Dragonflight patch 10.1 review
The zone and the first half of the zone questline released last week. The second half of the questline, the raid, and the Fryakk Assaults didn't release until yesterday.
The new zone, Zalarek Cavern, is... decent? Probably the best looking Dragonflight zone with the orange lava rivers, the yellow sulfur, the turquoise crystals, the purple plants, etc. However, the zone isn't very fun to adventure through gameplay wise, unlike the multi-layered Tangled Depths or Draconis Mons from GW2. The underground area is does not feel as grandiose as it could have been compared to other fantasy underground areas, be it Draconis Mons, or the Hidden World from HTTYD, or even the Underbog and Azjol Nerub from WoW's earlier expansions. Neltharion's citadel, Abberus, does not feel imposing either.
The zone is very good for open world PvP, though, since the low ceiling means that it is unlikely your enemies can escape from you by simply ascending infinitely. They are likely to get dismounted by your wingshredder or airborne tumbling. I am disappointed how unimmersive the war supply mode crate is delievered, though. The plane spawns 5 feet in front of a cavern wall, flies the same path of south to north through the cavern, drops the crate, and then despawns 5 feet in front of the northern cavern wall. The plane either should have flown through the cavern entrances, or the crate should have been delievered by a Dwarven digging machine.
The map transition isn't perfect, as often times I see the end of the cave wall before it disappears. Yes, my game is installed on an SSD. Nice piano, though.
A 5th species of dragonriding mount has been added, called the Slitherdrake. Once again, we have the key feature of the expansion, the dragon mount, and it is too small for Tauren players. Still forced to use the Proto-Drake. No real choice or personalization to be had here. It's a shame, because I love the way the Pern-styled dragons look. Would have loved to have used one. Maybe 10.2 will introduce another dragonriding model and it will be probably scaled?
Slitherdrake
Proto-Drake
Questline
The mole people are nice. I'll take Honeypelt over that irritating Goblin from Nazjatar.
I have never met this man in my life. EDIT: oh, is he from that questline about the comedy duo of a human and a blood elf that ended with the elf sacrificing himself inside a tower?
Sarkareth isn't a threatening villain when we get a cutscene of a girl stomping on his glove device.
Hated the gratuitous Emberthal wank and the constant putting down of Wrathion and Sabellian.
More fire Vrykul... *snore*
Ebyssian should have died, either from the impact of crashing into the earth or the profuse bleeding from the serrated spear being yanked out of his body.
The mole village should have been turned into a smoking crater. The scene doesn't have much impact when there are only five dead bodies and all of the other vendors are manning their stalls selling stuff like normal and the buildings are still intact, not even caved in.
Looks like after you return to Alexstraza the story becomes either timegated and/or locked behind another reputation grind.
*Sarkareth gets beaten up a second time, as aforementioned*
More cringeworthy dialogue between Emberthal and Ebyssian.
If Neltharion had a loyal army of Black Dragonkin who would do ANYTHING he asked, why didn't he call upon them in Cata?
Wrathion never got focus this patch.
New raid: Abberus, the Shadow Crucible.
The raid is... I'm not sure how I feel about it.
First of all, it is yet another underground fortress/fire themed raid, in a game that is already heavily oversaturated with them. Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Grim Batol, Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, Firelands, Siege of Orgrimmar, the ogre mines dungeon from WoD, Blackrock Foundry, and so on. It is also mono-themed all the way through, unlike the great raids like ToT or SoO that have a lot of variation in environments and themes.
A raid about exploring a dark laboratory sounds cool. Unfortunately, the actual raid is you running through huge, empty hallways, nothing immersive like Karazhan.
Lots of asset reuse here. Generic fire elemental boss, another hydra/core hound boss, more fire vrykul bosses, yadda yadda.
Some of the AoE timings feel unfair. An AoE appears beneath you, and you have a fraction of a second to begin walking out of it, or you will be one shotted.
The hardest boss thus far has been Zskarn. Rest of the raid thus far has been a breeze.
This was a 5 or 6 hour long raid. I cannot recall any music from this patch. It's all forgettable crap. Very disappointing given how great this franchise's music once was.
Doesn't Neltharion's ghost showing up contradict the afterlife lore introduced in Shadowlands? He should be some Bastion temple or repenting in Revendreth. Or he was turned into anima and is powering one of Mikanikos' robots. Not that I'm complaining. Best to pretend Shadowlands never happened.
