I seem to have a much different, worse experience of Dragonflight's story than most WoW players—why?
A bit of background before I get to the main body of the post.
I've been following Warcraft's story since Warcraft III came out. It was a wonderful experience of my childhood, and I was interested in the story's progression since then. Even though I haven't played WoW personally until last few years, I read the comics and books, and I read about the lore. Chatted with friends who played the game.
Near the very end of Legion I started the game (2018), and Battle for Azeroth was my first real experience of the game. I played a demon hunter night elf, and I didn't have a problem with the story at the time. I thought the burning of Teldrassil set up the conflict well, and I found the world fascinating. Of course, it was heavily colored by me finally being able to play the game after almost 2 decades. I was also a night elf fan since my childhood, so I looked at things mainly from the perspective of Alliance. Story-wise, my major problems were that N'zoth and Azshara were defeated too quickly, and Tyrande's ritual transformation should've had resulted in much more of an impact.
I now know that the experience for Horde players was much different. But roleplaying as a demon hunter night elf suited the BfA story very well. I had just come out of a long battle against demons to find my people burned to death, their land destroyed. Vengeance, once again, fueled me.
Come Shadowlands, and like most people, I found that the story to took a steep dive in quality. I don't think I need to elaborate, but I will touch upon the main points. The afterlife was extremely unimaginative and made death lose its impact, the conclusion of Sylvanas's story was extremely unsatisfactory, Jailer was all kinds of bad writing, and Tyrande's arc was a major letdown.
Coming to the main issue. With the release of Dragonflight two years ago, and seeing how much people praised it, after a month or two passed I bought the expac and joined the adventure. However, despite all the letdowns of Shadowlands, I found the Dragonflight story to be the most unengaging one I've experienced. I just didn't care about the dragons and their personal arcs. Every word that came out of the major characters was such a cheesy and cliche line. In the cinematics, every one of them, especially Alexstrasza, talked so slowly and artifically that it threw me off every time. I just couldn't take it seriously.
There is only one memorable moment I remember from Dragonflight, and it's that one dragon in dwarven form that tells you his story while you sit down and listen for a few minutes. It was a really touching and tragic story, but it was just a very minor interaction.
I have no problems with personal stories or more touching subjects being told in video games. In fact, I think they can be wonderful. So, that wasn't the part that bothered me. What bothered me was that dragon aspects felt extremely one-dimensional and same-y, and their story was like a poorly written Disney story about the importance of family. Because it was handled badly, it especially felt jarring and out of place in the world of Warcraft, where violence and war crimes are rampant.
Yet, many players seem to have enjoyed the story because it was more "down to earth". I have trouble with this, because I have trouble understanding how people found this story to be engaging at all. For example, when Amirdrassil arc concluded, I didn't feel anything. In fact, it just made the burning of Teldrassil feel hollow for me, because I felt like that dramatic turn of events didn't matter at all. Night elves had a world tree and a home again, as if nothing happened. This retroactively made the story worse for me. At that moment, I realized I had stopped caring about WoW's story and was forcing myself to care. I decided to stop playing, at least for a while, because story and lore were the main reasons I played.
This, however, led me to a question. I've been following r/wow for some years, and the general opinion there is that Dragonflight's story was well done. My experience is the opposite, as it was the most unengaging story experience for me.
I have considered several possible explanations for why people reacted so positively to the story of Dragonflight.
- The one-upping of threat levels and villains in Shadowlands left a really sour taste, especially because it was handled so badly and retroactively undermined a lot of stories. So a relatively tame threat and villains were welcomed.
- Since the "gameplay" part of the expac was received well, this put people in a positive mood and led them to interpret the story charitably. This might go the opposite way too. For example, both BfA and SL were also criticized heavily for gameplay reasons.
- The expectations for WoW's story are really low, and that's why longtime players that are still playing don't mid the stuff that bothered me. In other words, they adjust their expectations. People who didn't adjust left.
- People don't actually pay much attention to story, they are mainly interested in raids and other combat-centric parts of the game, or even cosmetics. So, when discussing the story, they mostly go with the prevailing vibes and opinions of the community.
