Why is Bolvar the face of the Shadowlands expansion?

[Unholyvamp]

Woud you rather see more of Sylvanas everywhere?

Honestly, yes.

[huth]

Honestly, yes.

In one piece or evenly distributed?

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Because he is the Lorewalker Cho Khadgar Magni Bronzebeard of the expansion.

[TheFirstOnes]

Because:

A. He is the guy trapped between Life and Death.

B. He was the former LK.

And C. He knows more about the Jailer than most of us.

[Cosmic Janitor]

He kinda was part of the story, but because of the awful pacing and everything torghast feeling like filler instead of MSQ his role is rather weak right now.

[shise]

Because he is literally the key element on this whole X pack...

Without a Lich King, the veil fell down. The way it all started involving him, he will most likely return to be the Lich King, clearly in a permanent state.

[Unholyvamp]

In one piece or evenly distributed?

Haha, in one piece obviously :> Don't be mean to Sylvie!

[Pheraz]

In all advertisements, be it the Battle.net launcher, internet adds, or the posters on the bus driving down the street, there's Bolvar as the Unmasked Lich King, alongside the WoW logo and BUY NOW advert for Shadowlands.

But... why?

I can think of several characters that have had more prominance, camera time, and effect on the story than Bolvar.

Because there exists the collectal illusion that WOTLK was a good expansion, which it clearly was not for people that played vanilla and tbc. But for the ones who started in there it is niiiiiiiiiiiice a box with something about the loiiiiiiing kiing coooooool. You know?! WOTLK!? Everyone says it was the best expansion!??!?! *rolleyes*

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Interesting to note, Bolvar who is human (humans ultimately creations of the Titans, beings of order and by extension Arcane magic) who followed in the path of the Light who was almost killed but saved by the essence of Life/Nature then became the Lich King with power over Death... and not to mention that the Curse of Flesh which transformed all of the Titan's creations into flesh and blood mortals is Void...


...Bolvar now just needs to train as a warlock to add Fel to his resume and he will become the ultimate being!

[Razion]

He is just standing there next to the Helm of Domination kinda unsupervised. He'd be a problem if Sylv and Zovaal hit the dirt - he'd be able to dominate the whole of the Shadowlands.

[KYH]

Because anyone that the advertisement will work on won't know the difference.

[Garymorilix]

Firstly, you don't know how the story will continue. Bolvar is already a huge player and will also be present in 9.1.
Illidan didn't even show up in Legion at the start.

Secondly, it looks cool.

[TickTickTick]

photo snip

In the case of TBC you could argue it was the first expansion and some things weren't established yet.
The next two have the villain on it.
Then we have an expansion named Mists of Pandaria, and having Garrosh on it simply wouldn't fit the name.
Then WoD had Grom because he was to be the expansion villain, but we all know how the WoD fiasco ended.

Then it gets tricky. Who was the villain of Legion? Argus, who we fought? Or Sargeras? Legion was the only expansion besides TBC (and I'll bring back the not established yet argument) for which the main villain wasn't known from the very begining. Whether they didn't know who that would be at that time, or they wanted to hide it, they still had to place someone on it. Khadgar would have seemed weird on a Legion cover, and so they decided to go with Illidan.

BfA was "the" faction expansion so they went with the classic human vs orc. I think it makes sense overall.

Shadowlands HAS a known villain. They are not hiding it and know from the start he'll be the big bad guy. He also fits the Shadowlands theme much more than some former paladin turned lich king who lost his rule. They should have placed the Jailer on the cover.

[FelPlague]

In the case of TBC you could argue it was the first expansion and some things weren't established yet.
The next two have the villain on it.
Then we have an expansion named Mists of Pandaria, and having Garrosh on it simply wouldn't fit the name.
Then WoD had Grom because he was to be the expansion villain, but we all know how the WoD fiasco ended.

Then it gets tricky. Who was the villain of Legion? Argus, who we fought? Or Sargeras? Legion was the only expansion besides TBC (and I'll bring back the not established yet argument) for which the main villain wasn't known from the very begining. Whether they didn't know who that would be at that time, or they wanted to hide it, they still had to place someone on it. Khadgar would have seemed weird on a Legion cover, and so they decided to go with Illidan.

BfA was "the" faction expansion so they went with the classic human vs orc. I think it makes sense overall.

Shadowlands HAS a known villain. They are not hiding it and know from the start he'll be the big bad guy. He also fits the Shadowlands theme much more than some former paladin turned lich king who lost his rule. They should have placed the Jailer on the cover.

Mists of pandaria could have had the sha... they were the expansions villians..
legion could have had guldan... he was the expansions villian
yes, and so did tbc, and mists of padnaria, and legion

[VinceVega]

In all advertisements, be it the Battle.net launcher, internet adds, or the posters on the bus driving down the street, there's Bolvar as the Unmasked Lich King, alongside the WoW logo and BUY NOW advert for Shadowlands.

But... why?

