and indeed the one responsible for what happened to Sylvanas to begin with, for the purpose of destroying the universe.

[Shadochi]

That is the part of the story I really despise. Because of course Ranger-General Sylvanas hasnt done anything, that's the point. What this does however is cheat us out on seeing the actual Sylvanas get her comeuppance.

The story hasnt done anything to really earn Sylvanas' redemption. Her actions in BfA are horrendous, and with the added explanations given in Shadowlands they become beyond monstrous, far worse than close to any villain we have had before. So seeing the writers essentially cheat some sympathy onto Sylvanas just makes it feel like they slammed the handbrake on the story for a quick redemption the story really doesnt need.

The writers are simultaenously asking us to believe this is the Sylvanas we know from before, while also telling us the Sylvanas we see is not the same character at all.

This, they are using the split soul as nothing more than a copout. I really hope they removed chapter 8 of ZM campaign in order to rewrite it for 9.2.5 or a hotfix later since stuff seemed to point at Tyrande letting her off the hook!?

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Also, is it still 2 cinematics for 9.2 that are encrypted?

[Sondrelk]

I seriously don't understand the fascination with this theory. All it does is add an extraneous level of convolution that really doesn't make the plot any better. All it does is add another layer of scheming villainy to the layers of scheming villainy, and this villain is only moderately more interesting than the others. It is also very contingent on all sorts of presumptions and stretches of the imagination. Why not just let a bad plot be a bad plot rather than accidentally make it even more nonsensical by trying to fix it?

That is basically it. Zovaal was such a nothing villain that it feels better to believe he was actually buildup for the ACTUAL Jailer than the Jailer himself.
The Primus has links to other cosmic forces, and is generally a more interesting design, so it's more interesting to imagine a scenario in which he is the villain.

The biggest issue here is Sylvanas though, like so much else in Shadowlands. Her presence kinda undercuts the whole stoyr unless you want to add even more layers of complexity.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

That is the part of the story I really despise. Because of course Ranger-General Sylvanas hasnt done anything, that's the point. What this does however is cheat us out on seeing the actual Sylvanas get her comeuppance.

The story hasnt done anything to really earn Sylvanas' redemption. Her actions in BfA are horrendous, and with the added explanations given in Shadowlands they become beyond monstrous, far worse than close to any villain we have had before. So seeing the writers essentially cheat some sympathy onto Sylvanas just makes it feel like they slammed the handbrake on the story for a quick redemption the story really doesnt need.

The writers are simultaenously asking us to believe this is the Sylvanas we know from before, while also telling us the Sylvanas we see is not the same character at all.

I do think that it's difficult to segregate people between their past and present selves when all that has changed is something of a new perspective. It does seem like they're trying to ascribe some blame to her, but she just gets off easy—I think at least giving her a more permanent solution would be reasonable. Have Sylvanas die heroically and get some kind of redemption that involves the removal of her identity (see: the Kyrians) and let her be retired as a character with some redemption and comeuppance at once. There's plenty more to do than "alright, fix some of the results of your horrible actions."

There's also the fact that this whole "new perspective on herself" angle doesn't really hold up well under scrutiny—the same psychological perspective still applies, and this is still Little Miss "Arrows in the Quiver" we're talking about. I don't see how an individual so mind-numbingly Machiavellian wouldn't manage to do enough moral gymnastics to justify genocide a second time if she could do it the first time. If I got the sad painter Hitler and showed him what dictator Hitler did, there's still a very good chance that sad painter Hitler could come to the same conclusions as his future self and simply run over everything he did again. It doesn't automatically put you under your own self-aware scrutiny just because you've been put under a microscope. Someone who is willing to commit genocide isn't simply inherently evil, but neither are they just victims of circumstance. There's a very real and deliberate sequence of thoughts they'd have to put together to come to their conclusions.

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That is basically it. Zovaal was such a nothing villain that it feels better to believe he was actually buildup for the ACTUAL Jailer than the Jailer himself.
The Primus has links to other cosmic forces, and is generally a more interesting design, so it's more interesting to imagine a scenario in which he is the villain.

I can definitely see that being somewhat desirable, but I think it's frankly better to stop dwelling on what could've been with Shadowlands and move on in the plot.

[Makabreska]

I think people disliked that it was predominately about Sylvanas with Jaina and Uther present. I think it just exacerbated people's concerns the story this expansion is entirely too focused on Sylvanas. You could argue Uther had closure of sorts when he dropped him in the Maw but not for his repentance after. And Jaina never had any closure I am aware of. While Sylvanas closure was detailed in the Edge of Night. We really didn't need more of her dialogue on the situation.

