Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nyel]

I wouldn't be surprised to see them in 9.2.5

Blizzard definitely needs some new flashy press so new races during mid expansion could draw in players, plus they are essentially already in the game, they'd just have to make racials and voice overs, and perhaps fix armor on their models.

Allied Covenant races would have to be faction agnostic. It makes no sense to give e.g. Kyrians and Venthyr to Horde and Necrolords and Nightfae to Alliance. And then we would have the Pandaren problem which Blizzard wanted to get rid of altogether.

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Someone on the lore forums pointed out that Azeroth could be a slightly changed A Zereth, meaning A Keystone.

If Zereth Mortis is just one Zereth, then maybe Azeroth is the Keystone of Order. Hence the titan soul, why we can use first one gates, etc.

This sounds interesting. And it would give Shadowlands a nice finale on Azeroth (and Azeroth is really the only thing that matters in WoW).

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I agree with this, it would be pretty unexpected if we spent 2 seconds in 9.1 forging 4 sigils but took an entire patch just to get one. Though maybe actually going to the Craftenium for that would kinda be cool if taken seriously.

I mean if it would be like AQ opening or Isle of Queldanas from TBC where the entire server has to hand in resources it could be neat, but I think that stuff won’t make a return. So an entire content patch with just the premise of reforging one sigil sounds boring and dull in my opinion.

[therumblings]

nd then we would have the Pandaren problem which Blizzard wanted to get rid of altogether.

I haven't seen any actual evidence of this except for something ghostcrawler said, besides, you can make a void elf and blood elf literally look identical with some hairstyles/colors.

[Nagawithlegs]

Allied Covenant races would have to be faction agnostic. It makes no sense to give e.g. Kyrians and Venthyr to Horde and Necrolords and Nightfae to Alliance. And then we would have the Pandaren problem which Blizzard wanted to get rid of altogether.

BFA kind of sets up factions working together, so I don't think 4 choose-your-faction races would be offbrand.

[Sondrelk]

A title is a given, but we are already getting upgraded soulbinds and I doubt we'll get ANOTHER armor. That's probably why we're getting tier sets again (artists are free to do more things than covenant armor).

Allied Races would be a nice renown reward but I think it's unlikely.

I guess if we are going by how 9.0 had cosmetic rewards in all slots, and 9.1 only have armor, then I guess the next set might be just cosmetic backs.

[Cosmic Janitor]

BFA kind of sets up factions working together, so I don't think 4 choose-your-faction races would be offbrand.

Except for them having literally no reason to leave the shadowlands yet and join the mortals and their pathetic squabbles. The allied races joined because it was usefull to them, so unless we blow up the shadowlands in the next patch (would probably be for the best), I simply see no logical explanation why people that usually can't even interact with us should be joining us collecting bear arses to fuel our race wars.

Edit: Though we aleady discussed this stuff to death last year/earlier this year

[Sondrelk]

Except for them having literally no reason to leave the shadowlands yet and join the mortals and their pathetic squabbles. The allied races joined because it was usefull to them, so unless we blow up the shadowlands in the next patch (would probably be for the best), I simply see no logical explanation why people that usually can't even interact with us should be joining us collecting bear arses to fuel our race wars.

"The struggle on Azeroth is vital to the Shadowlands' continued survival, and our Aspirants/Fae/Recruits/Venthyr are curious to see how such a tiny planet can change so much. Let us join you in your struggles to help the Shadowlands."

It's the easiest explanation possible. Azeroth is importnat to the Shadolands in some way we don't fuly understand yet, why not just have denizens of the Shadowlands join us to help?

[Cosmic Janitor]

"The struggle on Azeroth is vital to the Shadowlands' continued survival, and our Aspirants/Fae/Recruits/Venthyr are curious to see how such a tiny planet can change so much. Let us join you in your struggles to help the Shadowlands."

