Seems they went away from templates to make any monster into a half dragon and into just one half dragon stat block. I do like some of lore text though.

Dislike all this lore, loved that dragon offspring with non-dragons were just half dragons....it made sense

I'm failing to see how is this a half-dragon if they are just made from the essence of dragons and nothing else. What's the other half? It sounds like a dragon wants a strong minion, does a ceremony with their magic pulling out some of their essence or some other magic user does it, and boom a half-dragon is in existence as a separate entity as they tend to hate their creators.

I can understand Wizards wanting to get rid of half-humanoid lore, because otherwise they'd have to justify every sort of half-half creature, which becomes especially annoying when people ask for every sort of half-creature player species. But it is truly a shame that we lose the half-monster lore altogether, whether that is for Cambions not being born of fiendish descendants, or Half-Dragons. It gave opportunities for fantastic plot-hooks that are now lost. 

There's nothing stopping a DM from saying, "This half dragon is the offspring of a dragon and a mortal." There are a few things stopping Wizards from saying that, though.

Agree that I'm not a big fan of this lore. Infact contrary to it being a unique monster I think basically what this is is a higher CR Guard Drake, which are also just draconic creatures created by magical rituals. This is just smarter & stands on two legs if it wants. I also feel like there shouldn't be so much emphasis that metallic dragons don't make these. Having some dragon war between the two sides manned by half dragons would be hella cool.

Much preferred the flavor of it being a genuine hybrid, which itself have the monster lots of implied freedom to e.g. be a hybrid of various different species & creatures, or to use an NPC statblock as a base to apply the template to.

Quote from TheOtherRyan >>

There's nothing stopping a DM from saying, "This half dragon is the offspring of a dragon and a mortal." There are a few things stopping Wizards from saying that, though.

 Look at you, being logical

"oh no! this book made by this company says that this is how this monster works and I have no way of changing it!"

it could be saying that its half of a dragon, not half-dragon half-something else

I'm playing this monster for one of my dnd characters 

That AI art is abominable.

It's not AI art. It's an illustration done by Mathias Kollros.

Please know what you're talking about before you claim something is AI art. 

D&D became so PG from its old grim storytelling the originate conceiving made so much more sense we’ve seen dragons take humanoid forms plenty of times poor weak writing 

Quote from Rebelzoid >>

D&D became so PG from its old grim storytelling the originate conceiving made so much more sense we’ve seen dragons take humanoid forms plenty of times poor weak writing 

I don't think D&D ever had grim storytelling (though we may fundamentally disagree on the definition of grim). I understand completely why D&D had to alter the Half Dragon's published lore. But DMs can use whatever lore they prefer.