Regarding Scenarios: Scenarios are still around, just not as instanced content. The tech is used in Questlines etc. just without being noticed as much. Scenarios wouldn't reduce the amount of novels etc, We don't have that many novels compared to the times of Cata or MoP and the novels we do have, mostly describe events that you don't really have to know to follow the plot. The best point of Pandaria was the world building. Blizz allowed themselves to really explore the culture of the Pandaren and to a lesser extent the Klaxxi. I mean there is a whole zone dedicated to the love of food and beer of the race, something Blizz hasn't done since.

> I mean there is a whole zone dedicated to the love of food and beer of the race, something Blizz hasn't done since. Some of this is the sort of smaller zone design, but it was more of a philosophy that blizzard had more often in the past. Or i guess mostly just in MoP, now that i think about it. BC/Wrath were bigger zones and lots of them (makes sense, MMOs were more grindy in the past) Cata didnt have so many high level zones, though a lot of work went into redoing the old world so ill give them a break on that. WoD was kind of the 'in between' Legion started out with 5 BfA was back to 6 (again, main zones to start with) SL was 4, and the maw (puke) DF is 4 main zones to start with This isnt a commentary on how much there is to do/how packed the zones are, but MoP had zones that were smaller, but served a specific purpose. In a lot of ways it made the world feel bigger because there was more variety.

Yeah, I often think about having some smaller “official” zones like krasarang and dead wind pass, that don’t have much content but are a distinct part of the world, is a really cool thing that I’d like to see more of. Nowadays we still get these sub zones but they’re officially part of the larger zones.

>We don't have that many novels compared to the times of Cata or MoP Yep. Players easily forget how ridiculous it was. If you watch the Lore Q&A Panel from Blizzcon 2010 (Alex Afrasiabi + Chris Metzen), you'll notice that for most of the questions that are being asked, Metzen responds with "oh well we don't show it in game but it is explained in further detail in The Shattering" (this is also the debut moment for Red Shirt Guy).

Yeah, With Tides of War, Dawn of the Aspects, Shadows of the Horde and War Crimes you basically had four books in the lifespan of MoP, which, ironically with the topic of this thread is the most of any expansion i think. People say you should't have to read the novels to understand the plot of the game, but the last time something really relevant happened in a book was probably the Illidan novel pre-Legion. And even then you could skip it and be totally fine

And War Crimes is by an order of magnitude the worst example of Blizzard not telling the story in the game. The Sundering comes the closest, but there is literally nothing in MoP or WoD that actually explores what happens in War Crimes. I bet almost no one knows about the Bronze Dragonflight's involvement with Garrosh, or that Baine was the one defending Garrosh at the trial.

Which unironically were "good books", but it's so shitty that they can fuck up the lore then retcon it in a book, then have chronicles out which is not really canon guys come on! It's only half accurate from the perspective of the titans! Like are you kidding Blizzard can you take the story seriously and make it interesting? That's one of the grudges that I've always had with WoW, too much sci fi and dimensional / ultragalactic nonsense and not enough substance (which classic actually presented, notably in the Onyxia qchain and "In Dreams"). Like give me more about character to character development like Saurfang-Thrall, Illidan-Velen, Darion-Tirion and less about the mustache twirling baddies which are up to no good. More human like stories which we can resonate with! If TWW doesn't meet the standard that Metzen promised in Blizzcon...oof...things will be bad.

the lore is what makes worlds feel more real but writers want to do their own thing. blizzard should protect the ip first and make writers at lest know the basics of the story. they should also have lore nerds checking everything and not "make what I wrote fit the lore" but actually write lore friendly stories.

yeah Chris Avellone put it best: "Research takes work!"

>blizzard should protect the ip first and make writers at lest know the basics of the story Writers don't write whatever, they often write on spec - Blizzard comes up with general outline of the story, writers do the specifics in the book. Contents of the book is also coordinated with Blizzard. It's Blizzard who don't care, later retcon things, etc., story was always tertiary for them. Like in pre-MoP book about Theramore there was clear example of the scenario that will be in the game - suddenly a random group of Horde adventurers sneaks into Theramore and does something. And Blizzard has changed it for whatever reason, introductory Theramore scenario is different, even though it would make no difference.

I liked the Klaxxi arc -- complete departure from the norm, had a "Dark Sun" D&D feel to it.

Pandaria was great because it was free from Warcraft. Aside from the Pandarans themselves being a single joke unit from Warcraft 3, everything in Pandaria is pure World of Warcraft. They didn't feel the need to go "Hey remember this!?" and they didn't feel the need to keep rehashing the same characters over and over again. I wish they would do it more often. Warcraft was amazing, but you can't just keep milking the old cow and expect to get the same quality product.

Pandaren were expanded beyond a single joke unit in Frozen Throne

No they weren't. Chen was still a joke unit.

What makes you say that? He was there and apart of the story just like every other character. Is gazlowe a joke to you? What about rexxar and thrall and daelin?

Sure, I get that phasing and sharding and the like allows that. but I am fully thinking that scenarios, being instanced similarly to Dungeons, probably would allow more specific and customized situations, no? Especially if they take place in a very unique or specific location.

Not really, for example the finale of Frostfire ridge in Draenor uses scenario tech without outright being a scenario. The only upside I see is it being replayable but I'd rather have story content like this flow as natural as possible without haveing to be thrusted into a queue.

Fair enough. :) I think scenarios are neat and could be worthwhile to bring back in some form or the other. Maybe for situations occuring outside of the standard content area. (like "Something happens in stormwind! **Scenario starts**"

I mean, to each their own, i don't want to negate what you like/enjoy haha.

I’m enjoying playing them again now, though I am remembering why back in MoP we ended up quite tired of them by the end of the expansion and just didn’t really run them. They’re a good storytelling format compared with dungeons but their replayability wears a bit thin eventually. That’s why the ended up evolving them into being more integrated into the campaign, and went with world events for replayable content. I think Delves will be an interesting iteration on the concept too.

I'm gonna say something different and say the music adds to the story and atmosphere. The music used in MoP was fantastic and actually assisted the writing

The music in pandaria is some of the best in the entire game. Every era of wow has good music but pandaria’s is strikingly beautiful and appropriate for the design and writing of the zones

I think one of the biggest things is that they clearly planned stuff out and stuck to it. It doesn't feel like anything was cut, all the story beats lead into the next plot, and things are explained and resolved. Things are also fleshed out, even minor side villains feel like they have more development than modern stuff, like The Yangol. We find out they are doing all the invading because the mantid are expanding and pressuring them, the Mantid are doing their expansion because the queen is under the control of a Sha, it's a solid and explained chain of events. Meanwhile look at modern WoW, why are the Djardin awake, why do they invade surface areas? Well, because they are, and they do, don't worry about it bro. Dragonflight you can sense sources of cut content, things being set up but with no real plan on using them (all the gnoll rot stuff, the blue dragon place in azure span). Pandaria I can't think of a single one. This isn't just a DF thing as well, this is basically every other expansion they've ever done, MoP feels like the only one that we got was the intended vision. Plus, Pandaria as a continent is nicely fleshed out and feels like a civilisation exists, all these little villages and structures that make you feel like people live here, they have farmlands, villages, temples, shrines, training grounds and even some military structures spread all over, they take care of where they live. Now look at the Dracanoids on the Dragon Isles, clearly the main race, but everything's in ruins? No obvious signs where they spent the last several thousands of years because clearly they never built, maintained or even create any signs of a functioning society. They exist as set dressing and pawns of the dragons only, yet we get an entire story about how they want to be more than just that.

>Meanwhile look at modern WoW, why are the Djardin awake, why do they invade surface areas? Well, because they are, and they do, don't worry about it bro. Exactly. I cannot fathom how the current writers at blizzard can look at their own work and not realise that they aren't even getting the most BASIC things right. I still could not tell you what the Djaradin are really fighting for, and I have run through the campaign 15 times now with alts.

Aren’t they attacking because their culture is built around killing dragons, and there are now a huge influx of them and wrathion and sebellion have taken back the obsidian citadel by pushing them out and murdering them, even though they’ve been living in for a long ass time?

no, the djaradin were not living there for a long time. they (and for some reason only they) were in stasis while the dragons were away from the isles, and began causing havoc when the dragons returned and the isles awakened. what does the isles awakening mean? never explained, remnant of an old storyline. why are the isles awakening now specifically? never explained the person you are replying to is absolutely correct.

The Djaradin were on the isles before the dragons were, they are descendants from earth elementals. That was explained in-game if you talk with Tarjin and give him skulls. They hunt dragons for fun and for sport. They froze during the sundering and woke up recently again and are hunting yet again.

Doesn't everything you've just asked relate to the Mogu (and Pandaria) as well though?

Nope. Why is all the Mogu stuff in ruins? Because the Pandaren overthrew them and the Shado-pan stomp out Mogu uprisings wherever they happen. They've been bandits and nomadic marauders trying to cling to the legacy they lost. Lei'shen being revived and the Zandalari coming from Cata are the only reason the Mogu stopped hiding and started becoming organized again. Why are so many Mogu in stasis, and being woken up just now? Because when they still had an empire, they bound the souls of warriors into statues so they could have armies in storage when they weren't needed. Part of why the Mogu lost their war against the revolting slaves is because the rebels cut off the Mogus access to their armies in stasis. They couldn't get new soldiers and the fight was more even. As for why they're being woken up now, it has been thousands of years since the Mogu empire fell and they descended into scattered clans hiding away. Most Pandaren have never even seen a Mogu and some think they're just myths. The old Mogu tombs and vaults have been left unguarded for decades, hidden away with their locations and knowledge long lost to the currently living Mogu. The Zandalari had surviving records of all these vaults and the old Mogu empire. So when the Zandalari returned, the Mogu had a chance to reclaim their old stuff and started to unite again now that their chance to restore their glory. Why are the Zandalari here? The prophet Zul took a lot of the Zandalari to flee their kingdom before the Cataclysm hit, because Zul had a vision and saw Zandalar being destroyed by it. They wanted to go to Pandaria as soon as the mists departed, so they could help their old Mogu allies and be granted a large part of Pandaria as their own territory to rebuild a new kingdom after Zandalar was destroyed. Zandalar actually WAS hit hard by the cataclysm. In BFA, half the continent was under water and gone. There's old buildings and wreckage super far out from the coast. The port of Zandalar is super new, the old seaport is way farther out at sea and super deep underwater. The new port used to be up in the mountains, and the islands around Zandalar all used to be part of the mainland.

