Says who? Where is it stated that we are redeeming souls the Arbiter has already judged?
And yet the Maw exists and the Arbiter, before being shutdown, did send souls it judged deserved that fate.
That would mean that you agree with Sylvanas that the system is broken, because souls WERE being sent to eternal torment by the Arbiter. The idea that the eternal torment she faced in death was inherently unfair is the very basis for her actions, the desire to break that system and replace it with something more just.
It’s intuitively obvious - we know nothing of the souls we take back with us. At least some souls in the Maw were judged to deserve being sent there. Therefore we cannot know if the soul we select was in fact one that that the Arbiter had sent there intentionally.
Then 'tis likely they no longer were.
The second half of this statement proves the first part is a bad assumption.
It is easily assumed that they are not sent there by the Arbiter as how would a mortal be able to over ride the Arbiters will and redeem a soul she had judged? The entire context of the expansion lends to the assumption that these souls were sent there after the Arbiter was neutralized.
Plus, assuming your theory is correct I would also assume Revendreth would be able to figure it out themselves.
I agree that it’s broken. But it’s broken because of her and the master she serves. She isn’t fixing anything, she’s made everything far worse.
After doing poop quests, I stopped caring 
So long as it pays I don’t particularly care since it goes to power my toys…
But I’m finding it an unrewarding so I’ve stopped bothering.
I hate the way I come off in text. I am not trying to be rude or crass, and sincerely am considering your concept and giving what I feel is appropriate counterpoint feedback. I am not trying to sound argumentative
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The Arbiter is non functional, what possible sway could she have over our actions in the Maw? You are trying to say that somehow a soul the Arbiter has judged as deserving the Maw is somehow anchored there even when she no longer functions. That doesn’t seem plausible.
If ALL the souls in the Maw arrived AFTER the Arbiter was disabled then you have to believe that prior to the Arbiters fall, there were NO SOULS in the Maw. I see no evidence of that. Zovaal was not alone, he ruled over the souls that were sent there. And since we cannot tell which soul was there on purpose and which by accident, there is a very real chance we are freeing some that should not be freed.
The Arbiter was sending souls into the Maw before Sylvanas was involved. In fact, it was a vision of this same eternal torture that Sylvanas saw when she threw herself onto that saronite spike that set her on a path to change it. It is that very system that you and she both describe as broken - that eternal damnation should not be part of the cycle.
I appreciate that, and I hope I am not coming off the same way. It’s just something that bothered me - that either Sylvanas was right or we are wrong to be returning some of these souls. In my head there’s no way we come out smelling of roses on this one.
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We don’t actually know if that’s true or not. Even the worst souls seemed to get a chance in Revendreth, and if they ended up in the Maw it was because they went there from Revendreth. And we don’t even know if that was intended or if it’s because Denathrius was working with Zovaal.
And even if what you’re saying is true, it doesn’t matter. Sylvanas may have accurately observed that the system was unfair, but her solution was to make it even MORE unfair.
Who said anything about releasing them?
Mine get consumed after dipping them in beer batter and cooking to a golden brown.
Wait… am I doing it wrong?
They are called Soul Rolls for a reason…
I have a feeling that if souls went to the Maw before Revendreth, more would try to correct their sins.
I usually quote in chronological order, but I felt it’s important to start at the end of your post for this response:
We need to first consider the fact that we are trying to logic out narrative that has had so many continuity issues, plot devices not lining up with previous plot points, and outright contradicting itself to the point of oblivion.
That said…
There are real world mythologies that would indicate condemned souls are retrievable, and other mythologies that are not. I chose to go with the latter as it seems to fit the “end of existence” concept Blizzard is trying to deliver with the Maw. So I would say yes, in that view, souls the Arbiter has judged as worthy of the Maw are damned to remain there.
Following the idea above, it would make sense to me that these redeemable souls we are quested with retrieving manifest differently than those condemned before the Arbiters neutralization. They obviously haven’t been tasked with any specific purpose in the Maw yet, or turned into Anima so that to me implies they are there erroneously, outside the mechanics of the original intent of Shadowlands.
Doubtful because there wouldn’t be any souls telling the living what happens to the people who do bad things. Heck there wouldn’t even be a reason to live a life of good… since we would all end up in the same toilet flush.
This is actually the main problem - we just don’t know. I have to concede it’s possible that Zovaal was alone when he was banished. But I can’t reconcile that with the story that Sylvanas, when she comitted suicide, saw the eternal torture that the Maw had in store for her that really formed the entire basis of her character arch to avoid that fate. It implies that the Maw was in fact a thing for some souls.
Do we even know what her plan was for the “new” system? How do we know it was unfair at all, we never get to hear her plan. Maybe we would have agreed with it? All we know is that she wanted to eliminate eternal damnation, something many of us agree with.
In Ardenweald, when you return with the 20 souls they are literally released into the zone in all directions like bottle rockets.
Such a waste of good food.
Re: those narrative inconsistencies I mentioned previsouly.
Side question:
How do you prevent singing your fur when you invocate fel fire for Chaos Bolts?
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This is absolutely plausible. That these “loose souls” we gather are only loose because they didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. I like this idea.
The reason I disagree with that position is because Sylvana’s soul was sent to the Maw and brought back again. She is proof that a damned soul can be extracted. In fact there is one theory that every soul taken by Frostmourne was sent to the Maw because Frostmourne was a Maw forged weapon. Not sure I believe that but it would certainly explain why Sylvanas saw the Maw after committing suicide.
We aren’t doing that. We’re just giving them a chance at fair judgement, rather than basically becoming fuel for the jailor.