9.2 Lore Speculation

[Super Dickmann]

I will say what I have said before. This expansion would have worked much better if we spent the majority of the time on Azeroth, and the Shadowlands instead came to us.
We would have lost some of the more spectacular elements like the Maldraxxus arena, or Revendreth. But we wouldn't have had so many questions that need to be answered, and could instead leave a layer of mystery.

We've talked about this before and I still think that'd have been a great way to do it and both add the mystery and not require everything to be lathered in layers of explanation. Have the only bit of the Shadowlands full through be Torghast in the broken sky over Icecrown, with the other realms bleeding over in parts of Azeroth, fucking with the area they'd merge with. Emphasize how unnatural breaking the Veil actually is and instead of going full outlandsih, allow the outlandish elements to stand out even more in more familiar settings. Hell, you can still do Revendreth, overlay it over Gilneas or a part of Kul Tiras or what have you.

On a separate note, the bit about the constructs in the Maw is confirmed. They're melted down souls, with the armor shaped from those who didn't make the cut while the most broken souls get put inside as footsoldiers. The Maw in general suffers the most from the absolutely schizophrenic tone and how abstract it is. Replace the blue faceless ghost with familiar characters who can actually bleed and with backstories, show us the conveyor belt of the factory for someone we know being turned into one of those copy-paste robots with a vista of this being repeated and suddenly this depersonalized damnation is concrete and threatening. The idea and the aesthetic aren't bad, but instead of anchoring it in the world they decided to try and anchor it with characters, to its own detriment. They should've ditched the faction leaders and had the actual worlds overlap.

[sighy]

We've talked about this before and I still think that'd have been a great way to do it and both add the mystery and not require everything to be lathered in layers of explanation. Have the only bit of the Shadowlands full through be Torghast in the broken sky over Icecrown, with the other realms bleeding over in parts of Azeroth, fucking with the area they'd merge with. Emphasize how unnatural breaking the Veil actually is and instead of going full outlandsih, allow the outlandish elements to stand out even more in more familiar settings. Hell, you can still do Revendreth, overlay it over Gilneas or a part of Kul Tiras or what have you.

On a separate note, the bit about the constructs in the Maw is confirmed. They're melted down souls, with the armor shaped from those who didn't make the cut while the most broken souls get put inside as footsoldiers. The Maw in general suffers the most from the absolutely schizophrenic tone and how abstract it is. Replace the blue faceless ghost with familiar characters who can actually bleed and with backstories, show us the conveyor belt of the factory for someone we know being turned into one of those copy-paste robots with a vista of this being repeated and suddenly this depersonalized damnation is concrete and threatening. The idea and the aesthetic aren't bad, but instead of anchoring it in the world they decided to try and anchor it with characters, to its own detriment. They should've ditched the faction leaders and had the actual worlds overlap.

The characters themselves aren't the issue it's more of what is their purpose here exactly? What unique thing do they bring to the table? What have they done in the expansion?
Sylvanas? Did effectively nothing.
Anduin? Got puppted.
Baine? Sat on his ass in Oribos
Jaina? appeared in a raid i guess
Bolvar? dumped some exposition
Thrall? met his mom and that's about it
Tyrande? Ran around thorgast aimlessly, before getting cucked by Elune

Seriously like the only living character that has something they need to do there and actually followed up on it is Shandris, who was trying to stop her mom, from commiting suicide, which is fair enough, but has no real baring on the overall main story, because she doesn't even really play an active role in Tyrande's resolution or decision to drop the Night Warrior stuff. I can't honestly say in good faith that it being set on Azeroth would have changed anything, if the characters especially antagonists mind you don't get a great deal more active role than what they did.


This quote from a Massivelyop article kind of surmises my feelings of this whole damned ordeal.

Seriously, I saw a great summary of the entire Jailer arc in one comment: “We’re racing to stop someone we don’t know from doing something we don’t understand for reasons we haven’t been told in a place we aren’t familiar with for stakes that aren’t clear.” Trying to tell us that the Jailer is the culmination of a storyline other than the one that introduced him is insulting to our intelligence and even the most basic understanding of how storytelling works.

