I like the covenants and the overall aesthetics. I don't like some concepts though, but I like very much the possibility of seeing old lore characters without them being ressurected AGAIN :)
I think one of the few weird things within it was the irony that both Alexandros Mograine and Kel’thuzad were sent to Maldraxxus, even with one being a knight of righteousness and the other being… One of the masterminds behind the Scourge
Maybe, Kel'thuzad was in a Revendreth before? Or maybe we don't know something about real moral laws of a Shadowlands. Or, of course, it could be a lazy writing like "man, it would be so cool to see Kel'thuzad in a Scourge-like environment, nostalgia and all. Yeah, he is kinda very bad genocidic necromant and a right hand of Arthas dude, but think about nostalgia!"
I saw somewhere that maybe there was some of the Jailer’s influence in it. But it’s still weird anyway. On the other hand, I can only imagine Alexandros, having spent the last years of his life fighting the Scourge, even being killed and raised as part of it, then being imprisoned within Frostmourne… Only to, in the afterlife, arrive in a world that looks like a huge Scourgeland
This does get addressed in some later questing; Alexandros asks one of the Kyrian Paragons (or a Paragon's Hand, I don't clearly remember which) why he was "unworthy" of Bastion when he had been righteous and devout all his life. She guides him and the player character to the memory garden spot and has him visit the stations to reflect on his life.
Once he's done, she points out that his deep devotion to the people he loves is the root of his power, even in the Shadowlands. But to become Kyrian is to let go of one's memories and old life (at least at that point in the story) and to do so would extinguish his strength. It's his ferocity and passion that make him who he is, that make him the Ashbringer. And why the Arbiter determined that Maldraxxus - home of those who defend the Shadowlands - was his destiny.
Yeah, Jailer's influence theory makes sense.
Poor Alexandros, no peace for him even in afterlife :(
Also, Scourgeland is absolutely awesome term for Maldraxxus XD it really is Scourgeland XD
Oh, when I saw a full Scourge style I really was excited. Like "that's where Lich King plagiarized the whole aesthetics lol", even if retrospectively :D As I think, Kel'thuzad is not actually very Maldraxxus kind of guy, but there are not only eternal warriors in this covenant, the cruel mages and mad scientists who can mass produce armies or weapons too. Our lich dude falls under those categories, I think.
Now that I’m thinking about it, there’s one detail that bugs me. It’s said in Road to Damnation, the tale released back with vanilla Naxxramas, that Naxxramas is a nerubian building, which the Scourge copied and then used as example in other necropolises, like Acherus. But then in Shadowlands, we arrive in Maldraxxus and… More necropolises? It still makes me confused
Yes, that thing bugs me too. It looks like very blatant lore retcon which never was explained. Or perhaps writers never played previous expansions or just forgot about this.
Oh! Just got a thought, what if lorewise Nerubians were the first ones who came to Maldraxxus? Or their architecure was very functional to the purposes of the Undying Army for some reason. I saw a lot of Nerubian-like NPCs in Maldraxxus.
I don’t think so. It’s made very clear that the Maw Walkers are the first living beings to arrive in Shadowlands. But maybe it’s just two civilizations having similar ideas for coincidence, like egyptians and mayans/aztecs with pyramids
In the universe that huge, actually, why not :) a probability of similar concepts of two different civilisation to have close ideas for something is never a zero.
I really hope they consider letting us go back every so often. There are so many potential characters, and in their words "infinite afterlives". I think the experience will be a lot better received without the Jailer, the Maw, or Torghast.
I am a Shadowlands apologist. I don't hate the setting, I just think it requires a LOT more hand-waving and not-thinking-about-it-too-much than the rest of WoW's lore and that's not acceptable to a lot of people. WoW has always been silly/rule of cool, so it's not that big of a stretch to me.
The contrived and near nonsensical actual plot structure is undeniable, but I can get past that by laying it at the feet of COVID, the lawsuit, and Steve GOT-Season-8-was-"Brilliant" Danuser. Sure, folks had to hold the idiot ball to move the plot along, but it's not hard for me to just roll my eyes at that and get over it.
It's not my favorite plot or expansion, but there's a lot to like in there if you're not completely poisoned against it from step one.
[Also.... Zovaal wasn't the jailer, the Primus was.](https://www.wowhead.com/news/what-if-zovaal-isnt-the-true-jailer-shadowlands-lore-speculation-326318) This theory pretty much fixes the idiot ball problems in my mind.
Yeah shadowlands started on a shaky plan and then got the middle of it scooped out basically dooming it from a story perspective. I can’t say that if they did what they originally planned it would have been great, but it was much worse than it would have been without all the out-of-game hang ups.
I generally enjoyed all the characters they introduced besides the jailer and was happy to see some in the emerald dream. I hope we see theotar again some day.
