Shadowlands doesn't feel like Warcraft

[Dhrizzle]

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

Well yeah, did you miss the parts of the game where we get involved in a fight between cosmic entities responsible for ordering and messing up the universe?

[haiyken]

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.

Wait... What ? Outland is far more bizarre than the Shadowlands compared to the Vanilla experience. A swamp with giant mushrooms with a giant engine in the middle. Mountains with spikes, spikes and spikes everywhere. A shattered purple land with eco-domes run by being made of energy. I do agree that there is a disconnect between core Warcraft environnements/fauna/flora and the Shadowlands, but we already had a lot of strange settings in past expansions and it was weird then too. I personnally like the scifi-fantasy stuff, but even I was taken aback when going through the Dark Portal for the first time in TBC.

If anything, I think the Shadowlands is not alien enough, and it's the fact that zones are too similar to IRL archetypes that's a shame. While I think the zone is great to play in, Revendreth doesn't make sense to me as being in the afterlife. It's the only zone in Shadowlands with that much architecture and the feeling of a civilization with real people, a class system, food and leisure. It feels disconnected from the other zones where the "mission" is at the center of everything (the temples in Bastion, the houses in Maldraxxus and the groves in Ardenweald).

I'm personally sad that the Shadowlands are not really connected to mortal races beliefs, meaning that "glimpses" beyond death didn't really make it to the realm of the living and inspire beliefs. The only exception is the Halls of Valor, but Odin is basically a thief, so... I think the disconnect we experience with the Shadowlands stem from that. Blizzard decided to make an all encompassing afterlive, working with all of reality, even parallel dimension, other planets, etc. It's really difficult to feel "at home" where all of it is so new. Putting past characters in the mix helps only so much, in my opinion.

It's then weird that the Shadowlands feels so much like reality while not really looking like anything we know. We'll see in the end if their decision to make the afterlife this "machine" was a good idea. I would have loved to explore a more spiritual world along with known spiritual races like Trolls and Taurens, or even see how believers in the Light could have been "snatched" by the Light from the Shadowlands because of their devotion, etc. So many things to do, building on existing lore. Well, it is what it is...

[Lakrin]

Previous expansions all added new places and creatures, but they brought existing elements there as well. You would find the classic races of Azeroth building settlements there, you'd see murlocs, goblin towns, human castles and so on.
Shadowlands doesn't have any of that. It's all completely different to the point where it feels like I'm playing some chinese knockoff of wow.
Even the loading screen looks more like something out of Narnia and that movie sucked.
Also, the fact that they added a bunch of existing characters that just sit in a corner in Oribos doesn't help.

This is my main gripe with the expansion and wanted to ask if anyone feels the same way.

I'm with you in that it has felt disconnected from WoW, but I think that was an intentional decision. We are supposed to feel out of our element and cut off from the familiar. We have crossed into the realm of Death itself. If we had Alliance/Horde settlements cropping up, I think it would entirely ruin this the point.

Don't worry, we'll be back to that sort of thing again, probably next expansion. For now, let's visit some old friends and thrash some new foes (and some old ones, too).

[huth]

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.

Frankly, anybody who thinks Dredgers are meant to be Dwarf knockoffs isn't paying attention to the theme of the zone. I just call them Igors because... well, you know.

[Army Dreamer]

Shadowlands doesn't feel like Warcraft

Because it is not.

[Nerovar]

I'm personally sad that the Shadowlands are not really connected to mortal races beliefs, meaning that "glimpses" beyond death didn't really make it to the realm of the living and inspire beliefs. The only exception is the Halls of Valor, but Odin is basically a thief, so... I think the disconnect we experience with the Shadowlands stem from that. Blizzard decided to make an all encompassing afterlive, working with all of reality, even parallel dimension, other planets, etc. It's really difficult to feel "at home" where all of it is so new. Putting past characters in the mix helps only so much, in my opinion.

It's then weird that the Shadowlands feels so much like reality while not really looking like anything we know. We'll see in the end if their decision to make the afterlife this "machine" was a good idea. I would have loved to explore a more spiritual world along with known spiritual races like Trolls and Taurens, or even see how believers in the Light could have been "snatched" by the Light from the Shadowlands because of their devotion, etc. So many things to do, building on existing lore. Well, it is what it is...

The sad thing is that Shadowlands ruined all posibilities that we will see any of those aspects explored in the future. That's the fundamental issue with Shadowlands. Instead of creating something that is inspired by things that were teased and alluded to in the lore of the game for years, they tried to create some blank slate story that is fundamentally disconnected from the rest of the lore and wouldn't even be recognizable as 'Warcraft' if it weren't for the familiar faces they threw into the story.
It just seems incredibly wasteful to me.

