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World of Warcraft Dragonflight being review-bombed

World of Warcraft Dragonflight launched on the 29th with surprisingly little fanfare. There's not even a thread about it here or in the Community board. After Shadowlands' debacle it was to be expected I guess, but I thought the WoW community was alive and kicking here at GAF.

Anyway, for what I've played, Dragonflight seems to be better than Shadowlands (Not that it was very hard to begin with). Dragonriding is a lot of fun, and the game is sunnier and more colorful, which I guess it's nice. I'm currently more interested in glyph hunting and racing than the more usual WoW-y aspects of the game, but still, I've already done a couple dungeons, which is more than the total of dungeons I ran in Shadowlands (A total of 0)

There are still no "official" reviews which is I guess normal for a MMO, but the user reviews are notoriously negative, even though the gameplay seems to be miles better than Shadowlands' and there's a new race to play with. The negative user reviews mention almost unanimously how woke the game has become, how full of gay couples the new expansion is, the virtue signaling etc, how the new Centaur area seems to be a big "matriarchy good, males bad" pantomime etc. (Keep in mind I haven't gotten there myself yet) If anything, it pretty much guarantees decent review scores...

I generally run away from the performatively woke stuff because the overlap in the venn diagram of "Good games" and "Performatively woke games" isn't generally very big, but I haven't seen anything "blagrant" and I frankly believe most of the negative reviews are there just out of malice. Since WoW is an MMO you can play your main character the way you like and anyway, people will stop reading the quests in two months time.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
World of Warcraft Dragonflight launched on the 29th with surprisingly little fanfare. There's not even a thread about it here or in the Community board. After Shadowlands' debacle it was to be expected I guess, but I thought the WoW community was alive and kicking here at GAF.

Anyway, for what I've played, Dragonflight seems to be better than Shadowlands (Not that it was very hard to begin with). Dragonriding is a lot of fun, and the game is sunnier and more colorful, which I guess it's nice. I'm currently more interested in glyph hunting and racing than the more usual WoW-y aspects of the game, but still, I've already done a couple dungeons, which is more than the total of dungeons I ran in Shadowlands (A total of 0)

There are still no "official" reviews which is I guess normal for a MMO, but the user reviews are notoriously negative, even though the gameplay seems to be miles better than Shadowlands' and there's a new race to play with. The negative user reviews mention almost unanimously how woke the game has become, how full of gay couples the new expansion is, the virtue signaling etc, how the new Centaur area seems to be a big "matriarchy good, males bad" pantomime etc. (Keep in mind I haven't gotten there myself yet)

I generally run away from the performatively woke stuff because the overlap in the venn diagram of "Good games" and "Performatively woke games" isn't generally very big, but I haven't seen anything too "blagrant"? Since WoW is an MMO you can play your main character the way you like and anyway, people will stop reading the quests in two months time. Is this as bad as the user reviews make it seem? If anything, it pretty much guarantees decent review scores...

I mean as you said no one in the review space is bothered, the only people who care about WoW already play WoW.

If there is a review hit with a bunch of woke shit from users, it's obviously a change. Is it a big change? Only people who play WoW will know or care, your the first I'm hearing about this because I haven't played WoW since Wrath (the first time round) and a short stint on Classic before I cancelled everything because of the "Free Hong Kong" incident.

If it bothers you stop playing, I mean I personally stopped playing because I found wrath easy (can you blame me after burning crusade?). For everyone's it's diffrent and if you are put off because the game is apparently full of gay furries now and its making you feel funny, then just stop.

No need to gather survey data on if your reason is valid or not here.
 
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I mean as you said no one in the review space is bothered, the only people who care about WoW already play WoW.

If there is a review hit with a bunch of woke shit from users, it's obviously a change. Is it a big change? Only people who play WoW will know or care, your the first I'm hearing about this because I haven't played WoW since Wrath (the first time round) and a short stint on Classic before I cancelled everything because of the "Free Hong Kong" incident.

If it bothers you stop playing, I mean I personally stopped playing because I found wrath easy (can you blame me after burning crusade?). For everyone's it's diffrent and if you are put of because the game is apparently full of gay furries and your not enjoying it then just stop.

No need to gather survey data on if your reason is valid or not here.
I don't really care much as I'm enjoying the game. I'm not gathering data to form an opinion, I'm just curious about everyone's else opinion. Edited my post to reflect it better.
 
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AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Ended up playing. It's still shitty modern WoW as it was always going to be, where everything is a clusterfuck headache of AOE noise, but it's still fun with friends as ever. Literally only playing because 25+ people on my Discord are, I'll just do some mythics with them and bounce.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Does it still cost a kidney a month to play?

Each expansion still costs money on its own until the next one comes out. You've been able to pay for your subscription with in-game gold for about 7 years though if you wanted to.
 
Each expansion still costs money on its own until the next one comes out. You've been able to pay for your subscription with in-game gold for about 7 years though if you wanted to.
Oh, i always forget about that. Was just wondering if they lowered the subscription price
 

Valt7786

Member
It's more enjoyable than shadowlands (not that that's saying much) but it definitely has "Nu-Blizzard" woke vibes in the dialog and quests. Within the first couple hours you've met a non-binary dragon that gives you a full on lecture when you ask it what it is, helped a couple of gay blacksmiths make presents for each other. Does it really matter? No, but its obvious why its all there and it still smells of pandering to appease the twitters and show the "media" that they're not doing what they were accused of doing any more etc.
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Staff Member
I have been surprisingly enjoying it. There are definitely heavy handed moments and they are as cringey as you would expect. Thankfully they can be ignored and rushed so you spend very little time with the twitter/reddit level drivel.

The main campaign is silly, fun classic Warcraft. No borrowed power systems, a clear end goal in gear acquisition, side content that doesn’t feel mandatory - so far it is goos stuff!
 

proandrad

Member
Blizzard has chased off a large portion of its wow fan base to other mmos or classic wow. Players gave blizzard plenty of critique and feedback, most of it was ignored or rejected until the players actually started to quit. Instead of reacting quickly blizzard opted to cater to either the 10% most hardcore(mythic raiding, mythic+ dungeons) of their base and the bottom 10%(LFR, pet battles, easier leveling). This segmented the player base and removed a large part of social aspect of interacting and coordinating with players of different skill. Why join a guild to raid when you can just automatically queue for a training wheel version of the raid? Why would a hardcore raiding guild try to recruit and mentor a lower skilled player when it's already hard enough to put an endless amount of hours in researching and wipes to kill the final boss of a mythic raid. Retail wow's downturn wasn't due to "woke" game design. Catering to smaller and smaller portions player base killed the overall social aspect, and as an MMO the social interaction with many different types of players is the major appeal.
 
What really irks me about these user reviews is the high amount of them saying "OK THE GAME IS PANDERING TO THE LGTB BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RACISM THE FIRST THING YOU DO IS CHOOSE A RACE AND HATE OTHER RACES LOLOL"

If someone told me this was false flag trolling I'd believe it; that's how dumb it sounds. Unfortunately I also believe people ARE dumb enough to think this is a valid reason for... anything.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
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