[Sondrelk]

The characters themselves aren't the issue it's more of what is their purpose here exactly? What unique thing do they bring to the table? What have they done in the expansion?
Sylvanas? Did effectively nothing.
Anduin? Got puppted.
Baine? Sat on his ass in Oribos
Jaina? appeared in a raid i guess
Bolvar? dumped some exposition
Thrall? met his mom and that's about it
Tyrande? Ran around thorgast aimlessly, before getting cucked by Elune

Seriously like the only living character that has something they need to do there and actually followed up on it is Shandris, who was trying to stop her mom, from commiting suicide, which is fair enough, but has no real baring on the overall main story, because she doesn't even really play an active role in Tyrande's resolution or decision to drop the Night Warrior stuff. I can't honestly say in good faith that it being set on Azeroth would have changed anything, if the characters especially antagonists mind you don't get a great deal more active role than what they did.


This quote from a Massivelyop article kind of surmises my feelings of this whole damned ordeal.

Being set on Azeroth wouldnt necessarily change the actual character actions into something more believable, but what it would do is make it easier to handwave questions, and therefore be able to spend time on the actual meat of the story.

Take the Kyrians. We know from the old Chronicle books that the Val'kyr were based on some kind of winged humanoid native to the Shadowlands. We didnt know exactly what they did, but we could assume that they do the same thing Val'kyr do in ferrying souls.
Now, when you have no idea what Bastion is, and how it factors into Oribos and the flow of souls then this is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. However, when you actually go to Bastion, and see for yourself the stream of souls and how they are seemingly picked up one at a time it starts raising questions.
Are every single soul picked up individually by Kyrians? What about ghosts we see running around? Why do they keep condemning souls despite having some semblance of agency over them?
And that is just their purpose. We don't know for instance if Bastion is effectively infinite or not. The gameplay limitations stand in stark contrasts to how it would have to function logistically.
If we spent the expansion in Northrend then stuff like the Kyrians could be explained as little as possible. Possibly not even seeing an uncorrupted Kyrian so as to not explain the mystery.

Northrend is familiar, so the story could spend time explaining what has happened there since we left. It could have spent time on plotlines that players are already invested in, while also building up the Jailer stuff.
Without actually going to the Shadowlands we don't need explanations on what the deal with Zovaal is in relation to the Shadowlands. We could have been content knowing that he is just someone who once controlled parts, if not all of the Shadowlands. The distance from the actual setting would allow the writers to take a more hands-off approach.


In short, the expansion taking place in the actual Shadowlands means we have to explain a bunch of stuff, and since so little was already explained it has to explain absolutely everything relevant, and whenever it can't it leaves a plothole. Like what happens to duplicate souls in other timelines. Because we go to the Shadowlands and see Draka we are left wondering why there are not two distinct entities. If Draka instead came to Northrend then it would instead be a mystery. Draka could be there, and she could be part of the Draka we see, but since we actually went to Maldraxxus and only saw one we are left with a question with an unsatisfying answer that the game struggles to integrate.

[Super Dickmann]

The characters themselves aren't the issue it's more of what is their purpose here exactly? What unique thing do they bring to the table? What have they done in the expansion?
Sylvanas? Did effectively nothing.
Anduin? Got puppted.
Baine? Sat on his ass in Oribos
Jaina? appeared in a raid i guess
Bolvar? dumped some exposition
Thrall? met his mom and that's about it
Tyrande? Ran around thorgast aimlessly, before getting cucked by Elune

Seriously like the only living character that has something they need to do there and actually followed up on it is Shandris, who was trying to stop her mom, from commiting suicide, which is fair enough, but has no real baring on the overall main story, because she doesn't even really play an active role in Tyrande's resolution or decision to drop the Night Warrior stuff. I can't honestly say in good faith that it being set on Azeroth would have changed anything, if the characters especially antagonists mind you don't get a great deal more active role than what they did.


This quote from a Massivelyop article kind of surmises my feelings of this whole damned ordeal.

Making the world the connecting element instead of the characters and spacing them entirely from the plot frees you up screen time to focus on said world or said intended plot. To put Baine and Sylvanas on the same wavelength on this point is nonsense, as is Tyrande and Jaina. Sylvanas and Tyrande have actual unresolved plot points going into this. We can talk if those were resolved well (the answer is no, surprise surprise), but they do exist. But Thrall, Jaina and the like simply have no purpose to being in this story. They are inherently poor as connective tissue no matter what because they have no emotional or story connection to the goings on and the contortions the plot has to make to its premise to allow them to participate weakens it no matter if it's Tolstoy writing it or Dan Brown.

