Remake/Rewrite Shadowlands - What would you do differently?

Argent Dawn
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One thing I’ve noticed on these forums are whenever ‘What’s the worst WoW can do’ comes up, the Shadowlands expansion is never far from peoples’ minds. I want to offer a bit of therapy.

As I’m interested in games design, I wish to issue a challenge! Using the simple premise -

‘WoW Expansion set in the Afterlife’

Sell me the very best premise you can. What would the -cool- and -awesome- version of Shadowlands look like?

You can go into as much or little detail as you wish. There only three rules:

  1. It has to be set in, or heavily involve the Shadowlands. Otherwise, carte blanche bar the other two rules.

  2. All events of BFA, including patches, are canon. This is the good timeline’s version of Shadowlands you’re selling. Any lore or story added in or post-Shadowlands can be disregarded or altered.

  3. You can incorporate, alter or remove story, character or mechanical elements of our reality’s Shadowlands at your choosing.

Give me your best shot!

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…make the helm indestructable to begin with.
the affix exists ingame for a reason

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You posit a Gordian Knot and expect no one here to cut it.

Shadowlands should simply not have been.

Put some of the realms as other dimensions/planets á la Outland perhaps but fundamentally this is an impossible challenge.

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I truly do not think you can salvage Shadowlands, especially with BfA being a requirement in its entirety. You’d have to change so much it’d be essentially unrecognisable.

But if I’m trying to rejig what we’ve basically already got into something I prefer…

The Shadowlands we visit (Oribos, Bastion, etc.) isn’t the true shadowlands. It’s a Titan ‘facility’ built on top of the real Shadowlands, created to intercept souls of particular value (i.e. notable lore cameos) before they pass into the proper afterlife. Crucially, we do not go to the proper afterlife. The Titans created this eons ago to help as an energy source (anima) and a source of soldiers against the Legion/Void Lords. The Winter Queen etc. are either Titans themselves or Titan Watchers like Odyn/Tyr/etc.

This is why it’s so militarised and regimented, and gives us an anchor in the lore for what we already know. Easier to accept.

Sylvanas wants to break this machine and return things to their natural order. Maybe this is because of her ties to the Forsaken, maybe she’s annoyed that her brother got puréed into anima. She discovers the truth of the matter not from the Jailer (we’re deleting him) but from records in N’zoth’s prison or something like that, backfill retconning that the war isn’t actually related to “death” at all. I’ll find a way to redeem her somehow.

Uther can’t be our escort around Bastion. His soul’s done too much stuff already in lore, so we need someone else to fill the role there. Doesn’t really matter who, but it can’t be Uther.

The whole “Arbiter is broken” plotline is deleted entirely. The Shadowlands is operating just fine when we get there. Sylvanas’ reason for shattering the Helm is solely to get us there, because she realises there’s no way she could talk us into it after the whole world war thing.

She’d be a more notable presence through the levelling experience, either seeing her directly, or her leaving breadcrumb trails for us to follow. It becomes pretty clear after a while she’s deliberately showing us bad stuff going on.

After seeing the various ways in which the Shadowlands realms violate our moral sensibilities, we decide to break it. Maybe it was originally fine, and has been steadily corrupted over time. Maybe it always sucked. Doesn’t really matter, but we go to war with the Shadowlands, siding with the Forspoken and other rebel factions, and ultimately the Arbiter herself.

If I wanted to do “poetry, it rhymes” Sylvanas stays alive and pulls an Illidan, becoming a jailer of the damned after the last boss fight to write her out without killing her, but I doubt people would accept that, so instead we’ll give her a climactic final battle where she doesn’t regret what she did, won’t apologise, but won’t submit to peaceful judgement either, so she gets a boss fight too, and she dies knowing she was successful in saving the Forsaken from having their souls mutilated by Titan machinations even in true death.

There’s probably more little things to fix (vol’jin…) along the way but that’s a big picture adjustment.

