The End of Shadowlands
Now that shadowlands is over and we are moving on to big and better lore I wanted to leave a review.
First shadowlands did a lot to destroy the lore that we as warcraft fans grew up with. This expansion was honestly a big dump on our youth. The destruction of major lore figures, the destruction of spirit healers, and even the entire plot of Warcraft so far.
The destruction of major lore figures included everything from the most experienced war leader the alliance has Tyrande Whisperwind to Arthas to Garrosh to Sylvanaas. Tyrande embraced the nightwarrior but then tried to choke an undead… whose literal racial ability is undying breath. Yeah that’s dumb. Then she gave up her Super Sayien form because it consumes the user. Again that’s dumb. Garrosh was shown to be repenting in Ravendreth, well not repenting but at least being useful for once as an anima battery. And does he go out with redemption that a lot of the original devs had planned for him… no he gets disenchanted like a worthless blue item that drops from trash mobs. Now Arthas was done dirtier than anyone. This is the literal ICON of wow. The Face of the Franchise. And in the shadow lands we learn even he could have had a second chance, a redemption arch. Before you say his story ended years ago, remember if the shadow lands taught us anything, it taught us that in the after life we can be redeemed. But how does the literally face of Warcraft get his redemption… also being disenchanted. No soul left, he is nothing more than soul ash.
Now the journey itself in shadowlands is also broken. It pulls the player out of the story because the different zones are so disjointed that it is clear they were built by completely isolated teams. Ravendreth was obviously built by the some of the old dev team who spent one too many nights binging Netflix Castlevania. These old devs though showed a zone that developed, hidden Maldraxxus attack etc and then we have a more believable big bad Denathrius. Denathrius was more developed than anything the jailor showed. Ardenweald was your theater kids who love Shakespeare a little bit too much (and this team had a ton of turn over because the story was the most chaotic and not linear). Maldraxxus was your undead loving combat is king team but had that flavor of the old devs but this team also didn’t consider that most of the player base hates undead, even vanilla horde didn’t trust them. Then the biggest offender of all the zones Kyrain, this zone was 100% femanazi zone, it is so bad that even the male npc’s have a female run animation (do the daily quest where you train a new Kyrain and get the male model who sashays his hips like a woman), this team was women power to the level it was no longer about equality, it was about the elimination of anything male. Having never seen the team that built this zone I can place money on it was mostly women with an agenda new to animation programing.
Without even seeing behind the scenes, you can see these team did not talk. These teams 100% developed without a care about what the other teams were doing or even at some points what the overall plot was. All of this was a shock the average player. One moment we are helping blue women slave owners then next we are fighting in a zombie UFC arena. It is not coherent and doesn’t flow. Nothing matches up and nothing makes sense.
The villain was also a major plot flaw. Here is this dude who is so powerful he had zero impact on anything we have ever done in wow but some how has been bff with Sylavanas since wrath… This dude got Sylavanas to be his slave for most of 20 years of lore but then when he says she will server she magically wakes up and goes all “I’ll never serve” … like she hasn’t served for 20+ years already. Now if he had been built up like this afterlife big bad who was trying to break the vail that separates after life from our reality to claim azeroth then I could get behind his story. But making him this god mode rewrite that was behind all the lore we warcraft fans grew up with was a hack job. It took everything we grew up with and dumped on it. It destroyed multiple character developments, it ripped apart multiple plots, and over all it was so hacked that it made zero sense.
Your writing teams couldn’t even make the different zones work together.
Here’s to hoping lessons were learned and Dragonflight is not this destruction of lore we grew up on and something that instead builds on what grew with. Something that adds to our legacy instead to stealing from it.
