Nobody says all the problems of the storyline are Afrasiabi’s fault, but I have some sympathy for writers who were left trying to create story after he threw that enormous wrench into it. Teldrassil was, frankly, a plot point that never should have happened (at least not in the exact way that it did), and you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as the saying goes.
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The story wasn’t all that good before either. Remember the Age of Mortals, meme zones, High King, Warlords of Draenor?
Everyone likes to forget the smear job Kosak pulled on Tyrande and Jaina too.
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True, but BFA’s faction war plunged things into new depths, ones we’ve yet to escape from. Being followed by another expansion of narrative failure has left the game and it’s players furiously paddling up #### creek.
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Blizzard just doesn’t care about tribal/spiritual horde. This left so many questions, it is surprising to see people not bring it up. So how do these races contact their ancestors or talk to them. We also seen instances of people dyeing and sticking around or being attracted to something how does that work?
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It hit me about 6 months into Shadowlands that its main flaw was lack of Azerothian characters there with us. Thrall, Baine, Jaina, and a hundred other characters, all needed to explore with us. It ties the Shadowlands to existing lore. Without seeing the reactions of existing characters, there’s no feel of gravity to the Shadowlands, no weight.
And you know what? Have those characters interact with the dead, just give in and go full fanservice. If you’re in the land of the dead, there isn’t much else to do that’s interesting.
I think if you replaced half the NPCs with living Azerothians there with us, then you can solve Shadowlands atmosphere/theme problems by about 80%.
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Looking at 9.1 and 9.2… I do not agree with that.
I like Thrall; I simply do not care about his reunion with Draka (although I have to admit her already knowing was well-done.)
I should care about Mograine. Seeing him as a Necrolord… Well, they tried to play it up as something interesting, but it doesn’t have enough room to land.
I like Taelia; she feels completely out of place in every regard in SL and thrown on the scrappy pile.
I appreciate that they tried to save Kael’thas’ character from how BC did him dirty. It was a valiant attempt but he’s best forgotten, there’s no saving that.
I think the biggest issue with SL is that there’s no reverence and few reminders we are in the land of the dead, and the character-driven melodrama that is the current writing would make throwing more of the living into the lands of the dead worse. I think a living world MMO should only ever visit the afterlife in quick trips – one, limited area. If we had just seen the Kyrian, Oribos, and the Maw and been told, “this is not the afterlife, just a waystation on the way to the afterlife and a broken part of that waystation”
that would have been a great patch
the concept just cannot support an entire expansion
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Shadowlands should not have happened. We should still be in BFA…or at least started SL sometime a few months ago when the covid restrictions were lifted. BFA could have easily been expanded with Drust and N’zoth could have been stretched out instead of one patch like an Emerald Nightmare patch…maybe have the direction that N’zoth’s true goal was to resurrect his breathen. then the following patch could have been a black empire expansion then 11.0 being shadowlands.
Just like WoD, SL had so much potential and it was wasted due to corporate greed. smh.
They turned the Shadowlands – The afterlife in WoW, a fantasy game – which was meant to be a realm symbolising the spiritual and the eternal: Into something entropic, incredibly synthetic & robotic – which all feels more borderline of a scifi fantasy than a magical one. It’s all so limited to the potential it could have held …
It’s putrid, disrespectful-garbage.
Not to mention the amount of retcons they applied, characters they ruined or outright deleted their entire conscious being from the game’s universe of such as Arthas, Garrosh and Ursoc. 
Most players quit this expansion for either gameplay, aesthetic or story alone - in each their own right, aside to mention from the collaboration of them above.
As a long-lasting lore fan, and active roleplayer - I no longer have love for this game & it’s story. Only spite, and bitterness. I’ve quit my sub recently - I’ll probably be back for Dragonflight but honestly I don’t know how long for because the damage is done. It still feels sad and hopeless.
This game use to help me with my depression, with its stories and limitless potential – now it makes me feel like life is worthless and I should just end it.
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I just want to say that I hope you can find some light in your life. I’ve been there.
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This, the zones do not feel as if we are in the land of the dead. Maybe maldraxxus but all other zones do not. I understand they didn’t want us to be surrounded by the undead for 2 years but they did it at the cost of killing the identity.
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Maldraxxus is probably one of the weirdest ones since it doesn’t feel like an afterlife with all the undead bone aesthetic, flesh crafting etc. Necromancy in the afterlife feels like an oxymoron.
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can’t say i agree, if death & undead do not represent the death realm then i do not know what does. Also in the cosmic chart death and necromantic are linked not life and nature.
They pretty much all have one characteristic of common Real-World afterlives, and Mald’s is the valhalla aspect. It’s pretty normal for people to latch onto different ones.
That said, I would probably rate the “it feels like an afterlife” scale from 1 to 10 as something like…
Maw: 7
Pre-Vendor Oribos: 7
Bastion: 6
Revendreth: 4
Vendor Oribos: 3
Maldraxxus: 3
Ardenweald: 1
Zereth Mortis: 0
Korthia: NaN
But being undead in the death realm seems self-contradictory, at least to me.
Just curious, why does Revendreth only rate a 4?
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“What are you crafting these bodies out of?”
“Oh, flesh just grows in the landscape!”
idk it gives me more of an Addams Family vibe than the afterlife personally. The fact that there are houses and politics and “spying” and stuff against unnamed other realms feels weird too. The Drust and one lone Naaru are the only things we see to support the notion that the realm of the dead has to defend itself from anything before the events of SL.
The WoW undead aesthetic, which aside from Nathanos and Calia is overall cartoonishly creepy rather than just creepy, does not help.
Blood thematics everywhere, everyone looking like vampires even if they’re not actually, ‘sinstones’ (gravestones) etc. It’s close enough to afterlife I wouldn’t find it jarring in a better expansion but I really get more of a BDSM undead church vibe than purgatory.
I may as well throw in while I absolutely hate Shadowlands and all its retcons the realms of death they introduced conceptually are all rather cool Revendreath, Ardenweald, and Draxxus are all fine, and Bastion is kinda… EEEH the fact that we have to solve their **** all crisis on how to handle dealing with souls and how to handle them is insane to me.
The Maw is fine if cookie-cutter but this partially has to do with the fact that the Jailer himself is literally Mcbland badguy literally every WoW bad guy stereotype put into one and also is behind everything because reasons.
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As in Undeath is “Not-Death” technically?
Indeed the word Undeath means Not-Death by literal definition.
Honestly the Bones(a great representation of Death) aren’t a problem the Undead are since they are present in this boney wasteland.
A Realm of Death should not have Undead walking among the bones! It should be haunted by Ghosts stalking the Green Pools and Bone Cities. The Grim Reaper(who yes should resemble a Skeleton) or Grim Reapers(there is precedent for the Grim Reaper appearing in plural in Fiction) should have his home here.
to each his own I guess, but in a way they aren’t undead as they are dead. But their souls goes into other bodies. That is what they refer to as necromancy in Maldraxxus.
Those bodies are not even bodies of the living but stuff they themselves made.
The issue is like… why does flesh just grow as the ground?
That could have actually been taken somewhere interesting as far as something something detritus of the living world, but since everything is just “Anima”, it really is because “Primus thought it was cool”.
You can totally do a land of the dead with necromancy, but it just felt like goofy cosplay LARP to me. Out of context I’d believe Mald is just a new Forsaken zone.
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ya it is odd how there is flesh there, has been confirmed as flesh? Also forsaken zone would make more logical sense then say druid or light zone in the death realm.