It's the easiest explanation possible. Azeroth is importnat to the Shadolands in some way we don't fuly understand yet, why not just have denizens of the Shadowlands join us to help?

That doesn't explain why they would join the player factions though, which we as players have to do by default. Unless we will be seeing a neutral faction option/mode I just don't see much sense in having people which are cruicial to the way the shadowlands work come back to the world of the living and fuck about instead of ferrying souls, protecting the shadowlands against the other cosmic forces, .. whatever it is night fae do ... or sucking the evil from baddy souls. They already have alot of issues and their realsm are in shambles too. Not to mention it would completely undermine even the last shred of gravitas for death in the franchise if everyone literally could just come back as a blue human for the lols.

[Nagawithlegs]

I like the idea that the one responsible for WC3 was THE de facto God of Death, or the most important one. I just wish they made this more evident... it feels like Blizz is pussyfooting around showing that Zovaal is the one most responsible for Azeroth's suffering next to Sargeras. Most people think he's kind of random because they aren't making it obvious enough.

And he has a much better motivation than Sargeras.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

inb4 we go to craftenium in 9.2 to forge a new arbiter sigil and it's like mechagon just bigger

The Gnome Afterlife...

Thanks, I hate it.

[Nyel]

BFA kind of sets up factions working together, so I don't think 4 choose-your-faction races would be offbrand.

Legion did set up factions working together. BfA destroyed all of the developments from Legion in that regard. Both factions fight a pointless, illogical and dumb war, just to have a truce and continue working together (oh except the Sylvanas loyalists, which all of a sudden are in favor of Alliance and Horde partnership?)… it’s just nonsensical at this point with this constant back and forth.

Let’s just imagine the faction problem for the allied races wouldn’t exist: what kind of races would we get? Sanlayn from Revendreht? Okay, that’s the easiest one next to blue humans. But for Necrolords and Nightfae? Skeletons? And dryads? Or what? It just doesn’t work. Let Shadowlands races be what they are and don’t try to somehow make them fit into the (allied) race roster.

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I like the idea that the one responsible for WC3 was THE de facto God of Death, or the most important one. I just wish they made this more evident... it feels like Blizz is pussyfooting around showing that Zovaal is the one most responsible for Azeroth's suffering next to Sargeras. Most people think he's kind of random because they aren't making it obvious enough.

And he has a much better motivation than Sargeras.

What’s there to show? The problem is, it doesn’t feel earned or genuine. You can’t make him the biggest villain within one expansion and give him credit for several of the decisive moments from the last two decades. That simply doesn’t work from a storytelling perspective. And that’s the biggest issue with all of the storytelling in Shadowlands, too much significant attributed to a single entity in a fracture of time that’s needed for it to leave an impression with players.

BfA writing was bad, but the lore didn’t suck that much. Sure, the entire N‘zoth travesty was a major misstep, but it didn’t retcon half of Warcraft‘s events just to fit the narrative. But that’s what’s happening with Shadowlands right now. I think having him cresting the Lich King etc is a serviceable kind of lore retconning, but all the other stuff they’re trying to do… then the whole Denathrius/Nathrezim stuff and the Elune bullshittery - it’s just too much for everyone and that’s why all the forums, Twitter, Reddit etc is plagued with hatred for Shadowland‘s lore and writing. I’ve never seen such a massive despise of storytelling in WoW as I’ve witnessed it with Shadowlands. Props to Sylvanas, I guess.

[AngerFork]

Let’s just imagine the faction problem for the allied races wouldn’t exist: what kind of races would we get? Sanlayn from Revendreht? Okay, that’s the easiest one next to blue humans. But for Necrolords and Nightfae? Skeletons? And dryads? Or what? It just doesn’t work. Let Shadowlands races be what they are and don’t try to somehow make them fit into the (allied) race roster.