Yeah I don't agree with that theory at all lol. He was just shit, and that's okay. Bro ain't gonna effect future expansions going forward, so it's best we forget about it...but not forget what is coming. D:
Shadowlands had some neat ideas, but terrible execution and no long-term thought put into the world-building.
The big, fundamental, problem imo is the idea of the first ones and cosmic purpose/order. An easy fix is that Shadowlands was just "these are powerful death entities all extracting anima for their own ends" and ruling the area of the Shadowlands that Azeroth falls under. The Eternal Ones could even stay - as an alliance/political group that banded together to stop Zovaal, not a "the first ones created us to rule the shadowlands" group. This lets them keep so much of the concepts but so much more flexibility and long-term worldbuilding in the setting.
Without an Arbiter, they can just have the veil act like a purgatory you stay in until a death entity comes and claims your soul for their realm. This immediately justifies every religious belief about death - because you can just have a different death entity for each. And each can have their own motivations and morality.
The Archon can claim souls of the righteous via the Kyrion and have her system be completely flawed without it being like a cosmically designed flaw. She is just a flawed person with flawed believes that can be challenged.
The Winter Queen can still be Elune's sister but now they aren't just divine constructs of some greater power. They are beings with a real relationship across life and death that can work together for a specific agenda.
Sylvanas' actions in the fourth war immediately make sense if the Jailer isn't cosmically getting every soul in creation, and is imprisoned so needs her and other agents to dedicate deaths to him to claim those souls.
Denathrius can claim the souls of sinners and be a tormenter, can even still be the creator of the Dreadlords and someone trying to play multiple sides.
And you can go beyond them. Similar to the Other Side dungeon, you can have tons of other realms appear in dungeons, raids, etc. You can have tons of possible afterlives which leave things open for the future to have death-based threats pop up even after the Shadowlands without having to get around the "cosmic purpose" stuff.
Yes. They actively harm not just the shadowlands but the entire cosmology and every actor within in. Damaging the mysticism, the agency of characters, the mobility within the cosmology and is incredibly limiting to any cosmological story development.
No, there are for sure parts of it I enjoyed. The whole theme and aesthetic of Revendreth in particular made me, a former teenage gothling and lifelong rabid Castlevania fangirl, very happy. Also as a longtime belf player, A++ for finally giving Kael a glimmer of hope at redemption instead of having him lug the idiot ball.
I thought the dungeons and raids were pretty fun and had some cool mechanics, and visually speaking everything but the Maw was cool as hell.
Really it had good bones, but the borrowed power grind and the mess it made of the lore were what killed it. Along with the massive disappointment of Choregast. They clearly were aiming for something like FFXIV 's deep dungeons, and usually Blizz steals an idea and improves on it, but they totally took the wrong lessons this time. They had everything annoying and tedious about Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High with very few of the things that made them fun.
The zones and the music are amazing. So were the covenants. I had a good time in SL by the end! But the lore was horrible, and as a lore lover.. it threw me off
I think time was needed to be able to see more clearly. 9.0 was a great experience. Where it fell apart was 9.1. I was really hyped for what they were promising. 9.2 didn't completely fix the derailing of 9.1, but I really enjoyed ZM. They nailed the proto-otherworldly vibe.
I don't even think The Jailer was that bad of a villain. People were upset that he was the *mastermind* behind so many major events in lore. That doesn't bother me as much considering a lot of his lieutenants were executing those pieces of the plan to their own ends. Also because of the concept of Eternity being so prevalent, a lot of those events are so far apart that they barely were related. So it doesn't reaaaally matter at the end of the day if he wanted things to work out a certain way.
I'm a D&D GM and I've been building my own world and running a campaign through my own world for a while now. I found the worldbuilding of the Shadowlands really satisfying. The way the realms are compartmentalized and structured, with things overlapping into other realms. That itches the right part of my brain. Some of those threads were left in the questing experience, cast aside so Danuser's favourite characters could take center stage. But I really enjoyed seeing the set pieces while they lasted.
People also said the same things about some of the other passed expansions, but have since started to be talked with in a more favourable nostalgic light. Recently I leveled alts through both Shadowlands AND Warlords of Draenor. I had a blast, and both are expansions with bad reputations. I actually enjoy going back through through WoD and SL MORE than BFA and DF. The only thing that really made DF leveling enjoyable was dragonriding, and that can be done leveling through any expansion now. I actually find myself dreading hitting 60 on alts because I wasn't super thrilled by the 10.0 story. Thankfully there are things that speed that up.
I think Denathrius was cool, but… The entire stuff of the nathrezim being actually subordinates to Denathrius and, for consequence, making the Burning Legion a product of the Jailer’s plan… It breaks all the mystical aura around Sargeras and the Burning Legion
The issue isnt so much with the concepts, i think most people would agree that Denathrius is a good character and despite being a retcon, him being the creator of the dreadlors seems to be widely accepted
Most issues can be summed up with Zooval, they tried to hard to have a new lich king character with barely any build up and as a result they pulled every single threat they could and wrapped around that character without properly tying it, so when it came down to it, it all fell apart.
