8.3 feels completely disconnected from Shadowlands / BfA should have ended with 8.2.5

[Azerate]

You have a point, but then again, is that so bad?

Yogg Saron and Ulduar also had absolutely nothing to do with the Lich King in Wrath, but everyone still loved it.

[Aleloron]

I wouldn’t really say that they’re “wasting the last Old God” as these are characters that our PCs cannot kill. We just manage to thwart them for a couple of days and send them back to hitting the snooze button on their alarm clocks. I fully expect there to be a massive Black Empire expansion when we return from the Shadowlands.

I do agree about Azeroth getting stabbed and all; seems like now we’re just supposed to shrug our shoulder slot and kinda forget it happened. Personally I would like to see an expansion in which we discover that we failed and that Azeroth is dead.

[Aleksej89]

Yea 8.3 is pointless in the context of shadowlands.
Most of BFA was pointless because it was a repeat of what happened before...
Horde again gets duped by a psychopath warchief, alliance again is all about happy hand holding, we again unite to save something or nothing.

BFA could have been skipped and the only explanation needed was "sylvanas went super saiyan and opened a rift to shadowlands".

[Krasuss]

Its almost as if people dont even read or watch what the devs have said or the lore thats been revealed has said. Sylvannas had 1 goal. Cause as much death as possible. From the time of legion, till the time she was ousted from the horde. Everything was for feeding the Maw and increasing her power from it. Death is exactly what 8.3 brings. She knows exactly what Nzoths coming brings. More death, which is exactly what she needs. She doesnt need the horde and ally to wipe each others out at the walls of Orgrimmar. She knows them fighting Nzoth will do it anyway.

8.3 perfectly sets up 9.0 in that regard.

exactly, and N´zoths death (assuming we kill him at the end) will bring enough anima in to Maw for Sylvanas to "learn" dark chain arrows from her soulbind Jailer in SL and start 9.0 makes perfect sense imo

[kaminaris]

But I am more hyped for 8.3 than 9.0, seems like more/better features.

[Kyrian Warrior]

It's possible Sylvanas does something in 8.3, but you're right. Leave 8.3 away, and the story is still coherent and understandable. In a story sense, 8.3 is redundant. Which makes it even more ludicrous this is the way we deal with N'zoth.

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But I am more hyped for 8.3 than 9.0, seems like more/better features.

Nah, visions and corrupted gear seems horrendous, I'll take covenants and that tower over that.

[Steelangel]

It's funny how the patches in BfA exactly contradict what you said. We hop from faction war to Azshara to Sylvanas to N'zoth. So yes, we indeed ignored the more imminent threat for the smaller one. So who is it who doesn't understand narrative arcs, me, you or Blizzard?

Probably you,. If you haven’t played through or haven’t paid attention to the entire story arc of this expansion, then you haven’t really understood the story. To get the full view you have to play both the alliance and horde stories.

[Ihsan997]

I wouldn’t really say that they’re “wasting the last Old God” as these are characters that our PCs cannot kill. We just manage to thwart them for a couple of days and send them back to hitting the snooze button on their alarm clocks. I fully expect there to be a massive Black Empire expansion when we return from the Shadowlands.

I do agree about Azeroth getting stabbed and all; seems like now we’re just supposed to shrug our shoulder slot and kinda forget it happened. Personally I would like to see an expansion in which we discover that we failed and that Azeroth is dead.

How would we bounce back from a dying planet scenario tho

Wait, maybe Emerald Dream world healing scenario?

[komlit]

The problem with 8.3 is that it's pure, free N'zoth and then we end up... dead and in the Shadowlands?

10.0 we're going to come back to life to not just Azeroth but an entire cosmos that's just Dragon Soul raid cranked to 11. We destroyed the Legion; there's nothing to stop the Old Gods and their masters now.

I agree with this or I think he wants his soul to be in the blade. You have to be dead to go to the Shadow lands aka why he needs the dagger. Dagger is used on him and we go to the SL only to free him to a world of souls he can consume. I think this would make since and set up something. I remember a leak saying about the shadow lands,death and how N'zoth is there and we must stop him from consuming souls. If i find it i will link it. But i feel like we are playing into his hands "even death suits him" something along those lines Xal'atath says. So i stand at that we are just pawns for him and he knew this would happen. "all eyes shall be opened"

[Nyel]

Probably you,. If you haven’t played through or haven’t paid attention to the entire story arc of this expansion, then you haven’t really understood the story. To get the full view you have to play both the alliance and horde stories.

