Why Shadowlands FAILED. 

You know you've fucked up immensely when "It was all a dream," one of the worst tropes in storytelling, is actually your *best* case scenario for an ending.

What's so heartbreaking is, this expansion has Jaina and Uther, they decided to not utilize Arthas in any lore between them. So much missed potential :'(

Can we also talk about the time Blizz retconned the reason we went to the Shadowlands in the first place? Originally we went to save the leaders being taken to the Shadowlands/Torghast, but after 9.1, any new players go through the maw intro, only to find all the leaders huddled around a table in Oribos saying "we saved ourselves, we don't need you." It really hammers home the feeling that we don't matter. What's the point?

I've never been less interested in a fictional villain in my life. They tried pulling a Thanos out of thin air and now everything feels hollow.

They also failed to write "any" good story for the Death Knight player characters. Let alone the Knights of the Ebon Blade. We understood that in mists of pandaria or wod...it wouldn't make sense to go into any great detail of explaining the player character Death Knights. You could rightfully pat them on the head and say "sorry, this expansion is not themed around necromancy...maybe later" and it would have maybe been appropriate. But in the "literal" sequel expansion to wrath of the lich king......and you get absolutely NOTHING for death knight player characters. That is totally ridiculous. It is so bad that I would qualify it as unethical to have screwed over those players in that way.

Every boss we’ve ever killed is somewhere in The Shadowlands…this was never fully realized. Torghast should have been a boss rush greatest hits of WoW. Instead we got bland environments and bland “boss” encounters after boring trash.

The point about dialogue is spot on. The difference between WoW and FFXIV is night and day. Like, it feels like WoW NPC dialogue could just be swapped between almost anyone with no real problem. Jaina and Bolvar and Baine and Thrall could all have their lines swapped with just a pronoun change. Meanwhile, if you gave an Alphinaud line to Alisae it wouldn't work at all, it wouldn't sound like him. Even if it's just exposition dialogue they still feel different. WoW characters have either no personality or "evil" as a personality

This reminds me of how baffled I was that Rexxar and Jaina don't exchange a single word in BFA, despite everything that has happened between them, despite Rexxar being the one who killed her dad.

12:05 Star Wars the old republic does the same. When you are leveling, all of a sudden you meet this character that just goes; 'Good to see you again, sir'. And it turns out to be a character you helped 20 levels ago who was no promoted as well. And they even cover that you might not remember them anymore by giving you the option to say 'remind me again where I know you from'. Whereas You saved Jaina's life about a million times now, and still she acts like she doesn't freaking know you.

Legion really made us expect Sylvanas to have some sort of going full hero mode. Like she saving Varian risking her life against the Infernal aboard the alliance ship. Saving the horde when everything turned wrong. Looking inspired and heroic when burning Vol'jin's body. But then BFA.. just went 180° so bad with her, that it makes all the other things I mention stupid and with 0 sense at all.

I get the what they said about the old team using retcons too much, but at the same time, they at least used retcons to build the world and try to make the story more connected. Chronicles was made so that all the story beats and differing accounts could be streamlined in the context of the past history. But Shadowlands is using retcons to undermine the previous story, and give undeserved importance to these new cosmic beings they're pushing to the mainfront. If they wanted to connect us to the Shadowlands, they really should have done it through the eyes of characters we know, like the suggestions Bellular and Matt made about Baine and Jaina. We would have both a visual and emotional cue to connect us back to Azeroth through these beloved characters. And the new characters like Taelia or Calia should have been way more involved due to their direct connection to the Shadowlands and the Lich King lore. Like the concept of the characters sound cool, but in the game they've just stood there doing nothing. And it really does suck that we've seen jackall in terms of old story characters. This should have been a parade of old characters both from WoW and Warcraft making appearances left and right and reuniting with old friends and family. I mean, aside from Maldraxxas, each zone only had like one character we've seen previously. Revendreth was a perfect setting for fan-favorite villains to make their return, but we only got Kael'thas, who barely does anything relevant to the story. Honestly, this expansion was such a waste, and as a more casual, lore focused player, made me quit the game after thirteen years.