The Revendreth one would absolutely be the Venthyr. There's at least enough uniqueness to their models to match many of the Allied Races. Bastion would obviously be the blue human models like Kleia & Pelagos. Night Fae would likely be Satyr-type models similar to Aralon. They might need a slight facelife, but could work. Maldraxxus is probably the hardest. The nice part there is pretty much any race you'd pick would be unique and people would be very interested. Spiders from the House of Eyes, Lich style skeletons, or perhaps constructs with a spirit implanted. Most of those would at least be interesting & would probably get a niche audience that would love them.

[YYDelive]

So we have to wait until 9.2 to see the whereabouts of Nathanos again? or 9.1.5? (if any)

[Cosmic Janitor]

The Revendreth one would absolutely be the Venthyr. There's at least enough uniqueness to their models to match many of the Allied Races. Bastion would obviously be the blue human models like Kleia & Pelagos. Night Fae would likely be Satyr-type models similar to Aralon. They might need a slight facelife, but could work. Maldraxxus is probably the hardest. The nice part there is pretty much any race you'd pick would be unique and people would be very interested. Spiders from the House of Eyes, Lich style skeletons, or perhaps constructs with a spirit implanted. Most of those would at least be interesting & would probably get a niche audience that would love them.

Maldraxxus imho only has the beef-jerky skeletons as fully animated as the other covenants have Kyrians, goat people and Venthyr. I Peronally like the hooded necromancers the most, but apparently people claimed they use just dedicated models that can't wear armor(?). Since the goats play little to no role and the jerky-skeletons are just trash mobs as well, it's questionable if they'd make for even decent allied races to begin with. I think only the Venthyr and Kyrians really have that going for them as a species/people that would justify them - though I guess the goants and bonesacks have easy parallels in forsaken and draenei model-wise. Kyrians and Venthyr are also ones with the most defined roles in the shadowlands though.

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So we have to wait until 9.2 to see the whereabouts of Nathanos again? or 9.1.5? (if any)

There is nothing in the patch, as we didn't get to interact with Sylvanas at all outside of the raid. All we knew is that she didn't know her toy was dead, but after the raid we don't get to interact with her at all and the NPCs don't say anthing either. We also have no hints of a 9.1.5 patch or anything along those lines.

Frankly it feels like the covenant campain was over way too quick anyway. In 9.0 the whole campaign at least was evenly split renown wise. 8 weeks of campaign, 8 weeks of excess grind. This time we have 6 weeky of campaign and 10+1 weeks of excess grind.

[Super Dickmann]

We still don't know Zovaal's "problem" with reality so its yet to be seen if he and Sylvanas have a legitimate argument for the universe reboot. But it can be (and will be) argued that not getting into the main antagonist's motivation for literal year(s?) is bad writing.

The cycle is said to be flawed over and over again. Why? Check back in a year.

I feel like we're switching places here but I'll disagree and say that they did exposit on this, they just did it poorly. Or at least the writers think they did - the first Sylvanas/Anduin cutscene was meant as a reveal.

What Sylvanas describes to Anduin is that as the Shadowlands work at the moment you're essentially controlled by factors outside your control. You live for what is compared to the endless amount of time in the Shadowlands a 'momentary flicker', with your beliefs on what will happen when you pass on bearing no resemblance to what awaits and then a robot decides where you go based on factors you have no knowledge of at the time you make your decisions. Eternal assignment based on a period of time so brief as to be effectively meaningless. Then you're either stuck there as who you were is disassembled or since dying there is dying for real you trip on a rock and die. Depersonalization is inevitable, either as a result of the active way the 'main' realms work - Bastion, Revendreth or just the sheer passage of time - Maldraxxus re: Draka. An afterlife wherein whether you sinned or not is determined by criteria you can't possibly see and your penalty is to be put into vampiric serfdom and hope your polite overlords don't punt you into turbo hell isn't a nice place to go, notwithstanding the bonkers morality of some of it like how Vashj and Kael's assignment is based purely on Vashj having utility and Kael not.

