I can’t believe we’ve been hearing about this place for 10 years since the Cata pre-event and this lame dungeon is what it ends up being.
Half of the bosses aren’t even troll related. Seriously, who thought to put the Manastorms in here?
Hakkar, the ultimate big bad of the trolls, is a forgettable side boss who has no story reason to be there.
The big bad is a character who did not exist until 2 years ago and who was clearly only added because fans latched onto him, since his debut in Traveler set him up to have a different story with Aram.
They drop that he was behind Helya, Odyn’s eye, and Vol’jin appointing Sylvanas in just his /yell at pulling the boss all with nothing even hinting at all of this beforehand, just so we have some reason to care about someone most people have never heard of before.
Not true he is also noted in legion in the warrior order hall research where it tells you he was the one who traded odins eye so that odin my take a peak into the shadowlands. That was 4 years ago
Odyn’s tablet did not name Mueh’zala at all, only “a spirit from the Shadowlands”. That connection only exists as of this dungeon. Which is one of my problems: they created a connection out of nowhere to try and make us care about this nobody. It should have been seeded earlier instead of revealed literally right as you pull him.
It gave the description of him the same description thats also given on the multiple mentions of him on tablets in tanaris that say his name it was pretty common knowledge who it was. Even nobbel made a video on this 3 years ago
Read the thread, people have addressed this. Mueh’zala was “known about” only in the sense that we knew there was a loa named Mueh’zala. But that was all we knew. Before Traveler 2 came out, the only thing we knew about him was this tablet: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Tablet_of_Theka
For all intents and purposes Mueh’zala as we have him now, the big death god, was a brand new character introduced only 2 years ago. And in his introduction in Traveler he was clearly being set up as the villain of that series, saying to the main character Aram “You and I are going to have a climactic final battle”. Until Blizzard saw how fans were latching onto him with theories: the author of Traveler 3, Madeleine Roux, said that Blizzard told her not to use him in part 3 despite part 2’s set up. (https://blizzardwatch.com/2020/07/20/lore-watch-podcast-148-wow-shadowlands-shadows-rising-madeleine-roux/)
So here we have a situation where the villain of a sidestory book series grows unexpectedly popular and Blizzard takes notice, scraps the original plan for him, and proceeds to shove him into the story in places where he never even hinted to have been before.
There was no connection at all between him and Odyn, him and Helya, or him and Sylvanas until he suddenly drops it literally right as you pull him. Because him being involved in that was a last minute change when Blizzard saw the forum threads, and they had to quickly come up with a reason for us to care about someone who before 2018 only existed as a single name on a single tablet in Zul’Farrak.
Do you not see how awkward it is to shove three different “I was behind it all along!” all at once on a near-nobody at the very last second like this?
Edit: Reading it I realize this rant makes me sound more upset about it than I actually am, but I wanted to clearly word it out.
No because I’ve had discussions with people who speculated with was Mueh’zala who traded with Odyn for his eye. This isn’t something new or awkward for me.
The Other Side is a bit… unfortunate for sure. As it isn’t a true Shadowlands domain (they say it is basically a ‘shadowlands adjacent’ pocket realm like Helheim) its significance in the overall story is sort of small. It is really only full of azerothian trolls, and then it seems to only be from tribes who worship Bwon or his boss. That is compared to say ardenweald, which deals in every powerful nature spirit in the entire multiverse.
I will say Bwon is really cool… and he cares a lot about his people to be sheltering them like he is despite the personal cost. Kaldorei certianly cannot say the same, with all those souls saying Elune would protect them as they head for torgast.
We went to the troll afterlife and didn’t turn a bunch of troll heroes into a fine paste after they joined the Jailer because TROLLZ EVIL.
It also looks fantastic, shows us what happens to non-trolls that make deals with Bwonsamdi, and that Bwonsamdi actually cares for those souls enough to risk his life for them.
The issue is everything leading up to the dungeon is in later chapters of the night fae campaign. Yet we can just enter the dungeon when we ding 60 with none of the essential context we’ll get later… because the campaigns are time gated.
Same thing with Spires of Ascension. That dungeon doesn’t take place until after chapter 3 of the Kyrian campaign, as that is when Devos makes her move on attacking Elysian Hold to take out the crest of ascension (which works) then turns her sights on the Seat of the Archon (Spires of Ascension). Until that point, Devos is still in Elysian Hold.
