This is why I said what I think Shadowlands should have been.
It literally, could have been the greatest expac of all expacs. A true walk down memory lane, a fight to save our own souls and bring them back to the land of the living. So many memories this game could have shown us.
Instead, enjoy your rolling robot in Zereth Mortis and The Jailer, he who was responsible for everything in the universe that ever was…just lol collapses.
Dumb.
Here is how we fix shadowlands but it starts with BfA. Below is a detail post on how we would resolve the number of issues these two expansions present.
Sylvannas gets arrested for war crimes at the end of BfA and we skip to dragonflight.
Hakkar is the greatest tragety there.
Built up in the Sunken Temple, barely beaten in old Zul’Gurub, teased in new ZG…
Then we break into his house, pants him, steal his powah, and run away again.
To me, they should of used the Legion formula, with the expansion set in Northrend and the “Argus” being the Maw itself where we go fight WoW Satan as he tries to break free into azeroth. Ideally, we would chuck him back in WoW supermax hell and slam the door (likely with sylvanas in tow).
Zovaal needed FAR more build up. Sylvanas stole all the oxygen out of the room and the writers were too enamored with the Zovaal they had in their heads to realize they had not really displayed what they imagined as an actual thing.
You’re not wrong. I still don’t know what they were thinking with Zovaal. He was boring and wasn’t fleshed out enough to be more than a cardboard villain. It was more like he was an afterthought when they realized they needed a big bad to take some of the heat off of Sylvanas.
I will stand by this to the death. The mechanics are forgivable, but the story?
You build on what you have and tie everything together into a connective whole that would work with itself, not against itself. You leave mystery in your wake, not rage and fatigue.
Players should never look at the realms beyond their own and go “Urgh, that place.” with the same level of disgust we reserve for having to use a McDonalds Bathroom in the middle of the bad part of town.
Rather than a whole brand new Titan++ threat, it is more Titans we’ve never heard of. The lore is revealed that they were explicitly removed from history to prevent rebellion and alienation towards the Titanic Pantheon, and even some Titans do not know of these ancient beings still existing.
We don’t just pop over into the Realm of Death, we are Mortal, it doesn’t matter how powerful we are, we cannot survive that trip, or at the very least is is a permanently one-way trip. Instead its a Titanic facility composed of interlinked prison-Demiplanes just on the edge of the Material Plane and Death, and the true Shadowlands remains a mystery to us all.
Jumping the shark for the sake of it never works well, and cheapens everything the players have done to get this far, and doing that over and over and over and over just makes players feel like “Why even bother if everything I’ve done can be wiped away by this new even greater threat pulled directly from the 
's 
writing all of this?”
Is tackled off his soap-box and taken outside to be violently rolled on the grass
Whenever the writing starts to falter, I notice Blizzard tries to link the thing back to the Lich King to try to bolster its popularity.
Like they’re asking us to please remember more popular eras of writing.
Please clap
Oh 100% they do. And it’s going to run out of steam eventually. How many times can we go back to Arthas at this point?
I’m glad to see Xal’atath being a thing in this expac. But I feel like she’s been absent more than she’s been present. I want Blizz to give her some bite. I want her to actually do something that puts us onto the back step. She knocked out Dalaran, but we regrouped really fast. Too fast.
We never did a good look into the Jailer’s chest cavity.
We left his body right by the engine to reshape reality.
And we had just spent a whole patch learning that you didn’t even need a World Soul or a Titan to re-activate or replace an Eternal One, you just needed a willing soul and a suitable robotic vessel for that soul, and a mountain of Anima to make up for the difference between a Mortal Soul and a Titan/World Soul candidate.
And Zo’vaal had just been channelling the powers of Azeroth, The Most Powerful World Soul Of All Time 
, and we still don’t completely understand the metaphysical mechanics of being bathed in that energy when you’re a Mortal, let alone a First One Robot with a Soul of its own.
It would have been cool if there was an extra mechanic on mythic where he pulls a burger out of his chest hole and regains 50% HP.
Is his chest cavity player housing?
Would it have changed anyones opinion of the story if the Primus would have been revealed to be the big-bad?
During TWW datamining (which I glanced at but tried to avoid most story spoilers), I remember seeing a few screenshots of Dalaran ruins in the new zone… and I thought that meant that Dalaran’s destruction would leave marks all across the island and be a constant reminder.
…But then it was its tiny little corner, only to be disturbed again to collect fallen plush toys.
The Dalaran event itself was great - running around the streets with NPCs dead and dying everywhere, rescuing who remained. The few Dalaran survivors->questgivers across Dorn were great. And I loved that the arcane crabs down in Hallowfall were infused with arcane magic specifically by the crash of Dalaran.
But all of that was gone in a flash. Finish the event once, done. Do the survivors’ quests once, done. Then it’s just picking up plushies, returning library books, and an untangling minigame. That’s not really impactful. Now Khadgar - the only NPC mentioned by name by other characters and specifically mourned (unlike the dead NPCs we ran by in the instance, who were never mentioned as individuals again) - is back alive, too, so even that’s been reversed.