Sylvanas wants to undo it. Even her being okay with killing everyone is in this lens a fairly coherent position to take since all those people would end up dead and so changed beyond recognition by the Shadowlands system anyway and accordingly, once she has the infinity gauntlet + stones great cosmic power of the Sepulcher she can undo all the consequences of her actions up to this point. What does she want to replace it with? Does the whole thing collapse? Do you go where you want? Fuck knows, that's where the exposition is completely vacant which scews the story up, but in terms of her grievances they're fairly clear and not especially unreasonable if not for her cubic ton of baggage and the character inconsistency.

As for the Blue Man, his issue is that everyone else is more interesting than he is and the only way he can stand out is to turn everyone into his meat puppets. He tells you right out he wants to make everyone else into mindslaves and his grievance is that right now there are people and they are not mindslaves. Or if you want to give it more credit and play with some of the implications 'Yet he defied the will of the First Ones and sought to unmake the balance of the cosmos.' from the Primus this week plus Denathrius' comments about Death being the only force of change and now the bit about the Jailer wanting to nab the world soul implies is that he figures that the balance of the cosmos is a fault and that the power he represents should rule supreme. Which given how passive Death is compared to the way every other cosmic power expands having its former ruler want to expand the influence of his 'element' is a fairly reasonable position to take, with the fact that he wants to wipe everyone else out being why his family kicked him down the hole.

The two-fold issues is that the narrative is both vague and complicated, yet not all that complex or pertinent to the emotional stakes of the story or existing materials in the plot and while that's fine for a character like the Blue Man since he's meant to be this higher force, it isn't for Sylvanas who badly needed a power point presentation.

[Sondrelk]

The two-fold issues is that the narrative is both vague and complicated, yet not all that complex or pertinent to the emotional stakes of the story or existing materials in the plot and while that's fine for a character like the Blue Man since he's meant to be this higher force, it isn't for Sylvanas who badly needed a power point presentation.

There are only really two "main" issues with the story.
One is that it follows after BfA, in which Sylvanas is portrayed as the most evil character to ever grace the game, instead of something more reasonable like Legion Sylvanas. This causes the narrative to really stretch to make the tragedy of the story work. Tyrande for instance is one that suffers narratively because of the same disconnect between the Legion/SL Sylvanas not really tracking to the BfA Sylvanas. Same with Anduin, whose optimism and ability to believe in the best of anyone is dragged down in the whirlpool of Sylvanas.

The second problem is that the scope of Shadowlands is simply too large. As you said the story is both vague and dense, but I would posit it alos has a major problem of overexplaining some aspects that should have gone unsaid, as well as not properly explaining other stuff.
It was simply put a mistake to have the expansion tkae place in the Shadowlands. Sure it allowed us to see cool visuals and old characters, but it also left us with gaping plotholes and issues the game is not equipped to handle. In an ideal world the Shadowlands would have been the exotic topping on a different expansion, one where we are given glimpses into what the Shadowlands is instead of leaving us with no mystery left to unravel.
The Shadowlands should have been treated wiht the same level of care that Argus got. A realm that we are told of repeatedly, but we only visit briefly and where as little as possible is actually explained of the inner workings.

[Ivarr]

The second problem is that the scope of Shadowlands is simply too large. As you said the story is both vague and dense, but I would posit it alos has a major problem of overexplaining some aspects that should have gone unsaid, as well as not properly explaining other stuff.

Perfectly put.

A Warcraft afterlife isn't inherently a bad idea. The lore refers to it several times. But the Shadowlands seem to have been purely created to make the events of BfA make any sense in hindsight making it feel untethered.

