Yeah I peaced out near the midpoint of BfA out of boredom and frustration so I only did Shadowlands once for the experience when I came back. Ardenweald was by far the biggest disappointment–there were so many opportunities that were like…small hints that it could’ve been something great but they pulled back and just said “just make it kind of fun and cute”. And I’m pretty sure it’s just going to stay that way as I think both Blizzard and the playerbase would prefer it if Shadowlands never happened.
Ardenwald was by far the most boring zone, but not the worst. The worst was Bastion. Or The Maw, since it openly punished you for playing in it. Ardenwald gave me a general sense of “Seriously? This is the best you can come up with?” So much abstract coolness you can do with fae and faeries, so much creative potential, and you basically just made Ashenvale again. But it was so boring I couldn’t muster up enough emotion to hate it. It definitely felt like a slog.
Bastion… Bastion. Oh, how I despise Bastion. The anger I feel when talking about Bastion is matched only by the burning rage that boils up inside me when I talk about what happened to Warcraft 3. I don’t hate it for art design, nor for the type of enemies you fight. No, my deep, burning, visceral hatred for Bastion comes purely from the story.
Okay so, let me make a comparison to another Blizzard game. In Diablo 3, Kormac comes from an order of Templar Knights who torture their new recruits until they lose all their memories, so that they can be “pure” and carry out their orders objectively. The game treats this as an unquestionably bad thing, even when initially operating under the assumption that Kormac agreed to it. To put it in the words of the noble Crusader: “it sounds like you were made broken, not whole.” For all the mistakes they made, the writers of Diablo 3 rightfully understood that the idea of ripping someone’s memories out of their mind and turning them into an empty-headed automaton to serve a function is wholly, unmistakably evil.
Memories are what make you who you are, they’re how you develop empathy, morality and wisdom. The people you love, the things you achieved, the lessons you’ve learned your whole life: these are what make you. If you rip those out of someone’s head, any nobility or morality they had will obviously be gone, and they’ll just be a brainless zombie for you to boss around.
The Kyrian do this unapologetically, openly and without the slightest bit of shame or doubt. This would be fine if they were meant to be villains, or just soft antagonists who need to humbled and redeemed, but they’re treated as THE GOOD GUYS. WE HELP THEM. You’re expected to send precious resources to them in a middle of a world-destroying drought so they can continue operations as normal. It’s not even like the game doesn’t recognize this is a bad process, when you try to help with it (something your character can’t ignore or reject if they want to continue the storyline) people are screaming in agony, bemoaning they don’t even know why they’re doing this anymore, feeling like failures for not completing it, and even the people who complete it are absolutely miserable. You’re supposed to feel bad when this glorified lobotomy lab is attacked and turned into a burning husk, but all I felt was glad.
Then you have the rebels, who are completely correct and totally justified except for the Jailer manipulating them so they can arbitrarily be the villains. Their leader very intelligently and passionately explains that the system is broken to her leader, and she just gets scolded and has a bunch of empty platitudes screamed at her before being chased out, because the Kyrian’s leader is a vapid, shrill, brainless, sanctimonious tyrant who blindly worships the system and all it stands for and views any potential change as blasphemy.
Again, we HELP THESE POPLE. This evil, cruel, hateful brainwashing CULT. We help them and are forced to pretend they’re righteous, well-intended and selfless when every single thing we’ve seen of them shows THE EXACT OPPOSITE. Sure, the campaign attempts to soften them up later and “solve” the problem by adding compromises and changes – but all of it feels like insufficient damage control to attempt to repair a core premise that’s just indefensible on its face. This is a sociopathic and disgusting view of the afterlife and the kind of thing I’d expect real life cults to preach.
I use the word “cult” here so liberally because brainwashing members and erasing all trace of their identity is exactly how cults operate. What the heck the writers intended me to take away from this perplexes me. But I know what I ended up taking away from it: Bastion is a disgusting hive of false prophets and abusive cultists masquerading as holy servants, and the only redemption for it would be total destruction.
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Why would they do that? The Forsaken are actively trying to rehabilitate their image as plague slinging genocidal monsters.
Plot armor was stretched thin trying to justify their continued existence while being the evil race in the Horde.