What you said about Legion Sylvanas was largely true as a horde player. Still annoyed about Vol jin (they has already killed too many horde leaders) but both sides lost someone (and Varian went out cool) so horde had hoped that was an evening out point. And then the lazy BS of BFA and on happened. Any real writing would have seen most of the horde leave Sylvanas when she gave the order for the tree

The game’s systems were oppressive at the beginning, but I think the fundamental issue of _taking players to the afterlife_ was the biggest one.

You're hitting the nail on the head here. I went through Shadowlands completely confused as to what the hell my role in the story was supposed to be. Then I got to the final cinematic of Sanctum of Domination and went- "Oh- I get it. I literally don't exist." So I unsubbed and decided to try FFXIV, which puts you at the center of events from the very beginning, and I've never been happier in a game.

An expansion that threw out cinematics and themes that tugged on all of the nostalgia strings of WotLK, but completely left out Arthas in the story and gameplay. That instead of writing stories about what happened to the souls of the dead from WoW's past, they decided to make the Shadowlands where "all?" dead souls go to? All this accomplished was to make the "Universe" of Warcraft absurdly small, and simultaneously ignore a lot of older WoW characters that have died. How many of the important characters in the story currently meet up with their dead and lost relatives? Barely anyone. There's so many smaller stories that would have had way more narrative impact. You could have areas where there's gathering of past kings of different nations, far more cameos from past heroes and villains; and them perhaps playing a far grander role in the story itself. Course the problem there is that would require the writers to know the history of the world they're writing for. There could have been many moments similar to Yogg Saron's visions, glimpses into the past history of the world as told by the dead; fleshing out the history and important moments. At the end of the day, souls and death had basically zero impact to the overall story. Instead of souls it could have just been 'mana' and the overall story presented in the Shadowlands could have played out in the exact same fashion. The dead have virtually zero ties to the living, meaning that all the NPCs could literally just been brand new NPCs and the narrative doesn't change at all. The NPCs we do see aren't for the narrative, it's for nostalgia.

When announcing Shadowlands, I thought of all of the people who have died in WoW (good and evil) and was looking forward to encountering and talking to many of them. Some must certainly have loads of valuable dialogue potential given that they are dead and we are not.. surely they'd have things to convey to use or other people still living. But no.. we encounter almost none of them. Then there's how incredibly small Shadowlands seems to be. I've heard of more areas existing but then how do souls get to those areas if Oribos isn't connected to them. Then of course the disaster of a story narrative, which makes it difficult to care anymore. In short, don't try to tackle something as huge as enter the Shadowlands if you aren't willing to put forth the budget and time necessary to do it right.

the core heart of why they fail as a story teller. "It all means that your knowledge of some event that had happened a couple of expansions ago has little value because the truth of this event can be changed on a whim" Its called investment, you cant invest yourself in a world that has no solid foundation. If the rules can be so easily changed and the old lore can be tossed like some used burger wrapper, why should I get invested in your world, or remain invested.

The point about Jaina not knowing the player is interesting. They know how to change dialog based on achievements (and I'd assume quest id completion) like they did with Lady Vashj. If you have the achievement for killing her in SSC, she acknowledges you as someone she's fought in the past.

THANK YOU for bringing this! This is something that really got to me after I started playing FFXIV. The important characters in WoW are just plot devices. They have no meaningful interaction with your character aside from "Player, do X" or "Thanks for doing X", where they rarely might react differently according to your faction or sex, but that's it. You're nothing but another "soldier" for them, who they send to do absolutely everything in missions. I loved those moments on FFXIV where you and other characters (and not only the Scions, but other meaningful NPCs) where instead of advancing the plot, it would expand your relationship with them or among them. Not only the heroic characters, but the villains too (like every interaction between the protagonists and Emet-Selch in Shadowbringer, the "dinner" scene in Endwalker,...) , and this makes me much more invested on them. I really wish WoW had some moments like that too. Were you're not "advancing the plot", but expanding more about the important characters, their personalities, relationships among themselves and your character as well.

Making the afterlife into a zone was always a Pandoras Box. There are way too many dead characters that should be relevant, it demystifies death and most importantly soft retcons it as characters from the Shadowlands can just be reintroduced. The idea itself was just too problematic.