For example, a more obscure piece of lore shows how intimate the Quilboar relate to death. Their entire race is a death cult:

All must cooperate to ensure the tribe's well-being. Weak, crippled, and elderly quilboar who feel they can no longer aid the tribe seek death. Quilboar have no need to execute their infirm — the elderly destroy themselves out of a desire to aid the tribe. Most seek death in battle, but when doing so is not an option, they take their own lives by wandering into the wilderness, hoping to slay at least one beast that may have posed some threat to the tribe. Quilboar do not frown upon this ritual form of suicide; rather, the tribe views it as an act of bravery and devotion.

Females almost always commit ritual suicide once past childbearing age. Quilboar believe that their afterlife holds security and comfort for their race. They enter a realm where all the land belongs to the quilboar and no enemies seek to destroy them. All fight with strength and bravery, battling monsters and prey for amusement. Quilboar revere Agamaggan — an ancient, boar-like Eternal associated with the night elves — believing him to be the progenitor of their race. Where his blood spilled, it is told, patches of enormous briars sprouted to serve as homes to the quilboar. These dens still exist.

They teach that until the invaders are driven out and the quilboar have returned to their promised lands, suffering can be alleviated through a heroic death. The afterlife for quilboar martyrs is filled with wonders and pleasures beyond imagining, according to shamanistic teachings

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Quilboar#Culture

A Quilboar heaven where they get exactly what quilboars want makes their existence in Kalimdor (and Kul'Tiras) feel less dour. It neatly balances Warcraft brutality with its silliness.

It's a weird, disturbing, lovely piece of lore. And yet not the faintest whiff of them appearing in the Shadowlands. It's not an inconsistency either. Might well that the quilboar are simply wrong about the afterlife, or their afterlife realm is somewhere far away from this Oribos node.

But it is a missed opportunity to interweave the afterlife with the warcraft universe. The realms we got feel more like niche elements of the lore. Like these are the realms that are supposed to take care of the outliers, the souls that took a unique path in their life and need some special attention. And yet these realms are now tasked with carrying the WoW afterlife in its entirety, being responsible for the fabric of reality. It's incredibly unsatisfying.

And of course I'm not faulting this expansion for not featuring a Quilboar heaven. What I'm saying is that none of the afterlives envisioned by any of the races in the Warcraft universe is dealt with.

[Sondrelk]

Perfectly put.

A Warcraft afterlife isn't inherently a bad idea. The lore refers to it several times. But the Shadowlands seem to have been purely created to make the events of BfA make any sense in hindsight making it feel untethered.

Before Shadowlands was properly announced my favorite "leak" was one where Northrend was revamped. Similar to now the story would be all about the Shadowlands, but instead of us going to Shadowlands through the veil, the SHadowlands instead would invade us, somewhat similar to Legion in a sense.

Even without necessarily having them invade I think what would have worked neatly would be a version where random people from the Shadowlands came through to do stuff. Maybe parts of Bastion crept through and made the Borean Tundra more vibrant, or spores from Maldraxxus made mushroom infestations flare up.

We would still see Mawsworn and such, but with less direct information we would be made to glean what we could from the scraps given.
The Va'kyr were based on something seen in the Shadowlands. Maybe the Mawsworn Kyrian was what was seen, maybe Kyrians came from somewhere else. What exactly said Kyrian do would be left to the imagination, only being vaguely told they are the ones responsible for bringing souls to the Shadowlands.


Of course back then it seemed most everyone wanted to jump into the deep end. Many still held a grudge for the lack of a dedicated Argus expansion (also a terrible idea) and we were just off the back of a lack of Ny'alotha as a dedicated zone, so I guess everyone saw no downsides to overexplaining a previously mysterious aspect.

[TheFirstOnes]

It is possible Zereth Mortis is a gateway to the Land of the First Ones, and every cosmic realm as their own “keystone” there. I doubt there is a land of the First Ones for every single cosmology.

Also, Azeroth is likely but a means to an end for Zovaal, or she is possibly a secret First One keeping all of reality and existence together (Like Azathoth). That would change things a ton.

