Thread by @Portergauge

So, 10.1's campaign is over. I gave myself a day or so to compile my thoughts, and this will be where I air them out. Warning: this will be long thread lol

Like I've said in the past, I love most of 10.1, but the biggest pain point lies in the Black Dragonflight storyline.

To preface: I do not think the plot beats of 10.1 are inherently bad.

There is a feasible story for any of the three brothers becoming Aspect, and while Wrathion's plot was inarguably the most set up, a pivot to explore other sides of his character instead is a neat idea.

My issues pretty much entirely come down to execution, both on the larger narrative messaging and on the journey to get towards this conclusion.

I'm going to first go through my issues with each brother, and then the issues with the flight's story as a whole.

Starting with: Sabellian.

What is odd to me is that Sabellian is the only one of the three that truly has a full arc that is explored in the campaign. The narrative of learning to see Neltharion's flaws is one that wholly fits what little we knew of him pre-Dragonflight.

He comes into the expansion and very quickly becomes the obvious choice: He has the experience, the culture, the birthright, and most importantly: an actual dragonflight.

And over the course of the story, has to learn which of those to prioritize. Overall, that was done well.

Aberrus teaches him that the difference between Neltharion and Deathwing in his head isn't such a clear line, and that the 'pre-corruption' version that he aspired to is not worth emulating as a leader.

He learns to better value his brothers and his morality by the end of 10.1.

...and then the conclusion of that is him giving up his claim. Instead of growing as a leader and a father to his dragonflight, he just... gives it up.

A dragonflight which, mind you, has no actual role as characters in this campaign, but I'll touch on that more later.

But overall, Sabellian's story is the least egregious of the three.

The flaws of the old Black Dragonflight were most easily exemplified in him, and giving him an arc of realizing that he shouldn't wholly emulate the idea of who they were back in the good old days largely works.

Which brings us to: Wrathion.

A lot more to say here, to put it lightly. At its core, my big issues are that his story in Dragonflight as a whole has neither given him an arc nor touched on any of the actual flaws of his character (of which there are plenty!).

Wrathion is not a perfect character, nor a perfect candidate for Aspect.

He lacks connection to his culture, he has an immense amount of self-loathing, a paranoid level of overplanning, and a tendency to bottle up his emotions under a facade of confidence, leading to outbursts.

There is even a story to write about him coming to examine his own expectations of himself, now that he isn't the only candidate.

He's spent years assuming he *had* to fill the role, and now he doesn't. That's a very good reason for close personal reflection on if he wants it.

None of these reasons are why he seen as unworthy of being Aspect in Dragonflight.

Instead, he is given a constant aura of childish petulance/recklessness, a need for flattery, and treating his Blacktalon as wholly disposable despite the direct development he had on that in BfA.

His youth is not brought up as a critique of his upbringing at large, as a reason for his disconnect from other dragons compared to mortals, or as a reason why he has had to force his own maturity and confidence for his entire life.

Instead, it is solely used as an insult.

There is no examination of his complicated relationship with the red dragonflight, or any real resolution to his animosity towards Alexstrasza (both from pre-DF and during its story).

The valid reasons for which Wrathion might be so different are never treated as legitimate.

The story largely doesn't even touch on the insecurities set up in The Vow Eternal, despite those all being very good reasons why he might not want to be Aspect!

We get the smallest bit of lip-service to it in the final Aberrus cutscene, but no actual examination anywhere else.

And what makes it weirder is that even within Aberrus, he *still* says that he wants to lead his flight into a better future, the thing he's been wanting since BfA that Aberrus did not change at all.

...but like with Sabellian, decides to just suddenly give up his claim?

And what is even stranger is that the story given doesn't even set up his ultimate role of Ebyssian's "diplomat".

He is not diplomatic with anyone this expansion, especially compared to his brothers, and in many cases actively spurns attempts at amicable solutions.

The most egregious of this, for me, is the Dracthyr.

Above either of his brothers, he has far and away the most in common with them. He too is an experiment created as a pawn for an Aspect's ambitions. But for some reason, he is wholly neglectful of them past their intro story.

Not only that, there are multiple times in which he is outright disrespectful, from their first encounter to his lack of care for Emberthal's struggle outside of his own interests during all of 10.1.

It seems like the most obvious plot imaginable for them to connect yet doesn't.

It's to the point where 10.0.7 genuinely feels like it was written for Wrathion at some point rather than Ebyssian.

Wrathion has reason to join them after Emberthal aided him at the Obsidian Citadel, and a much more personal connection to her struggles of fighting her own kind.

Because yes, he had to kill many of his own people directly from birth. It wasn't some heinous act, it was a war in which they were trying to end the world! Alexstrasza was doing the same thing!

