What do you mean by this?
Xal was in the game in Legion, though trapped in the priest artifact. Not sure if she was in earlier than that, but obviously her character wasn’t active during shadowlands, if that is what you mean.
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If you want to argue that SL was somehow good or “at least parts of it where”, make a better argument than “Some people have next to no standards”. Some people enjoy the worst of TV shows and movies, that doesn’t make those shows and movies good by any metric.
Shadowlands was the worst expansion lore wise but I must admit a dirty secret: I enjoyed the first major patch.
The leveling zones were fun and the idea was new and engaging. The fact that it all went down the drain later, that’s another story.
To the contrary, the War Within is barely getting interesting now, at the end. It’s been boring all throughout.
We didn’t even have a 9.3…
Some Shadowland characters were interesting. Off the top of my head: Denathrius, that psychopathic fairy in Ardenweald, Ve’nari, the arena announcer in Maldraxxus, the broker that we fight in both Nathria and SotFO…
Xal’atath has existed since Legion as a weapon artifact for Shadow Priests with her ominous whispers, and there’s even a quest line in BFA where she acquires the void elf body.
They missed the mark on many things with Shadowlands due to troubled development. And we did get more grounded experience since: All of Dragonflight and the first 2 patches of TWW have been on Azeroth’s surface (or subsurface).
What? No they didn’t. In fact until Undermine 6 months ago the tone set by 9.0 has been consistent.
There were some good aspects in Shadowlands. For one, the Denathrius arc. Then there was also the Night Warrior arc which was cut midpoint and resolved in a cutscene since the Thros raid was cancelled. Then the entire issue of the Devourers and The Rift, the most interesting part lore-wise to have originated in Shadowlands, has been left in an unresolved limbo as well.
And since I see presence of Devourers in K’aresh, I have to ask myself what quest did I miss and haven’t found an explanation for their presence here.
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Why did you feel the need to tell me this? Nothing in SL worked and that is an objective fact, you could have liked it but it doesn’t change it. However that does not mean that TWW is better or worse than it. It has serious issues as well, one being that it’s a very “and then this happened” story telling (and I use that term very loosely). You are free to argue which 
smells worse than the other among yourselves, I’m out.
Ok, excuse me then. I thought this was a conversation.
I’ll see myself out too.
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If you say so. I am really tired of arguing these things and I have many many posts explaining why it doesn’t work and why it isn’t interesting. Especially the Night Warrior stuff.
You probably didn’t. Like I said TWW is a very “and then this happens” story.
“Xal’atath destroys Dalaran”
“And then we crash land on a random island”
“And then we fight the Nurubians that Xal’atath recruited”
“And then the dark plate thing gets damaged”
“And then we go to Goblin town”
“And then workers rights or something”
“And then the Etherials trick Gallywix”
“And then we go to outherspace”
“And then Shadowlands stuff”
“And then we are working with Xal’atath”
“And then…”
Its just random stuff. Sure Blizzard are trying to do some cause and effect.
“We go to stop Xal’atath, but she has Nerubians, however we manage to damage the dark soul or whatever its called, so she goes to Gallwyx in order to fix it”. However the “effects” seem very disconnected from the “causes” and seem random.
Many of the stuff indeed, but some do have an explanation.
For example, Dalaran didn’t randomly crash into Isle of Dorn. Xal’atath lured the Archmages of Dalaran to teleport the city above the Isle of Dorn where she made it crash land. But I don’t remember why it had to be there, maybe it’s tied to my next paragraph.
Xal’atath recruited Nerubians because she wanted to open the Coreway towards the middle of the planet, ie. towards the Worldsoul. And she succeeded, but for some reason we have stalled work on that. That’s where I thought the new troll race would play a role.
When Alleria broke the Dark Heart, that forced Xal’atath to change plans. She had to find a way to repair it. What isn’t explained in-game to the best of my knowledge is WHY she contacted Gallywix about that. One would assume there would exist a lot more “Dark Heart Savvy” races than Goblins. To me that’s the first major plothole of The War Within.
Now let’s forget why she went to Gallywix, she had her reasons. Gallywix needed help from people who know about Void stuff to fix it, and he enlisted Ethereals. How he managed to get them to help him or how the Shadowguard Ethereals knew that Gallywix had the broken Dark Heart so that they present themselves as helpers in order to steal it isn’t explained either in-game, that’s the 2nd plot hole. The fact that the Shadowguard Ethereals betrayed Gallywix does not need a precedent, many characters say “I’ll help you” and then backstab you for their own reasons. This forced Xal’atath to again change plans and steal the Dark Heart back from the Ethereals. Which means she has to hunt down the Shadowguard that has it, which means we’re here.
Now what also isn’t explained, is why Devourers are here. Either a questline is missing, or they are asset flips.
-=EDIT=-
This patch with K’aresh also closes an open unresolved issue with Ve’nari. We knew she was gathering stuff from Shadowlands and other places for her own reasons. We didn’t know what her reasons were. We now know, she wants to help rejuvenate K’aresh.
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K’aresh and Dimensius was foreshadowed all the way back in TBC alongside the Nexus King.
The Burning Crusade was a beloved expansion, set on the shattered world of Draenor — a place that’s anything but grounded in Azeroth.
Similarly, Argus and the Antoran Wastes, introduced in the final patch of Legion (an expansion that, in my opinion, was a bit overhyped), also took players far from Azeroth. Yet, players seemed generally happy with that experience.
So being away from Azeroth itself isn’t inherently problematic. After all, Orcs, Draenei, and Ethereals are essentially alien races to Azeroth, so fleshing out and exploring their backstories and homeworlds adds depth and variety to the Warcraft universe.
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When I came to new zone “Hello, the Maw zone”. 
