Shadowlands Plothole?

[Josyel]

This thread:

1- Shadowlands gets souls from the entire universe but i dont see many souls from other planets popping up!!!
2- I wonder what makes Azeroth so special since its the only planet that is giving Shadowlands souls!!!

[Aucald]

This thread:

1- Shadowlands gets souls from the entire universe but i dont see many souls from other planets popping up!!!
2- I wonder what makes Azeroth so special since its the only planet that is giving Shadowlands souls!!!

You actually see several souls from other worlds. Droman Aliothe in Ardenweald was a bear-god from another world, one that was apparently destroyed by the Legion long ago. Several NPC's in Maldraxxus ponder the power of Azerothian heroes like the Maw Walker, Draka, and Vashj which would imply they hail from other worlds themselves.

[Maxilian]

Aye, but as we've seen before enough power infusion can change things thoroughly. Demon hunters go to the twisting nether in example, Gul'dan was enough demon that soulbinding him like one almost worked.

Does that apply to all DH? I though it was mainly Illidan, as he is an actual demon (because of the quantity of demonic energy he consumed), but the PC DH have not consume enough to be in that state.

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You actually see several souls from other worlds. Droman Aliothe in Ardenweald was a bear-god from another world, one that was apparently destroyed by the Legion long ago. Several NPC's in Maldraxxus ponder the power of Azerothian heroes like the Maw Walker, Draka, and Vashj which would imply they hail from other worlds themselves.

We also have the couple in Anderweald that state that they are from another planet and that they did too knew about Elune and saw her as a goddess

[Soon-TM]

Magic, I'm sure you realize such a force exists in WoW, and Death Magic (Necromancy) is what you draw upon from the Shadowlands, so he's able to raise them that way.


It was recently revealed that when a spirit is pulled out of the Shadowlands, it doesn't remember ever being there.

But Salanar (the guy who gives the mount at the old DK starting zone) does remember being in the SL. And that was back in WotLK, when this "machine of death" was presumably working a-ok.

[Thrasgar]

(so apparently if you treasured reefer most of all, there's actually is a realm where the only thing that grows is pot and everybody stays high as kite for all eternity)

see you there brother

[Maxilian]

But Salanar (the guy who gives the mount at the old DK starting zone) does remember being in the SL. And that was back in WotLK, when this "machine of death" was presumably working a-ok.

Well they look like they can walk through the shadowlands, or at least a part of it (I mean... its supposed that the DK players go into the Shadowlands to get their mount, but its obviously quite different, so maybe is just where the mortal plane and the shadowlands overlap?)

[Mehrunes]

Not every soul goes to shadowlands or is even given a new afterlife, even the story shows its been a long time since a soul last showed up could be hundreds of years for all we know, souls could linger on the planet for years before making it to shadowlands as its not going to be instant, the dragon ysera has been dead for what should be years in azeroth time and she has only just shown up in shadowlands.

Souls aren't showing up because Arbiter is inactive and doesn't direct them to their proper realms. It has nothing to do with "souls not going to Shadowlands". Likewise, nothing has been said about Ysera being a new arrival. What was said is that she's one of the last arrivals prior to the drought. You know, the same drought that is constantly described as lasting for a while by the time we visit.

It depends on the realm. There's a quest in the Maldraxxus invasion of Bastion about how when you kill a Maldraxxi they don't actually perma-die since you need to disrupt their souls, but Kyrians do. It comes back with the quest with the Kyrian abomination.

Maldraxxus is the only realm that does that at least from what I've seen and if I had to give Blizzard some credit it's because of necromancy. Necromancy involves a soul and body that are imperfectly attached and as far as Maldraxxus is concerned, that's done so that when you die, you can then be put in something else. With the other realms your soul and body/anima are synonymous so when you destroy one you take out the other.

Yeah, but during the Maldraxxus attack on the Bastion, at some point the Maldraxxi necromancer resurrects a bunch of Kyrians. WTF is he connecting to their bodies at that point?

[Maxilian]

Yeah, but during the Maldraxxus attack on the Bastion, at some point the Maldraxxi necromancer resurrects a bunch of Kyrians. WTF is he connecting to their bodies at that point?