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Honestly, I probably wouldn’t do it at all. The Shadowlands should have remained what they were in WotLK, much like the Emerald dream: the existing world but in a different ‘phase’. It should have been a dimension where the soul exists in perpetua. If you wanted a ‘Shadowlands’ expansion, then have it bleed into the real world in parts - e.g., revamp Northrend as a completely desolated, soul-strewn wasteland in the absence of the Crusade, the Dragon Aspects, the Horde and the Alliance.

Black Empire world revamp should have followed BfA. N’zoth was done dirty. End.

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I’d scrap the Jailer and, instead of situating the stories in the afterlife, which is the most foolish mistake made by Blizzard, I’d place them on a different planet instead.

I think there wasn’t much wrong with the areas and the stories themselves, except for the stupid fact that it was the AFTERLIFE. That just ruined the entire expansion for me.

And the Maw was way too small. It should’ve been far bigger.

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I feel like it would’ve hit harder if your character had to die to access it. Just walking through a portal into the afterlife doesn’t really carry the same weight or sense of consequence.

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The best and simpliest way is, indeed, just removing it all. But if it has to be kept around… I likely wouldn’t say anything new, but even this mess could be at least partially salvaged.

First and foremost, no Zereth Mortis or advanced cosmology. At all. Anything related to it should disappear into oblivion, with no trace left.

No Arbiter or the Jailer either. There’s no need for even further evil when the initial situation is already hardly deserving any protection from the justified accusations of…

the Shadowlands being a parasitic realm. Instead of sucking in all the souls there are, they absorb only the lost souls, or those they drag out of what they deserve. It’d also explain the entire place’s dependence on fresh souls and the stuff they bleed, and why no one questions the vampiric dependence of Shadowlands from the living world. Why does it deserve to stay as it is is another question entirely though, and in at least some cases the answer should have been “no” with no remorse shown.

The Maw should have been gone as well. Since Revendreth is already present to turn more problematic souls into something useful, like food, there was no need for it whatsoever.

Swap the Bastion and Revendreth narratives between themselves. Let’s be honest, Bastion is worse than the Maw in the initial situation, and it’d be far more satisfying to see the heartless, soulless Archon that turns people into thoughtless automatons at the gunpoint to be punished with all the cruelty possible than to see her agree with her opponents’ completely sensible requests after the immense damage was already done. Same as Revendreth: it’d make more sense to support a cunning ruler that uses an outsider champion as the means to wipe the board off the ineffective, stupid or outright traitorous subordinates than to support a revolution of vampires against vampires just because some of them affiliated themselves with someone branded as an enemy. Hence, the Spires of Ascension should have been the first raid.

Make Ardenweald a part of the Emerald Dream, and throw Bwonsamdi out of it. Let it be a place for the Wild Gods that got lost on their way to proper rebirth, something where the Nightmare or the Drust connections wouldn’t raise questions and get a chance to shine once more, up to the point of becoming the (mini) raid with Gorak Tul as the harbinger of doom coming to the Dream in Xavius’ stead.

Maldraxxus needs a complete overhaul, stylistic and sense-wise. An army that makes more collateral damage than use is a ridiculous concept, and its approach at creating soldiers can hold no criticism whatsoever and should have been reorganized ages ago. Also, compared to the malformed constructs common in there, any fresh necromancer can create better warriors out of mere skeletons and zombies, not to mention dedicated specialists like the mogu flesh-shapers.

Next, the story regarding Azeroth.

The matter of Rezan and Vol’jin should never have happened, whatsoever. Let the old devilsaur restore like all the others, it’d make much more sense than establishing the entire caste of Zandalari Prelates only to see their approach to the paladin class becoming obsolent for good.

Tyrande’s been done too dirty to even start with. Even the seasoned Horde loyalists were looking forward to seeing the banshee burn in the moonfire after how brutally she dealt with Nathanos, so giving the Night Warrior’s purpose a fitting end would have just been the right thing to do regardless of whether it’d get her killed or not. After all, story-wise Tyrande refused to even listen the peace proposals from the Horde as long as they did not start with bringing over Sylvanas’ head. Or, if stripping her of the Night Warrior’s gifts just had to be done, the reason be damned, then Maiev should have been there to pick up the banner and make a nice dichotomy for the Kaldorei: New Moon growing Amirdrassil and giving the people new hope while keeping the Black Moon around as the stuff of nightmares for the Horde.