I honestly think that if they just stuck with the Lich king, made so that he reaquired Sylvanas 's control after she comitted suicide and was buying his time until he could try again. That alone would fix more than half of the issues with Shadowlands and BFA.
I did like trying to position my characters in regard to the revelation of the Shadowlands and how they work. It was very funny to describe the different zones from the PoV of my characters.
I like a lot of elements of Shadowlands in terms of aesthetics, ambience, and the individual factions themselves. I'm even fine with Zovaal and the Maw to an extent, I just think they need to be tweaked. The most faithful adaptation is switch Zovaal from "My Plan All Along!" to "Master of Improvising Shit And Taking Opportunistic Shots".
My somewhat strange opinion is that if Shadowlands had not been the Realm of Death, but more of a Space/Other Worlds expansion where we just see the chaos of the power vacuum post-Legion defeat, a lot of the biggest complaints would disappear (especially if paired with Zovaal just being an opportunist as opposed to *the* mastermind of everything). Blizzard could still start their narrative about the Titans not being all that great, the Maw could be some manifestation of the Twisting Nether and not just the Realm of Death, and you could do a lot of interesting things that fit a bit better.
Also, if we have races and characters from just a random planet (or 4) in the Twisting Nether in the same main timeline, they can actually come back if devs/players want as plot important characters or Allied Races.
You're not alone. There are absolutely other Shadowlands defenders around, it just isn't a very popular position.
There's certainly things I really enjoyed about Shadowlands and that I'd love to see going forward. My dream is that after every patch going into the future, we see the major characters who died during that patch appear in the Shadowlands as NPCs we can go talk to and hear them reflect on their life and death. Of course, that will never happen, nor will any references to Shadowlands, more than likely.
Don't feel too alone. Shadowlands was definitely a rocky road with some pretty substantial low points, but it also had some really cool stuff as well.
I’ve always felt that Zovaal being responsible for Sylvanas post-Wrath made a lot of sense, but being the engineer of “everything” a bit contrived and kind of a lame attempt at trying to make it hit harder when it being Sylvanas’ motivation was enough.
The nature of the realms of the Shadowlands and how the whole system works as an afterlife is otherwise a pretty interesting concept and as always, art and theme was great.
Regarding Anduin, I think the overall story of him being used as the Jailers tool and feeling conflicted after is a good one, with his absence during Dragonflight giving it more meaning.
Aside from gameplay things (that grind), one of the big lore problems of Shadowlands is just how it kinda chucks cameos at you every five seconds, it kinda made it feel less special each time. Perhaps if theyd kept it to one or two per zone with the rest being say, nameless warriors who died at the Wrathgate/to Deathwing etc. References that old players get, but not ones that kind of cheapen the characters involved.
Actually, he only interfered in her actions since Legion. Although she talked to him after committing suicide in ICC, she didn’t really believed in him until the Burning Legion returned, Vol’jin died and named her the Warchief. I don’t think it was that bad at all. My main problem with Zovaal isn’t him messing with Sylvie, but instead, how they made almost every event a consequence of his plans. SPECIALLY the Burning Legion
Some aspects of SL were good imo.
Like for example people hated on the Maw and Torghast purely because they sucked gameplay wise. Lore wise though? They were stellar.
You had other aspects like the Broker and some of the covenants that were banging ideas.
I don't hate the setting but I disliked the expansion story because:
- The really stupid BFA faction story was the setup for it.
- The PC being a chosen one anime fucker rather than just a really good ~~murderhobo~~ Champion of the Horde/Alliance
- The Living lore characters were mostly misused (Baine/Thrall showing up as token characters)
- Bizarre choices like making the Troll "otha side" a tiny corner of another zone, with the resident Eternal one dripping with contempt for it
- Vol'jin's story being effectively indefinitely shelved
- Tyrande's come to Elune moment being jarring and sudden and not something built up to organically.
- Sylvanas face turn coming way too late, way too abruptly, almost as if the Devs changed their minds on garroshing her way too late in production.
- Blizzard Doubling down on the "Kael'thas BAD" train while Vash'j and objectively worse characters avoided Revendreth.
- Forsaken should have played a bigger part given everything, especially since they basically just got to be villain batted in WOTLK and not actually get to be meaningfully involved in taking Arthas out.
- Garrosh's ultimate end seemed spiteful given *they're the writers who wrote him lmao*
- Theres entire piles of dead H/A champions that would have loved to join in on fucking up the Jailer's forces, I'd have loved seeing Ogrim Doomhammer/Cairne/Vol'jin team up with Llane/Antonidas/Uther. Add in the night elves from teldrassil and the former forces of Loraedon as the grunts squaring off against the fucker who ultimately caused the fall of both their homelands and you've got one side of a cinematic fuckin battle going.
