Another “universe” we travel to that ultimately don’t mean anything. We meet a few WoW characters but for the rest, not even the concept of death we were familiar with seems present in the Shadowlands, which is a huge, huge failure in my opinion of the writers who don’t seem to be consistent and just invent new stuff as they see please… and go back and rewrite WoW or retcon stuff.
I don’t feel like it’s a Warcraft game… But I haven’t been feeling like that like a long time, ever since they tell storylines through NPC’s and scripted events. I feel like WoW is about exploration and adventure and putting a story on rollercoasters doesn’t work in an MMORPG. Leave the freedom to the player I say.
Now I don’t want to drift off.
What concept of death is present in Shadowlands? I must’ve missed something but never, not once do we see a reference towards Shamanism, Spiritwalkers, Ancestors, etc. We know there are “other realms” but I feel like that’s just a lazy way of the writers to not include stuff that was established, but rather force their new stuff they came up with.
It’s all the time gating, so that you don’t even remember the earlier snippets, from a few months ago, a story that you forget in 15 min’s.
Not to mention, SL was so buggy in the beginning, that you could even lose those, important in game cutscenes, while leveling.
They try to stretch the minimum amount of lore that we got, to last months.
The pathetic end game (cough, cough) “content” of the covenant campaign, is something that you could probably do in 2-3 hours, the same amount of time, that it took you to do, 2 daily quest hubs in past xpacks.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the maw and torghast best engame content evah!!
Wod actually brought some much needed backstory to draenor aswell as greatly expanding the lore on orcs / draenei / arrakoa.
Shadowlands on the other hand, barely any relation to azeroth the primary focus of world of warcraft not to mention its hard to be invested in the story at all unless you like sylvanas and this cosmology direction they seem to be heading in
I am still stuck on 23 renown on my main simply because it’s so boring to do… But I’m forced to reach 30 someway or another to unlock the rest of the “tier tree” in the covenant
I thought it was extremely rushed for that to hold some relevance… Orgrim and the 2nd Doomhammer being a plothole for example…
Kinda a shame to some other degrees, yeah. Makes you think what the point is behind the mystery of life after death through the use of different religious methods are if they all, in the end, are destined to get decided by a robot… thingy as to where they go.
Ah well. Guess it’s all a big set-up for something even bigger. I… I guess?
Again, it is another form of poor storytelling that doesn’t really expand… much. In fact, it does the opposite and oversimplifies quite a lot of things that are fantastically… well fantasy.
If you want more telltale signs, you can look at it this way: Most of the engagement people have with Shadowlands is derived from those story elements that are tied to plots outside of it (i.e. Sylvanas arch).
The Jailer, or the covenant issues, are plot hooks that do not create half the interest said stories have.
And the further the plot distances from it, the less players will actually care about the game from a story angle.
Honestly, I don’t know what will people talk about once Sylvanas is gone.
The rest of the big bads will probably fade into obscurity, much like it happened with the Titan Argus, or even Nzoth (examples of this high fantasy theme that felt as an afterthought to the story bits people cared about, regardless of the grandeur Blizzard tried to give them).
I prefer the bland nonsense of a WoD 2.0 to the offensive nonsense of a Faction War X.0, but that’s just me. But I’m not gonna deny that this feels more like WoD than anything else, starting with the “going on a suicide mission to another world to stop the baddie that started the last faction war”-thing…
Honestly I think WoD already went too far with “It’s alternate timeline… and it’s 30 in the past as well !”, it feels hyperspecific and superficial to say the least and imo stuff like alternate timelines (and afterlife…) shouldn’t be dabbled in since it adds so much confusion to the lore.
Shadowlands however… now that’s something else.
I feel like thsi was never going to do it justice from getgo, they can’t possibly account for every possible afterlife that exists in WoW lore. They at one hand have several religions that are real and at the same time give us mostly universal afterlife (which by the way isn’t even very pleasant afterlife anyway). And I am not saying it as defense, it’s just, time travel/alternate universes/afterlifes are concepts that are really dangerous to play with and will end up dissapointing.
Honestly at least WoD felt bit warcraft-y still (even if it was bad it still gave that vibe, xpacs afterwards less and less) but yeah afterlife is hard to recreate, and I feel wow lore should “ground” itself a bit again, not saying space is bad but in general it is devolving into something that seldom resembles warcraft anymore.
I get that it’s hard and warcraft lore definetly needs to expand but these huge extraterestial conspiracies and everything being linked to Argus and Old gods, that’s not good writing and that’s not good way to continue warcraft story imo
I for one am actually more excited about what we might find once we “return” to azeroth - its going to be akin to cataclysm 2.0 where the world has changed, not geographically, but nationally.
Maybe we’ll finally have a restored gilneas, a completed light’s hope chapel and westfall keep, maybe even a restored Stratholme?
As you can tell, I’m far more interested in “home” than I am with whatever shenanigans are taking place in the afterlife.
I’m also an alliance player so I dont even know what Horde equivalents to the above there are for us to expect.
As a horde player I feel exactly the same. Can’t wait for Shadowlands to be over and return to the place I really care for and see what happened to it in our absence.
Same for me. Shadowlands is doing nothing for me and I’m loocking forward to it’s end.
I’m worried though about what will be next.
I hope we will see changes, but I wouldn’t expect anything before a new expansion. Even if there will be changes, I can see it implemented as only something like:
Lightbound NPCs are now invading in one or two zones and Turalyon is supporting them.
No really large changes to the world. Perhaps something like they did in WoD during the invasion from the Iron Horde
With the marauding Scourge, Uther, Turalyon, Calia, Alexandros, Kel’Thuzad, Bolvar and probably Arthas around, the heavily hinted Scarlet Brotherhood and their supposed heir to the throne, and the Forsaken storyline that has been left hanging and kinda deliberately kept from any contact with Maldraxxus, I still maintain that a Lordaeron-based patch is very possible during Shadowlands.
This could be possible.
I think they would use the Scatlet at the same time something is happening in Stormwind, or with the Alliance.
I wouldn’t be surprized if this will become a plit point later down the line. But I’m learning also for this more to the next expansion. I would prefer it earlier though.
best engame content evah!!