Blizzard really could have used Archaeology to fill in lore plot holes and I’m deeply disappointed that they didn’t offer it this expansion.
I would be cool if they used archaeology as a means for us to uncover what happened during the ancient war in the Shadowlands when the Cosmic forces attacked each Covenant, as well as Covenant history and origin stories. I feel like this missing opportunity would be the chunk of lore we are missing, it would have made the story a lot more enjoyable if the writers actually offered us up some answers even if it was time gated behind an Archaeology grind.
Archaeology profession as a whole is under utilized as a means to sharing lore and history with the players.
According to Researcher Au’dalak, secrets are not lost to time in the Shadowlands. But, if we visit the mysterious Sepulcher, this idea may be proven false, and Archaeology might be added, at least I hope.
They removed a chunk of Maw lore, we were supposed to gather items with lore related flavor text to Ve’nari for an Achievement by killing rares in the Maw. They removed the flavor text and left the items and the Achievement.
I feel like again, the Korthian artifacts we recover should have had more lore attatched to them, some are pretty cool, like the broken light sword that can cut out a person’s shadow. The whispering statuette and the bag of rich soil that can potentially be used to regrow Teldrassil. But alas, it’s all hollow lacking the lore to back it all up.
It’s just another room full of cool meaningless junk like in Karazhan’s basement.
…and if there’s a patch 9.3, it will retcon away some 9.2 stuff.
I think they really do hate Archeology and want to remove it. They want to strip is away as superfluous so they can create a new version as next expansion’s borrowed Power mechanic.
The Shield from the Inn of Forever is interesting Lore… It could easily be where Durotan ended up.
Orcs that want peace outside the Shaman(who would get Ardenweald which resembles the Spirit Woods of Nagrand) and the ones who joined the Ancestors of Draenor(who are kept from entering the Shadowlands by K’ure) would get the Inn of Forever as their Afterlife.
Same would go for Human Soldiers, Hunters and Paladins who want rest.
At first I thought they removed the Maw lore stuff becausw they didn’t want to reveal any lore spoilers in the Grimoire but that book offered us no new information.
I think you may be right about how the story was either 1) changed midway through Beta testing 2) the story was heavily scaled back because they promised more than they could deliver.
I do hope Archaeology is re-added in later patches.
I agree 100%. I’ve always liked how archaeology gives us lore tidbits that don’t necessarily fit into quest text or dialogue options. I think it was at its best in Legion, where we not only had all the Legion artifacts on display as you completed them, but also quests to give people motivation to go out and keep doing it. After years of professions suffering, Legion came along and did a LOT to make them fun and relevant again. Then Legion ended and they went back to being ignored, with archaeology literally ignored this expansion. I’d argue we needed it more in this expansion than any other, since the Shadowlands were brand new without any previous lore to rely on. Having the small snippets of lore you get from archaeology finds would’ve been a big help.
I also agree with the theory that the Maw items were stripped of lore because they changed the direction they were going to go. I don’t think the original text of them was ever written down and saved, but I remember people saying that some of them implied the Maw wasn’t always like that, and it may have been an entirely different realm at some point in the past.
While that is true, it’s also true that a there is a great number of players who really don’t care about the Lore and they tend to be Activision’s bread and butter.
It’s all more true that, after all the years, it’s these players who have remained paying customers when all the diehard Lore buffs have long quit. Which is why boycotting the game is never going to work. All you’ll do is leave Blizzard with the players remaining that Activision wants to target, which they’ll just doubledown on targeting those players.
At the very least the trash from the emmisary chest do give junk that has lore to them. I feel like that was sort of suppose to substitute for the lack of archeology items for he covenants.
After clicking on your link, I found what I was thinking of: “All the Korrath’s Grimoires were readable; sadly, no player during development wrote down what the books said to the knowledge of the editors.”