I’m not Alliance, I’m just a WoW player who is following the story as it develops. In which, yes, the Alliance often got atrocities committed upon, while the side committing said atrocities always seems to not be held responsible for it, because “We just kill that one evil Warchief and everything is fine and dandy”.
The only thing I’m a “victim” of here is being subjected to bad writing and the forced status quo to facilitate inter-faction rivalry, and apparently, divide the player base.
Yeah, but that doesn’t really mean anything - apropos the Saurfang example. Was he tried and judged for the genocides he was part of throughout his life? No, he just got a “hero’s death” and been made into a martyr to some.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s not “being held responsible”. And again, this is not the Horde’s fault, it’s Blizzard’s fault. Just killing off characters is worthless if you make their death completely detached from their life.
And again, the Saurfang from 10 years ago would have told Sylvanas to shove it when she gave that order, and rallied the Horde on the “honorable” side.
Oh well, WoW always approached the moral of the story with a “if it’s a good lesson to learn once, it’s a better lesson to learn twice!”-attitude…
I agree with you. That’s it. The retcons are terrible bad and the Shadowlands are cartoonish, not in a good way though.
The really sad thing is you can’t ignore it. No matter what happens it’s the afterlife after all.
What really irks me is that this should NOT be the shadowlands. Prior to this expansions announcement and development the shadowlands was supposed to be azeroth but in death realm just as emerald dream is azeroth in the life realm.
Absolutely none of what we have been given is anything like what the shadowlands should have been like.
Like every time you died and had to corpse run that was you traveling through the shadowlands. That’s why spirit healers are dotted around the place, they were bridge between both realms.
They even had to change the death knights wraith walk description because it no longer made sense with their shadowlands retcon.
The entire thing is just completely retconned and made up to flesh out an expansion continent, you could have named this expansion to something else entirely and said it was a brand new planet in the nether like outlands and barely ANYTHING other than the actual word shadowlands would really need to be changed.
Time to go back to the books. I don’t think we are going to see any good craftsmanship from Blizzard in the future.
There are implications that there’s endless Shadowlands; an endless amount of sub-realms and covenants. The only assumption/confirmation we’d need now is that the four covenants we’re introduced to are the Azeroth-bound ones. That would also explain why we can’t find characters like Thal’kiel’s wakeners or Velen’s wife in the Shadowlands (as they died on Argus).
I get where you’re coming from, though. Strange we haven’t seen Aldratchi in the Shadowlands.
He was imprisoned for decades in a camp for his part in the Orc-Invasion, and his part in the burning of teldrassil was achieved by Sylvanas’ guile, and he basically gave himself up to Judgement in the next battle.
But since he had no willing part in the Burning, the Alliance decided to use his disdain for Sylvanas against her, and for themselves.
Ps. Saurfang even tried to stop the burning of Teldrassil, so according to even current Rules if war he would be innocent.
Playing the questlines feels like swimming in sauerkraut.
I cant wait for the epic and unique story of Sylvanas offering us some plot-device to weaken Jailor so we can zap him with some secret laser weapon.
What do you mean this is boring and already happened 2-3 times in former expansions traitor?! Dragon Soul was an epic adventure and Nyalotha had masterpiece writing!1
I understand some of the frustration, and I had personally a lot of apprehension regarding the disconnection with the usual Azerothian storylines. On the other hand, there is also the argument that many zones seem to be just updated versions of what we already had (Ardenweald and Emerald Dream, Maldraxus and the Scourge…)
In any case, just a personal feeling here:
To me, it feels like Blizzard has tried to give us the first major step into the cosmic war that is to come while still retaining some of the Azeroth roots.
I had fun going through the main storyline (except the intro - big lol), giving a glimpse of all zones and covenants, and then going deeper with the covenant campaigns. Being able to explore each covenant and their culture, and steadily seeing how they interact with the others has been quite fun imo. 9.0 for me has really tied my character with the Shadowlands, and I am now ready to see how things will be further developed. Building the SL based on what we already knew is a gigantic task and I am not against some retcons as long as the story remains interesting: having the Nathrezim originating from the SL and acting as spies in the Burning Legion? Why not, makes for some cool intrigues.
If anything, I would actually like to see less of Thrall/Baine/Jaina and more of Bolvar and SL-specific thingies, our usual leaders really feel out of place here.
And so what if this is self-contained and we will not see the SL-specific characters later on? I’ve come to enjoy my break from Azeroth more than I thought I would (and enjoying even more levelling alts for Azeroth feels by choosing which stories I want to get invested in) and I just hope the Sylvanas/Jailer/Anduin plot they have in mind will not ruin the exploration of a new realm that SL is for me.
Plus, these characters will most likely come back (or so I hope) for the cosmic war that is to come…
Please no. Not that kind of power creep. What’s next? The Jailer was a mere pawn in a greater war and was just manipulated by the true villain? And that one was manipulated by the true true villain while being a mere pawn in the true greater war? And so on and so forth, ad nauseam?
It would have been a lot more feasible to, if they wanted to make a self-contained new story that breaks with the old Warcraft legacy to…well, to break with the old Warcraft legacy. Not to just bring it into the next world, while powering up the “incoming apocalypse” scale. That just ends up with you writing yourself into a corner in the end.
Instead of having the fate of the Shadowlands inseparably tied to whatever the major players of Azeroth do, it could have been a brave new frontier, with its own conflicts, its own troubles, and its own history. Rather than us just busting in and “deciding its fate”, we could take on the role of frontier explorers.
But as I said in a different thread, once you start the power creep and just raising stakes again and again, it’s really hard to stop…
I may be wrong, but it feels like there are limits to that imo (hopefully though): there are 6 cosmic forces, and some of them have definite leaders (Sargeras with the Fel - and if his plans come to fruition, the Jailer for Death). Since they all more-or-less know about the other forces, it makes sense for them to put spokes in their wheels on such grand scales that we on Azeroth suffer from their actions and realise only much later what were the original causes.
If you think about it, Nerzhul as Lich King was a tool used by Sargeras for his own Fel purposes. And if you think about it, the Nathrezim, providing the tools to create the Lich King, being actually working for Death all along (if confirmed) makes sense too. I agree that none of that was developed back in WC3, but as far as retcons go, it does not sound illogical
I agree that it feels like we are being conned by the devs because it takes >10 freaking years for us to suddenly hear about it.
I am not sure this is “powering up the incoming apocalypse” so much as to introduce one of its players - Death. With Legion, we covered largely the Fel and Order, while uncovering bits and pieces of Light and Void. We already knew about Life. Now we have officially heard of them all and when the cosmic events will have its own expansion, we will be familiar with all forces and their heralds.
This “powering up” feeling comes from the Jailor’s schemes and machinations that make Arthas and his Scourge meaningless. But to me it feels like it just puts it on the same level as Nerzhul’s Scourge, being used by the Fel.
So yes, I am not one to endorse power creeping; but if there are limits (and I hope that this is where it stops), I’m fine with it.
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