Kel’Thuzad’s initial appearance would best be on Azeroth as the master of the Cult of the Damned. With how the cult initially grew on the poor, the mistreated and the desperate to the point of undeath looking like a better alternative, the Legion, the Fourth War and the devastation they brought might indeed have brought the people from all Azeroth to him. Especially when aided by the fallen Titan Keeper Helya, and only after their failure in our world they’d make the retreat to Maldraxxus to rebuild an army of the Scourge and be dealt with in the raid there. As of why he’d be so successful in the preaching, there’s a reason called…

the true final boss of the expansion. The only Old God that was killed for real by the Titans, Y’Shaarj. The destruction of his heart and the seven prime sha might well have sent them to the rest of his essence, allowing him to partially reform and start influencing Shadowlands first and Azeroth next. The negative emotions drained out of souls in both Revendreth and Bastion look and act too similar with the sha to be anything truly different, to begin with, and reaching of the critical mass during the recent wars was just bound to attract him to the people of Azeroth, especially if someone like Kel’Thuzad gives him a push from the other side.

As of Sylvanas… it hardly matters. Whether she’d be presented as full Illidan with her own goals being put above thousands of lives, a puppet in the hands of the greater evil or a monster in her own right, she should never have left it alive. One Kerrigan was one too many in the Blizzard storytelling to repeat it in an even worse fashion.

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I wouldn’t do it at all.
The phrase you can’t polish the results of a bodily emittance. Springs to mind.

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This is Shadowlands if Metzen wrote it and Danuser / Golden et al weren’t at the helm basically.

But honestly I am more of the opinion that Shadowlands and quite frankly BFA as we got it before it (again Danuserverse writing) should have been scrapped. Character mangling and assassination across the board and a complete lack of understanding of the fundamental forces that made Warcraft… Warcraft.

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Firstly, covenants do not exist as a system nor concept to constrain the narrative and cut players out from vital story content. The afterlife realms are dealt with in turn as patch content. There is no grand conspiracy of Demonic Burning Legion nathrezim. The Winter Queen is the first of the Fae, not Elune’s sister. There is no Zovaal, Torghast nor any mawsworn.

The Maw, if it must be a factor at all, should be a primordial thing consuming souls. A literal Maw, manifestation of hunger for souls. It is the source of the Devourers, having congealed from the first desperate souls without an afterlife to fulfill them. Oribos as an artificial filter (much larger, obviously Titan made Bespin City) exists to deny the beast and redirect the dead to proper afterlives. The Attendants are domesticated Devourers, pacified by sapience and The Purpose exists to temper them. This may be a problem as things break down.

The Venthyr are spiritual vampires whose existence depends upon draining souls. Their existence is not predicated on silly things like mortal “sin”, simply a product of wicked souls being funelled their way. Redeeming them is a necessity so as to feed back to the shadowlands what can be salvaged, the contrite being reborn as Venthyr themselves or judged anew.

The rebellion in the ranks is a matter of the system’s flaws; Venthyr reborn still bearing their old vices that they should have shed. Destructive greed, selfish ambitions and haughty pride produce a group of corrupt rebels seeking to overthrow the Sire; a harsh but ultimately reasonable king. First of their kind, he wandered the mountain until he overcame his prior failings by assisting new arrivals with his epiphanies and drinking their vices to free them from themselves. He is a figure more akin to a vampire buddha than a devil and the rebels do not understand this. They see a ruler who could do more, give them more and despise him for judging them as failures in clinging to what they’re owed! The player’s view of an ostensibly noble movement deteriorates quickly as a result until the Sire graciously invites them to court to deal with the upstarts and offer (most of) them redemption.

Revendreth is the realm closest to the Maw and this has consequences. As the Maw expands, Nathria is caught on the event horizon of a metaphysical black hole and Sire Denathrius rallies his allies to fight off the Devourer menace, the fight against a greater evil pitting parasite against parasite.

Bastion just isn’t what we got. The natural need for bearers of souls is filled by the val’kyr; noble beings who would never knowingly deliver the righteous fallen to the Maw! They do what they can to rescue doomed souls, Ben Howell among them, but the system chafes under the massive workload of displaced souls.

