Shadowlands doesn't feel like Warcraft

[Dispirit84]

In Shadowlands defense, it did bring over all the systems from BFA that everyone hated and gave them new names. Yeah, there's nothing good about this expansion.

[mojusk]

i do prefer the more original old school fantasy style, like lotr, dragons knights wizards vikings elves dwarves undead orcs etc.
im not that fond of when it gets too weird with furries and space/time travel.
BUT wow has pretty much always been a bit more weird than universes like lotr.

just because it doesnt fit yours or my preference of fantasy, doesnt make it not wow-like.

[dcc626]

Nope, he's not alone. Shadowlands isn't Warcraft, it's even more alien to the franchise than the asian Mists of Pandaria setting.

you mean MoP? the xpac people have been praising as one of the best ever during bfa? well then, no wonder it broke sales records....

[Deferionus]

Nope, he's not alone. Shadowlands isn't Warcraft, it's even more alien to the franchise than the asian Mists of Pandaria setting.

I found Mists to feel far more alienated than Shadowlands. I do think that Mists would be better received if released today than following Cataclysm though.

[Relapses]

I never got upset. I have been LOLing at this whole exchange. It's ridiculous. You are projecting in order to justify your reactions to some flat text. It's a human thing. Everyone does it. It's okay...

You have a high opinion of yourself. Are you some kind of forum royalty and I missed the memo? Going to "award" me. HAHAHA. You ARE funny and you didn't even have to use a meme to do it. YAY! You can be taught

You asked me for a meme. Why ask for something then make fun of me when I don't give it to you because you didn't earn it? I think you're just being mean. >:(

[Malic]

It doesnt feel like wow. But its not because of the setting but because of these bullshit systems and battlepass mechanics.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Then we can't be playing the same game.

It's very VERY Warcraft still, same as during any other expansion where people pretended otherwise. Yes, including MoP.

Don't get me wrong, I 100% prefer expansions grounded in Azeroth over going to "other wooooooooorlds!", but nothing about SL isn't Warcraft, not in visuals nor story-style or systems...

Bastion is the first zone in 11 years that I haven't liked at least in some way. The first one since Blade's Edge mountain, and I could at least fly there.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

Maldraxxus just unpacks the starter kit for Warcraft's creepy/necromantic themes and painted it ever greener. Skeletons, spiders, leathery-winged beasts, ghosts, cackling wizards, bubbling slime, and disgusting flesh golems.

Ardenweald is basically HD Ashenvale. From satyr-like fauns and dryads to a lot of moving tree creatures, to an abundance of nature, magic, and majesty, it's easily the most familiar-looking and Warcrafty zone of the four. And you'll find your obligatory troll-themed content here as well.

Revendreth, along with Bastion, is probably the most unique in terms of how it looks, and what its themes generally are. But even Revendreth brings in a splash of familiarity with the Light and the Naaru, and the obvious unspoken connection that Sire Denathrius has to the nathrezim, and Bastion pulls back the curtain a bit on the spirit healers we've had since forever, and the val'kyr a little bit as well, along with hints of the Void we've seen there.

Oribos is all new for the most part, and even then, you've got the Brokers which are basically Ethereals.

Sure, there's no murlocs and no human architecture. But if you can't find existing elements in the Shadowlands of some of the things that make Warcraft feel like Warcraft, or familiar Warcraft-y things within these zones, you're just not trying. I've seen more than one complaint about Shadowlands that it's TOO much like Warcraft, that is, that you could drop any four of these zones somewhere on Azeroth and they wouldn't be out of place. And I understand those arguments more than this one. It feels more to me like the Shadowlands have struck an okay balance between all-new and reminiscent, the way that a new expansion should.

I mean, Revendreth is really just another skin of the Gothic / Medieval architecture found in parts of Gilneas and Drustvar. Kind of bothers me how "human" (or rather, European architecture which is what humans make in Warcraft) the architecture is in this ancient, cosmic death realm actually.

[DarthMuffin]

I agree with OP, though it's not the first time I feel that way about an expansion.

I remember 14 years ago thinking that Burning Crusade didn't feel like Warcraft either. Giant robots, pink flying castles and wind chimes didn't feel right to me at the time. I remember Metzen's post on the forums where he apologized for the lore retcons and explained his point of view regarding the "sci-fi" elements. He pointed out that some people were upset about guns and steam tech in Warcraft but that nowadays it wouldn't really be Warcraft without these. That made a lot of sense to me and I kind of see the BC sci-fi stuff in the same light nowadays.

Of course Outland wasn't nearly as "outlandish" as the Shadowlands and the complete lack of anchors to established Warcraft elements, aside from a handful of NPCs, is an issue for me. But I'm kind of willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and I'm enjoying the ride so far. I doubt that it's an expansion that will have a lasting impact on my experience though and I probably won't level through it on alts when we move on to the next one. I would have said we're overdue for a more down to earth expansion, but I guess that's what BFA was meant to be. I'm just afraid that they keep heading down that route for future expansion to avoid overcrowding Azeroth with more islands or messy revamps. That sort of design seems to play right into their current mantra of each expansion being its own themepark with its own borrowed power mechanics.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I just have to wonder who can look at Maldraxxus and Revendreth and go "Yup... cheap Chinese knock-off right there, hurr!".