The upcoming questline (is it out yet? I frankly forgot to keep paying attention) should help, but even that seems to refer to the dead Dalarani as a collective instead of showing how each missing individual has affected the people close to them.
It feels like a summary, not a living world - what should be a web of individuals with their own views and goals, that we the player are experiencing in real time and can only generalize into a single summary after the fact.
I mean, the whole thing being Primus playing 4d Chess, manipulating Zovaal as the patsie, pretending to be chained up so we’d immediately feel sympathy and pity for him and help regardless of what he asked, would have been amazing.
Zovaal was branded with the Runes of Domination, he should not have been able to resist their effects.
Primus was with us as we reforged the Helm of Domination into the Crown of Will, thereby also gaining resistance to the Runes of Domination and thereby inoculating himself in case we turned on him and tried to bind him in turn.
With Zovaal as his puppet, Denathrius had no idea that the Primus was the real master and, with his ego and pride, would never be able to comprehend why a fellow Eternal One would willingly debase themselves as the ‘Rune Carver’ when they could have simply ruled from the shadows. Denathrius would simply have assumed Zovaal was in charge but unstable, and thus rife to be deposed at the right moment.
And, win or lose, the Primus is the only member of the original Eternal Ones who steps foot in Zerith Mortis. The leaders of Bastion and Ardenweld do not come, the council of Revendreth are too small and weak, and Pelagos becomes the Arbiter but is too trusting of both us and the Eternal Ones to ever question it.
Win or lose, the Primus now knows how to access Zerith Mortis and will inevitably be able to find his way back in some form or fashion, because we know with teleportation magic, even cross-dimensional versions, it doesn’t matter how strong the barriers, if you know where Point A and Point B are, you will inevitably be able to teleport between the two points.
Win or lose, the Primus knows the Words of Domination, has been inoculated against that same magic by our efforts, is beloved by the two remaining original Eternal Ones as their brother and their defender, is revered by his own Covenant and deeply respected as a ‘loyal’ defender of the Shadowlands and a cunning strategist by the Covenant of Revendreth, is the closest to Pelagos by dint of his ‘friendship’ with the young Arbiter and his active participation in the Shadowlands and not just sitting back and going through the motions like the rest, and is considered a friend and ally by the Champions of Azeroth who toppled Zovaal and have been exposed to the greatest mysteries of the First Ones in the process.
I’m still not entirely unconvinced that the Primus was playing the long game and manipulated the whole cascade of events in the Shadowland Expansion to get himself into position. We saw in the Draka short that his agents can teleport to the Material/Mortal Plane. The Engines in Icecrown Citadel are still functional. It took minutes for Zovaal to start to siphon enough Anima from Azeroth’s World Soul to attempt to start to reshape reality, and that was with us beating on his ankles and him having spent days forcing the system to comply.
And Primus was watching everybody, all the time, through those Legendaries he crafted for us, and saw the whole thing.
If the Primus is the real threat, he’s manipulated everything and everyone to get us in there, take out the greatest threats, make sure the whole Shadowlands thinks he’s too perfect to ever make a grab for ultimate power himself, and then politely shooed us out the door, locked it behind us and left himself at the shoulder of a young, inexperienced Arbiter as his greatest advisor and ‘friend’.
We’re gonna hear magical reports that a new hole to the Shadowlands has opened above Icecrown Citadel, small, contained, controlled, there’s Automata and Maldraxxi and dominated Scourge guarding it, and messages from somebody called the Primus telling us to stand by and keep watch over our people, there’s some great threat that slipped out of the Shadowlands, stay close to home, he will let us know when and where to strike.
And then the engines kick in and by this time … Primus’s forces have dug in and we are scattered across Azeroth scouring for this threat on faked reports and take too long to get back into the fight, too late to realise the Primus set us up.
We arrive and find Dominated agents of Revendreth, Ardenweld and Bastion guarding the Engines, which are in turn protected by shields fueled by Azerite itself. We can’t get in and destroy them, so we ride the flow of energy up into the Shadowlands, fight our way to the Zerith Mortis Gate only to find it destroyed, fight our way to Maldraxxus, fine a new Gate there and get to Zerith Mortis, all the while the flow of Azerite just keeps going, fight our way past Dominated Shadowlands natives of all kinds and types, including more dominated Automata, get into the facility, even more enemies, by the time we get to heart of the facility?
Primus salutes us, tells us he wishes he could have brought us into the fold, we are his greatest weapons and champions, snaps his fingers and any of his relics we were trying to use turn to dust and ash, and there’s Zovaal, rebuild and renewed, holding Denathrius’s blade which screams with the twinned outrage of the Sword’s native sentience and Denathrius’s own essence, and commands his ‘brother’ to finish the job this time, as more and more of these Proto-Forms we saw in the Zerith Mortis raid march out of the alcoves, taking the form of the Eternal Ones, of the Titans, of beings we have not yet met, all wielding great and terrible weapons forged by the Primus for this very moment, to stall us as the Installation, gorged on power stolen over the days it took us to re-invade and fight through the Shadowlands to get here, enters its final stage.
