Oh another great chestnut of ruined scourge lore “The helm of domination and frostmourne were forged by the legion, no wait they were forged by the Nathrezim, no wait they were forged by the primus and given to the Nathrezim to be given to the legion.” Soooooooo stupid
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I thought frostmourne and the helm were always crafted by a mysterious character, that we later learned was actually the Primus.
I remember speculating for years who the dread lords had commissioned to craft both artifacts
In general I think the best thing to do with Shadowlands is to just not think about it too hard. It is bad for your blood pressure.
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Nope originally in wc3 it was forged by the legion and originally the frostmourne was forged by the LK, to quote Tichondrius “The blade you wield was forged by the lich king and empowered to steal souls, yours was the first one it claimed.”
then in legion during the artifact stuff the creation was later attributed to the Nathrezim.
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I CAN’T DO THAT CAPTAIN! It has so many plot holes with it!
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Ngl I didn’t mind that. That aesthetic seemed so otherworldly and distinct. Spider cultural appropriation being it’s origin always struck me as kinda silly, really. As do the Nerubians themselves because when I think arachnids, I don’t think North Pole. I also didn’t mind Dreadlords being their own thing as they really seemed to have aesthetics and MOs different from the rest of the Legion.
SL had a lot of decent concepts but they were stapled to really bad and boring ones. Like the Maw was just Dull Coldharbour and the Jailor is just such a plain yogurt character that it genuinely feels like he was a placeholder for something they were supposed to finish later but never did.
Like I seriously thought he was deliberately that generic and when he got his soul USB back he’d become something interesting. But instead DK tier set, lava lamps, God’s 3D printer. What a baffling product.
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I’ll disagree with you on this, but hey I’ll respect the fact you like those changes. The architecture being nerubian made far more sense to me because of all the spiderweb themes that were present. Yet in SLs it felt more like a “oh hey you guys remember that cool scourge stuff? Well this place is where it came from so love it.”
Also you can have the dreadlords be distinct entities without diluting them into nothing more than Death constructs. Honestly doing that severely harmed them as a people for me.
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Also as an aside all the bones and stuff added to nerubian architecture would’ve been the scourge influence upon it after their defeat, azjol nerub was more in line with Ahn’qiraj in having a more Egyptian style but with spider stuff.
So what you are saying, is the maw needed a Cadwell. I can get behind that.
Zovaal felt so… flat. and his model felt somehow unfinished. Like… what happened to this guy. He oozed personality and felt like a proper “king of the dead”.
He was even the shadow we saw in the first cinematic. Instead somehow we ended up with this guy.
I really wish I knew what went wrong. There seems like there was so much interoffice petty edits to spite the original creator and just a constant comedy of errors.
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Holy crap can you imagine how much more tolerable the Maw would be if we had undead Don Quixote John Cleese dicking around with us?
Instead we got a stand offish lava lamp and a dehydrated Lich Santa who’s twist was so obvious it honestly felt kinda sad they even bothered.
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John Cleese always makes things better
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I have been a fan of Elune, Ysera, Night Elves, druids, culture and who/how they became other elves since the day I rolled my first character, a night elf druid. That was in Wrath.
I loved it all, more or less.
But since Shadowlands?
I have been a hot mess, crying at how much of their lore was thrown in the trash, lit on fire and left for dead.
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It is sad, all big deities are just robots now.
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Hm, where to start? I love so much of WoW lore but some particular stand-outs in the story for me have always been Azshara and the ‘birth’ of the Naga, The fall of Lordaeron and Quel’thalas (Rise of the Scourge), Every Troll city/temple and it’s inhabitants (Zul’farrak, Atal’Hakkar, Jintha’alor, Zul’Gurub, Zul’Aman, Dazar’alor, etc.)
Mostly all of the elf and troll lore is what I vibe with the most. I think the nostalgia of exploring Kaldorei ruins in Vanilla and always just being SO immersed in any troll questlines really stuck with me. (The Jintha’alor quests from the Hinterlands were so amazing.) The Blood Elf starting zone is also just mwah and I went back to replay the Ghostlands on almost every Horde alt I’ve leveled.
I also REALLY love the concept of Gilnean Harvest Witches and I really wish we had gotten more out of that than we did.
Edit: Oh, I also forgot to add Shadow/Void lore. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but every Old God raid has always been an absolute BANGER to me and the insectoid races are just incredible. The one thing I loved about Draenor was the Spires of Arrak quest chain which was a great interpretation of the Shadow/Light dichotomy on Draenor, plus ARRAKOA? C’mon.
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I would not entirely call them robots, really. They all seem to of been primordial spirits of predating the Progenitors deciding to bind the cosmic forces into the pattern. They were stuffed into bodies and bound to the pattern to serve a function within it.
But I do not blame anyone from missing that. People had mostly checked out a long time before that point.
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The weirdest thing about going from WoW to ESO is ESO did the Maw better ten years ago.
And it still wasn’t great. Because there’s only so much you can do to make a frowny gray rock fun. But notably getting John Cleese to voice an insane undead knight who helps you navigate the place is instantaneously a pretty big step up.
And Molag Bal is an actually legitimately evil bastard. My favorite is his quest in Oblivion where he gets you to get a soldier who’s sworn himself to a life pacifism to murder you, by defiling his wife’s grave no less, purely because he just hates anyone doing something that wholesome.
None of this “Oh well there’s an even greater evil” crap. No. He’s the Devil. He does it because making people wither and writhe is just amusing to him. No broader goal. Just King Bastard of Eat Ish Mountain.
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I like the events in the book Vol’jin: Shadows of the Horde especially the relationship between Chen Stormstout and Yalia Sagewhisper. I hope we can see more of the two sometime.
You and I went to two different mmo’s I have had a ball of a time enjoying the story FFxiv has produced, plus as a RPer that game is far more RP friendly with all the emotes they have.
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Elder Scrolls has always been good at expressing pure concepts exceedingly well in the Daedric princes. Molag Bal is domination expressed purely. There is nothing else to him. Sheogorath is madness personified. Hircine is predatory instinct personified.
It makes them exceptional at showing a concept, yet also easy to understand. WoW is trying to shove depth into cosmic beings where there does not need to be a ton of depth.
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Yeah Blizzard’s fantasy world is my favorite because it is largely nuanced. Yeah some types might be broadly more disposed to no-goodery but you could find total bro tier Lichs and Black Dragons in Azeroth. And that’s what makes it interesting. You can’t really judge a book by it’s cover out here.
But the buck does need to stop somewhere. Particularly with cosmic forces of nature. I’m fine with stuff like Necromancy being more generally martial and value neutral, and sugar plumb fairies being a lot more vicious and sadistic than you’d guess at first glance.
But if you’re going to introduce the literal duck mothering DEVIL - he can just be a prick. It’s fine.
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