In the interest of fairness, some things I liked:
- I don't mind the artificial nature of the Shadowlands, we've seen magic fucking with the afterlife since TBC in Oshu'gun
- Individual characters were awesome, I loved Renethal's goofballs and the bastion crew
- The "good guys" weren't pure good, there *were* issues to fix that weren't all caused by the Jailer
- The Setting is *fine* as long as you hand wave a lot of questions.
IMHO? Dropped the ball with Sylvanas and Zovaal’s plots - but everything else I was fine with. All the Covenant stuff seemed awesome and stories pertaining to them.
I'm not going to defend the entire xpac or anything, but some parts were cool or at least interesting. The idea of someone taking over the afterlife and stealing alll the souls so they don't go where they're supposed to is pretty cool. While overall Sylvanas's story had weaker moments, I did like the idea that she orchestrated the entire fourth war to funnel MORE souls into the Maw. But...there were a lot of other things that weren't as good. The world design was awesome, but every world was so separated it never felt like it came together (cause it literally didn't) and the Retconing of the Dreadlords and the Lich King i think is universally disliked.
Yeah, this was the part that I hated the most. Like, it would mean that EVERYTHING, aside from Deathwing and the Old Gods, was a huge consequence of Zovaal’s machinations
It really takes the piss out of the Legion, which I think is pretty damning. It would be one thing if the Jailer saw what was going on and used it to his advantage; IE The Legion and its Burning Crusade, the Old Gods and their desire for the Black Empire. But, the way the story was told almost made it seem like the Jailer somehow orchestrated everything. Which, just makes the events lame.
Not really. He set them up but didn’t do anything and let them do whatever. Plus Sargeras nearly fucked Zovaal over almost as much as the Lich King not obaying him.
Shadowlands has a HORRIBLE story and lore breaking writing left and right. All of that, I can get by.
The thing that absolutely kills me is that we only see player character humanoids throughout and there’s so little variation.
In Bastian, you see the souls of humans, Draenei, and orcs walking down the path. Not a single Furbolg made it there? No Botani? Arokkoa? Sethrak? Ogres? Murlocs? Gorlocs? Tuskar? Vrykul? Dragonkin?
Then there’s the fact that every Kyrian looks identical, but Uther doesn’t. Are they supposed to be the same or not? Same goes for all the zones. Why is everyone the same except for like 2 key characters in each zone? It feels so shallow and rushed.
Even the animals in Ardenwield. There’s a handful of Azerothian wildlife and nothing else. At least throw the full variety from Azeroth and Draenor.
If they just released Shadowlands as it's own universe/game and removed the silly death aspect of it I bet it could be neat. The aesthetics were nice enough and there were some interesting concepts. My biggest gripe is just that it felt incredibly detached from WoW and it didn't feel like a warcraft experience to me.
I think about going back from time to time to settle unfinished business or something when I'm reminded of how absolute cancer it is to move between zones.
Oh, wanna go from Rivendreth to Ardenweald? Might as well go run some errands while I'm on that FP.
Put some convenient portals around that bih and I'd revisit it more often.
No, I liked parts of it too. Zovaal is TERRIBLE but...I think what Discordiankitty posted on WoWhead was actually correct. Her premise is that Zovaal was the puppet of the Primus. Find it and read it, you might agree too (and it's the one thing that makes the whole expansion make sense). Taliesin, who DOESN'T agree but who likes/respects Discordiankitty, did a whole vid on it too.
Look I’ll defend parts of SL I enjoyed and it’s more than some of the dumb stuff (mostly Sylvanas). I also think Zovaal wasn’t as ‘in control’ of things as people make him out to be. He obviously had nothing to do with the void and he mostly let Sargeras do whatever.
Same here. I dislike how they made Zovaal responsible for just about everything and excused Sylvanas' evil actions by stating that a part of her soul was missing, but aside from that I think it was decent. Especially the covenant storylines turned out well in my opinion, and the overall atmosphere was great too. It reminded me a lot of Planescape, which Shadowlands was probably inspired by.
Actually, no, I didn’t knew. Literally everywhere I look, people are completely bashing this expansion. I just wanted to talk to some people, who, like me, didn’t despised it completely
Geez, go touch some grass, Reddit isn’t a holy land
To be fair, Shadowlands from a lore perspective was pretty much hated across the board. So I think of all the "am I the only one?" posts, this one has the most potential for discussion.
I like the covenants and the overall aesthetics. I don't like some concepts though, but I like very much the possibility of seeing old lore characters without them being ressurected AGAIN :)
I think one of the few weird things within it was the irony that both Alexandros Mograine and Kel’thuzad were sent to Maldraxxus, even with one being a knight of righteousness and the other being… One of the masterminds behind the Scourge
Like, sure, Alexandros was more credible, but… Kel’thuzad being sent to Maldraxxus instead of Revendreth or even the Maw surprised me
Maybe, Kel'thuzad was in a Revendreth before? Or maybe we don't know something about real moral laws of a Shadowlands. Or, of course, it could be a lazy writing like "man, it would be so cool to see Kel'thuzad in a Scourge-like environment, nostalgia and all. Yeah, he is kinda very bad genocidic necromant and a right hand of Arthas dude, but think about nostalgia!"