Another prime example of their just...not doing player investment is in Maldraxxas. I play a demon hunter, and when I ran into Baroness Vashj, who you would have logically been allied with during the respective expansion, she treated me as if I was one of the people who fought her and defeated her. They made no effort to make the lines/interactions make sense for demon hunters, instead choosing to write one generic experience as if you were part of the group that killed her.

I remember back in the day, as Alliance, if you've completed the Onyxia chain quest, when you finally met Bolivar again in Dragonblight in WOLTK, he acknowledged your accomplishment.

I see your thumbnail game has improved. Just needs an eyes wide, mouth open face to top it off 😍

I would be so happy if the next expansion actually begins with the characters waking up, and the Black Empire has been spreading across Azeroth again this whole time.

I remember in MoP some1 said in general chat in vale of eternal blossoms said that we will eventually miss this expansion and every1 laughed. Boy we're we wrong. I think MoP may have been the greatest expansion we have ever seen. It wasn't the theme that made the expac good, it was the core game itself

The description of "they always assume you're a new character so they keep resetting everyone to zero" it downright baffling when Ion made the excuse of "LOL YOU CAN'T JUST BE SOME UNKNOWN NEWBIE ANYMORE YOU SAVED THE WORRRRRRRRRRRRRLD" But they treat you as one. Constantly. And yet FF14 *just* wrote the BOOK on how you can literally end up with just being a simple adventurer at the end of the day despite all your accomplishments. You're as much of a hero or adventurer as you CHOOSE to be.

It's honestly a crime that we not only don't see Varian, but this was a great chance to bring in Tiffin as well. Hell, I can list so many missed chances with death characters, like Vol'Jin seeing his father.

100% agree with the point made with the sylvanus example, she was bad ass in legion, especially in the beginning, and seeing her in the bfa opening cinematic had me thinking the expansion was going to be so much different from how it ended

I just recently went back through all of z Warcraft 1 and 2. The lore of both of those games was very "Make it up as you go," but it still managed to create a setting that was instantly recognizable, with names like Nerzhul or Medivh that meant something, and a solid feeling of the world. The level of care early WoW took to keep up the world setting and carry the best bits forward is lost now, as I'm constantly feeling like very little matters or is canon anymore from the original series. And if I can't trust what the game is telling me to be true, then my immersion goes out the window. Also, I would be playing through Warcraft 3 right now but the fact that I bought the game 20 years ago means nothing because they funnel everyone to Refunded and I'm not touching that can of worms.

I had such high hopes for us to run into legendary characters like Lothar, Cairne, Nerzhul, Ogrim, Arthas, and many others and finally get to hear more insight into them in a way perhaps never explored yet in the lore, but was so disappointed to mainly encounter these unfamiliar cosmic souls from other planets that were pretty uninteresting...

What do you mean Jaina doesn't know my name? She has repeatedly called me "this Horde Champion"...which is pretty good considering I've barely done anything with here...other than that time I saved her brother, oh yeah, and how Thrall and I joined forces with her to bust out Baine and had a emotional moment out at Thunderbluff together...oh, there was also that time I helped lead a revolt against Sylvanas that ended the entire war between the Alliance and the Horde, not only resulting in the death of Surfang but also revealed Sylvanas' evil scheming and new powers. But other than that, why should she remember me? **cough**

NO STORY would be a HUGE improvement for wow . The story is so bad it breaks immersion more then just putting me in the setting and leaving me alone . Classic was great because the writing teams didn’t ruin it . In a perfect world the writing team would ADD to the setting

I always see mediocre writers in games try to make the setting as epic and cosmic as possible while having unintersting and forgettable stories and characters. Players remember the quests in Westfall and The Barrens because they were telling stories about characters trying to exist and survive within the setting.

Oof... Matt's monologue about Baine & Michael's mention of Tailia are brutal. All the character development Blizzard could have done. 🤦‍♂️ In an expansion with barely any content that could have been exciting side quest chains that people might have remembered in the future with fondness.