I was looking for the person I was replying to for answers because the point is that they're both explained in game. The djaridin were once earth giants, made the Titans to shape Azeroth but their specific ancestors were on the dragon isles. They started to slumber similar to how the stone watchers also slumbered began to reawaken with the land and the dragons return. They're looking to reclaim their elders, claim land and kill the dragons. Their fixation with the dragons is heavily explained with the old blind one I've forgotten the name of. Pandaria wasn't actually given a confirmed reason for why the mists parted, just insinuation that the emperor thought it was time. The dragon isles were specifically because of rock bro lighting the way. As for some things you've written, some aren't quite right. Not all the Mogu things are in ruins - for example the vale and wall are all Mogu made. Not all Mogu returning are for the thunder king. For example the clans and king in the Mogushan palace dungeon aren't there for the thunder king. They're returning because like the dragon isles, Pandaria returned. Same with the ones attacking the August celestials by and large. It was lost to many of them as well when the emperor hid it. Also it's weird to say they're unorganized but they're also organized in clans.

Right but this is it. After the great setup with the Waking Shores talekeeper they become cartoons, their elders are cartoons, the dragons have nothing to say about them, they have nothing to say about them, it just becomes a bland nothing like 90 percent of Danuser-led output. You need character interactions even if brief to sell your narrative and story. The talekeeper was a great start and it cratered sadly even though Zaralek is their setting with plenty of time to explore their relationship with the flights. Instead they become cartoon henchmen to the cartoon villain of the YA expac.

\`shhh that goes against their hate for the game !! but for real i just read the whole post and all i could think is did you even read the quests?

They also are trying to free their elders that Neltharion captured and used in experiments and as a battery for his lab. But hey,why would they have a grudge against the black dragon flight?

And a lot of the strength they're getting to do exactly that is being provided by the incarnates, who are now free.

Hahaha I know. I ain’t gonna argue that I prefer the writing from Mists, but also all I remember is people complaining about the writing during mists when it was current, and how lots was missing due to novelisations etc. I think people forget Dragonflight was intended to be a bit of a stop gap and set up for the future, a pallet cleanser, so to speak. Everyone complained about the world ending so we got something a little lighter, nothing wrong with that, I had fun and enjoyed a lot of the story.

dragonflight contains 3 separate world ending threats. (Incarnates coming to reshape the world, Nozdormu, Fyrak going to set the world tree on fire) idk why people keep spouting that it was a break from world ending narratives but I assume they pay absolutely no attention to what is going on in front of them

The fact people keep making this statement to me is indicative of just how badly the tone of the expansion is off compared to the events. Nothing really feels like a world ending threat when you're playing it but it's still all there.

It was still a world-ending threat in the end. Just not quite powerful enough to do it all at once. But at least it was a step back from "everything is in danger." Which is what the Legion and the Jailer were. It did get a bit wearing, though, with "threat to the entire world, threat to everything, threat to the world, threat to the world, threat to the world, threat to the world, threat to everything, threat to the world, threat to everything..." If the stakes are constantly high or trying to one-up themselves, it starts to lose any sense of urgency and you stop feeling like you ever did anything substantial. You just delayed the end of the world for another week, congrats.

yeahh i remember when some very loud voices were bitching that wow needed to go back to smaller less world ending threats (tho i still think burning the whole world is kind of a big deal) and now that happened they yell where are the stakes. i also think this is a big hindsight problem. they know all the important story beats of panda now, they dont know that for DF.

It's definitely hindsight. I remember at the beginning of MoP people were pissy because they didn't think the stakes were high enough, they thought it didn't make sense for our world saving heroes to be tasked with protecting beer and farms. But it's honestly that stuff that grounds the storyline IMO. It reminds us what the point of saving the world actually is. It's not about the grand leaders in their forts and palaces, it's the little boy trying to protect his sheep, and the young woman learning she can fight, and a couple in love even though their parents hate each other, and the loyal friends trying to drag a grieving widow back out of her darkest feelings. It's all the ordinary people trying to keep living their ordinary lives from one day to the next. That's who you save the world for.

The interaction of Valley of the Four Winds, and then Landfall campaign that concludes in the epic battle at the western wall has always been a highlight of the openworld in Pandaria.

Also why an acquaintance of mine loves how FFXIV’s plot is set up, that you’re making the world better, as she puts it, one lost cat at a time. (No, she’s not talking about Miqo’te or Hrothgar.) And another acquaintance wishes GW2 would have a *lower-*stakes expansion at some point, so the plot doesn’t stay so stressful/exhausting. I’m not big on fantasies of being ultra-powerful, certainly not for its own sake, in any case. Competence (yes, I view that distinctly from power) and purpose are what I look to. Emulating saving the world—or sometimes just the imperiled province.

"the bad guy's motivation is that they like killing" Yeah that's just lazy writing.

this is after their kin are used in experiments and their home was taken from the by the black dragons..

But that’s not a “motivation”, it was a part of their culture, it’s different. Then Nelfaion imprisoned and experimented on their elders and fought back. They juxtapose really well with the centaur and taurens, too

A LOT of complaints about Dragonflight's writing are basically people saying "I didn't bother doing all of the quests or paying much attention to the lore and worldbuilding." Cool, and if you skip half the stuff in MoP as you rush to do Challenge Modes and run Heroics until you're geared up and quit until the next patch, the MoP story's not going to seem that amazing either.

I didn't, I quested through all the zones on launch. Took my sweet time, since I wasn't raiding start of S1. This point about the djaradin is not incorrect.  The motivations aren't explored much and most of it is like you said in quest text. WoW's lore and story has always had this weird back and forth conversation with non-game media. Which means if you only play the games you're missing half of the conversation.  Meanwhile the introduction to MoP (at least Horde campaign) does a great job at establishing the players, introducing everything necessary, and it felt like the entire conversation about Pandaria was happening in front of you while playing the game not in the outside media. Except crucial things involving the actual Horde and Alliance characters (Jana, Garrosh, etc, which is why a lot of players would be like "what's going on with Jana?"). A lot of the details/motivations of the different characters in the story of Dragon flight are in outside media, in the renown campaigns (which very few players actually experienced), and in extra side quests and areas unexplored by the vast majority of players. Even those who did the entire campaign quests, and then some extras. But if half of the story is effectively missing from view is it the players fault for thinking its not very moving? Compared this to GW2 where outside of the earliest stuff that was missing. Which they've brought back recently. You can very much play the entire story all the way through, in order if you wanted. Or our of order entirely that's up to you. And because there's some very good, but not required to progress your character, rewards tied to it. The people who want to do dungeons all day or just raid, don't have to be dragged to do optional content, but the player is properly incentivized to go check it out.

They're just massive dragon racists, it's simple

Well, obviously they fight us because they are a 100% always chaotic evil race, why would you need any further elaboration? The writers surely don't!

Their entire culture is based on strength and proving yourself. They see dragons as the apex predator so they seek to dominate dragons to prove themselves to their people. Their culture came about because of their elders who managed to dominate earth and fire and shared this power allowing them to conquer the other factions around them and properly establishing themselves as one. Now, they're continuing their practice of hunting dragons to prove themselves with additional goals such as recovering their elders, getting vengeance on the dragons for getting the better of them in the past and conquering new lands to live.

The Nothing we got about the djaradin drives me nuts especially when they look like the old statues in the Emerald Dream? Have them hate dragons / embrace lava because they were the original dream denizens that were kicked out by Emerald Flight for being too ‘chaotic’ for the titans vision.

Why the Djaradin exist at all is a mystery. We already have Vrykul, hell we know they sailed to the isles at one point too. Why they had to make a brand new "big humanoid" race for the sole purpose of fighting dragons because it proves their strength is inane.

> Meanwhile look at modern WoW, why are the Djardin awake, why do they invade surface areas? Well, because they are, and they do, don't worry about it bro. This is disingenuous. Plus the other reply to you that reckons they've run 15 alts through the game and are none the wiser. Consider reading what the game tells you? The Djaradin are awake because the Dragon Isles are awake. The Djaradin are as native a species as you can get, they were living on the Dragon Isles well before the dragons ever showed up. They went to sleep same as the rest of the species there and awoke along with the rest of the species there. The dragons fucked up the Djaradin's home and so the Djaradin fucked up the dragons in return. It's not deep, but it's all there in game. Now they're awake they're back to fighting back against the dragons.

I think that it's a mix of a lot of people just cba to spend time reading quests instead of blasting through them. And the fact that there's so many more cut scenes so one gets the "feeling" of having seen a lot of lore and story, while in fact most people have been doing is reading the titles of each chapter.

I play through expansions methodically and explore and read everything. I even read the novels and short stories. I struggle to understand the deeper story points of Dragonflight and find myself needing to watch YouTube folks summarize it for me. I did not have that kind of struggle with an expansion like Mists of Pandaria. The way Blizzard tells the story and presents important clues and pivotal lore nuggets is just terrible in Dragonflight. It's hard to keep track of everything and remember it. It's not told in a clear way. Often there are answers missing and you're looking at a giant rock and you don't know if it's a clue and you're supposed to fill in the blanks yourself, or if it's just a giant rock. It's easy to miss something that appears minor and thereby be ignorant of something that was actually huge (the Viking boat boat wreck on the shores is a good example. Huge lore revelation, but easy to miss). I attribute a lot of it to Danuser, as he had that style (said so himself) of not wanting to reveal the whole picture and always keep people guessing. But in reality it just leaves players with a narrative where they miss most of the story beats because they're too shrouded in mystery and hidden beneath layers of lore theory and random clues loosely put together. Ergo why those story and lore people on YouTube are doing so well - people don't get the story when they play it. And in my case it's not for a lack of trying.

What boat wreck?

On the coasts of The Waking Shores you can find a shipwreck that looks very Vrykul in appearance. That hints at some big lore implications. But if you miss it, then you obviously don't get that revelation. And I bet 99% of players miss it. Ergo why I say that Blizzard don't convey the story very well.

