I really can't relate to any of these characters in Shadowlands

Lore Story
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Well the afterlive sucks.
It completely sucks.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but Shadowlands doesn’t have the same feeling as all the other expansions so far. There’s no “Warcraft” feel to it. I have talked and read other player’s opinions and I have to agree with them.
All the concepts of death we know about in Azeroth, aren’t present at all in the Shadowlands. Even better, the Shadowlands is literally a 2nd form of life, but this time you’re handpicked and put into a camp the jury feels like you belong into.

That’s just sad.

Orc ancestors and shamanism, Tauren Spiritwalkers, Troll voodoo and Bwonsamdi, the Humans and Dwarves with the Light. The Night Elves with Elune.
Different races, with different philosophies about death.
And these concepts are barely shown, if not at all, and replaced with something new.

But also, it is very hard to relate to any of the characters in Shadowlands at all.
And some are even straight up bizarre.

Take Draka for example.
The very reason she went to the Shadowlands was because she was fighting tooth and nail, despite not being a warrior, to protect her son and to fight and die alongside her husband she loved.
But this Draka, now suddenly just accepted her role. If she had such a warrior spirit, wouldn’t she be fighting tooth and nail and try to find out what the hell she just got transported to?

It’s so bizarre that we’re told that Draka is such a powerful warrior and all… but I really don’t believe it.
It doesn’t line up at all.
Fighting and giving your life for your son, dying alongside your husband, only for that to wipe that all of the table, accept your role and never even question, or try to find out what happened to your husband and Thrall.
I’m sorry, but Draka isn’t portrayed as a warrior to me.

She’s portrayed as a terrible spouse and a negligent towards her child, which makes her a bad mother imo.

And even that, what’s more bizzare is how no one questions what is going on.
You’re literally handpicked to fit and fight inside one of the 4 harry potter houses, and no one questions why and how, or where the HELL they just appeared into?

Alexandros Mograine, stabbed by his own son, saw a kingdom burn to ashes.
Completely disinterested towards the affaires on Azeroth.
It doesn’t care him one bit.

See this is the problem I have with Shadowlands and why the characters SUCK and aren’t relateable.
When you die, all your problems on Azeroth just, well, they don’t matter anymore.
So either we’ve been getting told a lie about honoring our ancestors, our heroes, our kings and queens, our legends, etc.
Those kings, those legends, those ancestors we look up to, they actually never cared.

I find it really hard to relate, and it’s almost depressing.
Why exactly should I fight and care about something in Azeroth, when all that’s left in death is just another system where you supposedly stop giving a damn about the affairs you literally gave your life for?

It’s straight up the most strangest thing I have ever seen.

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Yeah, it sucks, feels even more distant than WoD. Feels like nothing really matters and that truly sucks in an MMO.

Say what you will about BFA’s writing but it at least made me care about the world and the people on both sides of the war.

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completely agree, its honestly the biggest factor in me not really caring about playing SL, the theme doesnt feel like warcraft.

My only hope is this is the last expansion we have to see sylvanas and her mustache twirling

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I get the feeling none of it is real and we will wake up…

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That’s pretty much been my feeling of this expac, doesn’t feel very warcraft at all. Some of the zones are kinda pretty but, just doesn’t feel like Warcraft. Even a lot of the main cast and characters don’t feel like themselves, so many characters completely changed for the Afterlife to the point of not being particularly relevant at all. Even though I disliked a lot of BFAs narrative it at least felt like Warcraft and yep, Azeroth. I really loved Drustvar and Vol’dun. Which the only Legion zones I sort of liked was Suramar and Val’sharah but Suramars mob density in the city made me end up not liking being there as much.

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I agree too, and we’ve seen several posts on the forums in the same vein.

It doesn’t feel like WoW. It’s not that it doesn’t feel like Azeroth - which I suppose it shouldn’t - but that it doesn’t feel like WoW.

I feel this most strongly in Revendreth. I like Revendreth best of the Shadowlands zones; it’s very well done … but it feels like it was designed for some other game, and the devs just copied it in.

Maldraxxus, oddly enough, is the only one that feels a bit like it could be a WoW zone. Not a pleasant WoW zone, obviously, but one where the Scourge has run wild.

I didn’t feel this way about Draenor, or even Argus. Argus was odd, and unpleasant, and just a facade, but it still did feel like WoW.

P.S.
Examples

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I’m fine with the lore to be honest, not fine with the gameplay overall and blizzard vision though.