And yet he clearly carries guilt over it, of the idea that he could have saved them.

That guilt led to his research into saving Ebyssian, doing the very thing he's scolded of all expansion of building a better legacy built not on the deceit and aggression of his flight's past, but a building of a new foundations.

A foundation that never comes up in Dragonflight.

Ebyssian and Wrathion don't really feel like they're at all the same brothers in BfA. The loving, genuine care between the two is gone, replaced by constant scolding.

They now feel as though they're only around each other because they're family, not because they like the other.

And that scolding often comes from a story that has never defined Wrathion prior. The idea that he aspires to be like his father is, quite simply, wholly nonsensical.

He has certainly had times where he emulates him, but his *entire* narrative has been one of fear towards him.

He feared him in Cata, not daring to fight him directly. His fears were made manifest in MoP by the Celestials during our cloak efforts. His fears were a major impetus behind his efforts in BfA.

Even as recent as The Vow Eternal, he is haunted by fear of becoming his father.

A fear that defines his character, and yet never shows up in Dragonflight until the very, very end in Aberrus with no examination.

The shift towards praise did not come off as any sort of natural progression, but an easy shift to give Ebyssian something to lecture him about.

Like I said, Wrathion not being Aspect isn't inherently bad.

But after *twelve years* of build-up, I expected a reason more rooted in his character than a tossed in trait made to uplift another character. Wrathion has not progressed from anything he wasn't already prior to this.

Because ultimately, Wrathion had no arc this expansion. The story was not about Wrathion or his struggles, it never paused to examine why his insecurities might cause him to act in this reckless way.

He was, for all intents and purposes, a tool to uplift the narrative of others.

The narrative of: Ebyssian.

The new Black Aspect, he who 'won' the competition not through his ambition to do a better job, but because the other two dropped out and defaulted it to him.

He who was, seemingly, simply right for the job all along.

Ebyssian is such an odd character to think about, not just in Dragonflight but as a whole.

He came about as a result of needing to replace Wrathion in an already written plot, and has now escalated to replacing him in the narrative that had been built up over the last decade.

Even within Dragonflight, didn't particularly have much buildup until the last couple of months of story.

He not only wasn't in the 10.0 story beyond the dracthyr/intro quests, he flat out hasn't interacted with *any* black dragons beyond his brothers prior to his ascension.

In that regard, he has that same flaw as Wrathion when it comes to being fit for the role. He isn't integrated with them.

Broadly speaking, Ebyssian just... has a lot of the same plot beats as Wrathion's old story ripped away and grafted onto him to be treated as uniquely his.

The shame over their father's legacy was given to Ebyssian. The connection to wayward experiments of the dragonflights was given to Ebyssian.

Not only were they given to him, they were taken *away* from Wrathion and propped up as virtues that put Ebyssian above his brothers.

The story almost entirely focuses on those virtues in the same way it almost entirely focuses on Wrathion and Sabellian's flaws.

Which doesn't leave Ebyssian with much of an actual arc towards becoming Aspect. The audience is simply waiting for the others to give up their claim.

He has some (very good!) moments of insecurity in 10.0.7, but past that he is simply a static, morally good and noble character who the narrative and characters bend to justify.

In a lot of ways, he has the same flaws that Anduin has had in the story during BfA and Shadowlands.

His wisdom during the campaign largely just came off as scolding towards his brothers, painting both of them with a blanket shame for their ambitions rather than uniquely addressing the problems for each brother.

And then ultimately, that wisdom simply doesn't work lol

Which is frustrating, because there was room for growth, to show that as a flaw.

We never actually get to see him start regarding himself as just a dragon and choosing to step away from the Highmountain Tribe. That could have been a great story to involve Mayla in during 10.0.

There were a lot of things you could do, not just to give him a personal arc but to show what his 'better legacy' actually means.

The final quests give it to him on the idea of his 'wisdom and compassion', but that means nothing for how he's actually going to lead a flight.

What does Sabellian's Brood think of this? They certainly weren't thrilled at the idea of Wrathion taking control, so how are the brothers sure Ebyssian will be treated different?

How does Sabellian know his brother will be able to accommodate their unique upbringings?

There are so many questions as to what his leadership will actually mean for the flight as a whole, ones the story entirely leaps past for the sake of declaring him Aspect and showing the dragons united.

It's a good and fine ending, but it didn't feel earned by anything he did.

Which leads to the broader critique: The Black Dragonflight as a whole.

This story told in the main campaign was, as a whole, not about the black dragonflight. It was about Neltharion and his impact solely on his children.

There are places where it expands beyond just the main characters, but rather than for the black dragons, it is for the Dracthyr and the Sundered Flame.

