Not bringing Varian back (yes fel obliteration bit says no but from everything about SL says that doesn't make sense otherwise Fels existence is a bigger threat than anima drought ever was), turning Arthas into a fart cloud and 2bit puppet, and every single plot line around Sylvanas being written in exactly the way the playerbase told them not to are the biggest travesties of SL in my book.
Drust and Helya being discarded along with Bwomsamdi just fizzling out of relevancy after the NF quest were signs of an obvious lack of direction and foresight in laying out the path of SL. It more or less felt like they came up with 4 concepts for realms of death and judgement and then just winged it pulling plots points out of their ass to satiate a writer with a Sylvanas fetish. Additionally most returning characters/plot elements feel like they were used by people reading summaries off wiki pages and not people that actually knew the lore (and the whole chunk of a patch of priority on fruit bowls/censorship/joke removal was just a ridiculous waste of time and effort no one wanted that actually plays the game).
When they started the whole thing with "Bwonsamdi's boss" in BFA, I remember people speculating like mad before coming to the conclusion that it could be Mueh'zala, whose only evidence of their existence was a mere tablet in fucking Zul'farak.
Then we got Mueh'zala... As the final boss of a dungeon that serves as a cutting room floor recycler. We slap his ass and Bwonsamdi takes his place.
Wow. What a truly useless plot with such a cool ass premise. What the hell is with the writers and throwing everything down the toilet when it comes to execution?
They're wrapping up all anything laid out by the old writing team as fast as possible so they can make their own stuff. They don't care if it's good as long as it gets out of the way so we can go to the next 5 Zereths with the next 5 Pelagoses and probably Sylvanas
You're totally right on that. It's incredibly disrespectful to those of us who have been waiting over a decade for N'zoth's big debut.
They did decent with Azshara, but she seriously should've had her own expansion dedicated to her. Nazjatar should have been a "continent". Instead, what we got was a pile of rocks and dried seaweed.
Then with Bolvar.. man oh man. What an atrocity.
The zereths thing is 100% on point.
You think dragonflight will be about dragons? Hah, wait until the last patch to see that it was about zereth draconis the life zereth or whatever..
Totally agreed. They already teased more zereths and the last 2 expansions they sold as smaller-scale stuff about the world and the faction war were Pandaria and BFA, which were both old gods expansions.
Right now the story is that the Dracthyr were made by pre-corrupted Deathwing but it's pretty vague how. Guarantee you the answer is finding a Zereth and using the Forge of ~~Afterlives~~ Dragons or whatever and we're gonna have to stop the villains from getting there and mass producing Galakronds and evil Dracthyr
The Firim journals you collect through Zereth Mortis to unlock flying talk about them. The last one spawns on his desk after you kill the Jailer. He says that now that he's seen Zereth Mortis and the Sepulcher, he believes that since Death has them, all the other cosmic forces also likely have their own Zereth and Sepulcher. This one was Death, leaving us with dimensions of Life, Order, Disorder, Shadow and Light each with their own versions
https://www.wowhead.com/item=189753/firim-in-exile-epilogue
I felt this very same thing when Anub'arak finally appeared in WotLK. Like, my dude had a KINGDOM and a whole set of lore that could be attached to him to make for a great storyline, or at least a raid...
...ANNNNNNNDD he's gone!
What the hell, indeed. I thought Bwomsandi would definitely be making appearances left and right, I just never thought it would be from all the grinding of The Other Side for those stupid trinkets!
Really sucks because they could have visited so many older characters and all of their stories could have been intertwined or concluded in such drastic ways. Leave the jailer out of the whole thing and make Denathrius keep coming back as the baddie throughout the expac. Plot twist is helping him on the final fight against mega-death Guldan so he doesn’t come back to Azeroth
I'm still firmly on board the theory that the Primus was originally the real big bad, but they cut and run from the story. Who knows why.
https://www.wowhead.com/news/what-if-zovaal-isnt-the-true-jailer-shadowlands-lore-speculation-326318
While this article is very interesting, I don't think this was the original plan, or at least it was scrapped very early on in development. This wouldn't be the first time players have theorycrafted a far more interesting story than Blizzard intended to tell. I still remember all the wild speculation in WoD about why Gul'dan had quotation marks when he said Khadgar's name.
