Guldan in the shadowlands, How it should have been

Lore Story Forum
1

For orc players, there should’ve been something like this in Shadowlands:

You come across a cage deep in some forsaken part of the Maw. There’s a blackened soul inside, and from within, you hear heavy, wheezing breathing. Something about it draws you closer.

As you approach, you see a frail, emaciated orc curled up inside the cage. The sight is horrific—it looks like every ounce of fat and muscle has been stripped away, leaving only a hollow, starving figure.

The soul croaks out:
“H-help me…”

If you inspect the soul, you notice a debuff: Curse of Eternal Sickness.

<What are you?>
“I—I was never given a chance. They threw me down here…”
The voice is wheezing, trembling.
“If I had known… if only I had known… I would have never… I would have never…”
The voice fades into silence.

<Who are you?>
At this point, the soul would share vague details of their life, but it would be up to the player to piece together the truth: this is Gul’dan.

Then comes the moral choice:

You can offer to help lift the curse, or you can leave him to suffer forever.

  • Option 1: Take pity on him and go on a small quest to clear the curse, granting his soul release.
  • Option 2: Refuse to help, completing the quest by saying, “No, you deserve to suffer for what you’ve done.”

It’s a simple concept, but the choice would’ve been fascinating. Many people in the real world oppose the death penalty or believe in redemption for even the darkest souls. Outside of Christian belief systems, damnation isn’t always eternal—souls are often seen as redeemable, even the sinful ones.

So what would you do? Would you condemn Gul’dan to eternal torment for his crimes? Or would you waste your time playing hero for one of the darkest souls in Warcraft history, ensuring his suffering ends?

I think it’d be interesting to see how players interact with a moral dilemma like this. What about you?

2

You had Thrall and Drakka, were was the things for Draenei players?

I dont really like that way of thoughts that you must have always everything for every races every time, its like what we see now with people always wanting a 1:1 for both factions everytime something happens.

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3

I know people always complain about how shadowlands ruined the lore for races with shamans, like Orcs and the tauren. But the Auchenai priests whose sole job is to commune with their dead, get overlooked by nearly everyone.

It was a major missed opportunity

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4

I personally think that Zovaal turned Gul’dan into fuel or just destroyed his soul, rather than taking risk with him.

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5

Illidan ate his soul at the end of the Nightwell raid. He’s gone.

6

No he didn’t.

He disenchanted gul’dans physical body with fel magic and than crushed his skull

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7

Shadowlands Gul’dan would definitely trick us into setting him free. He’d be running a covenant within a month and back in Azeroth by years end.

Cause we’re dumb.

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8

Pft. More like he’d be running Zovaal’s entire campaign to wreck everything, except in the end he’d be funnelling all of Azeroth’s power into himself in the final encounter!!

Gul’dan would not settle for some silly covenant!!

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9

Nah… That’s just the dev’s not being able to think beyond the old Idiot Ball excuse for why we’d do something really foolish.

One example I like to point to is from Legion. It’s a simple side quest, help a Nightborne get back into the city. Yeah, she’s annoying and entitled, exactly how she is expected to behave given the others we run into, and for the last quest we are asked to escort her and protect her. Instead, we stand back, not even bound by a spell, and let some villain monolog and then sacrifice her for power…

The fact that the guy dies at the end doesn’t even matter. We failed, and that’s the point the dev’s wanted to force us to experience… but it falls flat, because we don’t make a choice. We have no investment no connection.

Then again… maybe the devs wanted to make a quest for those who like watching people die so they can “avenge” them.

Who knows.

My point is it isn’t the players who are dumb, it’s the inability of the dev’s to write a narrative that doesn’t rely upon taking away player agency.

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10

He only has one convenant! And that is to attain more powa! :dracthyr_nod:

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11

Transparently evil talking dagger: Do a series of highly questionable things for me.

Player: Okay!

A few years later: Dalaran implodes.

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12

And at no point was a choice ever offered, was it?

As someone who never played, or ever will, a priest, I guess I’m able to say I never made that mistake…

And yet that’s only because I don’t play the class. Not because the story doesn’t exist.

Blizzard refuses to allow their players to make choices. No, choosing not to do a quest doesn’t count because the game assumes you did them all.

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13

Legion leaders sit back and stare dumbfounded

Unknown Leader: So….so you’re saying all we had to do was give these idiots an evil dagger and they would’ve done everything for us? Archimonde! In my office! NOW!

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14

You don’t have to be a priest. The dummy that released Xal’atath was Player Character. You can pick up the quest in Stormsong Valley. Tortolans intercepted a strange dagger from Queen Azshara’s forces and hand it off to you to deal with.

It’s amusing enough but yeah, player character is just a mindless automaton.

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15

:person_facepalming:

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16

And not once have the kirin tor found the fortutude to look me in the eye and call me out for the hell I unleashed upon their city.

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17

I’ll bet if it was a horde only quest, they would have.

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18

They know. They know their lives are worth less than 15 gold and a disenchatable green item to me.

I imagine they all breath a big sigh of relief when the player character leaves the room.

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19

I imagine their thought process is Thank god one of you idiots didn’t have a quest to give them. Who knows how many bodies they would’ve stacked for 2 copper and a worthless trinket

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20

This is something that gets me. I remember one quest in the Souther Barrens that I wasn’t willing to do. The quest giver wanted me to murder Goblin miners because a Goblin had been involved in an attack on a fort that killed his son.

I wasn’t interested in committing racist revenge, even pretend racist revenge. What is more, had it been part of the quest chain, I would have had to give up the entire chain.

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