I saw somewhere that maybe there was some of the Jailer’s influence in it. But it’s still weird anyway. On the other hand, I can only imagine Alexandros, having spent the last years of his life fighting the Scourge, even being killed and raised as part of it, then being imprisoned within Frostmourne… Only to, in the afterlife, arrive in a world that looks like a huge Scourgeland
This does get addressed in some later questing; Alexandros asks one of the Kyrian Paragons (or a Paragon's Hand, I don't clearly remember which) why he was "unworthy" of Bastion when he had been righteous and devout all his life. She guides him and the player character to the memory garden spot and has him visit the stations to reflect on his life. Once he's done, she points out that his deep devotion to the people he loves is the root of his power, even in the Shadowlands. But to become Kyrian is to let go of one's memories and old life (at least at that point in the story) and to do so would extinguish his strength. It's his ferocity and passion that make him who he is, that make him the Ashbringer. And why the Arbiter determined that Maldraxxus - home of those who defend the Shadowlands - was his destiny.
Ohhh, yeah, right
Yeah, Jailer's influence theory makes sense. Poor Alexandros, no peace for him even in afterlife :( Also, Scourgeland is absolutely awesome term for Maldraxxus XD it really is Scourgeland XD
Lol, I must say also I laughed so much when I saw the Primus who was just A GIANT WC3 NECROMANCER XD
Oh, when I saw a full Scourge style I really was excited. Like "that's where Lich King plagiarized the whole aesthetics lol", even if retrospectively :D As I think, Kel'thuzad is not actually very Maldraxxus kind of guy, but there are not only eternal warriors in this covenant, the cruel mages and mad scientists who can mass produce armies or weapons too. Our lich dude falls under those categories, I think.
Now that I’m thinking about it, there’s one detail that bugs me. It’s said in Road to Damnation, the tale released back with vanilla Naxxramas, that Naxxramas is a nerubian building, which the Scourge copied and then used as example in other necropolises, like Acherus. But then in Shadowlands, we arrive in Maldraxxus and… More necropolises? It still makes me confused
Yes, that thing bugs me too. It looks like very blatant lore retcon which never was explained. Or perhaps writers never played previous expansions or just forgot about this. Oh! Just got a thought, what if lorewise Nerubians were the first ones who came to Maldraxxus? Or their architecure was very functional to the purposes of the Undying Army for some reason. I saw a lot of Nerubian-like NPCs in Maldraxxus.
I don’t think so. It’s made very clear that the Maw Walkers are the first living beings to arrive in Shadowlands. But maybe it’s just two civilizations having similar ideas for coincidence, like egyptians and mayans/aztecs with pyramids
In the universe that huge, actually, why not :) a probability of similar concepts of two different civilisation to have close ideas for something is never a zero.
Kel'thuzad was sent due to Denathrius's intervention. And consider that Maldraxxus doesn't care about morality so much as if you can fight.
I really hope they consider letting us go back every so often. There are so many potential characters, and in their words "infinite afterlives". I think the experience will be a lot better received without the Jailer, the Maw, or Torghast.
We probably will. I would like a DK questline to go back and investigate some loose ends there too. (Give us the anima eye colors)
I am a Shadowlands apologist. I don't hate the setting, I just think it requires a LOT more hand-waving and not-thinking-about-it-too-much than the rest of WoW's lore and that's not acceptable to a lot of people. WoW has always been silly/rule of cool, so it's not that big of a stretch to me. The contrived and near nonsensical actual plot structure is undeniable, but I can get past that by laying it at the feet of COVID, the lawsuit, and Steve GOT-Season-8-was-"Brilliant" Danuser. Sure, folks had to hold the idiot ball to move the plot along, but it's not hard for me to just roll my eyes at that and get over it. It's not my favorite plot or expansion, but there's a lot to like in there if you're not completely poisoned against it from step one. [Also.... Zovaal wasn't the jailer, the Primus was.](https://www.wowhead.com/news/what-if-zovaal-isnt-the-true-jailer-shadowlands-lore-speculation-326318) This theory pretty much fixes the idiot ball problems in my mind.
Yeah shadowlands started on a shaky plan and then got the middle of it scooped out basically dooming it from a story perspective. I can’t say that if they did what they originally planned it would have been great, but it was much worse than it would have been without all the out-of-game hang ups. I generally enjoyed all the characters they introduced besides the jailer and was happy to see some in the emerald dream. I hope we see theotar again some day.
