Norman spent 2 years fishing.
Listening to people talk about Shadowlands, you’re all under a mass delusion. Something that ridiculous could never have happened.
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I enjoyed Shadowlands, but I just enjoy WoW so the expansion usually doesn’t matter for me.
For Sho: He was a maw walker. He searched for his departed family in the Shadowlands.
I ignore SL to the maximum extent possible. My characters ICly spent the time doing other things. I’d say that they’d smile, nod, and politely change the subject if you mentioned it to them, but no one ever does or has. As someone noted upthread, it’s remarkable how little impact the expansion had. It’s very much the “we don’t talk about Bruno” of expansions.
P.S. “Canon” only really matters if you work for Blizzard, and not always even then.
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I generally take the stance that while lore is lore, nothing says my character can’t be wrong, stupid, crazy, or any combo there of.
It was always amazing to me how many people would take time out of their day to send me snarky messages “correcting” my character. They also told me I didn’t understand tauren, tauren can’t be racist/specisist, and that there was no precedence for player’s characters to be crazy.
The first couple years on WrA were wild, and I think all the mean people always found me.
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I feel like Kirsy is the only one who had actual SL experiences.
I was in NEC at the time and Vreth had it in his head that we’d be trying to worm our way into Shadowlands because there’d be a wealth of souls or other things to harvest. We were actively trying to create a portal that we could use to travel to the Shadowlands.
Beyond that, one of my RP friends was running a plot that his character had died and was somewhere in the Maw. We had to find our way there to rescue him. Kirsy was planning to also look for others, but it was during her missing memories storyline so she wasn’t even sure who else she’d be looking for.
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My overall take and headcanon is Shadowlands is one of those expansions about the lore characters and we are just riding back seat. Only the most important lore people went to Shadowlands and was lead by Bolvar and Bolvar and a handful of his death knights are canonically the “maw walker”. A few important adventurers may have arrived later after a portal was established but for the most part, it’s one of those, actually the important hero lore characters did everything kinda thing to me.
The more serious Juspion answer was that he was busy doing Juspion things.
Most of my characters I can generally fit into an expansion as a background character y’know. Burning Crusade, they could have just been a character stationed in Thrall’mar. Wrath, they spent it exploring Ulduar with the expedition forces. Even WoD, they could have been a Garrison unit sent to maintain some sorta thing or something. Shadowlands, the entire cast and setting is made up of Shadowlands people and a handful of important lore characters. So it’s just harder to think of a reason to insert my guy into the setting without it irritating me lmao
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The deliciousness of the irony of Thomas never going to the Shadowlands, especially during its expansion, cannot be overstated.
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Even the important characters didn’t seem to really fit sometimes. I’m talking about a certain Tauren leader who just sat in the Oribos hallway on the floor 
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I mean, from memory, part of Baine’s story got cut significantly, we were supposed to go and visit the Tauren afterlife to shed some light on what happened to non-Light aligned peoples when they died and how the Anima Drought was slowly wiping out all forms of Afterlight.
Same as the Gorian continent and the cut Draenei content in Warlords. What could have been great entertainment left on the floor because muh E-Sports was surely going to profit margins go up …
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I could relate though. That’s the same way I felt about the expansion.
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I know Baine’s content got cut, but it is kinda funny to me that Sylvanas was being petty and literally kidnapped Baine because he gave Jania her brother back.
“Foil my plans? Fine, go enjoy Super Hell and being degraded by a shirtless robot!”
For me, the more aggravating moment came right at the start where we rescue Thrall from the clutches of Super Hell and spend 15 minutes because the Specialist Green Boy needed to find just the right weapon.
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I’d personally cherry pick certain pieces of SL Lore and Plot to make ‘Canon’.
Like I would expect only Deathknights to be able to traverse into the Shadowlands, and the fact that anduin ‘was’ tortured during his stay in hell, But ‘covenants’ and all the nonense found in Zerith Mortis can stay in the Trash Bin.
My party hat is canon.
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yeah my general rule is that the more unnamed NPCs we see just chilling around an area, the more easy it is for me to insert my RP characters. The only azerothian unnamed NPCs we really see in SL are death knights. So, my death knights were involved, but if the Maw is ICly the worst place ever, makes sense even a death knight isn’t gonna want to bring it up.
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I have a small headcanon that unless you’re a death knight or a powerful enough undead, a mortal mind cannot fully maintain their memories of the Shadowlands. It was never meant for mortal eyes.
Calnos went IC on a mission that ended in failure, but he doesn’t quite remember. He brought journals with him to write in, but he would sometimes wake up at home and the writings within would read like the ramblings of a madman if anything. At times he would have flashes, like remembering a strange dream he didn’t understand.
Most of my other characters simply didn’t go.
Shadowlands ironically, despite being one of my least favorite expansions had some of my most involved RP cause “There’s a hole in the sky and the Scourge are running around and the aftermath of there is a hole in the sky” was a good RP hook for like a year or so even if the RP didn’t actually involved going into the hole in the sky.
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Oh yes. I know that music. I had to hear it all the time, for years on end, until I stepped away for a while and came back.
What helps is gradually discovering that people who try to police your character are, almost without exception, wrong about literally everything they’re saying. Lore protectors become really funny when you notice they don’t actually know what they’re citing to bludgeon you.
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I mean, this would work quite well. Only the Dead, or those touched by the Primal Powers, might maintain their memories of the Shadowlands while Alive, and even for those who do maintain their memories, it immediately starts to go fuzzy except for the memories attached to extremely strong emotions, like love, hatred, fear, etc.
If Blizz does give us a canonical answer, I like that one the most. "Yes, you were there, but the memories have faded into half-remembered phantoms and every attempt to make them clearer fills you with intense unease and an almost primal sense of wrongness, so all but the most determined have abandoned the goal.
The one thing that could have fixed shadowlands is when you jump into the maw from oribos you are prompted to do sick tricks on your way down and on the lower level players can rate people’s tricks holding up paper signs with numbers on them. What a missed opportunity.
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Tony Hawk mini game.
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