Legit cant wait for Blizzard to inevitably realize how bad of an idea it is Danesuer is pushing and rapidly begin backpeddling when it flops harder than a flip.
This is the best way I can think to summarize it.
Itâs like string cheese. You peel open the container and then you slide your fingernail into the top of this strangely-colored chonky cheese missile to peel back what youâve been led to believe will be a thin, delicate string of cheese. Instead, the cheese is all a lie. Due to the over processing of this fake cheese, you inevitably peel off a misshapen large chunk of flaccid âcheeseâ instead of an actual Pirazzi-like string and then youâre just irrationally annoyed about the whole thing, the entire experience is ruined and you throw all of it in the trash.
The 7th Cosmic Force is actually a 71 year old woman named Doris, who wears a hairnet and spends her 12 hour shifts at the cheese factory laughing at anyone who thinks what sheâs creating is actually cheese.
tl;dr - donât buy string cheese. Stick with a local dairy. Blessed are the cheesemakers.
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https://i.imgur.com/An61kBO.png
Shadowlands is so easy to ignore, if everyone else also agrees that itâs bad writing.
Makes me wish I could post my olâ âItâs bad writingâ gif.
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Well on second thought letâs not go to C̶a̶m̶e̶l̶o̶t̶ Shadowlands, it is a silly place.
Great analogy but how does it relate to ropes?
Iâm all for making sure that at every Q&A going forward, someone will be asking Danuser the following question:
âSo, we found out that the First Ones made all the cosmic forces we know about, correct? Then who made the First Ones?â
And the answer that they just existed will be dismissed on the spot because apparently a âgodâ just existing in WoW isnât the case. Maybe at some point and after a dozen QA session, Danuser will realize what kind of pandoraâs box he opened with that nonsensical writing.
Iâve done it. Iâve reached a point of not playing WoW for so long that I have no earthly idea what the seven hells yâall are talking about anymore.
Also:
[hits blunt]
Isnât this whole âYouâre all a dream and I am the one who wakesâ just the plot of Morrowind?
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Frankly itâs absolutely heartbreaking. I was going to agree with Norman that Iâve never not cared so much about a patch⊠but I donât even feel apathy anymore. I feel outright hostility.
Blizzard has utterly eviscerated the fantasy universe I absolutely fell in love with over a decade ago, and itâs utterly depressing. I absolutely hate this. There are no words to describe the depths of my frustration.
Iâve made lifelong friends in this game. Had some of the best memories in both gameplay and RP. Even last year Iâd have said Azeroth was like a home to me, my escape, my safe haven. It actually hurts to leave. But I feel Iâve been driven to it at this point.
I feel like, in a funny way, Iâm in a toxic relationship with Blizzardâs WoW lore lmao. At first everything was fun and great but then red flags started to appear and I ignored them because I remembered the good times and thought Blizzard would change. I even defended the lore on the forums more often than not. But it just got worse and worse until I had to leave. 
Edit: Sorry for the unnecessary negativity. Felt I had to get that off my chest though. I sincerely am happy for those having fun with Shadowlands and I hope you continue to do so 
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Iâm in the same place. Been playing WoW since I was in 4th grade. When I think of my favorite fantasy setting, itâs always been Warcraft. The savage yet ethereal night elves, honorable orcs, slightly vampiric blood elves. The stuff was cool.
But now it feels like theyâre just dropping all of that stuff that makes the world unique to chase down the next set of drama and fresh new race models to sell in the next expansion.
Itâs genuinely such a sad thing to me that Cataclysm failed enough to scare Blizzard away from world revamps as expansions. Itâs exactly what we need, not this escalating comic book cosmic war crap. I wanna see whatâs going on with the Gilnean and Kaldorei refugees, what changes in the culture, where they settle. Want to see the Forsaken revolutionize their society with the loss of their messiah. I wanna know what the draenei are up to with Kilâjaeden and the Legionâs death.