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Big purple maw
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Accept that it’s part of the game, dry your eyes and continue (or not) to play.
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yep it was
SPEAK YOUR MIND DWARF! 
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The arrogance here is next level…
Firstly, I think you’ll find it’s an opinion, not an objective fact. It may be a popular opinion, but that doesn’t make it a fact.
Secondly, your same logic can be used to argue the opposite — you and others may not have liked Shadowlands, but that doesn’t change the reality that, for some, it was actually okay. It was a troubled expansion, sure, but it had it’s good moments.
I don’t think Shadowlands was as bad as many people like to claim. While a vocal chunk of the player base was absolutely losing it on the forums—mostly over covenant powers, gated content, and legendaries being tied to Torghast grinds, often blowing things way out of proportion—there was an equally silent chunk of players enjoying the new zones and dungeons, the covenant fantasy, and genuinely having fun with the expansion. Was it perfect? No. Could it have been better? Absolutely.
The whole “lore retcon” debacle always gets me. There have been subtle in-game hints about the Scourge and the death magic associated with it for a long time. One example that springs to mind is an NPC called Gymer in Zul’Drak during Wrath of the Lich King. He’s a titan-forged giant who referred to the Scourge’s death magic as “ancient death.” Considering the Scourge was, at that point, no older than about 20 years, calling it ancient seemed out of place—unless there’s a deeper, older force behind it, which Shadowlands explores.
Sylvanas working for the Jailer was definitely a risky narrative choice, but there was groundwork laid well before Shadowlands. After she took her own life by jumping off Icecrown Citadel—a place where the Jailer’s influence is strongest—her behavior changed noticeably. She began secretly ramping up Forsaken plague production and openly defied Garrosh’s orders.
What many players overlook is an in-game cutscene during a Cataclysm quest in the Western Plaguelands called The Reckoning (watch it on youtube), where we actually see Sylvanas using domination magic—dark chains and all. This was years before Shadowlands, but those tiny breadcrumbs were easy to miss because they were subtle and cryptic, not spelled out or shoved in your face.
Anyhow, back in 2012 after Mists of Pandaria launched, it was branded the worst expansion—or at least rivaled Cataclysm’s unpopular reputation. Now it’s hailed as an overlooked gem, and players are enjoying its content again over on Classic severs. The same goes for Warlords of Draenor—ask players which expansions are the worst and WoD will almost always come up, but there are more and more videos and discussions highlighting its good points, and that sentiment is slowly growing.
So yeah, give it another five years or so and people might start looking back at Shadowlands more favorably.
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The player engagement lorewise says a lot about the success of a story.
Realistically, the last time I saw the lore community alive was during Shadowlands.
Ever since DF that part of the game has been buried and forgotten.
It seems like stories that have shock-value or bring new and out of the box elements keep the playerbase interested.
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I didnt play SL when it was current , but my guess as to why a portion of people didn’t like it is because, as i came to find out myself recently , some of the coolest MOG/mounts options are blocked behind some of the most atrocious grinds in the game.
That and the fact that Sylvanas had plot armor the thickness of a Tiger tank armor plating.(I still hate her guts and what she did to the whole story, also not bias at all since im a DK)
Absolutely.
I’m one of the proponents who say that Shadowlands should be totally retconned (like, this was a dream of certain characters, but not the true afterlife), or completely ignored without any references to it, or Blizzard should continue the story of Warcraft from a previous point (like Legion). Otherwise, Shadowlands will continue to be the elephant in the room.
It’s not that there weren’t good stories in Shadowlands. Yes, there were certain good individual stories. But it changed Warcraft so profoundly, that some of us just cannot care about retail. I’ve switched to Classic and to other games.
Here’s why Shadowlands was bad:
- It’s good for a fictional setting to have mysteries. No need to explain everything.
Unfortunately, that’s the biggest sin of Warcraft ever since Legion. Blizzard has decided it needs to explain the whole cosmos. Thus the world became less mysterious and less intriguing. Remember, Half-life fans still wonder about the G-Man, his employers and why he can’t/won’t stop the Combine. Compare this to World of Warcraft - there are so few mysteries now that you just can’t care about the world in general…
- Explaining the afterlives is the worst possible idea.
This leads straight to point 2. Don’t explain the afterlives. Don’t do that. Ever. There’s no good reason to explain what happens after death. The reasons are so many. It trivializes death - you don’t just stop caring about the world, you stop caring about individual characters. It creates a rift between how you, as a player, experience the fictional world, and how the characters in the game experience the world. It trivializes the religions - before Shadowlands, World of Warcraft had complex religions, customs and beliefs. Now every religion is just wrong and every god is a robot.
- It added an additional layer to the story and completely rewrote Warcraft 3.
The story of Warcraft 3 is sacred to many players. Don’t touch that. It was an awesome story - starting with the demonic corruption of the orcs, the Burning legion, the corruption of Ner’Zhul, the creation of the Lich King and the subsequent corruption of Arthas.
Now you have a whole new layer - oh, but it was the Jailer all the time, and the dreadlords were actually servants of Denathrius, thus the Jailer… The plan then was for Ner’zhul who’s a Jailer servant to corrupt Arthas, so he could attack the Jailer’s servants. Then you have Sylvanas - her previous story was about vengeance against Arthas… but suddenly she has absolutely no problem to work together with the Jailer who created Arthas…
So you see, the story is now a huge mess and you can’t make a sense of anything here… I can’t care about such story, I can’t love such story.
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Good points there and I think many share your sentiment.
Look, the way I see it, they went far too deep into the cosmic drama.
We care about relatable stories that take us home. We care about characters that have been part of our fantasy world for 2 decades.
There has to be depth and emotional maturity when writing a good story, be it fantasy or something else.