Maybe nothing? maybe they are just empty husks and is more reanimation than resurrections

[Lord Pebbleton]

I have read every quest description in Bastion and still I have several questions about it all. I have kinda stopped reading in Maldraxxus because it just feels like Plaguelands on steroids with fat, angry warriors and I'm not really interested in it.

They are not doing a good job explaining everything. I fear we will have another "The Legion is infinite" moment.

[Leodok]

It's like Rise of Skywalker. Don't pay attention to details. LOOK IT'S UTHER! Just keep moving through the story. Thinking about the details will just make your head hurt. LOOK!! KAEL'THAS!!! The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. LOOK, SYLVANAS HAS A PLAN FOR ALL OF US! THERE IS DRAKA!! MEMBER DRAKA?!?!? It is one giant clusterfuck the second you start poking and prodding the tapestry. JUST KEEP MOVING, DON'T THINK! LOOK, THE ARCHITECTURE IS LIKE IN IIIIICECROWN. MEMBER ICECROWN??? Level up, get loot, have fun with friends overcoming the raid encounters, revel in the great work the Art department did. The story is... not even tertiary at this point. LOOK! CUTE OWL-SERVANTS! JOKES ABOUT TALKING TO THE HAND. MEMBER URSOC??? MANDALORIAN REFERENCE!! PLEASE DON'T THINK ABOUT THE STORY OR THE ILLUSION OF COHERENT STORYTELLING WILL FALL APART!!! MEMBER YSEARA???

Fuck this Add-ons story. For all the interesting changes to gameplay, seriously, fuck the story. It picked up right where BfA left off, high-school levels of fanfiction.

Great summary, couldn't say it better myself. With all this and the way they've ruined and homogenized everyone's afterlife, I just can't understand how there's anyone still hyped for this trainwreck of a story.

[Mehrunes]

She legitimately could have prevented this. It didn't have to be this way.

That said it did contribute to the best bit of unintentional comedy after the pre-patch cinematic. It's the quest where you're supposed to check on the wards and while you're at it, Uther very, very slowly flies up, calls you names, blows up the ward and then very, very slowly flies off. All the while, since the robots are deactivated and the Blue Man Group has no peripheral vision nobody does anything to stop him. After about a minute, the gears in the head of that twink who's BiS for Kyrian finally begin turning and he says something to the effect of "Gee, champion, that sure is a shame. We better tell the cops." Abysmal scripting for a zone that's otherwise good about this, but it had me in stitches.

Maybe Kyrian are colorblind and can't tell a Forsworn apart from other Kyrians at first glance.

[Soon-TM]

I fear we will have another "The Legion is infinite" moment.

Well, this "a single SL for all worlds and timelines" is dangerously close to WoD's "a single Legion across all timelines", so...

That's why we have stupid things like AU Draka in Maldraxxus. I mean, why should we care about her, other than her being Thrall's mom, but "not actually"?

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Maybe Kyrian are colorblind and can't tell a Forsworn apart from other Kyrians at first glance.

I had to &$#@ing giggle at this, so true LOL

[Ophenia]

Well, this "a single SL for all worlds and timelines" is dangerously close to WoD's "a single Legion across all timelines", so...

I had read that already but I don't know if that's "official" ? Or just something said once in an interview and repeated again and again ?

Because I don't see how this could even work. That would mean that, as all timelines/dimensions are dangerously close to each other, an infinite number of the same character will arrive at approximately the exact same time. Maybe "our" timeline is a bit special due to WoD shenanigans, but other than that, most of the infinite timelines will behave slightly the same.

Which means there shouldn't have had one Uther/Arthas for example, but more likely one billion dying at the same time.

[Mic_128]

Does that apply to all DH? I though it was mainly Illidan, as he is an actual demon (because of the quantity of demonic energy he consumed), but the PC DH have not consume enough to be in that state.

Nope. In the starting zone if you die

Lord Illidan Stormrage says: Interesting. Like me, you have an immortal demon soul. You cannot truly die. Instead, your soul will make its way to the Twisting Nether. There, you will wait until you can find a suitable body to inhabit.

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I think it's addressed in a kryian campaign quest (I saw it in a beta video). But yes they carry the souls and yeet them into the stream. They're reasoning being it's literally Thier only purpose and they do it regardless of the arbiters judgment (or lack thereof).