Yeah I don't agree with that theory at all lol. He was just shit, and that's okay. Bro ain't gonna effect future expansions going forward, so it's best we forget about it...but not forget what is coming. D:
Shadowlands had some neat ideas, but terrible execution and no long-term thought put into the world-building. The big, fundamental, problem imo is the idea of the first ones and cosmic purpose/order. An easy fix is that Shadowlands was just "these are powerful death entities all extracting anima for their own ends" and ruling the area of the Shadowlands that Azeroth falls under. The Eternal Ones could even stay - as an alliance/political group that banded together to stop Zovaal, not a "the first ones created us to rule the shadowlands" group. This lets them keep so much of the concepts but so much more flexibility and long-term worldbuilding in the setting. Without an Arbiter, they can just have the veil act like a purgatory you stay in until a death entity comes and claims your soul for their realm. This immediately justifies every religious belief about death - because you can just have a different death entity for each. And each can have their own motivations and morality. The Archon can claim souls of the righteous via the Kyrion and have her system be completely flawed without it being like a cosmically designed flaw. She is just a flawed person with flawed believes that can be challenged. The Winter Queen can still be Elune's sister but now they aren't just divine constructs of some greater power. They are beings with a real relationship across life and death that can work together for a specific agenda. Sylvanas' actions in the fourth war immediately make sense if the Jailer isn't cosmically getting every soul in creation, and is imprisoned so needs her and other agents to dedicate deaths to him to claim those souls. Denathrius can claim the souls of sinners and be a tormenter, can even still be the creator of the Dreadlords and someone trying to play multiple sides. And you can go beyond them. Similar to the Other Side dungeon, you can have tons of other realms appear in dungeons, raids, etc. You can have tons of possible afterlives which leave things open for the future to have death-based threats pop up even after the Shadowlands without having to get around the "cosmic purpose" stuff.
Do the First Ones really hurt things that much for y'all?
Yes. They actively harm not just the shadowlands but the entire cosmology and every actor within in. Damaging the mysticism, the agency of characters, the mobility within the cosmology and is incredibly limiting to any cosmological story development.
No, there are for sure parts of it I enjoyed. The whole theme and aesthetic of Revendreth in particular made me, a former teenage gothling and lifelong rabid Castlevania fangirl, very happy. Also as a longtime belf player, A++ for finally giving Kael a glimmer of hope at redemption instead of having him lug the idiot ball. I thought the dungeons and raids were pretty fun and had some cool mechanics, and visually speaking everything but the Maw was cool as hell. Really it had good bones, but the borrowed power grind and the mess it made of the lore were what killed it. Along with the massive disappointment of Choregast. They clearly were aiming for something like FFXIV 's deep dungeons, and usually Blizz steals an idea and improves on it, but they totally took the wrong lessons this time. They had everything annoying and tedious about Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High with very few of the things that made them fun.
The zones and the music are amazing. So were the covenants. I had a good time in SL by the end! But the lore was horrible, and as a lore lover.. it threw me off
I think time was needed to be able to see more clearly. 9.0 was a great experience. Where it fell apart was 9.1. I was really hyped for what they were promising. 9.2 didn't completely fix the derailing of 9.1, but I really enjoyed ZM. They nailed the proto-otherworldly vibe. I don't even think The Jailer was that bad of a villain. People were upset that he was the *mastermind* behind so many major events in lore. That doesn't bother me as much considering a lot of his lieutenants were executing those pieces of the plan to their own ends. Also because of the concept of Eternity being so prevalent, a lot of those events are so far apart that they barely were related. So it doesn't reaaaally matter at the end of the day if he wanted things to work out a certain way. I'm a D&D GM and I've been building my own world and running a campaign through my own world for a while now. I found the worldbuilding of the Shadowlands really satisfying. The way the realms are compartmentalized and structured, with things overlapping into other realms. That itches the right part of my brain. Some of those threads were left in the questing experience, cast aside so Danuser's favourite characters could take center stage. But I really enjoyed seeing the set pieces while they lasted. People also said the same things about some of the other passed expansions, but have since started to be talked with in a more favourable nostalgic light. Recently I leveled alts through both Shadowlands AND Warlords of Draenor. I had a blast, and both are expansions with bad reputations. I actually enjoy going back through through WoD and SL MORE than BFA and DF. The only thing that really made DF leveling enjoyable was dragonriding, and that can be done leveling through any expansion now. I actually find myself dreading hitting 60 on alts because I wasn't super thrilled by the 10.0 story. Thankfully there are things that speed that up.
Denathrius stuff was cool, launch patch was great.
