Shadowlands feels like fan fiction written to an already completed story.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I had a lot of fun leveling through each of the zones individually. Like the stories there were pretty cool. Even the Maw was okay.

It all started out fine in SL, but just got worse and worse. Just way too much Sylvanas all the time, 4D chessing us. It was the same when we had to go on Thralls spirit quest in Cata which ended with his marriage and the arrival of his pregnant wife and then child? I think. Instead of face fucking us with just Thrall, where he is Dragon Soul KAME-HAME-HAing Dragons out of the sky, or Sylvanas smirking and mustaching twirling all the time while Danuser/Nathanos cums in his pants ..... well we could have used this time to develop other characters? As an Alliance main, I would have much rather have learned more about some of the other leaders, or had them develop up and comers, instead of have been forced into going to Thralls wedding on all my toons because it gave a decent back piece?

Bastion - interesting enough story. Starving of anima. Absolutists who think they are the good guys because thats just how its been. UH OH, civil unrest! UTHER?! It was over too quick.

Maldraxxus - the spy and intrigue stuff was fun, I somehow felt some amount of loyalty to the old characters there. The politics and Primus stuff was fun.

Ardenweald - boring as all get out at first. Mostly just bear ass gathering until the very end with the seed.

Revevndreth - again, a neat take on death. The baddies go here and get hunted and shamed. Loved the castles and more political intrigue. Is the sire good or bad! No one knows!

And then the Maw/memories/Torg - fine and dandy I guess, Torg is a neat idea.

But thats where the fun kind of ends, its like they made really decent to good separate pieces but really crapped the bed when it comes to wrapping it together. Sylvanas just putting LK2 in his diaper and then smirking once again was lame. The jailor retcons I am surprisingly okay with. I would prefer this kind of retcon to just more made up big bads out of the blue. I guess this may have been their best way to open up more avenues without some type of "filler," but they failed. Maybe the big reveal in the next and final patch will tie it all up. I just hope to god Sylvanas dies and doesn't get a redemption, though I know my thoughts on the story are always the opposite of what ends up happening.

[shoc]

Legion didn't feel like fan fiction because everything was grounded in lore we had already. I'll tell you for sure that none of us were here complaining about the quality of the story around this time:




The Demon Hunters are a big part of the lore that people wanted to see expanded.
Illidan coming back fueled the hype train like nothing else. Gul'dan was an amazing villain, even if he was from an alternate universe.
The Broken Isles were a common feature of fanmade expansion concepts.
Vrykul and Titans cool as fuck like always. Lots of Azshara and Naga involvement, also cool.
The Burning Legion was represented in such a high level of detail, so many different demon varieties and technologies, the Legion looked so cool. The Mawsworn are supposed to be tougher than the Legion but they don't look like it at all.
Allied Race system basically added evil Highborne to the Horde and de-facto High Elves to the Alliance. Both things were discussed among the community for like 15 years. Instead Shadowlands is going to add four covenant races that didn't even exist in the lore until 15 minutes ago.

[Khaza-R]

Legion worked because the overall story was really simple and just used a bunch of lore pieces previously established since Vanilla the people wanted to explore

WoD, BfA, and SL are all where Blizzard tried being clever with the plot and it failed, miserably. And at least for the latter two the Sylvanas story is primarily to blame for beginning the whole thing down.

[Leodric]

It was always weird to me why they tried the whole timetravel thing with WoD. It always leads to some confusion and so it did in WoW, at least to me. Was there ever an explanation why we couldn't get, for example, Varian back through the WoD portal? I mean it worked for Gul'dan and the AU Velen dying didn't affect the Velen in our time line one bit.

[Biomega]

It was always weird to me why they tried the whole timetravel thing with WoD.

Who knows what their thought was with WoD, honestly.