Weâll never see this. Next expansion weâll go to Lightia where we fight Yrel and reincarnated Xeâra, where weâll meet four new races inhabiting their own zone, all with their fresh new buildings and random robots pretending theyâre golems.
Thatâs not what I fell in love with, and since itâs obvious thatâs never coming back, Iâm losing reasons to stay involved.
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god sarestha donât call me out like this.
the best way i saw to describe it was some post on the forums that (paraphrasing) said something like: âThey tied up all the loose end lore in BfA so they could move onto this. So they could move onto Shadowlands. And nobody cares about it.â and yeah htatâs about it. i donât care about the frigging â7th cosmic powerâ i donât give a damn about sylvanas and her trite, annoying, frustrating, evil, storyline that has downright unethical storytelling and i donât CARE about ANYTHING anymore because the fundamental laws of reality are being rewritten less than five years after they were finally penned. who cares? who cares? i canât care anymore.
canât wait for the lol mmo, i may finally have a place to take my rp groups to.
EDIT: WHO IS SHADOWLANDS WRITTEN FOR?!
itâs not written for super faction fans, and itâs not written for those who are against the factions. itâs not written for anyone invested in death (not even us DKs, since thereâs been no exploration on DK stuff after the very first missions), thereâs basically nothing on ancestral lore, the ardenweald is just a chunkl of lore jammed in to siphon off some of the emerald dream lore in a weird and convoluted way (what does ardenweald being âwinterâ and the ED being âsummerâ even mean) itâs not written for random joe schmoe racial lore enjoyers since the race lore is basically âYou go to one of the afterlives and have any identifying characteristics sucked out of youâ
ITâS NOT WRITTEN FOR SCOURGE FANS. maldraxxus is a pale imitation of the scourge with much (imo) lesser aesthetics and a far less interesting framework, itâs not written for sylvanas fans (i assume) because i donât think any sylvanas fan wanted her to become this parodic imitation of herself, unless sylvanas fans secretley wanted her to be redeemed and (maybe) have all her identifying characteristics sanded off.
conclusion: shadowlands was written exclusively for the wow writing team, cause thatâs what they wanted to write.
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Honestly so much this. About the only thing thatâd bring me back at this point is further development on the peoples and cultures of Azeroth. Not add new generic villain #2483724
Honestly my best friggen guess is that the lore has gotten so utterly screwed at this point that the devs are just sick of writing about WoW and are trying to do something entirely new, and sort of link it to our characters. Which is stupid.
The other guess I have is that Danuser sees himself as the pioneer of a new age of Warcraft. Where someone like Metzen was credited with Warcraft 3 and early WoW, I genuinely wonder if Danuser sees himself as a pioneer whoâs writing a new and interesting twist on the lore, as War3 had been to War2 before it I guess. Does he seek praise and adulation for his imaginative and pioneering new direction, maybe? Problem is, heâs ignoring previous lore to achieve it. Heâs ignoring what players are actually invested in. So heâs writing for literally nobody, and frankly itâs written in a very 2 dimensional and unfulfilling way. And so this too, is stupid.
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this is a perfect ecapsulation of how i feel. âDoes he seek praise for his imaginative and pioneering new directionâ LINKED WITH âItâs written in a very 2 dimensional and unfulfilling wayâ. modern warcraft lore gives me the vibe that the writer thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world and such a hot new take, while also being completely unoriginal and boring and dull.
the essence of the new lore is hubris.
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I know someone IRL who, until Shadowlands, was very much a diehard Blizzard fan. Theyâd been subscribed nonstop for years, dipped into just about every aspect of the game (PvP, hardcore raiding, RP), devoured every lore or speculation video they could find, and would readily leap to the defense of WoWâs writing, its gameplay systems, its in-game store, etc. They were quite vociferous in their defense of BfA in particular.