[Dhrizzle]

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.

Here's the thing with Lord of the Rings - once you get past that story and deeper into the lore you find out that men and elves are children of (basically) God who sang the cosmos into being and the key distinction between them is men are taken beyond the world when they die, whereas the elves dwell in their halls of the dead and can return. The War of the Ring is essentially the last tiny sub-battle of a conflict that began in higher planes before life and matter had come into being, that the world itself had been the battleground of godly beings in the ages past and Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron and the Balrog are all physical incarnations of lesser gods or angelic beings. It doesn't go fully extra-dimensional like Planescape but you can see how even these ideas develop from Tolkien.

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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....

Yes but MoP was set on a different continent and had different races with different architecture. If you ignore the fact that Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms also have different races with different architecture you'll see it makes perfect sense that MoP doesn't fit in with WoW.

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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.

I'm using the term "heaven" to mean "afterlife place," not necessarily in a way that means a reward for being a good example of the class.

The Emerald Dream wasn't exactly a "heaven" in Classic, it was a copy of Azeroth in case the Titans ever need to restore it to an earlier state. What Shadowlands shows is they likely tapped in to or copied Ardenweald to create it.

Bastion and its concentration on duty means it's the place that "good" or "pure" Paladins should go to when they die, it doesn't mean it has the exact same power source rather it follows a similar discipline.

The connection between Maldraxxus and Necromancy should be obvious, the Scourge and other undead forces are almost exact copies of what we find there including Liches which are a sort of Necromancer final-form.

The vampiric nature of the Venthyr is echoed several times in WoW by various forms of crack-elves in TBC and Legion as well as vampiric demons and undead. I intended to put that in my original post but apparently forgot.

[belicus]

Wait... What ? Outland is far more bizarre than the Shadowlands compared to the Vanilla experience. A swamp with giant mushrooms with a giant engine in the middle. Mountains with spikes, spikes and spikes everywhere. A shattered purple land with eco-domes run by being made of energy. I do agree that there is a disconnect between core Warcraft environnements/fauna/flora and the Shadowlands, but we already had a lot of strange settings in past expansions and it was weird then too. I personnally like the scifi-fantasy stuff, but even I was taken aback when going through the Dark Portal for the first time in TBC.

If anything, I think the Shadowlands is not alien enough, and it's the fact that zones are too similar to IRL archetypes that's a shame. While I think the zone is great to play in, Revendreth doesn't make sense to me as being in the afterlife. It's the only zone in Shadowlands with that much architecture and the feeling of a civilization with real people, a class system, food and leisure. It feels disconnected from the other zones where the "mission" is at the center of everything (the temples in Bastion, the houses in Maldraxxus and the groves in Ardenweald).

I'm personally sad that the Shadowlands are not really connected to mortal races beliefs, meaning that "glimpses" beyond death didn't really make it to the realm of the living and inspire beliefs. The only exception is the Halls of Valor, but Odin is basically a thief, so... I think the disconnect we experience with the Shadowlands stem from that. Blizzard decided to make an all encompassing afterlive, working with all of reality, even parallel dimension, other planets, etc. It's really difficult to feel "at home" where all of it is so new. Putting past characters in the mix helps only so much, in my opinion.

It's then weird that the Shadowlands feels so much like reality while not really looking like anything we know. We'll see in the end if their decision to make the afterlife this "machine" was a good idea. I would have loved to explore a more spiritual world along with known spiritual races like Trolls and Taurens, or even see how believers in the Light could have been "snatched" by the Light from the Shadowlands because of their devotion, etc. So many things to do, building on existing lore. Well, it is what it is...

Outland may be more bizzare, but it was there from W2, ofc it fits. The mushroom trees were even in W2, then in 3d in W3 and in even more detail in TBC.

[Scathan]

I don't understand, why does it feel like chinese knockoff? I don't see any auto-run complete quests, or paywall behind quest chain

How would you integrate dwarves setting up a settlement in a land of dead? You expect us to save everyone passing to shadowlands from Maw just so they can setup a camp and hunt some animals in Ardenweald...It just doesn't make sense bringing up the outer world into Shadowlands, we are already disruption to this ecosystem.
They setup a theme, to discover new zones of this huge world, you can't expect to have goblins hoarding gold in every part of the universe.

For me personally, it still feels like WoW

Idk maybe visiting the place where dwarves would go for the afterlife? I honestly am just not a big fan of the construction of the shadowlands itself.

I understand the point but its a bit sad that the races were stripped of their identities. Personally I would have preferred an afterlife that worked with the belief systems of the different races of azeroth, and not one that blew them apart

[owbu]

Oh look, the mandatory "I'm declaring [the new thing] to not actually be part of [the old thing]" thread. How original.