The true threat comes from within as an obvious solution is imagined by the First Forgelight Mikanikos; industrial revolution and automation! What follows is a struggle against the war machines of this mad visionary looking to make all duty, honour and good redundant as all things are to be left in the hands of cold, efficient machines to sort souls. Uther’s role in this is his fleeing from his immense guilt of having doomed Arthas. The automation will relieve all from the burden of such difficult choices. Freedom from choice is freedom from guilt.

Maldraxxus as a warrior’s heaven and military hub is a gigantic fortress; an allegedly impenetrable shield against the darkness. A training ground for ever improving warriors, an academy for strategists and a factory of war, its architecture resembles a floating concentric steampunk star fort where warriors are rebuilt and upgraded piece by piece into faster, stronger, better pneumatic cyborgs. Krexxus leads his warriors bravely but finds that overconfidence is his downfall. Never have any enemy set foot in the inner halls of Maldraxxus and none ever shall! The fortress becomes a prison as the Maw lays siege but the extent of the sprawling fortification serves as a distraction as the strategic genius Primus holds the line, The Maldraxxus tanking a whole deity. The Heroes are sent to seek the aid of unconventional tacticians in the Winter Queen’s court.

Situated on the distant edge of the shadowlands, The Ardenweald is an outgrowth of the Emerald Dream, as slumber lies all too close to death itself. Seemingly utopian in its relative isolation, it is threatened by incursions from the corrupted Dream. Beings of Old God and Demonic origin spill into the fae wilds in growing numbers as they are driven from the world of the living. The key is to find Balance, for one cannot cleanse one realm and expect the other to be unaffected. The Drought killing the land is a symptom of this Imbalance and both living and dead must cooperate to push out the crawling chaos.

Somethingsomething, reconcile the drust genocide better than I’d trust any blizzard writer to.

In the middle of this is Tyrande, seeing violence as an answer and refusing, even murderously sabotaging efforts to bring Horde druids to this sacred place to aid the Court. Thus she makes herself an outcast while searching for her quarry. She is urged to find her Balance as well but rejects it, leaving a despairing Shandris. No “balance” can even the scales and undo the death of the kaldorei people. There is only vengeance now. The climax has Malfurion enter to mediate. What matters more? Death or what might come? Surely life springs anew after a forest fire? It’s no use and Tyrande demands there be Death before anything can hope to regrow.

With the aid of fae trickery and unconventional use of portals, the vast beast that is the Maw is torn and has its tentacles clipped, retreating to its pit for a time.

This borrowed time ends quickly as the Maw rises to envelop and destroy Oribos entirely, looking to completely and irrevocably break the soul filter and drink freely to heal itself. This awakens the subdued Attendants who shed their robes in an animalistic feeding frenzy.

Sylvanas sought to end the broken system and strikes to prevent the Heroes from saving Oribos. A lengthy battle follows where the brokers yield strange stockpiles to aid the battle, at a reasonable fee, of course. Sylvanas is beaten and Tyrande tries to swoop in for a nighthold kill steal. Thus is the Banshee Queen beheaded but being a Banshee, she immediately rises from her ruined body as a spirit and incapacitates Tyrande with a wail for phase 2 where the banshee is sucked into The Maw.

Tyrande survives her curse but finds vengeance empty. No dead kaldorei will return from this and she ruined her relationships. She goes into exile much like Anduin does in The True Timeline.

The true enemy is what was hinted in BfA’s Horde campaign; Mueh’zala as the original God of Death, orchestrating the ascension of Sylvanas to empower himself with the deaths of another great war to break his chains. Mueh’zala is Death. The Primal Hunger for Life. Mueh’zala is The Maw in a form we mere mortals can understand it. With the aid of Vol’jin, Saurfang and Varian’s spirits, this avatar is slain as even Death may die and The Maw creature withers away, leaving the afterlife to prosper without the threat of being devoured.

