If you were Lead Narrative Designer would you retcon Shadowlands?

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Put an end to the back-and-forth arguing with each other. Expressing your own opinion about the storyline of Shadowlands is allowed unless you do it in a proper manner. This is a topic about if you would modify the story of Shadowlands or not, not about complaining about how bad the writing is. There are already other topics about it.

[Lochton]

I would retcon it completely out of the game. I would rewrite BFA as there's likeable things in the expansion's lore and things to salvage but honestly there's nothing worth that pushed the expansion's lore forward other than Sylvanas shifting her alignment and having blue eyes. No one important died. No one important grew. No one gives a shit. And I don't either.

No. I wouldn't retcon it. Shadowlands is written so dumbly yet perfectly fine that the expansion can snuff itself out at the ending, and not be of future use, even new players are not going to be introduced to it. I would strip some of the assets and ideas from it, and implement them in future content instead.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

I think that we also arrived in Shadowlands way too late, where most of the things had already been destroyed and there was not much to be done. I wish we arrived earlier, before Argus’ corruption and death, so we could help Rygelon and save more lives. Maybe a time travel could fix it in the future. Now that the Shadowlands is “fated” I’m afraid that inevitable awaits.

[Nerovar]

Revisiting Classic after seeing the story of Shadowlands unfold has been interesting. Now I have to wonder every time I free the soul of some Scourge roaming the outskirts of Stratholme whether they're going to be sent to Maldraxxus to be stitched into some abomination. Absurd.

[Asrialol]

Polls in the lore section is never a good idea.

Most people here are writers themselves, calling everything they didn't write themselves "bad writing". Bonus points for mentioning Danuser by name, too.

[Kathranis]

No. Retcons are lazy.

I'd just take what's there and pivot it into something better, amp up the role of Denathrius and the Nathrezim and make them a returning threat in the future, with Denathrius having been behind the Jailer's actions and the true mastermind. Maybe even have him invade the realm of Light and have his capture and imprisonment by the Naaru be part of his scheme, too. Denathrius works as a 4D chess master where the Jailer does not.

The First Ones and the other Zereth locations I'd just make open ended mysteries and have them take the place of what used to be the Titan lore. Vague, never fully explained, never reappearing. At most, I'd probably use Zereth Tumult as a way to introduce a true pantheon of Disorder, as it doesn't make any sense to have Sargeras as its ultimate antagonist. But that's something I'd do way further down the line. I'd pull away from cosmic threats for the time being and then return to that in the future after building up to it gradually over time.

Also, it's a bit late with Dragonflight already on the way, but personally I'd have followed up Shadowlands with an expansion called "World of Warcraft: Rebirth" or something like that. Timeskip several years, maybe over a decade, and revamp the world in a big way. Stormwind reforged in the Light with big crystal lions and stained glass, the Cathedral becomes the seat of power. Orgrimmar flourishing with life, Botani and Saberon infesting the Barrens. A new world tree for the night elves, Lordaeron rebuilt. Silvermoon and the Exodar revamped. The Cataclysm aftermath all cleaned up where appropriate, not undone but built over with new stuff and new growth. Etc.

[Super Dickmann]

No point, next to nothing that happens in it has much on-going consequence for future stories, and by simply not bringing it up you can carry on as is. As @Jastall said, downplay the Bald Man's influence and close the Veil and you're basically done. You can then reuse some of its ideas later on, the way WoD and Legion made good use out of the dumpster fire that was TBC.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

No point, next to nothing that happens in it has much on-going consequence for future stories, and by simply not bringing it up you can carry on as is. As @Jastall said, downplay the Bald Man's influence and close the Veil and you're basically done. You can then reuse some of its ideas later on, the way WoD and Legion made good use out of the dumpster fire that was TBC.

Yeah, Legion was actually a great example of how things can be remade in a good way. I didn’t play Burning Crusade, so I can’t say if I enjoyed it, but after doing old quests, it felt like the late events of what happened to Dreanor after planet destruction. So Shadowlands could be saved in a similar way by moving to the past before things hit the fan.

