WoD had a great start, but yeah its storytelling & progression died off really quickly later on … The grand story of the expansion could’ve been a lot better, but in hindsight looking back — It was still a far cry better than Shadowlands
That all being said, I don’t think alternate universes or timelines was the issue with WoD — Dragonflight dabbled with that & honestly I feel like they did it quite rather well.
I’m talking more about class-specialisation, rather than balance mechanics such as range, etc.
You’d hardly see Gandalf lose his staff, grab Legolas’ bow — Do a kickflip off a wall & then start going all Rambo on the orcs. lol
From my understanding, canon-wise the artifact weapons were handed over to either the Kirin Tor or the sacred orders (Orderhalls) at the end of war with the Legion, hence as to how & why the blade of Xal’Atath ended up in the hands of the Naga later on.
Something that was rather controversial at the time, yet what I actually commended Blizzard for.
I mean, Blizzard could probably make that work in their favour one day in the lore — by having X character assume that Y character is blah class because they used a particular spell-school, only for it to be revealed later on that Y character is actually a whole other class altogether – and due to such, the tide of battle was turned.
Subverting expectations in a refreshing way and making players have a bit more of an open critical-thinking mindset to such matters
Its not only about the start, just the plot itself was just…wrong, i kid you not but, when the expac plot was announced, i did not watch blizzcon announcements as i was raiding at the same moment, and a friend came and told me like : “So, its Garrosh, who after the events of MoP go back in time, and creat a Horde, Iron Horde, and will use it to go back to the present to attack us.” And when i heard it, i was like : “You trolling right…?”’ And the fact was…he was not trolling…
Really, that base plot was just super stupid and terrible, you had so many better stories to do than go back in some kind of alternative timeline thing, and not to mention how everyone was confused (even the devs) and that even the base idea of “returning to the paste” was always like “so we killing past grommash but why wxouldnt this modify timeline?” Devs answer and main line of defense was : bUt iTs aLteNatiVe!" which was basically their excuse to retcon everything later with chronnicles v2 and say “ho well you know, all the things we said were diferent in wod because alternative…well it was on our timeline too!”
WoD also brought the “Uni temporal legion” bs idea…because well, yes, killing some kind of alternative mannoroth or archimonde was boring to players, so lets say they were the actual Archimonde and Mannoroth!
Also it makes no sense because, WoD happens “35y ago” (its what the cgi tells us (this 35y ago confused a tons of people back in the day by the way) so, meaning, we kill Archimonde (an untitemporal archimonde) 35y prior to war3…so how can he be in war3 then? heeee! see?! when i try to put logic in wod…wod insantly makes no sense!
And you will say SL was worst, at least SL was more consistent than wod, because i am sorry but Garrosh being some kind of ingeneering genius? No…and you can come with the “ho but he had the plans of the tech with him!” firstly no he did not, the short story about his evasion said he was naked and in chains so how he would have the schematics? And secondly, its not because i have the scematics to make a bomb H that i instantly know how to make one…
Oh you think so? Well, for wod i already mentioned why timeline was weong, but now with DF ; Explain me how Proto drake Nozdormu can become Murozond if he was not even time related as a proto dragon? Yeah, you just need to think deeper and you will see that its always bad when they do time travel.
I think it was a good thing to re use the Xal’atath weapon, and its why they should do for all the artefacts now, but from a lore pov, we dont know what happenned to Doomhammer now, maybe the “shaman player” kept it, maybe discarded like priest discarded the blade of the black empire.
But here, you see how palyers dont want to let go, even if it harm the story, for example, well…do you know that Alleria dont even have her familly bow right now? Its another bow we dont know about, in legion as a hunter you could interact with her about having her bow and she did say “i may need my familly bow one day” but seems like no…which i find very silly.
Thats a cool idea, and it kinda reminds me of a thing in SL (now i know you hate SL but bare with me on that one!) it reminds me, the whole missconception that people had regarding Uther soul, that people thought that Uther had his soul saved by the Light, and its why he was able to go to the SL, and in Bastion, and later on in the game, they explain that, the Light have no power over the Shadowlands and over souls, i think it was good thing to make that clear, because people were very annoying with that “light save my soul” thing.
That was cool “subvesting expectations” and make people “not think they know everything” thing.