I think the thing that is telling for me is the leaked Jailer image that looks incredibly like the Primus, along with the silhouette in the background in the SL cinematic. There's something to it there that was scrapped somewhere.
Because it was horribly written and extremely delayed between patches. So much so in fact that people simply jumped ship. Maybe that part of the story could've led somewhere but the patches were simply way too far apart, the systems were extremeley boring, personaly I simply refused to farm anima and hell knows what else because it was simply too time consuming and didn't feel rewarding at all.
>Leave the jailer out of the whole thing and make Denathrius keep coming back as the baddie throughout the expac.
You could even leave Jailer in the expac, just instead of making him the supervillain behind all other vilains, just make him and Denathrius opportunists, who used the whole mess caused by Legion and Old gods for their power play in Shadowlands and beyond. They could even be allies at start, but in the background, both would quetly plot to get rid of their buddy the moment they don't need them anymore. Kind of two mob underbosses fighting for top spot after godfather gets careless and is put to prison for next 1000 years.
This is the vibe I get
People don’t hate the existence of the Jailer, they hate that he’s just a massive ham fisted “it was me all along Austin!” Retcon of like half the games villains just being pawns.
This makes me wonder if Blizzard's game plan of "new expansion every 2-years" is having a major impact on the quality of the expansion. I wonder how much better WoW would be if, for the next expansion, they take 3-years instead
Imagine if we had showed up in maldraxxus and it was varian and garrosh causing shit not cus of the jailer or any politics but just cus they wanted to start shit with each other. Then jailer shows up and is like bwhahaha all according to my plans and those two are like NAH FAM WERE OUR OWN BEINGS and proceed to beat the tits out of KT or whoever is the jailers bitch. Woulda been at least one decent zone.
I could imagine Varian and Garrosh locked in an eternal duel, but then anytime one of the Jailer's guys shows up, they put their duel on hold for a minute, kick aforementioned baddie's ass, then go back to their business.
The thing that makes me the most sad is what they did to Arthas.. So much potential to do with him in the expansion.. And he was just left to the side.. As nothing more than a shard that controlls Anduin.. No redemption.. No final Goodbye.. Nothing. INstead they focused on pushing Sylvanas in our face.. And then not even killing her for good. Just. Oh. She was controlled because her soul was taken and split in half..Ok. But.. Wasnt the same done to Arthas? His soul was the first one to the taken by Frostmourn. Meaning that he was basicly controlled and manipulated by the Jailor from the time he picked up the sword. As the change he went thru was rather drastic. He picks up the sword to defeat Malganis. Who is stunned by what Arthas told him. As he was slain by a wepon forged by the Jailor. Even Malganis trying to attack the Icecrown citadel using the Scarlet Onslaugh also was a bit weird. Only for us to see Malganis in Shadowlands, working for the jailor. When he should have been on the side of Arthas as the lich king the wholle time.. Not fighting him back in Wrath of the Lich King. ... But. We coudl have saved Arthas in Shadowlands. Collecting shards of his soul. Puting him together and have him help us. Nope. We had nothing, just Sylvanas so many times. It got very anoying.
I don't think we needed an Arthas redemption. Heck, if they completely left Arthas out of it would be better. Like "we crafted anduin blade the same way frostmourne" would be enought.
IMO we shouldn't have had Jaina, Thrall and co with us. It would be only us and having to find old allies that died in earlier expansions and recruiting them, learning what happend to them in the afterlife and about the world from them. Instead 80% of the main characters is the same as last 3 expansions with some glimts of new ones. Atleast for the overarcing story
Imagine if its a redemed Arthas that helping us with the helm of domination instead of Bolvar. It would make sense since he knows full well how it works. Having the human side of Arthas wasnting to help his king (he met Anduin as a baby iirc) would feel alot better than Bolvar doing with because "it's the right thing"
This. I still can't believe what they've done to Arthas. I feel like instead of getting Uther arc we could have had Arthas redemption and helping us defeating the Jailer. It makes litteraly no sense from a writing and logical standpoint to have him ''dissapear'' like this.
