You can write that one. I don’t like to talk about Velen ever since I killed his son in the most excruciatingly slow fashion on my discipline priest. He’s all “no stop, stop it, don’t do it champion! plz no!”
Awkward weeping laughter: I can’t… I can’t dps any harder I am so sorry, oh god I’m sorry.
Ouch.
…You could say you were trying to help him with penance?
That scene and the followup Velen scenes were pretty cringe. Like yeah, I know it sucks that you lost your son while following the light’s prophecy, but What about all your people who lost their lives or had their sons and daughters turned into a bone road while following your prophetic vision? You expected them to keep to their faith, trust in the plan, and call you “prophet”…
It just seems so selfish that Velen suddenly stops believing in fate and prophecy once following that path has consequences for him and for draenei that happened to be shot out of his own crotch rocket.
Or Sylvanas steps confidently forward, a sly smirk upon her face, and then plummets off a cliff she didn’t notice and Nathanos leaps in after her and the entire cinematic is the armies exchanging awkward glances as their Goofy-like screams slowly fade before ending with a pair of soft thuds.
She could have won and still had her mega jump scene, she just needs to shout “Party at my place in the GHOSTLANDS Y’ALL!” before jumping continents.
At least we get a little more customization options though. 
Honestly, it was less what happened to his son that caused him to reconsider his opinions in fate and prophecy and more the revelation that he’d been manipulated by the Naaru, who coached their commands in prophetic visions and that was a large part in why Velen lost his son in the first place.
They also make a big deal about it during the “I aM mY sCaRs!” cinematic when Turyalon’s eyes literally change color after Illidan eyebeams Mama Naaru.
Do the draenei and especially the lightforged draenei stop following the Naaru, then?
I could have sworn I still saw some naaru during the lightforge recruitment scenario but im not entirely sure.
Also, im not sure how being shown specific visions meant to make them act a certain way (thus “manipulating” them) is any different from what they thought the naaru were doing back when they were following the naaru’s prophecy for thousands of years despite all the times theyve been massacred and chased out of their homes
i still think this was just the reflection of xe’ra’s light being extinguished by illidan’s juicy eye beams
i don’t think turalyon’s in-game eye color changes, and beyond the atrocious mag’har scenario xe’ra’s weird oppressive fanaticism is treated like an exception rather than a rule as far as naaru personalities go
at least i hope that’s the case because, as boring as it is to have all of the naaru be lawful good, it’s still obnoxious that blizzard is trying to sell “lite…is evil!!!” narrative when we already had the scarlet crusade (before their 19th surprise reappearance) do that particular story way more justice than blizzard’s recent attempts at it
Hey so I haven’t read anything else here because WHOA that’s almost 600 messages, but this seems like the place to be negative, so:
Is anyone else worried about the fact Shadowlands seems to be an expansion designed to keep roleplayers from interacting with it? Like…you can’t go to the Shadowlands at all without dying, and a super special exception gets mad by great effort for The Player Character and their allies. And then if you DO get into the Shadowlands, you unavoidably get stuck in The Maw, which is inescapable and only The Player Character can get out due to their connection to Azeroth.
That’s two layers of ‘you can’t go there’! It’s impossible without finagling a special exception, but if you get past that and reach the Shadowlands, okay - lore now states you’re stuck in The Maw and cannot escape unless you want to say you’re better and more powerful than literally every lore character.
So we have here a case where our options are ‘do not interact with the expansion in-character’ or ‘be a FLAGRANT mary sue’. Those are our only options. The hell, man?
This is a first, too. There always room to go ‘well…’ in past expansions. Oh, Pandaria? Yeah we were with the first expeditions but we got separated! Oh, Draenor? We were part of the nameless mob of soldiers! Oh, Legion? The Class Orders are big, there’s room for everyone to be a member!
But now in Shadowlands it’s just a big “NOPE!”…you can’t just be a character in the setting and be allowed to interact with it. You can only do it if you’re The Main Character, which is something you obviously can’t take into roleplay.
It’s a terrible situation. I can’t say it’s killed the expansion for me, because I was already very negative going in. But BOY it really guts what interest was left.
That’s not a bad point. Of course, there’s nothing that really stops you from just making up something new, you know?
Like, maybe you got to Draenor through the Dark Portal or maybe you got there via getting lost in a timestream. I don’t think anyone minds personal retcons.
I am glad you brought this up because this was definitely the FIRST thing I thought when I watched the cinematics at Blizzcon.
First of all, I am pretty sure the way into the Shadowlands will be at ICC. That right there automatically makes it difficult for my character to get there because he wouldn’t have easy access to ICC.
And then second, like you mentioned, Blizzard came out and said that everyone who goes to Shadowlands ends up in the Maw except you the Player because you are special! So basically if you want your character to be able to ICly go into any of the other zones you have to make your character a major special snowflake character.
I don’t like it one bit.
There’s a difference between writing in a grey area ‘between’ lore points, and flat-out contradicting them. We’re told that EVERYTHING goes to the Maw, and that escaping it is IMPOSSIBLE. We’re told that, ironclad, up-front. So avoiding that isn’t just writing around lore - it’s contradicting it. It crosses the line from roleplay into fanfiction, in a way that I personally am not comfortable with. If individual groups or players want to do that, that’s fine - but it shouldn’t be mandatory for everyone.
I should add I do concur with the overall sentiment that we have become so special and so chosen that it’s all becoming a little ridiculous.
Draenor was funny, in that I got through the first year of the expansion and even started playing an AU Draenei only to eventually discover that all of Warlords was basically supposed to be a one-way trip where everyone was trapped until the very end, and that the portal in Ashran was a super special exception for the most important player character’s use only, not a stable connection between the two timelines
The only good thing to think about is the entire expansion may not take place in the Shadowlands, similarly to how in BfA we went to Nazjatar and Mechagon. So if they do something similar in Shadowlands that may be where your character can ICly get involved.
OR maybe once we the Player get into the Shadowlands we find a way to allow the others to escape and open a way for others to enter without going straight to the Maw? Then you could make the argument that your character was not the main PC, but one of the ones who showed up after the “portal” or whatever was opened. If that makes sense!
Yeah, that’s my hope. That the 50-60 leveling experience will end with a great Maw jailbreak and we can just say ‘well, our RP takes place after that!’
My expectations are low, though. It’s clear that enabling RP is not something Blizzard’s…‘writers’…care about. If it works out that way it’ll be nice. But we’re just lucky if we don’t end up collateral damage at this point.
Yeah, with the announcement I was kind of excited for the story possibilities. Like my character could finally get some closure with his dead mom and true love, but now that most likely won’t happen because there is no IC way for him to go to Shadowlands.
I hope Blizzard does something that makes it less restrictive than the whole, “you are special because of Azeroth’s connection to you!”
Like, I’m fine with The Player Character being supremely special. That’s fine. As long as less-special characters are given room to exist. The Player Character can exist as a vague offscreen entity in whose wake we drift, and I can work with that. The problem is when they start putting up a “You must be this Special to ride” requirement on entire expansion continents.
There’s a ton of story potential in the Shadowlands, and I’m excited for it. But if they don’t take away that barrier to entry then none of it matters. It feels like whoever’s doing the writing doesn’t grasp that people don’t just take the same character in the game’s main story and play that character in roleplay.
Excuse me?