Was DF lore any good? What parts worked, what didn't?

[meroes]

My brother in the elements, you do realize this theme is a recurring one ever since Orgrim passed the armor and the Doomhammer to Thrall, yes?
That the very cutscene introducing Warcraft 3 is a stark reminder that division cannot help against greater threats, and that the Hyjal missions in the very same Warcraft 3 are that same kumbaya?

MoP concluded with Shaohao rhetorically asking what the champions were fighting for, because the reason is the same regardless: honor, peace, defend something important. The worst Horde writing has involved senseless conquest, the best of both factions was about diplomatic ties growing thin due to external influences.

The War in Warcraft is important, but ultimately it's a name. For sure, for the Horde and all that. In twenty years of stories and this continuous push and pull we cannot go back to MoP because MoP's lesson was about the futility of conflict.

This makes for a mature storytelling. Conflict taking different shapes and yes, eventually war. But war for the sake of war itself is a cheap stand in.

A “mature” story at the expense of interest. Mature also means ossified and without satisfying action. You see maturity and others see writing into narrower and narrower possibilities with only cheap rises left. Nevermind all the symbology you place on Thrall who has since absconded and best friend Cairne poisoned. So I don’t even buy the symbolic superiority you propose.

It comes across as if in Star Wars someone said after I-VI…the War in Star Wars is over since the Jedi bestowed their teachings. Thankfully Disney knew how to continue the War and not some fart sniffing Jedi drum circle.

[allegrian]

DF was a nothing burger and the only relevant part was the last patch which concludes the Night Elf diaspora plot, giving them a new home.

[Coidon]

Got to max lvl once, saw 9% of the areas & I don't read npc talk so hum no idea. dragonracing was fun & easy, didnt raid so couldnt finish the story quests.

Chain quests can be great but I think it would be better if each zone wow had its own stand-alone story to solve, with around 4-5 quest hubs. also wow xpacs need more zones, like 10 not 4.

[Cheezits]

The high level concept of the primalists saying the Dragonflights Titan magic was corruption, and they forced it upon them. However, they executed it poorly and made them out to be dumb cartoon villains.

The fact that they were right but the players weren't allowed to know that made them a horrible choice of antagonists- effectively, the player character is the villain and Blizzard had to pretend otherwise. The book hints that the titans forcibly evolved the dragons, as does the game itself (the Tyr vault), and then TLT basically is spelling it out in concept alone.

There should have been more crazy extremists like Fyrakk.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Themes of hatred, racism, and xenophobia are definitely not appealing to most people. They don't want to see the horrors they see on the news every day in a video game that's supposed to be fun and relaxing.

I mean just objectively, Warhammer is a huge IP lol. And Dark Fantasy/Sci-Fi is pretty popular in literature and games.

That said, they obviously want to take the D&D path and cast a broad net. The problem always comes down to doing this when it is a new IP vs doing it by transforming an old one. Folks are always going to resent the latter

[Syegfryed]

As a business company, Blizzard's priority is to make Warcraft brand as appealing as possible to everyone. Longdale explained this in a recent interview.

Themes of hatred, racism, and xenophobia are definitely not appealing to most people. They don't want to see the horrors they see on the news every day in a video game that's supposed to be fun and relaxing.

Who's they?

the twitter fanbase who doesnt pay neither play the game? they dont matter. Thats why more games like that make a success, things that are gritty, bloody.

Wow isnt "relaxing", it can be if you do the right content, but its your choice to make

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I mean just objectively, Warhammer is a huge IP lol. And Dark Fantasy/Sci-Fi is pretty popular in literature and games.

That said, they obviously want to take the D&D path and cast a broad net. The problem always comes down to doing this when it is a new IP vs doing it by transforming an old one. Folks are always going to resent the latter

And dnd is miserable falling compared to the past because they did just that, neutered their game and brand

[Ashana Darkmoon]

And dnd is miserable falling compared to the past because they did just that, neutered their game and brand

It remains the dominant force in tabletop gaming by a huge margin, nothing else is remotely close. It has never been more successful than in the past decade lol.

Very different industry/situation from wow though.

