So, hey there. After threatening it, things have fallen in place and I might be back in game by the weekend. I’m sort of excited. Anywho, I’ve played sporadically over the past several years to keep my Kina leveled; but, I haven’t done any serious RPing in that time. SL and it’s awfulness screwed my guild and Kina’s backstory and progression. I have ideas for that, but I do have some questions about what has transpired over the past 2 expansions.
1.) Where are we, as a community, with the awfulness that was Shadowlands. Are we ignoring it, vaguely mentioning it IF necessary, or embracing it? Is there a consensus or is just a “you do you” kinda thing?
2.) Anything of note about Dragonflight I need to be aware off. Played enough of it to get Kina to 70 and stopped. Didn’t really finish any of the story lines that I remember. I do know that Baine isn’t still staring at wall though. So that’s good.
3.) How many years do I need to account for from the end of Bfa until now? I’m not really sure at this point. If I’m going to lie about Kina’s age, I need to know how big that lie needs to be to make sure I cover everything.
It’s weird. I’ve been on the server for 15 years, around 14 years of that with Kina as my main. I feel like I’m a new RPer now, though. I know part of it is just being rusty. I think the other part of it that I have primarily focused on Tauren and RP and community. That’s what I know and that’s what I’m comfortable with. This time I’m looking at getting more out into the world with people and crap… It’s scary.
I doubt I’m the only person coming back who might have some worries about how they are going to fit in after a while away, so I figured this might be useful to other people as well. If that’s you, then post your questions as well.
I would appreciate any feed back anyone feels like giving me. If there is anything that might help an Elder (NOT ELDERLY), tribeless Tauren warrior who has been trying to find her new path and rejoin the world, please let me know.
Hi Kina,
In my experiences, I’ve come across the following:
1.) People rarely mention the realms of death. I guess people don’t like to think about death. Or Realms. Or Shadowlands. I’ve met a few exceptions, but it’s a “you do you”.
2.) Baine didn’t trust the centaur and people didn’t like that, so they told him to get over it because these centaur are different. I don’t have a tauren so I didn’t follow that too closely. Lot of quests really nailed home the “old is passing on the torch to the young and finding forgiveness in their lives of war and bloodshed”. I’ve been using that as a turning point for Thokk.
3.) From the end of BfA until now, I wager… five years? Six tops since we’re at the end of DF.
I was propositioned (not like that) to join an Orc guild after four lines of RP. They got mad when I wasn’t a war-screaming orc talking about honor. So there’s still some WAAAAGH HONOR ANCESTORS WAR MOK’GORA HATE ALLIANCE PUNT GNOMES types out there. Seem to be fewer and far between.
There’s a really nice guild called “I Will Wait For You” that posted on the forums here. Might be a good starting place.
I havent heard anyone mention the SL in-character, I think, in a VERY long time. Many of us didnt go (see Year of the Scourge for the campaign that multiple guilds took part in right here on Azeroth).
The Aspects have gotten powers back, not from the Titans but Azeroth herself. The Kaldorei have a new world tree, Amirdrassil, and are building a new capital there (Dragon Isles) and Tyrande has given over leadership to her daughter Shandris. Gilneas has been reclaimed (collaborative horde-alliance effort) and Greymane has given the kingdom to his daughter, Tessa (I think thats her name?).
BFA ended, and assuming SL took 2 years, then there was a 3 year skip, and Dragonflight has taken two years, lets say.
Shadowlands is in the same category as Warlords of Draenor in that it feels removed enough that you can ignore basically all of it and your understanding of the lore will not be hugely affected.
No one will have a problem if it was a big part of your character, but people mostly want to talk about other stuff, like Elves and which kind are the prettiest.
As far as I know, the community as a whole is not ignoring the events of the Shadowlands. They are canonical, but there seems to be a large number of players whose characters simply did not venture into the realm of the dead while only a handful or so have. Both of which are valid in any given RP scenario, as the content itself is part of the canon lore. However, during the Valdrakken Accord questline, we go to Ardenweald to bargain with the Winter Queen to bring Ysera back (for Dragonflight). It’s explained that the veil between life (the material plane) and death (Shadowlands) is getting harder and harder to cross with each passing year. So, in the near future it’ll be nearly impossible if not impossible to reach the afterlife once again.