It's also why the entire criticism regarding the bad guy's lack of motive is deeply tired. Sylvanas sure, she's entirely fucked by how we don't learn her motive until she's already screwed, but the Blue Man wants to kill everyone and take over the world. He tells you this in his very first scene. It's plenty explicit what he means. His problem isn't that his motive isn't clear or even that his motive is 2-dimensional, it's that its effects are abstract because we only ever see him far off and because he's not flashy to watch. This difference between conceptually poor ideas and poorly executed ideas are why there is discussion on how one would go about making the Jailer less dull but there are none on how to improve the role of Baine and Jaina, one of these characters has at least some purpose to the premise, the others don't. Same with Draka - there's a reason why she was met with complete apathy from Day 1, she was always a nothing character and her weight on the plot would always be poor.

[sighy]

Making the world the connecting element instead of the characters and spacing them entirely from the plot frees you up screen time to focus on said world or said intended plot. To put Baine and Sylvanas on the same wavelength on this point is nonsense, as is Tyrande and Jaina. Sylvanas and Tyrande have actual unresolved plot points going into this. We can talk if those were resolved well (the answer is no, surprise surprise), but they do exist. But Thrall, Jaina and the like simply have no purpose to being in this story. They are inherently poor as collective tissue no matter what because they have no emotional or story connection to the goings on and the contortions the plot has to make to its premise to allow them to participate weakens it no matter if it's Tolstoy writing it or Dan Brown.

It's also why the entire criticism regarding the bad guy's lack of motive is deeply tired. Sylvanas sure, she's entirely fucked by how we don't learn her motive until she's already screwed, but the Blue Man wants to kill everyone and take over the world. He tells you this in his very first scene. It's plenty explicit what he means. His problem isn't that his motive isn't clear or even that his motive is 2-dimensional, it's that its effects are abstract because we only ever see him far off and because he's not flashy to watch. This difference between conceptually poor ideas and poorly executed ideas are why there is discussion on how one would go about making the Jailer less dull but there are none on how to improve the role of Baine and Jaina, one of these characters has at least some purpose to the premise, the others don't. Same with Draka - there's a reason why she was met with complete apathy from Day 1, she was always a nothing character and her weight on the plot would always be poor.

@Sondrelk
I agree that leaning down the roster from characters, who have nothing to do with the premise and bring nothing unique to the table would have been a good thing and changing the scenery to somethign familiar would alleviate the going about last minute poorly explained cosmic crap then transitioning to even more last minute cosmic crap, with bald man mumbling about abstract edgy crap, in the background. But, at that point the story would need to be rewritten from the ground up, in order to address the fundamental glaring issues it suffers from.


Zovaal himself both has too much spotlight to be the abstract Sauron kind of villain, but at the same time he is too vague and detatched from anything to be a compelling villain. Making him effectively a halfassed mess, where he doesn't cut it as either of the two kinds of villain.

[Zers Editor]

This is definitely new. Ridiculous, but in a positively mesmerizing way. Hope the rest of the patch will keep this presentation up.

[MikeBogina]

Except he wasn't even remotely ANYONE in charge of what she was trying to change so 100% not like Sylvie. If Sylvanas was the one who made the plan to go to Zereth Mortis you'd have a point. You still don't. None of what you said even remotely lines up and you're just saying it for the sake of saying it. Sylvanas at BEST is B-15 as she was simply recruited to join someone else's plan to fix a broken system. You either didn't watch the MCU or didn't watch WoW to keep insisting that Sylvanas is Sylvie and not realizing the Zovaal is in fact Sylvie.

Yeah you're right, also Sylvie is a Frost Giant and Sylvanas is an undead elf, 100% not the same, what was i thinking.

