Lordaeron/Teldrassil - Missed Opportunity?

[Niroshi]

But the Horde wouldn't agree with it. That's why it's inconsitent. In reality half of the Horde would have been in uproar. The Horde haven't been some villanous force since Warcraft 2

Bro the Horde did agree with it. Sylvanas in 8.2 is stated to enjoy majority support among the Horde's population, I'm pretty sure it's Lor'themar that says this. The rebellion was an unpopular political minority that was supported by their literal enemy. They won entirely because Sylvanas turned into a dunce for a minute and said the quiet part out loud because she got a little bit mad then flew away.

[Kithelle]

Do you think Blizzard missed an opportunity in having the attack on Lordaeron occur after Teldrassil as opposed to the other way round? Personally I feel it would have made for a more compelling story had Greymane convince Anduin to retake Lordaeron and Gilneas which would then lead to an enraged Sylvanas to burn Teldrassil in retaliation since the kal'dorei aided Gilneans. What's your opinion?

May have made for interesting story but it wouldn't fit into the story they were trying to tell, Sylvanas's goal wasn't to take Teldrassil but to just kill as many as possible. She attacked because she knew there would be a response

[Sondrelk]

Bro the Horde did agree with it. Sylvanas in 8.2 is stated to enjoy majority support among the Horde's population, I'm pretty sure it's Lor'themar that says this. The rebellion was an unpopular political minority that was supported by their literal enemy. They won entirely because Sylvanas turned into a dunce for a minute and said the quiet part out loud because she got a little bit mad then flew away.

Again, it is the devs wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
They both want Sylvanas to be the unquestioned evil of the world with legions of loyal Horde at her beck and call, but also for the Horde to be innocent bystanders between Sylvanas' genocidal campaign and the Alliance's slapdash sense of justice.

Either Blizzard needed to admit the Horde were evil and go for a redemption arc, or they needed to have them oust Sylvanas immediately and then make it about whether the Alliance is justified in still going after them.

[Hctaz]

The morally gray thing might have been the biggest piece of bullshit spouted by the devs. The second Sylvanas burned down Teldrassil it was clear to everyone that the Horde was evil and the Alliance good for opposing them, and this painted the entire expansion in a bad light.
Is Jaina agonizing over letting daelin die despite him seeming a tyrant for wanting genocide? Teldrassil shows they might be irredeemable monsters afterall.
Is The Alliance justified in attacking the Zandalari, a seemingly neutral party? Not when they harbor known tyrants and allow their ports to be used as staging grounds.
Is Saurfang right about the Horde being iredeemable? All evidence points to yes.

In many ways the writers did absolutely everything wrong in BfA if they wanted to paint it as a morally gray conflict. For one they have shockingly little introspection from the Horde on how this is the third time they blindly accepted a tyrant going around genociding.

Oh yeah 100%. That's why I think so many people were "fooled" by Sylvanas' true nature. I also was in the boat of giving her more benefit than I should have simply because the devs were just hard pressed on this whole "morally gray" thing. It was either total bullshit or a situation where they changed the direction of the story midway through and after they had announced this morally gray thing.

[cparle87]

The whole thing made perfect sense honestly and wasn't an act of aggression. Right from the onset of the Azerite mining, the Alliance was the aggressor like "AMG HORDE CAN'T!" and started in on them. The goblins found it and were mining it and then they got attacked so she staged a false attack to draw away the closest source of contest. The actual hit on the tree was spite sure, but the attack was warranted. Everyone loves to ignore that the alliance was the one to draw first blood.

- - - Updated - - -



Yeah people seem to act like Wrathion got the Lei Shen power but chronologically Jaina got either the same or a reasonable portion in her staff. Lei Shen LITERALLY puts it in the dais on the ground and uses it during and she says power it from where you are. If both were done at the same time she took more as the body was there

This. Far as we know all Wrathion got was a glimmer of power that gave him a momentary vision of Azeroth's world soul that he wasn't even able to remember after. Jaina got whatever leftover power. I mean just look at what she did in the Dazar'alor raid. The entire goddamned city would've been covered in multiple feet of ice if she'd done it there instead of out at sea... That's a scary though. Jaina could teleport in, ice a capital city at any time and we probably couldn't do anything.

