This xpac msq is....?!!! [Ending spoiler]

[ShariusTC]

...horrible, a whole msq i feel like i am just a background character, my input mean nothing for story

I can understand that in 1st half of the game when i just tag along for an election, but when 2nd half happen when we are dealing with world merging and interdimension stuff, there is nothing change

Only when i face very last boss of xpac that realize i am the strongest of the group, but then when we are about to kill boss, some cs play that make certain character get all credit

I was like wtf a whole story, they literally make a godslayer go and collect some bird poops just to deal with local bandit, i am a warrior of fucking light, not some random grunt from WoW

[genuine_stranger]

Unfortunately, for the story to have any relevance, our WoL cannot be part of any smaller stories. We are just far too powerful and can send nearly every threat into oblivion with a high-five to their faces.
The way things are now, we have to be an extra and watch stories play out in which we have no par to play in, like we do in DT, or we have to face ever-increasing threats, or there are just no stakes at play. But we can only get so far, since we already defeated a threat to all existence in the known universe in EW in the form of Meteion and Zeromus.
What's next? Multiverse bad guys who threaten all dimensions? The creator of the universe themselves?

As much as people might dislike it, I honestly think that our character needs a reset of his power level. No more blessing of light, no more empowerment from the additional rejoining of Ardbert and the dragon eye. Just so we CAN have more meaningful writing on a smaller scale.

[BakoolJaJa]

I was like wtf a whole story, they literally make a godslayer go and collect some bird poops just to deal with local bandit, i am a warrior of fucking light, not some random grunt from WoW

The funny thing is - as much as I always hated WoW's approach to story telling where your character is just a nobody who helps out the actual main characters of the story... At least there they have a gigantic cast of ridiculously OP chads, some of whom have decade old lore from other Warcraft games, have entire books written about them, etc. Characters one could argue are at least supposed to be compelling, the writers at least make the attempt to build them up over time and put them into weird new situations to flash out this side or that side. And sometimes they also fail miserably, no argument there... But then you just ignore the characters that suck and focus on the ones that are okay, which is easily doable when the casts are so large and diverse.

And there despite fetching stuff for those characters, and playing attack dog, you also still feel appreciated and recognized. Because those other OP main NPCs at least have the decency to tell you that yes, you are actually pretty damn amazing, and when it comes from those characters it has some weight.

WoW doesn't put literal nobodies in the center of an expac and then make your character act like a worthless weakling because otherwise the new protagonist would look bad. If WoW did that, the devs would be dragged through the dirt and every Youtuber would be acting like the sky is falling down and Blizzard murdered their families.

Also, I'm just saying - Dawntrail is a contest where we do not get a choice in which contestant we want to support. Would be too hard to let us have an actual choice for once, right? Now look at Battle for Azeroth. Horde and Alliance get two completely different storylines. Completely different locations. It's basically two games in one. Don't want to do Alliance crap? Do the Horde! Hate the Horde? Do the alliance part! Sure, the stories aren't great and they have less voice acting or whatever. But as of now? Dawntrail didn't benefit from what little voice acting is there anyways. And the story sucks too.

Oh and quest design... At least WoW tries something new. Something like the Death Knight start where you fly around on a huge wyrm, aiming and nuking hundreds of mobs below... Is it something revolutionary? No. Best quest design ever? Hell no. Is it better than "talk to NPC, talk to NPC again, talk to NPC, talk to NPC"? Yes, yes it is.

[Avoidy]

It needed a lot more prepwork to be successful. If dawntrail's plot is what they were dead set on giving us no matter what, then Zero's filler arc with the void shard should have been completely scrapped. In 6.05 we should have met Wuk through Erenville and simply gotten to know her without any mention of the rite of succession. Just let the character breathe over the course of the post-patch content. Have it foreshadowed that something (the rite of succession) is weighing heavily on Wuk's mind, but maybe she doesn't bring it up because she doesn't want to bother someone she's just met with a burden like this. Then, in 6.55, have her finally crack and beg for our help. This accomplishes four things: 1) It makes us, the player, more likely to even like this character since she's ideally getting characterization and being allowed to actually grow on us, 2) It makes the player character's affection for her feel less shoehorned, 3) it makes our willingness to help with her issue actually feel sensible, 4) It lets other characters (hi Krile) breathe in Dawntrail because they're not trying to do an msq and rush wuk's characterization all at once.

