Shadowland "island" map

Community General Discussion
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MMO Champion just posted this:

https://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2020/april/shadowlandsWorldMap.jpg

And, now I don’t know much about the higher level of SL.

But, I’m curious why the devs are shying away from larger maps.

One of the “magic” things about WoW back in the day was the HUGE world. Seamless transition from zone to zone to zone. Riding your mount from Moonglade all the way down to Tanaris, cross all of those zones, without a load screen in sight.

But now we see the SL map. 5 (6?) different “zones”, disconnected.

This is not a world. This is Instance of Warcraft.

Clearly this began in Legion with Argus. Continue through BFA and the two islands, and now…this.

MoP only had one disconnected zone – Isle of Thunder. Timeless Isle and the Dino Isle were right there, and accessible. You could free fly to them (not on them, but you could get to them). They were part of the seamless world.

WoD was One Big Place.

Legion was also, albeit built up vertically rather than out, even with the Broken Isles, until Argus showed up with its 3 zones.

Then we got BfA. Kul’Tiras and Zuldazar, then Nazjatar. Mechagon was “Far away”, but you didn’t have to portal through to get their.

And now it’s even worse with SL.

Before the tin foiled hat brigade kicks in, I am curious what the development challenges are of the larger continent spaces that we had before (and apparently well tested and proven) aren’t useful today. I’m sure there’s some storytelling/lore reason to explain all of this, but no doubt there’s technical reasoning behind it as well.

I just get the feeling SL is going to feel claustrophobic.

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/sighs

We getting mad at maps now?

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I can get mad at things a lot less inconsequential than that… for example, why is the serving size for Girl Scout Thin Mints four cookies?

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I will be really upset if I have to transition zones through loading screens

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Why would they be connected? Souls are judged and sentenced to dwell in certain realms of the afterlife for all eternity. Why would they be connected? If they were, the souls could leave their realm and the sentencing would mean nothing.

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It’s the nature of the expansion. The Shadowlands are broken up into different demi-planes. The only way to represent that on a map is as “islands”. Get over it.

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Because these are infinite realms in the cosmos of the Shadowlands. Think about it like the realms that come off Yggdrasil in Norse mythology. They’re all part of the same cosmic system, but disconnected and independent of each other.

Before we come along and muck things up, souls in Bastion never interact with souls in Maldraxxus, or Ardenweald, or Revendreth. Once a soul is assigned to one of these infinite realms by the Arbiter, that’s where they remain.

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Its funny actually. Someone recently pointed out to me the girl scouts have become a legalized child labor force to sell food at marked up prices.

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Lol… but its a “non-profit”

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Prepare to be upset then, cause its been obvious thats how its gonna be since Blizzcon.

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That’s so gross.

Just imagine having to portal 5 times just to do dailies. Yuck.

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A shiny Gen4 PCIe M.2 2280 factor SSD will alleviate your worries.

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The smallness of each location could be due to the lack of anima flowing into the Shadowlands. That’s my take on it at least

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So basically the same as it is now.

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It’s really more a suggestion than a rule.

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I am kind of over “island” expansions …

… But literally all of them have been as such, save for maybe Cataclysm. It’s just not worth wringing your hands over, this late in the game.

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Seems like a side effect of running out of landmasses to put in. The big continents have long been covered, with all that remains being islands and island-likes.

I would love an expansion that brought an Eastern Kingdoms-sized continent more than I can describe, but short of remaking Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms from scratch I can’t think of any unimplemented landmasses that match that description. Blizz would have to start doing more “planet as expansion” setups like Outland/Draenor, probably with a bunch of newly invented planets.

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Nonsense… before MoP, the ancient Kalimdor was just the current Kalimdor + EK + Northrend. They invented Pandaria and then backtracked all their lore to include that new land mass as having always been a part of the world pre-Sundering.

They could do that again easily.

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I legit bought an ssd just because legion had so many invisible walls due to slow loading.

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Sure they could retcon in more landmasses, but it’s getting harder and harder to do that as time goes on and Azeroth is more well-defined. They could say, “oh, you haven’t seen the OTHER side of Azeroth” except that retcon would be one of the silliest yet since we’ve actually seen (and can still see, if you’re a Lightforged Draenei) Azeroth from orbit. They’ve kind of painted themselves into a corner as far as the surface of Azeroth is concerned.

I guess we could potentially have a “Journey to the Center of the Earth” expansion that has us exploring underground Azerothian continents though. Pulling out Sargearas’ sword could segue nicely into that.