[Verdugo]

This. Far as we know all Wrathion got was a glimmer of power that gave him a momentary vision of Azeroth's world soul that he wasn't even able to remember after. Jaina got whatever leftover power. I mean just look at what she did in the Dazar'alor raid. The entire goddamned city would've been covered in multiple feet of ice if she'd done it there instead of out at sea... That's a scary though. Jaina could teleport in, ice a capital city at any time and we probably couldn't do anything.

Too bad that Jaina no longer had that staff, so its still bullshit.

[Razion]

I do think negative reception to Sylvanas would have been lessened if as a whole the Forsaken had been retaliating and had been angry for a sacking of Undercity. I think on the whole the attack on Teldrassil, while still horrifying and a senseless genocide would at least at that point maybe have the possibility of being viewed as an act of war rather than a tragedy. But I think the entire point of the moment is that it would be a tragedy and that it would build all that emotion and discourse - they kind of leaned into that with the whole shattering of the Lich King helm and everything recently so I think the angle really was just to get people angry and talking about it more.

I do personally think it would have been a little reassuring that people could maybe try and discuss who was in the right over the event for a little while, but a really long-drawn-out discourse over Teldrassil years later and years later without anyone agreeing and only leading to more arguments and discourse and more flames of hatred would probably also have been exhausting. In the long haul it probably is better for the evil side to be defined so readily and for the debate as it were to be over so readily. Were Sylvanas to have been siding with the Forsaken in an act of vengeance it may also have seem kind of one-note for them -- as if vengeance is all they're ever about or something. There's also the added wrinkle that if Genn and Anduin had led the charge on Undercity and since in this situation it would have gone poorly and the retaliation of Teldrassil being burned would have then maybe demanded that the Night Elves be angry at the Alliance. And then people may ask if the Night Elves should stay in the Alliance at all... and that kind of angle, splintering the Alliance like that, would be pretty unsettling for different reasons. They both lead down pretty negative roads - which I guess again, is probably the entire point to fuel the rage of war in a war themed expansion, but as someone who just likes to speculate and theorize about lore the community splintering over itself and hating all over its own faction I can frankly do without... especially considering the Alliance has had a penchant for hating itself for a long time which would probably also would have been pretty tone deaf and one-note as well.

It would have been different. I'm not sure if it would have been better for the community, for the players, if it was done this way. Story-wise preferences could lean either way really, for different reasons, but I think ultimately I prefer this situation. Though, granted the reception of characters like Nathanos not representing a bright future for the Forsaken in the absence of Sylvanas makes things less good going forward but that's a bit unrelated and another can of worms. The future of Sylvanas and whether she could even continue as Warchief in the future will probably still pend whatever dynamic results we see in SL, but as far as things stand in BFA it doesn't look like the Forsaken players or people who like Forsaken lore could be too optimistic about where things are going for them. But at least they are involved in the story right now, which is surely better than the non-involvement of other player character races. So I guess there's that.

[ohwell]

Too bad that Jaina no longer had that staff, so its still bullshit.

What happened to it?

[NorthernDragon]

Bro the Horde did agree with it. Sylvanas in 8.2 is stated to enjoy majority support among the Horde's population, I'm pretty sure it's Lor'themar that says this. The rebellion was an unpopular political minority that was supported by their literal enemy. They won entirely because Sylvanas turned into a dunce for a minute and said the quiet part out loud because she got a little bit mad then flew away.

I know they did agree with it and I am saying it's inconsistent to the Horde that was written before

- - - Updated - - -

-snip-

I mean Nathanos is likely getting killed before SL and Calia & Lilian are leading the Forsaken

[Super Dickmann]

It would have been different. I'm not sure if it would have been better for the community, for the players, if it was done this way. Story-wise preferences could lean either way really, for different reasons, but I think ultimately I prefer this situation. Though, granted the reception of characters like Nathanos not representing a bright future for the Forsaken in the absence of Sylvanas makes things less good going forward but that's a bit unrelated and another can of worms. The future of Sylvanas and whether she could even continue as Warchief in the future will probably still pend whatever dynamic results we see in SL, but as far as things stand in BFA it doesn't look like the Forsaken players or people who like Forsaken lore could be too optimistic about where things are going for them. But at least they are involved in the story right now, which is surely better than the non-involvement of other player character races. So I guess there's that.

