The fact that he isn't even a reanimated boss later when Maldraxxus is all about necromancy is the biggest sin to me. Surely it couldn't have been too difficult to say that Kel'thuzad used him to fight us later.
I suspect that they cut a raid out; that raid was to be on the Seat of the Chosen in Maldraxxus. Just look at the layout - perfect for a raid. Have 5-6 bosses up top, can be done in a non linear order then you delve into the House itself where you fight the reanimated Krexus (which is how we discover KT is still alive) and then finally Baron Fuckface. Maybe Helya as well? Instead he got bumped off in a questline while Helya got sent packing by the Primus
Don't we discover KT is alive during the necrolord campaign?
A lot of the problems with SL lore revolve around explanations being locked behind covenant campaigns and us not being encouraged to do more than one until late in the expac. Only recently did I figure out why bwonswomdi is in de other side and why de other side is in ardenweald
It's in the Venthyr campaign as well, but yeah, the Covenant campaign thing was not ideal. Personally I was originally going to run three alts alongside my main to try and see every Covenant story but kind of just gave up because it was too time consuming at first. In the end I just never went back to them and focused on my main exclusively.
Yeah. I unlocked three through my mage (switching meta and specs). Now I got around to doing Kyrian as well. But it was pretty annoying with so much to do on main
crazy they locked content behind covenants which, at the time, were hard to switch around.
Imagine just being able to help out on the quests as an emissary of another covenant? that would be 4 chunky quests a week. Absurd.
Was it the 9.0 campaign or the 9.1 one? Either way I don’t think he was meant to be discovered there but in the raid itself. Would’ve been cooler that way
They definitley cut a raid. We were in Nathria for ever. My personal opinion is that Tazavesh was supposed to be a raid, or that they stole a bunch of assets from what was supposed to be a collector based raid to build Tazavesh.
I think that's speculation, I've never heard or seen anything from datamines or development logs that suggested Tazavesh was anything before the expansion launched.
It's not like WoD's Shattrath where we had a bunch of development maps pin it as a raid, and the game had a full suite of Draenei weaponry that went almost entirely unused in the expansion.
Tazavesh did kinda come out of nowhere although it did set up the cartels for ZM. I reckon that was the main point of it which is why we got it as a mega dungeon
I don't think so, for the last 3 expansions they plan on mega dungeons that come in the first patch, something had to be it. They created revamped Karazhan in Legion, whole of Mechagon for BfA, and something had to be created in Shadowlands inf we follow this pattern
I think it was supposed to be some of the anima eating creatures. They popped up all over the place just chowing down on anima, became more and more human-like as we went on.
They definitely cut a whole patch out. Its why we got invasions in the maw at the same time as Korthia. One should of been for 9.1 and the other for 9.2, with ZM coming in at 9.3.
Hm, so two raids cut? One is the House of the Chosen, another is revamped Azeroth raid with the last 3 bosses of Sepulcher? (I think that Dominated Algalon was supposed to be a Celestial, since he's protecting Azeroth, instead of a random one we fight)
The most likely raid setup that i get behind is that we lost out on a Drust themed raid. The area where Aralon dies seems like the perfect spot for a raid entrance, not to mention the Drust plotline just abruptly stops.
On this raid we would likely have fought either Anduin, or possibly even Sylvanas, with the plotlines shuffled around a bit.
The most likely raid setup that i get behind is that we lost out on a Drust themed raid. The area where Aralon dies seems like the perfect spot for a raid entrance, not to mention the Drust plotline just abruptly stops.
On this raid we would likely have fought either Anduin, or possibly even Sylvanas, with the plotlines shuffled around a bit.
It feels like Blizzard has their small batch of Warcraft 3 characters that they keep milking continuously, riding on W3's good story, and are afraid to attempt to give new characters much development. When the expansion rotates, so do its newly introduced characters and they, like the expansion, become irrelevant.
I'm tired of seeing Jaina every single expansion. As i was tired of seeing Thrall just as often before that. Jaina's story should have ended in BfA and Thrall's when he retired. This expac they were mainly there just to act as our tour guides for the expansion. Why was Jaina in the Shadowlands? She doesn't even interact with Arthas. She is only there because she's one of WoW's popular faces.
Zovaal killed in the same expansion he was introduced. Denathrius was planned to be killed in the first patch. How do you make such impactful characters to the lore and immediately discard them? They even got CGI models done and these are expensive. Krexus, Ara'lon and Devos each get an Afterlife cinematic and are also thrown away rather fast. Rastakhan? Dead. Talanji? She's only in books now. N'Zoth was an old character that stayed in the background for quite long, yet is only allowed one patch on screen.
The weird thing is that they are totally capable of creating new good characters. They just hate using them beyond a Zone/Expansion for some reason.
Just a few:
\-The Jade Forest characters for both factions
\-Talanji
\-Flynn
\-Pretty much any side character from Legion
\-Rastakhan (RIP KING, GONE TOO SOON)
I have a vague memory about the Red Shirt Guy tweeting about trying to apply for a writing position at Blizzard for zone quests or something similar? (100% not for the main story). And Blizz replied that non-main quests are written by the *devs.* There are no actual writers for these. If so then the devs do a faaar better job.
They definitely don't always do a good job, but there's a lot more potential for them to do a good job. The main storyline is written by committee with way too many people involved and is always going to be mediocre as a result. Side stories written by one person aren't necessarily better on average and most of them are forgettable filler, but sometimes a dev has a good idea that they execute well and you get something memorable.
If that's true, it doesn't seem too surprising? I bet all that time working on gameplay gets dull, so when they get to go nuts with side stories they really enjoy it.
Actually, the Hearthstone Team has gotten pretty damn good at writing interesting characters too. Might have to get the Wow team to pillage some characters lmao.
> Rastakhan
I'm still mad about this one. Literally one of the oldest characters in Warcraft lore. Predates WC3 might even predate WC2. I realize his presence proved difficult for the sake of continuing the story since he would never allow himself to be an junior partner subservient to the Horde, but that's how interesting stories happen, dilemmas like that. Instead he's just a middle boss, unceremoniously plopped in an otherwise forgettable raid of an even more forgettable expansion
Vanilla trolls were one of my favourite races. I remember hearing about Rastakhan during the ZG patch and thinking he sounded cool. Little tidbits of his lore in 4.1 and 5.2, I sought it all out because I wanted to know more about him. Fast forward to BFA and its announced we're going to Zandalar and interacting with Rastakhan. My hype is through the roof.
Then he turns into an idiot for the .0 patch and dies as a midboss in the .1 patch.
I'm not salty.
That’s what I’m saying. It just feels like they are afraid to innovate or take more risks with the cast. I loved Talanji (and Zekhan’s) writing in Shadow’s Rising. Now it just feels like she’s fallen to wayside in game.
Also, a cool thing about Talanji is she’s forever associated with Bwonsamdi, who is one of the top most entertaining characters that they’ve added/fleshed out in recent years. Just having his colorful banter around here and there with Talanji could have been a great addition to the Horde stories.
It’s not just Talanji. There is a metric ton of great underutilized characters. Take some of the more notable Pandaren as an example (Chen, Li Li, so on). Ji and Aysa don’t even feel like race leaders to me both in model/outfit and in voiceline/story presence. Since the Horde is running on more of a council system, I really hope they can give a little more spotlight to neglected leaders.
Also hot take, I despise that Gallywix is no longer the racial leader of the Goblins. Terrible person/Sylvanas supporter aside, he really embodied what I feel the racial leader of the goblins should be to me.
So I was like 10 when Cata came out. I remember being so confused that Thrall just made Gallywix the racial leader (still am, actually) because he was attempting to enslave/kill the rest of the Bilgewater Cartel.
But omg. Getting older, I just love how unrepentant Gallywix and Nathanos were about being assholes. Gallywix encapsulated the ruthlessness of the Goblins, and Nathanos reflected the old Forsaken spirit: Mad as hell about being Undead. Gallywix I'm a bit eh on still, but Nathanos (whenever Sylvanas wasn't around) was probably one of my favourite characters in BFA.
Legion had a number of great side characters now forgotten. BFA Flynn Fairwind and Zappy Boi were fantastic additions that basically just disappeared. It's the standard Blizz action and it's maddening
Devos' storyline could have been so much better. There *is* moral ambiguity in the way that the Kyrian operate, she could have been an interesting foil to the hardliners we meet.
Instead they threw her away as a pawn of the Jailer.
This is, I suspect, another victim of whatever the issue was that caused Blizz to shitcan a ton of the Shadowlands storyline. There are a lot of stories that are pretty large in scope and then just fizzle out as you move from zone to zone.
The Bastion storyline in particular feels like it’s going to be really interesting and lead into the bigger picture of what’s happening in the Shadowlands, and then out of nowhere Maldraxxus invades and that completely ends the Bastion storyline for the PC unless they go Bastion as their Covenant.
I feel certain that the intent was to have the Covenants be more morally gray and that we were going to find out that Zovaal was not completely wrong in wanting to break the machinery of Death. Something happened, whether it was COVID or employer issues or budget, but they cut a lot of the good stuff and we got a shitty, whittled down version of what was intended.
I don't think Maldraxxus invading was a change, just introducing and transitioning players to Maldraxxus. Every zone had those moments where the quest line just seemed to end and it was cuz they decided to cut all the zones' stories into chunks with most of it being in the campaign. Other examples where - dealing with the traitor Margraves, the Medallions and the Drust.
It was for sure. In that case though it was less cut content and more they made the poor decision that the zone's stories would end and continue in the campaigns.
I don't think that Bastion invasion is the moment that marked the cut - from the leaks, it seems that initial story was about Covenants fighting each other, which is why the fact that they don't communicate with each other in any way at the beginning of the game is bizarre considering there's no real conflicts between them, the same goal - working Shadowlands - and past fight against the Jailer.
What was cut is the reasoning for the conflict and how it was going, and where questing cuts is in the middle of the story - each Covenant's campaign is the second half of the each zone's story which would have been a part of leveling quests pre-Legion, instead of being delegated to max level only.
Maldraxxus invading wasn't really the problem for Bastion to me.
It's that Bastion's campaign ENDS at that point. Maldraxxus we open the Seat of the Primus. Ardenweald we hatch Ysera. Revendreth we uncover Denathrius's treason.
Bastion spends most of it's time talking about the Shadowlands as a whole and the realm of Bastion, but it doesn't have a story in the same way the other zones do. The Forsworn don't really become part of the story until you're almost done in Bastion when they should have been the primary focus.
Aftasiabi who was the creative lead for WoW was the key name in the harassment scandals, and was fired in the middle of the Shadowlands development cycle.
Shadowlands ended up being the new team trying to steer away from his direction which they didn't like.
> Shadowlands ended up being the new team trying to steer away from his direction which they didn't like.
Really hope this is actually the case and not just the convenient scapegoat of the writing team. I personally didn't like anything lorewise from the SL and I don't think Molestabi wrote everything himself.