Dragonflight had some big moments in it, and subtle ones too that held a lot of important information/details in it (see last lines of answer above). But overall, Dragonflight was a call back to Classic storytelling where we were simple adventurers/explorers visiting a new world to try to help its denizens. So it’s alright and understandable if your character(s) might not know full details regarding DF events, and it’s reasonable their knowledge would be more limited than your own (as the player).
We are currently in Year 41 (King’s Calendar, or KC), as far as I am aware. There was a 3 year time skip from the end of Shadowlands to the start of Dragonflight, and Dragonflight opened in the year 40. It’s been about a year now, and a large number of folk in the RP community regard this time period as either year 40 or year 41, depending on the group. Each expansion usually takes about 1-2 years in-game as well as canonically. Here’s a brief chart (originally posted by Danuser):
KC Year
Duration
Expansion
0
Opening of the Dark Portal
0 - 25
25 years
Events of Warcraft 1, 2, and 3
25 - 26
One year
World of Warcraft
26 - 27
One year
Burning Crusade
27 - 28
One year
Wrath of the Lich King
28 - 30
Two years
Cataclysm
30 - 31
One year
Mists of Pandaria
31 - 32
One year
Warlords of Draenor
32 - 33
One year
Legion (Four years after the end of WotLK)
33 - 35
Two years
Battle for Azeroth (Anduin’s age officially stated as 18)
the thing about Shadowlands is that unless you RP a death knight, you have zero reason to know anything about the story ICly. And even then, death knights can get out of it by saying they just stayed behind and murked the Scourge instead. I’d argue it’s actually probably a better lore-move to not mention too much of the Shadowlands story events in-character, as realistically, it was more of a “big heroes do big hero things” than Warlords of Draenor. In Warlords, there were entire settlements made by the Alliance and the Horde. In Shadowlands, it was just the major Lore characters, Maw Walkers, and the Ebon Blade that really went. Maybe a random civilian or two.
As a death knight RP’er, I acknowledge Shadowlands. But Gravewhisker spent most of it bumming around in the Maw, so they can’t really say much about it beyond “wow, this sucks.”
Also gonna add that Mulgore RP usually happens on Mondays. There’s a decently active, if small, Tauren community on the server. I show up on my death knight sometimes.
The Shadowlands exist, in the sense that the afterlife exists. Zaeka didn’t go do expansion shenanigans, so any mention of anyone travelling to and from the afterlife - and all of the ugly messiness that was the covenants, etc. - is maybe treated with mild suspicious and sniffing to see how drunk they are. SL didn’t show up infinite number of afterlives that exist, so it leaves room for it still to be explored and expanded on in RP and discussions of death. Basically, it didn’t matter.
Going to perhaps upset some people, but not really no. Unless you’re a Night Elf, or secretly a dragon, not much has changed for the average denizen of Azeroth. And unless Kin actually ICly went to the Dragon Isles, there’s not much to see or hear about it.
I believe Shadowlands started in 35 ADP, there was a timeskip after SL, and consider DF probably took a year or two we’re in 41-42?
Thank everyone for taking the time to answer. I appreciated it.
Here’s why Shadowlands is such an issue to me. Kina’s whole gig became reviving her Tribe’s religious practices, which was worship of the Skyfather. Skydaddy was - among other things - guardian of the dead. So yeah, It really just didn’t happen for her. She didn’t go, and she can just ignore the blasphemers who did go. I still need figure out where her head is right now. But I’ll probably run with the idea that it’s not the place that Tauren ancestors go, if it ever comes up.
I actually like what I played of Dragonflight. Though I look it more as a “palate cleanser” than an expansion.
I’ll admit this is really what killed Shadowlands for me. As someone who’s played and RPed a shaman since Vanilla, it was actually pretty heartbreaking to see that the expansion literally about spirits and the afterlife really had no particular discussion or focus on faith. I know Blizz probably did this to have a super sanitized version of the afterlife, but it was incredibly disappointing that there was literally nothing for the one class that is supposed to deal with these things.