Primus knows he can’t stop us, but he is the greatest strategist in the cosmos, and knows it isn’t about overpowering us, but slowing us down and redirecting us. We are a river, no matter what barriers are put before us, we will inevitably flow onwards to the sea. And just as the last of his army of Titans and Eternal Ones and other beings falls to our desperate attempts, as we’re spent, broken and exhausted … the mechanism at the heart of reality pings, the pillars descend, Primus turns to face us and tells us “Well done.”
“In the next cycle, know I will remember you, and make sure you are rewarded as the heroes you are. But this cycle is flawed, and must be remade.” as the whole world goes white, and all fades away into silence …
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing that could have made me like Shadowlands. I bailed on WoW right before it came out, and rolled my eyes through every lore update I heard from my friends. Seeing dead characters again? As the Blood Elf female joke goes, “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”
It just cheapens any emotional impact a character’s death might have had, and when I came back to the game and played through that expansion out of curiosity, I just sighed heavily every time one more dead “hero” appeared.
Turning Sylvanas more and more unhinged and evil (this includes stuff before the expansion) just soured it all for me, too. I don’t care that they threw in a hasty “BUT SHE WAS DOING IT BECAUSE–”. I’m tired of leaders (except Green Jesus) turning.
Anyway. That whole expansion was an irredeemable dumpster fire, though I realize that’s a purely subjective take. I’ll just be really glad to put it far, far behind me and hope that subsequent expansions go back to better storytelling (though admittedly, I don’t know how many further stories can be told in this universe, without going off to more planets. Like…how many more islands are we going to find out there? Does it turn out Azeroth is actually just one big landmass, but Magic made the boundaries look like ocean?)
ETA I do actually like the game, and I’m not trying to crap on anyone who liked the parts I hated. But that whole period of time tastes of disappointment, and I’m really hoping things climb back upward again!
I think I really would have liked Shadowlands if it was about owning, operating and managing a small neighborhood coffee shop.
My regulars would be people from the server and I would listen to their problems and make increasingly disgusted faces without ever saying anything.
I would chase people out for wanting to use the restroom without buying a croissant first.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
I was given Shadowlands for free (it was a lark that I felt the WoW itch again so I was active while Blizzard was just desperately pushing it on people), and I continue to feel like I overpaid for the expansion.
It killed all interest I had in the overall WoW narrative. Like to a degree I kind of feel impressive seeing as how I’ve been wallowing in WarCraft lore since WarCraft 2 when I was a literal child. I couldn’t tell you much of anything about the lore or plot of The War Within. Despite my maintaining an active sub for now, I can’t force myself to care about any of it. I went from the “read quest text like a novel and just drink in the atmosphere” to “Enemies I need to kill with either be highlighted or stuff I need to pick up will be pointed out on the minimap. I need no more context, let’s just get this nonsense over with.” Shadowlands did this - it was helped along by the WoD narrative going forward I admit, but Shadowlands by the time I hit Ardenweld I’d just stopped trying to find anything worth caring about in the setting, to the point Revandreth is just TV Static noise when I think about questing there-in.
It’s directly responsible for me outright skipping an expansion in its entirety (And to date I still have zero interest in doing Dragonflight content). This is a WoW first as the closest that happened before was my first hiatus between Cataclysm and the Siege of Ogrimmar (but boy did I return to MoP and realize I’d been missing out).
It made me actively hate the End Game systems and mechanics to such a degree I practically protest them on principle now. “Gather X amount of Free2play currency here”…No. No I will not do that. I don’t care if it hampers my “progression” - my end game content is doing old content and raids for transmogs and laughs. Which, slightly ironically, means my current batch of “fresh” content is Shadowlands dungeons and Raids. Except for those places currently on seasonal rotation which is the stupidest damn thing I’ve encountered but that’s more because I took the trouble to jump through all the needless loading screens to get to the dungeon in the first place and it’s current end game content for stupid reasons.
More than anything, Shadowlands was a culmination of every bad decision Blizzard ever had about WoW up to that point. As I’ve also said in the past: If WoD was Blizz putting a knife to WoW’s throat and BfA was dragging it across, Shadowlands was watching it bleed out on the floor.
Dragonflight seems to have staunched the bleeding, but if I’m going to be brutally honest especially with Siren’s Isle The War Within feels more like WoW is in a vegetative state at this point. Again - I’m still active which is probably the longest I’ve been so in a goodly while so points for that, but Undermine’s not filling me with any sort of excitement and I’m basically in a Sunk Cost Fallacy with this game at this point. I’m not having “fun” but I’ve been here for 20 years and I’m not really wanting to restart with another game.
Nobody asked, but I’d also like it noted how many WoW plots seem to revolve around robots malfunctioning.