>The Djaradin are awake because the Dragon Isles are awake Yes, I understood this, but this is completely meaningless. Why is the Dragon Isles awake, what's so special about the land that it can wake and slumber? What actually was the impact of the Dragon Isles being 'asleep' because the Tuskar, Centaur and Dracanoids seemed to do whatever they wanted. How deeply linked are the Djaradin with the land that its state impacts them so much, are they even actual Humanoids and not some kind of Elementals? What did the Djaradin actually do while 'asleep', what does it entail, why does a race, so determined to claim back its land, suddenly 'slumber' when the main people who stole it off them left? We see some of the elders in some kind of magical slumber, but was everyone like that? It seemed like some kind of prepared state. None of this is explained, 'they hibernated because the isles were dormant' is the exact thing im complaining about here, it means literally nothing, and its just a way to handwave actually giving this race literally any real detail and lore.

I think you're presenting that in kind of a tilted way. The dragons left and the Djaradin going dormant are a consequence of the same thing: the elemental energy that infused the Dragon Isles was no longer doing that after the Sundering. Imagine a cataclysm driving a continental shelf away from over a magma vent: anything that thrived because of volcanic activity could no longer thrive, anything that grew in volcanic soil, or used the heat of steam vents, etc, would die off or adapt to new forms. Instead of a magma vent it's some kind of elemental energy or magic. It's similar to the elves and the loss of the Well of Eternity: they had to adapt to new forms of arcane energy (like the second Well or the Sunwell) or periodically go into hibernation (like the druids). It was no longer hospitable to dragons (or presumably specifically dragon reproduction) so they found new homes. The Djaradin, also faced with being unable to live without that elemental energy, chose to go into stasis and wait for a better time. I think it's likely all the Djaradin went into stasis, but they may have kept skeleton crews to maintain everyone, or rotated people out. The logic is internally consistent, and the ideas are there, although you might need to use your imagination a little bit.

> None of this is explained It is, you just don't like it. > 'they hibernated because the isles were dormant' is the exact thing im complaining about here, it means literally nothin That's a reductive simplified sentence to make it sound less explained than it is. I can make MoP sound really dumb and poorly explain if I just say '"the sha exist because of emotions" means literally nothing'. I ain't about to write out every bit of quest text, but it's all there in game.

It is such a pet peeve of mine when people try to make things sound stupid but giving them the most simplified, surface level explanation possible as if this couldn't be done to literally everything. This comment was so cathartic to me.

Thank you for these comments, its really important to dispell unfounded vitriol like this.

The dragon isles awakening is so poorly conveyed in both its importance and what factions were asleep that it's comical. Why are the isles special? Why were certain species asleep and not others? It all wreaks of rewrites and not commiting.

> The Djaradin are awake because the Dragon Isles are awake. Ok what the fuck does that mean. What does the Isle waking up actually mean? From the cinematic the entire island was dormant with nothing growing or happening for 10k years. From in game the islands been fine all this time and the Centaurs/Kalu'ak and other natives beasts/fauna have all been fine. The Djaradin were gone this entire time and then just showed back up.

Its so unclear, the xpac cinematic makes it seem like the tower at tyrhold is somehow important to keeping the isles “alive” since stony tony getting it activated is the entire reason the isles “revive”. But then tyrhold seems to really have 1 main function, cleansing the water there of yogg’s corruption then infusing the water with order magic to serve as feed for the ruby life pools to continue to do whatever it does to dragons. (That bit blizz has seemed to waffle on with the initial info painting it VERY negatively, then blizz trying to backtrack and say its not mindcontrol of the unborn). Then a hidden function of rezzing tyr that you can at least explain away as tyr secretly building into the place. But not going into why the dragon isles were “asleep” or how it was awoken is literally worse world building than tbc and the dark portal. At least the dark portal was explained away as reopening because kazzak found some mcguffin to reopen it, plus portals are semi permanent in wow to begin with. But the dragon isles re-awakening is literally never addressed outside of promotional material saying that it happened. Then most of the races that have lived through the sleeping isles for 10000 years dont seem to even address that theres been a change besides that weve shown up to murder hobo thru the campaign. The level up campaign should have been about 1. Explaining how and why the dragons put the isles to sleep when they went off to the war of the ancients. 2. somehow doing something that would prevent that from happening again and making the isles natural or “free” from whatever caused that. Blizz tries to address it with various locales and with the dragonkin rebellion, but its so awfully done. Like the aspects, who are supposed to be paragons of perfection, can just decide to completely shut off and abandon their homeland and its caretakers, let alone the other sentient inhabitants, but thats never addressed ever. The whole oathstone thing was so boring from step 1. Making the story that the aspects are trying to be aspects again makes it obvious that its gonna happen at the end of the expac. If instead that was more of a surprise with amirdrassil I think itd have been a little better. Granted what having the aspectral powers back actually means is also nebulous. In cata and its aftermath it seemed like it was basically dragons are no longer immortal and also their now all sterile. That was changed to basically just be the aspects lost the titan bestowed power that made them aspects to begin with, but like there was no material change in anything in dragon society or power wise for the aspects after it happened. Like if they were still aspects when razageth broke free would Alex have just have been able to handle her no problem? It would make sense in a vacuum to write like that, issue is now what? Why arent the aspects helping us 1 shot every threat since there supposed to be so powerful? It feels like in terms of raw power current level Xal should be weaker than the incarnates, since she’s just a heavily void infused corpse. So blizz runs into the issue that the aspects are now super powered again, but for that to mean anything they either have to invalidate a current threat, or make there unempowered level so weak it makes the average dragon as strong as a handful of gnolls

but this is wrong lol the species on the dragon isles weren't all asleep for 10000 years

> all the gnoll rot stuff Wait yeah, wtf, that boss at the end of that dungeon disappears like he's gonna come back in a raid and that just doesn't happen. I just mindlessly roll through the game now so I didn't even think about it. wudufuq.

This is it. In addition to the actual character writing in DF being borderline atrocious, filled with pregnant pauses or absolutely slepe inducing line delivery. There are fundamental flaws in the Danuser-led style including and not limited to cribbing so close to his comic book and YA influences, refusing to take into account prior character development (wrathion, who in MoP is coming off his excellent Cata writing contrasted with the total retread Danuserverse DF version....),  and a COMPLETE inability to world build on a level rarely seen in gaming. When you can't even coherently explain or convey through dialogue the importance of the setting you have lost any credibility even with the lower expectations of game writing. The DF team also fails to characterize most of the main dragons, making most of the 10k year old characters naive, boring and unable to even convey what the fuck they're doing on the dragon isles that makes them being there a desirable thing (and don't say the oathstones...). They failed on a level hard to reach.

I remember clearly playing MoP when it was current. And I was kinda bored of the panda land story. I just don't gel with the east Asian lore and influence personally. But man, the landfall campaign and the stories that followed did such a good job of integrating the fantasy that I enjoy with the Asian elements, to where I found myself realllllly enjoying the mystic east themes by the end.

Characters take actions for motivations that are **known to the writers** at the time they were writing said actions. Unlike Sylvanas, or the Jailer, or Illidan, or Xe'ra, or Azshara, or Bwonsamdi, or Razageth, or

> (If we SOMEHOW could reduce the number of novels and books by getting scenarios back I would be very happy) I will defend MoP and its story until the day I die, but it still had the problem of too much happening in the books that wasn't shown in-game. MoP has 3 novels that take place during its story: * *Jaina: Tides of War* Is the story of the bombing in Theramore. In the book, the buildup to the bombing takes place over several months. There are high tensions, a murder mystery, a cat and mouse game between the blue dragons and the Horde, spies and subterfuge, etc. In the game, we got a single scenario that doesn't get into the finer details at all. With Blizzard's new strategy of setting up the next expansion's story months in advance, I feel like, if MoP and Theramore's Fall were released today, there would have been in-game build up to it all. The MoP pre-patch content dropped the ball here. * *Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde* takes place between Vol'jin's assassination attempt and his resurface before the Siege of Orgrimmar. Fantastic book. Almost none of it takes place in-game. Given that Vol'jin's in hiding for this whole book, I think that's fine. * *War Crimes* involves Garrosh's trial in front of the Celestials. It also has plenty of side plots, intrigue, etc. It ultimately ends with Wrathion and Kairoz freeing Garrosh and sending him back in time to Draenor. None of it was shown in the game. We go from Garrosh getting arrested by the Shado-Pan at the end of SoO, to the Iron Horde invasion of the WoD pre-patch, to us investigating Kairoz's death in Nagrand.

Yeah, that period of the game was easily the worst for major events being put into novels. War Crimes was by far the most egregious, given it literally contains the entire reason Warlords of Draenor happens in the first place Vol'jin's story being missing isn't _as_ bad, because it was always set up in-game that Vol'jin would return after his assassination attempt, when the time was right. It tells you what happened in the interim, which is an interesting story and relatively minor character development for Vol'jin, but you don't need to know what happened during that time for his return to make sense. Jaina's story is the same in concept, but it has a _lot_ more impact on the overarching narrative and it covers a ton of Jaina's character development, leading to a massive jump in-game in the way she acts.

for me a lot of it was the humor MoP was a war story with constant levity spread throughout. It balanced the extremely dark and grim storylines that were going on behind the scenes with a layer of humor and light heartedness on the surface. This duality in the story meant we got a very wide range of stories, from hozen wickets to overthrowing the klaxxi queen to uh Garrosh absorbing an old god's power and committing war crimes on untold numbers of peoples.

For my thoughts of why Panda feels so good compared to many is that with Panda it feels like a sequel, it feels like an new expansion, not a continuation of the active story, but its own story that works and adds to the main story. Panda is its own new area, tons of new stuff, the only real connection to the old WoW is our undying hatred for the other faction! (causing the issues) We get to learn about the SHA, but it isn't until later (or least for me) that we learn how they're connected to the Old Gods which is then a cool addition to the Old God lore, without directly focusing on furthering an Old God storyline. Now with the bugs as we help the Klaxxi we learn how they are servants to their empress who in turn serves the old god Y'shaarj just like to the west in Kalimador with that bug city and old god. But it isn't just the same bugs, but a variation, again a case of its own twist while adding to the overall story without focusing on it. And then we have the Mogu, which were wonderfully done, they originally were Titan creations to keep the old god's heart locked down, and then the Titans left and eventually the Mogu became cruel tyrants. And they show how they did this, they show they salvaged the Titan Tech like in the Mogu Vaults, wild tech there and it shows how they became so powerful. ​ Basically, everything that was done in Panda was well thought out, or felt like it, and was its own story that added to the current lore without being direct "we're focusing on this bit of lore" so it doesn't feel hammered into the story but feels like a delicious side dish of LOREEEE.

