World of Warcraft Dragonflight 10.2.5 Seeds of Renewal Announced
World of Warcraft Dragonflight 10.2.5 Seeds of Renewal was announced on Thursday, 16 November. With it comes a bevy of content - much of which was unexpected. The community feedback seems to be mostly positive thus far, and if you're looking for a negative hot take here, I'm sorry that you will leave disappointed.
In the graphic above, you will see the new additions listed. Dragonriding unlocking worldwide does not need much additional explanation, nor do the customizations or updates listed toward the bottom. But boy howdy are there things to talk about from the Azerothian Archives through Dragon Isle Epilogues.
Azerothian Archives?
Here's the text from the press release (linked above):
Discover the history of the Dragon Isles and meet a unique cast of characters, hear stories of old, and witness the iconography of a time before. Participate in Solo and Group activities within Traitor’s Rest with a Weekly Public Event, plenty of opportunity to explore, and earn rewards like Battle Pets, Mounts, and a Transmog set.
I'm hearing a lot of community event in this description, and even though parts of the community seem to have soured on these types of events, I'm still out there enjoying them for what they are. This event sounds more interesting than the current Superbloom events. I anticipate this content could be something similar to the Secrets of Azeroth event that began at the end of August.
I'm all for events that offer pets, mounts, and transmog even if it is RNG, which will likely mean I'll see very few of these drops. If it's currency (like what we saw with the Time Rifts), I'll be golden. As a long-time WoW player, I'm more classically conditioned than Pavlov's dogs. Give me a currency to grind to buy these items, and I'll be out there.
For whatever reason, my mind goes straight to Noblegarden when I imagine grinding currency. I don't want to admit how many hours of my life I've spent just circling Brill or Fairbreeze Village clicking on those eggs.
I've heard some folks in the community speculate - specifically, the most recent episode of The Starting Zone - that this might be some of that archaeology-ish content coming back into the game in a way. I think that would be great because I loved archaeology. And I've gushed about fishing in WoW, too. Maybe I'm just really boring. If you're reading this and like these professions, too, please leave a comment to tell me I'm not alone here!
World of Warcraft has a rich history, and I applaud the developers for including more books for us to learn about that history and lore in game. (But, if any devs happen to read this, a library/book tab would be nice so that these books don't sit in our bags, banks, or void storage.) This event could be a great way for players to actively explore this history, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out.
Taking Back Gilneas!
Yas, gurl... er, Genn! We're going to take back your super spooky, Victorian-style city!
I mean, what's not to love about this? If anything, this is long overdue. I imagine this will work much like the similar quest line for cleaning up the Undercity. I'd like to see Gilneas become a functioning capital, of course. It would be a bit anticlimactic to reclaim the city only to then have it still sit empty.
I made a worgen mage, Caelcas, and used my level 70 boost on him to celebrate the ocassion. Don't worry, Caelcas, you'll never be in any real danger. We know that I don't DPS beyond world content.
Dragonflight Follower Dungeons
This announcement was met with a little more resistance in some corners of the internet. I'll admit that my knee jerk reaction was to not like this idea because I really do care about the social aspect of this game.
But this feature will not hurt me in any way, shape, or form, and so it would be incredibly selfish and immature of me to hate a feature that would be welcome by a lot of players and that might even bring new players to the game.
If the game developers can expand the playerbase of World of Warcraft with a feature like followers, I'm all about it. And yes, I know this feature exists in other MMOs. I am hopeful the execution here will be better than whatever it is I'm doing in Baldur's Gate 3 with my AI companions. In other words, I want the AI characters in the dungeon to play themselves, please and thank you.
The (hopeful) speculation after this announcement seems to be that eventually our AI players will be made up of our own characters from our warbands as we move into the Worldsoul Saga - maybe as early as a patch in The War Within. I suppose this would be an interesting option, but I would rather see it play out more like followers from Warlords of Draenor garrisons or just semi-famous NPCs coming with us. We all could do with more Flynn Fairwind in our lives. Think of all of the characters from our Legion Class Order Halls. They could easily be the followers.
Continuing Dragonflight's Story
We all knew an epilogue (or epilogues, more likely given the inevitability of a 10.2.7) would happen after Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope.
Folks have been losing their minds over the end-of-raid cinematic in Amirdrassil. Just go to the forums or find your preferred content creator's YouTube channel. The outrage over writing in Dragonflight has been something to behold.
Yinz, we asked for this. The community was tired of the epic stories and wanted a return to Azeroth. World of Warcraft Dragonflight is that. Jez Corden makes this point in his guest appearance on the most recent episode of the Unshackled Fury podcast.
And I really don't want to get into name-calling on this blog other than calling out trolls for what they are. But it's a very specific type of WoW player who is upset with the ending of this raid: the edgelord types (mostly men over 30) who are also the folks hyperfixated on the faction war and when it will come back - and also the content creators that have come to cater to this type of player.
Were none of you listening to Metzen at Blizzcon when he introduced the cinematic for World of Warcraft The War Within?
I want to remind you all, that sometimes very epic things can begin with small, heartfelt moments.
Now, obviously the context for The War Within cinematic is much different than what we see at the end of Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope, but the principle is the same. It doesn't always have to be epic to be meaningful or to lead to eventually epic things.
Other folks are going to argue about the delivery - that is, their problem isn't with the content of the cinematic at the end of the raid but rather with how it was delivered/rendered. It doesn't feel big enough. It doesn't feel like a finale.
World of Warcraft Dragonflight won't have a finale. It's not meant to have a finale. I'm more and more convinced (especially after reading Courtney Alameda's War of the Scaleborn) that this expansion was always meant to be context for what's yet to come.
Storytelling - especially good storytelling - works this way. If you are building to the climax of a narrative, some episodes along the way are going to seem less dynamic than others.
Have there been issues with lore and storytelling in recent years - yes, of course. But I for one don't see this cinematic in that way.
The epilogue announced with World of Warcraft Dragonflight Seeds of Renewal will continue to provide that context, I'm sure. I look forward to what we will learn then.
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