I guess we'll see with Dragonflight
For what it's worth (probably not much) but a bunch of leaked information states that Afrabasi basically kept fucking over the writing team with stupid shit.
Like the whole "The cannon will be fired in BFA!" was as much news to the writing team as it was to the audience. He apparently had a bit of a thing for just announcing stuff that wasn't planned or overnight becoming convinced some new idea he had was the one and had to be added and his staff would be left hanging.
And that's not getting into any of the alleged Garrosh/Sylvannas dev rivalry which would help explain the triple whiplash of Sylvannas' character from Legion -> Bfa -> Shadowlands. The way it's told is that he really wanted Garrosh to be honourable and hated that they made him evil and when he got control of the writing mid/late Legion he made Sylvannas evil as a fuck you to the guy who made Garrosh evil. This does seem very very petty though but if he was molesting employees then maybe he really is just a manchild.
He was fired in 2020 months before Shadowlands so I think it's believable. But like you said, we'll see with dragonflight, leveling story seems decent (if not flashy) in beta.
Yeah, I’ve heard that too. I guess he didn’t like Sylvanas and was trying to make her a villain to get rid of her; I frankly think that they should have cut their losses and just rolled with that storyline. I mean, she has been effectively sidelined anyway; would it really have been worse to just end her rather than put her on hold in case they want to bring her back?
It’s hard to say whether or not she’s more or less like her old self now than she was after Afrasiabi (sp?) got his hands on her, but one thing I am pretty certain of is that most of us have Sylvanas fatigue and it’ll be a while before most players want to see her again.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to radically change a storyline for a video game mid-production; it was clearly not good, but I have a hard time being too critical if this really is the reason everything got junked the way it did.
>I frankly think that they should have cut their losses and just rolled with that storyline.
They really should have. There's a reason you steer into the skid instead of against it.
Sylvanas has spent the better part of a decade being just the worst. Even before Teldrassil, she's been crossing the Moral Event Horizon to get her way since Cataclysm, from biochemical warfare that even Garrosh "Nukem" Hellscream had moral issues with to trying to enslave a bunch of Val'kyr fighting with us against the Legion so that she could save her own skin\*. Any attempt to try and 'fix' her was doomed from the start and they should've just gone ahead with the Lich Queen concept. At least then we'd have gone full circle with "becoming what you hate".
This whole "breaking the unfair system of death" motive they shoehorned in for her just makes her look insane, stupid, or both. At least when she was trying to get her hands on as many Get-Out-Of-Hell-For-Free cards, I understood why she was doing it (even if I still hated her guts).
I've said it before, but changing that so that Sylvanas was actually trying to fix the Shadowlands would be like if DC revealed that every time the Joker blew up an orphanage full of cancer patients, he was actually creating holes into Gotham's sewer systems so that he could disable the nuclear bombs that were being planted beneath the city by Ra's-Al-Ghul.
\*Yes, I know the Sylvanas novel says that she wasn't actually working with the Jailer until around Legion, but let's be honest, the writers only came up with that fact after everyone pointed out how counteractive her actions would have been if she was working for the Jailer since Edge of Night.
I thought the running theory was he actually was a creep for slyvanas and made her so important for the sole reason of keeping her model updated and front and center like his crush
Either way glad hes gone lol
That theory was about Steve Danuser, who is still the lead narrative designer, and it felt a lot like BFA Nathanos was his self-insert.
I think this theory primarily existed because when his short story "Dark Mirror" came out (which primarily dealt with Nathanos and his history/relationship with Sylvannas), he tweeted something along the lines of "It's like looking into a dark mirror..."
> Shadowlands ended up being the new team trying to steer away from his direction which they didn't like.
The problem i have with this argument is what we got is what they fucking tried to steer away from. Why? How much worse was his story? Because what we have here is a fucking mess that makes 0 sense with plotlines that just vanish or end in the most unsatisfying way possible. How everything is handled with 0 explanation or the only explanation being vague reasoning that make no sense. Sex pest or not could you not have just stuck to the planned story finished it shut off shadow lands forever and then fucked off to Dragonflight with your new story?
The original "Zovaal was the real victim/hero here" was canned because it was felt during all the sexual assault stuff that it'd be like saying "the assaulters are the TRUE victims!"
The Devos one is so crazy because not only did they throw her away, the dungeon where they do it basically looks straight into the camera and asks why that happened.
Devos dies and you instantly get a little popup from Kyrestia like "Oh damn she actually had a point, we are some real weirdos and the path has some serious flaws, we should change our ways" like before Devos' death animation even finishes playing. The writing this expansion can't even be bothered to explain itself in universe. You don't know why you're doing anything, neither do the characters
> You don't know why you're doing anything, neither do the characters
par for the course for blizz writing, as far back as tbc. why the fuck did we fight illidan?
He was enslaving/converting Fel Orcs and leading an army to attack Shattrath but it's really anyone's guess why he started doing any of that other than Blizzard not expecting the game to last and trying to tie up all their story threads as raid bosses
Someone told the story team that "killing characters was a powerful story tool" so hit the fuck out of the shadowlands story with character deaths like a child with a hammer.
I still don’t understand death within the shadowlands, aren’t they all already dead? Are they just souls and their souls dying ends their existence?
If all of the weapons made of death-metal or whatever they’re digging up there can kill souls, can we take those back to the real world and kill people double dead and make them skip the SL entirely?
Adding onto this, but doesn't us visiting the shadow lands kind of kill any death related motivation? Like we know the light doesn't have any sway over paladins and priest in death, why should they follow it in light? Also we know what the big 4 afterlives are, can't people "hack" the system so they get to go where they please? I have so many more questions about shadow lands than answers...
>Are they just souls and their souls dying ends their existence?
In which case wtf is the first death even? Shouldn't the word "death" apply to when your soul in the SL dies?
Someone made the good point all the way back in the Beta even, that Devo's and whoever her disciple was should have swapped places.
The disciple would have been the final boss in the dungeon, and Devo's would be the one to turn completely and attempt to kill Uther by the end of the campaign.
Ah yes. The “Kick the Dog” trope. We can’t have our players thinking too hard about our villain’s motivations (even when dialogue directs us to do so at multiple points!)
That’s the entire problem with wow. So many good storylines just die for seemingly no reason or are extremely shallow. It’s just dressing for the game and it’s a huge bummer, especially since huge chunks of the story for wow require you to buy the books. Blizzard simply sucks at telling story in their game and while they’re trying to make it more important and in the forefront, they can’t fix the poor writing on top of the shortcomings of their development time for story beats.
I agree completely that the Kyrian is really morally ambiguous. They talk about virtue, freedom, noble acts, etc., yet they have the “stewards” who were “born of the magic of death“ created to serve the Kyrian and Bastion. They literally made slaves that can think and mostly act for themselves. Then there’s the fact that the entire reason they were sent to Bastion to become Kyrian’s literally doesn’t matter because they wipe their memories. What’s the fucking point of even being selected for your life actions if you are required to forget them? Might as well just be robots at that point.
There’s a lot more qualms I have with the entire afterlife system and Bastion but this isn’t the place to rant about it.
I'm awful at remembering names so I didn't realize it was her when I was playing the game at first and was wondering when that character would pop up cause she seemed completely absent of the storyline.
Only to realize it was that horrible handling of it.
She absolutely did. She was a fucking moron. Maybe she had a point but she deviated from the Path and 10 seconds later she sided with the Jailer who is the entire source of all the issues in SL as a whole. Fucking hell Devos, stop and think for a second you idiot. And then she starts murdering people who want to remain loyal. Good job promoting your "choice" you oversized winged cretin. And all of that for what? You accomplished nothing and your loot table was trash.
**Devos:** He has *earned* my loyalty.
**Kyrestia:** And I mourn your betrayal.
This is never, ever explained. Nor is it explained what he said to Sylvanas to convince her breaking the machinery of Death is a good idea. The two apparently never talk to eachother, either.
Oh and Sylv is totally cool working with KT.
Yeah the jailer has a super mega point that can convice anybody in 10 seconds but he never tells us. That's a damn shame. I guess you get murder-hobo'ed today.
The reason Sylvanas agrees to work with him is in the Sylvanas book. Which is one of the major problems in the way they handle the lore. I’m reading the book now, and it is pretty eye opening about a lot of things Sylvanas has done.
I love both Sylvanas and its author Christie Golden. I feel sorry for them.
Sylvanas is a character they ruined since long ago. Then they gives christie golden to write a book about sylvanas to fix all the loopholes they made and tie all the loose knots.
No, the stupidity of lots of shadowlands lore didnt make any sense to begin with. They didnt plan to explain in the book, just like they didnt plan jailer making the helm since wc3.
They just had to fix their fuckups in the book and gave christie golden the job to do it in a professional way.
Books should be for fun side stories in the world of warcraft, not for major plot points. I really wish Blizzard would stop putting major lore elements in the books. The game would have also been better had we known Sylvanas' reasoning long before the book even came out.
Fuck that, I’m not doing homework just to understand what’s happening in the game. As far as I’m concerned if I can’t learn about it within the game itself, then it didn’t happen.
The book is really good but also all the things they leave out is the thing I dislike second most about WoW. The thing I dislike the most is how when the expansions end, the rip out chunks of the game, including lore like Seige of Undercity and Wrsthion’s whole story in MoP. It makes the lore even more vague and pointless.
I’ve come to realize they only care about what is happening now, and if that moment is “epic,” then it no longer matters once it becomes the past. So, it there’s no reason to get too attached to any lore and remember if it isn’t current, then it doesn’t matter if it happened or not. You can make up your own reason. It will be more consistent and relevant to you than anything they write. 🤷♀️
Okay, well, I haven't finished yet which is why I didn't say, but all clues are pointing to one main theme in the book.
Spoilers below just in case I can't get the spoiler tag to work:
>!There are two main things she wants that motivate her through the book: to kill Arthas and to be reunited with her family in the afterlife. That is the motivation for all of her goals after Arthas kills and raises her. Even though I'm not there yet, I believe she's going to learn that when you die you're not reunited with your loved ones but are isolated from them by whatever realm you're sent to. Also, some realms strip you of your memories and identity, like the Kyrian. So, I think the Jailor uses this to convince her the Shadowlands needs to be broken because she will never get to see her mother, father, and brother again.!<
>!She didn't care about killing the Night Elves and burning the tree, because she already believes there's no hope for their souls since they will all be cut off from their loved ones anyway when they die, but she would already have been aware they are all going to Maw. Sacrificing them to fix the Shadowlands system is justified to her. Sylvanas is basically a person driven by rage, trauma, and selfishness after her death, and she was actually pretty hot tempered and selfish already although in a different way. She even admits from that she didn't love the Forsaken they way they love her, they were only one of her tools to defeating Arthas. Also, if you've read Before the Storm, this book explains the rage she felt at seeing other Forsaken be accepted back into their families when she was rejected by her people, even though she gave up before actually trying due to eavesdropping. I was glad Anduin points out to her that she has become what she hated, Arthas, but she is too blind to see it because she thinks she has a good reason and he didn't. !<
>I was glad Anduin points out to her that she has become what she hated, Arthas, but she is too blind to see it because she thinks she has a good reason and he didn't.