And then Shadowlands launched, and they were so disillusioned that they deleted the characters theyâd been playing for years and havenât touched WoW since.
Meanwhile I, ever-critical as I am and wholly unwilling to ever give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, am more than willing to give them another chance. Or two. Or three. Or ten. Iâll never stop loving Azeroth, and while Iâll laugh and poke fun and roll my eyes Iâll never hate it or feel betrayed or let down because Iâve already accepted that itâs a shallow, derivative (if not outright plagiaristic in some places), loud, stupid Saturday-morning cartoon of a fantasy universe. And Iâm here for it!
Iâm having a grand old time pointing and laughing as it jumps the shark only to fall face first into the dirt again and again and again. I enjoy brainstorming weird and out-there character stuff, and I love that Blizzard has entirely unintentionally created a world (of Warcraft) where just about anything goes. WoW is easily one of the best freeform(-esque) RP sandboxes ever created.
And I think thatâs why sometimes a critical eye, a sense of distance, and the ability to not engage with criticism you donât agree with (companies have PR teams, if they want me to defend them they need to start paying me) can help with forming a more healthy relationship with a piece of media. Because media shouldnât hurt you, unless youâre, like, into that or something.
I hope yâall can find something to love about WoW again, but if not, hey, thatâs fine, too! Everyone should be able to enjoy something that doesnât make them feel miserable.
Anyway, Iâve got popcorn and Iâm ready to watch Danuser drive this baby into the ground with all this wannabe Planescape godly extraplanar cosmic forces First Ones BS. 
(And maybe if Iâm lucky itâll lead to Warcraftjammer.)
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Carbot is pretty spot on here
This all said, Blizzard is still a business.
Danesur failing is eventually going to result in people wanting to continue getting paid seeing him axed. Just a shame he gets to take too many with him on the way there.
Iâm not sure Danuser being let go would actually change much, given that Blizzardâs âstorytellingâ process is just the game director deciding all the major story beats and then handing them off to the narrative team to try and turn them into something at least semi-coherent.
It wouldnât be a major loss, to be sure, but giving Ion the boot (or somehow convincing Blizzard to re-tool their entire writing process into something that isnât incredibly stupid) would likely have a more positive outcome.
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To this I agree, but the thing is booting Ion would be the inevitable first step.
That said, the moment when it will probably happen is when WoW Classic outpaces WoW Retail.
Personally, what Iâd love is if Blizzard got the memo and made a âStrangeworldâ type soft reboot by having the Jailor win and all the main universe end up seeking refuge in classic universe while breaking off the basic story in a post-Wrath world (Post Wrath so we can get Classic WotLK and start it off in an expansion people wouldnât be too phased about being shifted)
Iâd just have it that the people with allied races get to play them while the option to unlock them is gradually installed. (except Velves. Just replace Velves with Helves and say the timestream sucked the void out of them or something)
The writing is very bad.
Funny though, my friend is going through something similar with MTG. I donât really know anything about MTG and they donât really know anything about WoW. So itâs kinda fun to talk about the two games we like having both bad writing but also a lot of decisions that affect game play in negative ways.
Also bonus, toxic player base lol! We are in a discord together and when they shared they play a certain type of deck this other person went off on a rant telling them theyâre trash and an assshole and we almost got a kill yourself but they held back because the mods would have banned them.
Donât talk to me about MTG because I probably wonât know what youâre talking about.
Iâd be down with a soft or hard reboot at this point. While I love how loud and stupid and utterly incoherent Warcraft is, it does feel like theyâre getting to a point where things are maybe a bit too convoluted for them to handle.
Like, Iâve always gotten the impression that theyâre flying by the seat of their pants story-wise, but they genuinely seem to be losing the thread with SL in a way I donât think Iâve seen before.
Plus Iâm starting to think a soft reboot + timeskip is the only way weâll get a world revamp and player housing.
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Seems up their ally after having tentacles whisper sweet nothings in their ear for a few years.