I think all of these play some part in the explanation, but I came up with these explanations based on my own experience. I also can't assess their relative importance. For the reasons, I thought I could benefit from a wider array of opinions, especially from people that have or had been involved in the game and community for longer than me.
So, my questions are;
- Why do you think Dragonflight's story was received so positively?
- Why don't people seem to care about the aspects I mentioned?
I can't really answer your questions. Just wanted to say I felt the same way as you about Shadowlands and Dragonflight. Granted I came into Dragonflight this spring at the tail end of the story and expansion, but just playing through the quest story arcs and the final chapter with the World Tree just felt blah to me. I know that the Primalists were going to destroy Azeroth and yada yada yada, but I think after Legion and it's end story ark of Argus, nothing really compares to that scale of world ending that was felt during the Legion campaign. I mean there is still a giant fucking sword sticking out of Silithus and thus the World Soul. Varian and Vul'jinn were killed in the first five minutes of the expansion. We were complete underdogs in the fight it felt.
I am glad we are coming back around to the World Soul Saga and maybe finishing WOW for good with it.
I was hugely invested in WoW’s storyline, grew up playing the games, loved it all…. Until wotlk.
My guess is that WoW lost most of the people who truly cared about the story some time in the cata/mop era. Wotlk really was the conclusion of the original Warcraft story, which is part of why I think Classic is so popular.
I personally haven’t played retail since MoP, but I’ve raided in Classic since 2019 and I’m seriously considering playing TWW at launch. The game now is less about the story for me and more about the organized group gameplay.
——-
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Asmongold says “gameplay is king” and on that specific thing I think he is right.
Edit: I just went to YouTube and got recommended this short video about TWW story from “Thor” who used to be a blizz dev https://youtu.be/1PJK27HYGBw?si=_SKatJGK45H2tW1W
I would say that TWW is the best point in time to return after a long absence.
You are going to be confused about all the new systems, the UI, gameplay, talents, etc. etc. But in terms of story, TWW is the first chapter in the new 3-expansion arc and while there are of course characters you may not be entirely familiar with, it really is the beginning of something new. It's the perfect time to return to the game, in my opinion.
Nice, that’s what I was thinking as well - I spent too many hours last week reading up on new stuff and just flying around doing world quests in dragon isles and the new radiant echoes thing
The game feels fun right now, my class (Druid) feels cool, and the story is pretty engaging
It's possible you aren't as invested in the dragon story since you joined WoW later in the game. The dragon aspects were a huge part of the story in WotLK and were obviously the central part of Cataclysm. The Dragonflight story felt like closure for a decades long story arc so I can see why it might not be as engaging if you're coming to it fresh.
I kind of wonder if what you're seeing on r/wow is a bit of survivorship bias.
I am an old Blizzard fan, one of the first games I ever played was Lost Vikings. Then grew up playing SC and WC. I made my first WoW character in November 2005, played every expansion + a little raiding until Dragonflight.
I don't think I would have ever called WoW a "story driven" game. The world, community, and mechanics are what kept me engaged. But I would say that some expansions have a more palpable aesthetic: TBC, WotLK, MoP, BfA scored high with me on wanting to explore the world and stick out prominently in my memory. Some areas in Cata, Legion, and SL were also executed well but as expansions they kind of just drift around in my head as "things I played." Notably I can barely remember WoD.
When I try to play Dragonflight several things happen: I immediately feel "been there, done that" and I'm on an on-rails Disney ride that will get me to max level without making any decisions about where I want to go.
I agree that the dragons in WoW are boring, and I think they always have been. In fact I think dragons are boring 90% of the time they're used in fantasy. Counter example: think of Smaug, he's the big bad and shit is going down when leaves his mountain, and he's a relative weakling in dragon terms and we spent a whole book building him up. I think Miyazaki has a decent handle on dragon size/strength but there are too many in Elden Ring. Matt Mercer does a good job with dragons: independent actors pursuing their own ends, rarely encountered except for one major arc in the first campaign.
I guess my question back is, was it? Here's a post on Icy Veins with player counts and subs. It looks like Dragonflight only beat BfA and most other expansions out performed it. While I'm a fan of BfA it wasn't well received.