And that’s where I think I may lean more into the ‘shadowlands didn’t happen’ camp just because it really did ruin my class’s mythos and main schtick. And I lean into it being more of a metaphorical or figurative sense of understanding the abstractness of death. And leave room for there to be faith and religious beliefs of our characters separated from Blizzard’s terrible writing.
Blizz’s whole lack of consistency just really irks me to no end. Your Lore and class fantasy says one thing - for freaking years! Like, Tauren ancestors live deep in the Emerald Dream. Then one day, nah! we got over it.
How I’ve decided to deal with the canonicity of the Shadowlands:
A handful of leaders and champions went missing for about two years, returned mysteriously, and not much is being said about where they were or what they did.
Those who did go experienced a kind of a version of the Shadowlands that their relatively small, mortal brains could handle. Metaphors, symbolism, all were used to create a world that would be familiar to the champions but a small, simplistic representation of a realm that is complex and multi-dimensional.
This helps me accept that most have never heard about what happened and those who have can easily dismiss what they’ve heard as “not the absolute truth”.
Shadowlands happened. It is part of the canon narrative written by the company whose story forms the backdrop for this game and the universe we roleplay in. Insisting OOC that it didn’t happen is choosing to participate in an alternate reality with alternative facts.
That said, you don’t have to make it a focus of your character. Your character does not have to be one of the characters who went or who even knew much about those events at all.
Shadowlands left enough open with the fact that we learned the number of afterlives is innumerable. This means that afterlives that resemble the ones different cultures on Azeroth have believed in very well may exist. Just because the inner workings of how souls get there were defined doesn’t mean those belief systems and religions are entirely invalid now.
Also, you can always have your character hold their particular set of beliefs because it’s what they want to believe. Or believe because reversing a lifetime of thinking a certain thing is just too difficult to overcome. We see this behavior everywhere in real life. People believe the version of reality that suits their world view despite what evidence sits directly in front of them. Other people simply have never been exposed to said evidence. Others find the thought of having lived a set of values that may not accurately reflect reality for so long clashing with their ideas of who they are and what the world is to be too difficult or even mentally painful to entertain.
So there are a lot of ways to go about having a character that still lives in our canon universe but who isn’t involved with or constantly considering the events of Shadowlands. Everyone is free to feel how they do about the expansion from an OOC perspective. Everyone is also free to feel how they will about it from an IC perspective. But everything I’ve said considered, there’s really no reason to segregate yourself from those who acknowledge it because of how much you didn’t enjoy it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way out of dealing with it that keeps everyone happy.
Pretty Much This. Like, the way they wrote Shadowlands is very much that only the Main Characters know the entire truth. The most the Ebon Blade saw were the Maw and Oribos. Knowing that there’s infinite realms of death, and also that very few average RP characters could realistically have been privy to anything in the story itself, means that nothing is really ruined for me. And I play with Misinformation or Underreporting in play, so it means I really do not have to acknowledge Shadowlands. Doesn’t mean it’s not canon, but it’s actually more accurate to canon if my characters remain ignorant.
After DF, I can finally empathize (not really as I pretty much lack all human emotion, but I can fake it really good) with people who want to pretend SL didn’t happen.
*Pats Norman on the shoulder. *
I understand and acknowledge your feelings as valid, friend.
So my character ended up being directly affected by the actions of Shadowlands as someone indebted to Mueh’zala and suddenly Bwonsamdi taking over. This was when Riva canonically died, went to The Other Side and then was brought back as a form of undead. He did not stray from the one dungeon but it means that SL played a pivotal part in his story and I couldn’t ignore all of it. Even the parts that directly confronted other parts of what had been described in Zandali culture and death
As was mentioned above there is a brief line at the very beginning that the realm was not meant to be viewed by mortals and to not trust your eyes. This wasn’t portrayed very well in my opinion but this gives us in in-game carte blanche excuse of “Well that’s just your vision”. So you are just as justified in the Skyfather’s role as guardian and psychopomp as the any other vision of the afterlife and its denizens.