I’ll say it.
Shadowlands wasn’t THAT bad.
It was one of my most played xpacs. I had a ton of fun in M+ and raids.
The story was a MAJOR flaw. So was all the pointless timegating and limitations they imposed.
But it wasn’t THAT bad.
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But how much of that was because of Covid restrictions making other activities more of a headache to go out and do? As opposed to the expansion actually being good.
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That IS my retcon.
If they did it right? No, I would think that would be great.
By right I mean at the end of this new expansion we wake up and realize we are still in n’zoth, slowly being digested and have to break free and reclaim our world.
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Absolutely not. They SHOULD retcon it.
It would show an actual commitment to change and an ability to admit they the dev team massively and uncorrectibly messed up and the only solution was to destroy their bad story entirely for the good of the greater lore. It would show contrition and a humbleness that they’ve never displayed.
And say what you will about balance changes or people sobbing about faction war or this or that, those are all within their purview and rights. Destroying the base lore as SL did was not within their rights. It’s collectively owned art at this point, it’s like George Lucas going back and making Han Solo shoot first. It’s wrong. It robs the customer (us) of something.
People object that they played it and saw the lore or whatever and it would rob them of that but I point out it existing robs the tens of millions of players who came before of the lore that existed in one way or another before that for over a decade which millions loved. It takes from this minority something they like but gives back to the majority a greater lore body that they loved and can continue to love if done right.
Unfortunately the time for that to happen was either DF or Warthin and neither clearly is going to do that. After a certain point it becomes a question of how they could reasonably retcon it, not like we’re going to wake up from an old god dream that somehow implanted the SL experience but didn’t impact DF and the following things. The best opportunity was immediately after it, the last opportunity well, hard to say but I’d say it’s never happening. It will be a permanent wound and it’s part of a permanent decline in WoW.
Nothing else they do will ever fix the game as much as retconning SL. No amount of pandering or player-first policies (they aren’t keen on either of these) are going to cut it. But the team seems to have accepted that. They’d rather further sink the franchise and the game rather than have ripped out all the stops to undo the damage.
At some point the SL problem ripping the game so far from its origins WILL necessitate a universe reset if they ever plan to exploit Warcraft as an IP for anything but a slowly dying MMORPG. If they ever get a TV show and it actually works they’ll assuredly do a branch-off from some point of the game, if I were them I’d choose end of MoP or end of Legion.
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I worked 40 hours a week throughout. And I’m a shut in regardless. 
Covid didn’t affect me at all honestly.
Still would have played the crap out of m+.
There was a ton of world content and a lot to do in general.
The problem with SL was the awful implementations of the story. Deleted content. Timegates. Oh and the retcons that it did.
It was made very clear that the 4 areas we visited in Shadowlands weren’t the only ones. We basically just confirmed there IS some form of afterlife, which was already more or less confirmed in WoW due to all the shaman ancestor stuff, yeah? Probably some Emerald Dream stuff in there somewhere but I don’t know much about that.
Going back to older areas would be fine if there’s a compelling story to be told by doing so.
I’m not sure there’s much to “finish” in WoD if you’re referring to cut zones and such. There’s no real reason to go back to them now. WoD’s story finished. It was a little hamfisted but we stopped the Iron Horde, made friends with the locals, and oops let Gul’dan escape to MU Azeroth and start the Legion Invasion again. That’s a wrap on WoD.
If they ever poke at the weird Yrel stuff as an actual plot point maybe we’ll see Draenor again, but it’s not like a glaring loose end.
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If I could go back to BFA shadow priest, sign me up.
I’ve hated the spec since shadowlands
And as a lore nerd, I’ve hated shadowlands since its launch. The lore is just awful, and the writing team did a MASSIVE disservice to Sylvanas’ character.
They actually wrote her to be dumb enough to think the jailer WOULDN’T enslave her too. Are we honestly supposed to believe she’s that stupid? After all these years of her being so tactical, conniving and sinister? She’s obviously very intelligent, and yet she was written as such an idiot in shadowlands. Just a power hungry derp with the same mindset as Garrosh “join me or die” 
And now her character is forever tarnished by such terrible writing
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Telling a writer their story is bad isn’t necessarily disrespectful.
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Too late for that. If they wanted it to be a fever dream, they would have done so already. Otherwise you can’t explain why Sylvanas is nowhere to be seen all of a sudden. Among other things.
Yeah, that’s fine. Feedback & Criticism is fine. But you don’t go demand they reprint their story with half the plot removed or heavily changed because you’re unhappy with it. You don’t bug them to take their story off the shelves or whatever. You accept that it’s bad / you don’t like it and move on.
Sometimes it’s just the truth
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I make WoW in my own mind as I go, their story is just a suggestion
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Could just have her commit suicide again and just have it stick this time?
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Well if they altered it to being a hallucination, the story would actually fit better and make more sense.
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That’s kind of what I was eluding too.
We kind of just left her there to massacre the planet.
But it is a shame we never got to see the shattrath raid.
4 years later without anyone noticing she’d been gone the whole time?
Only downside to that is we’d have to explain the Dracthyr and all their stuff somehow
I wouldn’t of noticed just have her be sad that writers self insert died garry or whatever the dark ranger
That’s an even worst story than Shadowlands was though…