[Aucald]

There's little need to retcon it - Shadowlands as it is now is essentially a bottle-story, and once we move on from the content I doubt it'll be mentioned much in the future. There was an existential threat arising from the realm of Death, we went there and dealt with it, then returned to Azeroth for a new adventure (Dragonflight) to pop up that is completely unconnected to what happened in the Shadowlands. Unlike WoD and Legion, Dragonflight doesn't even have a narrative connection to its previous expansion in the way that WoD and Legion shared an antagonist in the form of Gul'dan - it's quite literally a new story, moving on from what the developers termed "more high concept" story ideas.

[Selah]

No, I wouldn't just snap my fingers and be like "didn't happen." Firstly, you have all the stuff in the game that you'd have to just remove which would be wildly disrespectful to the team who actually put the work into the game.

The biggest problem with WoD, BfA, and SL isn't that the concept was poor, it's that the execution and implementation of the stories and content was incomplete and incompetent. The fix for these three expansions isn't erasature but giving these stories time to develop in-game and allow them to be seen through to completion. And that's the route I would take. I'd take multiple major and evergreen patches to explore these stories and worlds. Maybe even use the Bronze Dragonflight to do so. Have Chromie pop up and be like "hey, there's infinite messing with the time lines in these places. We need you to go back and make sure that everything happens in the way it should have" and use that as a mode of exploring those stories.

[Rustov]

In retrospect, something simple that might have helped Shadowlands, and Zovaal, gain acceptance- make the Shadowlands the personal afterlife to Azeroth. Not the universe, not the multiverse, just Azeroth. Each planet would have their own afterlife. A world is about the scale that people can handle, both as a setting, an objective, and a threat level. Trying to expand the scope to beyond one planet, to the whole cosmos, beguiles belief that we mortals could fix it, and that what we saw (~6 meager zones, 3 patches) was representative of a cosmic-spanning story.
It's too late to go back and do it that way, nor even retcon it, but perhaps a lesson going forward for Blizzard. Hopefully they remember it for 11.0.

[Eosia]

No. First and foremost the lead narrative person changed in the middle of Shadowlands at a point where it was probably too late to turn back. Coupled with a shift in development due to the pandemic and financial pressure from the holding company above them, it created a perfect storm to screw over the expansion. I know Blizzard is trying to save face on one side by adamantly stating no patch was cut, but anyone with eyes can see that. There's too many gaps, too many sudden revelations, etc.

And they did have a balancing act with Sylvanas. On one hand they couldn't just magically redeem her, bring her back, and then have everyone be all "we forgive you!". But they couldn't just kill off a popular character either. I think they handled that problem fairly well. The splintered soul aspect was an interesting twist, and certainly feasible given that we learned more about the process and forces behind the original creation of the Lich King from Ner'zhul's soul. That made her have to relive, as her "good self", what the Banshee Queen did. This actually has its roots in Shamanistic practices of our world. The act of dying to Forstmourne splintered the soul of the victim. When Uther goes in to talk with the Ranger General fragment, he's performing a "soul journey".

The thing is they can go back at a future point and expand on Shadowlands. We have a few other Zeriths, there's the "First Ones" to explore, etc. There's also the fact that Denathrius is tucked away somewhere now too which is something they can use to send us back to the Seat of the Titans to have a chat with Sargeras since he is now confined and "accessible".

It is fun to have these cosmological journeys every once in a while, but we do need to be grounded on Azeroth most of the time.

[Rageonit]

That question implies that the alternative might have been better, which i highly doubt given the material we're talking about.

Unless you wanted to see more of the Jailer & Co.

That kind of thinking got us to where we are, so you basically want to put a band-aid on another band-aid. It won't give any better results; quite on the contrary, retconning things AGAIN will undermine the story even more. I know there's plenty of people who'd rather pretend SL didn't happen, but it did, and sadly we have to live with it.

[Volitar]

I'm pumped that I have a job that I cannot be fired from no matter how poor the quality of my work is.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

I'm pumped that I have a job that I cannot be fired from no matter how poor the quality of my work is.

That's fantastic, my friend; now that we're no longer unemployed, would you change the Shadowlands story or simply forget about it? Ahaha

[Kralljin]

retconning things AGAIN will undermine the story even more.

Strictly speaking, Blizzard has barely retconned anything, they just "recontextualized" a lot of shit.
Which frankly fucked up a lot of the previous lore where it has created completely nonsense scenarios that are very difficult to ignore because of how fundamentally SL screwed with the setting.

