The Jailer was likely not part of the plan back in Warcraft 3 when Blizzard laid down the lore for the Lich King (World of Warcraft at that point wasn’t even in development), but it would have been planned since Legion at least.
The Shadowlands was a concept Blizzard wanted to explore since Vanilla though. It was originally supposed to be an end-game zone in the 2004 release of World of Warcraft, but it was scrapped along with Hellfire Penninsula, Northrend and the Dragon Isles (all of which were also supposed to be vanilla zones).
I remember a mini patch being added after Legion was beaten and you are able to speak with your faction leaders. When you talk to Nathanos he proceeds to turn his nose up at you and downplay your victory over the Burning Legion like he could’ve done what we did in his sleep. Your character literally dies trying to defeat Argus. What was he doing apart from licking Sylvanas’s boots?
I understood that he was a ranger but for some reason I never really got the impression he was anything special. Most of his fame comes from the Vanilla Alliance quest to kill him and it feels like Blizzard was riding on that to sell him as some sort of ruthless champion.
Oh great, instead of some brown nosing hero worshipper I get a petty venomous snake. Gee thanks Blizzard.
Of course it’s not new. We just had an expansion where we got nothing but new stuff. New setting, new lore, new magic, new races. And if you weren’t paying attention, everyone hated it and felt disconnected from the Warcraft setting. It’s why Blizzard has gone back to basics instead of bloating the lore with more idiotic garbage we got in Shadowlands.
I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one or two of the new races end up joining us after DF. Gnolls would be cool, but we have yet to meet a clan that isn’t a much of crazed maniacs and the naga still seem to be simping hard for Azhara because they are hinting her return from some stuff in the Forbidden reach. Though it’ll probably just be tuskarr and maybe the Maruuk Centaur, some how.
I kinda wonder if we will see a Darkonid AR, as they seem to at least have as much ability to wear armor as the Drakthyr have, and it let people live out their big beefy dragon warrior fantasy.
Just like how we never got any playable races after Shadowlands (despite many people asking for playable Venthyr and Kyrian), it’s extremely unlikely that we get playable races from Dragonflight.
And there’s no way in hell that Gnolls become playable. Ever.
The races of the Shadowlands are ‘created’ from dead people.
But they can travel to and from the Shadowlands at will, and they’re still mortal creatures (they just don’t age) meaning they eat, drink, sleep, breathe and obviously, can die. The Brokers demonstrate this perfectly and so do the Kyrian.
And the Venthyr, but the point is they aren’t meant to return to Azeroth or the realm of mortals in general.
The races of the Dragon Isles aren’t bound to such rules. Blizzard has proven otherwise that they’ll add whatever race they want and figure some way to make it work. They did it with the Worgen after all and they’ve also shown that they aren’t afraid to add races that don’t fully use every armor model in the game like with mechagnomes and more recently dracthyr.
There’s a side quest where we helped this gnoll called Gnoll Mon-Ark seize control of a group of gnolls. Mon-Ark was outright against the decay, so if playable gnolls were to become a thing they could be the key to it all.
They were all planar creatures with no business being in our part of reality, particularly with the Veil canonically growing closer and closer to being as impassable as it was before Sylvanas’ stunt with the helm of domination.
The Mon-Ark feels like a rare case. It also doesn’t help that character doesn’t even have an actual name and is more or less a joke. There were other gnolls who also didn’t appear to like the decay that were locked up in cages, but they were still very much gnolls. The moment we tried to free them they just attacked and tried to eat us like most gnolls would.
Blizzard would really have to do more with Mon Ark than a goofy questline. Maybe they will do more as the Decatriarch isn’t dead and will likely appear again at some point in the expansion.
There’s no rule that specifies this. Seriously, there’s nothing stopping any of the beings from the Shadowlands from travelling to Azeroth. Even Ysera, who was bound to the Shadowlands with powerful magic was able to come back.
But end of the day, the point I made was that just because there’s a new model, or players want a race to be playable, doesn’t mean they are, or ever will be. The concept of Gnolls being playable is honestly stupid given how hostile every single tribe of them is.
I don’t know if it was fanon or actually stated somewhere, that leaving the Shadowlands there is a drain on your anima you could only be gone for so long.
But then again, if demons, void or light beings can come to Azeroth for extended periods, no reason death beings couldn’t even. It really is just another example of how Shadowlands broke the lore.