by After Shadowlands, I decided to stop getting so emotionally invested in the lore. It’s not worth being disappointed by a story and worrying about how the Blizzard developers could have done it better or what might have been illogical in the story’s progression.
So in Dragonflight I refrained from evaluating the plot, cutscenes, etc. However, there was always something strange about the Dragonflight videos. There was something wrong with the videos. Were the characters too banal? Are the conversations too superficial? In any case, it was the way the characters spoke. But somehow I never understood what it was. Until recently I was seeing more and more posts about how video scenes in Dragonflight were playing too slowly. And here, of course, the obligatory spoiler warning. This is 10.2 content.
Dragonflight videos downscaled to 0.75x speed?
I first watched the clip above. The excerpt from WoW streamer Asmongold concerns the story’s pace continuing to slow down or become too soft. According to Redditor, characters who speak slowly are actually harmful to the narrative.
The over-the-top clip was obviously sped up or edited together in the back, so it looks like the WoW footage was some sort of action movie. This led to the discussion of whether WoW needed more badasses and war again. But I absolutely don’t want to comment on this. The clip reminded me once again that Dragonflight characters like Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, Vyranoth and Co. somehow speak strangely. Too slow somehow?
And then I saw the following post on the WoW Reddit forum.
“Movies at 1.25x speed sound much better.” The post shows an in-game cutscene featuring Tyrande from patch 10.2. At normal speed you notice the same slow flow of speech.
However, if you set YouTube to a speed of 1.25x (small gear at the bottom right), most dialogue will sound normal. So movies previously ran at 0.75x speed?
And yes, saying things more slowly sometimes has added value.
Slower = more epic? Only sometimes
Important events in WoW history (buy now ) of course they are always somewhat epic, sometimes performed more slowly and rather long to emphasize the theatricality. Something said slowly gives more meaning to the situation.
But this is not found at the end of Dragonflight. As you can see from the community memes, the opposite is actually true. But I’ll leave it alone. Rather, I want to point out another thing that shows that Dragonflight’s video playback speed may have been intentionally slowed down.
Suddenly the animations look better too?!
Dragonflight videos always seemed strange to me because the characters moved as if there were extra weights hanging from their extremities.
When Alexstrasza moved her arms, it looked like she was pushing aside the water in the pool. But at 1.25x speed, animations suddenly appear much smoother. Would this mean that video sequences in WoW are intentionally playing slower than intended? There may be a logical explanation for this.
It may be easier to properly dub into different languages if scenes play more slowly. Of course, getting the character’s mouth to move to match what’s being said is always a challenge with WoW animations. How do you see it? Are videos in WoW Dragonflight generally slower than in other expansions, or is that just me?