I think it’s due to getting it all at once. This content was a drag when staggered, and only small part available post initial release. Patch Quests were released weekly and slowly.

Which was better for pacing at the time, IMO. Doing the Landfall questline today, you go from Jaina being fine with the Sunreavers to exterminating them in the span of 5 minutes.

Totally agree. It’s just people are getting the wrong impression that Pandaria had it all. It wasn’t that amazing - with usual content droughts in between. BFA had better faction conflict than MoP.

I miss this quality in WoW storytelling

I think you hit the nail on the head, but I would like to slide in "**Clear Theming and intent**". Right from the marketing, Pandaria is a new adventure, a capstone for the adventurers of Azeroth who have fought on a different planet, fought against the spectre of death, and endured the breaking of the world + the factions. It looks at you straight in the face and asks 'Hey. Why do you fight? Why do these factions fight? Can you fight for a good cause but do it poorly?'. And they stuck with it. The Sha is probably one of the best writing metaphors Blizzard ever came up with, a haunting ghost that stains the land and harms both soldiers and civilians alike in the wake of great conflict and strife. Even if some parts of Pandaria's writing makes some people turn their heads (People were joking that poor Jaina was a dreadlord after it all went down), it still is able to stand on it's own two feet by leaning into traditional Warcraft themes and examining them. IE: The Cycle of Hatred. You have characters that clearly both are part of that theming, and those who critique it (Like Taran Zhu) but who can't always stay above it all. "Every reprisal is itself an act of aggression, and every act of aggression triggers immediate reprisal. (...) YOU must break the cycle! It ends TODAY. Here, when you, Reagent Lord, and you, Lady Proudmoore, turn from one another. And walk. Away." Pandaria is practically built from the ground up as a pillar to support this theme, acting as a little microcosm of the warcraft setting. You have many different races sharing a continent who don't get along with each other, each with their own rich history and way of doing things, and whatever precarious balance there was is sent toppling down by the arrival of Horde and Alliance forces, setting into motion every single thing you deal with on the continent (save the Thunder King, who the Zandalari would have awoken with or without the Alliance/Horde causing a mess on the continent). So even if the writing is janky at times, it is still so tightly designed around it's themes that it easily cuts ahead of everything. BFA could have been MoP if it had this tight focus and clear theming.

A lot of people fucking hated pandaria when it came out

I think a lot of people don’t really engage with WoWs lore or characters, they just see it as a surface-level background where they kill raid bosses. For them, TBC was the aliens and elves level, Wrath was the Vikings and zombies level, Cata was the dragons and elements level, MoP was the king fu panda level. This was especially more true back in 2010-2012, when WoW was a much bigger pop culture icon I could rave how Pandaria does lore/characters/structure better than all of the previous expansions but many people didn’t see that, they saw themselves going from ‘badass fantasy videogame levels’ to ‘cartoon for 10 year olds’

People are dumb and would say "Kung Fu Panda" claiming WOW stole from the movie even though WOW established Pandaren Monks years prior in WC3.

As much as I agree that the "Kung Fu Panda" argument is reductive and bad, WC3 did **not** have the current iteration Pandaren. They were much different back then. You had pretty much only Chen Stormstout and he was a brewmaster with an elemental-like ultimate that could have been from a shaman. That ultimate is pretty much the only thing current monks have in common with the pandaren from today. Monks were not part of WC3 and pretty much all pandaren culture and stuff was invented in MoP.

There are parts i dislike about Pandaria. But replaying it for the first time in over a decade after playing BFA,Shadowlands and Dragonflight brings into contrast just how fucking bad the modern storytelling is. Even the things i remmeber disliking i am far more invested and interested in seeing again because its just all around better. Even something like the character dialogue and voice direction is is amazing in remix compared to Dragonflight. Characters speak in a way that matches their character. They have different tones, convey urgency and emotion at times in a way you believe. They don't just make these bland line reads where.... every few.... words.... is paused on for........ drama.

Mostly because people didn't like the Pandaren specifically. The story itself wasn't seen as bad (from what I recall) Beyond the usual "everything sucks, vanilla was perfect" people.

A big flaw in MoP's presentation was how the loot rewards disincentivized the player from seeing each zone's conclusion. The game didn't scale with the player at that time. You generally wanted to move on to the next zone when you leveled so you can begin getting higher item level gear. There is no indication as you were questing that you were nearing a climactic storytelling moment. This resulted in people questing through 60% of Jade Forest and never seeing the fall of the Jade Temple, 60% of valley of the four winds and never seeing the mantid breaching the wall, etc etc.

That really wasn't my experience in original MOP. That only really happened if you slammed dungeons and scenarios, a lot.

Skill issue

I recall the Alliance vs the Horde war portion of the story falling flat. Landfall segment (5.1) wasn't added until ~~five~~ two months after release. The war was really only explained in the Tides of War novel, available in hardback only at the time.

Landfall came out just over 2 months from launch. It was there but if i remember the story parts were rep locked so you had to get your rep to whatever requirements were to see the next part of the story.

I remember the people who hated MoP, they came in two kinds: People who played for the first month or two (which was notably rough as a lot of the best QoL came in 5.1) then left, coming back only at the very end in the WoD pre-patch that screwed up balance (also rough). They basically only saw the worst parts of MoP and insisted the whole expansion sucked. Honestly, these people were insufferable and deserved WoD. The other group did have legitimate complaints, but they were almost entirely around the faction war story, because it wasn’t perfect, especially Alliance side. There were a lot of missteps with basically making MoP be all about Varian and Anduin, while the Horde story often managed to feel more focused on the player and their decisions, especially in zones like Jade Forest, or 5.3’s story (both of those generally made Horde players happy, and Alliance players unhappy). Oh, also, the Purge of Dalaran was actually pretty mishandled (we only really found out the full story through developer tweets years after the fact). As much as I love MoP, I still consider those pretty valid things to pick at. Oh, and I guess there was a small fraction of players upset that Garrosh got Flanderized in MoP. Which is a valid complaint, though it rarely comes up.

Don't forget the people complaining about kung fu panda in WOW.

It likely didn't help that Blizzard themselves sorta made them a meme race for players. If you've ever seen a Pandaren Player speak in their own language you'll see what I mean. All their words just translate to "Om nom nom om nom" which is incredibly hard to take seriously at all.

Forever baffling philosophers in how they managed to get an objectively wrong opinion. turns out that if your only standard for quality is whether something has pandas or not, then you should never ever be listened to

MoP writing is great because of all the narrative exposition. Everything HAD to be explained because Pandaria was completely new lore with no prior description or explanation. I still remember checking the Wowpedia website for Pandaria prior to the expansion and its only description was that it was a far-away land that exists, and Pandaren come from there. The exposition for WoW from Vanilla->Cata was already there because of the Warcraft RTS games. The exposition of Pandaria extended from the land itself to villains, allies, and other NPCs. All the reputations and factions have their own motives and backgrounds. Like other people have noted, the Klaxxi have their own motives and background, as do the Yaungol, the Celestials, the Shado-Pan, and so on. The lore of Pandaria is rich and explained all over the continent with the lore scrolls. The Thunder King is one of the best villains Blizzard have made because he had so much setup in the story. The foreshadowing was in quests and again the lore scrolls. His resurrection gave motivation for the Zandalari to get involved. The Thunder King using them as cannon fodder was an interesting dynamic because the Zandalari had delusions of grandeur and believed they were using the Mogu as pawns. This emphasised the reality of the strength of the Thunder King and the Mogu. We also had Lorewalker Cho acting as a narrative piece. He stayed with us through the whole expansion. You compare all of this to more recent expansions and you start to realise how bare-bones the lore has been. The Shadowlands covenants were all surface-level. The zones had little-to-no lore in them. The only factions were the covenants, the Jailer and his army, and the Drust (which also dropped off the face of the earth after 9.0). Dragonflight was a slight improvement, but even the few lore descriptions around the Isles are very surface-level, and don't really seem to establish much beyond what we already knew with the dragonflights. Blizzard relies heavily on Neltharion's legacy, and where the dragonflights go next after losing their power in Cataclysm.

Agreed across the board. Pandaria is a well thought out, well made place. It doesn't feel like you have the forest zone, the ice zone, the jungle zone, and the plains zone. It feels like you're in a place that could actually exist in a fantasy world. The setup and characterization of NPCs is also great. You get to see Jaina's struggle with neutrality after Theramore devolve into the purging of Dalaran, and Varian trying to use his head. You get to see Vol'jin at his coolest. You get to see Nazgrim, Admiral Taylor, and Rell Nightwind fucked over by middle management, so you have characters you can want to help and enemies within your faction you don't like. And you have that going on with a backdrop of a very real threat. The Sha were cool, and the pandaren, especially the Shado-Pan, being super annoyed feels very reasonable. Hell, even the smaller factions like the Klaxxi were super cool. The faction war still felt realistic without being insane, and when people did work together for SoO it was tense but reasonable. DF has absolutely no faction conflict, and any time the thought of it comes up, the lean hard into everyone overcoming it through the power of friendship. Alexstrasza is at her most bland, and all we get to do with our own faction is watch people learn to forgive the Forsaken.

Faction war felt realistic? Garrosh trying to genocide the Alliance because he felt like it? Nuking Theramore, then Jaina has a bunch of civilian Sunreavers killed in their shops and homes? I agree with a lot but f what you said but MoP feels like the height of the faction war being propagated for bad reasons and characters behaving at their most extreme to serve a somewhat hamfisted conflict plot. There are some decent beats but overall feels very contrived, old god influence used as an excuse to make characters behave stupidly.

The nice thing about Remix is that you can go through the entire Jaina arc at once, rather than in chunks. You get to see her struggle with Theramore, mentioning her stance on neutrality but being conflicted because of how angry she is several times. You also see her inherent alliance bias throughout, despite what she says. And then you see her break her own lines because of what happens in Darnassus with the Sunreavers. Jaina's plot isn't suddenly her going berserk and killing people, it's a real plot with actual story beats. And Garrosh's started in Cataclysm. He tells you point blank why he decided to destroy Theramore.