The main problem with the Forsaken narrative, besides everything in BTS that is, is that there's no way to properly frame the conflict in Teldrassil as being proportionate or even relevant because the Forsaken have no preexisting conflict or tie with the night elves whatsoever. They barely ever meet, let alone fight, they have histories which don't intersect at any point backstory-wise, and live on an entirely separate continent. If you do every single Forsaken-related quest in Eastern Kingdoms I doubt you'd meet a single hostile night elf. If you play Night elf, you can meet some Forsaken fodder in Ashenvale and kill them, but that's part of a much, much larger campaign against orcs. It is the orcs who's story has a heavy focus on Ashenvale due to border disputes and resources, it's been a thing for ages. It's why focusing on Saurfang for it and having a near absence of Forsaken except Sylvanas and Nathanos themselves in War of Thorns was a right call. It's also why the Darkshore Warfront is so limp as undead - it has nothing to do with much of anything you've been doing and you're fighting people who you have no preexisting tie or beef with up until a patch ago. The order of the two capitals being destroyed doesn't matter regarding the Forsaken storyline because it has nothing to do with the Forsaken.

Indeed, very little in BFA has much to do with the Forsaken as a people, as much as Sylvanas is constantly talked about. The loss of Lordaeron, the whole focus of their beef with humanity, is glanced over. None of them oppose Sylvanas except newly raised characters that have fuck all of the baggage associated and exist solely to die to beef up Baine. Fuck all of their extant cast from previous zones is there because any mention of them would break Calia and to a lesser extent Voss's story wide-open in how out of place they are with the race. At the end of it all, Calia doesn't even take them over on-screen but is already in charge by the time Shadows Rising starts with nary a comment and their existing chain of comment is supplanted by Voss, who wasn't even part of the Forsaken political entity until BFA. The Night Elves' demolition was more spectacular and on-going, but the Forsaken one was thorough and entirely apathetic to pretty much all aspects of the race. In the span of it, once you've removed undeath as having any effect except the cosmetic, removed their conflict with the Alliance as being entirely the result of deception by Sylvanas, removed their entire prior supporting cast, their racial leader and the only character of theirs they bothered to focus on - Nathanos, there's not much for them to do. They shouldn't even be Horde in their current incarnation or, from a story sense, exist given there's nothing left for them to do, but gameplay necessitates they fester on the roster.

[Sondrelk]

The problem with Teldrassil and such is in a sense the problem with BfA as a whole. Individual moments in the faction war barely gets their chance to shine when they have to share space with a somewhat equal reaction immediately after.

Teldrassil was a horrific event, and possibly one of the most impactful moments in the game, certainly one fo teh most haunting quests. However immediately after we get the Battle for Lordaeron, which isnt terrible, but really only seems to serve to take the wind out of Teldrassil. Same with what was ostensibly the Alliance counterattack patch 8.1, where the moral ambiguity is more confused than profound.

As I have said before, what Blizzard really should have done is make the Battle for Lordaeron the 8.1 raid instead of Dazar'alor, thereby allowing Teldrassil time to breathe, and also putting much more emphasis on the Alliance retaliation on Undercity.

Though then again, if we are changing stuff about BfA then this is one of the lesser problems, a far bigger one is how the Faction war stories and Old God stories do not mesh at all, leaving you feeling like the expansion is composed of two different ones stitched haphazardly together.

[NorthernDragon]

The problem with Teldrassil and such is in a sense the problem with BfA as a whole. Individual moments in the faction war barely gets their chance to shine when they have to share space with a somewhat equal reaction immediately after.

Teldrassil was a horrific event, and possibly one of the most impactful moments in the game, certainly one fo teh most haunting quests. However immediately after we get the Battle for Lordaeron, which isnt terrible, but really only seems to serve to take the wind out of Teldrassil. Same with what was ostensibly the Alliance counterattack patch 8.1, where the moral ambiguity is more confused than profound.

As I have said before, what Blizzard really should have done is make the Battle for Lordaeron the 8.1 raid instead of Dazar'alor, thereby allowing Teldrassil time to breathe, and also putting much more emphasis on the Alliance retaliation on Undercity.

Though then again, if we are changing stuff about BfA then this is one of the lesser problems, a far bigger one is how the Faction war stories and Old God stories do not mesh at all, leaving you feeling like the expansion is composed of two different ones stitched haphazardly together.