And read the novel and the comics and short stories. That’s what I call very bad storytelling when you need sources outside of the game to follow and understand what’s going on.

[CrawlFromThePit]

The title pretty much says it all.

Imagine if there wouldn't be no 8.3 - it wouldn't matter at all. Shadowlands basically starts directly after 8.2.5 and Sylvanas disappearance. All of the stuff in 8.3 doesn't matter for the upcoming expansion. It's just there to finish some plots they (unnecessarily) opened in BfA.

With a clear faction war storyline this expansion could have been good, ending with the disappearance of Sylvanas and then the Icecrown interlude to 9.0. There was no need of the Old God / Magna / Azerite stuff at all. Clearly it doesn't matter for the future as the focal point is Sylvanas and just that.

8.3 already turned into a non-event due to its announcement three weeks before Blizzcon and being completely overshadowed by Shadowlands (pun intended). It's so sad they waste the last Old God in a manner like this, with all the amazing Titan stuff, Wrathion, the Forge of Origination etc. - all stuff that basically seems to not matter at all for 9.0 and the events caused by Sylvanas. Yes, we cannot judge yet, but from what we know basically everything Old God related stuff from BfA is pretty much pointless for Shadowlands.

They could have easily spun an expansion around faction war, then Shadowlands and left N'Zoth and the Old God stuff for an expansion a la Black Empire. Yet they chose to throw away all of it in a fashion that it seem to be irrelevant for the future of Azeroth. This just makes me sad.

Both 6.2 and 7.3.5 more or less caused the upcoming expansion yet 8.3 has basically no effect on 9.0, 8.2.5 has. This isn't just weird from a storytelling perspective.

And when we take this further, not even the faction war mattered as it basically changed nothing - factions are there to stay, mechanically nothing changes. Horde gets a council, that's it. All this was just done to build up Sylvanas as a demigod anti-hero / villain or whatever. In the end all of the events in BfA didn't matter at all. Only Sylvanas did. Is this good writing?

8.3 is there for actual gameplay content and prevent some people from hanging themselves in their closet because their lifestyle of never stopping to play WoW would become unbearable.
It's not there for story. Actually, the game is not there for story, I'm sure you noticed the narrative in WoW is terrible, so just ignore it and play the game for what it is: hp bars to smash and corpse to rightclick.

[mvaliz]

..what? You go to The Dark Portal after vanilla because we were invaded by the legion ala Kazzak and the other Supreme Lord guy who’s name I forget. We had clear reason to enter the portal once it was opened again.

Same with Wrath. We got attacked by the scourge on our home towns. Why wouldn’t we go to Northrend to fight?

Cataclysm was told fine as you didn’t even contest it. I’ll give you the fact it had nothing to connect it to MoPs garbage though.

Love or hate the story, MoP transitioned into WoD very well. Granted most of the story was tied into the book War Crimes.

WoD into Legion was told perfectly.

And Sylvanas opened a rift into the Shadowlands, causing the Scourge to go bonkers accross azaroth.

The OP is wrong, and you know it.

EDIT: Woops, misread something.

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This isn't even bait. It's the entire fishing rod and tackle box.

Bait? It was just a reduce explanation that the writing is generally kinda bonkers to begin with. :P

Writing "Bad lady breaks undead seal to spread zombie appocalypse accross planet" fits right in there with the Bonkersness.

I only swapped things like "Northrend" for "Norway" for fun's sake. :P

[Steelangel]

And read the novel and the comics and short stories. That’s what I call very bad storytelling when you need sources outside of the game to follow and understand what’s going on.

I have never read a WoW novel, and only read the short stories posted online, which usually are just flavor text. I understand the story of BfA just fine, and see how the threads of story come together---especially because I played both Alliance and Horde stories.

Just because you don't understand it is no one's fault but yourself.

[Gaidax]

Because in the grand scheme of things N'zoth simply does not matter.

It's that loose end that begs for a bullet - he's not a Void Lord, just some lieutenant level guy and thus unimportant for the universe story as a whole.

The whole Old Gods hard-on ended somewhere around WoD when we started dealing with much larger universe level threats and for all his tentacles and whispers, he's just one of the many local threats, no different from Deathwing or Lich King, who certainly pack power in their own right, but are also not on the Burning Legion/Naaru/Void Lords level.

---

One thing though... we are not quite sure what path it will open in regards to what's coming next next. All in all his demise might have unforeseen consequences that will come back to hunt us in the inevitable Void expansion.

