(Spoiler) Kil’jaeden and the Shadowlands

[FuxieDK]

The Astral Sea is the Astral Plane. It's commonly referred to as the Astral Sea because it's often described as a never ending ocean of ethereal mists and starlight. That said, it's a realm of thought so what it actually looks like is more-or-less up to the imagination.

Ahh...

Makes sense why I couldn't find it on the pic then.

[Niwes]

There's no "greed". It's maximizing profits.

ok, i try it also here again:

replace greed with „really really REALLY wanna maximizing profit, even when the next quarter numbers just get pressed out another 0,5% more profit, regardless what it takes and how it its done and what is done with the game to reach that goal. as long as the next quarter numbers are higher than the last, everything else do not matter. or such stuff.“

better ?

[Mehrunes]

I know people hate retcon but honestly, I'm ok with it if it's sparingly or used to better a story. If you made a bad decision for your story years ago, you don't double down on it. You're allowed as a writer to be able to go back and say "look, this sounded good when I first wrote it but I didn't account for X or Y years later. It would make more sense if instead of events A and B going like that, events A and B went like this to lead up to event C."

There have been some retcons that I'm not too thrilled with, but there were some that I would have agreed with if I was a writer.

Why wouldn't you double down to it? Own up to your mistakes as a writer. Shitting the bed with retcons doesn't remove the bad, it only adds to it. In more way than one. First, it replaces one problem with another, i.e. by making your story an inconsistent trainwreck.

Secondly, it just drives people's attention to the original bad decision, when previously they may not have noticed it at all. It's a giant "look what a fuckup I created" sign that only lowers your crediblity. And if the only solution to it your talentless ass can think of is a fucking retcon, you create a second sign, one that says "look at what a fuckup I am", right next to it.

Because contrary to what the sloppy mess that passes for writing in the standard-less company that is Blizzard may indicate, usually it's actually possible to rectify a poor storytelling decision without throwing out the baby out with the bathwater. And in cases it isn't, you can just always let that aspect of the story go.

Case in point, just look at this situation. What exactly does the fact that Nathrezim stole the Lich King memorabilia from Shadowlands instead of making it themselves actually achieve? Adds background to the Lich King? We already had that kind of background, as such this only replaces what we had instead of being added value. By tying the Lich King to Shadowland's story? Already done in other ways. By tying the Legion to Shadowland's story? Does the Legion actually play a part in the expansion? If not, then this element of the story serves no point. So where's the "to better the story" part here? The answer is there isn't one. It's just "wouldn't it be so KEWL if we did that, established lore be damned because we don't give a flying fuck" mentality that has plagued Blizzard for years.

And even that aside, why couldn't it be achieved in another way? Would it really make a tremendous difference if what we learned was not that the Dreadlords stole the items themselves from the Shadowlands, but the knowledge how to create it? Or forced a denizen of the realm to teach them, be it with coercion or outright enslavement? Both those options serve the same overall storytelling purpose, create the same kind of Legion vs Shadowlands conflict yet don't actually retcon previous lore that explicitly states it's the Nathrezim that forged the Frostmourne.

What's more, option 2B (i.e. enslavement) even plays off of the Dreadlord's established penchant for necromancy, which makes the whole thing even more fleshed out while staying consistent and as such makes it look more organic and less of an after-the-fact thought. Hell, you could go even further with that and explain how it's events like that that created the need for Shadowlands to have the Maldraxxus army.