Do you think Shadowlands overall theme of death and hell hinders it’s reception by players?
I’m not talking game mechanics or systems, just the overall theme.
To me, this expansion feels darker, and more drab than previous. It’s more depressing…? I don’t really have an exact word for it but it just feels… Draining?
Doesn’t feel dark to me. Half of Wrath’s zones felt darker. It just feels disconnected and uninteresting.
Feels too alien to me. Doesn’t feel like I’m playing in the Warcraft universe. Also covenants overshadow our class fantasy which doesn’t help.
You think Warlocks that infuse their enemies with pestilence and blight wouldn’t love to be surrounded by happy, whimsical fairies all the time?
I dunno man…
For me, personally, exploring the afterlife opens up way too many cans of worms that are best left open to speculation.
Why are only some big named characters sitting around, while others aren’t?
Why is the afterlife for an infinite amount of worlds over all off time just 4 small zones?
Why should I care about anybody dying when we know they’ll just be resurrected in the Shadowlands?
It really ruins my immersion and that feeling of high stakes just isn’t there anymore. Same with WoD and it’s alternate reality nonsense.
This is something that really bothers me.
Knowing that no one truly dies, it just kind of cheapens the battles, conflicts, and losses we’ve seen in Azeroth.
I wouldn’t say its depressing but they said they literally just added things in Shadowlands because they thought it was cool and not because they wanted it to make sense or be believable part of the WoW mythos.
That’s just bad design overall.
Yes, but only in how they’ve implemented it. Many other IPs have successfully introduced their universes’ afterlives to resounding success, however such an ambitious undertaking is more than the post-Legion team is capable of, just because it IS literal hell doesn’t mean it has to FEEL like eternal damnation… but because this is WoW we’re talking about of course they don’t have the creativity to make it work. Just look at Hades (the game), DCUO’s Hades, Diablo, Darksiders etc… all of them did an AMAZING job at making the mythological afterlives diverse while having the “underworld/afterlife” feel to them… WoW’s team? Not so much, I blame a lack of talent…
Like imagine if in Ardenweald we got chased down by a giant monstrous headless horseman? Or faced giant skeleton elites in Maldraxxus? etc etc… all good ideas to expand the current realms, and if they REALLY wanted to make this work, they really should consider showing us at least a small fraction of some of the zones supposedly in existence beyond the main utilitarian 4, even if it’s in as small and contained an environment as the Legion invasion WQs… at least we would get SOME break up from the monotony that is the Maw…
The overall theme of it taking place in afterlife isn’t a bad idea. I just don’t care for how it’s broken up so much as it is. The shadowlands itself feels too disconnected.
The best thing that came from it is de other side imo. It has actually roots back to Azeroth that is fun to discover and experience.
Let’s just say I am laughing hysterically at my younger self who said Mists of Pandaria was was most anti-Warcraft setting in the game. (I did enjoy MoP a lot, I just thought it was a huge change from our current direction).
SL feels like an anime Beach Episode more than anything.
I did not know this. That explains why some stuff feels so random and odd though
And why it feels disconnected
Unfortunately, yes.
There’s a dev interview video out there where someone basically admits they made up Maldraxxus just because they thought it was “metal” and some players would think its cool.
I don’t think the setting is too bad, actually. Ardenweald was nicely done, and it is nice that it was a place that already existed within the lore. The Maw already existed as well, but it was so forgettable that I’m guessing half of the people who played in Legion didn’t know they had already been there. The other three new zones are buttpulls, but they each have consistently-executed themes and collectively make up an afterlife of sorts.
What kills this expansion’s lore for me is that none of the characters that are driving the plot forward have motivations that make any sense. Sylvanas, the Jailer, Denathrius, and their minions (Helya, Mueh’zala, and the Maldraxxi) are all just baritone moustache twirlers in search of a moustache. They’re just generically, boringly evil. That kind of villain is fine in games where you confront the villain and sweep them aside in a hail of FPS gunfire in two minutes, but WoW villains stick around saying the same emotes for literal years of our lives… if those emotes don’t have any logic, motivation, or pathos behind them then it just all falls flat. I’ve played months of Shadowlands, and I can really only point to two NPCs that I feel like I half understand, The Winter Queen and Tyrande. The WQueen is a fairly generic “protector” who doesn’t drive the plot forward except when she or her people are victims. Tyrande had an interesting enough arc (hint, Blizzard: it’s because she had a motivation), but it sounds like that arc is being ended without any real resolution… I hope I’m wrong there. The rest of the characters keep swearing up and down that they have motivations, but they aren’t telling us what they are and it should be a show-don’t-tell thing anyway. Even the NPCs that sell us stuff, the brokers, have opaque and mysterious motivations.
I am not a fan of the overall theme, but I dont think its too dark. I just dont think its interesting.
While I did hate the pre-patch, it still really doesnt tie into the story other than Bolvar got wrecked by Sylvie. For a supposed death knight themed expansion, they sure do show the elader of them as incredibly weak - like a level 1 taking on a level 120
I hear youtubers say how this or that is supposed to tie to death knights, but it just doesnt to me and my main is a death knight.
I just cant care about what happens in the shadowlands. Bastion is cool and interesting and Ardenwield is at least pretty but nothing else makes any sense or is too gross and weird. Even death feels lacking in consequences now that characters like Uther can just show back up. I’m left with the same feeling I had when we did WoD and Legion, everything we are dealing with is on a scale where individuals efforts cant possibly matter, though in WoD it was because of time travel and in legion it was us against a universe full of well trained world destroyers and we just… win?
100% The Shadowlands feel so weird and strange.
It also kinda breaks the fantasy when you explain something as huge and important as how the afterlife works. That’s something that should’ve been implied at best but never fully explained and explored.
I like the setting, but hope it’s not the start of a running theme of new areas that are entirely disconnected from Azeroth.
Like if we go from Shadowlands to like… new planet, or Lightlands; I’d be disappointed and disenfranchised from the main world the characters are meant to be defending.
Also, I wasn’t huge on our main reason for helping out in the Shadowlands being some important leader people were captured and we need to get them before we get Sylvanas. It’s a sign of a really different story direction that isn’t particularly… amazing. Not bad, just not amazing.
I don’t really feel this way. It hardly feels dark at all, kt feels like a disney version of warcraft.
Drustvar felt more dark than the entire of shadowlands. This expac as others have said just feels really disconnected, with zero gravity in its storytelling.
There’s no reason to care about it at all.
Also, once they pulled the whole ‘pierce the veil’ trick, so many consequences of prior events back on azeroth just feel so meaningless.
But that’s just my opinion
Yes it’s hurting my imerssion and I don’t care about anything in SL at all. It feels uninspired, not dark, but bland. I really hate it especialy Bastion.
SL also destroyed a lot of old lore.
I feel this, Shadowlands doesn’t feel very “Warcraft”
That’s why I Joined the Night Fae, it seemed the most deliberately connected to the story of WoW, and I wasn’t dissapointed by the story or the characters that showed up.
I hope the Next XPAC IS Warcraft themed, set in the Warcraft universe. And I want a WarCraft class, hopefully from the Warcraft games.
Dragon Isles, Undermine, or just a big focus on Azeroth, and a Tinker Class.
That would be much more interesting