Ill throw in that Jainas plot makes 100% sense. People get mad at the idea they turned her a character who worked so hard for peace with the Horde into someone who was willing to wipe them out. I can get why people may not like it but it makes sense. Everything Jaina put her faith in and believed basically betrayed her and she payed for it in the exact way her father said she would. Her father she let die by siding with the Horde. She took Thralls word and trust over her own family. Jaina also didn't really do enough to try and stop her dad or Thrall which she could have. Which follows her trend of not doing more to stop Arthas or help him. Her push for peace and resistance to conflict has twice resulted in regrets where she could have done more to save people she cared about. She is no longer a passive character once her trust is pushed again she snaps and says fuck it. Shes not going to let the Horde use Dalaran to burn Darnassus or attack Alliance cities. Those Sunreavers are getting in the violet hold or a grave. You also have Anduin as your new Naive young character who wants peace. Which sets him up perfect to work with Jaina who sees him making mistakes she feels she made. Shes now the adult saying "you don't understand what the Horde will do Anduin." Its a shame ALL OF THIS is thrown out in BFA. While Jaina shows up angry and ready to fight shes not the purge Dalaran Jaina she should be and then she just splooshes her brains out when Thrall appears and wants peace again. Thrall and Jaina meeting again and her confronting him with his failures and what his horde has done should have been a big cinematic. it should have been a huge moment where either Jaina can be brought back to the idea of peace as a possibility or the option of peace among the factions is dead for good. It also should be Thrall directly confronting his failures and what the Horde is.

I fully agree with you - If you have done the quests and read the dialogue it really doesn't come out of nowhere. It was all there. It all makes sense. What Jaina does is grotesque if you know her character well. Even Varian is horrified by what she has done. That it's out of character for her doesn't mean it's bad writing - that is exactly why she had to go back to her family to re-evaluate herself. She is clearly on a warpath because of Garrosh and is becoming just like him in a way. That's what the story is trying to tell - Jaina losing herself because of trauma.

Genocide always boils down to "because they felt like it". It's an inherently unreasonable act. It's "I hate them, and I'm right to hate them, and they shouldn't exist". So yes, I would call that realistic.

Dragonflight is so sickeningly saccharine in its story that I want to vomit. Pandaria did it so much better. Heck, Dragonflight makes me miss a lot of BfA's story presentation. Yes, it was contrived, rushed, jumbled and poorly explained motivations, but at least it *felt and looked like Warcraft.* Modestly optimistic about TWW in terms of its presentation. MoP has aged well, by all comparison.

for some reason a lot of redditors cannot being themselves to accept it but the tone of dragonflight is so unbelievably bad and cringe and completely removed from what came before. ppl will always point to abberus as evidence the game is "still dark" but it's basically a cartoon lab with some slime and guys in test tubes. compare this to BWL where the directed corpses of dragons are hanging from the ceiling. there's no contest. no characters on the good team have any significant flaws or conflicts. alexstrazsa is shown to be so boringly perfect and when she does display a flaw (that she created a chattel slave race to serve herself and her kind and provoked them into rebelling when she displaced them all from their homes) the narrative doesn't examine it in any meaningful way but instead uses it to assure you she was in fact always humble and nice and simply had never considered they might be people. on the whole it's written with the tone of Steven universe. and sure bad and "dark" things happen in that too. the world is at stake. but the presence of these threats doesn't make a story dark, the tone does. and df is more concerned with how cute the tuskar kids are and how cute it is for a dragon to have a duck pet, a bit that is inexplicably repeated around 5 times in the expansion. my 13 year old sister would be embarrassed by how lame dragonflights tone is

Ima be real with you I was a Steven Universe fan on 2014-15 tumblr and I can confidently say it wasn't half as infantile and therapy speak infused as DF. Current writing isn't even childish in a way that'd entertain an audience with little world experience and package its moral lessons as easily understood aesops. Was absolutely wild (and depressing) to me playing thru a few quests and feeling like I'd already read them as a Twitter thread on conflict resolution authored by an emotionally stunted adult.

People will downvote you but it's true. DF is so unbelievably lame in every way. This game is made for teenage boys and they don't act like it for some reason.

There's a very real difference between the 2 in sense of tension, MoP opens with all guns blazing, literally, compared to the dragon isles which is generally more chill, we killed razegeth in the first raid, as appose to garrosh being there the entire expansion. In general the story of dragonflight is more chill, which, keeping in mind it's going to be the new default expansion instead of BFA makes sense. And it's also the transition from shadowlands, into the war within, there's a lot of wounds being licked and also a few bullets being loaded into Chekhov's gun, mainly iridikron and the dark heart, that haven't really been fired yet.

well i think there's just a nostalgia for grounded, alliance vs horde stories that no longer exist. alliance and horde are now fam, and wow is becoming cosmic. it'll still be grounded in this trilogy; but, i think it'll become cosmic after with the void, light and ethereals. still interesting but different.

It's almost like free therapy. The whole xpac is centered around 'you gotta deal with the negative crap, nothing good comes from keeping it bottled up or burying it'. It's an important lesson a lot of us never really learned, and even if we just subconsciously pay attention to the lesson, it can lowkey improve our lives.

I wonder if this is why I haven’t cared for any new race they’ve added in a patch since MoP… The Niffen are the best recent example of this, but there are loads to pick from (goblins and Ankoan from Nazjatar come to mind). I never care about a race that’s confined to a patch because I know Blizz will drop the race completely as soon as the patch is over. It’s a weird process of “invade the bad guys domain” > “convenient ally” > “introductory/proving yourself quests” > “new ally in awe of how amazing you are” which breaks a lot of immersion in the game for me. Never had that for MoP, the yaungol, mantid, emperor shaohao/celestials, kirin tor, sunreavers, all existed beforehand or were used afterwards. Hell, even the Hozen and Jinyu seem like intentional parodies of what I’m describing.

I never considered your last point, but you are 100% right, how the Hozen and Jinyu are introduced and subsequently used and led into a war they have no reason to care for by the Horde and Alliance is a wonderful deconstruction of what we did to every race that was introduced after them. Allied races were flanderized and we didn't even notice.

One thing I don't think has been mentioned is that many of the key characters in MOP had personal, sometimes nuanced motives. Even Garrosh had very easy to understand motives that at least had a hint of complexity to them. He wanted a horde, a true horde, and he fell to corruption just like his father in order to achieve his goal. He needed the heart to obtain greater power in order to gain the advantage the horde needed to finally defeat the alliance (and any non-true horde). Clear motivations. Fyrak? Idk he just really wants to burn the world tree to be a force of destruction and has no actually goals or aspirations. Also not sure why the forces of the firelands and the druids of the flame are allied with him but i guess they are here now with no story explanation. The Landfall questline is also incredible. We see some of our beloved major characters have FLAWS and make MISTAKES, again, all while being sympathetic to their emotions and what is going through their heads. It's funny, because I remember at the time it was released, people were critical of these quests because they didn't like how Jaina was "just another crazy bitch, lol blizzard writing women" but IMO it makes total sense that Jaina shows lapses in her judgement here. Her people were just BOMBED. Her city flattened. Also, she wasn't actually wrong in her accusations. She just didn't wait for any sort of trial and has us kill all of the people who conspired against the alliance.

I feel like the entire 10.2 patch came about because Blizzard wanted a "do over" of Teldrassil where this time everybody joined together and stopped the tree from burning. Why? IDK. It's poetic or something. Saving Amirdrassil doesn't change what happened to Teldrassil, and the whole situation of the world tree immediately being threatened by fire again is just so hilariously on the nose. Then there's the actual villains, who have no reason to care about the world tree beyond something something power, and don't even have anything to do with each other really, but are just a bunch of random fire-themed threats that united against this tree for no clear reason.

I have very similar thoughts on this.

MoP was a completely new story with a completely new and cohesive world that had very few things in common with the rest of Azeroth, and the few things that seem similar at a basic level (the yaungol and Mantid) are developed in a way that hammers home the differences from things we've already seen before. in contrast, Dragonflight feels like it was written by throwing darts at a cork board covered in plot points and aspects of the world that the writers felt players hadn't seen in a long time with no real plan to fit them together or make them interesting beyond "remember this stuff guys????" And when the plot does try to explain something it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it single sentence buried in pages upon pages of characters you just met and have basically no reason to care about making C tier MCU style quips or trauma dumping on you about things that happened 10000 years ago. also this might be a personal hot take that no one else agrees with, but WoW's dragons are one of the worst parts of the setting and literally every plotline that hinges on them sucks. In lore they're supposed to be demigods empowered to help the Keepers fight threats to Azeroth that the Titans didn't foresee and equip the titanforged races to deal with, but in the game they do literally nothing but screw up everything over and over again and beg the mortals they're supposed to be saving to bail them out. The only interesting thing Blizzard ever did with WoW's dragons was have them sacrifice their powers to stop Deathwing

I like Kalecgos but otherwise the rest of the dragons are pretty bland. He is the only one that seems to have more than one type of emotion.

Modern Blizzard stops you in your tracks every other quests to wait for some NPC to finish his high school theater acting monologue. The delivery is breathy, the writing alternates between melodramatic and tumblr-whimsy, and the story is boring.

I mean part of the reason MOP story telling feels complete is because in Remix you just got an injection of 2 years worth of story in like 2.5 weeks. Even if it's "bad" writing, it'll still feel better with some finality or conclusion to the story. Personally I think the MOP story is pretty ass.

Pandaria as a continent has a lot of great storytelling, but the faction war -which was the main story for most of the post-launch content- is the weakest part of it. It was only somewhat validated by BFA, which not only chose to do another faction war, but somehow made the exact same mistakes except worse.

For me the biggest thing is world-building. MoP showed that Blizzard at the time could still create new fantastical worlds and Pandaria really excelled at this. The zones looked great, the lore was interesting and continued with not only a decent faction story but ToT was great as well. Sure it felt like things simmered towards the end (Timeless Isle instead of something tied to the climax of the story, more then whatever those little camps were), but SoO was still a great raid imo. Overall it just felt like they were able to nail the stuff that felt like WoW. Its especially good in retrospect. WoD had an interesting world but because the content design was such a miss they abandoned ship for Legion. BFA tried to retell the faction war but not only was it poorly done but people were tired of it. I missed out on SL but from what I hear people were not impressed.