As i explained, we should not give wod that excuse as the base plot was already doomed to fail, you cant build something good if your base is already completly defunct. (I already explained why all the time travel thing was a problem) and i never saw, for real, i never saw so many people be confused about an expac plot right from start than with wod, like so many people wondering “what is going on”
It mattered before Lightforged Warlocks. Once that happened, it all went out the window.
You can do whatever you want in a fantasy story if you can make it believable within the rules of the world you made, and consistency and rules are very important for that. But Blizzard has shown there’s basically no rule that will stand in the way of a gameplay combo.
I just wish they’d give us a better lore explanation for some of the sillier combos. We still don’t know anything about how Lightforged are able to be warlocks at all, except that they “chose the light AND fel” which tells us absolutely nothing.
tropes are definitionally cliched and therefore not unique. fantasy is not a genre defined by clear cultural divisions. some franchises can be, though whether it ever is to their advantage is pretty dubious. night elves are purple wood elves; the most unique thing about them in a broad context is their skin color
i legit don’t understand this take. people claim to like the lore but then don’t want it to grow or develop. if you want warcraft from a specific time, blizzard already has old games and game modes to sate* that want. they’re more than happy kto make extra money from you.
I don’t think we’re going to agree on the WoD thing, as I personally feel like it suffered for the reasons Karestae stated earlier for the most part.
And we’re DEFINATELY not going to agree on WoD versus SL — I very much do NOT – in the slightest, think that SL was “more consistent” than WoD … Sure WoD wasn’t perfect but man lmao, SL was in no way “Consistent” – Players were constantly memeing about how Blizzard were just making all up as they went along & couldn’t agree with eachother on where to go with the story
I do
As for your statement about Nozdormu — He was elevated into a time-dragon before from a proto-drake to begin with … The infinites were simply cutting the line and using their link to the powers of their flight to imbue that former … er future (you know what I mean) power into the proto-form to elevate him into a different form — which yes, is a paradox … But they’re infinite dragons, that’s kind of the point. lol
I think that was honestly tremendously stupid because it was a horrible retcon.
Especially since the most benevolent forces of the light played into the whole DnD vibe of holding a blissful afterlife too — and WoW had actually touched base on that before with various questlines, like with Crusader Bridenbrad and with Uuna.
Personally I’m hoping that the Kyrian just had no idea wtf she was actually talking about – Since she’s not really a godlike all-knowing being …
That being said, the Naaru themselves have said before: That the light are not the only force in the cosmos and there are other powers that contend with them …
However as you know, I’m not a fan of Shadowlands (nor are most others throughout WoW’s playerbase) and the above is simply the tip of the iceberg of problems I have with that lore-insulting horrendous expansion But anyway, yeah …
How do they know? There was no such things. As far as i remember, and also i mean, for wod? I re watched the interviews and all the things from back in these days and…i actually forgot how hard the dev team treated the player base like a bunch of idiots back in these days.
When i see that, you had one dev, who stated that WoD (during 6.2) had 2 major patches…and was thus a “full and complete expansion” znd that players were bascially not allowed to complain…they never dared to say such a thing in sl, they mainly said they apologize for their mistakes, they never did it in wod.
Also, i do remember, when i saw all the infos they gave about wod, that in concept, (story changed like 3 times during developpement…) firstly they wanted garrosh to have an horde made up of gnolls and kbolds, then they had idea that Garrosh would breath in an one of the horns of Nozdormu to resurected the warlords of the past…i man…do you find any of these idea actually good?
If wod was so “consistent” then explain me why Orgrim was green? Why does Grommash give some kind of ultimatum to Ner’zhul telling him that 'shamism is weak and he need to do more" while there is plenty of shamans in the Iron Horde?
I really dont see in what way SL is “less consistent” than all i mentioned, sure we have no idea what the jailer actually did to get sent into the maw, but thats ONE detail, not some kind of plot point you definitly need to understand the plot.
But the problem is, i give you actual instances and examples, but you wont give me examples as to why SL is not consistent.
You played WoD right? But even if you played it, you actually would need to re-watch all the interview, all the content creations of 2014-2015 to actually understand how bad it was : you will need to be in 2014-2015. With your eyes of 2025.
But how will time magic have effect upon him, if he had no time powers at that moment? He was just a regular prot dragon during the fight with Galakrond, he had nothing time related, the infinite turn time bronze dragon into infinite, not any dragons.
