So, I have a few questions regarding Shadowlands Roleplay. To be precise, I was hoping to talk about the possible travel between Azeroth and the Shadowlands Lore wise.
Firstly, travel between Shadowlands can apparently be zone through the Ebons that are apparently able to help the living make travel over. Will this mean we will all be able to investigate the Shadowlands without being ‘Heroes of Azeroth’?
Looking at the story so far. I am not going to do any spoilers but those who have died previously, since apparently there has been a problem with ‘death’ should this be a case where our characters that have died over the years of roleplaying, will they be able to be played once more in this case? Will they be able to do the opposite of what the first question is and return to Azeroth?
Thirdly, is a general question. How will we set events around Shadowlands? I know this could be considered difficult until we actually are able to see how this all goes on. Although anyone got any plans?
To be honest, my plan is to avoid the realm of the Dead as far as possible IC
Simply can’t see RP alone/team wandering as living in the shadowlands and… killing things already dead? Studying death? Search for… heros? Past knowledge? Discover the horrible truth what waits you after death?
For… uhm… so you see my problem?
Honestly? I hope there is a way for regular Heroes, ones we play IC to venture to the Shadowlands. It is not going to be for everyone due to power, but could lead to interesting stories. So for the sake of potential I hope that getting to Shadowlands is going to be difficult - sparking adventure in of itself - but possible for those who want to risk their life and limb to commune with the dead and have power - reasonable amount of it - to do so.
In fairness, while Warcraft has always been a high fantasy universe, the fantasy setting of Shadowlands is so incredibly high and spectacular I’m not sure how you could fit any non-mega epic RP in there.
This is an entirely new problem. I never had a problem figuring out how to make reasonable RPs out of TBC, WOTLK or even Legion’s high power setting, but Shadowlands is a bit too fantastical if you can even believe it.
Sometimes it feels like Blizzard has no idea what the term ‘spectacle creep’ even means, and basically punched it through the roof with the Shadowlands expansion. And not in a good way.
It’s a high concept leap to be sure and it’s hard to tell where it goes. They built some leadup into the Horde Zandalar quests but can the setting emerge intact?
Contextually speaking, we’ve dealt with space travel, metaphysical alien invaders, time travel and as much rebranded Lovecraft as blizzard can legally be expected to get away with in a setting that’s a wild mix of different fantasies, sci-fi and steampunk. All that’s missing is an ambulatory kitchen sink raid boss but maybe that’s the Maw?
Coming from a D&D background, this isn’t too much. A vast setting gives opportunity even as it dilutes itself. Traversing the afterlife via the Outer Planes is a perfectly viable adventure but once this door is open you can’t really close it to satisfaction.
Let’s look at the time travel. Draenor was closed off, officially ending the diverging timeline and the unfortunate implications it presented. Alright, fine. It’s a possibility that had its own reality until it didn’t. The Shadowlands is a different matter as the afterlife itself or at least an infinite midway point between our reality and what’s beyond.
You don’t colonize that. You don’t return to it for a holiday. You don’t plant a faction flag in valhalla and recruit einherjar as an allied race. It’s all very self contained to the immediate priorities of the expansion itself. Once the veil between planes is broken, you don’t just close it either. There’s a lot that we don’t know yet but it must be handled with care.