I know there are people who probably wanted to see Arthas actually speak or do something himself, but I agree his original story had a perfect ending. The less they touched on it the better in the end.

Definitely not. Him throwing Arthas to the Maw after being goaded by Devos was against his beliefs as a paladin and only fed his unrest. Second time he acted out of vengeance towards Arthas. His closure came later after he retrieved his soul fragment and understood where he fucked up.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Its one of the more interesting theories that we've seen stuff point to in recent times (has way more evidence than "we are still in N'zoths nightmare"), so it is interesting to discuss. Also the fact that everything points to that there was at some point in Shadowlands development some change between the characters of Zovaal and Primus, with Primus being nothing as described in ingame lore (actions, mind) and The Jailer originally looking completely different than now, and looking more like Primus. They were probably at first just one character before Blizzard changed things (also the fact that Runecarves helmet is similar style to what the Jailer in armor helmet looks like, but that can be just because its a domination helm)

I honestly think that "more interesting" is a low bar by this point—back before Chronicles, I recall my young self reading through and being very fascinated by the old Tinfoil Hat theories on Know Your Lore and found them very interesting. Over time, though, more of the series was revealed and the theories one could create about it faded. Previously, we had a very vast setting, even if it wasn't all that deep, meaning that people could create all sorts of fascinating theories about it—I actually recall that long before Chronicles was even a thing there was a theory which completely predicted Azeroth being a nascent Titan's shell. All of these were very interesting and very thorough, and none of them really required any underlying 5d chess where THIS VILLAIN was actually doing what THIS VILLAIN said all along.

It simply seems like an asspull by this point to say "actually, this is another Jailer! You see! The plot is ... good? now!" I mean, the villain no one liked was a proxy all along, even if that doesn't really fit with anything we know about them." It seems like adding more layers for the sake of a twist that doesn't need to exist. More twists for the sake of twists is exactly what got us in to the mess, so I don't see how it would help at all, even if it gives us a slightly less banal villain—why not just focus on new, better plots?

[Sondrelk]

Definitely not. Him throwing Arthas to the Maw after being pushed by Devos was against his beliefs as a paladin. Second time he acted out of vengeance towards Arthas, and his closure came later after he retrieved his soul fragment and understood where he fucked up.

Which is really a plotpoint that dies a slow death.
Uther is initially all about his failure in upholding his ideals in regards to Arthas, then he has that big introspective journey in 9.1, and then he pivots completely to helping Sylvanas.
One would think that letting Arthas fade from existence should weigh more heavily on him given his whole journey.
Maybe he will have soemthing to say in a later questline at least, seems a very odd ending for what is one of the defining moments of Shadowlands.

[Vakir]

I don't see Ersula's comment about "mediocre white male" characters making any sense when Sylvanas is made into the single most stereotypical, banal female villain ever by blaming all of her evil behaviors on a more-malicious male. Back in Warcraft III, we had a very good characterization for Sylvanas, and we got a pretty good, consistent motive for her well into Cataclysm. Unfortunately, "despot wants to avoid dying" isn't enough of a hook for Blizzard's writers because it involves having to write a character with actual depth or nuance based on a very simple premise, so they instead have to obfuscate horrendously superfluous and redundant characterization under "lol she's sad and angry at the universe". It could even be more interesting if there was some emphasis on what people who blame the inherent function of the universe for their own bad decisions are actually like—there are plenty of people in real life who decide that because people act immorally, they therefore have an excuse to act immorally, consequently inspiring more people to do the same etc. without any willingness to acknowledge the irony.

Essentially, the top-tier generic anti-hero we've gotten out of Sylvanas is a waste of several potentially good motives that were brought up and promptly discarded. Not every tinpot dictator needs to want to destroy the entire function of the universe—sometimes a tinpot dictator can simply sit in her dictatorship being the North Korea of WoW. The Forsaken were always a very interesting race when they had some diversity of interests but were generally united under Sylvanas' charismatic dictatorship—she was arguably the first quasi-modern personalistic dictator on Azeroth, and there was plenty to do with that. Her Cataclysm arc, for instance, showed plenty that could be done to put Sylvanas in the spotlight—Silverpine was a great questline and showed the Forsaken had plenty of potential other than moping over the now-dead Arthas' malignant actions for the rest of their eternal unlives.

