Originally Posted by
MyWholeLifeIsThunder
I think the grievance is understandable, but "fanfiction" isn't the accurate complaint here; As Aucald put it, Warcraft lore has always been by committee, without a singular vision; it has always been a franchise driven story and narrative instead of an individually crafted story.
Indeed, the problem IS that warcraft just keeps feeling more removed of what it once was, with Shadowlands trying something so out there feeling too disconnected, but I really think we would have had so much more faith in them if BfA had been good: I don't think the problem is SL's narrative by itself, but that BfA killed the good faith the playerbase had.
Imagine if BfA had been a great expansion that satisfied our desire to return to those roots of the Horde/Alliance conflict, SL would have gotten to stand on its own as a new chapter into the cosmology of Wartcraft, instead of carrying the baggage of BfA.
I don't hate the SL narrative, but I don't love it either, but I really think that is mostly BfA's fault why I can't be fully on for the raid rather than SL's actual quality, specially when SL's biggest narrative issues are the ones caused by BfA rather than its own.
If Sylvanas motivations had been streamlined and well set up in BfA, and we didn't had to keep fixing Teldrassil, I genuinely believe SL's story would be far better received.