What is supposed to come? My theory is not void but some Galactus like being, look at theese devourers, they are kinda sus. And it makes sense as we see more advanced devourers in Zereth mortis. Whatever dimension they are coming from must contain some realy crazy ones.
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It’s not just the writers, though, it’s the work it seems to take in WoW’s engine to make narrative content happen, and the ressources they can allocate to that. They’d have to overthrow their entire development structure, basically. And for what? To try to chase games like FFXIV int the one thing they are clearly better at? That’s just a recipe for failure. WoW rose to prominence without the story focus of these games, and it needs to build on the strenghts it has instead of highlighting their own weaknesses. And the story has always been a weakness. Theworld-building lore hasn’t, and they should certainly still focus on that, but the story has.
No, there doesn’t have to be ONE story. There can be loads of them, like there were before. And some of them would suck, but some of them would be cool, and all of them would build the lore without pushing themselves into the spotlight.
No, you can’t get an inconsequential “main” story, if you didn’t have a “main” story. In Shadowlands everything is tied to one horribly bad story. If that was some side plot that either was some line of sidequests wasn’t particularly highlighted, or over in a patch, it wouldn’t matter half as much, but we were asked to focus on this crap for years. The “main story” concept is the reason why they wouldn’t do one patch in the shadowlands and the next somwhere in Azeroth, because that would be a “distraction”. And that’s the thinking tat needs to die.
And N’zoth and Zovaal don’t have a special place among WoW endbosses here. Most of them were pretty crappy. They didn’t even have big cinematics to show how crappy they were back then. I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now, because whomever is playing WoW for the story instead of the world can’t have seen a good story ever. It always sucked.
Yes, and that’s nothing but vague foreshadowing. They can easily drop that possible plotline for any amount of time they want without creating any contradiction. They could have set up a threat that was there now, and thus commited to following through with it. They didn’t. They chose to make it one that the Jailer thought would be releavant “an eternity” ago.
I just wish we would see some “normal” antagonists in wow not this strange grey skinned super-sayan from nowhere with motivations for his doings as non substantial and illogical as we have seen now in case of Jailer.
Whenever I think of a EVIL antagonist with a big E and actual depth I recall Sojourner from DND Erevis Całe trilogy… it had depth, it had malovence and actual evilness about him and build up that led to the confrontation of the hero with this antagonist was great.
For those who didn’t read those books…
After a great story of struggle of the main character against Sojourner actions, sacrifices that our hero had to do and victims that died during the story our hero finally meets up with this Uber-powerful wizard at the moment of Sojourners triumph to stop him.
And when our hero asks Sojourner Why all those victims, why the damage to the poeple and the world?
He is given the most beautifully Evil answer:
“Because I wanted to walk on a beach once more”
For me that was the crux of an Evil character.
Some goals don’t have to be grandoise or world changing, some can be petty or small but the story and path our heros do to stop the antagonist is what makes the story a great experience.
In case of this Jailer antagonist…and omg Sylvanas before him it’s pumping balloon and pumping and pumping… for actually well nothing substantial in the end. The story is filled to the brim with illogical decisions, powerful characters who seem to be suddenly idiots and not even thinking about all of the loose threads from previous expansions.
As others above said… wow writers should focus on smaller simple stories that live together in the world without the huge threat campaign which simply they don’t seem to know how to write or cannot implement into wow due to engine limitations
I remember coming to this forum some time during 9.0 I think, arguing the potential and the merit of the story, especially with regards to Sylvanas, and how it was all according to plan.
You’ll see! You’ll see! It’ll be great!
I gave Blizzard the benefit of the doubt and I think that was the right thing to do, because what’s the point of engaging with a story if you’re not hopeful about its quality?
But I was wrong. I’ve never been so wrong about where I think the story will go and where it actually went.
There are a lot of posters who owe me an “I told you so!”, but I think even the doomiest of doomsayers must have been a little shocked to see just how bad this ending was.
It’s not good for anyone when Blizzard manages to disappoint everyone.
I think the biggest story issue is that even though it looks like Blizzard are trying to “close the chapter”, then all this Shadowlands lore is not going to go away. That’s part of WoW now, and I don’t think that’s for the better.
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Im just gonna say shadowlands did the same team who killed nzoth in a patch with the most riddiculous ending possible, next expansion aint looking that promising and i will stay off from preordering from now on.
They have to work within the engine’s constraints obviously, however that does not excuse the terrible writing and non-existent structure. That doesn’t excuse the timing they choose to unveil information, that doesn’t excuse the gotcha see you next time nonsense they’ve been pulling.
