“Screw the Kyrians” is a hill I’m willing to die on
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Quite the hill, indeed.
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They didn’t know at first, but you’re right that they keep ferrying souls even after learning the Arbiter is out of commission.
Instead of removing Shadowlands story of existence, they could’ve said this and Dragonflight is happening simultaneously. They did it with TBC and WotLK right?
So everyone can assume the Jailer has nothing to do with the waking of the Dragon Isles. The absence of the world leaders in DF is explained by their abduction to the Maw, and SL’s conclusion is revealed to us by the end of 10.3 or whatever last patch number is
It also provides a seamless transition ER>>BfA>>Df. So new players reachinh lvl60 are made to choose which story theh would like to take.
a. Cross the shattered veil above Icecrown and discover the fate of our abducted leaders
b. Heed the Aspects’ call and restore the glory of the Dragonflights
Legit.
All the people I know IRL who play WoW, along with myself wanted to side with the Forsworn lol
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The Forsworn had legitimate gripes about the system too, which did make them somewhat sympathetic
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That doesn’t solve the problem of Shadowlands invalidating years of WoW lore, the concept of death, and… gestures at everything
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Fixed it for you.
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But they lose that sympathy when they started killing trainees / aspirants for simply not being one of them. And there is also the fact that the higher ups (excluding Uther) joined Zovaal. Which makes no sense as Devos was horrified that a weapon of the maw (Frostmourne) was running rampart on a mortal world.
Like the Forsworn could’ve been interesting if the whole “we willingly serve the Jailer” was dropped until Devos was defeated. Where Lysonia, driven by grief over Devos’ death is tricked by Helya. Now a minion of Helya (and thus Zovaal), she hands over Forsworn Kyrians over to the Jailer so they can “ascend” into Mawsworn. Against their will of course as later quests demostrate.
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I absolutely believe the devs could salvage the storyline without completely dismissing the last two expansions.
In fact they’ve already laid some of the groundwork for it to be possible. They’d just have to commit to it.
Here’s my version:
Sargeras’ last stab at Azeroth was calculated, not flailing. He knew he couldn’t cleave the planet in half, but if he could at least destroy the last Old God (N’zoth) he could prevent Azeroth from becoming a void Titan.
But he wasn’t strong enough. It just damaged the prison even more, allowing him to spread his influence more. A lot of the actions still transpired but their context was not what we saw. We even saw this During BFA where a lot of world quests for Horde showed up very differently for Alliance (killing civilians etc).
We ended up corrupting the re origination devices not saving them. Ghuun was a Titan experiment for using Old God capabilities to kill Old Gods (but we killed him). Our final battle vs N’zoth? We destroyed the last seals on his prison.
Then we went to the Shadowlands - except it wasn’t the Shadowlands. We were trapped in a vision of N’zoth killing people on Azeroth to help solidify his hold wherever it weakened. There were no covenants - we were traveling across continents.
Still pockets of resistance remained. N’zoth knew to bring back the Black Empire (without alerting the Titans) he had to corrupt all the Titan facilities (so there would be no emergency signal) and he knew of the dragon isles, but if he searched them out it would alert them to the danger. So a period of relative peace occurred (time skip) while we explored at his behest.
Once we found it, We caused life to arise there again while we thought we were healing the planet. The primalists don’t exist. We’ve been destroying the denizens of the isles, preventing the watchers and keepers (now somewhat corrupted) from using the facility.
During the expac, Nozdormu will turn into Murozond when he learns what is transpiring. He does so due to the whispers of the Old Gods - to him and to us - and seeks to alter the timeline to prevent this claiming a worse ending if he doesn’t succeed (as he does in The End Times).
The final raid occurs in the heart of the Titan facility, racing to save it. Afterward we try to find knowledge on how to use it to help heal Azeroth. In prepatch, we will head down and activate the facility. Once we do, the haze is lifted with maniacal laughter.
Instead, we allowed it to be corrupted. Around us will be the corpses of Titan constructs we killed during the raid. N’zoth will show us the Black Empire on the map of Azeroth - Pandaria, Northrend, southern Kalimdor, the entire east of the eastern kingdom, all pushing to spread more openly now. Thanks to us. His champions. Our corruption takes full hold and we start growing tentacles.
Just then Chromie appears - a more serious version. She whisks us away stating that she thinks this time she’s finally found the right time to save Azeroth.
Later she will explain that she’s gotten us horribly murdered the last few hundred times she’s tried this, but she’s really sure of it this time. Then she will take us back in time to … whenever.
I think it could be cool to start the expansion with something of a “Let’s go change a few dozen key points in history to fix what we broke” type of thing stating that our arrival in nyalotha during the bronze campaign caused all of this so we are trying to fix the timeline but we can’t just go there because N’zoth already knows that and we would be giving him more information and we can’t prevent the event that caused it because that was caused by time travel and that ripple would destroy the universe somehow because time travel.
So the expansion hits key points in time where N’zoth implemented plans in response to his learning of his demise and we have to find ways to nullify his plan so that we can stop the end point - our full corruption and the destruction of the Titan facility (which can be used to help purify corruption) - and from there figure out how to save Azeroth from the Black Empire. While still not encouraging the Titans to wipe us out.
The best solution is to treat it as “soft” canon. Don’t outright erase it, but don’t strictly follow the “rules” of it either. Never let it get in the way of a new idea, never let it stop you from using a character, never put its lore in top priority. Bring back any character you want, show any kind of afterlife you want, and handwave it away when people ask questions.
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It’s what The Elder Scrolls does with its contradictory lore. It’s either completely true or entirely made up depending what NPC is speaking at that moment
That’s how Blizzard’s been treating the lore so far and why it’s in such a sorry state now.
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I think being absolute on such things helps nothing.
One can argue that Shadowlands overall wasn’t their cup of tea, so to speak… but you can do that with any expansion. For example, most of the lore-loving player base seemed to hate WoD. Should we just throw it out wholesale because of that?
General attitudes and opinions on expansions change with time, too. I remember when everyone seemed to hate Pandaria because “Kung Fu Panda LOL!”; now the general sentiment is that it was great. The same goes for Cata. and BFA.
This really boils down to subjectivity. Whilst I think it’s fair to say that Shadowlands’ story was, on the whole, poorly received, it’s still worth seeing if that changes in the years and expansions to come.
And why discard it ALL? That’s just lazy.
Some things in Shadowlands were fantastic, in my opinion. For example, I thought much of Maldraxxus–and its storyline–was solid. The brokers and devourers were cool, too. If anything, I’d want to see MORE lore regarding Shadowlands come out so we can see the good polished, and developed.
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No not because of that but I’m pretty good with binning WoD.
Nah. Bin BFA too. Didn’t know folks were all onboard with that shipwreck.
Everything in BfA screams “we didn’t know where we were going when this started so we are writing as fast as we can!”
And most of Shadowlands is a mix of some parts of writing seemingly screaming “We know we are driving on the wrong side of the road and are trying to turn around!” And other parts just whimpering.
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My philosophy is, keep the good parts, trash the rest of it. That goes for BfA and SL also
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there are many truths
many perspectives
who are you to deny that truth
There’s “the truth” and people’s opinions.
My philosophy was that there were no good parts in SL.
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Sure there are. Maldraxxus, Revendreth, Ardenweald are all great zones worth keeping