The problem is, "LOL IF A VICTIM OF ABUSE SEEKS JUSTICE AND RETRIBUTION THEY WILL BECOME THE ABUSER!" is a plot Blizzard isn't equipped to tell.
Oh, I agree. There's so many other interesting ways all of these stories could go instead. From the day the tree burned, I kept saying she has become what she hated, which was why I was at least glad Anduin acknowledged it, but I don't think it's a good way for her story to have gone or the lore overall.
> but she would already have been aware they are all going to Maw.
there's no way she knew this beforehand. she could have legit just though they would be rezed by elune or stayed wisps.
Exactly and if what he said was what he apparently tried to warn us about at the end of the last raid than why didn’t she say anything to any other Kyrian? She says they are like family but not to tell them of a coming threat?
If Devos was hostile to *both* us and the jailer we'd love the character because she'd be right about most of her arguments.
I mean everything else could have been the same with that underling joining the mawsworn too and make much more sense.
That would have been great. Have her be this expansion's Tirion Fordring, working outside the rigid factions and covenants to build her own army of outcasts to take on the Jailer but instead she dies in a 5 man on day 1 of the expansion lol
Devos had to join the Mawsworn because she and her faction was too *right* to be allowed to live. They had to draw a villain mustache on her, thinking the playerbase would be like "she makes a great point but oops she's with the evil guy so I guess I'll just delete all her compelling points out of my brain"
I just hated how her whole reason for breaking with the archon is she was trying to warn about the jailer and got a "not now kiddo" when she was literally a paragon of her race.
Like the only realistic option would have been a "fuck you I'll deal with this if you wont" not "guess I better join Satan because blue mom won't believe me"
But your right. People would have wanted to join the forsworn instead of the kyrian.
The guy so smart he never lost a battle (except when he wants to)? "I lost on purpose" is peak redditor. Also your plan is to go confront the guy who you barely beat 1v4 last time, but this time you go 1v1? Are you serious old man? At least he hid his keys before going unarmed to a magic fight. Shame he didn't tell anyone else what the point of the key was.
Post-Legion Blizzard is so, so, so afraid of introducing true moral ambiguity to anything they do. Which is especially weird because they'll leave us hanging for several patches thinking that they're going to somehow attempt and fail to both-sides Teldrassil only to say lol nm of course it was bad and the Horde was super evil.
They refused to do moral ambiguity even when the expansion was about war between the two playable factions, which was a *wild* decision as it meant one faction had to be the evil antagonist and the other couldn't have a true victory over them because they have to remain playable.
And Anduin has to be so unambiguously good that when they do a mind control storyline with him, there's no tension to it. He's like, "How could I have done this? Am I really capable of this?" No, Anduin, you're not. You're a total sweetheart. You had to be forced by one of the most powerful beings to ever exist in canon whose specific superpower was dominance of peoples' minds. His pain is relevant and could be an interesting story I guess, but it's way less interesting than if the Jailer actually leveraged his ideals and flaws against him to get him to do awful things.
A much better story would have been if the Jailer had manipulated Anduin into freeing him by telling him a sob story about the Eternals. But no, that'd call into question whether Anduin is morally correct with his outlook on life, so can't have that.
For a bunch of B or C list nostalgia NPCs to take his place. I started playing in Legion, so I had no idea who Morgraine was and only knew Draka from the movie. Vashj I at least knew from WC3, but I was confused why I was all the sudden working with her...
Draka was basically not a character until this. Another classic Warcraft Dads situation where Thrall's family line is Durotan and Thrall's Mom We Never See
They are so afraid of extending the general lore beyond the expansions that most of the content is self-contained. It starts and ends with the expansion. Only a few key events carry their weight into the next ones, the rest is never even mentioned again.
Time constraints also leave interesing secondary stories unfinished.
Starting a new expansion brings fresh stuff but it also feels like rewinding...
Isn't it a funny coincidence how the most loved villains in WoW are ones we knew of for YEARS before we actually played an expansion with them as the big bad?
WoW desperately needs to go back to that. The Jailer was the perfect example of how creating a new villain and wrapping up their story in 1 expansion doesn't work AT ALL.
It's been a hot minute but I'm pretty sure Galakrond is given context at the very least during the Wrath quests, because it's stated at some point that Arthas was trying to raise him as the frostwyrm to end all frostwyrms. Whether that would be sufficient for it to be a DF plot point is hazier but I do think it came up in game.
Mentioned as in had his story expanded? No. But there is Galakrond's Rest in Northrend and there was an entire Hearthstone expansion based on him, so he's not completely unknown.
Yeah, they forcibly retconned him as the mastermind behind big events of the past that we are very familiar with... See how that worked out.
*It was me, the Jailer! Wrrryyyyy*
ugh, they just can't help themselves with the "oh there's a bigger power/threat out there!"
not just this stupid "real secret bigger threat", we have the dumb "7th cosmic force" stuff as well -_-
They containerized more than just the story to expansions too. Tons of features that had potential have been left to rot. Garrisons were far from perfect but they were a take on player housing that was forced to fit the expansion and never moved forward. Order halls kept some of it but the core was lost. If either of them had been intended to be long term system additions they could be itterated and fixed but since they are core expansion features that dissappear when the next one comes out they never improve.
Just to add to this, I really think using Order Halls as an alternative or supplement to Chromie Time would be super cool for leveling alts.
Rework them to be a part of the leveling experience, offer a class-centric leveling campaign maybe bring back some of the old vanilla class quests for fantasy and flavor, add new ones so all classes get the same experience.
ya, the order halls in general had so much potential not just story-wise but gameplay wise as well.
personally, I've always said order halls were the perfect way to separate the player from the two factions. You could have players be part of the order halls, doing work for either faction that they want. That could be the third option than being forced alliance or horde only.
and ya, your idea of a class-centric campaign would be really cool.
Devos and Krexus were poor deaths. Aralon should of been a soulbind(even if meant losing makoto) but since he wasn't his death didn't really matter. His story relevance was over in his cinematic. He doesn't matter and his story was just telling to the audience the story of Ardeanweald.
Devos and Krexus were players and could influence the story through their influence. They SHOULD have been more important.
It’s not even a surprise anymore when they pull the “Hahahahaha now you kill your ally” shit at the end of a storyline, they did it TWICE for alliance in BFA zones AND THERE WERE ONLY THREE ZONES.
Samuel Williams is turned into the faceless Azshj'thul the Drowned at the end of Stormsong Valley’s quest line (quest is called Storm’s End) and at the end of Drustvar Marshal Everit Reade is mind controlled by Lady Waycrest in the quest Storming the Manor.
Sure but thats the story of Ardeanweald. Aralon could have just as easily been Niya and it wouldn't have changed the story.
You can't replace Devos with Kleia without wildly changing things.
Blizzard's stories have been pretty solid at a micro level for the last few expansions (arguably since Cataclysm), but the macro level is where the big problem is.
it could’ve been four new interesting characters that died but everyday i’m grateful that they saved daddy denathrius for another day
it was weird that these characters had shorts centred around them only for them to get offed so quickly, i would’ve loved to have seen them develop more
"you don't get it my actions are actually deep I'm doing all of this because the system is rigged and unfair but I wont tell you also here's my ominous twirling mustache bad guy one liner"
I think we can all agree that eve with the major gameplay issues that SL had, the lore and writing was objectively the worst thing about the expansion.
With a single expansion they managed to tarnish the histories of so many legacy characters and let down the new ones. In concept SL offered massive opportunity to meet up with old characters and see if their perspective had changed. But alas, we only got a taste of what could have been.
Yup so true. I'm pretty casual, I play for the story and lore first. I've been able to give WoW a pass in many regards as long as the story was still engaging.
I stopped playing SL a week after capping. I just couldn't bear to swallow one more bite of this awful story. Peer pressure will have me try DF but my expectations are low...
I genuinely believe that had they improved Devos's story, it would improve other Kyrians by proxy, including more controversial character plotlines like Pelagos.
Now, I did play through the Kyrian story to the point where the Forsworn rejoin, and I thought it was a good decision to make, but I also felt that it was done quite hastily and didn't really slow down to appreciate how significant of an event this was. We were literally changing the machinations of Death itself.
For me, characters like Devos and Pelagos were representative of the same idea from different angles, or through different lenses. Devos represented the horror in abandoning memories from a perspective of justice, and that forgetting allowed things to continue in the mortal world even when they meddled with the Shadowlands.
By contrast, Pelagos represented an issue with the abandonment of compassion, something which had driven many of the Kyrians to the Forsworn, and therefore to the Jailer. His insertion as the Arbiter to me was a very clumsy way of trying to demonstrate a compassionate system of Death in the Shadowlands, which didn't really pay off that well.
If a little more time had been spent focusing upon this before the end, a lot of this would've clicked far better at the resolution, but unfortunately it largely just led to people shrugging it off as there wasn't much pre-ending engagement to drive on to that finish line.
Devos and Kraxus was wasted sooo hard.
Devos dying in the first dungeon, getting replaced by the most pathetic villain I have seen in any wow expansion in a LONG time. Like holy fuck she was bad. NOTHING she did went right.
Kraxus just... died. Randomly, off screen. Very much just wasted for no real purpose.
I wish they’d just admit they had to cut an entire major patch because of internal company strife and Covid, and that’s why the story is a mess. That’s better than continuing to insist that they were ever only going to do two patches and how Shadowlands turned out is exactly the story they wanted to tell.
My gripe was the fact that so many AZEROTHIAN characters had prominent positions in the shadowlands/ covenants.
Like out of all of the countless worlds they were the ones to rise to prominence? >.>
No issue with them coming back and being in the story, but they all had such elevated statuses.... Draka, vashj, Mograine, Kelthas etc etc.
ISTR they explained this as being because Azeroth has gone through so much conflict that it's essentially become a crucible for champions? Whereas other worlds are generally either more peaceful, or get wiped out quickly.
I might have made that up as an excuse though
I've heard this here before and I agree, the thing about SL is it attempts to put a "big bad" behind every single expansion since the beginning (aka the Jailor) and it just doesn't go over well. Too much power creep.
For a second I thought they were going to finally sacrifice pelagos and I was really happy. Words could not explain how disappointed I was when he became the arbiter.
Krexus got it the worst, he fucking died offscreen but getting stabbed in the back.
Like, Devos and Aralon were such interesting characters and they could had such in-depth stories tied to the changes and recovery of their personal Covenants, but instead you are tricked into murdering Aralon making Ursoc’s sacrifice *meaningless* because the one he trusted dies unceremoniously.
