Originally Posted by
Kralljin
You mean, like they're doing it already?
You're not going to win a certain audience over by very fact that it's an old game already, if "you can ignore everything from the previous expansion" isn't good enough for them, then nothing will.
At a certain point you just have to accept the fact that something has existed before one has started the game and if they cannot, then it's simply an audience you need to pass on.
When people want something completely fresh, a 17 year old game won't cut it.
The book on the RTS was effectively closed already in Wotlk with Arthas and Illidan being dead, you'd still had the Legion in the background but the majority of the material from the RTS was already chewed through at this point.
It's not like Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion or BfA were that reliant on the RTS games, they paid homage in some aspects, but they had barely any ties to the RTS games.
In SL, they just invented another twist to Warcraft 3, only to deal with that twist (the Jailer) in the same expansion, it's like a strawman argument of storytelling.
They invent a new threat out of thin air at the expense of the original material, only to then defeat it in the very same expansion.
This book did not need closure, it was already closed, the new writers felt the urge to re open that book because the Jailer had to behind everything.
They already did that in MoP or Legion.
Suramar was a ruined city in Warcraft 3, in Legion they pulled a Dalaran and went "actually, the city hid under some bubble".
MoP was almost exclusively about new lore, it had barely any ties to existing lore, the "main antagonist" (Garrosh) was a fresh character, not a character featured in any RTS.
And frankly, stuff like the Thunder King or the Mogu are in my opinion certainly one of the better addition to Warcraft lore in recent history.
Certainly better than the new writers trying to "reframe" established work because they need to build up new villains.
The problem is that you cannot create characters out of nowhere and expect people to love them, one of the few character introduced in WoW that actually had a better reception were characters like Garrosh, Garrosh or Anduin and those characters took years to built.
Any [Shadowlands] specific character will likely not be featured in the future because they're tied to the Shadowlands, not Azeroth, the most significant thing that will likely influence the next expansion will be the fate of Anduin, because as hinted by Ion, he'll be changed fundamentally.
And in order to grasp Andiun as a character, you need to:
Have read The Shattering book + Short stories
Have played MoP
Have played Legion
Have played BfA
Have played SL
Right now, Blizzard set themselves up that a character that by now requires a lot of background knowledge will be a focal character of the next expansion, that doesn't scream "new player" friendly to me.
It's a catch 22 situation, new characters will not have the same impact as established ones because those positions of relevance have to be earned over the course of years, but well established characters obviously require lots of background knowledge.
That's why in my opinion this focus on a small set of characters is very difficult and something even single player games struggle with, because every sequel must be written with new players in mind and have to make concessions for things that established players know but new players don't.