This is the one shining thing about Shadowlands, I look forward to trying all the expacs I missed
The War Campaign entirely ignores the main question that this expansion was “alleged” to orbit around: morally grey actions, how far is too far, and total war between the factions.
Not only did the morally grey card get taken off the board in the very first minutes, but throughout the entire expansion - Horde players in particular are forbidden from asking questions about their own morality. Not a single character aside from Saurfang was given any dialogue in response to Teldrassil until now.
There was no explanation given as to why the events of Darkshore went down the way they did (looking at the Kaldorei Dark Ranger characters).
There was no explanation for Alliance side with regards to anything that had to do with the scepter business during the Dazar’alor raid. That was a story element entirely hidden from an entire faction, and thus the importance and relevance of it’s role was tossed in the scrap bin.
The entire story with Ashvane was scrapped or just never designed in the first place, so that players on Horde side have to just “go with the flow” and rescue an enemy from prison without any explanation. It’s never followed up on in Nazjatar either. Players were literally just left on a dock going “Guess that storyline set sail without us” in the most jaw droppingly stupid moment ever.
Nathanos’ involvement in the entire war campaign is left wholly unspoken; we know he’s tied close with Sylvanas, but he felt like a loose fragment floating around as events happened - he’s given very few meaningful things to do when it counts (Nazjatar). He outright vanishes for the entire patch. The guy the Horde literally follows into the bottom of the sea dips out and we get absolutely ZERO lines of dialogue from him.
Characters like Jaina, who have been thrown all across the board when it comes to their ‘feelings’ towards the Horde, are suddenly back on the peace side all of a sudden.
Cailia’s story makes 0 sense in game, as is the same with Lillian Voss and her involvement and flip flopping.
The question of the Sword in the planet has been entirely ignored and we’ve just been slurping up goop for two years with an occasional quest thrown at us which feels entirely disconnected from the story.
Characters like Tyrande had their stories left entirely unfinished, with absolutely no meaningful conclusion or resolution.
The whole point of “this is a step for step rehash of MoP” also needs to be raised because, I mean, really.
I’m looking forward to having level-scaling content that isn’t BFA or Shadowlands. Never again pre-purchasing anything from Blizzard after this train wreck/dumpster fire.
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Oh cool. Maybe you can explain to me. Why exactly are we killing Nefarian in BWL ?
Why are we going to Outland to kill Illidan ?
What to you makes no sense ?
Big baddy Death God whispers to Vol’jin to put Sylvannas in power so he can manipulate her into feeding him thousands of souls in exchange for power. She does. Horde and Alliance figure it out too late, put a stop to it, and now we’re heading into Shadowlands.
What exactly is hard to comprehend ?
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Another point of comparison between this and WoD is that… minus Gul’Dan? Most of WoD could be completely ignored.
… Then came this. Not only can it not be ignored (this isn’t taking in some super happy funtime alternate dimension that doesn’t matter) but it goes back and drags WoD into full relevance in the worst possible way. It isn’t just bad in its own right - it goes and ruins the one saving grace of the former champion of bad.
All so the developers could reuse the assets for the Mag’har.
Bah.
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Bad attempt to be clever. The lore is terrible is the point, obviously. And most people skip it.
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In my opinion, it wouldn’t have been as bad if there was an actual ebb and flow to the “battle for Azeroth” between the Alliance and Horde. Not a whole lot of… Alliance victories.
While steamrolling an opposing force in PvP feels pretty good, it’s honestly less entertaining in a story. Without the back-and-forth, eye-for-an-eye action keeping people on the edge of their seat, it’s really… well, not as fun to read or witness. With BfA, it was a foregone conclusion that Sylvie W was going to be HASHTAG WINNING through this whole mess without any real opposition, and taking her boytoy Nath along with her.
Nathanos > Night Warrior Tyrande+Greatest Druid Malfurion, somehow?
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Uh… head cannon much ?
Everyone with half a brain knew Sylvannas was trying to get everyone dead the minute she burned the tree. If you still believed that crud about “Morally grey” at that point, I got lunar property on the cheap you might be interested in.
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Imagine being mad about the coolest Orc customizations in the game.
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Actually blizzard said they were focusing on creating morally grey situations.
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No, non-writing staff for Blizzard told you that because everyone had figured out this was going to be “Warchief removal time 2.0” before the expansion even shipped.
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They are still part of blizzard.
So ? They are not the writers, and thus don’t have control over the direction of the story.
Meh, I never bothered reading more of the ‘‘story is garbage’’ comments from people and just saw it for myself. I don’t hate it, don’t love it… but I never enjoyed WoW’s story telling 'cause it was rarely ever about that… I just dislike that majority of things you have to find out on third party places. Most is really condensed or left out in-game. Last I checked a heck of a lot of people skipped through quest text, to be honest they were boring to read through FOR ME.
And Wotlk was something special 'cause they were able to hit it out at peak time for WoW as an MMO, with a villain that was built up over a long period of time. Kids then enjoyed the edgy nature of DK and Lich King so it appealed to them.
Then they shouldn’t have commented
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You’ll be often and massively disappointed if you take Ion and Lore’s speculation about the stories at face value.
Look at the marketing for BFA again and tell me I’m wrong. The expansion was sold to us on the premise that we were both fighting for what we believed was “right”.
This.
And also this, but it doesn’t negate the fact that this expansion was marketed and sold on the premise of “morally grey”, “questionable” conflict.
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Yes and ? Saurfang fought Sylvannas and there’s a “Betrayer” questline with a choice for Horde players.
Maybe you picked the “Wrong” “right”.
AKA : Saurfang’s questline.
Sylvannas was never going to be morally grey.
If by “coolest” you mean the most unnecessary, the most narrative subverting, and most tainted by association to WoD, you only really need about a Blizzard level of imagination to picture it.
WC3 - “Nuuu, don’t blame the Orcs! They were tricked! The DEVUL made them do it! They can work as protagonists too, see?”
WoD - “Actually, nope! Take away the demons, Orcs are still inherently violent sociopaths with all the nuance of a naturally Chaotic Evil D&D mook.”
That expansion set the Orcs back almost two decades.
But hey, spikey warships.
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That choice was added after player dissatisfaction regarding the entire quest line I think. It wasn’t planned initially
I hear this “the writing’s so bad” statement a lot as if it was a self evident truth. But I challenge the OP and others who assert this to explain what is bad about it and what they would change.
It’s pretty easy, and lazy, to lob verbal grenades. However, I think someone should put in a bit more work if they going to criticize another’s craft.
That said, I do think the BFA story is fairly uncompelling, mainly because I think female characters generally don’t made good villains for this type of medium. Furthermore, the same goes for this whole Lovecraftian tentacle god trope they keep recycling. It’s all just too impersonal and unrelatable. Arthas was so compelling because he represents the duality of human nature. Multi-eye betentacled blob monster, not so much.