Did you like the cinematic?

[Chadow]

Every friend of mine knows my weakness about stuff that makes me cry/shed a tear everytime.
And thats "self sacrifice for a greater good" action scenes.

I shed a tear on Saurfang VS Sylvanas
I shed a tear on almost every animated shorts from WOD presenting the Orc culture.

And now i shed a tear again with Dragonflight self sacrifice is my big weakness for sure

Extra points for the lonelyness feeling on the island...the fact they were rock dudes only with that purpose in life...the slow pace...the ambience
AH
I enjoyed it very much You?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I liked the stone guy, but Alexstraza kills the cinematic for me. I hate the voice overs (both the script, timing and delivery), and the two minutes of generic dragons flying around at the end does nothing for me.

At least the DF cinematic was nowhere near as infuriating as Shadowlands' cinematic, which should have only ended in one way.

Also, what this guy said:

An underwhelming cinematic that has no idea of what it's supposed to be. Every single cinematic since Vanilla has been centralized around explaining the conflict. In Vanilla it was Alliance vs Horde vs the world itself. In TBC it was Illidan's schemes in Outland. In Wrath we had the Lich King creating an army of the dead to destroy all life. Etc., etc. Heck, even Mists of Pandria understood how to frame the conflict of the expansion by having the Alliance and Horde realizing the vast potential of this newfound continent and its people. Dragonflight attempts to copy that same premise of a hidden world without a proper reason as to why it had to be hidden and why we the players should care.

The story makes zero sense when you actually start thinking about the old lore. Why would the Dragonflights not know the location of an entire continent when they can fly and have powers to warp space and time? Why would they have a defense system which not even they can find a way to unlock the path back? Why didn't Deathwing crack a way open when he literally controls the element of Earth? He broke the entire world from just writhing in pain and being enveloped in pure wrath, so why the heck didn't he just crack it? How come these islands were not affected by not one, but TWO sunderings, the Great Sundering and the Cataclysm? The true answer is, there is no answer. To any of these questions. They just write without thinking.

[BrioWoW]

It sucked. The quote above summarizes the problems very well.

[elderu]

(Allow me to inject a little positivity into this specific topic!)
Almost can't find the words for the sigh of relief when I see that "Danuser's Baby" and "The Next Chapter of World of Warcraft" actually just begins with Titans.

It's certainly up there with my favorite WoW cinematics, this blindsided me. Far exceeding Shadowlands if I'm comparing.
though funny enough honestly, it was cooler to me before the dragons appeared.
(I mean look at this Keeper! Amazing. Handsome man.)

greatly am I anticipating Archaedas' appearance when we return to Uldaman, hopefully with his creator and original VA mr Metzen in the role.

[Stealthyjake]

I liked the beginning part but as soon as Alex comes in and its just dragon flying around it got lame af

[Kyux]

I thought it was great, and a clear indication of a return to MoP/Classic exploration type of gameplay. The quote above says there is no clear antagonist, sure. But the same is true of MoP. There is a clear singular mission though: restoring the Dragon Isles. I thought that was pretty coherent and obvious...

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Well Stone Guy didn't use magic death chains to make Alexstraza look like a total bitch so that's already a one-up on Shadowlands.

But that aside, I just feel like this cinematic was.... light on story. BFA we at least got to see the Battle for Lordaeron, Shadowlands was literally the thing that started Shadowlands. This time... we got an adventure with Stone Guy training his Dragon....

Would have rather seen like.... Galakros, or the Primals, or more of this Land Healing stuff.

[RickJamesLich]

I think there's some good parts and bad parts about the expansion but the trailer is boring as hell. Like there's nothing exciting about it, I wonder if blizz was thinking the players would be like "Whoa... the dragons came back to the Island!"

[bloodmoth13]

Little stone giant that could was sweet. Has his job and does it, sees his brethren destroyed by the elements and knows he's the only one left and goes ahead and just does his job.
Then dragons flying all over the screen like flies in the middle of summer that was lame.
Weird how the hyped as fuck dragons were super lame when the generic stone guy is awesome.
Alex catching him was silly, like she had time to get there from exactly where she was. Seeing the world with the sundering happening in the distance was pretty hype imo.

