The vassal of life disguises treachery. Beware the eyes of green.
Didn't Ysera and Tyrande talk about Malfurion coming back already in that little hidden dialogue they have in front of Amirdrassil just after you start the quest when you kill Fyrakk?Not that much of a surprise.
Welp that whole side story with Malfurion and Ysera was very anti climactic
Until another major event occurs and Malfurion is sent back to the bench...The developers should just say they don't like Malfurion or have no idea how to write a demigod. But Tyrande keeps being forced into the picture. My goodness, the fact that such a poorly written character is still alive is sad. But not atypical, as the Alliance isn't treated like the Horde.
Malfurion from the books: His tears cause continent-wide flooding slowing Sargeras' army and bogging down pit fiends, he can destroy a black dragon with a handful of leaves, Defeated Fel Infused and Dark God Infused Xavius 1v1 (multiple times) and trapped all the Satyr in Darkheart Thicket. Wins the war, gets the girl... Basically a Demigod at this point.Malfurion in the Game: Zzzzzz..... Zzzzzzzz.... Zzzzz..... Zzzz... Zzzzz.....
Oh my, I'm so glad to see him back! <3
Good thing they made it a big deal that he was taking Ysera's spot and going away, to only bring him back right away.
I think we’re overthinking this.The expansion is called “Dragonflight.” The story is predominantly about dragons, and more specifically, how to create a narratively satisfying (YMMV) story on how the Aspects regain their powers, and how to effectively recontextualize the dragons going forward on WoW.Ysera was brought back temporarily to provide the narrative lift to install Merithra as the new Aspect of the Dream. Now, what would have been clutch (pun intended) was if Ysera was swept into the Aspectral Empowerment as the “Aspect of the Cycle” but for some reason (likely player hostility to anything Shadowlands), Blizzard seems timid about embracing the Great Cycle (one of the only narrative beats I find has significance in WoW’s lore, and should not be ignored by the narrative team).But Blizzard locked Ysera away, so they came up with the “hostage swap” and frankly, Malfurion does make sense (and we’ll ignore the rather tepid response from Blizzard that Malfurion and Tyrande “share a common narrative space” because that’s a very weak excuse). Malfurion, Tyrande and Ysera are dear friends, and yes I see them willing to make the sacrifice to allow Ysera a temporary stay. There has to be some consequence for Ysera’s death and her saving by the Winter Queen, and the swap gives Blizzard a thread to maybe pick up any a later point.Malfurion basically experienced a similar cycle as the Wild Gods themselves, and I find that fairly profound. Remember, time works wonky in the Shadowlands. We do not know how long Malfurion’s time in the Shadowlands was for him. And you have the leader of the Centurion Circle, and of the Night Elf druids, getting close and personal with the counterpart of their charge: the Emerald Dream, and experiencing what his Wild God allies go through when they die. Blizzard has set things up to establish the Great Cycle as part of any druid’s repertoire -- especially given the connections to the afterlife with some druidic cultures (Trolls with Bwomsamdi, Kul’Tirans with the Drust). I see this more like setting up breadcrumbs for future stories, and advancing/expanding druidic lore.That said, my belief is that for every story there needs to be development to get that story in game, and whatever the narrative team wants to do is bottlenecked by how development hours are allocated to story. And there wasn’t the development support to have Malfurion and Tyrande and Merithra and Ysera running about. With Dragonflight being about dragons, the easiest solution is to use Malfurion to explain why Ysera was allowed to return to “life” for a while. Was this the right call? Maybe yes, maybe no. But I understand the reasoning.It wasn’t about getting rid of Malfurion. It was about how to get Ysera involved in a way that didn’t requires a ton of in-game focus (which would require development effort). It’s the same reason why Amirdrassil is located in the Dragon Isles - because it’s the easiest development effort: repurposing the Emerald Dream zone and not having to re-develop another zone. ESPECIALLY given that players are pretty much exhausted on Night Elf trauma p***. Blizzard just wants to wrap this up and do so quickly and cost effectively. Which means a limited cast of characters for the Emerald Dream chapter of the story, and putting the Night Elves in a zone that has nothing to do with them instead of re-developing a zone that actually has narrative resonance, These were the narrative decisions that were made to keep within what was budgeted for the narrative team’s use, which at this point is probably fairly meager, as Blizzard is likely all thrusters on developing three expansions in parallel and really just wants Dragonflight’s development to be light. Once we look at a lot of these narrative decisions in the light of “how do we do this without invoking a ton of developer time?” it starts to make sense.
Would rather have Ursoc back but alas....served the forests one last time. *sad bear noises*
"He rests in Ardenweald.""So he's dead?""What? Oh, no, he's napping in Ardenweald. He'll be here soon enough."
