1. #1
    Over 9000! Golden Yak's Avatar
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    If is *IS* the Shadowlands... What would that be like?

    Enough of these bullshit leaks! Let's deal with the hard facts of what we do know before we wonder what might be true. If the next expansion does involve the Shadowlands, what could that mean for we the players?

    TLDR

    Just a few thoughts about what a Shadowlands expansion might entail, premise-wise:

    -New continent to explore (The Shadowlands) with zones themed on various afterlives, from gothic and gloomy to bright and sunny
    -New enemy in the form of the forces of Death in their home realm
    -Possible rematch with various Death-related entities we've seen in the past, i.e. Sylvanas, Arthas, Yogg-Saron, Helya, Bwonsamdi, etc.
    -Patch content could include the planet of Nihilam, the Doom World, where the Titan Pantheon died

    What Are The Shadowlands. Seriously, what are they.

    The Shadowlands are real. They're a thing in WoW lore, and a place that can be traveled to. Technically, we've gone there a bunch already - every time we die for one. A couple times on quests and things where we go to a place that looks like a regular place on Azeroth but its' got a weird blue/grey filter on everything. When you do the Uuna quest (and it was a freaky time for reals).

    And we've been dealing more and more with stuff related to the power of Death, with is one of the heavy hitters on the Warcraft cosmic power chart. It's domain is Necromancy, the Undead, the elemental power of Decay. And the Shadowlands is its power manifested as a realm, like the Emerald Dream is connected with nature, or how the Twisting Nether is associated with Fel, Disorder, and the demon races. Shadowlands is a world with Death as the foundation of everything.

    Shadowlands is the afterlife of the Warcraft universe, more so than any other realm. It's not quite becoming one with the Light, or protecting nature as a wisp bound to the Emerald Dream, or becoming a demon in the Twisting Nether, or being devoured by some eldritch whatever in the Void. It's the grim, gothic, gloomy realm of the dead, full of spirits and ghosts and wraiths and the restless, wandering souls of those who died under bad circumstances.

    What Would it Mean to Explore Them In-Game

    So far we've only seen bits and pieces of the Shadowlands that are basically gloomy reflections of Azeroth. Similar to how the first times we saw the Emerald Dream, it was basically some forested zone in Azeroth with a cloudy green filter on it. If we get the Shadowlands as a new continent to explore, well then odds are low it'll stay that way. But does Shadowlands have the same problem people use to bring up about the Dream? 'How can a whole expansion work if it's just a big forest/graveyard?'

    If Shadowlands is the afterlife of Azeroth, think about what that would entail for zones to explore - there are a lot of people on Azeroth, and they have different beliefs about the afterlife. Why not have them all be true? The Shadowlands could potential encompass many different environments, all based on what different Azerothian races believe about what the afterlife holds. We saw a bit of this in Legion, where the vrykul goddess of death Helya had created a pocket realm within the Shadowlands of broken shipwrecks and enslaved vrykul. The troll loa of death Bwonsamdi might have a slammin' dark voodoo bog where he hangs out when he isn't being summoned to the world of the living. There could also be less gloomy afterlives, more heaven-like realms where benevolent spirits watch over the rest of the noble dead - peaceful forested glades for nature-lovers full of ghost animals, Halls of Valor-esque citadels for brave warriors feasting for eternity, deserts filled with great ancient tombs where the dead sleep eternity away, even some frozen wasteland regions that were influenced by the Lich King.

    It wouldn't be out of the question for the Shadowlands to be a patchwork mash-up of different afterlives for different belief systems. Maybe the more benevolent ones are under attack from some dark force, driving the story forwards and requiring the players to come to their rescue.

    Who could the enemy be?

    We've fought a couple of entities that held noteworthy titles associated with death. Arthas the Lich King for one - he died and his last words were about seeing darkness. Did he cease to exist, or did he fall into the Shadowlands? Yogg-Saron, an Old God claiming to be the God of Death. What did he really mean? Yogg-Saron infested the Emerald Dream with the corruption of the Nightmare, could he have gone to work on infested another realm as well? Helya the vrykul goddess of death was a pretty heavy hitter for a while. A few lore bits here and there hint that she might not be gone for good. Bwonsamdi mentions that he has a 'boss', so we know he at least isn't at the top of the Shadowlands pecking order. Sylvanas has recently shown herself to be well and truly an enemy of the living. Those are just a few possibilities for Death-related enemies that we might come across in the Shadowlands, and that's not counting original enemies we've never seen before.

    Legion lore related to Odyn mentioned that he traded one of his eyes to an entity from the Shadowlands in order to create his val'kyr. Who was this entity? Arthas wouldn't be born for millennia, Yogg-Saron was in jail at the time, and Helya hadn't been made a death goddess yet. Odds are low it was Bwonsamdi. What did this entity want Odyn's eye for, anyway? Odyn needed to give up an eye to look into the realm of the dead, but maybe something is using that eye to look into the realm of the living...

    What could the future hold?

    Expansions like Legion and BFA spilled out from the initial setting to further new regions like Argus and Nazjatar that were introduced in patches. How could a Shadowlands expansion do something similar? Beyond adding new regions of the Realm of the Dead to explore, which might be enough, there's one planet in the Warcraft cosmology that may be more stepped in death than any other - Nihilam, the Doom World.

    Nihilam is where Sargeras betrayed the Titans and slew them. The souls of the Titans were revived, but they have yet to regain their original power and colossal size and remain in smaller bodies - their original planet-sized were destroyed around Nihilam, suffusing it with cosmic energies due to their demise.

    Imagine what an entity of Death could do if it seized control of an entire planet full of colossal Titan corpses. A patch zone set on Nihilam would also look spectacular - a skyline filled with giant corpses of stone, twisted hands and screaming broken faces representing the bodies of the slain Titans. Any Death entity would want to resurrect such corpses as undead, giving them a fantastic army of colossal unstoppable proportions. Cosmic forces have tried and failed to destroy or corrupt the living Titan within Azeroth, but maybe the forces of Death would be more interested in the corpses of dead Titans.


    Gonna be fun to find out in... just like a week and a half, yeah!

  2. #2
    And this couldn't have been posted in the dozens and dozens of "leak" threads?
    Goodbye-Forever-MMO-Champ
    Quote Originally Posted by HighlordJohnstone View Post
    Alleria's whispers start climaxing

  3. #3
    Over 9000! Golden Yak's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pebrocks The Warlock View Post
    And this couldn't have been posted in the dozens and dozens of "leak" threads?
    No.

    It couldn't have.

  4. #4
    The Lightbringer gutnbrg's Avatar
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    IF is IS...

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Golden Yak View Post
    No.

    It couldn't have.
    Why? Because you feel your opinion on fakes is important enough for another useless leak thread??
    Goodbye-Forever-MMO-Champ
    Quote Originally Posted by HighlordJohnstone View Post
    Alleria's whispers start climaxing

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