He’s referring to the alternate reality souls joining the main soul upon death
I think that’s what he’s referring to anyway
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Ursoc would be a very weird example of that, since the two Ursocs he referenced are the same Ursoc?
But I dunno, maybe, I have seen stranger things today!!
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At this point, I’m so confused, that I’m just throwing stuff out there and seeing if it sticks 
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The alternate universe point was more about Gul’dan. Main Gul’dan has been dead for nearly years by the time Legion pulls around so he should be somewhere in the Shadowlands if he hasn’t otherwise been drained of anima and destroyed like Arthas.
So how does alternate Gul’dan play into the afterlife/soul interaction of the Shadowlands? Are there 2 dead who can interact with each other? Being dead doesn’t seem to limit an individual’s power unless they’re stuck in the Maw, so if he’s in, say, Revendreth, he could hypothetically still have his power or regain it somehow a la Kel’thuzad. What about the alternate timelines in general, are there 2 Shadowlands? We know demons exist in the twisting nether outside of alternate universes so there’s only 1 Archimonde, somehow, even though Archimonde existed as a mortal before becoming a demon and therefore there should theoretically be multiple Archimondes with different souls that can become different demons.
Esoteric cosmology doesn’t really jive with Warcraft’s lore, it opens up way too many cans of worms that the writers will never approach because they’re either not smart enough to make it make sense, or they’re not confident enough in their abilities to make it a compelling narrative.
No, I get that. I was clarifying for Rash about Ursoc, who is a very different case.
According to the abyssmal explanation we got, all Gul’dans merge into one Mega-Gul’dan who is composed of every iteration across every timeline. Which is… Very dumb, because this Amalgam Gul’dan would then suffer for the sins of main and Alt Draenor Gul’dan.
Lert me use a different example, because we know Gul’dan is probably always going to break bad.
Kael’thas. He ends up in Revendreth to pay for his sins of working with the Legion, and the Kael’thas we see is a combination of every Kael’thas. But what about alt timelines where he never did that? What about the alt-universe where Garithos never Garithos’d, where Arthas never razed Silvermoon, or where Kael’thas died in the war? Because prior to working with the Legion, which depends on those events happening, there isn’t evidence Kael’thas did anything wrong. But those iterations are combined with the Revendreth Kael’thas we see.
And making this worse is the unnecessary nature of it. They could have, back in WoD, just not said every timeline is connected to the one true Twisting Nether, Shadowlands, etc, all cosmic realms, and they have their own realm of death, fel plane, whatever. Or better yet, that their cosmic realms are effectively just “phased instances” of the “main” cosmic realms and that’s why we’re not dealing with Alt-Draka. Or just… Not bothered trying to force any explanation at all.
“But what about alt-Varian from Timeline 1706, can we see him too?”
“No. Who cares. We don’t need to go into that crap.”
But… Here we are.
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You are playing a Death Knight, you are pretty much already doing that.
Being dead means:
Where you are no longer in the realm of the living.
I dono what else to say, thats kind of been the most general definition of afterlife for 1000s of years.
Shadowlands afterlife is bad for the opposite reason where its not a afterlife at all because you can still “die” in it. If I were to write Shadowlands there would be no “double death” because it would just be pointless in having a realm you go to before that.
But I mean…to me it just sounds like you both just dont like afterlife as a concept at all so I am not sure what else can be said. If you dont like it, you dont like it.
Imma be real with you Kromkosh, I personally believe in an afterlife and I can assure you death holds weight over me.
If being dead just means “no longer in the realm of the living”, then what, functionally, is the difference between being dead, and just moving really far away from everyone you know? Because, functionally, that’s all that happens when you die in lore now.
Good for those cultures, but we’re talking about a video game with a fictional magic system that allegedly has rules that are supposed to be followed. Rules that Blizzard’s own writing doesn’t really jive with despite them pinky promising that it makes sense.
