So a random video popped up in my youtube watchlist, and as I’ve been away for a while I thought I’d catch up on all the Blizzconline stuff I’ve missed. What I discovered has some bearing on RolePlayers!
It would seem that, according to Steve Danuser himself, it is actually really difficult for regular people to get to the Shadowlands, from a roleplay perspective. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard.
Danuser can also say that it’s really difficult for regular people to get into the Shadowlands, but when you have Old Emma, Celia Menethil, Daughter Fordragon and more popping up it comes off as facile.
He does address that though - they need to be directly helped by someone who’s already managed to get there, and have the ability to transport them, like Mages and Death Knights
I vividly recall at the beginning of the expansion the narrative was anyone can get to the Shadowlands, any regular person.
I personally like the idea that it’s hard, I’m fine with that, but Blizzard needs to make up its mind and make a hard decision on which one they want. Either it’s difficult or it’s not.
Any regular person can still get to the Shadowlands, even if the portal room is non-canon, but getting back is much harder and involves a spirit healer.
As I’ve understood it, teleporting and portals are hard on the leylines and magical flow of Azeroth/the cosmos.
The portals that are always active and the portals/teleports that mages can do? Purely game mechanics for ease of getting around.
Do the portal rooms exist canonically? I could’ve sworn that they do, but the portals are not canonically active 24/7. You have to get permission to use the portal, and for good reason, because it’s hard on the leylines to use them. You wanna go visit grandma in the Shadowlands? Permission denied. You headed to the Shadowlands for an emergency sting operation to obtain some powerful thing before the other faction does? Permission granted. Stuff like that.
As for NPCs in the Shadowlands, but really “shouldn’t” be… shrug Blizzard put them there because they wanted to. Maybe they did have an actual reason.
Edit because I thought of a good example… portals weren’t used until the last minute on Teldrassil, and that was about when there were absolutely no other options to get people evacuated.
Also wasn’t the reason Draenor exploded into Outland was because Nerzhul started opening a billion portals?
I wonder if there’s a fear among mages around Azeroth that if there’s too many people opening portals at the same time raises the risk of Azeroth turning into the new Outland?
I’ve always RP’d having to fill out a ton of paperwork and pay fees and jump through a ton of hoops to use a portal room portal. Like certain ones are only opened once a month and only for like, an hour, and there’s a line with limited capacity.
This bothered me sooooo much OOC that I ended up using it ICly as Kirsy’s reason to think the Alliance were inept in their military strategy. Who leaves civilians in a place under siege until the very last minute?!
The portal hall being non-canon is fine. Let it be the sort of meeting room for when a person gains access to a mage or portal. A simple regailed hall to enter given the mage is able to handle it. I prefer the idea that telemancy or portal magic isn’t so commonplace on hand. Requiring focus as we’ve seen through NPC portal channelling.
But it also makes it even more difficult to really finagle a way that isn’t either A. Buy a bus ticket to the afterlife, or B. Make some complex, and lore-bendy reason how someone got you into the Shadowlands. As if having reasons to go there isn’t already hard enough.
You submit a request for access to the portal room and you’re sent a link to a Google doc page that is 100 pages of official paperwork that needs to be filled out. Why you need the portal access, what are you bringing with you through the portal, do you require a return portal, any fresh produce, have you been in contact with any farm animals or other agricultural livestock within the past 72 hours, do you have any goods you need to declare, all gold excessive of 10k or more must be declared before passage, how many of you are in your party, what time and day do you need portal access with the note no travel on holidays including banking ones and your vaccination paperwork.
Once you fill it all out your request is denied anyway.
You know speaking of strategy, if the portal rooms were canon, Orgrimmar chose an awful place to put theirs. Simply take the outer wall and you have immediate access to the very middle of Horde cities.