Or not... either way, he's done.

[Dacu]

The title pretty much says it all.

Imagine if there wouldn't be no 8.3 - it wouldn't matter at all. Shadowlands basically starts directly after 8.2.5 and Sylvanas disappearance. All of the stuff in 8.3 doesn't matter for the upcoming expansion. It's just there to finish some plots they (unnecessarily) opened in BfA.

With a clear faction war storyline this expansion could have been good, ending with the disappearance of Sylvanas and then the Icecrown interlude to 9.0. There was no need of the Old God / Magna / Azerite stuff at all. Clearly it doesn't matter for the future as the focal point is Sylvanas and just that.

8.3 already turned into a non-event due to its announcement three weeks before Blizzcon and being completely overshadowed by Shadowlands (pun intended). It's so sad they waste the last Old God in a manner like this, with all the amazing Titan stuff, Wrathion, the Forge of Origination etc. - all stuff that basically seems to not matter at all for 9.0 and the events caused by Sylvanas. Yes, we cannot judge yet, but from what we know basically everything Old God related stuff from BfA is pretty much pointless for Shadowlands.

They could have easily spun an expansion around faction war, then Shadowlands and left N'Zoth and the Old God stuff for an expansion a la Black Empire. Yet they chose to throw away all of it in a fashion that it seem to be irrelevant for the future of Azeroth. This just makes me sad.

Both 6.2 and 7.3.5 more or less caused the upcoming expansion yet 8.3 has basically no effect on 9.0, 8.2.5 has. This isn't just weird from a storytelling perspective.

And when we take this further, not even the faction war mattered as it basically changed nothing - factions are there to stay, mechanically nothing changes. Horde gets a council, that's it. All this was just done to build up Sylvanas as a demigod anti-hero / villain or whatever. In the end all of the events in BfA didn't matter at all. Only Sylvanas did. Is this good writing?

Damn, nice post. Only question I have is how do you know all of this when none of this content is out yet? You have the 8.3 cinematic's and the Shadowlands previews. Is this good writing? I'm not sure, because the next part of the story hasn't come out yet..... . A lot of your points are based on pure speculation. You were given an intro cinematic, maybe there will be another one to further introduce this part of the story when the patch goes live.

[corruptdevil]

We have yet to see the ending cinematic that will come with 8.3's raid. And between that and the launch of shadowlands will likely be smaller patches and the pre-patch leading up to shadowlands. Legion didn't end with azerite spewing out of the ground igniting a new war. That stuff was built up shortly before the next expansion. The sword itself held very little meaning to the rest of the expansion.

[Cosmic Janitor]

We have yet to see the ending cinematic that will come with 8.3's raid. And between that and the launch of shadowlands will likely be smaller patches and the pre-patch leading up to shadowlands. Legion didn't end with azerite spewing out of the ground igniting a new war. That stuff was built up shortly before the next expansion. The sword itself held very little meaning to the rest of the expansion.

Yes, it ended with a war out of nowhere that didn't make any sense what so ever

[corruptdevil]

Yes, it ended with a war out of nowhere that didn't make any sense what so ever

There were flashpoints all throughout Legion, starting with Wrynn dying. There was a whole cinematic with Genn outright attacking Sylvanas, just because he hated her. The book prior BFA shows that during a meeting between alliance and forsaken citizens, that multiple people worked to get people away from Sylvanas, which ended in a blood bath. While Sylvanas could have easily been more lenient in many ways and she was clearly working to an end goal, there were plenty of places in legion that built up to war breaking out between the alliance and the horde. Some of it was natural, some of it was pushed by Sylvanas.

If you don't like they way the wrote the whole thing and how they choose to make the story work that's fine, but the plot is there and it didn't just get pulled out of the ether.

[d00dles]

UNLESS the next expansion is about Old-gods invading Azeroth and expansion 10.0 takes place during the Shadowlands timeline. At least, that's how they sorta introduced Cataclysm back in the day.

[komlit]

UNLESS the next expansion is about Old-gods invading Azeroth and expansion 10.0 takes place during the Shadowlands timeline. At least, that's how they sorta introduced Cataclysm back in the day.

Me personally would be fine with this. We go into shadowlands and only to return to old gods invading or taken over. Due to N'Zoth master plan seeing we have to die to go to the shadowlands who knows how much time we will be down there or how time works. Maybe a day there is like a week above. So when we return the world we know of is changed. Would be kool to see and have a good timeskip.