Ontop of my linked statement about Shadowland’s main antagonist being an unknown with unclear motivations, my other complaint would be the style Blizzard is telling the story now. They seemed to really took the wrong lessons from watching Game of Thrones, trying to recreate these ‘jaw dropping surprises.’ While it’s nice to have the audience/players surprised and not knowing what could happen next, that effect is vastly cheapened and virtually neutralized when we’re simply kept in the dark.
I remember reading one of Golden’s tweets about how she was reading all the speculation about Shadowland’s story, I don’t remember the exact wordage, but it insinuated that people had no idea what was actually going to happen. But I feel like even she didn’t know where the story was going. Like why did they write Sylvanas having Baine captured just for him to be discarded by the Jailer and then freed again. If she wanted revenge, just kill him. But it didn’t even seem like she knew he was even in Torghast, it’s all about Anduin.
That goes for Jaina and Thrall too, they just get freed without anyone really caring. It’s like, “Oh hey, you’re free. Nice.” And then they just go to the Sanctum during the Sylvanas fight to tell her she really shouldn’t be doing this.
There’s a lot of things you can like about Shadowlands, the zones, the characters and quest, but the main plot is just boring and drawn out. Oh no, the Jailer will get free and do something to destroy the universe! Who cares? If you need to write the stakes that high to make people invested, you’re failing at so many basic levels.
In BFA and Shadowlands I have loved the trees but hated the forest. I am happiest when I can pay attention to the story in front of me but dread when the big picture intrudes.
I loved the zone stories in BFA and Shadowlands. With the longer than usual content drought the mind wanders and the trouble begins. You wonder about Orc and Tauren ancestors and where they belong in the Shadowlands. You dread the return of the Sylvanas story feeling there is not a way for it to resolve so that there is a three expansion payoff that is not going to involve one side gloating over the misery of another. You worry over what is the next shock for effect event that might drop trying to recreate the Red Wedding.
I’m worried that the rest of the expansion will focus on Sylvanas which will lead to more player infighting or more Jailer who is being setup for a similar Sylvanas run. Is he the devil incarnate or misunderstood and really the hero. Let’s split the playerbase , draw it out way too long, then make half feel bad for the side they choose.
I agree. If I view Shadowlands as some stand alone game, I appreciate it alot more. The Revendreth and Maldraxxas story lines were the bees knees. Ardenweald and Bastion grew a bit tedious… but maybe others like them.
I felt for the Groves being lost. I fell in love with The Accuser and Draven - man, they are the best new characters I have quested with in a long time. Draka is awesome. I am enjoying a lot about it.
Alot of the story complaints seem to be coming from Night Elf fans who want even more focus and presents. Or Alliance fans in general who don’t like the mean things Sylvanas said. Or Horde fans who hate Sylvanas. I havent even noticed her much so far. She popped into a few scenes but she isn’t ever present, like Arthas in WotLK.
But yeah, I think the story is fine - when I forget about Sylvanas and Anduin and the crew from Azeroth chilling in Oribos. The actual Covenant and Zone lore is pretty fun.
This is a big issue. It ruins alot of the game for alot of folks.
I chose Revendreth because it was just awesome thematically - but Kyrian was a bit better Gameplay wise. The potion/cleanse and the Scouring Tithe were things I would use almost on CD. I swapped to Kyrian, and I noticed my DPS was significantly better… but I missed Revendreth. So I swapped back, even though my performance was taking a hit.
On the other hand, My Druid’s best Covenant is Ardenweald, and that works thematically and gameplay wise.
I enjoyed the zones (minus Ardenweald), i enjoyed the characters and even though the antagonists are kinda empty its too bad because at this point for our characters its basically tuesday defeating ommicidal megalomaniacs who underestimate us.
Like im not exactly vibing it (minus Maldraxxus and Necrolords, which are great) but its keeping engaged enough to keep coming back.
The problems come with its connections to BFA (which i hated)
the fact that Necrolords turned to be my BiS was a happy coincidence, but even if it wasnt i would have still gone for it.
i NEED those tmogs and mounts.
stats are ephemeral, your collections (and style) is eternal
It’s hard for me to dislike Shadowlands because there’s nothing actually here to direct any anger towards: despite being in totally new plane of reality, Blizzard is so dead set on witholding all lore, that almost literally nothing has happened this expansion.
We’re a year in and we still don’t know anything about anything. Once we know the origin of the Jailer, what he wants, why he wants it, his history with the Eternals, and why they turned on him, THEN I’ll decide if there’s anything to dislike. It’s hard to hate an empty room.
My Alliance druid is in Ardenweald, but I refuse to put any of my Horde characters through Guilt: the Zone. So my Horde druid is in Bastion, but boy, do I ever miss Convoke the Spirits.
The story has all the complexity and emotional depth of your average Schwarzenegger film, but none of the fun or “badass” moments. I couldn’t care less about Sylvanas, the Jailer is an incredibly boring villain.
Bring in the big, dumb, fun stuff that made previous expansions entertaining. Have the Alliance and the Horde start sending airships through the rift in Icecrown and start wreaking havoc on the Maw. Have the covenants pull a Legionfall and start staging combined assaults on the Jailer’s forces. Stop dwelling on characters that nobody particularly cares about and get back to making players feel like unstoppable badasses with magical mecha suits and all that other ridiculous crap.