Maybe they thought they needed more time to flesh out a BL-themed expansion. Maybe they wanted to give Garrosh more screen time. Maybe it was their self-destructive obsession with Warcraft all being about orcs and humans. Maybe they thought just redoing present-day Draenor would be too boring. No idea.

To me it's still the single worst setting for any WoW expansion, and time travel/alternate timelines in general I find to be among the worst storytelling tropes in any medium (with very few exceptions). It was the beginning of the end of WoW for me personally, even though I must admit that a lot of the MECHANICS of WoD were pretty good - BRF is among the best raids ever made, and class design was at the top of the game for most classes. But everything else? POOP SOUP.

With SL it's kind of a jumping-the-shark moment, where everything is cranked to absurdity and maximum trope. The Jailer is a COMICALLY evil character, there's little to no compelling story drive other than "this d00d so evul, plz halp!", and everything just feels like a reiteration to the n-th degree with no love or creativity anywhere. It's the McDonald's equivalent of what you thought would be a good meal but is really just a cardboard-adjacent industrial complement designed around a cheap, superficial illusion of satisfaction that exists purely to prop up corporate interest.

[Syegfryed]

Legion didn't feel like fan fiction because everything was grounded in lore we had already. I'll tell you for sure that none of us were here complaining about the quality of the story around this time: .

But... that is what fafinctions are, grounded in lore already established

Legion had the same shit lore we got form BfA and shadowlands, you can find a lot of inconsistencies and bad writing, like doing all this shit to not face sargeras but a random ass shit titan, and yes, people were complaining too.

Luckily the expansion had a lot of things, this helped to distract people.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

It was always weird to me why they tried the whole timetravel thing with WoD. It always leads to some confusion and so it did in WoW, at least to me. Was there ever an explanation why we couldn't get, for example, Varian back through the WoD portal? I mean it worked for Gul'dan and the AU Velen dying didn't affect the Velen in our time line one bit.

Its possible that the AU Varian isn't alive or isn't the same person, but technically yes we could I guess.

[Pheraz]

I agree. But I think that this is not the only problem in this category. I think more than the story the zones felt too weird visually.
It should have been "Afterlife". But you do not have bones and flesh in afterlife. The whole corpse and flesh style feels completely out of place.
Ardenweald tries to mish-mash standard wood vibes with too much blue and somehow spirits.
Maybe the only two aestetics on spot are the maw, which is simply "Hell" but which is just too small, and too bright to be what they promised and Bastion which is simply "Heaven".
Then this weird titan-constructs-but-not-titan-constucts walking around everywhere. Why? Why machines in afterlife?
Sure, everything looks "nice", just as always, but the whole atmosphere is just wrong and weird.
Ah, also because those 4 zones makes no sense they also literally disconnected them, as if they were not already disconnected enough visually.

[Ersula]

Lord give me strength... the guy is not just some random writer. He is the lead narrative designer not a single piece of media is put out without his supervision. So... again. You are wrong or you simply cannot understand the words written to you in plain english.

Dude, you're basically arguing semantics. We're literally agreeing on the quality of the writing. But do you realize Dansuer only been "lead narrative designer" for 4 years, nor has ever written anything professionally before working at Blizzard. Sylvanas has been in this franchise for almost 20 years. I'm allowed to call his characterization of her into question.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I agree. But I think that this is not the only problem in this category. I think more than the story the zones felt too weird visually.
It should have been "Afterlife". But you do not have bones and flesh in afterlife. The whole corpse and flesh style feels completely out of place.
Ardenweald tries to mish-mash standard wood vibes with too much blue and somehow spirits.
Maybe the only two aestetics on spot are the maw, which is simply "Hell" but which is just too small, and too bright to be what they promised and Bastion which is simply "Heaven".
Then this weird titan-constructs-but-not-titan-constucts walking around everywhere. Why? Why machines in afterlife?
Sure, everything looks "nice", just as always, but the whole atmosphere is just wrong and weird.
Ah, also because those 4 zones makes no sense they also literally disconnected them, as if they were not already disconnected enough visually.

