Let’s put it this way, Tiff. Even if your suspicions are correct and most of the playerbase like shadowlands, and that’s a
big if, then most of the playerbase likes poorly written stories and deserves to be disregarded.
I won’t let content creators be the end all be all for what constitutes good story telling, but is there a single lore fanatic who genuinely likes shadowlands?
I mean, there’s tolerating it, but as someone who’s read quite a few Warcraft books and watched a fair amount of YouTube content (more like “the story of…” content), I thought Shadowlands was just awful.
Nobbel’s a great example. Guy really loves wow lore, and shadowlands practically killed his spirit any time he would even attempt to make sense of it
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They could have thrown the light followers and even the Tauren a bone. No light, No earthmother…lots of constructs though.
I robot, afterlife edition. This place was better left a mystery,
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I never said most of the players liked shadowlands. What I’m saying is that of the seven million or so people who play this game, we just don’t know how about seven million of them feel.
The fact that a few hundred or even a thousand or so rant in forums says nothing about the millions of players who never enter notes in forums.
As for whether something is poorly written or not, that’s subjective. You have your opinion, I have mine.
Yeah, me. Shadowlands is one of my favorite expansions.
Relying on retcons to make your writing work is objectively bad Tiff. That is not an opinion. That’s just accepting the fact that you can’t have a good story without respecting the integrity of the continuity of said story.
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It had a lot of great storylines and I enjoyed the various zones (Castle Nathria was awesome) if I just forget the Maw exists, but the Jailer storyline was a mess, and its impact on existing lore was… messier
That’s a pretty vague statement. What retcon in particular are you talking about and was it really a retcon?
He was a typical over the top villian like you see in just about any expansion of any video game.
“HA HA, Your going to die now !!!”
*** SPLAT ***
Guess he was wrong.
Everything after 7.2 in Legion. Last patch introducing Void Elves, setting us on this cosmic war course that they’re continuing on for the next few expacs would be even better. Need to nip out the real roots of the Shadowlands problem which started in 7.3, set the stage for all of this nonsense, set the stage for BFA, and ultimately SL which was just one of many planned stops of weirdness in the cosmic forces tournament someone thought was a good idea.
Retcon Pandaria. Make Garrosh’s dream come true!
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I think everyone agrees visually SL was stunning. That actually makes it worse. Such beauty wasted on a dook xpac.
Is… is this even a question? There were several retcons Tiff, and I don’t consider you an unbiased or objective enough individual to actually discuss or debate whether they were “really” retcons. I’d be wasting my damn time. You would most likely resort to reinterpretting the definition a retcon in order to make it about opinions.
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Garrosh’s dream was part of MoP, you carbuncle…
Yes it was, but it didn’t become true. Hence, the retcon.
It can’t come true if it never existed in the first place! Which it didn’t until MoP…
Garrosh had the potential to be a spectacular character. A hot head who learned just a small modicum of wisdom. The true redemption of the Orcs and the aggressive warrior aspect of their culture, free of Thrall’s human education. A new Horde that was still noble, but not trying to be friendly or even especially peaceful with the Alliance. It’s sad they chose to go the opposite direction.
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Sure, I’d just say where they went wrong is retroactively inserting him into lore that I think should’ve just been left alone.
Like if his influence largely just stopped with sylvanas in BFA and the whole Teldrassil thing was the first time he actually influenced anything, that’d probably be okay.
Even though it doesn’t make much sense for sylvanas to serve him after she unwillingly served the lich king, but whatever, ignoring that…
Think Jailer going back so far as to make us question “oh, the Nathrezim didn’t serve sargeras?! Well that’s… weird”.
Stuff like that
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Just another regular day in a Horde player’s life.
I’m torn on this.
On one hand, Arthas’ spirit being used as a tool one last time to only fade away as a pitiful thing is sad and beautiful.
But I dislike the ENTIRE idea of everything we know of the legion and lich king to be all part of some bald dudes sinister plan all along is stupid as sin.
Arthas can still be killed, but scrap everything surrounding it in that expansion.
Y’all burned Teldrassil.
After that, there never should be peace.
We can come together to fight the big bad, but there should always be war at the end of the day
Inb4 she tries to argue that it wasn’t a retcon to make the Dreadlords creations of some random character from the afterlife, instead of natives of the Twisting Nether. And inb4 she tries to argue the Jailer himself not being a random gigabrain retconned into existence.
My only regret… is that we can’t do it a second time.
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Stories require depth. If there’s no depth, the story cannot stand on its own. It is not “supplemental writing” as you both erroneously describe it. Peripheral stories and characters are important to the main story because it can become quite clumsy trying to explain everything that’s happening based only on few characters. The main characters do not always see the consequences of their actions, nor do they always understand what drives others around them. This is what peripheral stories and characters do. They are the threads that support the main story, and in Shadowlands, a lot of this was missing.
Vanilla WoW actually handled this very well. There were many stories that, on the surface, did not seem connected to the main story, but explained to the observer what the consequences of the main story was to the average citizen of Azeroth.
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