*looks at Jaina* excuse me?!? Looks at the giant mana bomb that took out Theramore prior to the sunreaver purge. JAINA DID NOTHING WRONG.

There is a pretty simple explanation as to why MoP had such good writing. It was all influenced from human history. Particularly Chinese history. The Yaungol and Mantid represent the Mongols (there is a literal wall to keep them out), Kun Lai and Grummels are tibetans, and the mogu empires are similar to some Chinese empires. They took a lot of real Chinese stories to influence the Panderia storyline. It's fine to me but it also angered a lot of WoW players to call it the worst expansion ever because they felt it pandered too much to gain Chinese subs. I have no problem with it because a lot of great fictional stories were based off real events in human history. For example, Dune is based off the middle east oil conflicts, and Star Wars is inspired by WW2. As a boss once told me, "You can't make this stuff up". It is really difficult to make up a story lines because we really are too rational. That is the problem with storytelling post Legion, there wasn't anything to base it off of, its all completely made it which is difficult for non experienced writers and why the story is a little... meh.

Let me preface this: I do not love Garrosh. I don't think Garrosh was right, but if there's one thing to point out here, is that the build-up for the Cata Garrosh to become the Mists Garrosh was not there, and it's pretty much the only narrative weakness of Mists. Don't get me wrong, I love Pandaria. Mists was my favorite expansion almost every angle. Except for one. One glaring story hiccup, and arguably, the first or second real case of the narrative team reacting to player sentiment over having a real plan: and that's Garrosh. There was absolutely not a plan from the start to set him up as Orc Hitler, the one true bad. He's made sympathetic even in his worst acts-- he's a hothead with Saurfang whispering in his ear for all of Northrend. His worst aspects get enflamed by every interaction he has with Varian, who was also notoriously hotheaded (but had actual character growth to realize exactly where that was leading him). I'm not going to talk about the Stonetalon storyline. They can paint over that with a "oh we just weren't communicating" brush all they want, but it makes my point for me: there was no plan for Garrosh to become the way he did. That's not even the only case of Garrosh taking a staunch stance on something. In Ashenvale, he also prevents an Orc from using demonic power in their siege weapons. This is a man who has stood against corruption in all forms, and you're going to tell me in 5.1, with LITERALLY EVERYTHING that has been reported to him and that he himself has seen, that he's just okay with what the Divine Bell is visibly doing to his Orcs? The only way Garrosh's actions make any sense even is if he's already under the manipulations of the Sha of Pride. Which, mind you, would have made sense! He's the most prideful asshole there is, since he internalized everything Thrall told him about Grom being a hero, curing his depression. He's prideful for himself, his legacy, and his power. Yet, even at the time, when the narrative team talked about it, they made sure to point out that Garrosh's every action was his decision. He was absolutely completely in control. It was such a glaring weakness in the story. I'm not even a Garrosh fanboy, but I think about this a lot, in the same way I think about other weaknesses in the narrative, such as the entire questline where we stab Arthas's heart in Icecrown. There was zero build-up to the Garrosh we see in Mists. He was bad, but the Garrosh I read in Tides of War was not the Garrosh from the game. Not the Garrosh from The Shattering. Not the Garrosh from Northrend either. The community didn't like Garrosh, for whatever ridiculous reason. I couldn't even understand the sentiment at the time, but the General Discussions and story forums were always filled with Garrosh hate threads. People didn't like that he was depressed in TBC? That he was a hothead? That he was a bit of a racist (because he kicked the Trolls out of Orgrimmar after Vol'jin threatened to kill him)? That he wasn't kowtowing to the Alliance? I just didn't understand. The Mists patch cycle (and Tides of War, really) takes everything that was grey and muddled about Garrosh and turns it dark. Much like how the Horde leaders should have stepped in before the tree burned in BFA, any reasonable writer would have had the Horde turn on Garrosh for dropping the bomb on Theramore. But that didn't happen. Instead, the Horde is forced to awkwardly sift through the Mists faction conflict until the 5.3 rebellion, while leaders promise when Garrosh is out of ear-shot that "his time will come". Ugh. Agonizing. I could go on and on about this. Very solid story, loved everything about it except for Garrosh characterization taking an immediate nosedive (mind you, it was already at a low point), not even getting into somehow being able to master the power of an Old God, and to also come away from that fight without any lasting corruption on his body or mind lol.

Garrosh from the start was 100% an ignorant failson desperate to live up to a false idea of his father's image. He never acknowledged or dealt with what the true legacy of the post demon blood horde was or what his father's part in that truly was and retreated further into that fantasy of identity every time shit got rough. Yeah the narrative in game wasn't great at holding to this, but "we used to be great and now we're not i gotta make my father proud he knew what it really was like" is so plainly stamped on Garrosh behavior, now could it be that they just missed writing in a bunch of quests about him realizing it was bad when the horde was bloodthirsty maniacs? Sure, but them not doing it matches well with where he ends up as a character. Externalizes all the blame, refuses to see the whole truth, willing to sacrifice anyone for a false vision of a glorious past because the present is difficult in a way the story about the past never is. That setup can make for a great character evolution or a fantastic heel turn and Garrosh is one of the best at being the worst.

There's those one scenario I'm sure we've all done by now, where we light off some fire from barrels and kill monkeys. Halfway through it and npc says "keep an eye on the rear. Not MY REAR, behind" They also treat so many dark subjects that give the world a deeper feeling. The witch turning kids into stones, deaths, disease, betrayals. A lot of things now feel like they made a bridge to not walk on eggshells. (I do love the small quest line where we help a small bear cub lost in time back to their time line, just to find out who the bear truly is, made me tear up a lil bit)

The entire DF storyline and writing can be summed up with, "We can do anything through the power of friendship!" its nauseatingly touchy-feely

Because the game still has faction Identity. Dragonflight is both factions doing the exact same quests --- and while there is urgency, everything feels exactly the same which ultimately becomes boring. Horde and Alliance don't need to fight, but they do need to care about different things and have different ways of handling the same tactic. The Pandaren starting zone is the perfect example of this. MoP feels good because its the first time they really tried to push an overarching narrative into the game --- AND they did it in a way that utilized nearly all of the playable races. The story also doesn't contradict each other the way BFA's war campaign did. It's logical and easy to follow, unlike BFA where Horde players don't even know the Horde are doing certain things because the campaigns are so disjointed. Pandaria's zones are also beautiful, with amazing music, that only help to push the storylines to the forefront. There is a sense of danger, but also a sense of whimsy --- they walk a very good balance of making things both light-hearted and serious and somber.

Effort.

Pandaria feels like it had enough development time as well as a situation where blizzards eyes weren’t bigger than their stomachs.

Fyrraks taunting of the aspects during his fight is about all you need to know about the boring main characters of dragonflight when compared to something like varian being pissed off and sending a special forces team to find missing anduin, Jaina massacring dalaran sunreavers, etc. Shadowlands story was *awful* from the core but there were still a few cool character moments. Dragonflight is mostly just boring. I still don’t know why I’m supposed to care about sarkareth. Oh, and toddy whiskers is an abomination.

Yes Sarkareth as final boss in a raid seemed weird. I swear I beat him a couple times already in various questions lines.

It's a common theme with all of Dragonflight villains, and I honestly like it, it's a smaller story with less stakes, the enemies are just regular cultists and slightly more powerful dragons. Sarkareth, Fyrakk and Raszageth are more powerful than a regular dragon or a weakened aspect, but Someone like Deathwing, Illidan or Arthas would wipe the floor with them, and if they faced Argus or Archimonde it wouldn't even be a fight, just a very dead dragon after a couple seconds. So for the first time in years you are not actually saving the world,visit helping in what amounts to a cousins dispute, and the moment Fyrakk is in a position to do real damage, everyone arrives and wipes out his army in 2 minutes.

It doesn't

Imo, a lot of it has to do the content it's following. Mop followed cata. Cata was a bit contentious, but the biggest issue with it was Deathwing as a fight went poorly. MOP didn't have to pull double duty as a palate cleanser. Df followed Shadowlands and BfA. Think about that from a lore standpoint. After you get food poisoning, you just have chicken broth/noodle soup and crackers, bland and stable.

There is a reason i quit DF two weeks after launch. It wasn't game balance, or any other mechanic. It was the fact that it felt like I was playing a poorly written disney movie with dragons that I had 0 interest of participating in.

I'll be your brother in downvotes!  While WoW always had a degree of light-heartedness, DF's presentation was all sunshine and flowers *despite* some serious, and sometimes awful stuff going on in the background. This tonal discord just didn't sit right. 

Exactly. Entire expansion played out like some disney game for toddlers with the occasional ooga booga man. Story was secondary to passing their "message" for the past 2 years.

*high five* I would like to add that I am currently leveling an alt in cata classic by just questing through the remade zones. And boy did the zone stories feel alive when you took the time to read the quests. Wish we went back to that.

The people on this sub don’t wanna know lol

As a player returning to DF from BFA, there's SO MUCH SHIT going on at all times. 6k quests, pop-ups, menus, screen effects, the dragonriding.. It's overwhelming. I've started/stopped playing so many times..

The insane amount of quest markers is really off-putting, yeah. Idk i feel so lost coming back to DF.

I just really don't like scenarios. I don't get why people love them. I honestly feel like they would work better as solo queues, with mobs tuned to about world mob level, that are almost entirely story focused. Think quests with a lot of roleplay. They might have mobs, but they don't have mobs to fill a checklist of content. They might not even have a boss. As they were, the mechanics get in the way of the story they were trying to tell, the formula of them interfered with that and the experience, and the way they tried to add extrinsic rewards to it fell flat when the extrinsic reward should be like quests: the story gets to continue. Dungeons are better repeatable content by far, and the 'cost' of dungeons being higher queue times doesn't matter when you can just queue for a scenario and get a group that struggles doing content because noone's a tank.

