Do you feel like Shadowlands is the "conclusion to the first book of Warcraft saga"?

[Sarethion]

In the announcement video for 9.2, Steve Danuser said that they view Shadowlands as a conclusion to the "one book of Warcraft saga".

Obviously, we don't know what the story of 9.2 is, but I'm still curious - how do you feel about this?

Personally, I disagree. Playing through the story and looking back at it, I never got the idea that we're heading here and I don't really see some grand story that we're now supposed to see the finale of. Heck, if anything, I'd say Legion was far, far closer to being some sort of conclusion to a greater story, because it had us deal with Sargeras and the Burning Legion, a.k.a. the beings behind Orcs coming to Azeroth or pretty much everything that happened in Warcraft RTS games, i.e. the events which set up a lot of WoW's story.

And Shadowlands... Up until now, I've always seen it as a self-contained cosmic story that's about us having to deal with Sylvanas and accidentally running into some bald, blue maniac that wants to rewrite the universe. It never really felt that connected to other stories of WoW and so I don't really feel it's a conclusion of some grand story that started way back and it was always supposed to end here.

I guess, you could say that they've retconned the Helm of Domination to be filled with the Jailer's magic or the Dreadlords to be secretly Denathrius' agents and that that it's possible that in 9.2 we'll learn that it was actually the Jailer that corrupted Sargeras and that the Legion wanting to get Azeroth was about trying to do something for the Jailer and thus the Jailer was behind everything all along, but...

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. Looking back at the story in previous expansions or Warcraft RTS games, I don't get the feeling that "this is it, the grand finale, the final battle everything lead to" at all. To me it all feels like a bunch of last minute retcons made to artificially bend the story to fit the "it's an end of an era" narrative that they only came up with recently, not some properly built up, naturally unfolding climax of a grander tale.

But then, maybe I'm wrong, so I ask you - how do you feel? Would you agree that Shadowlands feels like a conclusion of a greater Warcraft story?

[BaumanKing]

Danuser gives himself too much credit. Legion feels like a conclusion to the "first book of Warcraft saga". SL feels like an unnecessary conclusion to WC3 and nothing more. But I won't judge until I see 9.2 story.

[geco]

The conclusion of the "First Book" is Arthas.
The conclusion of the "Second Book" is Legion.
The conclusion of the "Third Book" is Ashara and the old gods. (Only this was canceled)

Shadowland doesn't really connect to any of the Rest of WoW and what little it connects (BFA) isn't going to shut it down.

[Super Dickmann]

About as much as BFA was a story that changed the world and had a lot of heart to it.

[ArenaDk]

Or maybe they wanna break away from all this story paths they are forced to build on. Giving them a more clean start for new story strings

[Varodoc]

The "first book of the Warcraft saga" concluded here:



BfA and Shadowlands are filler.

The "second book of the Warcraft saga" is about to begin, and it will be about Light and Void, the two fundamental forces of the Warcraft franchise since the very beginning.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I felt like MoP 5.4 was more of the endpoint of Warcraft's story. The Legion was a TFT plot thread that became less and less important as WoW went on. Kil'jaeden's defeat in BC made it feel like "yeah, we blew up Archimonde and pushed back Kil'jaeden and liberated Outland. The Legion won't be coming back for a long time, and if they do, we'll easily beat them back anyway", so I felt like there wasn't really a need for a Legion expansion. By the end of MoP 5.4, pretty much all of the plotlines that had begun in WC3 had been wrapped up in some way or another. Not all of them wrapped up satisfactorily, but all were wrapped up.

Starting with WoD, the story begins using contrivances to keep bringing back old threats because the creators didn't have the imagination to create new stories and villains (and probably because corporate wanted to capitalize on WC3 brand name recognition like Grommash/Illidan/Sylvanas). Shadowlands had the potential to be great as we were exploring brand new material, and it didn't need to be shoehorned back into the old WoW story.