- - - Updated - - -

On a separate note, the bit about the constructs in the Maw is confirmed. They're melted down souls, with the armor shaped from those who didn't make the cut while the most broken souls get put inside as footsoldiers. The Maw in general suffers the most from the absolutely schizophrenic tone and how abstract it is. Replace the blue faceless ghost with familiar characters who can actually bleed and with backstories, show us the conveyor belt of the factory for someone we know being turned into one of those copy-paste robots with a vista of this being repeated and suddenly this depersonalized damnation is concrete and threatening. The idea and the aesthetic aren't bad, but instead of anchoring it in the world they decided to try and anchor it with characters, to its own detriment. They should've ditched the faction leaders and had the actual worlds overlap.

I would have loved to see this. It's like the concept was there, it would be good but the delivery was just horrible.

Early on, we should have been shown a few souls we know(among ones we dont know) being turned into this metal guys, maybe a cutscene or one of those handholding introduction quests, it would have added a lot more whenever you fight these guys.

Going to the afterlife, I dont want to see faceless copy/paste enemies, i want to see dead characters. We got copy/paste metal men and a bunch of boring living characters shoved in our face at the beginning for them to mean nothing later on. Almost as if they were used to bridge us to the new place and now they're sitting there twiddling their thumbs.

And speaking of bridging us to a new thing, they come up with expansion concepts first, then they try to figure out how we get to that so they pick random characters and throw them at it and tell us to go fetch to get us there. Zovaal is completely new, he's not someone with Arthas/LichKing years of development before WotLK. WotLK i didn't care what major characters were going to Northrend, I was going there to fight Arthas. Shadowlands though, I dont know zovaal or care, so you take characters i know and you think i love(i wish all of them would die) and you come up with some nonsense for them to be used as tools to get me to go to shadowlands to fight this new made up on the spot enemy who can't carry an expansion on his own, aka enter Sylvanas.

So I said this a lot last expansion, Sylvanas the character was used as a tool to get us into BFA, which as a Horde player annoys me that our characters are used in this way. They come up with a concept for an expansion, then they try to figure out how to get us there. BFA was an HvA + Old God expansion, we had one of these before, it was called Mists of Pandaria. To get us there, they wanted 2 cities to get wrecked and chose Sylvanas to do it. Since they're already using her to get us to BFA, might aswell use her to get us to Shadowlands too. In 2 expansions back to back, Sylvanas is used to get us to an expansion and then it's handed off to a big baddie who couldn't carry the expansion on their own, an Old God and some new threat Zovaal.

These characters, who should have developing stories, are sitting around waiting for Blizzard to decide how to use them to get us to the next expansion and really nothing more. The only character they are giving development to is Anduin and that development is copy/paste Arthas onto him. Which is ruining the Arthas for me.


This expansion though, just a waste of a potentially good idea.

[Gloriandus]

I half-expected that construct to say, "User..." at the end.

[TheFirstOnes]

If he's the one making the templates, then it's because he's already himself and doesn't need an inferior version forever reminding him of his balding cranium so he didn't input his data.

Didn't an inferior version already exist prior to his takeover of Zereth Mortis, however? And didn't he fucking hate her existence, alongside the other Eternal Ones' existences for as long as Reality itself, possibly even longer? This dude had to exist with that mockery holding HIS power, his "RIGHTFUL" place within the Shadowlands, in the spitting images of the Creators HE HIMSELF DESPISES for eons, it's only natural he'd want to do the same, but with the other Eternal Ones. Would also rightfully piss off Denathrius, as well, considering he's likely going to the Sepulcher with the idea that Zovaal's simply going to grant him a seat beside him in the remaking of the Cosmic Chart (Powers, Framework, Reality, etc), but unbenounced to him however is that Zovaal was ALWAYS going to replace him, no matter what. Denathrius fulfilled his role, and the Dreadlords still have a role to play, for the moment at least. Denathrius is and always was expendable. The truest deceit lies in ego. Always.

[Sondrelk]

Didn't an inferior version already exist prior to his takeover of Zereth Mortis, however? And didn't he fucking hate her existence, alongside the other Eternal Ones' existences for as long as Reality itself, possibly even longer? This dude had to exist with that mockery holding HIS power, his "RIGHTFUL" place within the Shadowlands, in the spitting images of the Creators HE HIMSELF DESPISES for eons, it's only natural he'd want to do the same, but with the other Eternal Ones. Would also rightfully piss off Denathrius, as well, considering he's likely going to the Sepulcher with the idea that Zovaal's simply going to grant him a seat beside him in the remaking of the Cosmic Chart (Powers, Framework, Reality, etc), but unbenounced to him however is that Zovaal was ALWAYS going to replace him, no matter what. Denathrius fulfilled his role, and the Dreadlords still have a role to play, for the moment at least. Denathrius is and always was expendable. The truest deceit lies in ego. Always.

