SL is regarded as the worst expansion by the majority of players on both the forums, reddit posts, and youtube videos. The only expansion that doesn’t let you choose where you want to go to level. That is inconvincibly bad game design for an MMO. Then there’s the BBEG who has so many filters on, you need to turn on subtitles to understand what he’s saying. Only for him to be another “I was trying to stop this other, bigger threat from coming” plot we had multiple times already. Creatively bankrupt motivation for the expansion’s BBEG.
The one and only decent thing it did was not follow Legion’s model for the Professions. Legion can choke on a rotten egg for that mess.
I wasn’t here for SL, but did play through the campaign of DF while leveling alts.
What happened after BfA? Why did the faction driven stories and campaign zones completely fall off the map?
It’s just wild coming back from the faction conflict focused expansion to three expansions where it’s like over a decade of conflict is just conveniently brushed under the rug and forgotten.
Well, I played Shadowlands, I know he “merged” with Rezan and became some sort of semi-loa or something like that, but I didn’t see much beyond that—or maybe I forgot.
I didn’t like that expansion. Sometimes i go back just to get transmogs, but… his story turned into a mess.
And yes, Cairne is gone. Baine actually had an interesting follow-up in Dragonflight where he resolved some issues with centaurs—I thought it was interesting because in WC3 and old WoW, the tauren had major conflicts with centaurs… even so, that was basically it. They found a different kind of centaur clans and… that’s it. They didn’t develop it much further.
Thrall isn’t the same anymore.
Vol’jin doesn’t exist anymore.
Sylvanas… well…
Gallywix had an okay storyline recently, with Gazlowe and the cartels turning into a council, but… it’s kind of vague what that actually represents to the horde.
Lor’themar is the only one left from the old crew… because Kael, even though he appeared in Shadowlands, was doing Shadowlands stuff—it had nothing to do with the Horde…
As for the newer members of the Horde like the Nightborne and Vulperas, mag. orcs…etc…well, they’re recent… and there isn’t much content about them for now.
So yes, the Horde has changed and feels strange.
I think Vol’jin’s absence in the story is huge, and no one has really taken his place—not even someone like Rokhan, for example.
Tangent, but why is everything turning into a council? Can we not get 1 leader to step up and make a big name? Horde is a council, forsaken is a council, goblin cartels of all things is a council. Wheres the ambition?
Prove it. First, tell us something no one else but you seems to know. How many players are there? Then divide that by two, add one, and show us that many people who are saying SL was the worst expansion.
Without that you have no idea what the majority is thinking. You only know what the small fraction of people in the forums are thinking.
What? Just about every expansion requires you to go through the campaign with at least one character. In Shadowlands, once you did that you could use “Threads of Fate” to level your alts.
Effectively written out of the story because he isn’t a conventionally attractive waifu thus no plot armor to stay relevant-ish in the story.
Canonically he’s a LOA now who will eventually be reborn but it’s unlikely it’ll be anytime soon…though I fully admit to not know how long it “normally” takes for LOA and other wild gods to meander back into the mortal realms once they take their Ardenweald nap.
He’s had a pretty pathetic narrative run too. Like even his tenure as warchief was completely pointless since the expansion he held the title from we were literally in an alternate universe AND even a different planet with lip service support/involvement from the homefront…and he literally gets “killed” as soon as the focus is back on our side of things to then be left in literal limbo until his grand arc puffs out like a fart on a glorified sidequest level of narrative importance. A placeholder character if there ever was one.
They probably notice that about half the players are playing elves, humans and orcs. Dwarfs are about 5% but then you see them in popular culture like Lord of the Rings.
Trolls and Zandalari Trolls add up to a little over 7% which is not bad compared to some of the others so maybe that will encourage them to bring him back.
Dwarves in WoW are largely propped up because their racial is so OP relative to other races. I know a good number of tryhards who rerolled/race changed to dwarf purely for the racial.
Not denying that the popular races aren’t popular because they either look great or fulfill a common player trope, but it is what it is.
This toon originally, back in Wrath, was created as a NE purely because, at the time, NE dodge racial was “best” but I hated the animations and look so I opted for human as the “2nd best choice”…which then arguably became the best choice with humans gaining expertise on Swords and Maces plus having EMFH as a racial (with mythic+ not existing so meld skips not being a thing)…and I have been tempted to swap to a dwarf on occasion because Stoneform is just that good
But I don’t think I ever will for the likely fact that as soon as “I” do it, that’ll be when Blizzard decides to finally nerf it…so really the community should be thanking me for my sacrifice letting them keep their gimmicks. Plus I don’t want to be a dwarf.
He’s may have been lined up as a Loa, but Blizzard wanted to get away from SL as fast as possible so what Vol’jin is now (other than dead) is currently unknown.
Wrath, and Cata, best expac cause of short stack Goblin supremacy, didn’t. Not sure if 'nilla counts as there was no campaign or story in it.
Despite the profession butchery, the timegating with stupid table missions, and the endless AP grinds, Legion and BFA didn’t. We got to mostly choose where we wanted to level. Holding off on Suramar until level cap was stupid. We all know those Elves were involved with the Sundering. That city should have been the first assault point.
Admittedly, TBC, MoP, and WoD all required you to do the starting zone for a bit before but at a certain level, you did get to choose to keep questing or go to a new zone.
Back to topic: Can both playable Trolls do some mojo voodoo stuff to talk to him? Or is he at some afterlife bar and doesn’t want to be bothered?
Vol’jin is in a pod in an orchard in Ardenweald being fed anima to keep him alive. The Winterqueen can feed him a burst of anima to bring him back when the time is right.
You don’t have to create a poll. That person is a known troll. I went round and round with them on that exact topic before I finally just put them on ignore.
Blizzard even said in a meeting with their investors that SL was a massive failure and listed the reasons why. It’s against the US law to lie to your investors, btw. The only thing that was probably keeping WoW afloat during this time was Classic.
Edit: Btw, here’s my receipts. Not Bellular himself, but the pictures that were leaked from GDC where Blizzard literally says “yeah we screwed up.”
Interesting, thanks for the info - I didn’t even know about that.
I believe they made a lot of mistakes, both in the story and in gameplay content…
Vol’jin is proof of that.
From my point of view, the story mistakes were: turning Sylvanas into that, the whole controversy of her serving the Jailer only to say in the end that she wouldn’t serve (that was weird to me) … making the Lich King into something so insignificant… Shadowlands, as the name implies, “shadow, LANDS,” was supposed to be something way, way darker, but it ended up being almost too colorful… killing off Vol’jin just to fill this plot point of “oh he died and some fake loa whispered to him to put Sylvanas in charge so the next events could happen” < that was just… wrong.
As for the gameplay mistakes, there are several too—lack of PvP balance, the current ILVL upgrade system with crests is (TO ME) weird, I think it was a mistake not to bring at least five+ new races like gnolls, vrykul, naga, centaurs, etc… not having different body types for the current races feels strange, many class abilities still having outdated skins/animations, and so on… one of the weirdest things to me is how the WoW races are more interesting in Heroes of the Storm than in WoW itself, but anyway…
That was a bit off-topic BUT, going back to Vol’jin…
That book, Shadows of the Horde, and Vol’jin’s story in Pandaria was phenomenal. I really like the character and I think it’s sad that he’s no longer around…
This is litterally a Shadowlands plot; Bwonsamdi sends the two of you to the Maw to try and rescue fallen Loa with Rezan transferring what strength he has to Vol’jin because he knows he’s done for.
Was no fake loa, it was Muzala or however you say it he was working with the jailer to get his powers back from bwondsomdi. There is an entire questline that covers it.