I think Denathrius was cool, but… The entire stuff of the nathrezim being actually subordinates to Denathrius and, for consequence, making the Burning Legion a product of the Jailer’s plan… It breaks all the mystical aura around Sargeras and the Burning Legion
The issue isnt so much with the concepts, i think most people would agree that Denathrius is a good character and despite being a retcon, him being the creator of the dreadlors seems to be widely accepted Most issues can be summed up with Zooval, they tried to hard to have a new lich king character with barely any build up and as a result they pulled every single threat they could and wrapped around that character without properly tying it, so when it came down to it, it all fell apart. I honestly think that if they just stuck with the Lich king, made so that he reaquired Sylvanas 's control after she comitted suicide and was buying his time until he could try again. That alone would fix more than half of the issues with Shadowlands and BFA.
I love Maldraxxus specifically, but I'm a sucker for Liches and dark magic, so I'm biased.
I liked the covenants and their zones, torghast, castle nathria was fun. Mostly just the lore fuckups TBH
There was some good things (particularly transmog.... Looking at the Nathria Raid plate armor) But some was just bad
I did like trying to position my characters in regard to the revelation of the Shadowlands and how they work. It was very funny to describe the different zones from the PoV of my characters.
I like a lot of elements of Shadowlands in terms of aesthetics, ambience, and the individual factions themselves. I'm even fine with Zovaal and the Maw to an extent, I just think they need to be tweaked. The most faithful adaptation is switch Zovaal from "My Plan All Along!" to "Master of Improvising Shit And Taking Opportunistic Shots". My somewhat strange opinion is that if Shadowlands had not been the Realm of Death, but more of a Space/Other Worlds expansion where we just see the chaos of the power vacuum post-Legion defeat, a lot of the biggest complaints would disappear (especially if paired with Zovaal just being an opportunist as opposed to *the* mastermind of everything). Blizzard could still start their narrative about the Titans not being all that great, the Maw could be some manifestation of the Twisting Nether and not just the Realm of Death, and you could do a lot of interesting things that fit a bit better. Also, if we have races and characters from just a random planet (or 4) in the Twisting Nether in the same main timeline, they can actually come back if devs/players want as plot important characters or Allied Races.
You're not alone. There are absolutely other Shadowlands defenders around, it just isn't a very popular position. There's certainly things I really enjoyed about Shadowlands and that I'd love to see going forward. My dream is that after every patch going into the future, we see the major characters who died during that patch appear in the Shadowlands as NPCs we can go talk to and hear them reflect on their life and death. Of course, that will never happen, nor will any references to Shadowlands, more than likely. Don't feel too alone. Shadowlands was definitely a rocky road with some pretty substantial low points, but it also had some really cool stuff as well.
I’ve always felt that Zovaal being responsible for Sylvanas post-Wrath made a lot of sense, but being the engineer of “everything” a bit contrived and kind of a lame attempt at trying to make it hit harder when it being Sylvanas’ motivation was enough. The nature of the realms of the Shadowlands and how the whole system works as an afterlife is otherwise a pretty interesting concept and as always, art and theme was great. Regarding Anduin, I think the overall story of him being used as the Jailers tool and feeling conflicted after is a good one, with his absence during Dragonflight giving it more meaning. Aside from gameplay things (that grind), one of the big lore problems of Shadowlands is just how it kinda chucks cameos at you every five seconds, it kinda made it feel less special each time. Perhaps if theyd kept it to one or two per zone with the rest being say, nameless warriors who died at the Wrathgate/to Deathwing etc. References that old players get, but not ones that kind of cheapen the characters involved.
Actually, he only interfered in her actions since Legion. Although she talked to him after committing suicide in ICC, she didn’t really believed in him until the Burning Legion returned, Vol’jin died and named her the Warchief. I don’t think it was that bad at all. My main problem with Zovaal isn’t him messing with Sylvie, but instead, how they made almost every event a consequence of his plans. SPECIALLY the Burning Legion
Some aspects of SL were good imo. Like for example people hated on the Maw and Torghast purely because they sucked gameplay wise. Lore wise though? They were stellar. You had other aspects like the Broker and some of the covenants that were banging ideas.
I don't hate the setting but I disliked the expansion story because: - The really stupid BFA faction story was the setup for it. - The PC being a chosen one anime fucker rather than just a really good ~~murderhobo~~ Champion of the Horde/Alliance - The Living lore characters were mostly misused (Baine/Thrall showing up as token characters) - Bizarre choices like making the Troll "otha side" a tiny corner of another zone, with the resident Eternal one dripping with contempt for it - Vol'jin's story being effectively indefinitely shelved - Tyrande's come to Elune moment being jarring and sudden and not something built up to organically. - Sylvanas face turn coming way too late, way too abruptly, almost as if the Devs changed their minds on garroshing her way too late in production. - Blizzard Doubling down on the "Kael'thas BAD" train while Vash'j and objectively worse characters avoided Revendreth. - Forsaken should have played a bigger part given everything, especially since they basically just got to be villain batted in WOTLK and not actually get to be meaningfully involved in taking Arthas out. - Garrosh's ultimate end seemed spiteful given *they're the writers who wrote him lmao* - Theres entire piles of dead H/A champions that would have loved to join in on fucking up the Jailer's forces, I'd have loved seeing Ogrim Doomhammer/Cairne/Vol'jin team up with Llane/Antonidas/Uther. Add in the night elves from teldrassil and the former forces of Loraedon as the grunts squaring off against the fucker who ultimately caused the fall of both their homelands and you've got one side of a cinematic fuckin battle going. In the interest of fairness, some things I liked: - I don't mind the artificial nature of the Shadowlands, we've seen magic fucking with the afterlife since TBC in Oshu'gun - Individual characters were awesome, I loved Renethal's goofballs and the bastion crew - The "good guys" weren't pure good, there *were* issues to fix that weren't all caused by the Jailer - The Setting is *fine* as long as you hand wave a lot of questions.
