Reminds me of a thread I wrote on my blog post a long while back!
Nowadays though I would have to change it to being something like:
“At the end of all that, we find out the hero was corrupted and went into a trance, dreaming up Shadowlands which turned out not to be canon, but a premonition of a planet far away…”
This way ‘afterlife races’ would be grounded in reality and we’d need to meet them again, they’d have lore that tied them to the realm of living, etc. Which would satisfy those who like those races. We wouldn’t even have to change their lore much, but maybe a bit of tweaking. The nature ones could be from the Emerald Dream. Mald stuff would be applicable to a new corrupted zone in Northrend which is like a tumor on the land, but the free-willed undead would have been a force of good and the army idea would stay. Venthyr & stoneborne, and everything else, would be another type of vampyr (like San’layn or human vampyr), or the origin species, coming from… well here’s an idea. Remember that sanguine zone we saw back during Legion planet travel stuff? They could have been from there, and their ‘curse’ stolen by the Dreadlords and applied to those on Azeroth.
That leaves us with Kyrians who just could have come from the ‘realm of light’ or something. Sort of like how void things come from the void or demons from the abyss, like that sort of idea.
Eh, I dunno. This one kinda cheapens Mald a bit to me. Something closer to their current plot as a grand army defending a large, important area somewhere would be better.
Kyrians are just blue knockoffs of Val’kyr really. Also, the odd thing about them: even though they feel very Light themed, they’re actually Arcane users.
Yeah, even my super-pro Horde friends knew that story was far-fetched poor writing.
Makes me feel bad though, for the poor book authors that were told to ‘find a way’ to write it in their books. Like they can only polish so much, lol
(Though the authors did a rather alright job with what they were given).
It’s like with Garrosh. The author was partway through a redemption story for him post-MoP when suddenly Blizz was like “Oh, we need him to go evil again for our next xpac. Thanks!” so they had to make up that “weak inner character” nonsense.
Yeah that makes sense. Admittedly whatever I come up with to fix that wouldn’t be great due to apathy toward Shadowlands and afterlife races (at best) so someone else would be best to come up with lore for that issue, if we were to speculate.
I doubt Blizzard will do the ‘Most of that was a horrific vision’ thing anyway even though I strongly wish they did.
I want to start with saying I fully support San’layn and Dark rangers/fallen being implemented in the game; they are options that should’ve been playable for a long time now.
I like the ideas you mentioned in this post, but I do want to point out that this perspective is only accepting half of what’s tied to reality in world of warcraft. Please do not take this as a personal attack, it’s just a evaluation of this perspective.
You mentioned that some of the nature races could be from the Emerald Dream, which is itself a separate realm from the living. Opposite of the Dream is the Shadowlands, the other realm that is tied to reality and separate from the living realm. Both realms are tied to reality, as they are depicted on the cosmology charts, and both have lore tying them to the living realm. So to accept races from one of these realms as being suitable playable options, but not the other seems a bit one-sided because both have equal ties to the living realm.
I don’t think changing the lore of the Shadowlands races would ground them anymore into reality than what they currently are. If anything, their lore needs to be expanded on and not simply cut off at the end of this expansion. They have a lot of potential, and it all depends on what Blizz decides to do with it.
I know you were just throwing some thoughts out there, but I did want to point out that the Shadowlands is just as grounded in reality as the Emerald Dream.
That’s fair. Personally I’d be fine with leaving it all behind as a ‘horrific vision’, and I’m not taking that as a personal attack, no worries. This also wouldn’t be a personal attack from me. We fundamentally see things differently with how WoW lore should go, and I’ll flat out say I hate pretty much everything about Shadowlands. If I ever rejoined the game to roleplay, I’d say in my character profile that they don’t acknowledge some parts of the expansion as canon at all. (Aside from if they add afterlife races, but even then, I don’t know. I really hate the perma-death idea above all, and EVERYTHING I see about 9.2. I’d be more open to it being canon in my case if 9.2 lore wasn’t a thing, and if perma-death wasn’t a thing. Maybe if I come back I’ll just ignore the perma-death thing and say they go to a different unknown part of Shadowlands & that 9.2 particularly didn’t happen…)
I was using my post more to offer ideas for those who do like those races, but in the end… I really don’t like this expansion and especially can’t stand lore, and how it utterly shattered everything I used to love about the game.
As for their lore being expanded, I personally disagree given what I said, but it’s fair for others to want that.
All in all & in the end, my hopes of ‘It was all a horrific vision’ for the tree burning and onward, at least for many aspects of it aside from the BfA zone stories, likely would never come to pass.
