i mean, its pretty simple, in tbc i fought with, and along side with, orcs, trolls, taurens, blood elves(same if i played as alliance), the outland factions, that consisted of factions we knew, against enemies we knew, doing something bad against our allies while killing the enemy faction in process.
In shadowlands is, again, blue man group, edgy vampires, scourge 2.0 and night elf 2.0 that is not rly night elf, we never saw then before, they are crap and we have no motivations to help then.
don't get me wrong, i like cata and mop as much, if not even more, MOP was the first expansion i played serious, still think final was crap.For a hell of a lot of people, the first two expansion following on from WC3 are how they got into the franchise.
Hell i felt even more attached to wod storyline, even being as shallow as a cup of water and ruining charactes like orgin.
Sargeras don't even show up, they can flip flop his origins but the result is the same, tottaly different from retro-activelly inserting Janitor as Thanos mastermind.This is also why I can't take as granted @Jovok 's argument that Shadowlands is especially bad because it destroys what came prior or plucked characters out of their environment for the sake a of preachy, retcon-laden mess, whereas TBC isn't. I do not believe that when I wrapped up the TFT campaign that the natural environment to end Kael's quest to find salvation for his people's needs was to become a crack addict on a pink spaceship and that what Arthas really did when he destroyed the Sunwell to revive Kel'thuzad is have it reincarnate as a busty farmgirl who ends up porked by a dragon. There is no substantive difference between retconning Sargeras to have been played by the dreadlords in TBC or legitimately the exact same extent of a retcon to them present in Shadowlands. No more so than that Shadowlands represents a disrespect for the Nathrzim as an independent council of manipulators from WC3 who were willing to take over the Scourge on their own terms even after writing the Legion off, yet killing off dreadlords as unnamed fodder mobs hanging right out in the open in your third quest upon entering Outland does not. When I think new Horde content going on from the classic RTS what I did not envision was helping a meme redneck character kill Zul'jin off alongside high elves because the redneck wants to loot him for valuables. Prettying up a pig and dressing up new, terrible ideas as old, better ones while using them for cover to build your own, terrible story is bad I entirely agree and if that's in SL's DNA then it's TBC's entire family tree.
Yeah, kael wanted salvation from his people, and where did he think he found? with a half-demon and feeding on fel magic, that seemed pretty obvious where things would end, yeah, fallen prince that hunger for power is outdated, but it made much more sense that sylvanas in this expansion, the first i can swallow.
TBC lore Isn't bad because it didn't made sense, it was bad because even it made sense, could have being done better or handled better, by example, it makes sense why the horde would go against zul'jin, the amani and the horde back then end their relationship pretty hard, and after years they gave two shits about it, now since they are allied with elves, it make sense why the horde would defend their allies.
would make a better lore that that the horde reunite with the amani, to fight the elves, because instead, ogres joined the horde and elves alliance? fucking yes, but the earlier still made sense anyway even sucking.
i still stand that:This is also why what you bring up as TBC's greatest advantage compare to Shadowlands is actually why it's much worse. It's for the same reason that BFA is uniquely wretched and why Mists, despite being probably the best constructed and told narrative and worldbuilding the game ever did was ultimately terrible. It's the consequences and the end state it leaves. At the end of TBC we've massacred every TFT character and taken the scythe to the WC2 characters to go with it. Those angles are closed, fair enough. I totally agree with you that you can basically ignore most of the windchime nonsense, spaceships etc. What you can't ignore are the blood elves permanently being in the Horde despite having jack to do either narratively or thematically, something that's recurred over and over in stories since. When Shadowlands wraps up, the characters it's exhumed and shit about the Bald Man being behind everything that ever happened can be entirely ignored. The only differences between the end of BFA and the end of Shadowlands will be that Tyrande will have become a peacenik, functionally already the case and that Anduin will be sad. Everything else may as well have never happened. Cosmic bald men, infinite legions and Thrall breaking the space time continuum to steal a necklace make a splash and vanish, nobody caring before they happened or after. Consequences for the playable factions last.
- at least tbc didn't ruined the factions and most of the characters there, it actually introduced new ones and strenghtned faction fantasy, like adding Garrosh, Drannosh and the long lost maghar tribe, what shadowlands did to the horde? even by adding elves, everything else felt the horde became more horde, while in BFA, we actually became red alliance
- While i hate elves and their players, i can see how this was better than putting a dead elf as warchief and then completely ruining it in the end by making a council with a bunch of dipshits. Elves in the horde break the common fantasy tolkien stereotype, dead elf warchief and "horde council"? it breaks the Horde as whole.
- we can't rly ignore Janitor since we is responsible for everything, every time we discuss something now we will have to remember it was this egghead that played us this whole time.
- Even hating Sylvanas i can see what this did with her was more moronic than the whole tbc crew imo, and theya re shoving all over our faces like she should aprreiate her and what they did it, thsi can't rly be ignored, but, vash? i can ignore that.