I feel like the dragons turning up should have had some exposition, it just seemed like they turned up like moths to a flame, the dragons felt a lot more like insects than dragons.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Little stone giant that could was sweet. Has his job and does it, sees his brethren destroyed by the elements and knows he's the only one left and goes ahead and just does his job.
Then dragons flying all over the screen like flies in the middle of summer that was lame.
Weird how the hyped as fuck dragons were super lame when the generic stone guy is awesome.
Alex catching him was silly, like she had time to get there from exactly where she was. Seeing the world with the sundering happening in the distance was pretty hype imo.

I feel like the dragons turning up should have had some exposition, it just seemed like they turned up like moths to a flame, the dragons felt a lot more like insects than dragons.

You know what? I almost wish it was Wrathion who caught the Stone Guy. He'd been looking for the Dragon Isles, would make sense he's the first one there when the beacon is lit.

[kansor]

The burst of CGI dragons at the end were beautiful but there was no drama. The dramatic question was whether the stone dude with no personality would fall off the tower, which doesn't work. There's nothing at stake and the effect was emotionally flat.

You can have a positive, uplifting message and still have a structure. Some of the fake cinematic leaks that were very similar to what we got did this better.

Compare this to cinematics like Wrath and Cata. This one is twice as long yet it feels like less is happening. That shows that it's flatter and less affecting.

From a cinematography standpoint, there were a lot of wasted shots. Half the shots of the Watcher's ascent to the beacon could have been cut. In fact, the Alexstrasza narration from 10k years ago could have been going on at the same time as the Watcher's ascent, filling in that big silent dead space in the middle of the cinematic (and allowing you to cut the unnecessary widepan ocean shots at the start, which contain no interesting information or notable landmarks). This would have also produced the kind of contrast between words and image that creates interest (like in the WOTLK cinematic) and prevents either one from being redundant. As soon as the words are simply saying what the image shows, or vice versa, the audience falls asleep.

What's going on here is the same thing that's happened to the ingame cutscenes if you compare the Shadowlands rendered cutscenes to the Arthas' fall cutscene from Wrath or the Thrall vs Garrosh one from WOD. The new writing team doesn't have a sense of how to write for the camera. No sense of pacing, just flat droning on in boring shot-reverse-shot.

[Matticus777]

I loved the bit with Stonebro but felt the dragon part went on too long since she was just looping around the same area.

[Zankai27]

Fuckin loved it. After I hated the Shadowlands cinematic so much I could never re-watch it, the adventures of Stone Chad and him being saved by Dragon Mom and the squad flying in was just awesome. Felt super fun and Warcraft

[Skildar]

I've watched the cinematic a couple of times.
On first view I didn't really understand where they were going with Tyr hold and how its tied to the dragons (even though the first lines from Alexstraza are telling you its the dragon's home, so shame on me).

There are quite a few things that bother me lore wise with the settings of the expansion more than the cinematic itself, because I really enjoyed the kind of poetic narrative of this one. My favourite expansion cinematic have been wod and wotlk, both that got really good a telling a short story that delivers a setting. And I feel like this one has a close enough beat.

I don't know what people find in BfA or Legion cinematics, those were very bland. This one works for me

[Mordog]

As other said already.

The Cinematic was great - but it was missing the point.
The Stoneguys is cool - hopefully , like Zekhan, he finds a way in the game.

The Cinematic doesnt tell u anything other then the Dragonisles got open again and the Dragons came home and are happy...
I miss the tension, whats all about. Not necessarily the endboss, but something the Dragons fight in the Sky or fight/flame down somthing on the ground, and defend their Temple etc...

IS was kind of a all Happy Cinematic wasnt it?

[ek0zu]

I loved it, i got Ancient Greece vibes and for some reason Lost vibes, my all time favorite TV show. I loved the art direction that it had.

It certainly is not on par with Wotlk cinematic, but that cinematic might be the best cinematic for a Warcraft fun ever made.

Overall, great ambience and music, lovely art, good story telling, i will give it a 7.5/10.

[chorx]

>10,0000 years ago
Yeah I’m into this

>Present
*EJECT*

[Khain]

Top2 worst cinematics together with Pandaria.

[Super Dickmann]

Worst intro one thus far. There's no conflict. It tells you what the expansion is about, i.e milling about on an island with dragons, but it defocuses both the player and the threat. It's pretty, but nothing special.

[Plehnard]

I loved it.
It's the first one that isn't based around a conflict and that is kind of refreshing for a franchise that has been stagnant/deteriorating for the longest time now.
Combined with all the game play changes announced this is making me kind of hopeful for the future.