Which is good, it should! But we ended up seeing far more of how Neltharion affected them than regular black dragons.

And with that focus on Neltharion, it focuses in on the revelation that there was never truly a virtuous man fallen to darkness, but instead a flawed man whose downfall came from his own willingness to put his morals and other people on the line.

Which on its own is really good!

For all my critiques, Aberrus accomplishes this beautifully. It shows his disregard for the wellbeing of both allies and enemies alike prior to his corruption, the noble intents behind it, and shows how that man became Deathwing.

...but that lesson was not evenly applied.

Sabellian, of anyone, got it applied best. Wrathion, however, feels as though he got the opposite message.

The message that feels as though it works is that he shouldn't fear becoming Deathwing, because unlike Neltharion, he has learned the faults in treating people as tools.

Instead, he gets basically the same lesson of "Maybe my dad *was* bad before the madness!" and applies it in the same way as Sabellian.

And it's largely a lesson that doesn't touch on what this means for the flight, back then or in the present day.

By comparison, the side stories with Veritistrasz and Voraxion do this much better. It shows their flaws in Zaralek, but it also shows their virtues through the stories that Veritistrasz tells.

It shows that the nobility of the flight's past is its true legacy, not its flaws.

If the focus wanted to solely be on Neltharion, I feel as though it needed a slightly expanded cast to learn those lessons: Alexstrasza and Nozdormu.

They, above any, still hold Neltharion as separate to Deathwing, and his downfall as a tragedy that warped him beyond who he was.

They largely keep rose colored glasses on to shield themselves from their trauma, from the idea that their brother was always like this. Even after the campaign, they still speak of him like that.

They, as much as the brothers, needed to learn the truth of who he was.

Perhaps then it would have felt more like an isolated character piece, revealing what he had hidden even from his closest friends, rather than simply the legacy thrust upon three people who never truly knew him.

But something like that would need a much larger campaign.

Which largely, I think, is one of the big issues: this campaign is way too small for the scope it wants to tell.

It wants to tell in depth stories for four children of Deathwing, as well as the story of the flight, while also balancing the broader main plot of the expansion.

It leads to a lack of introspective moments for many characters (Wrathion in particular) due to a strict rationing of those moments.

Sabellian gets some, Ebyssian and Emberthal get most, and Sarkareth and Wrathion are essentially left with none, merely action and face-value.

It's not until the post-raid chapter that we truly get some moments to stop and examine some of their arcs.

But by then we've already zoomed past so much that the final cutscene has to make the characters recite their arcs to the audience and each other to show the intent.

It's such a stark contrast to the Blue Dragon storyline in the very same patch, which focuses pretty much solely on characters and their turmoil. It slows down to examine them, and give both them and Kalec moments of introspection.

It's such a night and day difference.

And because we zoomed through so much plot, it doesn't really leave much of an ongoing emotional arc for the black dragons going forward. Their turmoil is simply done.

Even Wrathion is seemingly still tied to its narrative via his new role, despite the disservice it's done him.

Like I said, the idea itself was not bad. It's a swerve from what has been built up for years, but Ebyssian building himself as a leader who bridges the divide between his brothers and actively works to unify them is not a bad idea.

We just didn't really get that story.

But the narrative is over now, and there's not much to really fix it, which is rather sad.

At this point, I think the best thing to do is just to separate Wrathion from the black dragonflight and let him do his own thing. Their story clearly hasn't done him any favors.

Ebyssian and Sabellian essentially seem done as characters after this, but Wrathion didn't any sort of satisfying growth or meaningful resolution so far in this expansion.

I'd much rather just tell the story about him as *fully* his own character going forward.

And after all this expansion has done to tear down his virtues, amplify flaws he simply never had, and push a narrative he never needed to learn, god does he deserve it.

The saving grave for me is that the arc is over now, and hopefully his character can wholly move on.

In a lot of ways, Wrathion's treatment in Dragonflight is similar to Sylvanas' in BFA.

But I could make a whole thread about characters in Warcraft whose plots are degraded for the sake of uplifting others, so I won't delve too deep on that here, lest it be twice as long lol

I'd rather they explore who he is beyond the dragonflights, what protecting the world means to him as a leader of mortals, not dragons.

And after all he was put through, there had better be some super gay shit with Anduin to make up for it, that's all I'm saying lol

There's a lot to do with him, and I went over it more here.All I can really say in the end is that this was a very bad start to what has to be a much longer arc for him.

Otherwise, I have no clue what the point of all of this was for him.

The Black Dragonflight's story is over, for all intents and purposes. I wish it had been executed more deftly, and I can only hope that Wrathion can move on from it going into future stories.

This was... a lot, so I hope I worded things well enough to get my thoughts across.