Why are people so mad with Shadowlands story?

Lore Story Forum
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STV is arguable, but probable after Cata. We really don’t know the state of the tribes homelands aside from Zul’drak. Someone who has read Exploring EK can probably correct me if I’m wrong there. There would have to be some sort of forced conflict to make STV work, that I will admit.

However, Hinterlands has the Wildhammer Dwarves, who ARE squatting on what is probably the Forest Troll’s best chance at securing a land for themselves yet again. Those Dwarves are in conflict with both the Revantusk and Vilebranch Trolls who make the region home, which is already established.

So, it’s a reconquest of currently contested turf in a sense they are shoving out interlopers and securing the Hinterlands and Jintha’alor while creating a strong showing at the border of Arathi to deter Stromgarde encroachment.

Gameplay-wise, you’d be working your way from Revantusk Village or Jintha’alor to Aerie Peak, dealing with Wildhammer forces and Stromgarde reinforcements. Once at Aerie Peak, there would be a pitched battle, but the Dwarves are unable to repel the combined might of the Witherbark, Revantusk, Zandalari, Darkspear, and Vilebranch tribes and make a successful evacuation towards Grim Batol (Which should lead to a scenario of cleansing that of any remaining corruption and potentially taking all of Twilight Highlands). From there, it turns to a repel of Stromgarde forces who came to Aerie Peak’s aid, pushing them across the border to Arathi before the Humans are able to force a stalemate with the aid of backup from Ironforge and Stormwind. Before the battle ends, Rokhan or Talanji should have a chance to battle Trollbane and get a solid W under their belt by forcing him to retreat personally, the PC can handle a swarm of soldiers or another named character like Rogers while that is occuring.

Then, like Ashenvale, it becomes a zone to play through and experience a story for.

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Aerie peak has been a thing since Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos. So not exactly squatting on a land that has been as old as the game itself with impressive landmarks.

So your plan is for the Horde to blow up another iconic Alliance city that has been has lore as old as Warcraft 3 for some lightly associated trolls in one zone 99% of the playerbase probably can’t remember the tribe name of? I think if Night Elves are only allowed to recapture something that was already theirs to begin with then we have to do the same for the trolls. The Gurubashi are probably the most iconic so maybe something involving them is better?

Not possible. It will become just like Gnomergan where the Dwarves are standing outside the gates while the rest of the place is going to be used for the dungeon that needs to stay where it is.
Besides, some places are probably more interesting as something occupied by enemies for the player to conquer than a new capital city with very little purpose 5 minutes away from another capital city.

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Doesn’t change that it’s Troll land, which has been a thing since WC2 since Zul’jin and the Amani were introduced.

And the Wildhammer get their ancestral city back while curbing the Dragonmaw Orcs in Twilight Highlands, who betrayed the Horde anyways so we can hopefully cut the cycle there.

Didn’t you just oppose this?

The dungeon can have a separate corridor that leads to it, while the Dwarves get the city proper. OR you can go crazy and have the entrance inside the city much like Stockades and RFC back in the day. Best option might be to just Zidormi time it.

Besides, you’d just run into the same issue with ZG with the Gurubashi, given all Troll cities minus Jintha’alor are pretty much dungeons.

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Yeah… back in BC. Vanilla predates them by years.

As I said not possible because Grim Batol will need to remain a dungeon for the sake of the gameplay. Half of Hinterlands is Dwarf and the other is Troll land with neither side really killing each other in either cata or vanilla unless we count the quests that mobilize the muderhobos.

No, I was just unsure what you would do. Most of STV is held by trolls anyway, the Alliance camp is very very tiny so not much for you to fight. But at least its parity with Ashenvale is more comparable than the Horde blowing up something old and beloved by Alliance players since WC3 for Horde’s power fantasy.

Agreed so better off to shelve the ideas and btw I am not sure why you have a bone to pick with Trollbane, despite his name he hasn’t really been active since… WC2 before suddenly appearing in Legion. Why would confronting him reward Talanji?
Why not help the Drakkari in Northrend they had a big kingdom that was under a massive assault by the undead.

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Zul’jin was WC2. He was killed in BC.

That’s how a lot of conflicts in WoW work to be fair.

The goal is to give the Trolls a chunk of land back and give a tangible payback for Rastakan’s murder, the exact mirror of Ashenvale. The Alliance will have to be involved, which would perhaps take the form of an Alliance invasion force aiming to secure Strangethorn, which is brutally repelled.

Because they’re extinct. A fallen tribe with only one known survivor who is quite open about his tribe’s extinction. There’s nothing that can be doen to fix that and it still has TWO dungeons in the form of Gundrak and Drak’taron Keep. So it fails your test as well.