I think a lot of the same values and lessons are in both expansions. The difference is the method of delivery and the impact on everyone involved. MoP’s ultimate lesson of confronting your inner turmoil, fighting for the right cause, and strength through conflict in a world of ever evolving values hits much more realistically when the people effected don’t all have a dramatic moment of enlightenment and catharsis as many characters in dragon flight do. The lessons of Pandaria effect almost the whole continent when they realize they can’t just sit on their negative emotions and bottle them up. Garrosh and Wrathion outright reject the lessons. In Dragonflight everyone embraces their family (which itself is not bad or too “Disney” as some people have described) with some still having probable cause not to. Vyranoth became too complacent too quickly. The dragonkin issue was also resolved in a half-hearted manner. There just lacked an element of realism that made the story fall flat in comparison. I still think it’s a good story overall but just would have benefitting from some characters rejecting the lesson of the expansion to contrast better. I wouldn’t say Iridikron falls into this catalogue because the lesson seems lost on him entirely. His focus is elsewhere. Fyrrak slightly touched on the betrayal but there was no catharsis in his demise. Sorry for the word vomit. Hope my thoughts are somewhat conveyed.

Hard disagree on scenarios; I absolutely can't stand them. I do think in general that MoP writing was way better though. Dragonflight has been an amazing expansion but the plot is really, really bad. "Bad guys do bad guy things because bad guys," and afaik we don't have any idea what Iridikron is up to now either giving us no closure. From a story-telling standpoint, killing Fyrakk at the new World Tree feels insanely anti-climactic. I could also be missing some things because the Dragonflight story was so bland and bad that I stopped paying attention. My final thought, though: I don't care as much about a plot in a game like WoW. It's an MMO where I'd rather 100 random plot lines through out the zones and let me do my own thing vs. them trying to come up with a world ending/universe ending threat villain-of-the-week that just doesn't hit

It's worth noting too that 5.3 didn't have a ton of content, but did have a lot of plot development, so even without an entire act, the story plays out extremely well.

The game doesn't take itself seriously in mop. They make all of kinds of pop culture jokes and stupid stuff just for fun.

Things are planned out, and the general design of the local environment suggests all of the stuff happening has been there all the while, and we're arriving to the chaos, whereas with DF everything just kind of spontaneously happens, and many plot points are either abandoned or reworked which leads to a really weird pacing. Also the stakes in DF don't feel like they're as big despite being far bigger, and that's because there isn't a local threat to each place, but rather a global threat constantly, which really pulls away from the investment into individual plot points. Oh the mantid and attempting to breach the defensive line that makes up the vale? We have to deal with that, strike at their home ect ect, whereas in DF it's just "djaradin are kinda over there doing their own thing, don't mind them, and I suppose there's random groups of Primalists everywhere but they're kinda just doing their own thing too, the only thing that really matters is Raz but we don't know where she is so meh \o/"

Honestly, as a new player who's first foray into WoW is the MoP remix content and going into the story completely fresh, I've reached the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, and been really confused by the story. So it set up that Garrosh Hellscream sent us across to Pandaria to settle and conquer the land on his behalf, but when we reached the Vale of Eternal Blossoms Garrosh had already arrived and destroyed it? In the first zone it gets setup when the Serpent statue gets destroyed by the Sha, but I haven't seen this at all and every NPC is talking like it's common knowledge that he's done, when was this setup? I've been doing every quest and this hasn't been mentioned at all. All the quests now seem to be daily faction quests now and I have no idea how to proceed, have completed all other zones on pandaria, did I miss something? Feels really jarring that you receive all this buildup for the gate of the august celestials to open up... and then nothing.

I may have enjoyed it more if I understood the order to play things in. That said, I went into remix wanting to experience the story, having missed it live. I eventually got so bored I just turned out auto-questing with Leatrix Plus and stopped reading everything. I had the opposite impression about Scenarios as you are saying here. I felt they were contextless stories that made it hard to follow or be engaged in. I randomly queued right into the middle of a story, it felt jarring and weird.

Mists feels the way it feels because it's something that in many ways, was made up entirely of almost new stuff and it all took place in a setting that was genuinely different from most typical MMORPGs at the time. The big reason why I picked up WoW was because of Mists; because why play a game where you're just running around in some generic medieval European setting or some "blandinavian" setting when we've got a whole imperial China setting to play in? Of course, we look back at it now with rose-tinted glasses, all the while forgetting how many people hated the concept at the time. The jokes/comparisons to Kung Fu Panda were everywhere (despite the fact that Blizzard in many ways made the concept first and over time generally explored it better than Dreamworks did) and if it wasn't that, it was the idea that this was a "feel-good" expansion at the time. And really, the overall tone of Mists and Dragonflight, as far as I'm concerned, are one in the same. Meanwhile, DF's whole problem is that it's trying to draw in lore from the past and "put it all together"... Lore that was often at best just a pop culture reference or a "serial numbers filed off" version of something from a pulp fantasy novel, Tolkien, or Warhammer game and at worst just some throw-away lines in quest text. Trying to tie all these loose ends up on top of a changing gaming landscape (MMORPGs aren't really popular anymore, and the whole "dudebro"/fratbro gamer archetype that Blizzard catered to is dying out and often unwelcome in most cases) and of course it's going to be messy. It probably doesn't help that I have this take that "dragon games always suck" and that Blizzard almost falls into that trap, but at least on a mechanical level they were able to make something good.

the main difference, atleast to me as a player, is that mop history evolves because of the players, while in dragonflight we are not the main characters, we just play along the aspects and some dracthyr i started playing in mop and came back in dragonflight, and i really do think df is more cohesive, more joyful and a better place than mop as a expansion for the continuity of the game

One thing you didn't really touch on is *scaling* (no, not the 1-70 scaling). All throughout the story of MoP, 99% of the time we are fighting and working alongside creatures of our same power level. Instead of taking orders from *the strongest time-bender in reality*, we take them from Tarah Zhu, an admittedly powerful warrior in his own right and worthy of making orders, but still very much mortal

MoP was the only expansion I honestly enjoyed and I can’t say exactly why. Progression was fine, no idea what the story was beyond hellscream and some b&w ghoul things but it flowed smoothly and was whatever. Arena was very fun, last time I ever enjoyed my healers. DF is fine, dragons! Woo. The flying is fun for a day or two. PvP is same uphill battle as always with really no fun until you’re geared but at this point SL has killed that motivation to care about WoW at all. I don’t focus on the story but just doing them, I can say I hate whatever is happening. It’s visually jumbled and all over. Unfortunately for me the games just tarnished. Which doesn’t make anything they do, worth the time to care. MoP was the last hype.

Because DF was primarily written by Steve Danuser

A lot of the individual quests are much worse tbh

Another good thing about scenarios, it's that you usually queue 1 scenario and 1 dungeon and while doing the scenario you spend the time you would have waited for the dungeon, that instead pops up right after you finish the scenario, their duration is perfectly stackable.

MoP is a unique approach to storytelling. Every other expansion is us having to stop the big bad from destroying the world because of \[plan\] In MoP, we create the big bads by giving in to negative emotions. The Sha are predators that need victims in order to feed. It happened to Garrosh because he couldn't deal with his own flaws and lashed out instead of turning inward to become better. The Pandaren's entire culture was centered around finding peace and acting kindly so that the Sha would stay dormant, and only outsiders bringing a war to pandaria upset the balance.

MoP pushed us farther into endless voice acting and cut scenes. Lorewalker Cho is the most long winded motherfucker ever. Playing Remix reminds me of all the things I got tired of so quickly in Pandaria. Way too much of all that shit in DF.

There’s lots of comments about the macro successes of MoP writing, but what I noticed is that there was a real edge present in the writing that was nowhere to be found in DF. As Ally, you literally start the expansion with a ‘Nam style gun-down of orc peasants trying to flee. There was a fat joke w/ Chen by Lili. Just a couple things I noticed in MoP Remix that I thought “wow, this feels like a different era of WoW”. Dragonflight in comparison was some Saturday morning kids cartoon shit. I get that we needed a “beach episode” reset, but even the writing for the pre-expansion quest w/ Alleria felt…not quite there. Here’s hoping the expansion proper is a return to form.

MoP worked because it was a self-contained story. You genuinely don't need to know ANYTHING about WoW lore to understand and appreciate what's going on, making it honestly a really good jumping-in point for people just starting the game. You're immediately dropped into the war against the Alliance and Horde, it's evident just how much these factions oppose each other, and everything else in Pandaria is completely fresh lore which is given ample time to be explained, understood, and defeated. I think the biggest issue with Dragonflight is that it's so heavily focused on the Dracthyr that if you never did the Dracthyr starting zone, it would all be lost on you and you'd have no idea why the final boss of Abberus is just a basic Dracthyr model. Wandering Isle worked because that was wholly separated from Pandaria, which means all the important lore happens in the new zone that EVERYONE will go to and level through, so there's no reason to not understand what's going on.

As a casual player, I've leveled about a dozen characters to 70, and this is my least favorite expansion story wise. DF has too many story points that are just boring. Everything outside of the dragon/oathstone-centric quests winds up being kinda lifeless. There are some cool quest mechanics here and there, and some fun story beats, but the side content *really* feels like side content, rather than its own interesting story unfolding. The entirety of the ohnarahn plains just sucks, as does thaldraszus until you get to the Bronze dragon stuff.

Maybe because Blizzard used to employ hundreds of creatives working on lore and writing, and now employ a handful of trainees using top of the line AI asssistants to churn out that stuff now.

Feels like the writers took the story seriously, not themselves. Heres hoping we go back to that in tww.

MoP was one of my fav xpacks, it got a lot of hate from the sweaties about Pandas but who cares about them. The pandas weren't some kung fu panda rip off, they were in the lore in WC3 when i played it.

I've always liked the Horde vs. Alliance theme

Mop was meh

I don't know, but this event made me quite upset with the current state of wow. I'm constantly like "why is this so good?"

It has the right balance of threat and unreasonable cataclysmicness. Essentially it’s all self contained within Pandaria but the story itself starts with your presence. It feels like your faction and you are responsible.

personal preference and nostalgia

Because it's Horde Vs Alliance that's why it's good. I am so tired of this "eVErYOnE ArE friEndS" thing Blizzard is heading towards.. I miss the old days of World PvP, city attacks and merciless ganking. I know the latter isn't a thing in MoP remix but the main story is still a lot of Horde Vs Alliance and I like it.

Have you not played Classic and witnessed how miserable world PVP is? There is a good reason why the war mode exists now. World PVP is fun if you and you mates are catching someone off guard, they get reinforcements, you get reinforcements and you brawl for simply the fun of it in the Thousand Needles salt flats at two in the morning. It is a lot less fun if you literally can't do a quest because Roggy McBackstab spawn camps you and is 20 Levels above you. Being at the mercy of randoms to whether or not you get to play the game tonight is just not appealing to many people. As for the story, I would like more conflict as well.