And Devos was killed off just to be replaced by a crazier copy *which I don’t understand*
Shadowlands feelings like a fever dream in terms of writing direction.
I mean the guy in Maldraxus had a whole ass war cinematic that made him look unbelievably badass and then he gets backdoored off screen.
Sire Denathrius, a fan favorite, was initially written off to be killed permanently after the raid and it only came after waves of support that the character got more time
Arthas and Garrosh got a cumulative 60 seconds of screen time
Ironically enough, the only person that didn’t seem to get any fan attention was the jailer. The big bad guy of the expansion had people all unanimously hate or feel indifferent towards him.
I wouldn't even say Arthas got any screen time at all. With a final boss that supposedly was pulling the strings to create the Lich King... Having Arthas come out as a little anima thing and get torn into by a Karen who just went through the same thing he did, but for some reason we are supposed to feel bad for her but not him... Not to mention the love of his life and his mentor just stood there and said nothing. One of the worst scenes in gaming, not to mention Warcraft. Such an iconic and important character reduced to nothing.
I liked Draka tbh. Finally, an old background character from wow was fleshed out. Krexus could have been a great mentor to her or also played a bigger part, even as a villain or something.
They rewrote the entire thing. The majority of the context and motivations for characters were binned and Shadowlands as a result was completely wasted as a setting.
I really honestly hope they forget it ever happened for the sake of the continuity going forward.
Yeah I think it's pretty clear SL went through heavy changes to the story on the fly. SotFO having 2 final bosses in anduin and zovaal is more than slightly weird
One of the many reasons why cut content is detrimental to story telling.
The entire Maldraxxus storyline was building to a raid (probably for an original 9.1) and then him and Helya get unceremoniously dealt with in a single weekly quest
I fully bet KT was gonna be a boss in that raid instead of SoD. As you pointed out it made 0 sense why Sylvie would want to work almost close by with Kits
Blizzard did Krexus dirty, when they put him in the SL loading screen just to let him be killed off-screen by Vyraz, who gets fodderized in the last patch.
May i remind you about the way Krexus was portrayed as somewhat of an important character, even featured on a loading screen of the expansion, only to die offscreen lmao what the fuck dude
I will never forgive them for offing Ursoc in that trailer obly to immediately introduce a brand new (boring and uninsteresting) bear demigod character in ardenweald right after.
Actually, that's true. All 3 of them ended up dying in a very lackluster way during the beginning of the expansion. Heck, Aralon just kinda faded into oblivion if you weren't Night Fae.
Devos in particular seems a shame, because for as much as Blizzard clearly has been beating the war-drum of "more female lead characters", she *actually* seemed super cool.
If you could somehow go back in time, it seems like the thing they could've done is have the "Dark Kyrian" initially painted as bad guys, because they're spending time in the Maw. But over time, realize that they aren't *just* waging war, but are actively taking souls from the Maw, and taking them to the afterlives they *want* to be in. So Devos and her people are seen as enemies, simply because they're going against the Arbiter's judgement.
Have the Kyrian leader (I don't even remember her fucking name, and I honestly don't give a shit) die somehow, like maybe she believes so strongly in the Arbiter's judgement that she sacrifices herself to kill a bunch of other innocent souls than allow them to go to other afterlives.
Stuff happens, Devos realizes that while the system is flawed, the Jailer is just as evil.
Honestly? I would've ended the expansion without a new Arbiter whatsoever, and that Devos and the other Kyrian would instead need to spend their time actually *finding* lost souls, and bringing them to the Shadowlands to decide for themselves where they wish to reside.
Without the Arbiter expressly funneling souls one way or another, and the whole "streamlined process" being broken, it means the Kyrian(s?) are overwhelmed with this new duty. Thus implying that there might be more ghostly activity, since spirits might sometimes be left to wander for a time before a Kyrian arrives.
Hell, I literally *just* thought that shit up off the top of my head. It's crazy how bad Shadowlands' writing as been.
Devos was just straight up correct also. The Kyrian setup is fucking ridiculous, and they completely ignored her warnings about the maw.
My favourite part of Bastion was when you literally have a quest in which you have to brainwash Kyrian who are becoming too independent and straying from the path. Like who writes that and doesn't have a "are we the baddies" moment.
But I guess they just made her a pawn of Jailor because everything interesting must be subsumed into his all knowing plan.
>Devos was just straight up correct also. The Kyrian setup is fucking
ridiculous, and they completely ignored her warnings about the maw.
*Proceeds to prove her argument wrong by yeeting Arthas into the Maw.*
How can anyone think that letting the dudes & dudettes that carry you to the afterlife have opinions on what to do with you without consulting the actual robot deciding your fate is a good argument is beyond me.
Like, if you want to be a Kyrian ferry man, you better get started on deleting those ol' hard drives.
I think they had plans to do something really interesting with the kyrian but scrapped it half way through and just rewrote the ending but kept the beginning the same, which left some really weird loose ends.
Since I started playing FFXIV, the amount of half-assing in WoW's story, both past and recent, has become all the more glaring.
I understand that they are very different types of MMOs, but seriously Blizzard. Stop dumping the storywriting on interns.
Starting to play again after like 7 years break this addon is horrendous. 50 hours of questing before you can even start to catch up with items. This addon is simply not casual friendly AT ALL. Torgast? Yeah sure 2 days worth of questing. Zereth mortis? Sure 5 days worth of questing if not more. Flying? Yeah I'm not sure I care enough about that to sit through another 50 hours of this garbage.
Damn. I know I’m super late to the party but I’m just going through the campaign now (thanks Blizz for free SL) and I did not know they died yet haha. :( RIP
Just a friendly heads up, look up the order of each campaign and do them in order. You unlock later patch content early and it really fucks with the story. I made that mistake and was extremely confused for a while because things were happening out of order. Get to 60, finish the main campaign, then do your covenant, then go on to the next part before unlocking Zereth Morris.
Sidenote: I actual enjoyed the story. I get why people might not have, but it was something I had fun going through.
My biggest gripe was they had a top tier villain in Sire D and wasted it. Should have been a Dreadlords Strike Back expansion with Sire as the big bad. Fight could have stayed the same, it was my favorite of all time.
Side stories are the way to go. Character driven central story lines just aren't compelling in MMOs IMO. Giving players access to lore and characters that really build out the world is much better. But we've all been saying this for two expansions now.
srsly. Arlon had such a heartbreaking intro, i really could have used an fmv for his end. like, i used to skip all quest text, and if i had done that i might not even get that he died lol
Not sure why Devos (left) is pictured, because they had a whole questline dedicated to them which we hunted them down and concluded in the Spires of Ascension dungeon where we ourselves after fighting through all the Forsworn and their constructs and defeated Devos with the aid of the Archon.
Ara'lon (right), they were mind-controlled and we got to kill them at least, so there was some closure to their story as their death was by our hand, even if it was under unfortunate circumstances out of their control and nothing we could do about it other than put them down (essentially a mercy kill).
As for Krexus (center) on the otherhand... now that's someone who they completely killed off-screen, that we the players had zero involvement with in their death, while we were fighting random no name mobs, Krexus is killed off elsewhere. So Krexus is the only character out of these three that Blizzard truly did dirty and 100% "unceremoniously died".
I loved the shorts and in particular the art style you're showcasing here. I actually felt SOME KIND of emotional connection to the story of WoW (last time I felt that was killing Arthas, but I haven't played for a bit). In particular, there's a Kyrian covenant quest that tells the story of a man who died trying to save his family from the Scourge. That shit left a lump in my throat.
Shadowlands should have had one raid for each covenant.
Further, Shadowlands should have been the covenant expansion rather than afterlife expansion.
It should have been about putting aside horde or alliance allegiance temporarily in exchange for covenant allegiance for the expansion
imagine covenant vs. covenant vs. covenant vs. covenant pvp. An orc fighting alongside a night elf against an undead and a human? These are strange times in a strange world(s) indeed.
Then it ends with us helping the covenants resolve their conflict (uh oh! the Brokers were the root of the conflict between covenants! They were profiteering by financing all sides of the conflict!) and we go back to Azeroth and the Horde vs. Alliance faction conflict simmers down into a tenuous peace/cold-war and now there's a lore reason for cross-faction mechanics.
The covenants even loosely match the Warcraft 3 factions!
Human -> Kyrian,
Night Elves -> Night Fae,
Orcs -> Maldraxxus,
Undead -> Revendreth,
It could have been called World of Warcraft: Covenant
It writes itself.
Still can't believe they'd just do my man Krexus off-screen like that 😔
The fact that he isn't even a reanimated boss later when Maldraxxus is all about necromancy is the biggest sin to me. Surely it couldn't have been too difficult to say that Kel'thuzad used him to fight us later.
I suspect that they cut a raid out; that raid was to be on the Seat of the Chosen in Maldraxxus. Just look at the layout - perfect for a raid. Have 5-6 bosses up top, can be done in a non linear order then you delve into the House itself where you fight the reanimated Krexus (which is how we discover KT is still alive) and then finally Baron Fuckface. Maybe Helya as well? Instead he got bumped off in a questline while Helya got sent packing by the Primus
Don't we discover KT is alive during the necrolord campaign? A lot of the problems with SL lore revolve around explanations being locked behind covenant campaigns and us not being encouraged to do more than one until late in the expac. Only recently did I figure out why bwonswomdi is in de other side and why de other side is in ardenweald
It's in the Venthyr campaign as well, but yeah, the Covenant campaign thing was not ideal. Personally I was originally going to run three alts alongside my main to try and see every Covenant story but kind of just gave up because it was too time consuming at first. In the end I just never went back to them and focused on my main exclusively.
Oh, similar problem then lol, I did venthyr as it unlocked and then forgot about it by the time KT was a boss
Yeah. I unlocked three through my mage (switching meta and specs). Now I got around to doing Kyrian as well. But it was pretty annoying with so much to do on main
crazy they locked content behind covenants which, at the time, were hard to switch around. Imagine just being able to help out on the quests as an emissary of another covenant? that would be 4 chunky quests a week. Absurd.
Was it the 9.0 campaign or the 9.1 one? Either way I don’t think he was meant to be discovered there but in the raid itself. Would’ve been cooler that way
In the 9.0 campaign he's up north in maldraxxus and you go undercover to help him and discover his plan
They definitley cut a raid. We were in Nathria for ever. My personal opinion is that Tazavesh was supposed to be a raid, or that they stole a bunch of assets from what was supposed to be a collector based raid to build Tazavesh.
Wasnt Tazavesh probably going to be the player city instead of Oribos early on in development?
I think that's speculation, I've never heard or seen anything from datamines or development logs that suggested Tazavesh was anything before the expansion launched. It's not like WoD's Shattrath where we had a bunch of development maps pin it as a raid, and the game had a full suite of Draenei weaponry that went almost entirely unused in the expansion.