So my concerns can get shelved because of dungeons? But NE concerns still run rampant? Blackfathon Depths in in Ashenvale, though it isn’t a city does that not matter?

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Night Elves got rolled in three of their territories with the last one containing all the refugees and civilians got torched by Horde players.
The only thing the Alliance and NE will be getting in this is an Ashenvale retake against some nameless unknown Horde soldier canon fodder and thats the end of it the Night Elves are lucky.

You want to blowup an iconic city almost to the same level as Theramore from WC3 to help trolls who have more antagonism against the Elves than Dwarves. Can we stop doing that? Blowing up iconic alliance places for Horde’s entertainment?

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And Trolls have had all of their cities sacked throughout WoW’s history, including the Darkspear and Zandalari. So, when do they get some closure and progress on that?

The only thing the Horde and Trolls would be getting is a STV or Hinterlands conquest against nameless Alliance cannon fodder and potentially a showdown with one named Alliance character that they win. That’s it. One victory for the Trolls that has no ‘gotcha’ strings attached like Vol’jin and Zulduzar.

Aerie Peak isn’t what I would call iconic. It existed, yes. But it’s barely even discussed outside of the exact discussion we’re having right now. That’s a far cry from Theramore.

You want to keep Aerie Peak so bad, that leaves STV. The Alliance, seeking more resources after the war sends a massive army to subjugate the area. The Gurubashi, still weakened after the last raid on their city and the Isle of Thunder, have no leadership left and are unable to form any semblance of a counterattack.

Talanji, still looking for a way to hit the Alliance back after Dazar’alor, hears of this from the Gurubashi speaker, who pleads for assistance. She agrees, asking the Darkspear to aid her. Rokhan, unable to stomach his ancestral homeland in Alliance hands agrees. The two make landfall at Grom’gol, finding it under siege by the Alliance. After pushing it back, Rokhan takes command of the forces while Talanji begins to rally the other Jungle Troll tribes together, reforming a Gurubashi army.

The counterattack sends them to Zul’gurub, where the Alliance has become entrenched and forces them out by bringing the full might of the Loa upon them, chasing them to the edge of Duskwood before Turalyon himself marches the Lightforged to meet the united Troll front. The two armies are unable to make much headway, though Turalyon does find himself bested by Rokhan in the fight. Alleria arrives and pulls him out before anything can actually happen to him. A stalemate occurs, both sides waiting for the other to make the next move.

From there, the Gurubashi tribes pledge themselves not to Zandalar, but to the hero who led them to victory: Rokhan. The Gurubashi cede control to the Darkspear, creating the Darkspear Empire and bolstering the once small tribe into a true world power.

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Not sure about Darkspear but the trolls got raided by both factions all the time. Taking it out just on Alliance is bit unfair and the Zandalari are the sole exception that they got raided by Alliance only.
I am not sure what the Hinterlands offers them in terms of restitution, The Kultiran Navy was destroyed just as the Zandalari was destroyed. Rastakhan was killed in an Alliance raid then perhaps Horde players get a quest to assassinate Jaina’s mother in response for payback against Jaina. Zul and Talanji did blow up stormwind ships and leave the city burning as they escaped. I think this should equalize things.

If your idea didn’t involve Aerie peak getting destroyed or conquered, then I wouldn’t have any problem with it really. Besides Jaina’s mom I can only think of Tandred as a worth foe for the Zandalari or Dakrspear to kill as a past payback.
And it benefits the Alliance because it will make Jaina more hardlined against the Horde so both sides should be happy with this.

So some sort of invasion/raid of Kultiras military outpost to payback the Kultirans for Dazaralor and Tandred ends up dead as the boss of the scenario.

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Shadowlands has a “road trip to the theme park” problem.

The individual zones are nice. The storyline from Bastion all the way to Revendreth was fun and the characters are pretty great. Shadowlands is the Theme Park.

Getting there is the road trip crammed with your siblings in the back of a 10-hour car trip. It’s not fun, there’s not enough snacks, you just left a rest stop and you have to go pee again, and everything’s just cramped. It’s not fun, and you want it to be over with. That was the start of Shadowlands.

Sylvanas’ plot with the Jailer redefining everything we knew about her and the convoluted mess of breaking the literal sky above Icecrown and the circus with the main characters is the road trip. It’s not fun, but once it’s behind us, we can have fun exploring the theme park.

WoD, BfA, and Shadowlands had head-scratchingly convoluted beginnings. Legion was the only one so far that was at least kinda fun.

