On paper the Primal Incarnates are set up to be the big bads of the expansion, right? We're told Raszageth (and as someone whose name is Hungarian, let me tell you it always hurts a little when fantasy names pronounce "sz" as "z," but oh well) is the youngest of the Incarnates, and we even get, presumably, the name of her oldest and most dangerous sibling, Iridikron, in the expansion-launching cutscene.
And it's totally possible that that's where this expansion is going to go: straightforward, these are the bad guys, we fight them, that's the end of it.
But you don't really believe that, do you?
First off, I think we've got to look at the Primalists' motivations. Yes, they're doing a lot of destructive stuff, causing chaos and attacking characters that we're generally friendly to. Warcraft is an unusual fantasy property in that dragons, generally speaking, are presented as good, and the evil dragons we've faced have tended to be fallen heroes rather than pure monsters.
There are obviously a lot of parallels between this expansion and Cataclysm - both have a focus on Dragons and Elementals, and there's a humanoid cult that is channeling elemental magic to strike against us.
But Twilight's Hammer was apocalyptic and served the Old Gods. The Primalists' stated goal is to remove what they see as the "corruption" of the Titans from Azeroth, which includes the Titan-altered dragons (the dragons we've spent most of our time dealing with).
Essentially, while their methods are not great, it's not really clear that this is done with malicious intent. The Primalists are chaotic in D&D terms, but it's not clear that they are strictly evil.
The thing is, we've generally looked at the Titans as good - certainly the narrative of Sargeras rebelling against the Pantheon painted them, in contrast, as the good guys (obviously, Deathwing's turn is a parallel). But at the same time, we've seen how some Titan-based beings have acted in rather horrific ways. Probably the first example was the Mogu in Pandaria (we did encounter friendly Mogu later on in BFA, but the Mogu were mostly known as tyrants). And then, while we worked for him and on his side in Legion, the more we learn about Odyn, the more he seems to be a real dick - and possibly just plain evil. After all, he basically forced Helya into becoming an undead Val'kyr, while also gaining the knowledge to do so by trading his eye to Mueh'zalla, and through him, to the Jailer.
In the new Uldaman dungeon, you can find a few (I've found 3) lore books, one of which suggests that Odyn decreed a propaganda campaign to paint the history of the Black Empire in black and white terms, lest anyone be tempted by the Void, when, evidently, there were "advancements" the Black Empire made. And the waters of Tyrhold (Titan name: Uldorous) have evidently been conditioning dragons to get on the "order" program of the Titans - it's the reason the Primalists attack the Ruby Life Pools, which they see as "corrupting" dragons with Titanic influence.
Essentially, at this point I think it would be weird for the story to remain being told in such simple terms.
Admittedly, before the expansion, I suspected we'd be getting a lot more mentions of Galakrond, whose corruption and mutation appears to have been the result of failed experiments by Tyr (perhaps to create a singular Dragon Aspect) but so far at least, I haven't seen a lot about him.
And then there's Murozond. Yes, we "killed" him in Cataclysm (in one of my favorite dungeons of all time) but given that he's a time-traveler, that's no reason to think we won't see him pop up. Nozdormu's fate has hung over everything involving the Bronze Dragonflight, and I think there's a decent chance that this expansion is when we're going to see the change take place.
Now, between when I started writing this post and when I'm writing now, the ending cinematic for Vault of the Incarnates has been posted online. I'm going to put a spoiler cut here.
SPOILERS FOR VAULT OF THE INCARNATES ENDING
I cannot imagine that it's much of a shock, but while Raszageth is slain in her big boss fight, the other three incarnates are released - a fire, frost, and earth one (Iridikron appears to be the Earth Incarnate). Kalecgos and Khadgar teleport away to retreat (presumably taking us with them) but we've definitely got a pyrrhic victory situation here.
The question, then, I think is how credible the Incarnates are as bad guys.
One of the things I found very frustrating in Cataclysm was how Deathwing, whose lore had him as this brilliant manipulator, such as how he passed as Daval Prestor to take over the kingdom of Alterac, was portrayed as basically just a giant kaiju who could taunt us mustache-twirlingly. There had been some complaints in Wrath that Arthas showed up too many times in the leveling process, and so they pulled back on Deathwing actually appearing all that much except for occasions where he'd fly over a zone and torch absolutely everyone (there's an achievement that you can now only get in the Dragon Soul raid called "Stood in the Fire," which you got if killed by Deathwing in one of these flyovers).
But the Incarnates have the following problem: this is the first we're hearing about them. And so we literally only have what's happened in Dragonflight so far to get to know them and their motivations, and so far, the only one we've really gotten any time with is Raszageth, and...
Well, it's not a whole lot. She's real mad, hates the Titans, and hates the "true" dragons who were mutated by the Titans.
Now, we get a few scattered hints at reasons the Incarnates might dislike the Titans, but it's definitely not very explicit.
See, the Jailer himself was a total bore - a blank, wooden board that said things like "pitiful mortal," but the backstory revealed about him, at least, was super interesting. We're now in a position to kill one of these Incarnates and we still, as far as I know, don't really have an understanding of how they became the Incarnates, how their beef with the Titan-uplfited dragons began, and what/who if anything/one is behind them.
This expansion either needs to do a lot of work in the max-level campaign stories to flesh them out, or they've got to be a red herring, or... the story is going to fall pretty flat.
In terms of mechanics, I've been cautiously positive on Dragonflight so far. The Professions stuff is... very complicated, but at least makes them possibly more useful (I think Titan Training Matrices should drop more frequently to encourage the use of Crafting Orders). The talent system is... also more complicated, but seems to be encouraging the development of different sorts of builds in a fun way.
And I'm actually very happy not to have any real "borrowed power" stuff, which was very fun in Legion and kind of got run into the ground (arguably starting in 7.3).
But back to story:
I know that this expansion is called Dragonflight, and so it makes sense to have a real focus on, you know, dragons. But I think it'll be sort of underwhelming if the whole expansion is just about taking down the other three - just making each of them the final boss of a raid.
Indeed, if there's one thing that's kind of surprising, it's the lack of dense story quests at the level cap. I know that these are largely locked behind renown, but I hit level 70 and found myself sort of surprised that there wasn't at least something big to do other than getting my Spark of Ingenuity.
It feels like there's an immense amount of stuff to examine here, but I hope we won't have to wait until the first patch to really get some juicy lore.
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