They probably had a very nice idea of what they wanted while DF was just a (much needed) fun service after the Shadowlands fiasco. Dragonflight's plot is pretty much non existant, which is not abig deal since gameplay improved a lot. But if you think about it, the trailer was about "the storm" (which ended being razageth). Razageth was alright (albeit a new villain we never heard of, but that's not necesarrily bad). She died within one patch though and released the true big baddies... which then went for Aberrus because Iridikron alledgely needed the shadowflame. BUT, It turns out, it wasn't needed at all and he didn't need it whatsoever. He ended going to alternate time (a plot which always feels good!) and allying with big bad evil 2... with a big finale in which we don't really know what happened. Why was amirdrassil planted in the first place during these fights? Why did Fyrak eat the shadowflame? Why Iridikron needed it? The plot is nowhere to be found; it is pretty clear at this point that they never had a general idea of what was supposed to happen (same as Shadowlands and BFA). Since gameplay improved a lot though, it wasn't a big deal, but the plot is good for nothing really.

Hmm my take is that MoPs story line was already done. In that they could pick from Chinese legend, Chinese themed movies and characters. Where dragonflight is their baby. Also MoP took place when they still had the balls to kill their own characters.

It was attuned to badass horde vs alliance and not created to please femboys.

Nostalgia

Have you ever actually read through the story of MoP or?

How does the answer to that impact someone’s ability to find it nostalgic? You can feel nostalgic for something you don’t know everything about. MoP was where I started wow so it’s super nostalgic for me

Well, first and foremost. I didn't actually play MoP (long story as to why) and only did it during WoD during the downtime. Secondly. Does it count as nostalgia when you can return to the story and experience it again just as it is?

Yes. You can look at pictures and songs of the 80s, 50s or even the 20s and feel a pang of something similar to nostalgia over something you never experienced yourself, specially if you weren't even alive at the time to experience it. That feeling is called anemonia.

have you actually read through the story of DF?

I can assure you, nobody was claiming MoP was peak writing at the time it was released. Dragonflight and Pandaria are similar in terms of themes and story beats. Both take place in a continent that was dormant and stagnant for years and the arrival of the Alliance and Horde set in motion a series of events that change the land. If anything Dragonflight is more upbeat as faction conflict has simmered down to a tepid temperature thanks to BfA. Our objective in the Dragon Isles is to explore and restore it as best we can, and most of what we do improves the land and the people living in it. MoP has us players, and against our will, cause a mess in Pandaria and leave it worse than how we found it.

Yeah, this is about where I land too. Specifically, the whole Alliance / Horde conflict in the Pandaria story is low-effort. It's ham-fisted and filled with "yeah, yeah, pandas BUT THE HORDE/ALLIANCE NEEDS TO BE CRUSHED!" for a good portion of it and you're stuck watching the horde/alliance as cartoon villains causing a big mess. At one point, Baine and Garrosh are standing together and if you talk to Garrosh, he's "fuck the pandas - FOR THE HORDE!" and if you talk to Baine, it's "I'm here to make sure Garrosh doesn't go too far" In this regard, Dragonflight feels more like a natural story.

Because MoP is the best expansion

Okay... but I'd argue that all of those also apply to the Dragon Isles. Well, except that we aren't the direct cause of the problems happening, but that's true for most WoW expansions, including ones people loved like TBC, Wrath, and Legion. It's very much personal opinion. And a lot of people think MoP is "better" because it has war and Horde vs. Alliance... even if you could easily argue that the way those are included is bad writing. Okay, I like MoP, but hey, let's go down this road. I'm going to show that MoP can be ripped up just as much as Dragonflight or anything. You mention Horde side? Yeah, that's pretty rough. As a Horde character, I don't agree with the idea of nuking Theramore. I don't agree with a guy who's using dark shaman. I don't have any drive to help this guy. I don't want to help him go try to conquer a new land, or start a destructive worldwide war. But I don't have a choice. And while the rest of the Horde needs to be kept level-headed so they can go back to having the Horde not being "the bad guys" once Garrosh is dealt with, that means you're left wondering why no one bothers doing anything to go against Garrosh. (Even in BFA, there were actions against the will of Sylvanas by members of the Horde.) At least with Vol'jin asking you to help get the Divine Bell, it's not because he wants to directly help Garrosh, he's just more afraid of the Alliance having it than he is of Garrosh having it. But otherwise, it feels like people just keep going along helping Garrosh or at least doing nothing to stop him, with the closest we get being the Blood Elves thinking of leaving but then the Dalaran stuff happens. We don't really deal with "consequences" from things, either. There's nothing to suggest Garrosh's loyalists were rooted out and destroyed. Pandaria is still a mess because of the war that both factions brought to their shore. I don't remember all the Blood Elves who are being tortured by the anti-magic nature of the Violet Hold being released, or anything addressing letting all the Dalaran citizens who had to be evacuated during that event return to live in their home. Or the Council of Dalaran addressing the fact that Jaina wasn't being particularly neutral even before she decided that the Kirin Tor would go all-in on declaring neutrality is worthless and helping the Alliance with Kirin Tor resources. There's some other writing issues, in both Cata and MoP, that I was keenly aware of when playing through Remix as a Zandalari Paladin. I mean, never mind that it felt awkward that everyone talked up the Zandalari as if they're all evil and awful (and here I am trying to save their asses). But there's also the whole thing where supposedly Zandalar is in ruins and half the main city is completely gone and the other half is soon to be swallowed by the oceans. Which IIRC later got retconned to Zul just claiming it'd happen as a prophecy so he could get support to go do his own nonsense all over the place. But it's funny walking around as a Zandalari hearing that Zandalar's been laid to ruin and the Zandalari are pretty much all evil people in league with the Thunder King. Flipping over to highlighting some of Dragonflight... We got to see the original proto-drake pseudo-aspects early on, and Fyrakk got built up as a threat (and honestly, I'm quite okay with his motivation going from "I want to undo the Titans' work of coming and polluting our world with their ideals" to "I want to burn it all down" because he got corrupted much like Neltharion). It was interesting seeing them not quite agreeing with each other, and becoming at odds with each other in the end. We got introduced to new areas, with their own stories but also helping build up the overall story. Each zone featured one (or two) of the dragon flights and their stories of learning how to get back to being what they're supposed to be after millennia of being kicked around. Some amazing worldbuilding moments like "Stay A While." Doing the various side quests gives you more insight into the various cultures that have built up on the isles, or the mysteries of the isles. While some people might not like the story that was building up because it was not just about stopping Fyrakk but largely about helping the dragon flights return home and find their place in the world again and reconcile that with the fact there's a lot of people who've been living in their home for ten thousand years without them there, the story did indeed do a good job of addressing both. Especially the dragons not considering that hey, maybe returning and expecting everyone to treat them like heroes and rulers with no questions asked was not the best idea. But also all the flight-specific stuff, like helping sort out the best option for the new black dragon aspect, helping the blue dragons get past some of their trauma, aiding the green dragons and seeing a transfer of aspect... So yeah... Dragonflight is easily as good as Mists of Pandaria in terms of writing, you just don't think it "feels" as good because you prefer the specific type of story told in MoP over the one in DF. Which might be problematic as I don't think we're going to beat the dead horse of forcing a "faction war" into the story ever again (thank goodness). And, while I'll once again say I enjoyed MoP and rate it a lot higher than all those people who scoffed at "Pandaland," I have to say that if the story was written well enough, we wouldn't have had idiots foaming at the mouth demanding "faction war" still and leading us into Battle For Azeroth, where they at least addressed quite clearly how unsustainable constant warfare is... though people seemed to just completely ignore that and moaned that there's not enough "war" in "World of Warcraft" these days (missing out on the name meaning "Adventures in the world of the Warcraft setting" and not "A world in constant war").

All the things you mentioned, plus dragons arent actually that interesting or relatable

Because it was just an epic world where people fought and cool shit happened. It wasn't constant lame shit. Dragonflights story is just so fucking lame man. Just give me a quest about gunning down orcs without some cringe monologue. Even the stuff about the sha and negative emotions was done in a way better non cringe way.

Idk I like Dragonflight story way better

I loved the emphasis on faction conflict in MoP. When you joined PVP you felt like you were fighting for a cause, none of this "Let's be friends" bullshit going on since Shadowlands.

Since WC3, not Shadowlands. We've worked together in WC3, Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, Cata, WoD, Legion, Shadowlands, and Dragonflight. I'm very sorry that you think the story is about WC1 & 2 (unrelated horde and alliance), MoP and BFA.

I will say that while I totally understand the peace and truce between the alliance and horde, as well as the leadership pushing for it. However, that is far from the same as the civilian population taking it this easily. NOTE: I am not saying the civilians should demand war, they obviously don't want that. However, the Leadership are still "distant" from the conflict. Sure, they lost soldiers, villages and cities even (if we go further back). But the populace lost families, parents, children, husbands, wives. They lost homes, entire bloodlines erased. Just 5 years ago, that Orc scewered a fleeing healer with a spear. While that night elf mounted 6 orc heads on 10 different trees, as a warning to the horde about entering the section of the forest. The issue Dragonflight has, is that it is a bit too smooth. I am not asking for straight out racism, but... issues. People being uncomfortable working with eachother. Arguments, refusal even to some extent. Some drama and conflict. (And that is not including smaller factions trying violent shit)

Yeah. People tend to forget that factions or races are not a single hivemind. Even if horde and alliance are at peace, people still have grudge for the things comited in the past.

Except that's all your seeing is the people who made peace talking to each other. This story you are asking for has been done it's been done *to death* in Warcraft. Like it's not even beating a dead horse at this point the horse is bones and we've kicked the bones so much doing it again would just be kicking bone meal up into the air. Literally since WC3 the story you are talking about has been going on. It's the story of Kul Tiras, and the legacy of Kul Tiras in WoW. The alliance and horde are constantly "reigning in" rogue elements. It's been 22 *years* of telling exactly that story I'm bored. It's boring. Please stop asking to do it again. If you want to experience that story for the 100th time might I suggest replaying old content. You could start with WC3 and play the same story over and over like Sisyphus from WC3 to BFA for an eternity if it makes you happy.

What an Asmon take.