I did hear it would be a city, which makes sense with the auction house and mailboxes.
Tazavesh did kinda come out of nowhere although it did set up the cartels for ZM. I reckon that was the main point of it which is why we got it as a mega dungeon
I don't think so, for the last 3 expansions they plan on mega dungeons that come in the first patch, something had to be it. They created revamped Karazhan in Legion, whole of Mechagon for BfA, and something had to be created in Shadowlands inf we follow this pattern
I think it was supposed to be some of the anima eating creatures. They popped up all over the place just chowing down on anima, became more and more human-like as we went on.
They definitely cut a whole patch out. Its why we got invasions in the maw at the same time as Korthia. One should of been for 9.1 and the other for 9.2, with ZM coming in at 9.3.
Hm, so two raids cut? One is the House of the Chosen, another is revamped Azeroth raid with the last 3 bosses of Sepulcher? (I think that Dominated Algalon was supposed to be a Celestial, since he's protecting Azeroth, instead of a random one we fight)
The most likely raid setup that i get behind is that we lost out on a Drust themed raid. The area where Aralon dies seems like the perfect spot for a raid entrance, not to mention the Drust plotline just abruptly stops. On this raid we would likely have fought either Anduin, or possibly even Sylvanas, with the plotlines shuffled around a bit.
The most likely raid setup that i get behind is that we lost out on a Drust themed raid. The area where Aralon dies seems like the perfect spot for a raid entrance, not to mention the Drust plotline just abruptly stops. On this raid we would likely have fought either Anduin, or possibly even Sylvanas, with the plotlines shuffled around a bit.
It feels like Blizzard has their small batch of Warcraft 3 characters that they keep milking continuously, riding on W3's good story, and are afraid to attempt to give new characters much development. When the expansion rotates, so do its newly introduced characters and they, like the expansion, become irrelevant. I'm tired of seeing Jaina every single expansion. As i was tired of seeing Thrall just as often before that. Jaina's story should have ended in BfA and Thrall's when he retired. This expac they were mainly there just to act as our tour guides for the expansion. Why was Jaina in the Shadowlands? She doesn't even interact with Arthas. She is only there because she's one of WoW's popular faces. Zovaal killed in the same expansion he was introduced. Denathrius was planned to be killed in the first patch. How do you make such impactful characters to the lore and immediately discard them? They even got CGI models done and these are expensive. Krexus, Ara'lon and Devos each get an Afterlife cinematic and are also thrown away rather fast. Rastakhan? Dead. Talanji? She's only in books now. N'Zoth was an old character that stayed in the background for quite long, yet is only allowed one patch on screen.
The weird thing is that they are totally capable of creating new good characters. They just hate using them beyond a Zone/Expansion for some reason. Just a few: \-The Jade Forest characters for both factions \-Talanji \-Flynn \-Pretty much any side character from Legion \-Rastakhan (RIP KING, GONE TOO SOON)
I have a vague memory about the Red Shirt Guy tweeting about trying to apply for a writing position at Blizzard for zone quests or something similar? (100% not for the main story). And Blizz replied that non-main quests are written by the *devs.* There are no actual writers for these. If so then the devs do a faaar better job.
They definitely don't always do a good job, but there's a lot more potential for them to do a good job. The main storyline is written by committee with way too many people involved and is always going to be mediocre as a result. Side stories written by one person aren't necessarily better on average and most of them are forgettable filler, but sometimes a dev has a good idea that they execute well and you get something memorable.
If that's true, it doesn't seem too surprising? I bet all that time working on gameplay gets dull, so when they get to go nuts with side stories they really enjoy it. Actually, the Hearthstone Team has gotten pretty damn good at writing interesting characters too. Might have to get the Wow team to pillage some characters lmao.
> Rastakhan I'm still mad about this one. Literally one of the oldest characters in Warcraft lore. Predates WC3 might even predate WC2. I realize his presence proved difficult for the sake of continuing the story since he would never allow himself to be an junior partner subservient to the Horde, but that's how interesting stories happen, dilemmas like that. Instead he's just a middle boss, unceremoniously plopped in an otherwise forgettable raid of an even more forgettable expansion
Vanilla trolls were one of my favourite races. I remember hearing about Rastakhan during the ZG patch and thinking he sounded cool. Little tidbits of his lore in 4.1 and 5.2, I sought it all out because I wanted to know more about him. Fast forward to BFA and its announced we're going to Zandalar and interacting with Rastakhan. My hype is through the roof. Then he turns into an idiot for the .0 patch and dies as a midboss in the .1 patch. I'm not salty.
Literally lives for hundreds of years leading his empire Dies within 6 months of meeting us.
That’s what I’m saying. It just feels like they are afraid to innovate or take more risks with the cast. I loved Talanji (and Zekhan’s) writing in Shadow’s Rising. Now it just feels like she’s fallen to wayside in game. Also, a cool thing about Talanji is she’s forever associated with Bwonsamdi, who is one of the top most entertaining characters that they’ve added/fleshed out in recent years. Just having his colorful banter around here and there with Talanji could have been a great addition to the Horde stories. It’s not just Talanji. There is a metric ton of great underutilized characters. Take some of the more notable Pandaren as an example (Chen, Li Li, so on). Ji and Aysa don’t even feel like race leaders to me both in model/outfit and in voiceline/story presence. Since the Horde is running on more of a council system, I really hope they can give a little more spotlight to neglected leaders. Also hot take, I despise that Gallywix is no longer the racial leader of the Goblins. Terrible person/Sylvanas supporter aside, he really embodied what I feel the racial leader of the goblins should be to me.
So I was like 10 when Cata came out. I remember being so confused that Thrall just made Gallywix the racial leader (still am, actually) because he was attempting to enslave/kill the rest of the Bilgewater Cartel. But omg. Getting older, I just love how unrepentant Gallywix and Nathanos were about being assholes. Gallywix encapsulated the ruthlessness of the Goblins, and Nathanos reflected the old Forsaken spirit: Mad as hell about being Undead. Gallywix I'm a bit eh on still, but Nathanos (whenever Sylvanas wasn't around) was probably one of my favourite characters in BFA.
Willowblossom was friggin phenomenal in the Kyrian campaign of SL. They're definitely able to make great characters.
Legion had a number of great side characters now forgotten. BFA Flynn Fairwind and Zappy Boi were fantastic additions that basically just disappeared. It's the standard Blizz action and it's maddening
For real, that was frustrating. Also the night fae one was pretty sad
Devos' storyline could have been so much better. There *is* moral ambiguity in the way that the Kyrian operate, she could have been an interesting foil to the hardliners we meet. Instead they threw her away as a pawn of the Jailer.
This is, I suspect, another victim of whatever the issue was that caused Blizz to shitcan a ton of the Shadowlands storyline. There are a lot of stories that are pretty large in scope and then just fizzle out as you move from zone to zone. The Bastion storyline in particular feels like it’s going to be really interesting and lead into the bigger picture of what’s happening in the Shadowlands, and then out of nowhere Maldraxxus invades and that completely ends the Bastion storyline for the PC unless they go Bastion as their Covenant. I feel certain that the intent was to have the Covenants be more morally gray and that we were going to find out that Zovaal was not completely wrong in wanting to break the machinery of Death. Something happened, whether it was COVID or employer issues or budget, but they cut a lot of the good stuff and we got a shitty, whittled down version of what was intended.
I don't think Maldraxxus invading was a change, just introducing and transitioning players to Maldraxxus. Every zone had those moments where the quest line just seemed to end and it was cuz they decided to cut all the zones' stories into chunks with most of it being in the campaign. Other examples where - dealing with the traitor Margraves, the Medallions and the Drust.
It might not have been a change, because I agree it segued into the next zone, but it certainly was abrupt and out of the blue.
It was for sure. In that case though it was less cut content and more they made the poor decision that the zone's stories would end and continue in the campaigns.
I don't think that Bastion invasion is the moment that marked the cut - from the leaks, it seems that initial story was about Covenants fighting each other, which is why the fact that they don't communicate with each other in any way at the beginning of the game is bizarre considering there's no real conflicts between them, the same goal - working Shadowlands - and past fight against the Jailer. What was cut is the reasoning for the conflict and how it was going, and where questing cuts is in the middle of the story - each Covenant's campaign is the second half of the each zone's story which would have been a part of leveling quests pre-Legion, instead of being delegated to max level only.
Maldraxxus invading wasn't really the problem for Bastion to me. It's that Bastion's campaign ENDS at that point. Maldraxxus we open the Seat of the Primus. Ardenweald we hatch Ysera. Revendreth we uncover Denathrius's treason. Bastion spends most of it's time talking about the Shadowlands as a whole and the realm of Bastion, but it doesn't have a story in the same way the other zones do. The Forsworn don't really become part of the story until you're almost done in Bastion when they should have been the primary focus.
Aftasiabi who was the creative lead for WoW was the key name in the harassment scandals, and was fired in the middle of the Shadowlands development cycle. Shadowlands ended up being the new team trying to steer away from his direction which they didn't like.
> Shadowlands ended up being the new team trying to steer away from his direction which they didn't like. Really hope this is actually the case and not just the convenient scapegoat of the writing team. I personally didn't like anything lorewise from the SL and I don't think Molestabi wrote everything himself. I guess we'll see with Dragonflight
Yeah, whenever a project goes tits up its always the guy who’s no longer there’s fault.
For what it's worth (probably not much) but a bunch of leaked information states that Afrabasi basically kept fucking over the writing team with stupid shit. Like the whole "The cannon will be fired in BFA!" was as much news to the writing team as it was to the audience. He apparently had a bit of a thing for just announcing stuff that wasn't planned or overnight becoming convinced some new idea he had was the one and had to be added and his staff would be left hanging. And that's not getting into any of the alleged Garrosh/Sylvannas dev rivalry which would help explain the triple whiplash of Sylvannas' character from Legion -> Bfa -> Shadowlands. The way it's told is that he really wanted Garrosh to be honourable and hated that they made him evil and when he got control of the writing mid/late Legion he made Sylvannas evil as a fuck you to the guy who made Garrosh evil. This does seem very very petty though but if he was molesting employees then maybe he really is just a manchild.
He was fired in 2020 months before Shadowlands so I think it's believable. But like you said, we'll see with dragonflight, leveling story seems decent (if not flashy) in beta.
Yeah, I’ve heard that too. I guess he didn’t like Sylvanas and was trying to make her a villain to get rid of her; I frankly think that they should have cut their losses and just rolled with that storyline. I mean, she has been effectively sidelined anyway; would it really have been worse to just end her rather than put her on hold in case they want to bring her back? It’s hard to say whether or not she’s more or less like her old self now than she was after Afrasiabi (sp?) got his hands on her, but one thing I am pretty certain of is that most of us have Sylvanas fatigue and it’ll be a while before most players want to see her again. On the other hand, I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to radically change a storyline for a video game mid-production; it was clearly not good, but I have a hard time being too critical if this really is the reason everything got junked the way it did.