I do also expect the Pantheon of Life to aid us in some way, as I seriously doubt Elune and co are going to be sitting ducks for much longer.

I do think the Sepulcher raid could end on Azeroth, which would be cool since that could also tie in perfectly with a Light and Shadow expac, or maybe even a Cata 2.0 expac leading into a Light/Shadow expac.

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Reminder, why would Zereth Mortis (AKA Keystone of Death) represent a land of the true Gods of Warcraft? Idk, that in itself doesn’t add up. I simply think it acts as a keystone to their lands, similar to how the players use the keystones to Oribos from the Maw and Korthia.

But here, we’ll need a key of Death to unlock the Waystone, and the Primus is currently making that key.

[Ivarr]

Before Shadowlands was properly announced my favorite "leak" was one where Northrend was revamped. Similar to now the story would be all about the Shadowlands, but instead of us going to Shadowlands through the veil, the SHadowlands instead would invade us, somewhat similar to Legion in a sense.

Even without necessarily having them invade I think what would have worked neatly would be a version where random people from the Shadowlands came through to do stuff. Maybe parts of Bastion crept through and made the Borean Tundra more vibrant, or spores from Maldraxxus made mushroom infestations flare up.

Right, I'd be fine if that was what the next expansion amounted to. Patch 9.3 shows that there are countless smaller realms in the shadowlands that are all rough approximate versions of what Azeroth (and other worlds) races believe the afterlife to be.

The in 10.0, For some reason rifts continuously open and close causing these realms to spill over into Azeroth. When a rift opens, part of the realm temporarily contaminates the zone with their bullshit in Azeroth, and when it closes it's as though it never happened. Like a Legion invasion.

Players have to fight back this contamination as they would with an invasion and finally they have to cross over into the afterlife realm and explore this zone to lock in the result. These afterlife realms can vary greatly in size and scope and theme.

So to use the quilboar (i'm not obsessed with quilboars I swear) example; A rift opens in Dun Morogh causing the quilboar realm to spill over, a phased version of Dun Morogh begins, suddenly thorns everywhere, the snowy mountain ranges are upheaved like a snowy version of Briaback Kraul in Stormsong Valley. Players complete quests, farm, grind, defeat rares and bosses for a few days. When they do it sufficiently, the rift recedes and only a gateway remains that allows players to enter the Quilboar realm for say, a full week. Maybe when they don't manage to beat back the rift, they don't get their portal either and they're locked out of the content for that week. It raises the stakes and it sure beats timegated content.

But Dun Morogh and the Quilboar realm aren't intrinsically tied. The same quilboar rift can open in the Eastern Plaguelands, or the Borean Tundra, or Deepholme, changing these zones but still giving access to the same Gateway.

Likewise, other rifts can open up in Dun Morogh as well. Maybe the next time De Otherside decides to screw up a different location in Dun Morogh and the players have to try their hardest to make sure they can lock in their gateway to de Otherside for the next week.

This is how you can create a Cataclysm in Azeroth without screwing with the existing content. Players can 'opt out' of this invasion and just access the ordinary zone if they don't want to join.

And rifts invasions don't have to be all deeply tied to lore either. There can be generic rifts opening gateways to realms with barely anything in it just to break up an existing zone for a bit and give players an opportunity to secure a gateway for access to some resources in this wasteland of an afterlife realm. Would be a fun way to make the WoW economy more dynamic. If players fail to secure these gateway the entire server is locked out of specific materials for maybe several weeks until they get the next chance.

[Super Dickmann]

There are only really two "main" issues with the story.
One is that it follows after BfA, in which Sylvanas is portrayed as the most evil character to ever grace the game, instead of something more reasonable like Legion Sylvanas. This causes the narrative to really stretch to make the tragedy of the story work. Tyrande for instance is one that suffers narratively because of the same disconnect between the Legion/SL Sylvanas not really tracking to the BfA Sylvanas. Same with Anduin, whose optimism and ability to believe in the best of anyone is dragged down in the whirlpool of Sylvanas.

