With the release of the final LFR wing for Amirdrassil, we're now basically in the Dragonflight epilogue.
First, let's talk about those last two fights.
I think since Aberrus, Blizzard has seemed to choose to make the difficulty of the raids a little more forgiving, and I actually think that this final wing of Amirdrassil might be just as easily runnable to farm gear and such as the earlier wings - which I would not say was the case with Raszageth. Sarkareth was not too hard, but this one really doesn't seem to be significantly more difficult than the previous wings of Amirdrassil.
All in all, even though Fyrrak is a deliciously fun villain (shout out to having two Critical Role people playing the final bosses of Aberrus and Amirdrassil, respectively) one cannot help but feel a slight notion of anticlimax to this expansion.
In a sense, Dragonflight has been partially a unified story of the struggle with the Primal Incarnates and their Primalist followers, but it's also been kind of episodic stories about the various dragonflights. Ending with the new World Tree, the story of the Green flight, and closing the chapter that started with the burning of Teldrassil is certainly an epic tale, but it does leave some other stories behind rather than leading to a grand culmination.
Also, while Fyrrak is the immediate threat, the main villain of Dragonflight has managed to escape the expansion unscathed. I think this is, overall, smart, because it lets us build to a fight with Iridikron and lets us build him up as a villain in a way that some previous final bosses (the Jailer most infamously) didn't get to be.
In a certain sense, this expansion feels like a callback to the very early concepts of WoW design - where the location was the more important aspect of an expansion (or the original game) than the "plot" of the expansion. The Dragon Isles as a place are kind of the star of the show here.
Now, plot-wise we know that there's more coming with future patches before we go to The War Within. But I doubt we're going to be getting any new raids (maybe, just maybe we could get a 2-3 boss mini-raid, but I doubt it) and raids are typically where the climactic moments of an expansion take place.
Ok, now for real, let's talk about the fights themselves.
Tindral Sageswift is probably the cooler of the two fights, conceptually, if only because of its unique intermission phases. Tindral himself is fairly straightforward - there are some AoEs to avoid, some plants to squash, and an incentive to try to stack the raid a bit. Tanks get to soak some fiery mushrooms.
But it's the two intermissions, where you hop on your dragon mounts and fly across practically the entire Emerald Dream zone that are pretty exciting. On LFR this phase is pretty safe - as long as you don't run out of Vigor, you'll be fine (hope you've gotten all of the dragonriding medallions). But given how central dragonriding has embodied the appeal of this expansion, it's a fitting thing to have in the raid.
Fyrrak is simpler in the sense that the entire fight takes place in a single room (which, to be fair, is true of most final bosses) but there are several phases. I think it's largely that on LFR these phases go by quickly enough that none feel like a huge threat. This might be a product of running these on the Tuesday the wing came out on LFR, but I did not wipe once on either boss when tanking this on both my Protection Paladin and Blood Death Knight. (The DK sadly is still wearing Explorere and Adventurer-quality gear, and still has his Aberrus tier chestpiece).
There are some cool things going on in this fight, though it's funny that we don't really fight him in his dragon form until the final phase. Also, things were going too quickly for me to check, but the guy summons Infernals, or at least something that uses those models. Will have to see if they count as demons or elementals (I'd guess the latter, given Fyrrak's affiliations).
The final cutscene shows Amirdrassil empowering the Dragon Aspects... and Vyranoth, making me wonder if she'll technically count as a Dragon Aspect moving forward.
Another curiosity is that they make it clear that the power of Azeroth is distinct from Titan magic, lending evidence to the theory that the World Soul is not inherently a Titan in the making, but perhaps something with the potentially to be all sorts of other things.
So, with Dragonflight nearing its final, completed iteration, what do we think of this expansion?
In terms of gameplay systems, I think this might be WoW at the best it's ever been. The new talent system, which took the best parts of the original vanilla version and the Mists of Pandaria version and put them together, is fantastic. The game is also a lot more flexible in allowing you to play the aspects of it that you want to. Dragonriding has made traversal a lot more fun.
In terms of story and aesthetic, I'd say this is on the high end of the mid tier for me. I think there's some fantastic character work (Iridikron genuinely feels like one of the best villains they've introduced because he actually respects how powerful Azeroth's heroes can be). But I also think there's nothing in this that has utterly wowed me, going beyond the baseline fantasy stuff I expect from WoW. It's been good, solid stuff, but nothing totally unique. (Here, despite all its problems, is an area where Shadowlands excelled).
Overall, though, if Dragonflight represent the new baseline for how WoW expansions are designed and the overall design philosophies that it represents are enshrined, this bodes very well for WoW's future.
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