This expansions has been mostly lore trivia. That’s worthless, in terms of actually getting people invested. It means absolutely nothing, when you’re not given a good reason to care. And including named characters to just be there is not gonna cut it.
The expansions are always sold with an unifying theme to them, which all the content must necessarily conform to and every single time they diverged from that it hurt the overall product significantly. The most damning example of it being obviously BfA, with it’s shift to cosmic nonsense burning through like 3 expansions worth of promissing ideas in the span of 2 patches, while leaving the core thematic to rot.
Not gonna say they’re blameless, because they could have turned it around at any point since Afrasiabi left, even if you subscribe to the malicious vendetta idea. Holding back like they’ve done recently shows that they’re insecure about actually trying to tell a story, which left us with a disjointed pile of lore trivia and lackluster paint by numbers disappointing wet fart finales.
Who is excusing anything? Quite the contrary. I’m saying it’s so bad that they should put it into the background as much as possible. WoW has a cool and very reactive combat system with polish that newer games have a hard time matching, they have great art, they have cool zones and peoples, and some good mindless action. They have years and years of content. They have tried out a lot of systems for about everything. And when WoW introduces a system like transmogg they usually do it better than most of the competition. They have quite a lot of strenghs that they can highlight. They don’t need to highlight the ugly stepchild that is their ongoing story, it won’t draw players and it will get some to turn away. It’s a losing strategy.
No it jhas mostly been teasing of grand reveals. Each time there was new content we were looking for the explanation of what was actually happening. Each time we were waiting to hear more about the Jailer, the Maw, Sylvanas, Mourneblades, the Nathrezim, or Kel’thuzad. Because everything was about that. They spent their time setting up mystery boxes which opend to reveal other mystery boxes. That was the story experience. One(!) story, one needlessly complicated mystery… and at the end, for those that didn’t give up in disgust before… a box of poop.
…why? It didn’t before, it doesn’t have to now. Sorry, but I have absolutely no idea where you’re coming from. No, Mechagon didn’t conform to the faction war theme at all, nor did N’zoth, to bring up the most recent examples. You don’t need more of a theme than the new landmass you are introducing, and you don’t need to stick to that, either.
…I have no idea how that is supposed to relate to what I’m talking about. I certainly didn’t advocate for rushing. I was advocating against making everything about one of them. They can have plot lines take decades for all I care, going step by step and building everything up sloooooowly. I just don’t want the game to be about them.
It’s not that I don’t agree it’s just that I have no faith in the writing team, Danuser’s behaviour on twitter and his abject denial of reality go to show that these people will ignore any kind of criticism of their work. I hope that they’re self aware enough to drop this whole thing but considering that Danusers pet character is Sylvanas, his self insert is Nathanos, etc. I don’t expect them too, I hope they do but the reality is their behaviour reminds me of narcissist in denial.
My hope is usually that capitalism finds a way. 
The story devs have often been defended with the observation that even they don’t have free reign over the story, and that they are often just executing what they have been told. Well… that could work in our favour as well, if the money guys and managers start to veto their worst impulses instead of indulging them, because they have (relative) losses to point to. And while we still largely have the same people within the story team’s leadership, we do know that there were recent changes in the company structure and management.
So… I’ll wait and see what April 19th brings, but before that not all my hope has died, yet… just most of it.
Well, we found out what Sylvannas meant by we’re all just prisoners and we have set ourselves free. Our short existence didn’t mean much, our choices mattered not in Eternity as we just became pawns of the Shadowlands upon Death.
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In the end we were explained what the machine of death behind necromancy and the LK was all about. Where all the Undead tech originated from. We got a taste of the fate of all living beings:
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The selfless, the heroic, the good and kind souls were brain washed to become defenders and paragons of virtues in a serene afterlife, while loosing who they were in the process. We fixed that. Now they can preserve what made them who they are.
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The cycle of nature, in Ardenweald was not allowing any souls there except those of plants, animals and animal gods ( Loa, etc. ) for their cycle of Rebirth. This changed, our night elves and future nature loving souls will have access to this afterlife ( what’s left of it ) Vol’jin is now a loa and will be reborn on Azeroth, the Loa of Kings.
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Maldraxxus, was sharpening the greatest warriors in existence, and more devious strategies, and warmongers into tools of war, that battled each other for eternity only to become better, while doing some secret ops all throughout the cosmos, but we’ll never find out what that was about. We cleansed out most of it of the evil power-hungry wrongdoers, and we gave it a taste of orcish honor, which will have an impact on its future.