Nothing in shadowlands is as foreign to the original warcraft theme/world as "now with space travel and laserz" TBC or "now in China" MoP. Its different takes on vampires (had those since wrath), the nature realm (had those since WC III), undead (had those since WC III) and angles/valkyre (had those since Wrath). And its in a differen sphere, but we've been to a time travel meets dimension hopping place and we've been to space. And it never actually matters. It just means the place has a slightly different shader/sky box.

But, again, this happens every xpac. If this thread didnt exist, shadowlands might be a little less warcrafty.

[Weeps]

looks more like something out of Narnia and that movie sucked.

Ok, I lol'd at that

[Aleksej89]

Shadowlands definitely has many parts that feel really out of place with the usual war3 vibe.

Mainly this whole afterlife theme so far is not well explained and feels as deep as a dry puddle, with the most elementary aspects sort of explained and nothing else.

[Doffen]

I can see your point OP, but personally I always enjoyed the otherworldly behind the scenes lore that we had since early days of Warcraft and to be frank, I am tired of Azeroth. So Shadowlands is perfect for me and I hope 10.0 sends us to outer space, or space really, really enters Azeroth, I can live with that.

Just, NO! Faction war in Azeroth again.

[Nagawithlegs]

There is a Spirit Healer zone, a Wild God zone (that explains the fairy shit in some druid areas that has never had much of an explanation), a Nathrezim origin story zone and a Necromancy origin story zone. And then the Maw, which is completely based off the Lich King's magic and aesthetic.

How is this NOT a Warcraft expansion when every single zone is based off and has to do with something that already exists in Warcraft?

[Kumorii]

There is a Spirit Healer zone, a Wild God zone (that explains the fairy shit in some druid areas that has never had much of an explanation), a Nathrezim origin story zone and a Necromancy origin story zone. And then the Maw, which is completely based off the Lich King's magic and aesthetic.

How is this NOT a Warcraft expansion when every single zone is based off and has to do with something that already exists in Warcraft?

Think it boils down to "I don't like it".

[DarthMuffin]

Wait... What ? Outland is far more bizarre than the Shadowlands compared to the Vanilla experience. A swamp with giant mushrooms with a giant engine in the middle. Mountains with spikes, spikes and spikes everywhere. A shattered purple land with eco-domes run by being made of energy. I do agree that there is a disconnect between core Warcraft environnements/fauna/flora and the Shadowlands, but we already had a lot of strange settings in past expansions and it was weird then too. I personnally like the scifi-fantasy stuff, but even I was taken aback when going through the Dark Portal for the first time in TBC.

I meant outlandish in the sense of not being connected to existing Warcraft material. Outland did have a lot of strange and otherworldly stuff but was still populated by familiar races and much of its history was already known. Orcs and ogres were all over the place. There were bases and villages built by our own elves, trolls and even gnomes. Even though the environment and geography was changed drastically compared to the RTS games, famous places like Hellfire Citadel were known to us in the lore. That strange mix of familiarity and otherworldly is what made it work in my opinion. It was a fresh experience with new ideas and concepts set in a familiar world. Shadowlands is a fresh experience set in a completely new world. If it weren't for our own character and a dozen famous NPCs, it would feel like an entirely different setting altogether. I can see the appeal, but I'm personally not a fan of that.

[Magneto]

Let us swim, here in the sea of confirmation bias!

[Ringthane]

Nah, pretty sure it's just you buddy.

No, it's not just him. But way to be dismissive and unhelpful and add nothing to the conversation.

[clevin]

Nope, he's not alone. Shadowlands isn't Warcraft, it's even more alien

The afterlife is alien and different from the living world? NOOOO!!!!

[haiyken]

I meant outlandish in the sense of not being connected to existing Warcraft material. Outland did have a lot of strange and otherworldly stuff but was still populated by familiar races and much of its history was already known. Orcs and ogres were all over the place. There were bases and villages built by our own elves, trolls and even gnomes. Even though the environment and geography was changed drastically compared to the RTS games, famous places like Hellfire Citadel were known to us in the lore. That strange mix of familiarity and otherworldly is what made it work in my opinion. It was a fresh experience with new ideas and concepts set in a familiar world. Shadowlands is a fresh experience set in a completely new world. If it weren't for our own character and a dozen famous NPCs, it would feel like an entirely different setting altogether. I can see the appeal, but I'm personally not a fan of that.

That's fair, you're right ! I may have been too narrow in considering mostly landscape and not all other elements you mentionned. You made a lot of good points that changed my mind about my original comment.