The second problem is that the scope of Shadowlands is simply too large. As you said the story is both vague and dense, but I would posit it alos has a major problem of overexplaining some aspects that should have gone unsaid, as well as not properly explaining other stuff.
It was simply put a mistake to have the expansion tkae place in the Shadowlands. Sure it allowed us to see cool visuals and old characters, but it also left us with gaping plotholes and issues the game is not equipped to handle. In an ideal world the Shadowlands would have been the exotic topping on a different expansion, one where we are given glimpses into what the Shadowlands is instead of leaving us with no mystery left to unravel.
The Shadowlands should have been treated wiht the same level of care that Argus got. A realm that we are told of repeatedly, but we only visit briefly and where as little as possible is actually explained of the inner workings.

Agreed on the first point entirely, and it's the hurdle that the expansion could not overcome regardless of its level of competence, which is why I'm more willing to cut it slack when it goes through the torturous motions of the Sylvanas Anduin interactions and fails.

For the afterlives though, this is where its faults are their own. Going straight into what's basically D&D afterlives with the connection to Azeroth being tenuous was a major mistake and none more so than us actually getting all of the info about how these places work while at the same the main plot is underexposited and character motivations are there. Rather than tying it to the world of the game and its peoples and thus creating stakes they tied it - very loosely to the 'Avengers' we've been stuck with since BFA. They, with the exception of Anduin who has actually improved exponentially since he was always intended to be the main character in a game of a totally different genre, are boring husks who've gone through all these motions before and are completely tangential to the plot. The interaction between Darion and his dad where they gloss over how Bolvar ordered him to raise Tirion is among the most galling in that regard in that it really demonstrates how Bolvar is nothing but a visual design, his most interesting aspects - that being him being the Lich King, being excised and leaving nothing left because at the end of the day there wasn't much of anything to him in the first place.

I'd put this whole bit about how if the only place in the Shadowlands we went to was the Maw as an endgame zone while the rest was a Northrend revamp where all the Covenants and their operation would be alluded to and demonstrated as rep factions but would not actually have their home depicted except as glimpses or, to borrow from Ivarr - rift zones like Argus but you already did, so I'll just give it a thumbs up. Explaining the afterlife was always a mistake - foregoing the societal effects of it only made it exponentially worse by taking the people out of it. I couldn't care less about any of the Avengers we're lugging around like lepers and I'll go to the bat to say that the Shadowlands cast are exponentially more entertaining, anything to do with the Blue Man aside, but aside from them every tie with Azeroth is abstract and so the plot is abstract. Even the torture dimension is abstract because we never see any torture and so we have no frame of reference about what the bad man will inflict upon everyone.

Of course back then it seemed most everyone wanted to jump into the deep end. Many still held a grudge for the lack of a dedicated Argus expansion (also a terrible idea) and we were just off the back of a lack of Ny'alotha as a dedicated zone, so I guess everyone saw no downsides to overexplaining a previously mysterious aspect.

Argus was a mistake and Ny'alotha rather than N'zoth as a zone next to Nazjatar was also a mistake. Even killing KJ was a tremendous error. All the 'i miss killing boars uwu' posters now were 'Azeroth is boring, we need to go to spehss, the faction war isn't important' posters then. The evisceration of the heart of the franchise took place over people talking about how it had lived out its course and it was now time to go to deal with cosmic threats. Watching those same people now complain about how boring and disconnected this is from Warcraft and how the characters who's destruction they were cheering on in cases like Jaina's BFA story has been a profoundly satisfying bit of Schadenfreude. Especially since my apathy and contempt for much of everyone of the established cast has made Shadowlands a bit more enjoyable than those who were surprised when 'Anduin solves all the world's problems and goes to space to fight ghosts' went pretty much exactly as anyone with the faintest sense of pattern recognition could've noted.