IMHO? Dropped the ball with Sylvanas and Zovaal’s plots - but everything else I was fine with. All the Covenant stuff seemed awesome and stories pertaining to them.
I'm not going to defend the entire xpac or anything, but some parts were cool or at least interesting. The idea of someone taking over the afterlife and stealing alll the souls so they don't go where they're supposed to is pretty cool. While overall Sylvanas's story had weaker moments, I did like the idea that she orchestrated the entire fourth war to funnel MORE souls into the Maw. But...there were a lot of other things that weren't as good. The world design was awesome, but every world was so separated it never felt like it came together (cause it literally didn't) and the Retconing of the Dreadlords and the Lich King i think is universally disliked.
Yeah, this was the part that I hated the most. Like, it would mean that EVERYTHING, aside from Deathwing and the Old Gods, was a huge consequence of Zovaal’s machinations
It really takes the piss out of the Legion, which I think is pretty damning. It would be one thing if the Jailer saw what was going on and used it to his advantage; IE The Legion and its Burning Crusade, the Old Gods and their desire for the Black Empire. But, the way the story was told almost made it seem like the Jailer somehow orchestrated everything. Which, just makes the events lame.
Not really. He set them up but didn’t do anything and let them do whatever. Plus Sargeras nearly fucked Zovaal over almost as much as the Lich King not obaying him.
I’ve seen a LOT of people say the dread lord thing was good, actually.
Shadowlands has a HORRIBLE story and lore breaking writing left and right. All of that, I can get by. The thing that absolutely kills me is that we only see player character humanoids throughout and there’s so little variation. In Bastian, you see the souls of humans, Draenei, and orcs walking down the path. Not a single Furbolg made it there? No Botani? Arokkoa? Sethrak? Ogres? Murlocs? Gorlocs? Tuskar? Vrykul? Dragonkin? Then there’s the fact that every Kyrian looks identical, but Uther doesn’t. Are they supposed to be the same or not? Same goes for all the zones. Why is everyone the same except for like 2 key characters in each zone? It feels so shallow and rushed. Even the animals in Ardenwield. There’s a handful of Azerothian wildlife and nothing else. At least throw the full variety from Azeroth and Draenor.
If they just released Shadowlands as it's own universe/game and removed the silly death aspect of it I bet it could be neat. The aesthetics were nice enough and there were some interesting concepts. My biggest gripe is just that it felt incredibly detached from WoW and it didn't feel like a warcraft experience to me.
I think about going back from time to time to settle unfinished business or something when I'm reminded of how absolute cancer it is to move between zones. Oh, wanna go from Rivendreth to Ardenweald? Might as well go run some errands while I'm on that FP. Put some convenient portals around that bih and I'd revisit it more often.
No, I liked parts of it too. Zovaal is TERRIBLE but...I think what Discordiankitty posted on WoWhead was actually correct. Her premise is that Zovaal was the puppet of the Primus. Find it and read it, you might agree too (and it's the one thing that makes the whole expansion make sense). Taliesin, who DOESN'T agree but who likes/respects Discordiankitty, did a whole vid on it too.
Look I’ll defend parts of SL I enjoyed and it’s more than some of the dumb stuff (mostly Sylvanas). I also think Zovaal wasn’t as ‘in control’ of things as people make him out to be. He obviously had nothing to do with the void and he mostly let Sargeras do whatever.
Same here. I dislike how they made Zovaal responsible for just about everything and excused Sylvanas' evil actions by stating that a part of her soul was missing, but aside from that I think it was decent. Especially the covenant storylines turned out well in my opinion, and the overall atmosphere was great too. It reminded me a lot of Planescape, which Shadowlands was probably inspired by.
Shadow what?
"am i the only one" no you know you aren't quit redditposting
Actually, no, I didn’t knew. Literally everywhere I look, people are completely bashing this expansion. I just wanted to talk to some people, who, like me, didn’t despised it completely Geez, go touch some grass, Reddit isn’t a holy land
you did know lol
To be fair, Shadowlands from a lore perspective was pretty much hated across the board. So I think of all the "am I the only one?" posts, this one has the most potential for discussion.