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The only thing I can think of that’s even remotely achievable to ‘help’ SL would be to not have us go to these extremely important zones that hard-define the endpoint of so many views / beliefs. Having four total zones and saying souls end up in either of these for the most part felt incredibly limiting for the lore, and let’s not even talk about Zereth Mortis. I generally feel neither of the places we were allowed to set foot to, shoulda been visited, and instead we should have been exploring some sort of inbetween limbo that shares features with our living Azeroth and facets of the afterlife too, while being neither. Maybe it coulda been nice for a final one-off thing in the last raid of the expac to have one room vaguely letting us glimpse beyond for real, but that’s it.

…This is all a very roundabout way to agree with many others saying it shouldn’t have been made. Even my idea is changing it so fundamentally it might as well be another expac entirely, but since I feel it’s fundamentally bad, I can’t offer anything smarter.

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This.

For me, the ‘good timeline’ would be a total overhaul of BFA, not villain-batting Sylvanas, and instead be lead-up to the Old Gods expansion, as they break free from their weakened prison (thanks, Sargaras!) and the huge surge in violence, paranoia, fear and doubt is their whispers working overtime to make people Arms Race azerite and weaken the prison, and each other, further.

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Make the covenants’ stories and their zones lean into their theming even harder rather than being stand-ins for other in-universe factions, or use some of the scrapped ideas the covenants were known for.

Use the scrapped idea of the Venthyr having heavy involvement in Blood Magic rather than making it strawberry-flavored anima. Make it so the mortals that have shed the most blood for the sake of bloodthirst but can still be somewhat redeemed are sent there, and, fittingly, get turned into vampires. Heavy City of Enoch vibes from Vampire: The Masquerade.

Maldraxxus is full of high fantasy war moments, both good and bad. It is a terrifying and awestriking sight, all the time, everytime. Krexxus doesn’t die within the first questline. A story reminiscent of Fullmetal Alchemist (spoilers) with Kel’thuzad trying to turn all of Maldraxxus into a ritual circle to sacrifice for more power, and become the leader of whatever comes of it. He’s also trying to find a way to restore Arthas’ soul and bind it to his armor with the ‘help’ of the Runecarver; and his actions are the seed of many recent conflicts within the ranks of Maldraxxus. Oh, also, the entire soundtrack is metal.

Ardenweald is the realm of nature for the kind of nature that mortals like elves don’t care about. A more brutal, less idealistic sight of nature - but not without grace and beauty. They nurture the spirits of those who go beyond and belong in such ranks, or have been abandoned or treated unfairly by their gods. As such, the night elves of Teldrassil go here (were it not for the Maw), acknowledging that it was unjust for Elune to treat them in such away; same as the Night Warriors that became weapons that wrought nothing but destruction to themselves in the process.

Bastion is not the realm of duty, but the realm of caretakers and healers. Their main sight is to heal the recently arrived souls of that that burdens them, before having them go on to their afterlives. Those that cannot heal are offered a chance to join Bastion until they feel ready to depart, alongside those who do simply volunteer to help who also may leave at any point they wish.

The Mawsworn Venthyr storyline needs little restructuring. Denathrius, the bloodthirstiest of them all, makes a bargain with the Jailer. The Jailer gets a lot of that precious magical blood to give his realm some oomph, and in turn, Denathrius gets access to even more souls, striking the ‘but they can be redeemed though’ from his recruitment quota.

The Mawsworn Maldraxxus storyline is reflavoured as being Kel’thuzad and his followers who want to overthrow that which is Maldraxxus to a new realm more reminiscent of the Scourge, and turn Maldraxxus in its entirety into a floating necropolis to invade every other afterlife.

The Mawsworn Ardenweald storyline is just the drust, or something akin to the Unseelie Court of many other fantasy worlds. The Drust consider it a terrible injustice that they have been cast into such a realm and effectively deprived of their own would-be afterlife and want to sacrifice Ardenweald for their own (which they have begun to construct), and the Unseelie Court is just here for the violence and to manipulate the Drust into being their tools once they pull the rug from under them, vowing secret fealty to the Maw (but also wanting to double-cross them eventually) in silence.