I mean I don't really know why Blizzard even felt like a faction conflict plot was needed considering how little of BfA was about it and especially since they knew it would lead to Old God shenanigans. To me BFA felt like multiple writers writing multiple plots with no real feasible conclusion.

[Razion]

The main problem with the Forsaken narrative, besides everything in BTS that is, is that there's no way to properly frame the conflict in Teldrassil as being proportionate or even relevant because the Forsaken have no preexisting conflict or tie with the night elves whatsoever. They barely ever meet, let alone fight, they have histories which don't intersect at any point backstory-wise, and live on an entirely separate continent. If you do every single Forsaken-related quest in Eastern Kingdoms I doubt you'd meet a single hostile night elf. If you play Night elf, you can meet some Forsaken fodder in Ashenvale and kill them, but that's part of a much, much larger campaign against orcs. It is the orcs who's story has a heavy focus on Ashenvale due to border disputes and resources, it's been a thing for ages. It's why focusing on Saurfang for it and having a near absence of Forsaken except Sylvanas and Nathanos themselves in War of Thorns was a right call. It's also why the Darkshore Warfront is so limp as undead - it has nothing to do with much of anything you've been doing and you're fighting people who you have no preexisting tie or beef with up until a patch ago. The order of the two capitals being destroyed doesn't matter regarding the Forsaken storyline because it has nothing to do with the Forsaken.

Indeed, very little in BFA has much to do with the Forsaken as a people, as much as Sylvanas is constantly talked about. The loss of Lordaeron, the whole focus of their beef with humanity, is glanced over. None of them oppose Sylvanas except newly raised characters that have fuck all of the baggage associated and exist solely to die to beef up Baine. Fuck all of their extant cast from previous zones is there because any mention of them would break Calia and to a lesser extent Voss's story wide-open in how out of place they are with the race. At the end of it all, Calia doesn't even take them over on-screen but is already in charge by the time Shadows Rising starts with nary a comment and their existing chain of comment is supplanted by Voss, who wasn't even part of the Forsaken political entity until BFA. The Night Elves' demolition was more spectacular and on-going, but the Forsaken one was thorough and entirely apathetic to pretty much all aspects of the race. In the span of it, once you've removed undeath as having any effect except the cosmetic, removed their conflict with the Alliance as being entirely the result of deception by Sylvanas, removed their entire prior supporting cast, their racial leader and the only character of theirs they bothered to focus on - Nathanos, there's not much for them to do. They shouldn't even be Horde in their current incarnation or, from a story sense, exist given there's nothing left for them to do, but gameplay necessitates they fester on the roster.

I pretty much agree with all of that. I think the decision to make Night Elves vs Forsaken was a Life vs Death theme, which on the magic side of things works and sets up a nice set of polarizing forces which was probably meant to synergize with Shadowlands. They may have been worried about conflicts eroding like Arthas' did, so as far as Night Elves vs Forsaken go, the Forsaken are kind of abominations of nature and so inherently aren't going to go away with the death of one person so the conflict would be able to stay around perpetually. The Worgen have previous beef with the Forsaken but again like Arthas the threat would maybe die out if say someone like Genn died and there wasn't anyone else to pick up the torch. And although the Forsaken had Worgen in Silverpine to create a stigma for them, the innate rivalry with Worgen as just a species is less self-evident and hasn't been reinforced much over the years which otherwise on a base level of zombies vs werewolves is pretty cool for different reasons and maybe yeah a bit of a missed opportunity if they had managed to figure out the successor problem. People need to die for the conflicts to have stakes, and if the important people never get touched it could be seen as maybe like main characters have invincibility, but at the same time if they always had offspring to come along ready at the time of their death maybe relationships would be getting forced at that point. The answer to that may have been to just make up someone to come up out of nowhere and take over, or to use other NPCs that were building up in importance so that between the two it wouldn't be so obvious how conflicts are succeeding. There was probably also a tie-in with Legion Nightborne and Night Elves being recently involved as a tie-in having something to do with it in terms of stories more organically leading into one another. But really it's probably just that Night Elves were cool and maybe they hadn't gotten story for a while since Mists or WoD really that they ended up getting focus rather than Worgen, who were introduced in Cata and maybe didn't have some stiffing like Night Elves did in maybe Wrath. (And heck, Worgen technically have story in Wrath, even.)