I guess it also can't be good if you have a bunch of souls floating around, haunting up the place.

[Orby]

the writing team are a bunch of hacks,on got s8 levels of ''quality'',thats the sad reality,its true that mmo's generaly dont have good stories as its the nature of the beast,but atleast other mmo's have a consistancy and logic to it

There's the main problem, its a writing team, and not a writer. Its the too many cooks issue. Imagine if you wanted to write a book and had all these awesome ideas and your publisher was like 'here are 12 more writers to help write your book' who all had different ideas from yours :P

Putting aside whether nostalgia "MEMBER X" pandering is good storytelling or not (it's not), I still don't understand how some genius at Blizzard thought that Draka was good MEMBER material. That complete nothing-burger of a character has had two feats of any magnitude to her name until now: spawning Thrall and dropping dead. She's so meaningless that I managed to forget about her even being in Maldraxxus in the time between the release of Shadowlands and the release of Maldraxxus Affterlives video. At least that ended my ruminations on Venthyr vs Maldraxxus as a Covenant for my main.

I said the exact same thing in another thread. They had a chance in WoD to do something with her and they still didn't make her interesting there either. They should have replaced her with Lady Vashj instead, I had way more emotion and feeling to seeing her again, especially when you see her for the first time and she makes clear that it was YOU who put her there. already there';s friction and intrigue and chemistry. It was Vashj and the absent minded Alchemist fellow who held me on more

Hell if they wanted to use an interesting former assassin, why not Van Cleef?

[Soon-TM]

I had read that already but I don't know if that's "official" ?

It is official, look at this:

Q: We’ve done some stuff that’s involved with time travel and alternate realities. What happens to those souls when they pass on? Do they go to the Shadowlands?

A: This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.

The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.

If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope.

[Lord Pebbleton]

Well, this "a single SL for all worlds and timelines" is dangerously close to WoD's "a single Legion across all timelines", so...

That's why we have stupid things like AU Draka in Maldraxxus. I mean, why should we care about her, other than her being Thrall's mom, but "not actually"?

I wasn't aware of the "a single SL for all worlds and timelines" thing. Maybe I blocked it out because it is so absurd. Still, this explaination stems from WoD, its convoluted time travel, and its horrendous legacy that will ripple throughout the history of WoW for all years to come. So I'd just count it as yet another WoD shortcoming that would not have needed any further inspection if that mangled abomination of an expansion never happened.

I also am a bit skeptical of Draka. I don't really feel like she's Maldraxxus material, she kinda feels like a generic orc female badass like we have been having since Garrosh. Not to mention we already saw her in WoD. I swear that expansion is the root of all evil lol.

[Armakus]

There's a few troll souls around Bastion and the Maw. Shouldn't they be in De Other Side? Or, does Bwonsamdi not claim every trollian soul? I'm confuse

I don't think every troll subscribes to the same belief system, so it makes sense that not every troll would be in De Other Side

[Nerovar]

It was recently revealed that when a spirit is pulled out of the Shadowlands, it doesn't remember ever being there.

Death Knights go into the Shadowlands on several occasions without dying. Latest example would be Salanar during Legion who was inside the Shadowlands since WotLK.

We also get several table missions (Unholy Attainment) to harvest stuff from the Shadowlands

• A manipulator and traitor, Soulbinder Nyami wielded powerful shadow magic in life. In death, she is the perfect vessel for the Essence of Shadow. Harvest the essence from her soul in the Shadowlands.
• After the death of his son, Admiral Daelin Proudmoore was consumed by the thirst for revenge. Collect the Essence of Hatred from his soul in the Shadowlands.
• Grand Apothecary Putress was once a trusted advisor to Sylvanas. He deserved his end, but he may still prove useful. Harvest the Essence of Undeath from his soul in the Shadowlands.

[loras]

Does that apply to all DH? I though it was mainly Illidan, as he is an actual demon (because of the quantity of demonic energy he consumed), but the PC DH have not consume enough to be in that state.

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We also have the couple in Anderweald that state that they are from another planet and that they did too knew about Elune and saw her as a goddess

The PC too actually, if you die during the introductory questline Illidan comments on it.
Should make for some weird stuff in the Shadowlands, as dying in a foreign plane should yeet them to the Twisting Nether.