What was really bad about BfA that requires a retcon?
Iād sayā¦ basically the entire Faction War, especially itās motivations and the npc reactions. Hell, just remove it completely and make BFA an Old gods expac with the Factions merely skirmishing.
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Idk, the major plot points of the faction war were all good old fashioned World of Warcraft. Even with the genocide debacle, thats basically par for the course. A wound that will never heal is a cow that never dries, and you can milk story out of that lingering hatred forever. Anduin teaming up with Saurfang to oust Sylvanas, and Sylvanas noping out was also fine. Totally in character for everyone involved.
The retcons that happened, I would reverse. Would that I had control of the franchise, that I could reverse time, and cancel Shadowlands completely. I would get rid of the jailer as a character. I would go back to BfA development, figure out how to balance the factions across servers resonably well and I would launch BfA with the PvP aspects of warfronts intact. I would make each warfront like Wintergrasp or Tol Barad. Essentially doubling down on the faction conflict.
As for motivations? The only crap motivation I can think of is the whole kill everyone for the jailer retcon. You dont even need to explain why Sylvanas did anything right away. There was no need to hurry up and resolve the conflict in 2 expansions (one of which had almost no faction conflict.)
This theory does have merit, but I think itās more likely that it was intended as a twist that will now never happen. The words from Blizzard when speaking about literally anything to do with the game for the lastā¦ five years? Six? Has always been in half-truths, technically not lying but leaving stuff out.
For example, I truly do believe that they did plan out a lot of the Sylvanas stuff (though not as far back as even Cataclysm) but their office situation and general mismanagement forced a lot of cuts, splices, and revisions. The theory Iāve had that Legion and BfA were meant to be four expansions instead of two feeds into that idea. So much of the stuff in the Shadowlands works better if there had been more buildup and more attention to certain aspects, and thereās a lot of stuff in Legion and BfA that indicates they planned far more in those arcs.
But the stuff at the office coupled with them staunchly wanting to stick with this arc while also being possibly pressured by the upper management to put out expansions more quickly for less money resulted in what we got. And they were rewarded for it in Legion because they sacrificed WoD to develop that one. If thereās one thing I know about upper management corporate types, itās that if something makes a lot of money for less once, they desperately cling to that method in hopes it will work again.
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I will always laugh at writers who saw GoT or read the novels and concluded that shock value for shock value must be good. Even though the shock value in ASOFAI has narrative purpose. Ned Stark dying was designed to set the tone of the story. No-one is safe. The āgood guysā do not have plot armor. Actions have consequences. Meanwhile Blizzard is like, ācharacters we like has plot armor. So much plot armor that it would make shoulders on male orcs look like shoulders on a gnomeā.
I got the same feeling. Like there are so many bosses that were clearly put in as filler. Like the only important bosses imo for SFO are;
- Vigilant Guardian as we have to break our way in, while Zovaal got free ticket
- Dasaugue, as she was the Orcale Zovaal dominated in the storyline to get him access to SFO. Plus she is leading the mawsworn to secure the forces outside of the main complex.
- Anduin, not much to say on this one but duh
- Lords of Dread
- Zovaal, the Jailer.
Like that is it. 5 bosses out of an 11 boss raid. The rest are filler or not important to the story at all. Like why do we need to defeat a robot chilling doing its own thing and the robot looking after SFO who has not being dominated yet? The only one that is on the fence is the prototype pantheon but I prefer to ignore that one on a lore basis. It is stupid. Like why do these prototype Eternal Ones have their own unique bodies mirroring the completed versions but Zovaalās robot body is just the generic robot body we see in the raid?
I also have had this idea. Since we know blizzard wanted to do yearly expansions starting with WoD. My guess that was something Activision tried to force on them. Like Legions story ends with ToS. Even Ion acknowledged that when he announced 7.3 at a blizzcon.
See I donāt really get that.
What I get is upper management made the decision almost a decade ago that expansions had to last 2 years, most expansions start off super ambitious with the stories written out extremely long in advance. Based off what Iāve seen happen in game, the story for 10.0 is probably already completely written and done.
What Blizzard is terrible at, is being agile enough to adapt the story when they have to cut content or change things in the live game. Take BfA for example, thereās a lot that makes sense when it swapped to an old god theme, they put the focus on it in 8.0 through Shrine of the Storm and the story for itās respective zone. What looks like got cut and had to be trimmed was the .5 content, that was supposed to have more player interaction with the faction war and instead they had to opt for more cutscenes.
I canāt remember the actual interview, but I think it was more along the lines of if he could have split off Argus to be itās own expansion, then he would of had it his way Legion would have been split in half with original Legion ending in ToS, and Argus being greatly expanded upon in itās own expansion.
All the story beats where they went with on Argus is what they wanted, but he wanted to do way more with it.
