To quickly answer the first part: kill your average adventurer character in some meaningless way and bam, they’re now in the Maw and have the means to somehow get involved with the current story. Step two, find a way to get their soul back to their body.
As for the second part…
For starters - I don’t bind my roleplay exclusively to the current expansion.
During Legion I was running stories that had absolutely nothing to do with the expansion’s theme, and also some stories that did have something to do with the Legion. Folks get burnt out real fast when you slam them with an overload of expansion related stuff; it’s part of why we deal with such massive population declines during the content droughts.
We need variety, first and foremost; some people are gunna get burnt out on over exposure, and other people just don’t have interest in the expansion’s theme.
I’m perfectly fine keeping my characters out of the Shadowlands, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have some clue as to the rumors going around about current happenings. That said, not everyone should know everything.
I’m also nervous(and not nervous) because BFA’s writing was downright miserable to every degree possible; there has never been an expansion whose story was such a sordid and abominable mess - and no, WoD did not even come close to this, IMO.
I have absolutely no confidence in their writing ability anymore, so in that sense - I’m not nervous because I simply don’t care anymore. I am nervous however, because I will still be RPing in game, even if I don’t play Shadowlands, which means I’m stuck dealing with the existence of this upcoming trash Sylvanas redemption plot in universe regardless.
My hope is that doing whatever reputations connected to the covenants will unlock an allied race connected to it. I don’t think that it will happen but I think that playable Venthyr would be very popular
In terms of RP? I’m not really sure how It’ll go down for my characters. I’ll probably wait a bit and quest through to see how the story shapes out/explains itself of the realms and the situation in it. Will it be similar to Warlords of Draenor, where we thought we were stranded in this alternate universe when really we can just summon portals directly to our own universe for supply lines? Or will it be a “You are stuck until the story says so” type of deals and portals being pure gameplay mechanics?
Then there is also the fact that the Shadowlands/Afterlife in WoW is so varied and covers a swath of spectrums that one could potentially RP about going to their ‘version’ of the shadowlands and never actually interact with the Champion/Important NPCs. The four Zones/Factions are not the Sum of the Shadowlands, but rather a condensed Sample of what one could expect. (That’s how I see it anyway)
As for how the average person could get into shadowlands without a portal? I have a wonderful picture in my mind of goblins building rockets and charging exorbitant prices to shoot people into the sky in Northrend. Either you reach the tear or the rocket explodes. Either way, you get to the Afterlife.
The lore died in BFA. Everything moving forward is nothing more than a poorly written fanfic.
We’ll all currently Champions of Azeroth (A word that literally means nothing to me anymore after how many times they’ve used it), Slayer of N’zoth (We killed him via friendship and magic and love and kindess), Speaker of the Horde / Alliance Diplomat, (Placeholder Title) of our classes.
The lore doesn’t want us to be average people anymore. It wants us to feel like it is a single player game and we’re the chosen one who just as happen to need other people to kill a raid boss and the Shadowlands proves that.
I’m nervous in the sense that Shadowlands seems to -really- cheapen death even more so than how inconsequential it already was in this setting. This is on top of trying to add clarity to lore that I feel is best left to imagination and ambiguity.
Several races have their own cultures and beliefs built around how spirits and souls work which made the world feel all the more mysterious. Consolidating this all into one type of…specter realm just feels flimsy.
Given how garbage the Kaldorei storyline’s been handled in BfA?
Absolutely freakin’ terrified.
But then again, I guess if it’s as Sylvanas-Redemption-Gray-Morally-Centered as it’s shaping up to be, most of the stuff involving my mains will get collectively ignored as usual, so yay?
Like you’re absolutely right…but…satyrs 