I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on the concept of an afterlife by itself, only how it’s used in the context of the setting. WoW already had various afterlives that were just fine. Emerald Dream for Dream-related entities, orcish ancestors being able to communicate with the living, etc. They were all vague enough and never given too much of a spotlight for them to be ruined the way Shadowlands ruined every single practice and idea surrounding death in-game.
We’re still talking about World of Warcraft, right?
Well, what is supposed to happen is you can not move freely back and forth. Afterlives should be considered one-way tickets to that “really far place”.
I guess? But you already said you dont like afterlife concepts anyway so wouldn’t ANY idea of one, even if its vague, ruin the story for you?
Yes?
No, because I didn’t say anything like this.
You said it ruins the narrative, right here:
I said I wouldn’t write one into my story because it does away with any mystery around death. I never said I didn’t like them.
Warcraft doesn’t gel with concrete afterlives. There are too many disparate cultures and uses of magic that have tangible effects on the soul that all do different things which are not fully explained to the player. This is how it should have been kept. Making the dead go to 1 place forever undoes all of that.
Warcraft’s races and cultures were largely not written with any particular afterlife in mind, and the topic of what happens after death largely never touched on.
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Ah I see.
As much as I didnt like SL for other reasons I actually did not mind that part much. I somewhat liked having a universal place everyone goes to thats still diverse.
Although I will admit, it did trample over a lot of the older lore.
Totally the opposite… you have a head canon that you wanted to hijack this original poster’s topic with; when in reality the Titans are not dead in the real lore. Then you proceed with your gate-keeping routine.
I meant what I said about Ursoc. There are two different versions of Ursoc. Quite literally when we defeat Xavius in the Emerald Nightmare raid, it teleports us into a little extra room which Cenarius refers to as the “pure heart of the emerald dream” and it has green meadows and trees…but also green partially translucent spirits of many of the wild gods that died during the campaign, even ones outside the raid like the tiger. And yet, there is an Ursoc image sitting there right along with the rest. Then, in shadowlands we had the cinematic short that they wanted to produce with Ursoc being shown at the moment we defeated him and then going directly into a seedpod in ardenweald. That means we have an Ursoc spirit happy and pure sitting in the Emerald Dream about 20 minutes later, and a sad soul of Ursoc sitting in Ardenweald… with no writing clarifying whether we were seeing fakes in the emerald dream or something else.
Precisely.
That isn’t the greek or aztec or egyptian or japanese conception of afterlife at all, in any way. But that’s neither here nor there, as Warcraft is not any of those cultures.
Rashidi reminds me of someone, but I just can’t figure out who… opinionated, quick to being hostile the moment someone disagrees with them…
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Well again, I could ask you the same question I asked Krom: How would you write WoWs afterlife then?
Me and Alysna were just talking about that a few days ago. Funny how you picked up on it too
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I have been a bit laxed in my story forums reading…
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I’m just browsing and commenting on things at random. I just thought it was funny all three of us have the same idea, but can’t pin his main down 
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I wouldn’t have written any afterlife… my understanding of the concept of a Shadowlands before they released an expansion on it was that “the Shadowland” was a dark version of the existing universe and any soul that got caught there was suffering and maybe even non-corporeal. The shadowland bits in the starting quests for death knight players in Wrath of the Lich King for example… and the brief mentions of a shadowlands during vanilla, etc. Never once, did I read all that during vanilla and wrath and think to myself “gee, the shadowlands will be an island with blue sky and people will have to walk around and grow food and carve trees into chairs forever…” that just doesn’t fit.
Not who you’re talking to… obviously.
Depends on my goals. Normally I ignore it, let the people and readers think what they like.
However, depending on the circumstances I might write about it but that’s unlikely and usually only limited to the purposes of the story.
I would consider it if it served as a means of creating closure for a character or set of characters. Immediate example that pops up a chance for a couple, or whatever, to be together or at least say goodbye. Even so I tend to keep it vague and specific to the people and situation.
I’d also consider it if I wanted to undermine/counter the argument of someone who was using their interpretation to create harm in the world, and I didn’t feel like I had another option. This hasn’t happened yet.