Thank you.

For the longest time, I thought the logical progression of Sylvanas' new motivations introduced in Edge of Night and carried into the godsmakingly amazing Silverpine questline was that it was going to be about more self-preservation combined with having empathy towards her people in a way that wasn't as manipulative and done for the sole purpose of revenge as it was before. Perhaps to be almost passive by comparison before being sprung to action by other circumstances - like, say, being named Warchief when she didn't want it, which would've been an interesting hook. Hell, look at the Legion description:



Imagine if the next logical step was for Sylvanas to be challenged and growing after being brought into the fold as a major player and needing to bring down the self-preservation walls rather than it just...being the setup for a Valkyr-making lantern that goes effectively nowhere, followed by some tower world PvP quests.

They proceeded instead to follow Edge of Night up with her suddenly taking wildly irrational actions as early as mid-Cataclysm leveling that would make her even more of a target to die and go to Turbo Hell with the only reprieve from consequences being that the writers kind of forgot for there to be any.

People talk about Fantasy Kerrigan a lot, but the seeds were there for her to be different from Kerrigan in the first place, and they didn't take them and just moved in the direction of making her MORE like the SC2 incarnation. It's frustrating. Say what you want about what happened in Legacy of the Void, but at least Kerrigan got to have justice towards Mengsk at the end of her game. Sylvanas misses the boat to get resolution in favor of Tirion, has a fascinating story introduced by Kosack, and then spends the next 8 years being Dick Dastardly before spontaneously everyone decides "Oh, it was actually THIS guy and not Arthas" and reverts her back to being exclusively about her trauma.

And then they just piss on it more by...effectively making her not the same character by way of the soul splitting and over-softening her, all while still holding this new version of her up to the light way, way too often. It's sad.

[ChairmanKaga]

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Wor...s_Base_Edition
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3dr0dE

Nobody, NOBODY bought this physical, so it's possible he wasn't on it afterall, but it was intended to be so.

The only physical version this time was the CE, there is no boxed edition otherwise.

[shoc]

I agree with you. I think Epilogue is coming in 9.2 (2 weeks).

I've posted this a million times but here it is again from Wowhead (for context). https://www.wowhead.com/news/steve-d...tch-9-2-325990

"We’re very excited about how that story culminates. It will play out in a chapter of the Covenant campaign that we didn’t put out on the test realm for a specific reason: because we wanted to hold back that final piece to the story for players to discover as they play through the content.”

Never is it mentioned that this would happen AFTER 9.2. Just not available on the 9.2 PTR. Also, Steve has said in a recent tweet 2 weeks ago that Shadowlands would have a conclusion (whether it's this chapter or additional story (9.2.5, CGI, or otherwise...who knows?).

9.2.5 epilogue revealed

[Shadochi]

I agree with you. I think Epilogue is coming in 9.2 (2 weeks).

I've posted this a million times but here it is again from Wowhead (for context). https://www.wowhead.com/news/steve-d...tch-9-2-325990

"We’re very excited about how that story culminates. It will play out in a chapter of the Covenant campaign that we didn’t put out on the test realm for a specific reason: because we wanted to hold back that final piece to the story for players to discover as they play through the content.”

Never is it mentioned that this would happen AFTER 9.2. Just not available on the 9.2 PTR. Also, Steve has said in a recent tweet 2 weeks ago that Shadowlands would have a conclusion (whether it's this chapter or additional story (9.2.5, CGI, or otherwise...who knows?).

is this interview from before or after they removed the Judgement chapter from the campaign tho? Since it was originally in the achievement but during PTR it got removed. IIRC the 9.1 final chapter also wasn't testable but it was still in the achievement

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Imagine if the next logical step was for Sylvanas to be challenged and growing after being brought into the fold as a major player and needing to bring down the self-preservation walls rather than it just...being the setup for a Valkyr-making lantern that goes effectively nowhere, followed by some tower world PvP quests.

They proceeded instead to follow Edge of Night up with her suddenly taking wildly irrational actions as early as mid-Cataclysm leveling that would make her even more of a target to die and go to Turbo Hell with the only reprieve from consequences being that the writers kind of forgot for there to be any.