The only real concept humans have of an "afterlife" is something without our human bodies. Most religions seem to think something spiritual/ghostlike... which would be incredibly boring. I can't say I would have made these places any better. Bastion is angelic spirits, owls? for some reason, and then what are more like golems and not machines. Vampires as being the shitty but redeemable leeches in life is a little on the nose. Ardenweald isn't really that surprising, we have the have druid/forests right? And they wanted to push the Emerald Dream connection. The weirdest one for me was Maldraxxus, where there was no real rhyme or reason as to why you would be reincarnated as this "monster" versus that monster. I get that they are supposed to be warriors and such, but... why? And why aboms, skeletons, and zombie monsters and not more militarized golems? I guess since those monsters are associated with death they needed a "death knight" type zone, I don't know.

It is weird to see the main areas have all four of the factions comingling.

[LilSaihah]

Honestly I'm inclined to agree with the people who say 'the lich king is dead and world of warcraft died with him'. The only other good story was MoP IMO.

[Sinaa]

you cant really have the bad guy win, resurrect other bad guys near his level of power and an entire empire of other bad guys and have a believable resistance from characters that already lost to him, at that point. he could erase from existence with a mere thought.

F for effort though I guess.

Except you can, especially since Blizzard HAS DONE SO MUCH WORSE over the years.

[Mojo03]

It was always weird to me why they tried the whole timetravel thing with WoD. It always leads to some confusion and so it did in WoW, at least to me. Was there ever an explanation why we couldn't get, for example, Varian back through the WoD portal? I mean it worked for Gul'dan and the AU Velen dying didn't affect the Velen in our time line one bit.

People always forget about the movie.

They made WOD because they wanted people who played WoW to know who people in the movie universe they were making were.

And probably new people who saw the movie and wanted to play in a world with those characters wouldn’t be completely confused.

Basically none of those movie characters were ever really in the game, no regular players knew anything about them, and Khadgar was completely different.

So they contrived a plot to send us back in time in WoW.

They seemingly cut production on wod right after the movie flopped.

It came out in June and in August they said they were done with WOD and announced Legion.

[Drindorai]

you cant really have the bad guy win, resurrect other bad guys near his level of power and an entire empire of other bad guys and have a believable resistance from characters that already lost to him, at that point. he could erase from existence with a mere thought.

F for effort though I guess.

But why not though? Feels like this story could so easily be done if they bothered to sit down and ACTUALLY plan out their story over the course of an expansion for once beyond cliffnotes of the most major plot points..

Especially because N'zoth specifically was the weakest Old God and, in the scenario hypothesized above, basically plays dead until he can figure out how to actually resurrect the other 3 Old Gods and combine with them. In fact a significant amount of the leveling experience could have been us trying to stop him from doing so and failing, and the final act of the leveling story is preparing to be able to survive against a seemingly unstoppable, united, Old God threat.

Blizzard has virtually never written a story where the conclusion is that the heroes just lose. The only time I can think of was the Vashj'ir storyline when Neptulon gets captured at the end of it. Which could have had major story consequences if Cataclysm didn't just eliminate that entire raid tier lol

Having the players encounter, struggle, and then lose to an enemy can totally be a thing and the result is that a lot of people will get invested in taking down that enemy the next time. Blizzard can actually get people invested in the story if they want to try.

And if Steve Danuser stops trying to write Wrath of the Lich King in his own terrible version.

[Toho]

Dude, you're basically arguing semantics. We're literally agreeing on the quality of the writing. But do you realize Dansuer only been "lead narrative designer" for 4 years, nor has ever written anything professionally before working at Blizzard. Sylvanas has been in this franchise for almost 20 years. I'm allowed to call his characterization of her into question.

We are not at all speaking about this.

We are talking about the fact that Danuser is responsible for the multiple Sylvanas disorders and the conflicting lore that has been the new normal.