With WoD, you can at very least ignore it, because it's largely self enclosed (barring the Legion nonsense, but that's only relevant if you ever deal with AU's), but with SL it basically looms over literally every character that's dead.
Nevermind that basically any belief system in Warcraft has been pretty much fucked by SL.

That's why i say retcon SL, because it just fucked the setting of Warcraft.

[Khaza-R]

Strictly speaking, Blizzard has barely retconned anything, they just "recontextualized" a lot of shit.
Which frankly fucked up a lot of the previous lore where it has created completely nonsense scenarios that are very difficult to ignore because of how fundamentally SL screwed with the setting.

With WoD, you can at very least ignore it, because it's largely self enclosed (barring the Legion nonsense, but that's only relevant if you ever deal with AU's), but with SL it basically looms over literally every character that's dead.
Nevermind that basically any belief system in Warcraft has been pretty much fucked by SL.

That's why i say retcon SL, because it just fucked the setting of Warcraft.

This. The long term implications of the Shadowlands on the narrative can't be ignored. It essentially re-defined the nature of the setting itself. It doesn't matter if you close the veil and pretend it never happened.

Its essentially WarCraft's version of midicholorians.

[Rageonit]

That's why i say retcon SL, because it just fucked the setting of Warcraft.

Did it though? Us even being in SL was a "one in a lifetime" kind of thing. If I understand it correctly, after SL we (the heroes) simply f*** off and are never able to go back again, so whatever happens there doesn't really concern us (at least until another Jailor comes up to reset the universe or whatever). We know now there's some kind of afterlife waiting for us when we die, but we still have to manage our mortal affairs, and people who die and go to SL should never interact with us again.

[Darknessvamp]

Easy question to answer, yes. With little effort they could go the route of Nzoth collectively mindfucked us in Ny'alotha, the super saiyan blast, "Azeroth's woons are healed Champiun!" celebration and all of Shadowlands was his extremely convoluted distraction after being severely wounded during the raid fight to the point Ny'alotha itself was collapsing and he had to flee as his shrivelled shadow of his self (unbeknown to all). We come to our senses after 'leaving the Shadowlands' to awaken in the Heart Chamber with everyone reeling from being ejected from Ny'alotha to find only MOTHER looking grim and Wrathion running around boasting that N'zoth is finally dead! MOTHER quickly exposits about how the player was stuck in some form of suspended animation as a final attempt by the dying Old God to have some kind of victory before perishing with the collapse of their realm and they've been working to free us. Then transition into Dragonflight by having MOTHER mention the world outside the Heart Chamber has changed while we were in stasis and that we're needed to visit one of the oldest Titan facilities to help Azeroth at Tyrhold or something before we visit our home capitals only to find they're under attack by Drakonids.

[Rageonit]

Easy question to answer, yes. With little effort they could go the route of Nzoth collectively mindfucked us in Ny'alotha, the super saiyan blast, "Azeroth's woons are healed Champiun!" celebration and all of Shadowlands was his extremely convoluted distraction after being severely wounded during the raid fight to the point Ny'alotha itself was collapsing and he had to flee as his shrivelled shadow of his self (unbeknown to all). We come to our senses after 'leaving the Shadowlands' to awaken in the Heart Chamber with everyone reeling from being ejected from Ny'alotha to find only MOTHER looking grim and Wrathion running around boasting that N'zoth is finally dead! MOTHER quickly exposits about how the player was stuck in some form of suspended animation as a final attempt by the dying Old God to have some kind of victory before perishing with the collapse of their realm and they've been working to free us. Then transition into Dragonflight by having MOTHER mention the world outside the Heart Chamber has changed while we were in stasis and that we're needed to visit one of the oldest Titan facilities to help Azeroth at Tyrhold or something before we visit our home capitals only to find they're under attack by Drakonids.

Still leaves you hanging with plenty of question, like: why did Sylvanas did what she did? Supposedly she was motivated by Jailor (who doesn't exist, as he was merely a figment out our imagination), so was she already controlled by Nzoth - and if she was, should she be redeemed of her actions...? Etc. etc.
Pretending that SL didn't happen doesn't solve much; if anything, it makes some of the stories and motivations even more muddled. At least some of the stories got closure in the Shadowlands; without that, you're back to square one with a set of all new troubles.