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Fair fair :wolf: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Depends if we’re talking about hypothetical “trying to make sense” discussion, or what we got in practice.

In practice, even though Shadowlands was a good chance to dive into more of the troll stories and now with more powerful zandalari to build them up more than even before. But the current dev team decided “nah”.

If the question is about what could be there, the main question IMO would be coming from the same core problem: should the game go in the “factions are the core” direction, or it’s time to move past that.

IMO the first thing for the trolls would be to re-discover and establish relationships with various troll tribes and learn more details about their stories, loa, etc. Most I assume would join the current Drarkspear-Zandalari alliance, although not all. That would be a rize of something new, and a chance to revisit all the “let’s raid trolls” stories, sort this out.

As for the Rastakhan, well, Jaila shound make steps to address the thing. Will she? Depends on if the devs use logic in the narrative.

They do with the horde too. And would’ve been an interesting story IMO if both would be explored. With some caring about the “vs. alliance”, but some taking different path too.

gl hf

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The Darkspear were raided by the Kul’tirans both on their previous island home before it sank and on the Echo Isles. They then had the whole Zalazane zombie takeover from Vanilla to Cata where Bwonsamdi personally had to be called in to deal with it.

I mentioned the grievances with the Horde, which has a path towards actual diplomatic resolution through the Zandalari, whom the other Trolls tribes still respect. This is especially true of the Amani tribe and the Blood Elves.

This also just repeats Jaina’s story arc, which is dumb. Jaina SHOULD face consequences for Rastakhan’s murder, but I’m not down for giving Jaina a reason to punish the Trolls yet again down the road. It also fails to grant the other half of my demand which is the reclamation of at least ONE traditionally Troll territory as part of the unification of the tribes.

I just laid out an entire scenario for the Gurubashi and you completely ignored it and are still talking about Aerie Peak.

Again, with the Zandalari now in the Horde, there is an actual chance for some of those be addressed through diplomatic means. I would love to see a Ghostlands update at some point where the Amani are split over the Zandalari-led negotiations with the Sin’dorei. Some are willing to take what they can get, securing Zul’aman and much of the Ghostlands for themselves, but others are still hopped up on Zul’jin’s vengeance juice. Make that a rep grind, where you work with the Blood Elves and Amani against the insurgents, who have holed up in Zul’aman, and formally begin to process of reconciliation between the two powers.

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Yup, that could’ve been an interesting story. But I mostly refer to blood trolls (if any left) who doubled down post BfA (according to Shadows Rising at least) on being anti-zandalari and anti-horde.

Other stories would be also interesting. All that follows up the events in Zul-Farrak, interacitons with gurubashi, etc.

gl hf

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This discussion really does make me want the various Troll Tribes to actually get something positive for once.

For all the talk about the devs hating Nelves, I swear a new awful thing happens to a Troll Tribe every expansion.

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Because I am not sure what the Alliance would even be attacking in STV and I doubt any Alliance player cares about STV.
But if killing Alliance there somehow pleases Troll fans then ok I guess.

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Bad thing happens + every major city/location is either an instance except Echo Isles: ZF, ZG, ZA, ZD, Atal’dazar, King’s Rest, Dazar’alor, Other Side

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Same reason the Horde are in Ashenvale, resources. Same reason the Night Elves want an entire scenario dedicated to killing Horde in their land. Don’t act so surprised that other races want the same treatment.

I interpreted Shadows Rising as being the final stand of the Blood Trolls, they’re either wiped out or broken to the point they can’t be a threat any longer. It seems like the Zandalari had somewhat of a permanent presence in Nazmir as well. I’d be okay with letting them go the way of the Hakkari, but a reconciliation between the Nazmari and Zandalari could be cool if that was the card Blizz wanted to play.

The Farakki definitely need a story beat of their own, but thats one that should involve Bwonsamdi and Mueh’zala as well.

Hey! You put some respect on Zul’drak’s name! It got to be a WHOLE zone dedicated to killing Trolls! Ya know, with two dungeons to boot. xD

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(disclaimer: to me the core of the factions are ideas behind them, and not specific races / visuals / etc.)

I can imagine, in a parallel timeline where the devs actually invest time into developing variety of views / takes on events, current and of the past, blood trolls to be one of few tribes that could enable the alliance to get insight into the troll culture without bias lens of the elves.

Maybe they could get along the idea of justice / retribution for some arbitrary definition of the stuff.

gl hf

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Sorry for not being a participant in this conversation earlier - but I did want to reply to this thread in particular. I like your idea as presented here and would support it.

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