The whole "Shadowlands ends the first book of the Warcraft saga thing" is quite obviously Blizzard desperately flailing in FFXIV's shadow, which has been praised for its storytelling. I've voiced my gripes with FFXIV's storytelling over in its megathread. FFXIV's whole story was not planned out, and the Garlemald arc was cut entirely, but the writers have been able to pretty successfully make up the story as they go along and convincingly sell their audience on their first playthrough that it was actually planned all along, with the seams only appearing upon closer inspection on a second playthrough. The story is coherent. Character motivations are clear. Important reveals and character motivations aren't shoved into books and then retconned a few years later. The long term storylines do eventually have a payoff. FFXIV's cast isn't my most favorite ever, but I do care about almost all of the characters to some degree or another.

[Zachsophone]

I’ve heard that 10.0 is going to be pretty different. So we don’t know yet, but I think 9.2 concludes “wow 1” and 10.0 will start “wow 2” (again from what I’ve heard). So I think that’s what he means. It’s just difficult for us to see it since we don’t know what the future holds and he does.

[natpick]

so blizz expect me to believe that when i played warcraft 3 all those years ago,this was the plan all the time? what a load of bullshit,there just trying to make it like mcu with the phase 1-4 and so on,they already ripped off anything thats popular along the way,these guys are deluded serously.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The "second book of the Warcraft saga" is about to begin, and it will be about Light and Void, the two fundamental forces of the Warcraft franchise since the very beginning.

I am crossing my fingers that Blizzard does not do a Light vs Void expansion. I vehemently hate the entire concept. I dislike how the Light was downplayed and secularized after Wrath, and how Legion turned it into another materialistic elemental force rather than being a "yes really" actual omnipotent deity of the setting (then again pretty much all of Warcraft's gods and religions have been neutered as of Shadowlands). I'm also not into the idea of an entire expansion of gold and purple. Wasn't WoD's development rebooted because it had too much orc, and in the end it still had too much orc, on top of the 14 months of Siege? So three years of orcs in black iron citadels lit by orange fire? And then there was the three years of green lava from Hellfire Citadel through Antorus.

[Orby]

I guess Sargeras at the end of Legion was the true end of Warcraft since Sargeras was kind of mentioned throughout Warcraft lore as far back as Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

Since BfA we have been delving into very new territory and even BfA feels like filler between the end of Legion and the start of Shadowlands as shadowlands really does feel like the next chapter seeing as we are kind of going super cosmic with the direction of WoW (a direction thats put me off the game thematically).

Unless after Shadowlands brings forth a huge time skip 200 years into the future I don't see anything really closing any book, although not sure how that would work with our PC's :P

[Sarethion]

I’ve heard that 10.0 is going to be pretty different. So we don’t know yet, but I think 9.2 concludes “wow 1” and 10.0 will start “wow 2” (again from what I’ve heard). So I think that’s what he means. It’s just difficult for us to see it since we don’t know what the future holds and he does.

In terms of gameplay, perhaps - I won't argue with that.

What I'm talking about is just the story. It's like - imagine if all Warcraft story was a single book and you now have 50 pages left. Would you feel like this book, as a whole, represents one coherent story and the ending you're just about to read fits well with it? My issue is that I don't... To me it feels more like the writer basically put this on a single page with big, bold red letters: "yo, reader, I got tired of writing this book, so now I'll change some things I wrote about previously to fit the ending I want, but don't worry, I'll have another book out soon!".

[Enter Name Here]

pretty incoherent and disconnected if that all is supposed to be one book

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Unless after Shadowlands brings forth a huge time skip 200 years into the future I don't see anything really closing any book, although not sure how that would work with our PC's :P

I think it would be rather unsatisfying if our player characters returned to Azeroth and have found that decades have passed (possibly centuries), and almost everyone they knew is dead. Their society and culture has moved on without them and they are now a stranger in a familiar land, and all of their efforts have amounted to nothing as the world falls back into turmoil.

