A series of scenarios showing different afterlives (those that are currently mentioned in passing + others), with a “key message” of the narrative being that these 5 zones are the pillars/mechanics of death, would have gone a long way to making it fit in with Azeroth/WoW better than it does.
1 Like
This part really resonates with me. I’ve made light of it before, how it makes communing with the spirits and ancestors so mundane now, but I’ve always found shamanism and spirituality to be one of the most fascinating things about WoW’s lore. Now it just feels… pointless.
On top of that, the theme of the expansion feels so dull. I wish we were doing things in the actual world again. I haven’t felt this detached from the current plot – not even in Warlords. Shadowlands kinda feels like some kind of crossover… like nothing we’re doing even has relevance to our world. Warlords inspired a similar feeling, but at least we were still interacting with races we knew of.
I dunno. I hit 60 this expansion and just called it there. Not a BG, not a dungeon… not sure if it’s burnout, the plot, or a mix of it all, but it’s never been easier to spend time away from the game.
8 Likes
I see this a lot, but I don’t see how??
We have access to essentially 3 realms of service, 1 purgatory and 1 hell. These are places that make the machine of death run.
We also have a few wings of De Other Side, though we don’t see much of this place.
We do not have access to any other of the noted “infinite” afterlives. A few are mentioned, but we don’t even have short scenarios to go there.
We do not have access to all the spirits of our ancestors.
I think they should have actually tied the lore and happenings of the afterlives to what we’ve actually seen in Azeroth. Make Bastion explicitly tied to the faith of the Light. Revendreth explicitly tied to the Cult of the Damned. Have an actual Shamanic realm and do more with the other side.
Instead, the zones only contain broad aesthetic references and a couple of key characters. Outside of that, they could be copy/pasted from any other setting.
The only one that has actual lore relevance to Azeroth is Ardenweald, as it seems to build on our preexisting understanding of Emerald Dream, the reincarnation of the Wild Gods, the fate of Tyrande and the casualties at Teldrassil as well as hints at the nature of Elune. All stuff that your average Night Elf might actually care about. And the Bwonsamdi and Voljin stuff was a great Troll lore treat as well.
I hope they pull a(nother) page from FFXIV’s Shadowbringers expansion and have some “Meanwhile, in Azeroth…” cutscenes to flesh out the situation back home. Like how FFXIV explained to us what was going on in Eorzea even while the MC’s played around in their alternate universe.
They already adapted FFXIV’s ideas of having main story line quests distinctly marked and added their own “deep dungeon” in the form of Torghast!
3 Likes
I can get on board when it’s a cosmic power e.g. the light.
I would definitely have liked more of the other side, and at least a peak into a few of these other “infinite afterlives”!
The one they mention inventors going to, for example, plenty of gnome and goblin ancestors would be there – and not reachable by our adventurers.
That gnome from MG who posted here had a great idea about those being sort of like the other worlds we visited in the Argus patch. It would be neat to even see a tiny, tiny slice of them and purge them of a Mawsworn boss (who actually drops loot, too lol).
2 Likes
The fact that we have access at all is what makes it feel that way, at least for me. Some things are better with a sense of mystery. A sense it cannot be so freely explored. Granted, we can’t access all the realms of death, but it does generally give the sense that these are just other planes of the same existence we’ve already experienced. It sacrificed that aura of… enigma, for lack of a better term.
While there may be some quantity of reasons some can hold onto as for why it doesn’t give them that same feeling (and I both envy and respect that), it’s not a feeling that can be rationalized into vanishing; the afterlife has simply lost its sense of mystery for me, and I accept it’s a subjective matter. But there are many others that seem to agree.
4 Likes
A friend suggested the other afterlives might be visited by the player a la island expeditions to collect anima. I like that idea a lot.
6 Likes
I feel the exact same. I like the idea of SL, I love the zones, it’s beautiful… but oh my goodness I get so burnt out so quickly.
Most of my guild has felt the same so we’re not very active unfortunately.
2 Likes
the state of rp is nebraska
so despair
2 Likes
I really hope they don’t decide to retcon De Other Side and make it that tauren orcs and Pandaren also go there. But hey, it’s run (now?) by Bwonsamdi, who will literally make deals with anyone he meets
I’m having a fine time with RP, getting maybe a bit more than I had last year but admittedly Shadowlands isn’t particularly helpful or harmful for it.