[Dreyen]

Personally what i found the most interesting is the titan lore stuff. Iridrikron is pretty interesting too. Everything else, not so much. I thought i'd be more hyped about the return of the black dragonflight but it lacked something. Wrathion seems almost stupid when he was a very interesting character before.

[Jackstraw]

A “mature” story at the expense of interest.

Don't get me wrong. I am firmly opposed to the nothing burger the overarching story often serves us. But conflict for the sake of conflict is not this insane cook it's getting touted as.
Warcraft was made special by - for the times - a special, relatively intricate narrative. So did smaller stories leading to bigger plot threads in the old days and at this game's best.
Also, in that moment Thrall has no inherent symbolism associated when receiving Orgrim's relics. It's the investiture of the next Warchief on merits of strength, and in Thrall's case mostly spiritual strength.

It comes across as if in Star Wars someone said after I-VI…the War in Star Wars is over since the Jedi bestowed their teachings. Thankfully Disney knew how to continue the War and not some fart sniffing Jedi drum circle.

Have to ask: you are being sarcastic, right?
Because aside from side stories Star Wars is severely spiraling. Andor and some parts of Mandalorian are carrying the brand.

[username993720]

Couldn't stand the vibes it was giving. Worst expansion by far in that regard, in my view.

[Jackstraw]

He butchered the alliance dogs all the same

Mind you, in his fortress in northrend he kept alliance prisioners with the pigs

Didn't look like so to me.

Also, even if he led the gunship fight in Icecrown, his son stood to the values he preached: cooperation.
This is the point though: characters have to evolve, especially in a game like WoW where the narrative is given through characters and the plot is preordained.

Dnd is a great teacher in this. Despite the questionable opinion that it's now way worse than it was, as a game it cannot be swayed by any given corporate decision, no two tables are the same and the narrative is tailored to your given party. But again, a narrative that does not evolve and characters that do not evolve lead to a stale experience.

Reactivity matters in storytelling.

[Syegfryed]

It remains the dominant force in tabletop gaming by a huge margin, nothing else is remotely close. It has never been more successful than in the past decade lol.

It is dominant just because it created the monopoly and still ride in their past peak, the sales are lower, people are running off, books arent as common, they took a huge hit with the rebrand and the OGL, even critical role went off to create their own RPG, their juggernauts left to work on that

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Didn't look like so to me.

Also, even if he led the gunship fight in Icecrown, his son stood to the values he preached: cooperation.

And died because of it.

Saurfang killed the alliance all the same to get to his son first.

[Mic_128]

Why not ? That could have been a great way to anthagonize dragons and make a better vilain for the whole expansion.

The villains are the ones defending their land from us? Their allies, who have turned on them in a time of weakness? I get the game is made by Americans, but come on...

LEt them come, them we fight them, and ally with others

Imagine the black dragonflight siding with the horde and the Green one fighting for the alliance, and the rest remains neutral

So the Alliance are trying to steal our resources, I guess the most peaceful of the flights will turn traitor to their kind and ally with the ones in blue because...they really prefer aesthetics over their heritage? And all the other flights will just sit back and let this happen?

What the hell logic is that?

[Zardas]

The villains are the ones defending their land from us? Their allies, who have turned on them in a time of weakness? I get the game is made by Americans, but come on...

You just need the proper setup to justify it, and that's pretty easy to do.

Let's just say that, after Sargeras stabbed Azeroth, the lands of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom started to progressively die a bit, producing less and less resources every year (the land are giving their strengh to Azeroth to heal her or something like this). At the start it would be considered just some bad harvests, but five years after SL, it would have been clear that a new source of resources was needed so, when the dragon isles would have been discovered, both the Horde and the Alliance would have taken the opportunity to clam this land and her resources theirs. Naturally, the inhabitant of said isles wouldn't have been very pleased and conflict would have ensued.

There you go, simple and clear justification to make the dragons themselves the ennemy.

[Nymrohd]

Worst part of DF was Chromie. Crazy effective at removing any impact from any serious storyline. Keep her for game mechanics, she is fun for that. Had they used Anachronos for the Bronze story next to his parents, they'd have been far more impactful.

The tuskar were fun but did not get enough world building. The centaur felt completely paint by numbers. The Djaradin did not get more than tents and vague origin stories. They still did not do proper side stories on the origins of the different dragonsworn. They did on how their relationship with dragons was strained which was quite solid.