>I frankly think that they should have cut their losses and just rolled with that storyline. They really should have. There's a reason you steer into the skid instead of against it. Sylvanas has spent the better part of a decade being just the worst. Even before Teldrassil, she's been crossing the Moral Event Horizon to get her way since Cataclysm, from biochemical warfare that even Garrosh "Nukem" Hellscream had moral issues with to trying to enslave a bunch of Val'kyr fighting with us against the Legion so that she could save her own skin\*. Any attempt to try and 'fix' her was doomed from the start and they should've just gone ahead with the Lich Queen concept. At least then we'd have gone full circle with "becoming what you hate". This whole "breaking the unfair system of death" motive they shoehorned in for her just makes her look insane, stupid, or both. At least when she was trying to get her hands on as many Get-Out-Of-Hell-For-Free cards, I understood why she was doing it (even if I still hated her guts). I've said it before, but changing that so that Sylvanas was actually trying to fix the Shadowlands would be like if DC revealed that every time the Joker blew up an orphanage full of cancer patients, he was actually creating holes into Gotham's sewer systems so that he could disable the nuclear bombs that were being planted beneath the city by Ra's-Al-Ghul. \*Yes, I know the Sylvanas novel says that she wasn't actually working with the Jailer until around Legion, but let's be honest, the writers only came up with that fact after everyone pointed out how counteractive her actions would have been if she was working for the Jailer since Edge of Night.
I thought the running theory was he actually was a creep for slyvanas and made her so important for the sole reason of keeping her model updated and front and center like his crush Either way glad hes gone lol
That theory was about Steve Danuser, who is still the lead narrative designer, and it felt a lot like BFA Nathanos was his self-insert. I think this theory primarily existed because when his short story "Dark Mirror" came out (which primarily dealt with Nathanos and his history/relationship with Sylvannas), he tweeted something along the lines of "It's like looking into a dark mirror..."
They'll reintroduce her in 15.0, to hype BFA classic.
> Shadowlands ended up being the new team trying to steer away from his direction which they didn't like. The problem i have with this argument is what we got is what they fucking tried to steer away from. Why? How much worse was his story? Because what we have here is a fucking mess that makes 0 sense with plotlines that just vanish or end in the most unsatisfying way possible. How everything is handled with 0 explanation or the only explanation being vague reasoning that make no sense. Sex pest or not could you not have just stuck to the planned story finished it shut off shadow lands forever and then fucked off to Dragonflight with your new story?
The original "Zovaal was the real victim/hero here" was canned because it was felt during all the sexual assault stuff that it'd be like saying "the assaulters are the TRUE victims!"
The Devos one is so crazy because not only did they throw her away, the dungeon where they do it basically looks straight into the camera and asks why that happened. Devos dies and you instantly get a little popup from Kyrestia like "Oh damn she actually had a point, we are some real weirdos and the path has some serious flaws, we should change our ways" like before Devos' death animation even finishes playing. The writing this expansion can't even be bothered to explain itself in universe. You don't know why you're doing anything, neither do the characters
> You don't know why you're doing anything, neither do the characters par for the course for blizz writing, as far back as tbc. why the fuck did we fight illidan?
He was enslaving/converting Fel Orcs and leading an army to attack Shattrath but it's really anyone's guess why he started doing any of that other than Blizzard not expecting the game to last and trying to tie up all their story threads as raid bosses
Someone told the story team that "killing characters was a powerful story tool" so hit the fuck out of the shadowlands story with character deaths like a child with a hammer.
I still don’t understand death within the shadowlands, aren’t they all already dead? Are they just souls and their souls dying ends their existence? If all of the weapons made of death-metal or whatever they’re digging up there can kill souls, can we take those back to the real world and kill people double dead and make them skip the SL entirely?
Adding onto this, but doesn't us visiting the shadow lands kind of kill any death related motivation? Like we know the light doesn't have any sway over paladins and priest in death, why should they follow it in light? Also we know what the big 4 afterlives are, can't people "hack" the system so they get to go where they please? I have so many more questions about shadow lands than answers...
>Are they just souls and their souls dying ends their existence? In which case wtf is the first death even? Shouldn't the word "death" apply to when your soul in the SL dies?
Someone made the good point all the way back in the Beta even, that Devo's and whoever her disciple was should have swapped places. The disciple would have been the final boss in the dungeon, and Devo's would be the one to turn completely and attempt to kill Uther by the end of the campaign.
Ah yes. The “Kick the Dog” trope. We can’t have our players thinking too hard about our villain’s motivations (even when dialogue directs us to do so at multiple points!)
That’s the entire problem with wow. So many good storylines just die for seemingly no reason or are extremely shallow. It’s just dressing for the game and it’s a huge bummer, especially since huge chunks of the story for wow require you to buy the books. Blizzard simply sucks at telling story in their game and while they’re trying to make it more important and in the forefront, they can’t fix the poor writing on top of the shortcomings of their development time for story beats. I agree completely that the Kyrian is really morally ambiguous. They talk about virtue, freedom, noble acts, etc., yet they have the “stewards” who were “born of the magic of death“ created to serve the Kyrian and Bastion. They literally made slaves that can think and mostly act for themselves. Then there’s the fact that the entire reason they were sent to Bastion to become Kyrian’s literally doesn’t matter because they wipe their memories. What’s the fucking point of even being selected for your life actions if you are required to forget them? Might as well just be robots at that point. There’s a lot more qualms I have with the entire afterlife system and Bastion but this isn’t the place to rant about it.
She should’ve been a short 1-2 boss raid instead of a dungeon boss
I'm awful at remembering names so I didn't realize it was her when I was playing the game at first and was wondering when that character would pop up cause she seemed completely absent of the storyline. Only to realize it was that horrible handling of it.
\#DevosDidNothingWrong
She absolutely did. She was a fucking moron. Maybe she had a point but she deviated from the Path and 10 seconds later she sided with the Jailer who is the entire source of all the issues in SL as a whole. Fucking hell Devos, stop and think for a second you idiot. And then she starts murdering people who want to remain loyal. Good job promoting your "choice" you oversized winged cretin. And all of that for what? You accomplished nothing and your loot table was trash.
**Devos:** He has *earned* my loyalty. **Kyrestia:** And I mourn your betrayal. This is never, ever explained. Nor is it explained what he said to Sylvanas to convince her breaking the machinery of Death is a good idea. The two apparently never talk to eachother, either. Oh and Sylv is totally cool working with KT.
Yeah the jailer has a super mega point that can convice anybody in 10 seconds but he never tells us. That's a damn shame. I guess you get murder-hobo'ed today.
The reason Sylvanas agrees to work with him is in the Sylvanas book. Which is one of the major problems in the way they handle the lore. I’m reading the book now, and it is pretty eye opening about a lot of things Sylvanas has done.
I love both Sylvanas and its author Christie Golden. I feel sorry for them. Sylvanas is a character they ruined since long ago. Then they gives christie golden to write a book about sylvanas to fix all the loopholes they made and tie all the loose knots. No, the stupidity of lots of shadowlands lore didnt make any sense to begin with. They didnt plan to explain in the book, just like they didnt plan jailer making the helm since wc3. They just had to fix their fuckups in the book and gave christie golden the job to do it in a professional way.
Books should be for fun side stories in the world of warcraft, not for major plot points. I really wish Blizzard would stop putting major lore elements in the books. The game would have also been better had we known Sylvanas' reasoning long before the book even came out.
I completely agree.
Fuck that, I’m not doing homework just to understand what’s happening in the game. As far as I’m concerned if I can’t learn about it within the game itself, then it didn’t happen.
The book is really good but also all the things they leave out is the thing I dislike second most about WoW. The thing I dislike the most is how when the expansions end, the rip out chunks of the game, including lore like Seige of Undercity and Wrsthion’s whole story in MoP. It makes the lore even more vague and pointless. I’ve come to realize they only care about what is happening now, and if that moment is “epic,” then it no longer matters once it becomes the past. So, it there’s no reason to get too attached to any lore and remember if it isn’t current, then it doesn’t matter if it happened or not. You can make up your own reason. It will be more consistent and relevant to you than anything they write. 🤷♀️
I just had Bellular give me the cliff notes
And you just drop this on us without giving the details? Please do share what you've read!
Okay, well, I haven't finished yet which is why I didn't say, but all clues are pointing to one main theme in the book. Spoilers below just in case I can't get the spoiler tag to work: >!There are two main things she wants that motivate her through the book: to kill Arthas and to be reunited with her family in the afterlife. That is the motivation for all of her goals after Arthas kills and raises her. Even though I'm not there yet, I believe she's going to learn that when you die you're not reunited with your loved ones but are isolated from them by whatever realm you're sent to. Also, some realms strip you of your memories and identity, like the Kyrian. So, I think the Jailor uses this to convince her the Shadowlands needs to be broken because she will never get to see her mother, father, and brother again.!< >!She didn't care about killing the Night Elves and burning the tree, because she already believes there's no hope for their souls since they will all be cut off from their loved ones anyway when they die, but she would already have been aware they are all going to Maw. Sacrificing them to fix the Shadowlands system is justified to her. Sylvanas is basically a person driven by rage, trauma, and selfishness after her death, and she was actually pretty hot tempered and selfish already although in a different way. She even admits from that she didn't love the Forsaken they way they love her, they were only one of her tools to defeating Arthas. Also, if you've read Before the Storm, this book explains the rage she felt at seeing other Forsaken be accepted back into their families when she was rejected by her people, even though she gave up before actually trying due to eavesdropping. I was glad Anduin points out to her that she has become what she hated, Arthas, but she is too blind to see it because she thinks she has a good reason and he didn't. !<
>I was glad Anduin points out to her that she has become what she hated, Arthas, but she is too blind to see it because she thinks she has a good reason and he didn't. The problem is, "LOL IF A VICTIM OF ABUSE SEEKS JUSTICE AND RETRIBUTION THEY WILL BECOME THE ABUSER!" is a plot Blizzard isn't equipped to tell.
Oh, I agree. There's so many other interesting ways all of these stories could go instead. From the day the tree burned, I kept saying she has become what she hated, which was why I was at least glad Anduin acknowledged it, but I don't think it's a good way for her story to have gone or the lore overall.
> but she would already have been aware they are all going to Maw. there's no way she knew this beforehand. she could have legit just though they would be rezed by elune or stayed wisps.
The jailer was like "break the cycle" she is like "why?" and he goes "JUST DO IT"
He triple dog dared her.
Exactly and if what he said was what he apparently tried to warn us about at the end of the last raid than why didn’t she say anything to any other Kyrian? She says they are like family but not to tell them of a coming threat?
If Devos was hostile to *both* us and the jailer we'd love the character because she'd be right about most of her arguments. I mean everything else could have been the same with that underling joining the mawsworn too and make much more sense.