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Please do not do that
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Yeah, but remember. We were supposed to pick a faction in the war for the Shadowlands and big fat bald heads with stupid accents whipped the community into a frenzy so rabid that Blizzard changed that.
My favorite thing about the Kyrian is how they yeet that carpenter’s soul into perdition then heroically… do nothing about it.
“Welp he went straight to Hell for all eternity. That’s a bit odd. Someone above my paygrade should probably look into that”
And that could’ve worked if they were depicted as completely detached bureaucrats but they’re framed as heroic. It’s just bizarre.
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I’m not familiar with this, can you give more details? This would’ve been so much better and would explain so much about how the final product came out.
A fourway war for the Shadowlands wouldn’t have really worked though, since absolutely everyone would’ve sided with Maldraxxus. There’s literally no reason to side with anyone else except transmogs lmao.
There’s a lot of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as well as just general theatre vibes as well.
lmao any discussion on the story forums that mentions Shadowlands will inevitably change the original topic into a thread bashing Shadowlands and it’s 100% justified.
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There is one.
And it is a massive one.
In no world where continuity matters should the Night Warrior have even been one percent of Sylvanas’s power when empowered by Zovaal who received every single soul in the entire multiverse that died.
There is absolutely no way that Tyrande could ever fight her and succeed. None. She was empowered by one goddess that had no where near every soul in the entire multiverse. It was fanfiction, plain and simple. Meant to please night elf fans and absolutely no one else, and even then it failed there.
I’m not saying this as a fan of Sylvanas. When she screwed over the Horde and killed Saurfang I was finished with her. But Tyrande shouldn’t have ever been able to contend with her.
Their power was not equal.
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No, I mean at her trial in Oribos. Killing her and sending her to The Maw still allows her to toil at saving souls, search for Nathanos, and when they’re done they can shuffle off to whatever lame afterlife world awaits them.
Allowing her to live accomplished nothing.
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Oh, okay.
I get you.
Yeah Tyrande had already gotten all of the nelf souls out of the maw (nelf souls were the only souls that were intentionally saved) so yeah. But they’re never going to give Sylvanas anything more than a time out.
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Should’ve just had her turn into a Dreadlord during the trial and go “you’ll never find where I stashed the real Sylvanas!”
Then we immediately go find her, because Dreadlords are only cunning on paper, and she’s like… “are you stupid?”
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Maybe if she killed her she would lose any ability to condemn her.
Letting old blue boy arbiter her (now soul intact) to… Bastion, for dying to Arthas? Who knows.
I mean, that’s not going to take the sting out for anyone who lost to Sylvanas. It still reads as “and she got away with it scott free.” Retconning it changes nothing emotionally speaking. The Horde are still more evil than Sylvanas. Saurfang is still dead.
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Nothing is going to wash out the taste of BFA and SL. Use bad writing as a magic wand to fix the mess previous bad writing landed us in.
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She doesn’t deserve hate for killing Saurfang. He challenged her to Mok’gora. He had been fantasizing about doing so since before she burned the stupid tree. (Granted, that was artistic foreshadowing, but we are pretending these characters are people worthy of hate and not just storytelling elements).
Why did he challenge the warchief that was leading sheep off of a cliff and laughing at them as crows ate their flesh?*
*Ogmott’s colorful description for Sylvanas’s canonical betrayal of the Horde.
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The only person who deserves hate for that is whoever wrote it. Probably Golden cause sure looks like her MO, given she hates toxic masculinity which explains why she had to HUMILIATE Saurfang and Anduin was involved in most of it, her pet project.
And it’s funny cause she wrote War Crimes. She wrote the bit where Saurfang states that honor demands that if someone is messing with the Horde from the inside, he’d challenge them to a 1v1. So what does Saurfang do when he finds out that’s happening? He tries to let someone else kill Sylvanas for him then proceeds to try and commit suicide like a woosy little coward which the ACTUAL Saurfang wasn’t. A big middle finger from me to Golden for this.
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Honestly don’t care about Saurfang after BFA.
“Hi, I’m too spineless to stand up for The Horde (that I think is no different to Blackhand’s fel juiced Horde, anyway) so I’ll go beg the crying teenager supreme commander of my enemies to do it for me.” ← somehow less pathetic than Baine. Faction pride expansion, btw.
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