I thought she was a pretty interesting choice. By the standards of WoW characters and Orcs in particular she wasn’t really bombastic. More cold and calculating. Deliberate and dispassionate. I was really curious to see where they were going to take this storyline because that’s certainly a different choice.
And she turned into a shrieking lunatic. Completely torpedoing your own plans with an honest to God tantrum because a pointless grudge match with an insubordinate lieutenant didn’t go 100% your way is some ish I’d expect from Garrosh on a particularly bad day.
It certainly subverted expectations. I’ll give them that.
That is very true and something that Madeleine Roux, the author of Shadows Rising, agrees with too.
To just quote directly from the development section of Shadows Rising wowpedia article.
During the book’s development, Roux was conscious of the criticism that had been directed against previous expansion prequel novels (namely The Shattering and Before the Storm ) for containing information that’s essential to the plot of World of Warcraft but is not communicated in-game, which could lead to fans feeling lost if they didn’t read the books. For this reason, Roux insisted during meetings with the writing team that Shadows Rising couldn’t be something that players would have to read, and there are some events which were excluded from the book as a result. However, Roux still strove to make the novel feel like something that lore-interested players would want to read by having it give unique insight into the various characters and their development; in short, “something that feels really essential but isn’t”.
I had to look him up because the name didn’t register and for those who were in the same boat.
Seriously Shadow’s Rising may be my favorite WoW book because you don’t actually need to read it.
It expands on the characters in interesting ways. Seriously Bwomsamdi screwing with Blightcaller was not something I knew I needed until I saw it happening. But you’re not going to be confused about SL if you don’t read it.
I mean, you’ll still be confused by SL but that’s not the books fault.
Like at a certain point in BFA I realized Blizz had essentially tricked me into doing their job as I helpfully explained who and what Calia was.
Because unless you played a Priest in Legion you might not know Arthas has a very much still alive sister. And if you didn’t read BtS you definitely don’t know she’s now some new variant of undead.
You just role up to Calston’s Estate and hand this overdressed woman a bunch of sad undead elves. She announces that she’s Calia Menethil of Lordaeron, just in case you thought she was of no relation and it’s not like that would make any more or less sense so, probably good they clarified.
Then she wanders off toward Deathknell with the elves and Derek in tow. And if you were wondering what the hell that had to do with anything - you will still be doing so years later.
To be honest you don’t have to play on PVP server for this.
There was a lot of Horde showing up in the lowbie areas on Malygos killing off all the questgivers and vendors just to be a prick. That was back in Vanilla.
Would have been real nice to have had warmode back then to lock the pricks into a cage.
Honestly the story is just the cherry on top. The story did not cause me to log out for quite possibly the last time.
Finding out they’d tweaked the Covenant abilities again, and I was going to have to redo the Venthyr questline for the 3rd time if I wanted the BiS PvP ability is what made me rage quit.
Like I already did the neceo and venthyr ones twice already for the same reason and can confirm there is zero replay value there. It’s truly amazing to me that the Covenant system failed in the exact way everyone said it would.
Like they didn’t know something we didn’t or have some kinda clever plan. They were shown the flaws of the system, and just didn’t address it and I guess hoped nobody would notice?
The story just cemented my disinterest in logging back in. I trudged through BFA because there were some story aspects I genuinely liked, and as a RPer it certainly put the Forsaken in an interesting situation. I just didn’t know then and indeed wouldn’t have believed I was putting way more thought into it than they were.
And with SL I will defend that one Bastion quest where you play just a regular civilian who gets killed by ghouls. That was 10/10. I really loved how it showed just how terrifying Azeroth is if you’re not some wizard or battlemaster. If all you brought to the party was lemonade and a shotgun you’re going to die screaming.
But that’s it. There’s stuff I really like Revendreth and Maldraxxus but I’m such an easy lay for those sorts of things that I am not a good source to objectively measure them. I’d probably rate being waterboarded 7 out of 10 if it was vampire themed.
Nothing I want to gush about like Dazar’Alor or at least find interestingly bad like Sylvanas’s storyline.