The Mawsworn Kyrian storyline’s reflavouring might be a little trickier. I am not sure what could work other than Devos starting a movement amongst those being healed and some of the newer Kyrian that the Archon’s teachings are all hogwash and don’t actually help those afflicted by more grievous things, such as herself, which would be expanded upon, or Uther. Perhaps the Jailer spoke to her like he did to Sylvanas in the Sylvanas book, and fed her a few half-truths, half-lies about how he knows what to truly do with those that injured beyond repair.

The first patch I’d leave as is, but I’d make it the last patch, with Sylvanas being left awake to vocally talk about her storyline rather than dripfeed it to us, and having her roam the Maw for the same reasons as Canon Shadowlands, but without there being a patch-long hiccup between her capture and this. The second (first, in this case) patch is absolutely terrible story-wise no matter how you look at it. I would have it replaced with a Drust + Unseelie Court raid.

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Other posts have already answered the question in a better way than I’d have managed, so all I’ll say is that if I could make one rewrite to the story, it would be to write Devos as the protagonist of Bastion. Scrub out the nosedive into evil for the Forsworn and help them lead their rebellion against a fundamentally unjust system.

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‘Duty-above-all blinding people to their humanity/soul’ would have been a much better storyline for Bastion (as much as any SL arc could be better) and Devos was done so damn dirty :pensive:

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Take the Gnomes out of “De other Side” and make it a proper Troll afterlife.

No, you know what… Make it a full zone. Respect established Lore.

(Also allow Zovaal to tell us what he saw what made him turn evil)

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For the base answer of what Shadowlands as a place is: I would take inspiration from Brandon Sanderson by turning it into a place where souls go to for a very short time that is being inhabited by all sorts of magical people, before passing on to the real afterlife that is left unknown. Said place in his books also happens to be a sort of strange reflection of the real world, as the Shadowlands has been portrayed before its expansion. An important part of the magic system involves the ability for people who have been powerful magically to linger for longer or (in some cases) to even leave behind a “shadow” that has their memories and personality (it is left unknown whether these shadows are actually the soul of the person in question or just a copy while the real soul has moved on to the actual, unknown afterlife).

The greatest narrative, universe-breaking problem of Shadowlands has been the fact that it is THE afterlife, turning the WoW universe into grimdark setting, especially with destruction of souls and Maw for everyone. If we turn it into a temporary place where souls go (with time there being possibly even in seconds for those who wish to progress further), we fix this problem.

At the same time, we can use Jailer without changing him a lot, as someone who has been doing all that he can to capture souls, preventing them from moving to the afterlife, and using their energy to fuel his armies which would not be the souls themselves but rather the denizens of Shadowlands. The Jailer´s armies would be a great threat to the other denizens because they are constructs, something that others can´t replicate, fueled by souls that have been put into a coma of sorts (not tortured by the Demons of the Warp…right, sorry, wrong universe).

The stakes? If Jailer wins this war of conquest, he will be able to fully control the Shadowlands and just snag all the souls, depriving them of their real afterlife. This is why we need to help the other denizens of Shadowlands in their fight against him. What is his motive? Does one need greater motive than more power and getting to paint the map with the main color on their empire´s flag?

Secondly, by keeping Shadowlands as reflection of Azeroth, we can limit the scope to our planet only (we could add Outland for good measure, explain it by it getting connected to Azeroth if we wanted to get us some folks who died in Outland). ALL OF CREATION isn´t getting threatened, only our little corner of the universe.

And, a cool little benefit of it being shadow of Azeroth? The zones could be reworks of existing ones, with some cool flair. I don´t want to go too much into this as the base zones aren´t really something that important in the grand scheme of things. For all I care, the base design of “not-Light”, “not-Emerald Dream”, “not-Plaguelands” and “not-Castlevania” could work fine (alright, maybe without not-Plaguelands). After Alliance and Horde have spent their forces, it´s up to neutral organizations to take the mantle. Argent Crusade goes to not-Bastion, Ebon Blade goes to not-Revendreth, Cenarion Circle goes to not-Ardenweald, and we could get some zone for Earthen Ring, perhaps some plains and stuff. Kirin Tor can be saved for Dragonflight, as I´m assuming that´s going to happen still.