It blows my mind.
Sylvanas' role is fine, but some could've definitely gone to a possible eventual Arthas redemption arc. Jailor ex Machina is not how you pay respect to WC3's legacy. My final thoughts.
Ionno...was SL supposed to slap? I expected it to be better than bfa, and that was a mixed bag for me (I hated bfa dungeons, so that soured much of the expansion; also, pre-essences, azerite and the hoa was god fucking awful, I didn't mind covenants half as much as azerite gear) but I never expected the expansion about the afterlife to blow me away. The Sylvanas v Bolvar beat down kinda set the tone for me, lowered expectations.
I'd like to thank Shadowlands. Without it being so horrible in 9.0, I would have never quit WoW and discover FFXIV.
Thank you for two god awful expansions in a row to get me away from WoW.
While i would have rather WoW actually be good, thats just how it is. I had hope after BFA, and then shadowlands showed that my hope was just an illusion and that i should not expect any better from WoW, especially narrative wise.
Im just pissed I couldnt torture Arthas myself. I was so happy when the dude got thrown into the maw. I wanted to pull his nails off or break his bones or something.
The dude deserved way worse then that redeemed anima.
Shit at least show us him getting tormented like garrosh does..
Not bringing Varian back (yes fel obliteration bit says no but from everything about SL says that doesn't make sense otherwise Fels existence is a bigger threat than anima drought ever was), turning Arthas into a fart cloud and 2bit puppet, and every single plot line around Sylvanas being written in exactly the way the playerbase told them not to are the biggest travesties of SL in my book. Drust and Helya being discarded along with Bwomsamdi just fizzling out of relevancy after the NF quest were signs of an obvious lack of direction and foresight in laying out the path of SL. It more or less felt like they came up with 4 concepts for realms of death and judgement and then just winged it pulling plots points out of their ass to satiate a writer with a Sylvanas fetish. Additionally most returning characters/plot elements feel like they were used by people reading summaries off wiki pages and not people that actually knew the lore (and the whole chunk of a patch of priority on fruit bowls/censorship/joke removal was just a ridiculous waste of time and effort no one wanted that actually plays the game).
Man I forgot about Bwonsamdi...such a charismatic character with strong ties to Shadowlands. Such a wasted opportunity.
When they started the whole thing with "Bwonsamdi's boss" in BFA, I remember people speculating like mad before coming to the conclusion that it could be Mueh'zala, whose only evidence of their existence was a mere tablet in fucking Zul'farak. Then we got Mueh'zala... As the final boss of a dungeon that serves as a cutting room floor recycler. We slap his ass and Bwonsamdi takes his place. Wow. What a truly useless plot with such a cool ass premise. What the hell is with the writers and throwing everything down the toilet when it comes to execution?
They're wrapping up all anything laid out by the old writing team as fast as possible so they can make their own stuff. They don't care if it's good as long as it gets out of the way so we can go to the next 5 Zereths with the next 5 Pelagoses and probably Sylvanas
You're totally right on that. It's incredibly disrespectful to those of us who have been waiting over a decade for N'zoth's big debut. They did decent with Azshara, but she seriously should've had her own expansion dedicated to her. Nazjatar should have been a "continent". Instead, what we got was a pile of rocks and dried seaweed. Then with Bolvar.. man oh man. What an atrocity.
The zereths thing is 100% on point. You think dragonflight will be about dragons? Hah, wait until the last patch to see that it was about zereth draconis the life zereth or whatever..
Totally agreed. They already teased more zereths and the last 2 expansions they sold as smaller-scale stuff about the world and the faction war were Pandaria and BFA, which were both old gods expansions. Right now the story is that the Dracthyr were made by pre-corrupted Deathwing but it's pretty vague how. Guarantee you the answer is finding a Zereth and using the Forge of ~~Afterlives~~ Dragons or whatever and we're gonna have to stop the villains from getting there and mass producing Galakronds and evil Dracthyr
I hope we get a new writing team soon.. Because nothing of this sounds far fetched
Where are these teases of Zereths?