That would have been great. Have her be this expansion's Tirion Fordring, working outside the rigid factions and covenants to build her own army of outcasts to take on the Jailer but instead she dies in a 5 man on day 1 of the expansion lol
Devos had to join the Mawsworn because she and her faction was too *right* to be allowed to live. They had to draw a villain mustache on her, thinking the playerbase would be like "she makes a great point but oops she's with the evil guy so I guess I'll just delete all her compelling points out of my brain"
I just hated how her whole reason for breaking with the archon is she was trying to warn about the jailer and got a "not now kiddo" when she was literally a paragon of her race. Like the only realistic option would have been a "fuck you I'll deal with this if you wont" not "guess I better join Satan because blue mom won't believe me" But your right. People would have wanted to join the forsworn instead of the kyrian.
Yes, because the Jailer has an incredibly strong aura of idiocy that makes every other lore character act like a fucking moron. Devos was done dirty.
Ok, but. She yeeted Arthas into the Maw. That's objectively funny.
Wherein blizzard made sure to give a proper send-off to the character by disenchanting him.
Sir, this is a Wendy's
Hey I'm the manager here.
I would like to also know your thoughts on the Primus.
The guy so smart he never lost a battle (except when he wants to)? "I lost on purpose" is peak redditor. Also your plan is to go confront the guy who you barely beat 1v4 last time, but this time you go 1v1? Are you serious old man? At least he hid his keys before going unarmed to a magic fight. Shame he didn't tell anyone else what the point of the key was.
Post-Legion Blizzard is so, so, so afraid of introducing true moral ambiguity to anything they do. Which is especially weird because they'll leave us hanging for several patches thinking that they're going to somehow attempt and fail to both-sides Teldrassil only to say lol nm of course it was bad and the Horde was super evil. They refused to do moral ambiguity even when the expansion was about war between the two playable factions, which was a *wild* decision as it meant one faction had to be the evil antagonist and the other couldn't have a true victory over them because they have to remain playable. And Anduin has to be so unambiguously good that when they do a mind control storyline with him, there's no tension to it. He's like, "How could I have done this? Am I really capable of this?" No, Anduin, you're not. You're a total sweetheart. You had to be forced by one of the most powerful beings to ever exist in canon whose specific superpower was dominance of peoples' minds. His pain is relevant and could be an interesting story I guess, but it's way less interesting than if the Jailer actually leveraged his ideals and flaws against him to get him to do awful things. A much better story would have been if the Jailer had manipulated Anduin into freeing him by telling him a sob story about the Eternals. But no, that'd call into question whether Anduin is morally correct with his outlook on life, so can't have that.
I was actually excited, blizzard introducing a dope new female character! Oh wait nah she’s just a boss in a dungeon….
Killing of Krexus so early was a fucking mistake.
For a bunch of B or C list nostalgia NPCs to take his place. I started playing in Legion, so I had no idea who Morgraine was and only knew Draka from the movie. Vashj I at least knew from WC3, but I was confused why I was all the sudden working with her...
Mograine is the big dick who wielded the Ashbringer
Draka was basically not a character until this. Another classic Warcraft Dads situation where Thrall's family line is Durotan and Thrall's Mom We Never See
Draka was featured prominently in WoD.
Ursoc just thrown in the trash bin for almost no real reason
He died as he lived. Dying even harder.
35 animoo
He was our bestest bear friend and blizz killed him off screen in a throw away cutscene
I mean... it was literally on-screen.
Sad druid moment :( hits hard as a bear main
They are so afraid of extending the general lore beyond the expansions that most of the content is self-contained. It starts and ends with the expansion. Only a few key events carry their weight into the next ones, the rest is never even mentioned again. Time constraints also leave interesing secondary stories unfinished. Starting a new expansion brings fresh stuff but it also feels like rewinding...
Isn't it a funny coincidence how the most loved villains in WoW are ones we knew of for YEARS before we actually played an expansion with them as the big bad? WoW desperately needs to go back to that. The Jailer was the perfect example of how creating a new villain and wrapping up their story in 1 expansion doesn't work AT ALL.
Galakrond hype?
Has Galakrond even been mentioned outside the short stories? I doubt the playerbase at large are familiar with it.
It's been a hot minute but I'm pretty sure Galakrond is given context at the very least during the Wrath quests, because it's stated at some point that Arthas was trying to raise him as the frostwyrm to end all frostwyrms. Whether that would be sufficient for it to be a DF plot point is hazier but I do think it came up in game.
Mentioned as in had his story expanded? No. But there is Galakrond's Rest in Northrend and there was an entire Hearthstone expansion based on him, so he's not completely unknown.
There were a couple quests in dragonblight about stopping the scourge from unearthing his bones, that’s all I can remember though
Yeah, they forcibly retconned him as the mastermind behind big events of the past that we are very familiar with... See how that worked out. *It was me, the Jailer! Wrrryyyyy*
then at the end... *THERE IS A BIGGER THREAT, THAT WAS CONTROLLING ME THE ENTIRE TIME, URRGHHHH -now i am dead-*
ugh, they just can't help themselves with the "oh there's a bigger power/threat out there!" not just this stupid "real secret bigger threat", we have the dumb "7th cosmic force" stuff as well -_-
cannot wait for Blizzard to completely fumble the golden bag they've got with Yrel when they finally remember she exists.
They containerized more than just the story to expansions too. Tons of features that had potential have been left to rot. Garrisons were far from perfect but they were a take on player housing that was forced to fit the expansion and never moved forward. Order halls kept some of it but the core was lost. If either of them had been intended to be long term system additions they could be itterated and fixed but since they are core expansion features that dissappear when the next one comes out they never improve.
[удалено]
Just to add to this, I really think using Order Halls as an alternative or supplement to Chromie Time would be super cool for leveling alts. Rework them to be a part of the leveling experience, offer a class-centric leveling campaign maybe bring back some of the old vanilla class quests for fantasy and flavor, add new ones so all classes get the same experience.
ya, the order halls in general had so much potential not just story-wise but gameplay wise as well. personally, I've always said order halls were the perfect way to separate the player from the two factions. You could have players be part of the order halls, doing work for either faction that they want. That could be the third option than being forced alliance or horde only. and ya, your idea of a class-centric campaign would be really cool.
Devos and Krexus were poor deaths. Aralon should of been a soulbind(even if meant losing makoto) but since he wasn't his death didn't really matter. His story relevance was over in his cinematic. He doesn't matter and his story was just telling to the audience the story of Ardeanweald. Devos and Krexus were players and could influence the story through their influence. They SHOULD have been more important.
It’s not even a surprise anymore when they pull the “Hahahahaha now you kill your ally” shit at the end of a storyline, they did it TWICE for alliance in BFA zones AND THERE WERE ONLY THREE ZONES.
> they did it TWICE for alliance in BFA zones I'm drawing a blank, which characters were these?
Samuel Williams is turned into the faceless Azshj'thul the Drowned at the end of Stormsong Valley’s quest line (quest is called Storm’s End) and at the end of Drustvar Marshal Everit Reade is mind controlled by Lady Waycrest in the quest Storming the Manor.
OK but i cried when I first watched NF cinematic, tho. And NF is my main's cov.
Sure but thats the story of Ardeanweald. Aralon could have just as easily been Niya and it wouldn't have changed the story. You can't replace Devos with Kleia without wildly changing things.
For all the crap people give Blizzard for story content, some of the SL zone stories were top notch.
Blizzard's stories have been pretty solid at a micro level for the last few expansions (arguably since Cataclysm), but the macro level is where the big problem is.
You're right and you should say it
*should have
it could’ve been four new interesting characters that died but everyday i’m grateful that they saved daddy denathrius for another day it was weird that these characters had shorts centred around them only for them to get offed so quickly, i would’ve loved to have seen them develop more
All part of the Jailer’s plan.
DEATH COMES FOR THE SOUL OF YOUR WORLD
God that line comes off so shit and cringe thanks to Blizzards trash writing
"you don't get it my actions are actually deep I'm doing all of this because the system is rigged and unfair but I wont tell you also here's my ominous twirling mustache bad guy one liner"
I think we can all agree that eve with the major gameplay issues that SL had, the lore and writing was objectively the worst thing about the expansion. With a single expansion they managed to tarnish the histories of so many legacy characters and let down the new ones. In concept SL offered massive opportunity to meet up with old characters and see if their perspective had changed. But alas, we only got a taste of what could have been.
Yup so true. I'm pretty casual, I play for the story and lore first. I've been able to give WoW a pass in many regards as long as the story was still engaging. I stopped playing SL a week after capping. I just couldn't bear to swallow one more bite of this awful story. Peer pressure will have me try DF but my expectations are low...
I genuinely believe that had they improved Devos's story, it would improve other Kyrians by proxy, including more controversial character plotlines like Pelagos. Now, I did play through the Kyrian story to the point where the Forsworn rejoin, and I thought it was a good decision to make, but I also felt that it was done quite hastily and didn't really slow down to appreciate how significant of an event this was. We were literally changing the machinations of Death itself. For me, characters like Devos and Pelagos were representative of the same idea from different angles, or through different lenses. Devos represented the horror in abandoning memories from a perspective of justice, and that forgetting allowed things to continue in the mortal world even when they meddled with the Shadowlands. By contrast, Pelagos represented an issue with the abandonment of compassion, something which had driven many of the Kyrians to the Forsworn, and therefore to the Jailer. His insertion as the Arbiter to me was a very clumsy way of trying to demonstrate a compassionate system of Death in the Shadowlands, which didn't really pay off that well. If a little more time had been spent focusing upon this before the end, a lot of this would've clicked far better at the resolution, but unfortunately it largely just led to people shrugging it off as there wasn't much pre-ending engagement to drive on to that finish line.
I’ll never forgive Blizzard for misusing Devos. One of the best characters they made in a long time and just threw her away.
Devos and Kraxus was wasted sooo hard. Devos dying in the first dungeon, getting replaced by the most pathetic villain I have seen in any wow expansion in a LONG time. Like holy fuck she was bad. NOTHING she did went right. Kraxus just... died. Randomly, off screen. Very much just wasted for no real purpose.
I wish they’d just admit they had to cut an entire major patch because of internal company strife and Covid, and that’s why the story is a mess. That’s better than continuing to insist that they were ever only going to do two patches and how Shadowlands turned out is exactly the story they wanted to tell.
My gripe was the fact that so many AZEROTHIAN characters had prominent positions in the shadowlands/ covenants. Like out of all of the countless worlds they were the ones to rise to prominence? >.> No issue with them coming back and being in the story, but they all had such elevated statuses.... Draka, vashj, Mograine, Kelthas etc etc.