[Aucald]

Dragonflight was a pretty good expansion, in my view. In terms of lore it had some excellent worldbuilding for the Dragon Isles themselves, the history of the Dragonflights, the nature of Neltharion's start of darkness into becoming Deathwing, and a lot of interesting lore especially with the Bronze and Infinite dragons centered around the Temporal Conflux. Probably the only real marked failure of Dragonflight was its final chapter with the Emerald Dream and Amirdrassil arc, which felt like it undelivered both in terms of the resolution of the Night Elven story arc stemming from BfA and Shadowlands, as well as the abrupt nature of the Aspects regaining their Aspectral power mysteriously from Azeroth itself, disconnecting that story from the ongoing build-up around the Oathstones and their respective sanctums.

[Darknessvamp]

None of it really worked tbf.
They took the Five Dragonflights which apart from certain characters have always been distant to the mortal races, one that has always been historically confrontational and is on the verge of disappearing, one that has been abused by various cults and has trouble with whelpings being born, one that has lost it's major ancient matriarch trying to uphold their protection of nature duty and another that keeps losing it's most ancient leaders to conflict over leylines and magic and finally one that is kinda just there at this point and decided in Dragonflight to give the first another mutant army backstory and change their future to a popularity contest between two characters and their flight is just good now, the second was given whelps and made really gullible, the third glossed over any strife or conflict over their loss and even brought back said matriarch to say 'be chill', the fourth was given special magic jedi ghosts that have totally always existed to make out they were mistunderstood and always good and hey make Kalecgos the leader while the last was... Oh hey it's Chromie, you guys like chromie right? and oh look big dysfunction in time go solve tha- oh noes the bad guys used our massive gateway into time to steal power from Galakrond how could this happen? (In other words they lacked any real development.).
Then on top of the expansion feeling disney-ified there were the lackluster villains, the primals with their discount Twilight Cultists.
You got the stormy one who gets the least character (literally didn't have a humanoid form too) and existed to be a first raid tier boss and allow the others to be free.
You got the ice one who acts all mysterious and facilitates their plans until the 2nd patch where after a bunch of cinematics of moaning at Alexstrasza about being betrayed and other such nonsense, decides to side with her and betray the other primals.
You got Fyrakk, the fire one whos name I recall because it got spammed everywhere, who turned out to be a discount Deathwing and dies as a last raid tier boss.
And then you've got the Stone one who also acts mysterious but also gives us nothing as he is present in every important cutscene or moment grabbing a plot important item or powering up that item and that is until he just hands it over to Xal'atath and then fucks off.
Great cast of antagonists right there, brilliant Jailer tier characterisation.

About the only good thing that came about from this expansion was reviving Tyr.

[Syegfryed]

So the Alliance are trying to steal our resources

why not?

I guess the most peaceful of the flights will turn traitor to their kind and ally with the ones in blue because...they really prefer aesthetics over their heritage? And all the other flights will just sit back and let this happen?

They side with the night elves over teldrassil and other stuff, create a divide among dragonkind, not all of them were super friends, and i dont see why others cant just ignore them

[bobrock1982]

On my first playthrough I always do all the quests and read all the quest text, listen to all dialogues and watch all the cutscenes. DF was the first expansion that made me think to myself at the end - "I wish I had just skipped all of it".

To me it was super boring, with a lot of filler. Like a story written for 10 year olds. Very tame, very tepid. None of it worked for me, I couldn't get into it. Even SL had story beats I liked - like a lot of the stuff in Revendreth. SL overall was the worst story they ever told, because of all the Sylvanas/Jailer nonsense, and all the damage it did to the lore, but DF was the story that bored me the most. SL had some 8/10 moments and a whole lot of 2/10. DF was all 4/10, across the board.

[angrywithmygod]

Dragonflight solidified that they were doubling down with terrible writing from Shadowlands. Clearly, they are so afraid of writing a story that offends they are going with the safest most tedious preachy writing they can.

Blizzard like most western AAA developers are no longer capable of writing a good story because they have their heads so far up own butts they refuse to see how badly they are butchering the setting.