Blizzard has done a gigantic blow to the world, dignity, soul, and story of Warcraft. Unfortunately it’s a permanent one and I don’t see how it could ever get better.

WoW expansions may come after each other but Blizzard treats them each as their own separate thing. There is little (if any) character growth. I'm sure they rationalize it by saying 'we don't want to confuse new players by having this old NPC have a history with they are brand new character'. Personally I prefer the good old days where our character was some random murder-hobo and not the CHAMPION OF AZEROTH! Mainly because blizzard doesn't write the story that way. If you read the dialogue the NPCs treat us more as the random murder-hobo we started with in Vanilla.

I was a diehard DK player. I loved their lore, their role in Wrath of the Lich King, and I was hoping that as the resident experts on death and necromancy - who have canonically made ventures into the Shadowlands during Legion to collect reagents for their war machine against the Burning Legion - I _expected_ them to be our guide through these new lands. While I was stoked to see my boy Mograine help us rescue his dad, and their brief reunion, I was not pleased to see how shafted they were. Here's what I think the original intention was before they railroaded Sylvanas into this ham fisted 'redemption' arc: Bolvar was supposed to be the Big Bad. Bolvar, after years of fighting off the corruption of the Helm of Domination finally succumbed to its influence. We've seen in-game and out that Bolvar was losing himself to its power. He threatened to take Acherus once the Legion was dealt with, in 'We Ride Forth' he puppets Mograine - albeit with difficulty - and makes very unsubtle remarks again, about wanting to take back Acherus. In the Fire mage questline, Bolvar remarks that if the player falls, he'll raise them as part of his scourge. So, my thinking is Bolvar was supposed to be the big bad. He fell to the Helm and the Jailer. Mograine, who already vowed to do everything he could to relieve Bolvar's burden, sees it as his responsibility to end the threat. It makes taking Anduin make so much more sense given that Bolvar is more or less a second father to the boy, and they could have numerous discussions regarding the state of affairs. Each giving compelling arguments to the other's point. That way, we save Sylvanas for the Void Lords expansion.

I think the main thing about WoW's storytelling is that... it isn't our story. It's Jaina's, or Thrall's, or Anduin's, or Sylvanas's, or Garrosh's. It's never the Champion/Maw Walker's. You could replace our character with any other character, say Zappyboi, and nothing would change about the narrative. It's how it's always been. The issue is that now you have these MMOs like FFXIV, like SWTOR that put the player character in the narrative rather than just watching it. Even the dialogue choices in FF have no impact on the story in the grand scheme of things... it let's you give personality to your character and even has one line responses from NPCs before returning to the regularly scheduled program everyone else experiences.

A simpler explanation: Most WoW players care more about gameplay than they do about the lore, and Shadowlands failed because the average player was offered an endless anima farm for cosmetics and minigames at max level instead of systems like MoP Valor that allowed them to gear up through accessible content.

The Reason why nothing of these missing Plot Points is ever shown in the game... is.. wait for it.. you know it.. its Steve Danusers Dream: YOU HAVE TO BUY THE BOOK! .....

Its really sad that people know and like Arthas so much more from knowing him from broken missions in WC3 two decades ago than newer characters they have introduced and not expanded on. At all.

If you watched any of Heelvebabyface's batwoman videos he commonly remarks about _Why did this character do that? So the plot could happen._ or _Why did that character go there? I guess they read the script._ 😆 WoW seems to have a lot of that going on too.

I wish I could see a story director's reaction to stuff like this. Honestly, this has happened time and time and time again where they keep cutting story. Not simply content but context. Drives me nuts.

Exploring the afterlife in a franchise is a big gamble, even in the best of times. And it did not pay off in WoW.