People talk about Fantasy Kerrigan a lot, but the seeds were there for her to be different from Kerrigan in the first place, and they didn't take them and just moved in the direction of making her MORE like the SC2 incarnation. It's frustrating. Say what you want about what happened in Legacy of the Void, but at least Kerrigan got to have justice towards Mengsk at the end of her game. Sylvanas misses the boat to get resolution in favor of Tirion, has a fascinating story introduced by Kosack, and then spends the next 8 years being Dick Dastardly before spontaneously everyone decides "Oh, it was actually THIS guy and not Arthas" and reverts her back to being exclusively about her trauma.

And then they just piss on it more by...effectively making her not the same character by way of the soul splitting and over-softening her, all while still holding this new version of her up to the light way, way too often. It's sad.

Adding to that, they also pretty explicitly missed a pretty good excuse for anything she does during Battle for Azeroth—Azerite. They had the obvious, gleaming MacGuffin right in their faces which could feasibly be asspulled (along with every other vague, transitory property Azerite had) into a potential means of restoring the Forsaken's forms or creating more Val'Kyr. They had the dangling plotline of Helya, still unresolved, to give her motivation to potentially make a trade for motivation even in the absence of the nebulous powers that Azerite could grant her—Azerite for Helya's Val'Kyr. There's all sorts of things they could've done with this plot, all of which would potentially resolve Sylvanas' plotline and lead her to carry out the same actions throughout BfA with a far more sensible and interesting motive. Every action re-framed as desperation instead of part of a larger plan would give her far more in the way of personality and motive, and her desperation could finally lead her into the clutches of Zovaal's manipulations—instead of just having retroactively been in league with the Jailer since Edge of Night, she instead could've simply ended up being introduced to him by Helya right as things seemed darkest for Sylvanas. With no other option, she would be pressured into helping Zovaal under the misguided impression that this could allow her to preserve a future for her people in a world where Death rules reality—in that way, she'd fulfill her old creed.

"Death to the Scourge, and death to the living."

Furthermore, it would also give a real reason for her to suddenly have an epiphany that Zovaal, the evil guy with the chain motif, is actually a bad guy—instead of only then realizing his malevolent intentions, she could instead realize only in the moment that he directly quotes Arthas that she has given up everything she once stood for in the name of survival and finally return to her previous commitments instead of becoming everything she hated. Rather than being repentant for burning Teldrassil or other things that Sylvanas would gladly do in any incarnation of the character, she simply realizes only then that she has no real future—having betrayed both her few actual values and lost her opportunity to survive, Sylvanas gives up and allows herself to be punished.

Essentially, this entire plot could've taken the exact same actions and steps for a far more satisfying conclusion—all it needed was clear motives that were consistent with her previous decisions.

[Vakir]

@Le Conceptuel

Also better than what we got!

As an alternative, when I saw the art of her in front of the burning World Tree at the panel reveal, I was so certain, if it was her that did it, that we were going to get a pivotal moment where perhaps she brought Azerite in without full understanding of the degree of its potency. Maybe as a deterrent. "If you stand in our way of securing this to force a peace, I will be forced to use it." And then in a misunderstanding or a chaotic moment, a catapault empowered with it is released, and the entire tree goes up in seconds when it was never intended to. Sylvanas watches in horror as any possibility of a forced peace burns before her. She is now even more under the gun, they're coming for her and her people (and Zoidberg the Horde) and everything is worse now. She's forced to play the villain and use the cards she still has to fight this dead-end war that'll endanger her and her people. There's no way out.

LOL NOPE, SHE'S JUST CRAAAAAAZY. And also the least-deceptive looking Satan ever was involved too.

And then people put it all on a sex pest's writing as an excuse when...nope, the writing done by the newer people is also trash.

The only physical version this time was the CE, there is no boxed edition otherwise.

Got it. He was still intended as the key art and "cover" as indicated by the Artstation of the guy who made it.

They did nothing in this expansion with anyone that wasn't Anduin and Sylvanas, and that's pretty endemic of the issue.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

As an alternative, when I saw the art of her in front of the burning World Tree at the panel reveal, I was so certain, if it was her, that we were going to get a pivotal moment where perhaps she brought Azerite in without full understanding of the degree of its potency. Maybe as a deterrent. "If you stand in our way of securing this to force a peace, I will be forced to use it." And then in a misunderstanding or a chaotic moment, a catapault empowered with it is released, and the entire tree goes up in seconds when it was never intended to. Sylvanas watches in horror as any possibility of a forced peace burns before her. She is now even more under the gun, they're coming for her and her people (and Zoidberg the Horde) and everything is worse now. She's forced to play the villain and use the cards she still has to fight this dead-end that'll endanger her and her people. There's no way out.