It should be said that we don't actually know whether Zovaal intends to make a new pantheon to replace the old one, or whether he just activated the forge to ensure we are stopped, or even if he just activated it on a lark.

This pantheon creating machine will be intriguing if it actually gets some explanation. Could be Zovaal intends to make a new pantheon with the blueprints there, could be he creates them from scratch. Could be he isnt even the one that activated the machine, for all we know it could be remaking the Shadowlands from scratch after whatever thing Zovaal did too the forge of afterlives.

[Zers Editor]

Well, if Anduin being present during Sylvanas' judgement is not a red herring and his original king model will be back, then he's going to get his biggest win yet in this expansion.

[Maljinwo]

So... No Vol'jin
meh

However, seeing the quality of the storyline, I think it's better if he never wakes up to this

[Engal]

It should be said that we don't actually know whether Zovaal intends to make a new pantheon to replace the old one, or whether he just activated the forge to ensure we are stopped, or even if he just activated it on a lark.

This pantheon creating machine will be intriguing if it actually gets some explanation. Could be Zovaal intends to make a new pantheon with the blueprints there, could be he creates them from scratch. Could be he isnt even the one that activated the machine, for all we know it could be remaking the Shadowlands from scratch after whatever thing Zovaal did too the forge of afterlives.

There are also the dreadlords eagerly awaiting a new body for Denathrius ^^

[Feanoro]

So... No Vol'jin
meh

However, seeing the quality of the storyline, I think it's better if he never wakes up to this

At this point, people should hope their favorites DON'T get attention from the writers.

[Ersula]

At this point, people should hope their favorites DON'T get attention from the writers.

Absolutely. Dansuer has two modes: Make a character commit genocide or make a character a force ghost.

[Minikin]

It is settled then. Sylvanas will sacrifice herself and make a new world tree for the Night Elves and even give them back their immortality as a treat. Yall better show some gratitude after this.

they turned Xavius into a tree too, long ago.

look how that turned out.

before long ill be leveling up a nightelf in a serene tree killing hapless undead that seem to be sprouting up like weeds due to "corruption"

[MikeBogina]

There are also the dreadlords eagerly awaiting a new body for Denathrius ^^

one thing they could do with him, being the creator of the Dread Lords is to save him for later, as a potential leader of Legion remnants. Former Eternal One now Lord of the Burning Legion.

If they want to keep the Legion relevant in this grander cosmic conflict that's building, have him with his knowledge of the cosmic forces out there lead them to be a threat again(as of right now, the legion was just pawns and ignorant of the greater scope of everything).

[Super Dickmann]

one thing they could do with him, being the creator of the Dread Lords is to save him for later, as a potential leader of Legion remnants. Former Eternal One now Lord of the Burning Legion.

This is a solid pick. Denathrius isn't a blank giant bad man like Sargeras, and while KJ filled much the same niche, he was wasted in Legion and totally neutered. Denny D has panache and putting him and the Dreadlords back in the Legion both combines the benefits of their pre and post-retcon selves and solves the issue both he and Azshara face as recurring antagonists in that their aesthetic and associated minions are limited.

That is of course provided Blizzard aren't morons and don't waste him in a side quest within 9.2.

[Gloriandus]

Might the next expansion be "Azeroth-centered" in that the new zones are the different Zereths that we go to in progressive chapters, with Azeroth as the base? Kind of like the dragon chamber below Wyrmrest Temple. Or, will they do it more "WoW-style" and either a) not bother exploring them/take care of it "off screen" and/or b) have us wrap them up in a couple of End Time-like dungeons.

[sighy]

they turned Xavius into a tree too, long ago.

look how that turned out.

before long ill be leveling up a nightelf in a serene tree killing hapless undead that seem to be sprouting up like weeds due to "corruption"

If only there was a huge black ops prison complex specifically designed to hold powerful dangerous creatures and/or individuals somewhere on Azeroth... hmm