Is the writing 10x better yet? Remember how they scapegoated Afrasiabi as the singular reason for every problem with Shadowlands?
How impressed is everyone with Steve Danuser's "saga 2" of Warcraft?
Conceptually, an expansion about Warcraft dragons isn't very appealing to me. Warcraft dragons are pretty bland. The only thing really interesting about them were the Blacks, but Deathwing's story was limited to the WotA trilogy and Cataclysm. His grandson Wrathion had a cool storyline in MoP. Wrathion briefly gets 10 minutes of screentime in the Waking Shores, and then is forgotten until 10.1, in which he is sidelined in favor of Ebyssian, the black dragon pulled out of nowhere in Legion who is a sad tauren and is very boring. It is very aggravating that Ebyssian becomes the new Earth-Warder rather than Wrathion, a character who I was invested in (from MoP) and had a storyline building him up to fulfill the role that his father was supposed to.
The Primalists - an army of cultists from nowhere who hate the Titans and want to return to the good 'ole days of being enslaved by giant tentacles - are not compelling. The four Primal Incarnates - ancient dragons rejected the Titan's gifts and tried to destroy their creation - are whatever. They have goofy human forms that look like they are from a Saturday morning cartoon like Ben 10.
When you go through the levelling questlines, most of the star NPCs (Sendrax, Majordomo Selistra, the tuskurr chief, that bronze dracthyr in Thaldraszus, etc) sound like they are going through hormone therapy. Even Kalecgos sounds like a total wimp.
The Dracthyr storyline is pretty bad. Sarkareth and Emberthal both only got 30 seconds of screentime in the starter zone (and then Emberthal got another 30 seconds of screentime in the Waking Shores). Then they take center stage in the 10.07 patch and have a considerable amount of cutscene time devoted to them, but I confused as to who these people were or why I should care about them. They then continue to hog the spotlight in 10.1 but again the writers have failed to get me to care about what's going on with them. There are also egregious lapses of writing, where you beat up Sarkareth and could just kill him... but you don't, and he rises to his feet and declares that this is not the end and then runs off. Twice.
I haven't beaten the megadungeon, but it wouldn't surprise me if it ends with Chromie (who has been retconned to be trans) is installed as the new leader of the Bronze Dragonflight.
There is a sidequestline involving the Night Elves, who I did care about, but it was wonkily written.
Malfurion was calling me "friend" and asking me for my help. I main a Horde character. I invaded Ashenvale - Night Elf territory - and slew their people to help the Horde chop down more trees and dig up ugly holes for Goblins to spew muk into. In MoP, I snuck into Teldrassil and slaughtered more elves to steal a Mogu artifact to use against the Alliance. And then I invaded Ashenvale (again!) and poisoined their villages - women and children too - and then invaded Darkshore, and then torched most of their civilization. There is no coming back from that. Also doesn't make sense for the Green Dragons to treat me so warmly either. The Greens invested thousands of years of work into developing Ashenvale and Darkshore and Teldrassil only for me to destroy it, and they are family with the Night Elves, most of whom I burned alive.
The champion of the Horde should not be personally invited by the Night Elves and the Greens to help with their problems. This story should be exclusive to the Alliance champion. At least give the NPCs different dialogue so they only barely tolerate my presence because I'm the accomplished heavy lifter on hand. (Then again, it's weird that Magni entrusted the Heart of Azeroth to a mass murderer, or that Khadgar cracks jokes in my presence... or really any non-Horde character is chill with me).
Malfurion being written out of the Warcraft story is unsatisfying. He only ever got to... what? Star in the Cata Hyjal questline, and then get axed in the back by Sadfang at the start of BFA. All of his cool stuff happened either in WC3 or in books, both outside of the actual WoW game. Then again the Night Elves - a faction unto themselves - got utterly shafted in WoW from the start when they got lumped in with the Alliance.
Malfurion being written out of the story also feels completely unnecessary. We went through all this trouble to bring back Ysera only for her to immediately abdicate her powers and authority and then waltz off to do whatever. The story begins with the Green Dragonflight being led by Meritha, and ends with the Green Dragonflight being led by Meritha (though I guess Meritha got empowered at the end).
Didn't Cenarius die in WC3 and then easily came back in Cata? This who thing about having to sacrifice someone to take Ysera's place within Ardenweald feels stupid. And contrived, which it is.
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Dragonflight's story isn't offensively bad like Legion, BFA, and Shadowlands were. It doesn't trample on old lore or perform character assassinations of characters I loved. (Well, I guess Wrathion's edge has been sanded off but that happened in BFA). The issue with Dragonflight's story is that the writers can't get me to care about anything that is going on, and all of the sanctimonious cutscenes of people standing around with pouty faces and navel gazing fall flat for me.