Therefore leaving the lore as-is & adding in a BUNCH of races/customization people want is the best solution, and the most realistic one anyway (which includes afterlife ones if people can justify it in lore, which I’ve seen people do already. Still wish Stoneborne were more popular though, like I said, I like those waaaay better than venthyr).
I can’t imagine any way to do this realistically without totally reworking the afterlife so that it’s not really an afterlife anymore, which is even worse.
They already have the stupid perma-death thing anyway though.
Yeah, why couldn’t they have said, “Their souls go to someplace unknown in the WIDE EXPANSE OF THE SHADOWLANDS” which is supposed to be gigantic? Instead “nope gone forever” it just… doesn’t sit right with me. I hate ‘oblivion’ nonsense. This would be the first time I just flat out ignore canon lore and say it isn’t applicable because I hate it so much.
I’d never pull that on added races or classes, which is why I can’t ignore SLs if they do add the afterlife races (and I need to fully respect other roleplayers who play them, too, even if they aren’t added, given I hate elitists) but I would on things like perma-death & whatever nonsense 9.2 has going for it.
Yeah, it’s annoying. If they were just going to include them in the game after they had already died, just so they could immediately permanently kill them off forever they may as well have not bothered.
Yeah, I don’t know. I know the thread (which I should really add to my index… I’ll do that, whoops) has a lot of good information on afterlife stuff that’s not involved with perma-death and how they could work, but I don’t delve deeply into understanding it myself.
Alls I know is there’s Mawsworne who rezzed a bunch of powerful scourge and that happened during the prepatch, and it’s something I wish continued.
iirc, Maldraxxi, as users of necromantic power, can pretty much go back and forth between the realms of the living and the Shadowlands. This doesn’t seem to get huge focus though from what I’ve seen.
Then again, I’m not entirely caught up with 9.1, nor have I finished every Covenant story (I’ve only finished Revendreth’s), so I’m not exactly an expert on SL lore haha.
Yeah they can, they’d messed with the Legion from what I remember, not sure if that was expanded upon. We know Kyrian can via Mawsworn (prepatch) & Maldraxxi, so I assume Venthyr & night fae could as well. Before I quit, I saw some people roleplaying Venthyr in Silvermoon and probably used that justification.
Also just saying, if people are openly roleplaying covenant races, then people who roleplay San’layn or Dark Rangers should 100% be allowed to do so with no problems too.
And neither group should be given a problem given they’re both justified in lore.
It is good to see some familiar faces coming back again. I missed a lot of people, and I figured we might see some folks come back near the end of the current expansion. Hopefully, the next expansion will be a rainbow after the storm that is Shadowlands.
As I said before, assuming Blizzard does plan two expansios ahead, it could be after the next expansion before we see some requests potentially implemented. Still, I think it’s important to keep at it with the support. You never know if it could lead to something!
They probably sighed in relief when Blizzard promised they wouldn’t do it again + Told the players so, then choked when they were told to do it AGAIN with Sylvanas
Seriously though, the writing from BFA & Shadowlands seems like snoozefest fan fiction on the forums met with a cringe fan fiction ‘influencer’ from Twitter and just went wild.
In terms of poor writing and terrible lore that applies especially with ‘the Jailor’ plot. Like literally every single lore-content creator along with half the forums has said - Inserting his ‘lore’ behind most of every major event in WoW to elevate his status is super cheap, and such a cop out. Not to mention it cheapens those lore events and the characters that were originally involved.
“You thought those events played out the way they did because of the choices made by important characters, and the consequences that followed? NOPE! It was all secretly by my design, peasants!” - Some generic doomsday villain who never existed before
I kinda got that feeling when they were like “there’s this new character, the Jailer” and there was this silhouette of like a knockoff of the Lich King’s helmet.
RIP my boy, Kel’thuzad. The whole “I never actually cared about Arthas, and was working for the Jailer the whole time!” thing pissed me off.
I hate the Jailer and SL lore so much. Makes me wish this whole expansion was just a crazy dream that our characters had, and we all wake up after it’s over to see that N’zoth never actually died and took over Azeroth.
With all of you there, yeah. I just…there’s so much disappointment with the grand scheme of things. I’d love to see bits and pieces of things be ‘horrific visions’ all the way to the tree. I’d love for the tree itself not to have been burned in the first place, but that to be a vision.
We could keep the BfA zones the way they are and say they happened, maybe bits and pieces of the war campaign but reality would be garbled.
Shadowlands, idk, zone stories and such could be intact but something would be off, all of their ‘issues’ could actually be due to void influence or something, I dunno. The overarching story I’d love to toss to just ‘void visions’ for sure.