I say he is responsible. You disagreed. And here we are.

[deenman]

you cant really have the bad guy win, resurrect other bad guys near his level of power and an entire empire of other bad guys and have a believable resistance from characters that already lost to him, at that point. he could erase from existence with a mere thought.

F for effort though I guess.

It can work if more competent writers did the story,rift had a story like this,and grim dawn basicaly has humanity trying to resist in a post apocalyptic world where humanity is pretty much completly defeated and struggles against 3 cosmic level threaths in a world filled with other smaller dangers also,the reason its believable and that we still hang on is because those big evil factions are also in conflict,humanity is just a small worm in the grand scheme of the conflict

[hulkgor]

Does anyone else feel this way? Its disconnected and our sole connection is the few characters that tagged along and the cryptic connections to old lore that we never knew existed.

What is worse is that BFA was used to deconstruct and wrap up whatever loose ends we may have had to make this atrocity happen.
That's what makes me sad the most I think. Shadowlands we can all collectively forget it happened but BFA? You can't unring those bells.

I could say that would apply to the entirety of World of Warcraft story presented in-game, and not restricted to Shadowlands.

I honestly am surprised how people seemed to have a good impression on the game's story\lore\presentation in-game throughout the game's existence until now, and that shadowlands story is the straw that broke the camels back, when it's been clear to me that it's always been mediocre at its best, and just a means to present new content to the players.

Very few storylines have been actually good.

[OrangeJuice]

I stopped reading quest text/caring about lore after MoP.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

But why not though? Feels like this story could so easily be done if they bothered to sit down and ACTUALLY plan out their story over the course of an expansion for once beyond cliffnotes of the most major plot points..

The West does not have good writing practices, especially in entertainment corporations like Hollywood, the comics industry, or the games industry where corporations usually don't plan on making an overarching story that is 3 games long, so writers can't plan for the story lasting 3 games. Writers only know that this game might be released so they make the story for that, which leads to sequels having to be contrived and have retcons to continue the story. Plus, you have writers leaving and going. IIRC none of the lead writers on the first Mass Effect game worked on the sequels and it shows.

When 9.1 was coming out, Ion did an interview where he confirmed that they were making up the story as they were going along.

Blizzard has virtually never written a story where the conclusion is that the heroes just lose.

Starcraft 1 might qualify, given that the player was strung along by Mensk and helped wipe out the capital world of Tarsonis and all of its inhabitants and aiding a ruthless madman's rise to power. Also now the galaxy is being threatened by a new dark lord, Kerrigan, and the player is now a wanted fugitive on the run. It's not a total downer ending but the story ends with the bad guys having the upper hand and the heroes in a bad spot.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls ends with Diablo being resurrected (again!), but this was supposed to conclude in the second D3 expansion that got cancelled.

Having the players encounter, struggle, and then lose to an enemy can totally be a thing and the result is that a lot of people will get invested in taking down that enemy the next time.

Certainly. The Burning of Teldrassil was very motivational for me, but sadly Blizzard botched the payoff.

[Chend]

Obviously.

It would have been better if N'Zoth won at the end of BfA and used his new powers to resurrect the other Old Gods, bind them to his will, then revive the Black Empire on Azeroth.

Then 9.0 could have been the Black Empire expansion people wanted since at the very least end of Cataclysm, and could have taken place either in a new continent with massive Old God influence that could have been of interest to N'Zoth (like the Dragon Isles, which were also set-up in BfA with dialogue from Wrathion's agents, and the return of Wrathion for 8.3), or in a twisted, Old God-ified version of some zones of Azeroth (basically the Visions of N'Zoth but expanded).

Throwing N'Zoth under the bus for Bob the Janitor was foolish.

The problem with that is, to me personally, that after an entire old god patch, the last thing I wanna see is an entire old god expansion. I'm already tired of the theme halfway through the patch.