What is in your opinion more worse ? WoD story or SL story ?

[McNeil]

WoD story is contained in its own world while Shadowlands is doing a great job to straight up destroy the old lore while they keep shoving Sylvanas down our throats. Its so much easier to just ignore WoD and look back at the good old lore which wasn't ruined. They should have never done both an alternate universe and exploring the afterlife.

[Varodoc]

You're asking me what's worse between "Draenor is free!!!" and "Shadowlands are free!!!"

Don't do this to me, don't put me in this position, I genuinely do not know how to answer this.

[Chumahki]

SL is pretty bad, and just a continuation of pretty bad from BFA. WoD, however, set a really, really high bar for bad story. It is a true testament to the horrible story of WoD that it's worse than SL, because SL is just terrible. So terrible it's embarrassing. But at least it's not WoD.

[Niwes]

Yeah I can understand that. But everytime traveling in time is being used in games, movies/series or whatever in order to tell a story, it more or less ruins everything. Whats stopping us from not just doing it again and fix whatever went wrong? whats stopping our enemies to do so? When we do travel in time - what is really reality then? the timeline we are in now or is it corrupted? should we have gone a different path?

you can say something similar about „how is live written well, when you know what happens after your death“. but i know what you mean.

[Jamais]

Without a doubt, WoD. Also, BfA. Cata was also quite bland.

MoP was the best when it comes to a coherent story and cool subplots.

WoD ending was comically bad. Literally the only legacy is Guldan being a catalist into Legion. And death of Garrosh, and i find him being milked for fuelling anima in Revendreth very amusing.

Alternate dimensions ruined the feel of overall arc and i like to pretend it never existed.

You may not like how SL afterlife turned out to be, but yes, it is structured, ordered and imho it makes sense.

90% of SL story complaints are either direct or indirect Sylvanas complaints.

And better to have a divise story then a bland one.

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They should have never done both an alternate universe and exploring the afterlife.

Why not? We had spirit healers since day 1. It was logical to explore the afterlife at one point.

[Gaidax]

We've still yet to do a single thing by our own free will. Everything has either been a quest or a raid/dungeon which was introduced to us by an actually important character to the story. And then people wonder why there are holes in our understanding. If this was a single player rpg we'd probably be playing bolvar and have all these edgey behind the scenes meetings that tell us more of what is going on.

I think Blizzard needs to boost this ingame, not by much, but by a decent measure. One of the issues of current WoW story is that there is insane over reliance on mysteries, secrets and so on and so forth.

Like for the life of me, I don't understand why covenant leaders don't come clean on how exactly the whole Zovaal thing happened. Same goes for the first ones or Elune - like she's a bloody Winter Queen's sister - so why can't we get some explanations literally from the horse's mouth there - we deserve at least that for saving her and her furries' ass 500 times. And so on and so forth.

Instead Blizz keeps doing these Ilgynoth-like half sentences or shit we overhear or some 2 min cinematics with few lines missing the context like Elune one. Like until now, I have no fucking clue what Zovaal even tried to do to even be cast down to the Maw and what Arbiter actually is/was and how it got clearly Zovaal's bauble. And this shit - it really should have been revealed 9.0, so players would have actual information to work with instead of being with this feeling "this shit makes no sense".

I really hope that going forward Blizzard will adjust storytelling to be richer on detail ingame, the obvious questions that every sane person would ask right away should have an answer. Now 100% there should be mystery, but not bloody everything should be fogged up, because it's just turns everything into nonsense.

[Niwes]

You're asking me what's worse between "Draenor is free!!!" and "Shadowlands are free!!!"

Don't do this to me, don't put me in this position, I genuinely do not know how to answer this.

now you know, why i started this poll. i had a hard time to decide by myself.

which does not mean, i suppose that everyone do not like WoD or SL story per se. i think there are ppl out there, that really like WoD or SL story. thats what i meant with that additional text in the OP. ofc i could ask „which had the better story“ to not negatively announce it. but when i look over the years at everything what was said about WoD and everything what actually is said about SL, i find my question more apropriate than asking for the better one.

[Faldric]

Time travel vs Afterlife. Both concepts should never have been introduced. Why care if anybody dies anymore? It's really hard to tell which one screwed over the story more.

[TheRevenantHero]

Without a doubt, WoD. Also, BfA. Cata was also quite bland.

MoP was the best when it comes to a coherent story and cool subplots.

WoD ending was comically bad. Literally the only legacy is Guldan being a catalist into Legion. And death of Garrosh, and i find him being milked for fuelling anima in Revendreth very amusing.

Alternate dimensions ruined the feel of overall arc and i like to pretend it never existed.

You may not like how SL afterlife turned out to be, but yes, it is structured, ordered and imho it makes sense.

90% of SL story complaints are either direct or indirect Sylvanas complaints.

And better to have a divise story then a bland one.

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Why not? We had spirit healers since day 1. It was logical to explore the afterlife at one point.

At least WoD was self-contained and has yet to impact the story as a whole yet. Shadowlands HEAVILY impacts the rest of the story because it is literally death in the entire multiverse is broken. That's what makes SL WAY worse.

[Relapses]

Hard to compare WoD's completed story to SL's thus-unfinished story. So far, I'm liking SL a lot more but there was a lot of potential in WoD's story which was never explored.

[Jamais]

At least WoD was self-contained and has yet to impact the story as a whole yet. Shadowlands HEAVILY impacts the rest of the story because it is literally death in the entire multiverse is broken. That's what makes SL WAY worse.