I can think of several characters that have had more prominance, camera time, and effect on the story than Bolvar.

Ask that question again after 9.2... i don't think he gets is stage until then. 9.1 will be Tyrande and Sylvannas. Then the jailor and Bolvar.

[Icelin]

Woud you rather see more of Sylvanas everywhere?

This pretty much. Fatigue (overexposure) of Sylvanas. I wouldn't like to see three expansions featuring Illidan as a "main" character. (I don't mind that character either) I been informing them I have been fatigued with Jaina. It doesn't hurt when certain characters get set on the back burner. Gives people time to miss them. Let's use Thrall as an example. Anyways some people might argue they never want to see certain characters in particular ever again. Sometimes when the characters are away for long periods of time like Kael or Garrosh you might get people inquiring about them. Then they might actually end up making an appearance again like in SLs. Recently I heard people mentioning Khadgar.

Another reason could be they are potentially "listening" to feedback. I know I heard an uproar over the trailer and in particular about Bolvar. The guy looks interesting enough too. (Works in his favor) I can agree with others that a more interesting character from this expansion wouldn't have been a bad idea. Maybe they are planning to do more with his character this expansion.

[TickTickTick]

Mists of pandaria could have had the sha... they were the expansions villians..

They were bad guys but they weren't THE bad guys. Even then, which Sha would you put on the cover and why would that one be more important than the others?

legion could have had guldan... he was the expansions villian

He died not even halfway into expansion, how was he the expansion's villain?

[vertigo12]

Because Shadowlands will unravel the real reason behind: There should always be a Lich King as the Jailer of the damned.

[dunkl]

We still don't really understand what undeath is or means, or how it works. It wasn't necessarily a simple concept before we knew about the afterlife - it wasn't as simple as being brought back to life and done. And it's less simple now with anima (I still don't know if anima is the same as our souls being in our bodies as we're living, and if so, did the titans use anima to create inhabitants? But their constructs can't die and move on when they power down, until the old gods made the constructs mortal, so the old gods gave the titans' construct souls that can move on after dying?)

Back to undeath -there's the matter of the soul no longer being exactly attached to the body, it's there but also not. It used to be described as sort of in two places at once, the afterlife and in life attached to the bodus -but I don't think that's the case. So where is it really? So, did the soul go to the shadowands and come back when the body was being rezzed? Who, how or why designated that the soul from let's say ardenweald gets yanked out of the shadowlands and hitched to the reanimated body? I get that the undead race doesn't remember where their soul went. But we should get to witness or experience or explore this process.
It's one of warcrafts main things. Did the soul wisk back by the arbiter and say see you later as it was getting pulled from the shadowlands and did she allow the soul to return to the living ream? Or did it get yanked out a different way. I doubt she was able to judge the soul/anima of a body being rezzed into an undead - I doubt she'd allow it if she knew it was happening. also, once the living person died and their soul went to the shadowlands, did it become anima and if so did the anima become a soul when it left to go back to the living?

I was hoping we'd get a lot of undead answers/exploration/intriguing hints, as they are dead alive and as such, different than simply living, but not really dead, their souls are reattached to them somehow, but not directly, and I am a little shocked we haven't bumped into much mention of the how undeath is possible and what it means in the scheme of things/the cycle.

Bolvar may sort of be bound to life, but also dead or undead I'm not sure, so his personal issue is a weird one and they probably need him since he's infused with mentos to not only be a symbol of how life and death can exist as one entity (and probably allow for the shadowlands and the living plane to be traversable, and it's inhabitants be able to travel the plane of the living via dragon/titan power of life, once sylvanas breaks the wheel, but he also bridges the gap between now and later when alextrasza and dragons become more prominent and important. He's kind of like an ambassador for death and living, dead and alive, dragons, or at least one aspect/flight which also links to titans/powers (life).

I think undeath and the fact that night elves become wisps when they die are two very similar and interesting mysteries we could have explored/can still explore in this expansion. I also thought the night elves and undead races, since they were direct enemies in bfa, would realize a weird/similar connection to one another in the afterlife, since their deaths/rebirths both entail uniqueness (undead come back to life but their souls are askew, how why where? and night elves become wisps when they die, how why) I figured they'd share an answer in ardenweald or something to do with anima or something involving a connection to life/life's plane. And this could also be a reason sylvanas attacked the tree, knowing a secret only she knows about undeath and wisps. She probably knew that because undeath and wisps share a common mystical property/process/ancestry of sorts, she knew what she was doing and everything will be ok at the end when we are no longer slaves to death being decided for us -it shouldn't be part of our existence and if we could in real life shatter death's grasp we would.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I am guessing they were flipping though an art book of already created assets and pulled out 5 or 10 they figured would work. Tossed a few darts and whichever one landed the most hits they went with. Then they added a 9.99$ charge for finders fee and then a 39.99$ charge for having to pull the pages out and putting them back was an addition 39.99$. You have to understand the amount of effort and time they are putting into these things warrants it because they are a business.