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Revendreth, were all devious souls were trialed at an attempt to get them redeemed, only to be transformed in vampyrs, pardon me venthyrs that suck the life, pardon me anima, out of souls to nourish their new venthyr bodies, in a society of arrogant deviants, bent of redemption and control of the primal sins. We gave them a balance, as they had a out of control spiraling society that was no longer aligned with what it stood for.
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The Maw, where an eternity of suffering and decay awaited the most darkest souls that walked in existence, was purged of the Jailors monsters, but we will see if it will have a new Overseer/Jailer, perhaps one we never saw coming. The fate of all the Jailors armies and the souls trapped there still needs to be resolved right now.
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We found out what the dreadlords are, and who they actually served. They were meant to weaken all the factions of the cosmos, for Deaths to sneak in for final blow and dominate everything.
This expansion is not over yet, so… for those that saw the raid ending movies, I would not jump to conclusions regards its final end game. Zovaals motivation is pretty clear. The reasoning behind it is pretty obvious: he was the Arbitrer for milenia, he experienced all the lives of the mortals that came here, the knowledge he must have gathered, the insight on what was happening out there, with the Light, with the Void, with the Fel, with Nature, all that might have broken his programming made him decide to just take over everything, as the pattern was flawed. His plans came into fruition after a lot of time and effort, his fall was designed too, as it seems it was all part of a pattern, one the First ones which knew what will occur. Our simple presence in the Maw and Zereth Mortis was pre-planned by something beyond our comprehention. Makes you wonder…
The Sylvannas ark is not over yet. Arthas soul in the mournblade, might not be the entire soul fragement. Remember the crafting of the mournblade, and remember the sylvannas soul split being undone, the Jailor has a keep sake of soul fragments, but they are just fragments, not the entire soul.
While we rescued all souls we could find from the Maw, the ones that died at the burning of Teldrassil, remember there were far more victims of the Fourth war. What followed: the Siege of Lordaeron, Zandalar, Kul’Tiras, The Naga chapter, The old God chapter, they all had more casualties, souls that never reached their correct afterlife. It’s not far fetched to think we’ll have an end expansion patch to rescue them, and mend things, make things right. And find out what fate Sylvie will have.
There are many hero souls to be found and redeemed, including: Saurfang, Nathanos, ever I dare say Arthas (the light part of his soul), perhaps even Varian Wrynn.
These are all started stories that need closure, as we cast our sights towards the future of Warcraft.
And that was horrible and it utterly destroyed all the mystery and wonder about death, and removed all the fun speculations and intrigue from it. They should never had opened this Pandora’s Box…
It should be. She’s a horrible wreck of a character whose story is way past its expiry date. It’s time to let her go.
They really don’t. They should just be tossed into trash where they belong and never be mentioned again.
Taking the story to cosmic levels was the biggest mistake they could’ve made. And the damage done is irreparable at this point…
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Let’s face it, Blizzard at this point just wanted to get over this expansion and move on to the next. That’s why the Jailor was killed off (which honestly I saw coming from the moment they announced the expansion ), but the problem was they rushed through everything yet again just like they did with BfA and wasted the big faction war, Azshara and Nazjatar and Old gods.
I think what current Blizzard wants to do is move on from ALL the stories that old Blizzard wrote and created so they create the stories they want to tell. And not what they need to tell. But it doesn’t justify it. They could have told the stories better in a much simpler way but they decided to go for the difficult one.
Isn’t it fun that “yeah, it’s crap, but maybe next time” is the optimistic “copium”-explanation now?
It’s not. It’s simply the truth 100% unfortunately. They really had no idea how to tell the story. I will never agree with Blizzard that Legion Sylvanas is the same Sylvanas from BfA/Shadowlands.
Your mind is clearly blank, as an undead. You need to reconnect with creativity, and learn to enjoy things as they are, not as you want them to be. XXI life is not about being delivered things on a silver platter, its about enjoying art and storytelling in its form, and contribute to better it, like you should be bettering life around you as well mate.
Peaching, moaninig, complaining, being irational an unable to reason is the stuff of children, not yet matured up 
I do try to contribute to making the story better. My feedback is clear, and that’s that they need to keep the story consistent and not remove all the mystery from the setting. And they need to not let their personal bias come in the way of character developments.
I love creativity, but the funny thing about creativity is that it’s infinitely versatile, which means you can be creative while at the same time keeping the story good and consistent. Which Shadowlands failed to do.
If you find the Shadowlands story acceptable, I’m happy for you. But I don’t. I consider it to be horrible, and I hope that they’ll do better in the next expansion.
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