What do you mean death in entire universe is broken?

What would you suggest happens to WoW chars when they die?

[Niwes]

I don't like SL as much. I had more fun in WoD. SL is a depressing and dreary place. I was more entertained fighting the Ogre empire and Gul'dan than The Jailer.

again my reminder: we talk solely about the story here, not the xpac as a whole!

[Gen4Glock21]

For me WoD started out okay but the very last raid or in one patch the lore went south with no explanation. Grom was the villain through out the expansion then all was forgiven with no explanation that I recall.

At least with SL there have been subtle hints of why Slyvanas might be messed up, you know with missing her good side of her soul, etc. Don't get me wrong the last cinematic was bad with the "I will never serve" part. She has literally been serving this guy since she jumped off ICC. They should of written her change of mind with the whole mind control of Anduin IMO. That would of made more sense seeing she didn't like being controlled by Arthas and all. I am by no means an expert on the lore, this is just my opinion.

[TheRevenantHero]

What do you mean death in entire universe is broken?

What would you suggest happens to WoW chars when they die?

Death is broken because souls aren't going where they're supposed to go. Also, the anima shortage is destroying the Shadowlands. The Jailer is trying to literally remake reality. That's why Shadowlands is worse than WoD. Because the story of SL is literally fucking over the multiverse.

[Niwes]

For me WoD started out okay but the very last raid or in one patch the lore went south with no explanation. Grom was the villain through out the expansion then all was forgiven with no explanation that I recall.

At least with SL there have been subtle hints of why Slyvanas might be messed up, you know with missing her good side of her soul, etc. Don't get me wrong the last cinematic was bad with the "I will never serve" part. She has literally been serving this guy since she jumped off ICC. They should of written her change of mind with the whole mind control of Anduin IMO. That would of made more sense seeing she didn't like being controlled by Arthas and all. I am by no means an expert on the lore, this is just my opinion.

your opinion is ofc welcome. you do not need to be a lore expert to have an opinion about which story you liked more (or less, in that case).

[Darknessvamp]

WoD was definitely stunted storywise, we could clearly see they had a firm idea of what they were starting from and were trying to make it slot into the Warcraft universe as cleanly as possible (as bad as their explanation of pocket time locked dimensions was) but they quickly lost where the story was going to go alongside the issue of lack of content forcing them into bum rushing an ending to link to their Legion Invasion idea in the messiest way possible.

Shadowlands though is a mess that began as an afterthought two expansions ago (Legion) that wasn't even a solid-ish concept until well after halfway through Battle for Azeroth and by the time of release still doesn't even know what it's aiming for, where it's going or how to explain itself while constantly asking the players to just give it time for it'll (not) work itself out and make sense at (no) point. All while also dealing damage to the setting and sense of several stories and events that happened in the past of the series and making them significantly worse in the greater context as a result.

[Gaidax]

My biggest gripe is that they gave us a big bad without actually explaining anything. All we knew was whispers about something iffy sylvanas was doing and she might have help. And now we're supposed to care when he follows his plan, we don't know if what we're doing is actually working in his favor or not. If he has foreseen all our actions. Right now it feels like we're ants in his garden. And he's redesigning it, while we're there. But nothing we do actually makes any difference, and what we're doing is just following the breadcrumbs blizz allows us to follow. Why are we doing what we're doing? If we're defending the sigil of ardenweald, why do we fight a battle on the other side of the zone? As soon as they sent me away on a 'kill 10 mobs over there' quest. I knew they'd steal it while we were gone. Anything and everything we do this expansion is irrelevant.

That's the problem, they withhold information for no reason. Like it makes no bloody sense. We have Devos making these silly yell fights with Archon mid-dungeon telling that she heard what Zovaal said and that he is right and shit is fucked - well why not just tell us like 500 time we faced her and her minions? Why should it be such an insane secret, when every bloody kyrian traitor grunt seems to know what's up.

Same goes for Sylvanas, why with all her bullshit she did not even once reveal what she's actually after, like heck the very intro of 9.0 when we have this big fight before blasting off to Oribos - it would only make bloody sense to have her try and convince us of her supposedly "set everyone free" great motive.

I just don't understand it. It would absolutely make things better and far less cringeworthy, if we'd simply just know these basic not a big secret things from the get go in SL, if not even beforehand.

[Niwes]

Time travel vs Afterlife. Both concepts should never have been introduced. Why care if anybody dies anymore? It's really hard to tell which one screwed over the story more.

yep, same thought made me struggle deciding. besides other things in the plot itself. still not sure what does more damage: time travelling parallel universe (at last its a parallel universe and you can mentally wish it away easily) or afterlife.

in the end i feel afterlife more damaging, because for every azeroth story that follows you go „and when dying then in the shadowlands xyz happens“. a parallel universe, even with time travelling, is pure nonsense. but you can wish it mentally away by „its in another (parallel) universe and does not affect us much“.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

BfA.

If I have to pick only WoD or Shadowlands… I think Shadowlands is worse. You’ve got the Sylvanas, Tyrande, Elune shit. You’ve got the Jailer who is by far the worst villain WoW has ever made. The dread lord retcon. Pretty much all of the characters are completely incompetent. It’s all just ugh.

[Casshern]

strange, looks like you voted for WoD. at least before you posted it was 1:1. now its 2:1 for WoD. maybe missread the title ?

I literally just voted now and voted for SL…