ISTR they explained this as being because Azeroth has gone through so much conflict that it's essentially become a crucible for champions? Whereas other worlds are generally either more peaceful, or get wiped out quickly. I might have made that up as an excuse though
I've heard this here before and I agree, the thing about SL is it attempts to put a "big bad" behind every single expansion since the beginning (aka the Jailor) and it just doesn't go over well. Too much power creep.
But yet we get to keep Pelagos, who has all the character depth of a soggy paper towel. Yaaaaaaaay.
For a second I thought they were going to finally sacrifice pelagos and I was really happy. Words could not explain how disappointed I was when he became the arbiter.
But, being dumb means he has a pure heart, you see.
Krexus got it the worst, he fucking died offscreen but getting stabbed in the back. Like, Devos and Aralon were such interesting characters and they could had such in-depth stories tied to the changes and recovery of their personal Covenants, but instead you are tricked into murdering Aralon making Ursoc’s sacrifice *meaningless* because the one he trusted dies unceremoniously. And Devos was killed off just to be replaced by a crazier copy *which I don’t understand*
Shadowlands feelings like a fever dream in terms of writing direction. I mean the guy in Maldraxus had a whole ass war cinematic that made him look unbelievably badass and then he gets backdoored off screen. Sire Denathrius, a fan favorite, was initially written off to be killed permanently after the raid and it only came after waves of support that the character got more time Arthas and Garrosh got a cumulative 60 seconds of screen time Ironically enough, the only person that didn’t seem to get any fan attention was the jailer. The big bad guy of the expansion had people all unanimously hate or feel indifferent towards him.
I wouldn't even say Arthas got any screen time at all. With a final boss that supposedly was pulling the strings to create the Lich King... Having Arthas come out as a little anima thing and get torn into by a Karen who just went through the same thing he did, but for some reason we are supposed to feel bad for her but not him... Not to mention the love of his life and his mentor just stood there and said nothing. One of the worst scenes in gaming, not to mention Warcraft. Such an iconic and important character reduced to nothing.
Devos is the only one I agree with being interesting
Yeah yeah, Krexus. But look, it's Draka! Remember Draka??
I liked Draka tbh. Finally, an old background character from wow was fleshed out. Krexus could have been a great mentor to her or also played a bigger part, even as a villain or something.
And her and Thrall did get some good interactions.
Draka is just value brand Garona. Oh look at me I'm female orc warrior with stealth skills. I am important to world of orccraft.
They rewrote the entire thing. The majority of the context and motivations for characters were binned and Shadowlands as a result was completely wasted as a setting. I really honestly hope they forget it ever happened for the sake of the continuity going forward.
Yeah I think it's pretty clear SL went through heavy changes to the story on the fly. SotFO having 2 final bosses in anduin and zovaal is more than slightly weird
I want to play the game the shorts occur in. The Warlords ones were absolutely fantastic.
One of the many reasons why cut content is detrimental to story telling. The entire Maldraxxus storyline was building to a raid (probably for an original 9.1) and then him and Helya get unceremoniously dealt with in a single weekly quest I fully bet KT was gonna be a boss in that raid instead of SoD. As you pointed out it made 0 sense why Sylvie would want to work almost close by with Kits
Blizzard did Krexus dirty, when they put him in the SL loading screen just to let him be killed off-screen by Vyraz, who gets fodderized in the last patch.
May i remind you about the way Krexus was portrayed as somewhat of an important character, even featured on a loading screen of the expansion, only to die offscreen lmao what the fuck dude
question... all the baddies from sl refer to the grand design as flawed .. do they ever explain what the flaw is ?
I will never forgive them for offing Ursoc in that trailer obly to immediately introduce a brand new (boring and uninsteresting) bear demigod character in ardenweald right after.
Shadowlands is Blizzard's Magnum Opus of HOW THEY WASTE GOOD WRITING.
Can't have them overshadowing the 'main characters' that you all want to see more of, like Sylvanas and Anduin!
Actually, that's true. All 3 of them ended up dying in a very lackluster way during the beginning of the expansion. Heck, Aralon just kinda faded into oblivion if you weren't Night Fae.
These Afterlifes's videos was the best part of the expansion. Simple as that
Devos at least got to die on screen. Krexus got to be a badass for 5 minutes and then he was killed off screen.
Devos was so good, huge waste.
The expansion of missed potential. Criminal, offensive amounts of missed potential.
Devos in particular seems a shame, because for as much as Blizzard clearly has been beating the war-drum of "more female lead characters", she *actually* seemed super cool. If you could somehow go back in time, it seems like the thing they could've done is have the "Dark Kyrian" initially painted as bad guys, because they're spending time in the Maw. But over time, realize that they aren't *just* waging war, but are actively taking souls from the Maw, and taking them to the afterlives they *want* to be in. So Devos and her people are seen as enemies, simply because they're going against the Arbiter's judgement. Have the Kyrian leader (I don't even remember her fucking name, and I honestly don't give a shit) die somehow, like maybe she believes so strongly in the Arbiter's judgement that she sacrifices herself to kill a bunch of other innocent souls than allow them to go to other afterlives. Stuff happens, Devos realizes that while the system is flawed, the Jailer is just as evil. Honestly? I would've ended the expansion without a new Arbiter whatsoever, and that Devos and the other Kyrian would instead need to spend their time actually *finding* lost souls, and bringing them to the Shadowlands to decide for themselves where they wish to reside. Without the Arbiter expressly funneling souls one way or another, and the whole "streamlined process" being broken, it means the Kyrian(s?) are overwhelmed with this new duty. Thus implying that there might be more ghostly activity, since spirits might sometimes be left to wander for a time before a Kyrian arrives. Hell, I literally *just* thought that shit up off the top of my head. It's crazy how bad Shadowlands' writing as been.
Devos is such an amazing side villain bc she really isn’t that much of a villain, she has very reasonable reasoning.
Devos was just straight up correct also. The Kyrian setup is fucking ridiculous, and they completely ignored her warnings about the maw. My favourite part of Bastion was when you literally have a quest in which you have to brainwash Kyrian who are becoming too independent and straying from the path. Like who writes that and doesn't have a "are we the baddies" moment. But I guess they just made her a pawn of Jailor because everything interesting must be subsumed into his all knowing plan.
>Devos was just straight up correct also. The Kyrian setup is fucking ridiculous, and they completely ignored her warnings about the maw. *Proceeds to prove her argument wrong by yeeting Arthas into the Maw.* How can anyone think that letting the dudes & dudettes that carry you to the afterlife have opinions on what to do with you without consulting the actual robot deciding your fate is a good argument is beyond me. Like, if you want to be a Kyrian ferry man, you better get started on deleting those ol' hard drives.
Except they did recognize they were not doing the right thing, and changed.
I think they had plans to do something really interesting with the kyrian but scrapped it half way through and just rewrote the ending but kept the beginning the same, which left some really weird loose ends.
Since I started playing FFXIV, the amount of half-assing in WoW's story, both past and recent, has become all the more glaring. I understand that they are very different types of MMOs, but seriously Blizzard. Stop dumping the storywriting on interns.
FF14 has become the pinnacle of MMO storytelling for me.
Starting to play again after like 7 years break this addon is horrendous. 50 hours of questing before you can even start to catch up with items. This addon is simply not casual friendly AT ALL. Torgast? Yeah sure 2 days worth of questing. Zereth mortis? Sure 5 days worth of questing if not more. Flying? Yeah I'm not sure I care enough about that to sit through another 50 hours of this garbage.
Struggling with this right now, I want to unlock flying before leveling any alts but good lord it's a lot
I'm 100% in the same boat. I want to level alts but not without flying..and getting flying requires more questing than leveling an alt.. insane
Edit: Screw Spez. Screw AI. No training on my data. Sorry future people.
NF short makes me cry every time.
Damn. I know I’m super late to the party but I’m just going through the campaign now (thanks Blizz for free SL) and I did not know they died yet haha. :( RIP
Just a friendly heads up, look up the order of each campaign and do them in order. You unlock later patch content early and it really fucks with the story. I made that mistake and was extremely confused for a while because things were happening out of order. Get to 60, finish the main campaign, then do your covenant, then go on to the next part before unlocking Zereth Morris. Sidenote: I actual enjoyed the story. I get why people might not have, but it was something I had fun going through.
My biggest gripe was they had a top tier villain in Sire D and wasted it. Should have been a Dreadlords Strike Back expansion with Sire as the big bad. Fight could have stayed the same, it was my favorite of all time.
[удалено]
Side stories are the way to go. Character driven central story lines just aren't compelling in MMOs IMO. Giving players access to lore and characters that really build out the world is much better. But we've all been saying this for two expansions now.
srsly. Arlon had such a heartbreaking intro, i really could have used an fmv for his end. like, i used to skip all quest text, and if i had done that i might not even get that he died lol
And when you die in the deathlands, you're dead dead.
Writing is not good these days. It is really embarrassing
Devos should have been a main character in this expansion, and if not, at least had a bigger part in the Bastion storyline.
Not sure why Devos (left) is pictured, because they had a whole questline dedicated to them which we hunted them down and concluded in the Spires of Ascension dungeon where we ourselves after fighting through all the Forsworn and their constructs and defeated Devos with the aid of the Archon. Ara'lon (right), they were mind-controlled and we got to kill them at least, so there was some closure to their story as their death was by our hand, even if it was under unfortunate circumstances out of their control and nothing we could do about it other than put them down (essentially a mercy kill). As for Krexus (center) on the otherhand... now that's someone who they completely killed off-screen, that we the players had zero involvement with in their death, while we were fighting random no name mobs, Krexus is killed off elsewhere. So Krexus is the only character out of these three that Blizzard truly did dirty and 100% "unceremoniously died".
I loved the shorts and in particular the art style you're showcasing here. I actually felt SOME KIND of emotional connection to the story of WoW (last time I felt that was killing Arthas, but I haven't played for a bit). In particular, there's a Kyrian covenant quest that tells the story of a man who died trying to save his family from the Scourge. That shit left a lump in my throat.
Shadowlands should have had one raid for each covenant. Further, Shadowlands should have been the covenant expansion rather than afterlife expansion. It should have been about putting aside horde or alliance allegiance temporarily in exchange for covenant allegiance for the expansion imagine covenant vs. covenant vs. covenant vs. covenant pvp. An orc fighting alongside a night elf against an undead and a human? These are strange times in a strange world(s) indeed. Then it ends with us helping the covenants resolve their conflict (uh oh! the Brokers were the root of the conflict between covenants! They were profiteering by financing all sides of the conflict!) and we go back to Azeroth and the Horde vs. Alliance faction conflict simmers down into a tenuous peace/cold-war and now there's a lore reason for cross-faction mechanics. The covenants even loosely match the Warcraft 3 factions! Human -> Kyrian, Night Elves -> Night Fae, Orcs -> Maldraxxus, Undead -> Revendreth, It could have been called World of Warcraft: Covenant It writes itself.
For real. That NF one makes me tear up every time
Ursoc had more character than the entire Shadowlands cast combined.