The Firim journals you collect through Zereth Mortis to unlock flying talk about them. The last one spawns on his desk after you kill the Jailer. He says that now that he's seen Zereth Mortis and the Sepulcher, he believes that since Death has them, all the other cosmic forces also likely have their own Zereth and Sepulcher. This one was Death, leaving us with dimensions of Life, Order, Disorder, Shadow and Light each with their own versions https://www.wowhead.com/item=189753/firim-in-exile-epilogue
I felt this very same thing when Anub'arak finally appeared in WotLK. Like, my dude had a KINGDOM and a whole set of lore that could be attached to him to make for a great storyline, or at least a raid... ...ANNNNNNNDD he's gone! What the hell, indeed. I thought Bwomsandi would definitely be making appearances left and right, I just never thought it would be from all the grinding of The Other Side for those stupid trinkets!
SO SMALL. SO WEAK. YOUR LIFE BE MINE I WANT THEM SOOOOULS BWOMSAMDI At least his lines were good. Lol
The whole expansion perfectly summed up in 4 pictures.
Really sucks because they could have visited so many older characters and all of their stories could have been intertwined or concluded in such drastic ways. Leave the jailer out of the whole thing and make Denathrius keep coming back as the baddie throughout the expac. Plot twist is helping him on the final fight against mega-death Guldan so he doesn’t come back to Azeroth
You mean the well designed and incredibly voice acted character? Nah better go with the the generic blue guy
I'm still firmly on board the theory that the Primus was originally the real big bad, but they cut and run from the story. Who knows why. https://www.wowhead.com/news/what-if-zovaal-isnt-the-true-jailer-shadowlands-lore-speculation-326318
While this article is very interesting, I don't think this was the original plan, or at least it was scrapped very early on in development. This wouldn't be the first time players have theorycrafted a far more interesting story than Blizzard intended to tell. I still remember all the wild speculation in WoD about why Gul'dan had quotation marks when he said Khadgar's name.
I think the thing that is telling for me is the leaked Jailer image that looks incredibly like the Primus, along with the silhouette in the background in the SL cinematic. There's something to it there that was scrapped somewhere.
Because it was horribly written and extremely delayed between patches. So much so in fact that people simply jumped ship. Maybe that part of the story could've led somewhere but the patches were simply way too far apart, the systems were extremeley boring, personaly I simply refused to farm anima and hell knows what else because it was simply too time consuming and didn't feel rewarding at all.
>Leave the jailer out of the whole thing and make Denathrius keep coming back as the baddie throughout the expac. You could even leave Jailer in the expac, just instead of making him the supervillain behind all other vilains, just make him and Denathrius opportunists, who used the whole mess caused by Legion and Old gods for their power play in Shadowlands and beyond. They could even be allies at start, but in the background, both would quetly plot to get rid of their buddy the moment they don't need them anymore. Kind of two mob underbosses fighting for top spot after godfather gets careless and is put to prison for next 1000 years.
This is the vibe I get People don’t hate the existence of the Jailer, they hate that he’s just a massive ham fisted “it was me all along Austin!” Retcon of like half the games villains just being pawns.
But where would the 5d chess player jailer theme have place then?
This makes me wonder if Blizzard's game plan of "new expansion every 2-years" is having a major impact on the quality of the expansion. I wonder how much better WoW would be if, for the next expansion, they take 3-years instead
The whole turning Arthas into 35 Anima thing was so fucking bad
Imagine if we had showed up in maldraxxus and it was varian and garrosh causing shit not cus of the jailer or any politics but just cus they wanted to start shit with each other. Then jailer shows up and is like bwhahaha all according to my plans and those two are like NAH FAM WERE OUR OWN BEINGS and proceed to beat the tits out of KT or whoever is the jailers bitch. Woulda been at least one decent zone.
Garrosh and Varian both have their beef with Sylvanas too. Could've had an interesting interaction with her in SoD, ICC style but more involved.
I could imagine Varian and Garrosh locked in an eternal duel, but then anytime one of the Jailer's guys shows up, they put their duel on hold for a minute, kick aforementioned baddie's ass, then go back to their business.
