[Poll] How engaged are players with the story of SL compared to previous expansions.

[Eggroll]

I gave it a 3. I mostly removed myself from the lore aspect of the game - also no longer have game music turned on like I used to.

BfA was just a way to negative experience from a nelf perspective - a perspective with no light at the end of the tunnel. Not very entertaining or enjoyable.

[Akka]

Equating Shadowlands to Planescape is an insult to Planescape.

Couldn't agree more.

[Lane]

Things I'm interested in:

- Seeing the covenant stories, I've only just picked one after completing the questing storyline. However, I found Ardenweald dull and didn't like Maldraxxus at all, so I'm only really looking forward to Kyrian and Venthyr.
- Knowing the Jailer's backstory, which I'm guessing we're not going to find out until the end. He just seems a typical villain without the full history, which I don't find interesting.
- Tyrande, Bolvar, the Morgraines.

Things I'm not interested in:

- Sylvanas. I'm so burned out on her and her nonsense I just don't care anymore and want to be done with it. I just hope she isn't redeemed and actually faces real consequences for everything she's done.
- Anduin. Again, don't care, in fact, I'm still bitter we lost Varian for this. I do feel bad for Genn though since Anduin is like a son to him.
- Most of the rest of the major lore characters who are in the Shadowlands for whatever reason.

So, I guess I'd say I'm not engaged with the main story at all and have limited interest in zone/covenant specific stories and certain characters at the point in the game I'm at. Comparatively, I had 0% engagement with BfA, but nowhere near the same engagement I had in Legion (which I suppose I'd put at an 8). SL is currently maybe a 5? I hesitate to vote yet because that could go up or down based on covenant stories.

[Al Gorefiend]

The emperor was already established in the first movie (Tarkin explaining the Emperor has already abolished the senate) and so it didn't retcon anything.

Also, comparing Warcraft to Tolkien's writing in any capacity is just... Wrong
Yes, Melkor was the first Dark Lord, but that's in the past. It's not like the Free People defeat Sauron and his armies only to find out Melkor was the real bad guy that was never mentioned in any capacity but now somehow he is the true threat that they have to fight now.

True, though ultimately if Tolkien was in charge of an actively developing MMO that already had an expansion that dealt with both Sauron AND Melkor, he'd need to think up some new stuff real quick to keep his business afloat.

[Keyblader]

I was invested, until the expansion crawled to a halt.

[cozzri]

Quite self-explanatory. Disregarding gameplay elements and trying to be objective about your enjoyment of purely the story, how much do you want to see where the story goes, or more importantly ends.

I have been wondering this considering my genuine excitement about the story of BfA at this juncture. Not that I necessarily thought it was perfect, but by the end of 8.0, leading into 8.1 I was genuinely curious how the story would continue and end.
Would we go the full MoP and invade a city again? I was hoping for a Siege of Stormwind raid with all that jazz, or better yet one set in the ruins of Teldrassil.

Now admittedly this might also come down to that I simply liked the aesthetic of BfA more, especially as I love the ocean and maritime culture, and Kul Tiras was right up my alley. This might have slightly colored my view of the expansion in hindsight.


So just to reiterate, on a scale of 1-10, how engaged are you in the story and world, and how do you feel about this expansion compared to previous ones when it comes to this.


And of course, please don't bring gameplay issues into this, it has nothing to do with the question, no matter how much anyone wants to claim it does.

I completely lost interest after finishing my covenant campaign, I would be interested in maybe doing the other covenant campaigns for the story, but I don't want to lose/redo progress so my character is just locked where he's at with zero motivation. Tried leveling an alt for the other campaign, picked adventure mode only to find I cant do the campaign till max level or 58 whatever it is, and completely lost interest and gave up and unsub'd. The only quests keeping my going were the weekly quests to unlock twisted corridor, but I got tired of being strung along to unlock it so I gave up on that too.

The expansion is fun up to a point, then you hit a brick wall; I'm talking WoD vibes.

[Maljinwo]

True, though ultimately if Tolkien was in charge of an actively developing MMO that already had an expansion that dealt with both Sauron AND Melkor, he'd need to think up some new stuff real quick to keep his business afloat.

Or, maybe, come up with new threats that don't necesarilly change the previous villains motivations or origins constantly

Yeah I reeeaaally didn't like when Calia and Talia were suddenly in Oribos too. Like us going was pretty much thought to be a one way trip and now everyone is like hey let's check out the afterlife!

The fact that Ol' Emma a grandma searching for her children is hanging out in Oribos is laughable

[Darknessvamp]

I had issues with the story before the expansion even came out and since release my impression of it hasn't improved. Ignoring the blatant recycle by retcon they've been doing this expansion, the extreme vagueness of this expansion's story and stakes has been an explicit detriment in enticing any interest out of me (The Jailer's the big bad of a bunch of things, why? because he's an ancient evil, why? because he did the evil thing that all the other covenants didn't like, why? Look they didn't like it and then they locked him someplace but he can also reach out to other places and OOOOOH LOOK THE FUTURE OF Azeroth IS AT STAKE!), the questionable intelligence of each of the four covenants, their leaders and members always makes me wonder how did the afterlife work in the first place or until it broke, Oribos... is just there and the Maw is just Mordor but without any interesting backstory. Sylvanas' 'story' has been poorly handled since before BfA started and I have had no indication it's going to improve or develop in a surprising or engaging way. Most important I didn't enjoy how this expansion feels forcefully stapled on with how much it contradicts stuff that came before in the game and it acting like saying "it's infinite" solves the problem. Voted 1. Oh it also doesn't help that the major villain is pathetically absent for how much of a universe ending threat he is and that we know there's no way he "wins" because there's always another expansion.