Revendreth is so Warcraft with how it has adapted themes that it should an award.

[deviantcultist]

I said this before and I'll say this again. Stop using this argument whenever we get new content that does not resemble Warcraft III. If you want that, go play Classic and stop being entitled and asking WoW to stay grounded to old standards forever.

If anything, WoW needs more of what TBC brought at this point and that's cosmic fantasy.

[LemonDemonGirl]

I still think they should've kept Bwonsamdi out of Ardenweald. He sticks out like an undead sore thumb there, with all the blue fairies and such

But that's just my opinion I guess

[deviantcultist]

i do prefer the more original old school fantasy style, like lotr, dragons knights wizards vikings elves dwarves undead orcs etc.
im not that fond of when it gets too weird with furries and space/time travel.
BUT wow has pretty much always been a bit more weird than universes like lotr.

just because it doesnt fit yours or my preference of fantasy, doesnt make it not wow-like.

This is a great example of someone having their own opinion and not going out of their way to force it on others.

[Yuli]

High fantasy? Warcraft and high fantasy? Hahaha....nice one...

Lmao, Warcraft is not near set in the real world. Learn your definitions. https://fantasybookfanatic.com/high-...etailed-guide/

[Aeluron Lightsong]

No I think its you, it still feels like Warcraft, even if others feel the same. It doesn't mean anything.

[Dhrizzle]

I meant like when they skirt copyright laws. We don't have dwarfs digging for gold, instead we have grudges digging for anima or something similar. And I expected dwarfs from wow and the expansion to be set in a way as to accommodate the iconic things.

The whole point of Chinese knockoffs is they don't care about copyright laws and don't bother trying to skirt them, and even if they did they wouldn't have to worry about copying dwarves as they're a fantasy staple present in Tolkien, DnD, Warhammer etc, and even if that was an issue you can hardly say that drudges are anywhere near the dwarf archetype.

[Myradin]

That's how copyright laws are avoided in the rest of the world. Chinese knockoffs don't have to do that, they just blatantly copy.

I don't know, you could say that about so many things. What exactly is the "Warcraft feeling"? I could argue any race that didn't exist "as is" in W3 goes against it, including playable Draenei, so it goes back as far as TBC. Definitely not Worgen, nearly all of the allied races.

Warcraft has always had a pretty wide spectrum of stuff in it. Even in an expansion which you and some others feel like is too different, everything is still fairly derivative.

I get the feeling, to some extent, I get it from the simple fact that we now have so many playable races and not just the iconic first few. But ultimately it's not something exclusive to Shadowlands, it's a direction WoW has been slowly heading towards since its inception, and arguably a necessary one. If we always just get more of the same it gets pretty boring. The difference in Shadowlands is that it is so fantastical (even for WoW standards) because it's set in the afterlife, that they can be a bit more original than usual. Personally, I'd prefer if they went even more ham.

Its the afterlife for the universe, it makes sense not everything is something we're familiar with.

That said, even WC3 invented (or borrowed from other media) dozens of races and new things vs the prior games. Warcraft is always expanding. Im guessing the reason why humans and orcs get so much focus is to keep some sort of grounding to the original warcraft setting.

[Dhrizzle]

Well that's kind of the point, it doesn't feel like an afterlife dimension of the Warcraft universe, it feels like a blend of AION, Legacy of Kain, Diablo and Mortal Kombat.

Honestly it doesn't even feel like an afterlife, it just feels like another "continent" like Argus or Outland but aesthetically absolutely unrelated to the world we "live" in.

Strongly disagree here - Ardenweald is Druid heaven, Bastion is Paladin heaven, Maldraxxus is Necromancer heaven, Revendreth is purgatory for crack-elves (i.e. the vampiric forms of elves we've seen in TBC and Legion, as well as the vampiric undead and demons that are knocking about in the material plane.) All four of the major afterlives/covenants that we have seen have echoes and inspirations in the lands of the living that we have visited. What I particularly like is the fact that a character who is a particular class may not be a good fit for the afterlife based on that class, for example Mograine finding his place in Maldraxxus and not Bastion. It means that (from an RP perspective) you get to examine what really makes your character tick to decide where they end up.

[Nerovar]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but if a company owns an IP they can do whatever the fuck they God damned well please with it. No? Did I miss a memo?

What is this argument even supposed to mean?

Where did he say that they can't "do whatever the fuck they want" with their IP? No one is denying that they can. That doesn't mean it's good, in line with the previous story/aestheticts etc. or that it cannot be subject to criticism.

Strongly disagree here - Ardenweald is Druid heaven, Bastion is Paladin heaven, Maldraxxus is Necromancer heaven, Revendreth is purgatory for crack-elves

The way you frame it doesn't really fit the original lore (which is probably what OP is talking about). The Emerald Dream used to be 'Druid heaven' (this was revealed way back in Classic), Bastion cannot be Paladin heaven as the Light has no power there and they're forced to abandon it, the people we meet in Maldraxxus aren't necromancers (and I'm pretty sure necromancers wouldn't go to 'heaven' anyways) and Revendreth simply doesn't have any real connections to older WC lore.

[Pratt]

Bastion feels like it was outsourced to some random asian developer for sure. Was actually my first thought on flying in.