So, this is something that has come up in passing a few times (especially with recent Ancient lore stories being nonserious or frivolous), but it's nonetheless really fascinating to me how the tone and storytelling of FR have changed over the course of a decade.
TL;DR: There are lots of darker aspects of the lore that I was initially really excited to see expanded on, but understandably that's not going to happen now for various reasons. I'm curious to hear what other people were excited to see done, as well as headcanons, that will likely never come to fruition now.
I followed Undel as an artist back when she was just doing NeonDragonArt; bought her books, checked her website daily, followed her on DeviantArt, all that jazz. While she never really specifically wrote stories for people to read, her art often tried to tell a story of sorts. This was the mid/late aughts and early 2010s, so a big part of online and nerdy storytelling/art was Including Something Dark in order to give things Meaning (and also because it genuinely can add interest to a story). You had options: you could of course outright depict the disturbing/depressing/upsetting thing, but it would also count for you to allude to it or drop context clues that got people to "realize" that something sinister was going on. Of course this is a common trope much older than a couple decades, but from what I remember on the various sites I frequented at that time, the stories/art that people got the most excited about and the stories/art people created followed that trend. Undel definitely included it in a lot of her work from what I remember.
In 2013, when Flight Rising launched and the lore was published, the dev team included all kinds of intriguing dark threads: Emperors and their discovery and the fact that Light was the only flight whose dragons became zombies, the Beastclans, something akin to a magic-flavored nuclear explosion, "survival of the fittest at any cost" Plague Flight -- all of that just scratching the surface. I think the last Seriously Dark lore to be released was the Banescale lore, back in 2019.
Things have changed over the course of a decade, in addition to there being growing pains for the team: it's one thing to write a story for one-way audience consumption, and another thing to write and manage an interactive world for other people to participate in. Things that you've thought through for your story as the author that are dark often encourage the edgelords on the site to contribute their own, usually poorly executed, grimdark content; coming down on that means addressing accusations of hypocrisy and probably dropping future items/plot points to better lead by example. The culture of the Internet at large has also changed, and the dev team has done what they can to do what is right (imo) and it's a good and smart direction for them to take.
What were darker lore plot points that you were excited for but that never came to pass, and likely never will? Do you have headcanons about them?
I was excited to see where the Light Flight Imperial zombification and Luminax went, and was also really intrigued to see how/if that translated into anything about the Light ancient. I was also really excited about the potential for Gaolers and their imprisonment of Shade/Shade-touched beings and items, would they ever make a mistake and misuse their power, what kinds of consequences would their actions cause? But it never really ended up being touched on again in any significant way.
i think a lot of their more intense storytelling is trapped behind their maybe-someday adventure mode release. it's part "our audience has changed" and part "oh my god the storytelling method we banked a lot on is taking so much longer than we wanted it to due to factors we could have controlled (the site code; the refactor taking Y E A R S because its architecture was a mess) and now we've shot ourselves in the foot".
I kinda forgot about Adventure Mode (I know they really want to implement it but at this point I don't think it'll be here until 2033), and I think that you're correct. It's honestly a shame that they chose to withold, instead of going ahead and releasing tidbits anyways. I guess part of it is that I'm not bothered by spoilers, so knowing AM content before it's released would not at all bug me, if anything I'd get more excited while playing because "Oh I Know About That!" but that's really just me being a dweeb.
This game has worse gameplay and lore/story segregation of any I play. Why present the whole continent as being in a perpetual war between 11 factions when the most common event content is perpetual festivals celebrating each of the factions in turn? It would be one thing if the gameplay included PvP elements where you could command groups of your dragons to attack other players' dragons and seize objectives*, then the war aspect makes some amount of sense, but the actual game they ended up making is a clicker and dress up with an elemental + dragon theme. Dominance is basically a sports event rather than a war, and has been ever since it's up to the players to turn that into meaningful "content" via, frankly, much more and better quality usermade art and writing than the actual gameplay merits.
I commend the team for making a game within scope and their means and keeping it updated for the past decade, but the reason people ignore the lore so frequently is that it fails to provide context for any of the gameplay actions players take.
*actually developing a game like this would be a bad idea, for many reasons. Forgive me for digging up an old Reddit meme, but the only game idea more cursed than the science-based 100% dragon MMO is the same game idea, but also an MMORTS.
The fest vs war content point is a really good one. I do wonder how... different, things would be if instead of dom being sportsmanship, it was genuine competition. I'm sure the butthurt and rage would increase tenfold, since everyone on the internet is *so* good at losing lmao
Honestly the fact that most of the ancient breed releases have nothing to do with the story kind of peeves me a bit. Like, how hard would it have been to make the Aether crash be a result of the shade attacking it because of all the magic? Or have the Sandsurge resurface because of The Source?
The Auraboa release ultimately tying in with The Seed and The Sickness is a good fix, but due to the fact they made the Auraboa pretty overtly racist at first means that we haven't gotten any other stories with the breed releases. Why have the Dusthides surfaced? And why have the Everlux chosen to reveal themselves instead of just moving away from the Luminax?
It's also been two years since the last beastclans update. While they're not the main draw of Flight Rising, I personally really like them because they flesh out the world really well. Here's hoping we get another soon.