In other words, Blizzard should play to their strengths. Because it feels like they’re trying their hand at the gritty, dark sort of fantasy that’s very vogue these days, but the problem is, that sort of storytelling needs a strong plot and excellent characterization.
An xpac focused on the Afterlife was a bad choice, going to another plane of reality to interact and get involved with things I honestly don’t care about is infuriating when there are SO MANY unanswered questions about whats going on in Azeroth after BFA, you can’t have what you describe as the biggest War that will finally settle things and drop the G word and not give us enormous details of the aftermath and how everyone is dealing with things, even the neutral groups.
Bastion story is beyond garbage, and it boils down to “Maybe if I just actually listened and checked out why my Paragon of Loyalty was so freaked out so many permanent deaths could of been avoided”
Horde players are once again forced to “Go with it” regarding anyone who wanted to do Ardenwald stuff, and in blizz fashion instead of just obviously making a Alliance and Horde version of the covenant, it’s all the same
Do you know how painful/ annoying it is to be reminded about night elfs and what happened every 5 minutes and hearing “That’s so Horrible, who could possibly do something so HORRIBLE” and now I’m shifting uncomfortably like Aethas, as the night elf spirit glares at me.
I feel like this story has produced so many retcons /lore inconsistencies/ or just blatantly stupid moments in such a short period of time that it’s kind of hard to overlook breaking me out of any immersion I may of had and makes me wonder if they actually even planned this story out.
It is pretty much Argus 2.0. Horde players are forced to take orders from alliance heroes again. The Alliance bias once more ruins the experience for the red community.
I actually LIKE the Shadowlands story as long as you don’t think about it in relation to BfA.
I don’t think of it so much as a continuation of BfA so much as rather a side story to play through while waiting for the continuation of BfA.
There’s a lot of interesting stories and lore in Shadowlands that I find interesting that occasionally crosses the main story but because the main story seams to stagnated until 9.1, it’s easy to ignore and pretend it’s a completely different game.
Im used to retcons on some level. But the amount here is unreal, I honestly can only think of Legion doing more. And most of them werent quite as broad, they only really affected what was relevant in the moment.
By the nature of what the Shadowlands is, how souls have tied into almost every class at some point in the games lore, inherently this xpac affects nearly everyone. And it doesn’t do that very well. There’s not much acknowledgement of the pre-existing death lore, beyond vaguely saying “well other afterlives exist when the system needs them too” and all the new figures are very clearly imitations of older ones, like the Pantheon of Death / Zo’vaal and the Titan Pantheons conflict with Sargeras. It’s also trying to tie things thought up 20 years ago with things thought up extremely recently, without much history knowledge.
I would compare this to TBC’s retcon of the Eredar. That was realistically not that much, because it wasn’t a heavily explored part of the lore and was just 1 demonic race. But death lore, in all honestly, had a lot more depth and variety. Heck you can track death lore to pre-dating the concept of the Shadowlands in the heads of the writers. I mean BfA had it’s own acknowledgement of the old death lore too, the red dragon quest acknowledges lore from as early as 2005 about the Dream being the nature afterlife, not Ardenweald.
Edit: Characters are also done kinda dirty. Uther is written to be not Uther so he can become Uther again, and it’s kinda redundant and unfortunate since doing so requires them to contradict the amazing old Paladin class quests where we even speak to his ghost. Not just in Legion, but in TBC, through the power of the Holy Light. Kael’thas is slowly being written into a good person again, but they try to say he was -always- his TBC personality, which is so wrong. They make him a flamboyant himbo, but he wasn’t -bad- as a soft spoken, scholarly and perceptive prince in a desperate and deteriorating situation. Tyrande’s character issues go back to WoW having mixed feeling about wc3 nelves, so it’s not just SL, but it kinda contributes to the degradation of our themes by giving her the “VENGEANCE” personality Maeiv and Illidan already had and not a unique one to herself. And spoilers: Kel’thuzad and the Dreadlords have -really- controversial characterizations in 9.1
And Shadowlands would be such a perfect time to just go all-out on the bizarre and over-the-top silliness of Warcraft! I loved the idea of the Shadowlands, because I have no problem admitting that I like the cosmological escalation of Warcraft, and would love nothing more than to just delve into all kinds of strange realms and adjacent realities.
It really is strange that Blizzard choose to explore such a far-out, colorful, acid-trip of a realm, and then reveal next to nothing about it or why anything is happening. It just doesn’t make any sense… It’s like Dr. Strange, except boring. That’s difficult to mess up.
Fluff wise, the story keeps insisting the Jailer is the single greatest threat ever, without defining what that means, or why he wants it, or what he even aims to do. Mystery boxed to death.
Gameplay wise, the conflict is centered on inner covenant rebellion (3/4 until its revealed the WQ made the Drust or something) and the anima drought. Yeah, the Jailer caused the drought, maybe, but he’s stuck in the Maw and mia.
The individual stories are fine, better than usual actually, the bigger fluff is nonsense and more importantly these two story beats are disconnected. Why not be upfront with what the Jailer’s motivation, end goals and the means he intends to use to get them? If you’re doing a twist that the Jailer was the good guy all along, then you’ve set up a bait and switch. Instead you set up an obvious void of information we’re pointlessly waiting for you to fill.
People always talk poorly on current content. Notice how people are starting to talk more highly about bfa, but during bfa everyone talked crazy amounts of trash on it. Even legion got hate when it was current but now the vast majority seem to agree legion was good.
