How do you make a traditional high fantasy setting not complete shit?

Look to Final Fantasy. It is consistently interesting, when it's not doing scifi, and doesn't fall into the "dark imagery is cool" line of thinking.

Even when it's doing Sci-fi it's good, because it acknowledges that technology doesn't have to destroy magic in a fictional universe, it can work alongside it

Probably just do sword and sorcery dressed up like high fantasy
>Nobles are inbred to fuck and don't give a shit what ails the people unless it threatens the lives of the nobility
>High-ranking priests use their authority to control people for their own ends
>Wizards often go mad with power or retreat within themselves and do all sorts of morally questionable shit
>Every magical item comes with a curse or heavy cost for using it
>No one is driven by virtue

But at the same time
>Trick your players into thinking the attractive, charismatic minor noble has their and the kingdom's best intentions at heart only to have him betray them as part of a plot for power
>Trick your players into hating the only one who could stop this nobleman. An ugly, grumpy, heavily scarred adviser to the king who antagonises the party constantly. Odds are stacked against him as the party does more heroic deeds
>Trick your players into thinking that the wise wizard who offers them help isn't absolutely barking mad for sending them on a dangerous quest to find a magical artifact which may or may not even exist
>Every single one of these characters says they are doing what is "right" but only the guy destined to lose is the good guy
>Party should find themselves either trying to un-fuck a truly fucked world, or gaining power and becoming the villains

Wrap this in high fantasy themes and watch your players shit themselves.

Horror elements help

Draw inspiration from actual history and use it to come up with something interesting.

The world of the Witcher is excellent.

I agree with you on dragon age though.

Doesn't always work, see Eragon

Planescape.

Hey, this guy gets it.

I fucking loved that in Kingsglaive you have this very modern city with skyscrapers and freeways and cars and all the other modern technology being attacked a giant demon and defending itself with giant statues of its old kings

>Magic is common enough but to learn more then the basic ritual you have to go learn from a teacher often associated in schools.
>Various races have at least one territory that is forbiden to all other races under threat of death.
>Animals are far more adapted and most have some minor magical properties.
>Were-Creatures are actually curses and not some edgy fursonas.
>Society mostly consists of scattered city states due to struggle for power and individuals being able to hold much more power due to magic.

>Endless Legend

arf arf.

make it grim dark

>Enroth
My nigga, I don't think these plebs can appreciate it though.

First of you want to identify the parts of high fantasy and find out what you want in those parts. For myself I look at

>Power level
Yeah, dragonball style interpretation, but take a lesson here. Flying fireballing wizards, rogues dogding through the plane of shadow and fighters with skyjumping and mountain sundering blows. When you have this, it's hard to argue against it being high fantasy, but my point is you can have high fantasy without it. You dont need to have so low power it's humans/humans with pointy ears/stout drunk humans with barely-lethal swords and wizards with fireslingling capabilities of flint and steel.

>Heroism
Closely tied with Power Level, but still different enough for me. Heroism is more about style and PL is more numbers and abilities/powers. Heroism is more about the story/adventure, but both heroism and PL are tied so strongly to the system that it have to right for the right fantasy setting to shine.

>Fantistical Elements
Like real world but a sprinkle of fx werewolves or going full kitchen sink style.

>Magic
Magic is too big to be described by [high/low] fantasy - it needs it's own and independant descriptor. How magic is done is a big thing.

Overall my point is there's a lot of different parts and you gotta tune them to get what you want. There are probably more catagories to tune, but those were my big ones.

one of the big ones in my opinion is to figure out a consistent theme for the world, or at least the part of said world that will be the main one your Players will be in

Never oversaturate the setting with so much fantasy everything that everything clases daily like an MMO.

You'd think me wrong to say it but modern Toril is as bad a clusterfuck as Neverwinter Online leads to imply.

Ah, you have shit taste I see, as far as vidya is concerned

Make it actual traditional fantasy and not D&D fantasy. Like, what old fantasy novels and short stories were about. Read some Tolkien, some Howard, some Le Guin, some Anderson, some Moorcock and others.
Those all represent quite different fantasy styles and subgenres but it's fairly easy to see that they are very far from d&d-invented kitchen sink that is dominant now I'm not saying that every single thing D&D and it's succesors invented is bad and it's bad to steal any idea from that - you just need to be conscious about inspirations and able to sort the majority of steaming shit from cool, reusable concepts

Indeed. Everyone is allowed their own preferences but I don't see how something like 15's setting is any less fantasy then ye olden times slummin it in dirt farms and peasent villages.

You remove magic.

You're just unallowed to call that science-fiction since it's not science.

[Puffs internally]

...No that's just making things grimdark

[converts you into dust]