I do agree there. I get that they're the writers, and can pick the direction and tone of the story, and that for the last 2-ish years the world has been full of very real conflict and war so we're all looking for an escape... But there's no reason for the kind of randomness in the stories. Thank goodness the racism in the original Auraboa story was addressed, I enjoyed the newer version much more and actually liked the fact that it was longer and more involved. I really hope that for Dusthides and Everlux, since a better writing team and review process is in place, they'll choose to include more lore-relevant content instead of "cute quick internet story" content.
And, yes, please, more beastclans! I want to learn more about the dryads and the serthis and the longnecks, just, all of them. I agree that it fleshes out the world really well, especially as the team works to reduce the ways in which the content was problematic before.
I kinda wish they hadn't gone through and entirely retconned the beastclans lore. I understand WHY, but I kinda would have liked to see, instead of 'whoops dragons and beastclans actually always got along (except for a few outliers)' we instead had 'beastclans fought back and won and now we have alliances and treaties between beastclans and dragons' I just really loved Talona and the whole beastclan arc and would have loved to see it be resolved in a better way than never happened. But I'm white so I know I don't really need much of a say in this!
I agree that that would have been SUPER cool and really gratifying from a storytelling standpoint! We love growth of characters and even societies/cultures. BUT, I'm also mayonnaise-white and it's more important for me to listen to what the people who were actually hurt by the original content are saying, so ultimately I trust the judgement and actions of the dev team on that one.
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anonrerising2024-10-08 11:48 am
Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-06 11:57 pm (UTC)(link)TL;DR: There are lots of darker aspects of the lore that I was initially really excited to see expanded on, but understandably that's not going to happen now for various reasons. I'm curious to hear what other people were excited to see done, as well as headcanons, that will likely never come to fruition now.
I followed Undel as an artist back when she was just doing NeonDragonArt; bought her books, checked her website daily, followed her on DeviantArt, all that jazz. While she never really specifically wrote stories for people to read, her art often tried to tell a story of sorts. This was the mid/late aughts and early 2010s, so a big part of online and nerdy storytelling/art was Including Something Dark in order to give things Meaning (and also because it genuinely can add interest to a story). You had options: you could of course outright depict the disturbing/depressing/upsetting thing, but it would also count for you to allude to it or drop context clues that got people to "realize" that something sinister was going on. Of course this is a common trope much older than a couple decades, but from what I remember on the various sites I frequented at that time, the stories/art that people got the most excited about and the stories/art people created followed that trend. Undel definitely included it in a lot of her work from what I remember.
In 2013, when Flight Rising launched and the lore was published, the dev team included all kinds of intriguing dark threads: Emperors and their discovery and the fact that Light was the only flight whose dragons became zombies, the Beastclans, something akin to a magic-flavored nuclear explosion, "survival of the fittest at any cost" Plague Flight -- all of that just scratching the surface. I think the last Seriously Dark lore to be released was the Banescale lore, back in 2019.
Things have changed over the course of a decade, in addition to there being growing pains for the team: it's one thing to write a story for one-way audience consumption, and another thing to write and manage an interactive world for other people to participate in. Things that you've thought through for your story as the author that are dark often encourage the edgelords on the site to contribute their own, usually poorly executed, grimdark content; coming down on that means addressing accusations of hypocrisy and probably dropping future items/plot points to better lead by example. The culture of the Internet at large has also changed, and the dev team has done what they can to do what is right (imo) and it's a good and smart direction for them to take.
What were darker lore plot points that you were excited for but that never came to pass, and likely never will? Do you have headcanons about them?
I was excited to see where the Light Flight Imperial zombification and Luminax went, and was also really intrigued to see how/if that translated into anything about the Light ancient. I was also really excited about the potential for Gaolers and their imprisonment of Shade/Shade-touched beings and items, would they ever make a mistake and misuse their power, what kinds of consequences would their actions cause? But it never really ended up being touched on again in any significant way.
Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-07 12:49 am (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-09 09:31 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-07 01:25 am (UTC)(link)I commend the team for making a game within scope and their means and keeping it updated for the past decade, but the reason people ignore the lore so frequently is that it fails to provide context for any of the gameplay actions players take.
*actually developing a game like this would be a bad idea, for many reasons. Forgive me for digging up an old Reddit meme, but the only game idea more cursed than the science-based 100% dragon MMO is the same game idea, but also an MMORTS.
Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-07 05:59 am (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-09 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-07 04:09 am (UTC)(link)*turns into dust*
Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-09 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-07 04:11 am (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-09 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-09 05:00 am (UTC)(link)The Auraboa release ultimately tying in with The Seed and The Sickness is a good fix, but due to the fact they made the Auraboa pretty overtly racist at first means that we haven't gotten any other stories with the breed releases. Why have the Dusthides surfaced? And why have the Everlux chosen to reveal themselves instead of just moving away from the Luminax?
It's also been two years since the last beastclans update. While they're not the main draw of Flight Rising, I personally really like them because they flesh out the world really well. Here's hoping we get another soon.
Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-09 09:40 pm (UTC)(link)And, yes, please, more beastclans! I want to learn more about the dryads and the serthis and the longnecks, just, all of them. I agree that it fleshes out the world really well, especially as the team works to reduce the ways in which the content was problematic before.
Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-10 01:23 am (UTC)(link)I just really loved Talona and the whole beastclan arc and would have loved to see it be resolved in a better way than never happened.
But I'm white so I know I don't really need much of a say in this!
Re: Mourning lost lore potential
(Anonymous) 2024-12-10 06:50 pm (UTC)(link)