At least with Sargeras we could have the stakes of technically losing control/safety of Azeroth at one point as a storyline and work through a series of expansion gathering forces/fighting greater wars of importance to win it back and oppose the Legion but then again I was one of the few who was surprised by the fact the Burning Legion is just beat by conquering Argus and the Titans just happen to be there of all places and able to revive... despite the Legion having bases spanning multiple planets and having been active far before Argus was conquered in lore...

Equating Shadowlands to Planescape is an insult to Planescape.

Ain't that the truth, replaying Torment atm and reading the Planes being explained in the Corpse Bar is several times better than this expansion.

[Rustedsaint]

Depends on the zone
I’m all about the venthy/night fae zones but kyrian/mald kinda pisses me off.
The fact that kyrians are still dumping souls into the broken arbiter really pisses me and makes no sense when we have weekly quests to go retrieve souls from the maw.

[Soon-TM]

Depends on the zone
I’m all about the venthy/night fae zones but kyrian/mald kinda pisses me off.
The fact that kyrians are still dumping souls into the broken arbiter really pisses me and makes no sense when we have weekly quests to go retrieve souls from the maw.

Well, you can tell that the Kyrians are a bunch of retards by just looking at their faces. They all look so stupid that makes me want to /slap them.

[Alvito]

If it were up to me I would have left Baine, Jaina and Tyrande for dead in the Maw. The leadership in Bastion is awful. If the zones were on rails it wouldn't be as bad.

[Selastan]

5. I'm not actively turned off, but I'm not all that interested either. Once the scale starts expanding and we learn a bit more about the cosmology at work here, I might be drawn in a bit deeper. Till then, I'm just curious about the Brokers and their relationship to the ethereals.

[Soon-TM]

Yeah I reeeaaally didn't like when Calia and Talia were suddenly in Oribos too. Like us going was pretty much thought to be a one way trip and now everyone is like hey let's check out the afterlife!

Maybe they tried to make Oribos a more "living" place hue hue

[Necomis]

I'm at a 5 and stopped caring to the point to not even play in over 6 weeks. Think I may have even let sub lapse.

[Leodok]

I quit over an year ago specifically because of the lore.

[erifwodahs]

Is there a single Shadowlands quest you will remember? even one?

Teaching an owl to fly! Ez!
I do get what you are saying. Legion Orderhalls were something I actually could be invested in. Also few side quests where I could get invested in. Felt way more connected than shadowlands. And for all we know, it really could be another Outland as everything is too... alive? Shadowmoon Valley in Draenor felt more... spiritual to me than Revendreth or Bastion. I do not dislike the zones, but there is nothing what makes me feel like this is afterlife. Except for Maldraxus, Plaguelands had 10 times more impactful "death" atmosphere than maldraxus.

[Stardrift]

I gave it a 3. I mostly removed myself from the lore aspect of the game - also no longer have game music turned on like I used to.

BfA was just a way to negative experience from a nelf perspective - a perspective with no light at the end of the tunnel. Not very entertaining or enjoyable.

It was negative from any perspective really.

Draenei were completely missing

Trolls got shit on as per usual

Dwarves didn't exist except for the Dark Iron

Tauren got.. a human in a cow costume for a leader

Genn didn't seem to give much a fuck about getting his revenge on Sylvanas ???

Goblins thought they were finally going to get to do something and then whatever the fuck that scenario was featuring Gallywix

Fat people were introduced as a race

Orcs were yet again just cannon fodder

Pandaren????

Literally nothing happened in the story. A tree burned, A city got gassed, a great empire got deleted by Jaina, and Sylvanas team rocketed away. Those would be huge things if you thought the right characters were involved in them, but they weren't.

[Tiwack]

I think it's good but it's so convoluted and complex it's hard to follow - which is a given with this subject and because of the direction they're taking it - but the choice of barely giving us anything to go on and leaving us with sooo many questions just isn't cool and makes enough to go straight to wtf and that's where it starts to hurt the game instead of help to engage players. Even if you're on top of what's happening, it's very easy to lose the thread and forget where we're at, because even though the content is great, the whole story of it all is very much a pocketdimension on its own much like WoD was. There's so much confusion still about how death is handled and supposed to be handled since its broken. Then the pandemic delaying and disrupting their workflow and release-schedule really is just the icing on the cake as nobody wants to wait this long for answers to the new lore and resolving the story-arcs we're embarked on. Even if freaking Kelthuzad and Sylvanas are cruising for a bruising next tier it might aswell be sometime next year at this pace because it's so frustratingly slow and hard to follow what we're in and waiting for nevermind what's even going on altogether.

[Shoggoth]

I lost all the hope I had left for WoW's story after BfA. Shadowlands only made it worse. And I'm one of the rare players where half of my enjoyment comes from the story, worldbuilding and the character development. I give it a 2.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

MoP > Cata >>> WoD >>>>>> Legion > BFA > Shadowlands