The rite of succession was also kind of a joke. When the current dawnservant says that if the winner of the trials isn't up to snuff, that he'll simply refuse to cede power... all the stakes are just lost at that point. Like, the dude flat out says "if none of them are worthy I just won't give it up" and he tells you this near the beginning of the story iirc, so there's no pressure through any of it. If you were ever concerned that a warmongering psychopath might get into office, well, worry not, because the current ruler won't let that happen even if he wins. Why am I here to help with this? If you just want a leader who fits your standards, maybe teach them yourself instead of letting strangers do it? Just a thought.

And the pacing. The pacing was god awful. Everyone already knows the start is rough, but at the end too. At the end there's literally your new enemy (once again a petite girl at the root of all evil, and she even sounds like meteion. were they voiced by the same person?) building a death star in the background and you pull up to stop it... but wait! Wuk wants to talk to some more people. So now, at the end of the game, you get to drop all that tension and just go on more fetch quests. More talking quests. Pick up some ice cream! Star in a play! I was pumped when we arrived at the final zone, but by the end of all that bullshit I was exhausted and honestly mad as hell but for all the wrong reasons. When the credits rolled, I thought "finally" instead of "wow, what a story." Including Krile's parents, and Erenville's goodbye to his mother, should've been all for that part. Everything else, wtf are we doing. These aren't people. They're memories of people, brought to life with Aether. I'm tired of hearing ascian comparisons. These people already lived. Their real selves have been dead for decades, maybe even centuries. It's not a valid comparison. It was weird and borderline psychotic when Wuk decided that we had to get to know these literal ghosts before pulling the plug on them. And when she interjected herself into Krile's reunion to send me on another fetch quest for ice cream, I wanted to scream. Just stop. Stop shoehorning this character into everything to make up for your inability to pace out the story properly beforehand. The best part of this story was when every scion and Wuk all left, and it was just me and erenville in a wild west zone. It was small stakes. There was a reason for why I couldn't just use my WoL powers to nuke everything. There was a villain I absolutely detested. It didn't drag itself out, and it felt good to see it through. More of that, please.

And god damn, the cutscenes too. Even the cutscenes dragged. Do we NEED to cut away to my character nodding every other minute? It's like the writers felt compelled to remind you that you're even present, because you're so absent from everything meaningful. It was so predictable and cringey. I can take being a background character in my own game if the plot's good (it wasn't) or the other characters are interesting (they're not), but stop pretending like my presence matters by panning to my dude every other sentence. "See! There's you! You're in this scene too!" God, damn. And don't forget constantly panning to other scions to have them all nod too. Like what the hell?? Just deliver your message and end the scene. This whole story dragged like crazy. hire an editor next time. jesus christ. kudos to whatever director decided to pan to me standing there while the king got murdered by his own son btw, that was real "kino" real high tier shit, like I've had planets thrown at me and lived but I guess I'm just not fast enough to catch a suped up lizard in pimped out soul armor, alright

there's so much more i could complain about here, like how wuk totally jobs to the two headed dude and then 1v1s him like a day later, or all the times my character just stands there doing nothing while bad guys hold innocent people hostage and stuff, because "gotta let wuk handle it" because apparently other people should have to undergo trauma and possible loss of life so that wuk can get stronger like bruh what
what
why am I even here
there are like 2 moments in the entire journey where you get to have dialogue options with wuk that inform her thought process and encourage her to think like a reasonable leader, and outside of that, all you do is walk in wuk's shadow for 40 hours. there's no training arc. there's no come to jesus moment. she just walks from place to place, with your character nodding in the background, and magically gets stronger and develops leadership traits. hell, at least koana's group had moments where urianger and thancred mentored the lad. where was that for us? i could have stayed home and nothing would've changed. even if the psychopath had gained power, his dad would've just said "hmmm, nah" and that would've been the end of it. but all of that could be forgiven if the pacing weren't such. a. slog. "talk to 3 npcs" is the only kind of quest these people know how to make apparently, because that's all we do. talk to 3 npcs. pick up trash on the ground. find the sparkly area on the floor and then wait while a bar fills. over and over again for 80 quests.

