Battle for Azeroth covered a lot of ground over the course of its content updates […] we’ve also heard criticism that some of the connecting threads between these content updates felt unclear at times, or that we could have done a better job balancing clarity around Sylvanas’ intentions at Teldrassil with maintaining the mysteries around her long-term plans. We love hearing that kind of feedback, and we always try to take lessons from it when crafting the next chapter of the story.
In Shadowlands, we’ve set out to tell a focused story with an arc that will move through all the updates and culminate in a compelling conclusion. Our goal is to tell a story over the course of the expansion that feels natural and cohesive.
Is this lore supposed to be cohesive? Blizzard refuses to answer any of the player’s questions. They fragmented the lore into the 4 covenant campaigns (that you can’t do in just one character without screwing your covenant progression) and timegated these quests in a way that hurt the pace of the narrative. Too much lore was absent of the game and is just accessible if you buy the grimoire of the shadowlands and folks and fairytales, and we still need to wait from a book that will be released in 2022 to understand Sylvanas motivations.
We are approaching the and of the expansion and we still didn’t know the Jailer story, we didn’t know how he will remake reality and what that even means and what’s the role of Azeroth in all of this.
This lore team needs to change because it’s pretty clear that they’re not doing a good job.
The lore is pretty good in my opinion, and hasn’t wavered much over the past 17 years. If you’re unhappy with the current lore, I recommend waiting to see how things play out, although personally I quite enjoy it.
I don’t think it’s that much different from usual, being split to four covenant parts. Much of the rest of the game is divided between separate Alliance and Horde narratives, and some class specific ones too. BfA went really high on that with their own islands of major story arcs.
But you’ll never get the entire story of WoW if all you play is one character. It incentivizes alts and replayability letting you experience different storylines based on who and what you are. And if you do only devote yourself to one then you’ll have to get your info elsewhere, it’s all easily available online.
As to the Jailer we know enough right now to be getting on with. We know his origins, his general history and motives, his goals up to this point and where he’s going right now. Not everything is answered in a story right away, they develop over time. Mystery and questions are a common part of any fantasy story. But in the next couple patches it’ll be all about the Sepulcher and the Jailer’s next phase!
A lich king 2, not necessarily Arthas, but that theme would have been better than this. Think the last star wars, there was more plot then the 3 orginal movies combined. Just too complex.
I agree, and i really loved the class campaigns. But i didn’t need to play every single class in Legion to understand the story. I think that’s the case with the covenant ones.
The patches has nothing to do with people whining. The content pace is really slow and there’s nothing blizzard could do with shadowlands to bring players back. At this point, 3 patches will be just beating a dead horse.
As someone who came into the game really really wanting to get into the lore, I find SL an utter mess. I don’t understand the Jailer other than “he’s EVILLLL!” Nothing that happened including Jailer giving Sylvie back her soul made any bit of sense. He’s just this big monolithic BAD GUY with a literal hole where his heart should be, kind of like the grinch.
I thought I was checked out of the lore in BfA, and I totally was, but I was hoping for something better with this expansion and all I got was confusion mostly. And loot.
I think it’s not bad for filler. We’re going back to a remade Azeroth. I think that’s what they’re working towards… the Covenant stuff was fine…the maw, Korthia, Torghast is just an uncomfortable mess to get through. It’s the style of game play that’s really messing with the combined drip, drip of story. Imho