When you consider that, Nozdormu was infused with the power of Aman’thul himself to be an Aspects, i think its kinda weird that a mere infinite dragon can give him the same effects.
And well, the time rifts from DF asked more questions than it answered like : if there is an azeroth totally perfectly owned by the titans, why do the titans care so much about our? If the Legion is still conquering one azeroth in an alteranitve universe with Sargeras …isnt the Legion unitemporal as wod said? If the Old God won on an alternative Azeroth, shouldnt they had conquered the cosmos already?
Eetc…
I dont see in what way it is a retcon.
Who is “she” ?
I think, you are being way too personnal with SL, i think it is important to remove personnal emotions and have a more intrinsic vision of the product, yes SL is far from perfect, yes it have a lot of problems, its fact, but constantlu blaming it because “you dont like what it tells” or “where the lore was going” is not very honest.
Myself, i dont like SL particularly my favorite expacs are bfa and MoP, SL is far from being my favorite, but when i see how WoD have retconed the orcs, and how SL created something, even if you dont like it, its still creation and not a retcon (since we literally had no infos about the Shadowlands) and of course there is issues, its a big topic. Maybe it was too ambitious, but it tried and the Shadowlands was a place players speculated a lot about.
I can see we’re at an impasse, but I know what the consensus was throughout both WoD and SL — and SL was more poorly received in the overall storyline.
They said the light has no purchase in the Shadowlands … Whereas before it did.
The Kyrian that said the line above was a girl, if I’m not mistaken - no?
I admitted my own personal issue with SL but it’s not like I haven’t backed up the reasons to why – and there were many.
It did not, where does it says it did? The Light have no power on souls that are in the Shadowlands, that dosent means the Light cant claim souls before it goes here.
Also, the examples you given had Naaru interventions in them, like the crusader quest line, so well, if we need to have Naaru intervention everytime a soul is to go in Light realm.
Because thats the thing we know. There was no established lore rule that stated that you will go to the Light realm for x or y reasons, the rule was that Shadowlands was the realm of the deads, it always had that “life and death cycle” thing, what was established seems to be that when a being dont go to the shadowlands but go somewhere else (like demons, or else) they are out of that cycle.
I thinkalways putting the “right and wrong” on the consensus is not the right thing to do bascially its like “you are a follower” of the masse. The masse can be wrong, if it wre right we wold not have problems with elections.
I already explained that the mass can be manipulated easily.
Yes, it was Xandria the Paragon of Courage. But i mean, as i explained above, there was no established rule over the fact that Light had some kind of power inside the Shadowlands, and that a soul will go there (i mean thats the lore how it was from the starts.
And i can understand that, but as a matter of facts, i actually made my kind of retrospect about SL, and i do notice that, even if people yell about SL making too many retcons, actually there was barely any retcons, at least none that contradicted old established lore.
Compared to WoD or even Wrath, but wod was a big one, like when you see how, the fact that demons can only be killed in the nether (which was a rule brought by wod and therefore a retcon since it was stated that demons were dead in war3 manual) this simple thing, removed a lot of “impact” of war3, like, in war3 you had Grommash sacrificing himself to free the orcs by killing mannoroth…with wod its no longer the case, Mannoroth will come back in time…same with Archimonde.
Where does it say it? The quest: ‘No Peace In Death’
And the Kyrian I referenced earlier of which, is yes — Xandria, the Kyrian Paragon of Courage; who says such dialog with Alexandros Mograine:
Alexandros Mograine says: “But why was I not chosen? Was my faith in the Light not strong enough? Was my soul tainted from the moment I rose into undeath?”
Xandria says: “Light, Void… such trifling powers have no purchase here.”
As per above They do in fact, quite LITERALLY state that.
That’s a disingenuous LIE.
There’s plenty of retcons.
Especially towards such which contradicted old established lore.
Myself, along with many, many others have already had this conversation several hundred times on the forums before across a multitude of threads — Even so much as going to name, list, reference, quote, source and correlate various multiple amounts of evidence to pointing out such matters. It’s tiresome. I’m not doing it again, as I have nothing to prove; especially towards those who may even be in denial of such information …
It’s obvious to anyone who actually knows the lore of the game — that Shadowlands retconned a dung-tonne throughout the grand totality of Warcrafts story & established lore.