As far as the war itself goes, or the theming of Life vs Death anyway, kind of fell apart in the battle itself, though. Instead of seeing Life magic fight Death magic, we didn't really see a lot of that theming. It kind of ended up being a very militant kind of war strictly about strategy and siege warfare and soldiers than anything else - which works for some stories, like the one Metzen did with Tirion and Eitrigg, or in Wolfheart with Garrosh -- but these stories are more about soldiers, like Warriors and Paladins and less to do with things like Druids and maybe Necromancers like Night Elves and Forsaken would probably represent with characters like Malfurion vs Helcular or Gunther. The conflict seems to entirely side-step Gunther's Retreat on the greater map, so maybe that was intentional. Helcular recently was involved in the Pre-Legion Invasions, so it may have been good to see him continue forward after that to be brought in for the Battle for Undercity, but maybe they're trying to save the two for after Sylvanas - they may feel they need alternatives incase it doesn't fit the story for her to come back and the Forsaken doesn't really have spare main characters everywhere barring Calia and Nathanos (who annoyingly aren't Forsaken, visually). With how there was theming of Blight being used to raise undead it seems like Necromancers siding with a Dark Ranger aspect of Sylvanas may have reinforced the Life vs Death magic theme a bit more cohesively. But maybe they were trying to make the future of an expansion like Shadowlands less obvious to predict.

In terms of the Scourge before SL, there was maybe potential with the Helm destroyed that someone like Kel'Thuzad could have stepped up to resume control of the Scourge and resume the conflict of the Forsaken with the Scourge. But part of the problem may have been that they wanted to go somewhere completely new so that players would have a sense of walking into a place they didn't already know everything about and if Kel'Thuzad suddenly comes back and he's meant to be in charge while everyone is in the Shadowlands it probably would've not only been seen as Kel'Thuzad being invincible with yet another resurrection but also they had the opportunity to have him there, dead, in the Shadowlands, so maybe just decided it better to utilize him there so that by the time SL is over the logistics of whether Kel would or would not have taken over Azeroth with the Scourge didn't have to be worried about which seems to me to indicate that at least isn't happening. Yet, the Lich King is still around and Bolvar was being increasingly if not evil, menacing, so it seems like that was raring up to turn into something for them. Yet, with his status as guide in SL it isn't really clear where the Forsaken vs Scourge conflict is going to go in the future unless Kel ends up playing a significant detractor there. It would probably have to be Kel because of not only Arthas' maw status but also how Bolvar ties to Death Knights and the Ebon Blade, so maybe it was seen as kind of messy with Bolvar because maybe conflict with him would result in needing to reevaluate how DKs start again in addition to how the Ebon Blade relates to the Forsaken and how player DKs can be trusted.

And yeah, to the point of proper Forsaken characters getting emphasized it does seem like Belmont and Voss have been the primary Forsaken characters lately, barring maybe Alonsus Faol and Barthalomew kind of existing in the background. But because they belong to neutral organizations and didn't seem to take much action lately it doesn't seem like they're prone to do much in SL, but are maybe in a position to mean something for the reorganization of the Forsaken in a post-SL world.

[Sondrelk]

I pretty much agree with all of that. I think the decision to make Night Elves vs Forsaken was a Life vs Death theme, which on the magic side of things works and sets up a nice set of polarizing forces which was probably meant to synergize with Shadowlands. They may have been worried about conflicts eroding like Arthas' did, so as far as Night Elves vs Forsaken go, the Forsaken are kind of abominations of nature and so inherently aren't going to go away with the death of one person so the conflict would be able to stay around perpetually. The Worgen have previous beef with the Forsaken but again like Arthas the threat would maybe die out if say someone like Genn died and there wasn't anyone else to pick up the torch. And although the Forsaken had Worgen in Silverpine to create a stigma for them, the innate rivalry with Worgen as just a species is less self-evident and hasn't been reinforced much over the years which otherwise on a base level of zombies vs werewolves is pretty cool for different reasons and maybe yeah a bit of a missed opportunity if they had managed to figure out the successor problem. People need to die for the conflicts to have stakes, and if the important people never get touched it could be seen as maybe like main characters have invincibility, but at the same time if they always had offspring to come along ready at the time of their death maybe relationships would be getting forced at that point. The answer to that may have been to just make up someone to come up out of nowhere and take over, or to use other NPCs that were building up in importance so that between the two it wouldn't be so obvious how conflicts are succeeding. There was probably also a tie-in with Legion Nightborne and Night Elves being recently involved as a tie-in having something to do with it in terms of stories more organically leading into one another. But really it's probably just that Night Elves were cool and maybe they hadn't gotten story for a while since Mists or WoD really that they ended up getting focus rather than Worgen, who were introduced in Cata and maybe didn't have some stiffing like Night Elves did in maybe Wrath. (And heck, Worgen technically have story in Wrath, even.)