It's disappointing that the questline promises that you're going to venture into Abberus and fight alongside Wrathion and Sabellian... and then you don't fight with them in the raid. They just stand off to the side and watch as you do the battles.
One of the raiders in our PUG was muted, and apparently that prevented the raid leader from listing us in LFG to recruit replacements. Every time we needed to recruit more people, the raid leader had to kick the muted player out of his party (which in turn kicked him from the raid instance), recruit the raiders, then invite the muted raider back in, and since we didn't have a warlock we had to wait for the raider to run all the way back to where we are. We had to do this 10 times. What an incredible waste of time and stupid programming.
The PUG leader cursing and yelling at his raiders like a drill sergent and threatening to kick them seemed to have improved the PUG's performance. "YES SIR RAID LEADER!"
The last boss room where you descend into outer space like in Genshin Impact was cool.
The raid leader is telling me to play a 100 APM rotation imported from Icy Veins that I'm unfamiliar with and deal big DPS or he's going to kick me. He's watching the DPS meters like a hawk and is shouting "why aren't the adds dead yet? They need to die now or we wipe! Come on guys or I'm going to have to kick people!". I have procs popping up all of the time and I can't look away from my glowing hotbar. I am stacked on top of a raid of players who are throwing out heal effects and damage effects, on top of the boss who is fire breathing on our raid and dropping dark purple puddles and spawning dozens of dark purple adds who are using dark purple attacks on us. I cannot possibly see this tiny, dark purple orb through all of this crap. And then I get blamed and called a moron for a bomb I wasn't even carrying.
Welp, I'm done. Got Sarkareth down to 40% when our PUG disbanded. Tried joining Sarkareth PUGs but it seems people don't want ilevel 401 ret paladins. Guess my only hope would be to have joined another fresh run and hope it made it to Sarkareth all the way through, which I'm not doing. I am not a raider and I don't do mythic+, so I won't be able to get into PUGs later on when people start setting higher ilevel requirements unless Blizzard adds catchup gear towards before the next raid tier drops. Doubt I will beat Sarkareth until 10.2 rolls around.
Watched the raid ending cutscene on Youtube. It's funny how Wrathion and Sabellian teleport into the boss room as if they were there during the fight all along (last I checked they were still frozen in Neltharion's room). In retrospect, I suppose the same thing happened with Khadgar and Kalecgos in Vault of the Incarnates.
Fryakk Assault
Seeing Fryakk devastate the zone like Deathwing was cool. I thought that the event was that you were going to fight him. It's called a "Fryakk Assault" but you don't get to fight the titular big bad?
I was led to believe that the Fryakk Assault would be another GW2-esque event that had a beginning, middle, and end, like the Iskarra Soup event or the Primalist Future or the Assault on Dragonbane Keep. Instead, it's just an always on mosh pit, like the Legion assaults. That's disappointing. It does at least vaguely feel like a war is going on (still makes no sense where all of these Primalists are coming from), though the fire and ash effects disappear once you step 2 feet out of the assault area.
So Baine and Mayla are here in the plains fighting against Fryakk's forces. I guess that next week, the Azure Span will have Khadgar and Kalecgos? Thaldraszus will have Nozdormu and his wife? And the Waking Shores will have Alexstraza, Wrathion, and Sabellian?
So... that's it? That's the patch? Darn. Not even a new battleground. Doesn't seem to have longevity.
Future
Welp, none of the three Primal Incarnates died this patch.
The roadmap shows that 10.1.5 will come with world events. Perhaps one of the Incarnates will die in that? 10.1.7 will come with quests so maybe another incarnate will die in that. And then the last Incarnate dies in the 10.2 raid? I know that people were speculating that zombie Galakrond would be the final boss, but IDK how he could be fit in at the rate the story is dealing with the Primal Incarnates.
What on earth is the 10.2 zone going to be? Are they going to whip out another offshore island like Isle of Thunder/Isle of Giants/Timeless Isle? Or is the zone going to be in another dimension, like the Void? Or they could do the GW2 thing and have a map set on top of zombie Galakrond's rotting body? Or maybe an enlarged Primal Incarnate that has feasted on incredible power? Too cool for current Blizzard, probably.