If there is going to be a WoW 2, do what Guild Wars 1 did: end the game with the player character of GW1 having saved the world from crisis and no new calamities emerge within his lifetime. He retires and has many children. Then you have GW2 which takes place hundreds of years later and is about evil rising again, and it is up to the descendants of the heroes of GW1 to tackle this. After all they had been through, the heroes of GW1 finally lived happily ever after.

[Varodoc]

I think it would be rather unsatisfying if our player characters returned to Azeroth and have found that decades have passed (possibly centuries), and almost everyone they knew is dead. Their society and culture has moved on without them and they are now a stranger in a familiar land, and all of their efforts have amounted to nothing as the world falls back into turmoil.

If there is going to be a WoW 2, do what Guild Wars 1 did: end the game with the player character of GW1 having saved the world from crisis and no new calamities emerge within his lifetime. He retires and has many children. Then you have GW2 which takes place hundreds of years later and is about evil rising again, and it is up to the descendants of the heroes of GW1 to tackle this.

They are not allowed to do this.

There's too much build-up with Alleria and Turalyon in Stormwind for them to just do a time-skip and forget that this all happened.

[ek0zu]

They have butchered one of the best games ever created Reign of Chaos/The Frozen Throne and they still have the audacity to use Shadowlands and Wc3 in the same line.

[Varodoc]

I am crossing my fingers that Blizzard does not do a Light vs Void expansion. I vehemently hate the entire concept. I dislike how the Light was downplayed and secularized after Wrath, and how Legion turned it into another materialistic elemental force rather than being a "yes really" actual omnipotent deity of the setting (then again pretty much all of Warcraft's gods and religions have been neutered as of Shadowlands). I'm also not into the idea of an entire expansion of gold and purple. Wasn't WoD's development rebooted because it had too much orc, and in the end it still had too much orc, on top of the 14 months of Siege? So three years of orcs in black iron citadels lit by orange fire? And then there was the three years of green lava from Hellfire Citadel through Antorus.

I could write a Light and Void expansion that took place entirely on Azeroth, it doesn't have to feel alien at all, nor does it have to be "all yellow and purple".

The Scarlet Crusade and Lightbound are already two major forces of the Light that could band together and try to expand the interests of the Light on Azeroth.

The Lightbound can retrieve a fragment of the artifact originally used to create AU Draenor, and use it to reactivate the Dark Portal and cross into MU Azeroth.

[Sarethion]

If there is going to be a WoW 2, do what Guild Wars 1 did: end the game with the player character of GW1 having saved the world from crisis and no new calamities emerge within his lifetime. He retires and has many children.

I'd combine this with our character taking on some squire that acts as your follower / student in one expansion and that you can choose the name / class of. Then you learn that there was a period of peace, during which your character retired, passed on all the trophies, armor, mounts and so on to the squire and lead a happy life, and now that a new threat emerges, this squire takes your place as your new playable character.

[Dancaris]

And here we go again. If you listen without redeyes of hate you will hear that he said something like: "SL pulls together thread form WC3" and "conclusion to the one book of Warcraft saga", now first one.
So its just an end of some stories (prob. Sylvanas one) and not end of all OLD LORE and start of NEW ONE.
But alas, hate pust flow, right?

- - - Updated - - -

They are not allowed to do this.

There's too much build-up with Alleria and Turalyon in Stormwind for them to just do a time-skip and forget that this all happened.

From you they now allowed? I prefer skip their arc and make their doings have aftermath.

[Eazy]

First saga was probably from Wc1 up to Wc3.
Second would be from Wc3 up to Wrath.
Third from Wotlk up to Legion.

...and I have no idea what's currently happening with Warcraft.

so blizz expect me to believe that when i played warcraft 3 all those years ago,this was the plan all the time? what a load of bullshit,there just trying to make it like mcu with the phase 1-4 and so on,they already ripped off anything thats popular along the way,these guys are deluded serously.

Yeah.
They're stretching too far.