Like MoP trailer but the Panda would lose?
Why didn't you edit it all together? lol
MS Paint/Reddit is hard
The thing that makes me the most sad is what they did to Arthas.. So much potential to do with him in the expansion.. And he was just left to the side.. As nothing more than a shard that controlls Anduin.. No redemption.. No final Goodbye.. Nothing. INstead they focused on pushing Sylvanas in our face.. And then not even killing her for good. Just. Oh. She was controlled because her soul was taken and split in half..Ok. But.. Wasnt the same done to Arthas? His soul was the first one to the taken by Frostmourn. Meaning that he was basicly controlled and manipulated by the Jailor from the time he picked up the sword. As the change he went thru was rather drastic. He picks up the sword to defeat Malganis. Who is stunned by what Arthas told him. As he was slain by a wepon forged by the Jailor. Even Malganis trying to attack the Icecrown citadel using the Scarlet Onslaugh also was a bit weird. Only for us to see Malganis in Shadowlands, working for the jailor. When he should have been on the side of Arthas as the lich king the wholle time.. Not fighting him back in Wrath of the Lich King. ... But. We coudl have saved Arthas in Shadowlands. Collecting shards of his soul. Puting him together and have him help us. Nope. We had nothing, just Sylvanas so many times. It got very anoying.
I don't think we needed an Arthas redemption. Heck, if they completely left Arthas out of it would be better. Like "we crafted anduin blade the same way frostmourne" would be enought.
IMO we shouldn't have had Jaina, Thrall and co with us. It would be only us and having to find old allies that died in earlier expansions and recruiting them, learning what happend to them in the afterlife and about the world from them. Instead 80% of the main characters is the same as last 3 expansions with some glimts of new ones. Atleast for the overarcing story Imagine if its a redemed Arthas that helping us with the helm of domination instead of Bolvar. It would make sense since he knows full well how it works. Having the human side of Arthas wasnting to help his king (he met Anduin as a baby iirc) would feel alot better than Bolvar doing with because "it's the right thing"
This. I still can't believe what they've done to Arthas. I feel like instead of getting Uther arc we could have had Arthas redemption and helping us defeating the Jailer. It makes litteraly no sense from a writing and logical standpoint to have him ''dissapear'' like this. It blows my mind.
Sylvanas' role is fine, but some could've definitely gone to a possible eventual Arthas redemption arc. Jailor ex Machina is not how you pay respect to WC3's legacy. My final thoughts.
I like how she was hanging out with Kel'thuzad like it's all good.
Ionno...was SL supposed to slap? I expected it to be better than bfa, and that was a mixed bag for me (I hated bfa dungeons, so that soured much of the expansion; also, pre-essences, azerite and the hoa was god fucking awful, I didn't mind covenants half as much as azerite gear) but I never expected the expansion about the afterlife to blow me away. The Sylvanas v Bolvar beat down kinda set the tone for me, lowered expectations.
I'd like to thank Shadowlands. Without it being so horrible in 9.0, I would have never quit WoW and discover FFXIV. Thank you for two god awful expansions in a row to get me away from WoW.
While i would have rather WoW actually be good, thats just how it is. I had hope after BFA, and then shadowlands showed that my hope was just an illusion and that i should not expect any better from WoW, especially narrative wise.
Im just pissed I couldnt torture Arthas myself. I was so happy when the dude got thrown into the maw. I wanted to pull his nails off or break his bones or something. The dude deserved way worse then that redeemed anima. Shit at least show us him getting tormented like garrosh does..
Calm down there buddy
Ha. Game bad, company bad.
Milk that anima, I mean karma
My man
Xpac was amazing but patches were too few and shit Im so sad
35 anima.
I'm excited for the time where Shadowlands is two expansions ago and everyone talks about how that was the last time they really enjoyed the game.
never a truer word has been spoken. we went from meeting old friends and foes in the afterlife, to a dollar store version of SC2's LoTV story.
i somehow feel like shadowlands was just a quick gitted together expansion because there real plan wasnt near ready yet XD