Yeah I see what you mean. I think my slant is more that my shaman still matters haha. It’s definitely a “jumping the shark” vibe to me as well, it always is when an IP is like “let’s go to… hell!” Or “we’ve run out of ideas so let’s over explain things that should be mysteries.”
I also vaguely remember them referencing some “mysterious clockmaker” that’s basically god (not in game, I think in one of their cosmology explanations) and recoiled in cringe.
I’m really not sure how to put this in a way that makes sense, but it feels like the afterlives in the Shadowlands ultimately have nothing to do with anything that anyone on Azeroth (or Draenor) does or believes, and it bothers me.
If someone spends their lives attuning themselves to a cosmic power like priests of the Light do, it should matter. How are they cosmic powers if it doesn’t? And given that Azeroth has had some ability to communicate with spirits for a long time, why don’t there seem to be any mythologies about the afterlife that appear to have a relationship – even a relationship of misunderstanding – with reality?
I suppose it feels to me like death, while never exactly explained, also wasn’t portrayed as a completely inaccessible mystery before – it’s something that we should have had pieces of knowledge about, maybe with every belief system being a little bit right about one part of it or another, so that when you brought them all together and compared them to what we actually see now in the Shadowlands, it could be obvious how all of it exists in the same universe.
Instead, the ‘cosmic’ powers that many people serve appear to be irrelevant, and everyone’s soul is judged by a Being that’s completely unheard of, according to criteria that are completely unexplained.
7 Likes
I’ve been roleplaying on WrA Horde since 2014 (On this character actually! Same name – but different classes over the years). I remember seeing SMC and ORG pretty much always at capacity, plus A LOT of world RP that could be found just during questing and what-not. That’s reduced a bit over the years but I believe BFA sort of marked the end of the RP Renaissance in WrA. Legion was the last time I can recall an extraordinary amount of high-quality RP all over the world.
With that being said, I’ve recently returned and I have noticed that the RP scene is noticeably more lively than during BFA but still not quite what it was in MoP/WoD/Legion. I also feel like there’s a lot more slice-of-life roleplayers and less plot-based roleplayers – not to qualify one over the other, to each their own! But still, it looks like people are gravitating either towards slice of life writing or closed-doors guild roleplay.
It’s possible that I’ve just had bad luck in seeing the more active parts of the community but it definitely doesn’t feel the same as it did just a few years ago.
2 Likes
Basically.
And again, it’s especially egregious considering the prominence of Shamanism in the WoW universe. An entire spiritual practice built around talking to the souls of one’s ancestors years, decades or even centuries after they’ve moved on.
Shadowlands just straight up ignores all that stuff.
The Lich King is the bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead? The souls that made up the Lich King spent all their time on the plane of the living- either in the crown, in the sword, as part of the army. Necromancy as practiced in WoW is largely about PREVENTING souls from traveling to the afterlife by keeping them on the material plane in the form ghosts, zombies, and other undead.
But I’m getting off topic.
RP’s still lit, yo. Silvermoon in particular has been bustling lately.
5 Likes
There used to be a lot of attempts at community plots. Convocation of Silvermoon (all 90 attempts), noble RP, war crime trials, organized BK or other race-based communities, etc. Many of these crashed and burned because these events were notably open to the ENTIRE community (even people who were very open about being white supremacists) or because they WEREN’T open to some people (justified or otherwise, think “old horde” only groups/events). I think what happened is that people exhausted themselves on outrage and irritation or became mistrusting and isolationist.
There are a lot of big and very high quality and long-time RP guilds on Wymrest that engage in world RP, which is something that people always say that they want to see. But then, people complain that hubs are dead because people are creating RP elsewhere. There’s no winning.
That being said, the move for finding good quality and/or plot-based RP has been to network out of the game, largely via tumblr (and now, discord too). This has been an occurrence for a decade.
3 Likes
You don’t have any friends.
1 Like
Maybe the real friends are the Gwyneth we made along the way. Wait, I’m doing it wrong.
I know. Anyway, did you like that last event we had where Greyah went off to the Shadowlands and called Zaeka her daughter?
4 Likes
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
6 Likes