Jailer, the Eternal Ones, these guys also don´t need to be some second pantheon. They could simply be powerful beings (with no need to explain their origin) that emerged in the Shadowlands and lead various denizens of this plane of existence, each having their own small empire being threatened by Jailer. Our role as a player could be to convince them to finally begrudgingly work together and our Covenant might be actually important storywise as, even though we helped each of them, our choice to ally ourselves with a rival empire and in turn getting barred from their seat of power would make much more sense.

That´s the base story, now for the patches: I think getting a foothold in Jailer´s home zone with not-Korthia could work fine, ending with us destroying Jailer´s empire. Zereth Mortis we would have to completely scrap and instead, we would get reworked Icecrown.

And now we come to the last and the toughest part of this all: Sylvanas

Good thing is that the whole “this world is a prison” schtick has only started with Shadowlands cinematic and is up to change. Since Cata, she has been all about getting future for the Forsaken. However, there is one massive issue with undead: They are, by nature, parasitic. They cannot procreate naturally, they need the corpses of others. However, since overwhelming majority of people on Azeroth are unlikely to willingly become undead (this includes their allies), they can only achieve this by force. Which, in turn, will leave the area they conquer without living inhabitants that could provide new corpses.

I would put this problem as the core motivation for Sylvanas in BfA and Shadowlands. How does she try to solve it in BfA? She sees the signs of aggression from the Alliance, emergence of Azerite, and decides that the war is going to come sooner or later. She might as well start it and win it.

Her plan to occupy Teldrassil is recontextualized as a way for her to get new corpses that she could raise without her allies becoming her enemies. Night elves would still be allowed to live, but their dead bodies would become free game. And sure, elves live long, they don´t really die that often, but the same goes for undead. She didn´t need million new Forsaken, she only needed enough to replace the infrequent losses of Forsaken life.

Of course, this didn´t work out. So, what could the new plan be? Maybe the bodies could be created and used to house souls. Anduin can´t really stop you from raising someone when you don´t need to But, where to get the souls? This is what got her to research Shadowlands and get in contact with the Jailer. They make a pact: Sylvanas will fuel the war, sending more souls for Jailer to capture and in turn, once he takes over the Shadowlands, he will start sending her some back to help keep Forsaken a thing.

But, it goes sideways and Sylvanas, in a last-ditch effort, rips open a way into Shadowlands (not in Icecrown) to help the Jailer with her Loyalists and, eventually, get her side of the bargain. However, throughout 9.0 and 9.1 she realizes he has never intended to do so.

So, as we defeat Jailer at the end of the raid, she steps in, draining what is left of his power and opening another rift away from the Shadowlands, escaping us again. And where does she go?

Her allies won´t allow their dead to be raised. Her plan to create some form of sustainable system for undead creation failed, because her enemies wouldn´t just accept brutal occupation (and Horde probably wouldn´t be too happy about the idea either in the long run anyway). Her plan to get souls and create sustainable system without the need for conquest failed too. She is left without allies.

But, there is a power out there which she is familiar with. An army that could take over the whole world and allow her to enforce her will on everyone. An army that she will have complete control of. No more allies betraying her, no more weak servants. She would be able to create the future for the undead as masters of the world and, with draining of Jailer´s powers, now has a way to contest its master.

The final zone and raid would be rework of Icecrown, in the real world, after Sylvanas became Lich Queen. We need to stop her before she can fully take over the Scourge (because Helm of Domination would probably take some time to master).

The expansion ends with Sylvanas finally defeated. At the end of her life, she realizes she has become the same monster Arthas did. With her last breath, she uses the remaining power gained from Jailer to release the souls of Scourge undead into the afterlife, finally removing the need for there to be a Lich King and finishing what she has started over a decade ago: Freeing the undead from the Scourge. There will never have to be another Lich King ever again.

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It’s the end cinematic.
Your character wakes up in a cold sweat within a hut in Lordaeron.
You are not Jimmy Jenkins of the < N O O B K I L L A Z > Guild. Your name is Thrall. And you have changed your mind.

You rally the clans. Lordaeron must burn.

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World of Warcraft: Mankrik´s Wife Gets to Live