Lore is not perfect, but not too bad either, this whole cosmic powers battle thing, i don’t mind.

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This really hit the nail on the head for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying playing Shadowlands, but the biggest gripe for me is that this 100% doesn’t feel like an afterlife for me. Or at least what I imagined the afterlife would look like in the WoW universe.

I understand that the WoW universe is only a small part of the universe within WoW lore - and that the Shadowlands is connected to multiple other worlds that might not feel like WoW. But we wont ever experience them! We play WoW - so the afterlife should at least feel like it.

Bastion is the closest representation of the traditional “heaven” but that’s it, only visually, not thematically. Ardenweald is 100% what I’d imagine to be an afterlife for Druids - but it appears that quite a lot of night elves go there, even if they were priests, where they are connected to the light, and not nature.

The whole concept of death within the shadowlands just confuses me too. I’ve said it in multiple posts now, but how can something die that is already dead? A mortal dies in the physical world, their soul passes over the veil between life and death, only to find that they can just as easily be killed in the afterlife as they could when they were alive. Only this time, if you die, it’s for good. You literally cease to exist.

How does one even die in the Shadowlands anyway? I know that as a game we need the mechanic of death to earn XP etc, but you see NPC’s die all the time within the story. How does a spirit die? If you stab it, does it bleed? What actually causes it to die?

They should have just had the Shadowlands as another realm, not the afterlife, as it just does not fit. It hit me when I was questing through Bastion and you entered the zone where aspirants work to purge their memories of their mortal life. One of the aspirants turned out to be a Tauren and had died in battle. How the hell does it seem fitting that a Tauren is now in Bastion? Their whole belief about the earth mother, their connection to nature, it just doesn’t fit right in Bastion. And to round it off, the Tauren now had the aspirant human model? WTF?

Countless times we have had the Trolls mention speaking to the spirits. How does that work? Are they speaking to a spirit from Bastion or Maldraxxus? Surely they’d mention for them to abandon their earthly beliefs? Vodoo doesn’t have any part in the afterlife, may as well give up now.

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I think this is Sylvanas’ point, she’s just going about it the wrong way.

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Same here - love that zone, but feels like it was copied from Diablo. Same with Torghast, its the equivalent of D3 Greater Rifts. Dont get me wrong, all the zones look great (excellent art team again) and the music is awesome. Apart from the maw- I haven’t really bothered with the rep grind for that overgrown cigarette lighter (Venari).
But you’re right- it just doesn’t feel like WoW this time.

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I never thought about this, but yeah, they totally killed this part. Anyway, this expansion is one big failure.

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HOW DARE YOU! I think Draenor was amazing and it had more vanilla vibes than mop, legion, bfa, sl…

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Draenor could’ve been amazing, but too much content got simply cut.

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I didn’t realise how true this is until you said it :open_mouth: The aesthetic is kind of nice, just… it doesn’t fit with the rest of the game. Nor, really, does Bastion.

Tbh, I did feel like Outland was a very alien, not-my-WoW thing when it arrived. I’m no fan of WoD’s Draenor either. Or Argus.

Frankly I prefer expansions that keep things on Azeroth. My personal hope for the future is a makeover and re-use of old zones for the new endgame level. Bring the fight to Loch Modan for once!

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It’s just silly that paragons of Light like Uther and Alexandros don’t go and become one with the Light, what happened with Bridenbrad in wotlk for example, was he sent to Bastion as well or to the Light?

The denizens of Shadowlands are not that impressive either, vampyres, fae, dryads and blue humans just seem so plain and can mostly be found in Azeroth already…

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They are all just constructed worlds / beeings, forced into existance by the Archon / Wintherqueen / Primus / Danathrius who are abusing souls to gain anima. I’m quite sure in the end we will “restore” the proper afterlive and the jailer will be reunited with the arbiter and the maw will tun out as temporary purgatory before the souls are sent to the true (unknown) afterlife. (Or something like that.) If not, I’m just going to write that story myself. :wink:

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Yeah. It was simply my reason to go back to classic.
Man this feels like a real mmo , literally awesome world building , fragmented zone stories… is so good

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this is just bfa 2.0 the continuation of slyvanas story…

that is why it sucks.

death to the lich queen…

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I wouldn’t say it’s all thanks to Sylvanas. We barely have interacted with her so far.
I also don’t like how faction leaders are basically acting like Marvel superheros and blaim them partly aswell.

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I don’t much care about anything this expansion, yeah. That’s a step up from BfA for me, where I cared because I hated it. So I’ll take it.

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