I think the people on r/wow are a mix of real diehards and relative new comers. Most people I know with active subs are playing vanilla hardcore. I think the fan base from Vanilla-MoP have either walked away or are playing classic servers.
I find Dragonflight to be average but competent. Which after Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands felt like a refreshing breeze. Dragonflight is a basic story, but they were incapable of telling the stories they wanted to tell in BFA and SL competently. It had some standout quests, like the dwarf you mentioned and I enjoyed the bronze dragonflight's storyline in this expac.
As a long time night elf player, I have some mixed feelings over the burning of Teldrassil. For one part, the BFA pre-launch quest in which the Alliance fail to save the tree in my opinion is one of the best quests they ever made, and it's a shame it's no longer accessible. We also later have a trailer for the battle of darkshore with Malfurion being a scary and vengeful marauder hunting down horde. That was cool, shame we didn't get more of that.
But the rest of the writing around the burning of Teldrassil seemed to mostly be in service of horde storylines, and night elves just suffered setbacks with no payoff. Unless you count getting burn scars and black eyes in the character creation a big deal. Like even in the PTR, they originally had the Forsaken raise Night Elves who then promptly joined them because they felt betrayed somehow? It was changed before release, but it just felt like the writers didn't think about alliance players much.
Then shadowlands rubbed salt in the wound by having Tyrande lose her powers as she's about to get revenge. We get told by Elune herself in her first speaking role that she let the night elves die for no good reason. And the story mostly focuses on Sylvanas and well I don't know how that finished I didn't stick around.
Anyway, all that said, I kept feeling like the last half of Dragonflight was the Night Elf apology tour. We get to regrow a tree, we get a new home and are no longer destitute refugees. Bel'Ameth had some night elf cosmetics to discover, quests to expand on Nelf stories. It was fun exploring this zone and just seeing NPCs in their new home.
Just felt like Teldrassil was burned for cheap drama that they never capitalised on, and with Amirdrassil they seem to be trying to undo that. I was always waiting for a new night elf home, back in BFA I thought it would have been more interesting if the alliance retook Gilneas and the Night Elves were invited to reside as a thanks for taking in Gilnean refugees during Cataclysm. But I'll take Amirdrassil and Bel'Ameth.
Can't add much to the discussion that hasn't already been said by other commenters - I can just only join the choir and say that I think it's 1) recency bias and 2) DF only seems good because of how bad Shadowlands was. For me, it was a very mediocre expansion in every way. Like you said, it's been very unengaging. Just boring storytelling. Contrived, even. None of the dragon characters interest me in the least. A high point was the Tyr quests but that still wasn't much at all.
For me, the story hasn't been worth following since Legion. Legion was a one of it not the best expansion but you could still make arguments that the story was a mixed bag. I mean we ride a space ship to Argus lol
A big part of what has me really hyped about TWW is Alleria. I've always really loved that character and I can't wait to see what they're going to be doing with her now that she's center stage! I've had her as my profile picture on battle.net for 10+ years. I mean I'm not holding my breath after what they did with Sylvanas, but I'm still really excited. And the announcing of the 3-expansion arc has also got its hooks in me! For Midnight, it looks like we're going back to the blood elf areas which, I mean, can't wait to see Silvermoon and those zones get updated!!
I've played LVL 20 F2P ever since Shadowlands, and during the free weekend, I played through most of the DF story.
I guess for me, Shadowlands (and BfA) just absolutely destroyed any ties I have with the world in any deep way. So I enjoyed the DF story far more than SLs and BfA, but in the same sense I might enjoy a Power Rangers episode. I like looking at Alexstrasza, and the evil fire dragon cackling evilly, and the frozen lafy becoming the sixth aspect, and whiny Wrathion. I enjoyed playing through it. And I do think it's better than the last 2 xpacs, but I mostly enjoyed it because I'm no longer thinking about Dalaran's political stance or where the Forsaken are going to live or what the lightforged spaceship is doing, and am happy to just take the flying elf dragons as they are in their own world.
I enjoyed the stupid story, which stands in stark contrast with Shadowlands, which I actively hated so much that it burnt my love for the game.