and then there were so many parts that should have been more interactive but just weren't. like at the beginning where wuk tells you about all the cool stuff her dad did, ... by making you walk from stone to stone, clicking it, and waiting. And then you get to sit there and read exposition dumps from an unvoiced wuk lamat about what her dad did. this is ... THE MOST boring way to deliver information in a video game. this is a game. an interactive visual medium. our character can jump into people's memories and witness shit firsthand. there are SO many better ways you could deliver backstory info through this context, but the writers kept choosing boring exposition nearly every single time. imagine if, even once, we got to just play as the dawnservant and actually live this cool stuff out firsthand. or remember the weaponized train? WE ALREADY HAVE AN ON RAILS SHOOTING SYSTEM IN THE GAME, it's at the gold saucer. they could have just GIVEN US THAT and let us ACTUALLY PLAY that portion. instead, watch a cutscene!

did they forget?
did they forget that this is a game??
i can't bruh, this msq was so bad. so so bad. i'm glad i'm done. i'm glad it's over.

[ShariusTC]

i was annoying when final boss finally realize i am the only one pose a danger for her among other NPC, such an insult for whoever wrote story in ShB and EW

[MatthiusAbysswalker]

This whole expansion was just a waste of time.
Every "plot beat" was predictable and glaringly obvious to the point where none of it was a surprise.
Wuk Lamat took up like 80% of the dialogue, and when the V/a is so shit it's unbearable.
The WoL didn't need to be here at all.
Fluffed up graphics and good dungeons don't cover for the fact this MSQ sucked. It was worse than pre-nerf ARR. Fetch quest after fetch quest.

[ShariusTC]

first half of story remind me about majin buu arc of DBZ, but then after new threat surface, instead of switch focus back on goku, they keep insist to go on with gohan

[genuine_stranger]

first half of story remind me about majin buu arc of DBZ, but then after new threat surface, instead of switch focus back on goku, they keep insist to go on with gohan

Hey! My boy Gohan had at least some character in the Cell saga.
Goten, or Boruto would fit Wuk Lamat better imo.

[Avoidy]

i was annoying when final boss finally realize i am the only one pose a danger for her among other NPC, such an insult for whoever wrote story in ShB and EW

That part honestly felt very jarring, I agree. If the entire point of Dawntrail was for us to mentor a capable leader, then it should've followed that -- at the very least -- Wuk would have been recognized by the sphenebot as well. Otherwise, what was the point? And of course, in the end, Wuk crashes through anyway and has her Gaia E8 moment except it's somehow even cringier because the delivery is super flat and feels like the va was just given the lines with no direction or something. If you watch it in japanese, the va actually grunts while wuk is lifting the hand off of her and it actually seems like she got to see the scene as she voiced it. I wonder if maybe the english vas don't get this, because it's a problem throughout the english dub and it's part of why so many people have insisted on jp for years now, but i digress.

Honestly... it just felt like an excuse to get us alone so we would have to use the dutyfinder for the finale dungeon tbh, but they did it in the laziest way possible. They even used exposition to explain why we were alone. Like, the boss looks at us point blank and goes "i have removed the others because u r so vewwy strong uwu..." now compare that to endwalker, where there's a very good reason for why we're the only one left to confront the endsinger. there's a good way and a bad way to pick off the main cast, that's all I'm saying. This writer felt like he was new or something, idk man.

[PercibelTheren]

I don't mind not being the protagonist. What I do mind is that the Scions have had their personalities removed. If they weren't around, I wouldn't even have noticed. Not to mention they seem to awfully conveniently only turn up for Trusts and then disappear again half the time.

That and I'm really, really tired of my WoL being forced to be a naive, trusting idiot. The only way Sphene could have been more obvious would be if she had a giant sign say "I'm the main villain, ask me how" and yet the only person having a reasonable reaction to her was Alisae, of all people.