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The primus being behind everything makes more sense than the Jailer, who is really presented as particularly intelligent (we are just told that he is despite his action showing otherwise, but it does track with their ātell donāt showā mentality). The primus is suppose to be the master strategists, and him still dominating zovaal to get access to the sepulcher free of any impediments (i.e. when we leave) while he is free to use it later however he pleases. The primus and denathrius working together would also explain why the dreadlords are at the sepulcher as well after the jailer seemingly just discarded denathrius. That or blizzard just wanted a known villain (Malāganis) in a sea of more or no name trash mob bosses, along with the Jailer and Anduin.
Also we see some memories of zovaal and the runecarver, but if you can extract specific memories why couldnāt you alter memories as well?
Then about that cutscene I wanted to mention a while ago, but did Sylvanas free the jailer, we see her in front of the chained up figure we are suppose to assume is the jailer, if he was still chained up then was she the one to free him?
It is fun to speculate, but the more likely scenario is the wow writing team is massively incompetent and the future for wow lore is very grim.
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Maldraxxus is Galakrond. Evil dragon. The ultimate flesh weapon of the primus. Galakrond was known to create undead proto drakes from those who he consumed. He controlled them much like domination magic. He was known to have growths and deformations. Arthas was very interested in raising him.
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I want to point out for this, if they were doing a primus was the true bad guy, they could be pulling a death note (if you havenāt seen the anime that might not make much sense). There could be a reason his memory is kind of gone for the most part, and us restoring it was always the plan, the restoration could have been planned with that message he set up in Maldraxxus (or of course that dragon that could show him infinite timeways from that random interview with danuser so he could study them). We donāt really see any of his memories from when heās fully the primus I donāt think, only as the runecarver.
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The reason the Soul forge was in the jailer cinematic, was because it was using Revendreth technology to extract souls and forge them into weapons. The jailer was forging soul weapons for the Burning Legion.
The Primus may have known about this, because the Maldraxxi were spying/infiltrating the Burning Legion. In retaliation the Burning Legion attacked Maldraxxus.
Even if this theory is not correct, I feel like the Primus is witholding a lot of infomation from us about the connection between the Jailer and the Burning Legion.
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So you would want to take us all the way back to end of Legion but before BFA pre-patch huh?
I mean the two past expansions have been terrible in terms of storytelling and lore buildingā¦imo.
Wellā¦soul magic isnāt exclusive with shadowlands thoughā¦
Draeni do soul magic all the timeā¦ 
Soul magic? What are you talking about?
Heās talking a bout these guys: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Auchenai
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Auchenai_(alternate_universe)
The Draenei can put the souls of their people into constructs like the old instructor we meet in Eredath, and store them in physical places, like Auchindoun.
Thatās not even related to what I eas talking about thoš¤
Itās an unrelated tangent. The Grimoire already says that practitioners of Shamanism can manipulate spirits. That may have been why Zorvall chose NerāZul but when it comes to outfitting the Legion. Soul Forges were used to create mourne weapons for the Legion.
The blade stuck in Azeroth may yet still be a Mourneblade Zorvall crafted for Sargeras using the Souls collected by the Soul Forge (Ie: everyone that died to the Scourge) destroying the sword would release the souls, hypothetically.
This is kinda funny as this is the plot of Destiny 2: The Witch Queen. Savathun gambled on being made a lightbearer as she was sick of serving The Witness. Important to note is that you lose your memories upon becoming a lightbearer. So before Season of the Lost began (where she would be in a crystal prison for all of it), she placed clues that appealed to Guardians sense of innate loot lust (yes loot lust is canon, there is a dungeon themed around it 
). Placed within these clues and objects are pieces of Savathunās memories. We get these objects to try and find out how she āstoleā the light. Only afterwards does Savathun drop the bombshell that she was watching the memories as well. At least she says thank you =)
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Side tangent, but how is Destiny? Iāve heard good and bad things about it. People seem to either really love it or are just meh about it. I always wanted to try it. 
It is in a better position thanks to expansions like Forsaken and Witch Queen then it was during Year 1 (Red War, Curse of Orisis and Warmind). Beyond Light introduced the first Darkness subclass with Statis. Shadowkeep is forgettable, but that was being developed when Bungie split from Activision.
Bungie has got a lot better in telling their stories now. But it is a game that you do need to play with friends with if you want to get the full experience. No LFR for raids and the dungeons are a pain to solo. The only down side is that since Destiny 2 is also on consoles, a lot of stuff has been āsunsetā aka removed from the game due to file size.
So nearly everything from Year 1, The Tangled Shore (aka Forsakenās main campaign) and all seasonal content up to the current one have been removed. Although some stuff has remained from these. The dungeon from Season of Arrivals is still here, along with the 30th anniversary stuff and the dreaming city (Forsakenās end game content).
Seasonal storylines stay for their expansions patch cycle.
Auchindon, soul forges, transferring souls to machines like how we saw in Hellfire: Socrethar fight.
Like I said, Drainei know soul magic.
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That was The Burning Legion, again, in league with the jailer.