I actually did write/have been further writing a rewrite with that as the premise for Sylvanas' arc. Teldrassil is an accident after a bombardment goes wrong and a large stash of Azerite goes up like dynamite, setting Teldrasil on fire and sending Sylvanas even deeper into her desperation, with her sanity explicitly waning over the course of the story as she does everything in her power to preserve her life, eventually becoming her own undoing as her attempts to save herself end up putting Sylvanas in the crosshairs for everybody.

If I were to actually have written BfA from the get-go, that's 100% what I'd do. Sylvanas is a tinpot dictator with serious thanatophobia who is using the Horde as a bulwark to ensure her survival, gradually becoming increasingly kooky as time goes on because she's running out of options.

[MrFrag]

Our latest villains N'zoth and Jailer, both were trying to bend the reality. It's possible that Blizzard might be able to reset all Azeroth in the series to build up much stronger storyline. Bronze and Infinite Dragonflights are in the place to save the storyline anytime. I hope they use those opportunies. I'm not referring a total reset, a smart reset with a good story.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Our latest villains N'zoth and Jailer, both were trying to bend the reality. It's possible that Blizzard might be able to reset all Azeroth in the series to build up much stronger storyline. Bronze and Infinite Dragonflights are in the place to save the storyline anytime. I hope they use those opportunies. I'm not referring a total reset, a smart reset with a good story.

The issue is that the storyline isn't so much the issue as the bad worldbuilding decisions—it's far easier to salvage the Burning of Teldrassil than, say, the Lich King being a proxy of Zovaal this whole time.

[Catastrophy349]

I would like to share my very own bit of head-canon. To be completely upfront and honest, these ideas are my own and created based on a few questions asked by the community.

What if:
1). Steve Danuser has said, many times, the words “wait and see.” When Blizzard announced the roadmap for the Warcraft universe, someone commented that they would like to be excited; however, they are worried because of how the Sepulcher (Shadowlands ending) concluded. His response was basically something along the lines of “Well, I say this because I can’t provide specificity without giving away potential spoilers. As for the ending of Shadowlands, it will have a conclusion (The Jailer cinematic was not it).”

Analysis:
1). Many think that the “Epilogue: Judgement” chapter of the 9.2 story has been omitted and put into a 9.2.5 patch. However, I don’t believe this. In an interview posted on Wowhead (I linked it yesterday), Danuser says that the chapter was purposely removed from the PTR not to spoil Sylvanas’ story and how the campaign ends in 9.2. He said that he was excited for players to see what happens. Now, the 7/8 chapter releases on LIVE next week, March 22, 2022. IF I am correct, the 8/8 chapter would release on March 29, 2022 (the following week since each week is a new chapter), to conclude the campaign and Sylvanas’ story. What else releases on March 29, 2022? The Sylvanas Book.

Yes, you may be asking “Well, if the 8/8 chapter releases on the 29th, why is it hidden from the achievements/campaign section of our quest journal?”

You would be correct; however, I think this is intentional to build HYPE/suspense for when it finally does go LIVE. Furthermore, depending on what is said in the Sylvanas book, there could be a connection with the 8/8 chapter.

To conclude my crazy head-canon, Danuser’s “wait and see” comments would make a lot more sense. Of course, I could be incredibly wrong; however, I strongly believe in my justification. Time will tell.

Any thoughts?

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is this interview from before or after they removed the Judgement chapter from the campaign tho? Since it was originally in the achievement but during PTR it got removed. IIRC the 9.1 final chapter also wasn't testable but it was still in the achievement

Interview came out on Feb 18 (4 days before Patch).

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Vassal of life could be a few different people. I'm not sure which of these have green eyes.

1. Ysera
2. Alexstrasza
3. Elune
4. Eonar
5. Freya.

As far as anyone knows, the Vassal is almost certainly a Dreadlord or an agent thereof, so it may not be someone we've met yet and it's unlikely to be a Dragon. "Eyes of Green" sounds more like envy than an actual physical description.

[Varodoc]

In the Dragon Isles, major spotlight for the Ren'dorei can be expected.

It is stated in their Intro cutscene that the Ren'dorei have resisted the whispers that bent even the wills of Dragons. The Ren'dorei know something that the Dragons do not and thus they will play a major role in the Dragon Isles expansion, which by the way is the next expansion.