The 3rd biggest raid let down for me.
2nd being SL tier 3 and 4 (if you don’t know they merged the last 2 raids into 1 for tier 3 and scrapped the rest of SL to work on DF and we got fated instead of tier 4)
1st being vashjir raid. If you don’t know about this one, it was a massive underwater raid. Which is why the zone feels so empty. It was scrapped.
I was expecting a Drust raid in SL for sure. But nope.
Yes, I do know about this one. It would have been pretty cool.
I wouldn’t mind hear more about this. This is the first I’ve heard of the raid combination. Definitely knew Season 4 wasn’t originally planned as fated.
I remember back in Cata, or Mists, hearing talk that the original plan for the Well of Eternity dungeon, was to make it a War of the Ancients Caverns of Time Raid, focusing on Neltharion’s betrayal. We would have witnessed him wiping out the blues. Shame we only got a mediocre dungeon instead 
So tier 3 was supposed to end at anduin. Then tier 4 was going to start with whatever the next forgetable boss was. Thats why the themes of the raid don’t mesh well. (And why the story felt so rushed). Then of course, jailer was the big bad of SL.
But there was a lot of cut stuff from SL. Its why the start felt nice then it just massively trailed off from there. Even korthia felt like a throw away (which now I know was a cut drust zone reworked for maw shenanigans).
Probably was for the best they combined it. I don’t think I even want to know what kind of crap story they would have done for another raid tier with the Jailer at the end if Zereth Mortis wasn’t originally going to be the final zone.
I feel DF had a raid tier cut as well. I was fully expecting a 4th season with 10.3 focusing on the Red Dragonflight, with Alexstrasza as the last boss of the expansion, and we’re there to save her from corruption. In the War of the Scaleborne, Nozdormu made it very clear the Dragonflights had no future if Alexstrasza did not survive an encounter with Iridikron. And we had the teases of corrupted Alexstrasza in the Tyr questline.
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Well yes and no. I believe they cut SL short because of the massive negative advertising they were getting from the YouTube community.
People who didn’t like SL were so passionate about it that they would gobble up anything saying negative things about it so the negative CCs pilled on the trash talk farming for clicks. People who wanted to hear what they wanted to hear kept clicking and clicking.
The result was that an SL season was dropped and the expansion was cut short. Now the same people who fed those CCs all those anger clicks are complaining that SL was cut short.
As far as Im aware, they didn’t cut any major content from DF. I believe they intentionally did a fated season 4 to give them more time to focus on TWW.
Tbh if xpacs keep getting released with this level of polish, I don’t mind if they keep up with fated S4.
But if we see another wod, bfa, or sl level of cut and rushed shenanigans…
Well they also weren’t listening to players. You were cov locked. The system wasn’t alt friendly at all. The grinds were super tedious.
It wasn’t until ZM where things became MUCH better in terms of content friendliness.
So while the youtube nonsense did contribute a lot of negativity, it was also just the sheer lack of ignoring players.
Like DF and TWW, they’ve made a VERY big conscious effort to listen to players and make changes quite fast. Especially TWW and prepatch. They were making changes pretty much the same day in regards to player complaints and balancing.
SL, I think we went months or even an entire tier before they communicated things.
NOO!! NO WE CAN’T
That’s not at all true. Once you went through the story with your main you could level your alts through “Threads of Fate” rather quickly.
As for ignoring players; who besides the top level players were really impacted by the “borrowed power” and “convent” problem? I find it hard to believe that there are so many players playing with such fine margins that one button would make so much difference for mid level players.
Also remember, the entire total of people complaining in the forums represented a few thousand at most of the several million people playing the game. So the idea that they were “not listening to the community” is ridiculous. They were not listening to the noisy 1%, if that.
The Death Magic-using Drust(Vrykul who used Death Magic) were trapped in the most nightmarish known part of the Gardens of Life(almost the Realm of Life’s version of the Maw as it were) known as Thros the Blighted Land and sought to escape into Kul Tiras to reclaim what was once theirs.
Gorak Tul their leader was killed in Thros itself before the Drust could even reach into Kul Tiras with his successor Gorak Zhar orchestrating the invasion of Ardenweald where she sought to conquer the groves and claim the Souls to fuel her invasion of Kul Tiras only to be banished back into Thros after we killed her while her main invasion force was thrown back into Thros leaving only a few stragglers without anyone giving them orders.
The other Villain of Shadowlands the Jailer was focused on sacrificing the World Soul to wipe out all life and dominate every Soul in existence in order to raise a defense against some other threat.
The Jailer’s motivation is vague because we don’t know what the threat he fears is while the Drust just have a simple goal: Get Souls to fuel their reclamation of Kul Tiras!
Just because they were cheated of Souls in Shadowlands does not mean they are gone! As long as no army invades Thros within the Realms of Life they will continue to be a threat!
Now if someone were to offer them a huge amount of Souls for their invasion of Kul Tiras necessitating an invasion of Thros to uproot them permanently they would be resolved.
players asked for shadowlands to end early. I am sure there was tons of cut content we missed out on.
Is that you, Danuser?? Wasny GoT season also the greatest?
Lmao DF added a lot of lore books that set up world building elements for the next few expansions. Meanwhile Shadowlands destroyed the entire concept of death and spirituality in the game, butchered long-loved characters, and basically sought to turn the entire cosmology of WoW into a high school musical. The only thing it has going for it is the creative zone design.
“All we are, dude, is drust in the wind”
I can’t. I only paid attention for denathrius.
Shadowlands was the “realm of death” in that it tried to assassinate and kill many previously interesting characters and groups. From Arthas, Kel Thuzad, and the Scourge as a whole, Uther, Agent Kearnen, and Alexandros Mograine, to the Drust, the Dreadlords, and the Wild Gods. It was a whole mess of destroying characters legacies left and right.
I hate retcons, but I’d be fine if they retconned out Shadowlands.
Do you think they realized that arthas’s soul was split like uther’s and only a small fragment was in the SL?
The lich king was a combination of fragments from ner’zhul and arthas… it wasn’t either of them though.
The entire game for several expansions has just been Thrall’s feverdream
Okay, the drust.
When humans settled Kul Tiras, they came across vrykul who were already settled there: the drust. The humans were more than willing to cohabitate. The drust wanted nothing to do with the outsiders and war broke out. Individual drust were much stronger and better fighters than humans but humans were more numerous, had better tactics, better strategy and better equipment. When the drust saw they were losing, instead of admitting defeat resorted to death magic to animate constructs with the spirits of their fallen. It still wasn’t enough and they were eventually defeated. Worse, their use of death magic for them stuck outside of the cycle of life and death.
As for Ardenweald, it’s the place where the cycle of rebirth takes place. That’s why the drust were trying to take over it. They wanted to orchestrate their return to the material world and get revenge. The whole thing was conveyed very poorly however and you need to use contextual clues to figure it out.