Again, I think the problem here is that Teldrassil and Forsaken are heavily tied to the faction war, while the expansion ended solely with Old Gods.
Had Blizzard stuck to Faction War then we could ahve had a smoother transition into Shadowlands as well seeing as the final raid might have dealt more with Sylvanas.

[Razion]

Again, I think the problem here is that Teldrassil and Forsaken are heavily tied to the faction war, while the expansion ended solely with Old Gods.
Had Blizzard stuck to Faction War then we could ahve had a smoother transition into Shadowlands as well seeing as the final raid might have dealt more with Sylvanas.

I mean, there is something to be said of maybe being worried about sticking to the same theme for too long. WoD stuck with orcs for most of the expansion. And faction war stories can be pretty divisive. People seem to be asking for the PvP story, but at the time of making BFA they may not have been so confident that everyone would have been welcome to it. People constantly argue over bringing the war back in Warcraft and also that the faction war can be forced or that there's too much of it so striking a balance is understandably really hard to gauge and I think having a situation where people end up wanting more faction war rather than being sick of it is a better spot to end on in BFA so I think they made the right call ultimately even if in hindsight there may have been a want for more.

[Icelin]

Again, I think the problem here is that Teldrassil and Forsaken are heavily tied to the faction war, while the expansion ended solely with Old Gods.
Had Blizzard stuck to Faction War then we could ahve had a smoother transition into Shadowlands as well seeing as the final raid might have dealt more with Sylvanas.

Yes it would've been. Unfortunately I heard a lot of people that were dissatisfied with a faction war being a main focus of an expansion. I even see people push no more faction barrier the past couple of years. Maybe they actually listened and we got the jumbled mess of BFA. I really enjoy the N'zoth and Azshara stuff (so I was happy with 8.2) but I was never against faction war. I think it would've been fun to have other areas to receive updates/warfronts. One of the activities I did enjoy about BFA was the Warfronts.

They tried to fit too much in and it was obvious. So it ended up having shortcomings on both ends.

As for no more faction barrier. I understand where people are coming from.(Story perspective) Still I would probably look at the game like it was significantly dying. When that happens because of PVP.

[cuafpr]

eh,i don't think andiun would have done it... but instead of magic boat having the spaceship from the army of light swoop would have made more sense and could address that elephant in the room for the faction war. Either it gets destroyed or drains its energy blasting the wall. Jaina could still pop in and save the day telaporting the leaders out at the last minute in the throne room.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What happened to it?

Too bad that Jaina no longer had that staff, so its still bullshit.

She still has the staff it just got an HD update with the rest of her.

it got a design update and then another for bfa to make it tied to kul tiras.

[cparle87]

Too bad that Jaina no longer had that staff, so its still bullshit.

She still has the staff, it's just gotten two model updates since then.

[InfiniteCharger]

IMO they didn't do faction war because the game isn't really built for that kind of gameplay.

For example, the AI in Lordaeron and Stormwind (or any faction base) is that if you attack the NPC guards spawn infinitely until you stop coming back. That is about as far as Blizzard got in doing an actual in game "war" engine.

Not to mention they never figured out how to have a lot of people in one place, doing anything, without lag.
And now with sharding and cross realm zones, trying to have a real in game all out war is pointless.

And on top of that, a true faction war expansion would be another cataclysm like world revamp as stuff gets blown up and destroyed.
Sure, it would be fun, and they could definitely have used that time to really make the story flow better, but they probably saw downsides with it.
So they went off to a new area of Azeroth separate from the old world and avoided the hassle of all of the above.


So nothing about the faction war could be done justice which is why it is all done as scenarios.


That said, I wouldn't be shocked if they kinda merged the concepts for three separate expansions into one because it sure seems like they did.
Maybe they werent able to come up with enough ideas to do any one of them justice......