Well yes, and again in what way does it retcon anything? Because again as i said, the 2 only occurences we had of beings not going to the Shadowlands because of Light prevented it had Naaru implication
1 - The crusader quest, when you bring a naaru to him and naaru take his souls directly
2 - Souls in Aouchindoun which have a Naaru atracing the souls to it.
In both cases, you have to have a naaru around, there was no rule that stated that faith is needed or something.
The rule was kinda the opposite and simple one : all souls go to shdowlands when they die. It was not a retcon its like this since war2 which was the frist to introduce Shadowlands.
But thats not an arguement, you say it does, but you give no examples, i can easily dismiss any you will bring me anyway.
And NO you may not know the lore if you think that it contradict established infos, just like you said above that what Xandria says is a retcons, even if it isnt…
Like, you might bring me the jailer, like “ho but its cotnradict old lore!” thing is, it was never actually said in old lore from where the helm and sword of the LK came to begin with, in old lore Kil’jaeden wanted Ner’zhul to be his creature, and Nathrezim came up with this items…and it was never explained from where they came precisely.
So here its not a retcon that contradict any established things, it was just expanded and to be honest, you do war3 its same, there is nothing that go agaisnt what war3 tells us. As the LK is still the creation of Kil’jaeden, since Kil’jaeden still had Ner’zhul soul and still pout the helm and sword to it.
I’d prefer a system where the player starts out with classes locked on races whose cultures don’t include those classes, but the player can do a questline for that class and unlock it across all races. I feel that would give a player an initial sense of what the various races’ cultures are, while allowing players to unlock and play whatever combination they wished.
Its genuinely amazing how much Shadowlands contradicted itself throughout the entirety of the expansion.
Kyrians: The Light has no purchase within the Shadowlands.
Revendreth, exasperatingly pointing at the Ember Ward and its resulting apocalyptic Light cascade because a Dreadlord absolutely dun fugged up.
Eons ago, the area now called the Ember Ward belonged to Prince Renathal, along with Sire Denathrius’s creations, the nathrezim. In those days, it was a place of dark magic and experimentation. After the nathrezim were discovered infiltrating other realms, the Light unleashed its wrath upon Revendreth, permanently scorching and blighting the ward of the nathrezim in retaliation. It is now a land of madness and torture where Denathrius sends his most hated enemies and failures to suffer, as the Light causes overwhelming pain to the venthyr. Venthyr exposed to the Light too long become ash ghouls; once turned into one, there is no reversal. However, prior to this stage, the effects are reversible through consumption of tea made of liquid shadows. After the events of the Revendreth storyline, the naaru Z’rali is found here.
I think you simply miss understand what she means, and you are literally lying and being dishonest here, because that was not even the context of what she said ><
She said that regarding SOULS and IN THE SHADOWLANDS as a realm 'they have no purchase here"
its like if Aman’thul said that these have no purchase in the oroder realm, it dosent prevent them from attacking said realms.
Its just so silly how you would on purpose dont understand a simple sentance and put it out of context…
Ember Ward is exactly explaining to you that the others Forces want to conquer and invade the Shadowlands…
Not to mentions the Kyrians are shortsighted and kinda blind to the other threats, which is duh…what the story tells you?
Or maybe you dont know what “having no purchase” means?
Everything about the Shadowlands fills me with unfathomable fury and even if I am willfully obsfucating obvious intents it hardly excuses the absolute mess hall that is the rest of the expansion. Everything in the Sepulcher of the First Ones is designed to spit in the face of the average lore appreciator, and to dig a dagger in the kidneys of those who have genuinely grown to love the setting.
And i genuanly dont care how you felt about the expansion, you just being on purpose doing bad faith talk just because “i did not like the story that was offer to me”
Not my problem you did not like it. You either buy it or you dont, end of the story.
But to come and say “ho but its contradicting itself!” and just dont want to accept that other expacs do the same kind of contradicting itself too…its just not being honest.
I feel like this has happened a lot. I mean there’s the fel/arcane retcon I always rant about, and how the changes contradict so many things in the older expansions that it makes some bosses literally non-canon.
What are some other examples of lore that’s been changed so many times and so sloppily that Blizzard can likely never address it again?
From my understanding, canon-wise the artifact weapons were handed over to either the Kirin Tor or the sacred orders (Orderhalls) at the end of war with the Legion, hence as to how & why the blade of Xal’Atath ended up in the hands of the Naga later on.
But anyway, yeah …
There’s plenty of retcons.