On the subject of characters, I find that the best rule of thumb for writing Warcraft's best characters tends to introducing them in a limited capacity - such as a single zone - developing them through a questline, and bringing them back for little surprise questlines and only gradually making them more important if the need calls for it. Some of the best characters in this game were made through that method; the Nightborne crew in the Arcandor storyline of Surumar, Runas the Shamed, Lorewalker Cho (who was introduced more and more as time went on but started in the Jade Forest), Callydus, Riko, Reshad, Draka. Some of the characters who worked with increased importance and exposure we often got breaks from, instead of them being involved in every individual story beat, such as Illidan (who appears on and off during the Broken Shore questline and on bits of Argus but isn't at the center of every single major storyline, despite importance), Khadgar (who has the benefit of having a more lighthearted and comedic role), and characters like Talanji. Instead, we're forced to endure Jaina's drama, Thrall's ineptitude, Baine's do-nothing-ness, and Tyrande's stupidity, and Anduin's...Anduin-ness every single patch in a predictable cycle it feels since BfA. No importance is given to other characters who could have been involved instead.

Don't forget that they made the Warcraft afterlife to be universally unappealing. "When you die, you get to be A) tortured for eternity, B) tortured for most of eternity, C) forced to fight and die as an undead monstrosity for eternity, D) forced to give up everything that made you you in your former life, or E) forced to deal with Drust for eternity (also, you must find more wildseeds)." That is what they show. If you are a good person who lived a good life and died peacefully among those who loved you, there is no afterlife for you according to what the devs are willing to show. I spent far too much time trying to figure out how this cosmology was supposed to work, and it was not time well spent.

Also, at the time mists of Pandaria was released, Blizzard hadn't destroyed all of the good will they had cultivated with the community. By Shadowlands I for one was thoroughly done with their poor form. I just resubbed to go back and play through Shadowlands without any time gating. It took me 3 days of mindless grinding with zero challenging content. In many parts i was embarrassed for them at how ham fisted the content and animation was compared to other games i've played since I quite WoW.

You ain't dissing my boy Urianger and his explanation of Puddingway!

At this point I would like to see them finish an expansion. Actually have a full expansions worth of content. Not just mobile style f2p content.

It’s really sad to see because I think the different artifact weapons of legion did an amazing job of getting players interested in some lore, especially the ones that talked to you. Then they got punished for getting invested:(

Shadowlands could have been one of the more interesting expansions they have done simple due to the story telling they could have done. Anduin and Varian, Thrall and various orcs, Bolvar's story arc, Jaina and Arthus, Baine and Cairne, etc. This is an expansion story wise that could have taken 3-4 years to do, could have tied up so many threads and then allowed so many others to come forward. Once again they concentrated on systems, not story, in an expansion's who's backbone would be story. WoD had the exact same issues. They are far more concerned with pushing out expansions to get that next buck than they are about telling a good story or developing a good game.

Rule of cool works only if you see the character bust out all these of their tricks. You first establish some of them, make sure to communicate that's not all of their tricks and then finally see that character bust out their moves and go all out finally. And once they do, make sure they use all of them if need be. Look at Hellsing Ultimate and Gurren Lagann. They're basically textbook rule of cool, with Gurren Lagann being an homage to all kind of old shows with rule of cool elements so it's really like a greatest hits show.

My champion is the Deathlord. Why am I not seeing more of the Ebon Blade? Interacting more with Bolvar and Darion. The only thing that has impressed me was right in the intro when going to ice crown. The ebon knights actually addressed me as Deathlord. But after that. Nothing. I hate being champion. I just miss being an adventurer.

I’m a new player, only level 52 and I was starting to think I was just missing a crazy amount of context for the story. It’s both relieving and disappointing that I’m not missing anything, it’s just bad writing

Listening to the conversation about the Tauren made me realize that it was the decision to kill Cairne that was the first step in me abandoning WoW. Bottom-of-the-barrel writing.

It failed because the lore was all made up, they respected none of the previous groundwork and the setting was easily the worst thing they could have done. Nothing means anything anymore because you're where dead people go. It also means that no matter what, the expansions to follow mean nothing because all of our major lore characters and (hopefully) new villains end up there anyway. And the ones we recognize in SL are basically new characters because they've "transcended death" and their previous life is not important anymore. So all storylines eventually don't matter because the characters will abandon any semblance of their previous lives anyway. It was a can of worms that should have never even been thought into existence. Shadowlands has ruined WoW for me which is why I am exclusively playing Classic now.

Shadowlands has so many plot holes, that there's not even any plot left. Just hole. We never got a clear answer about just *who* goes to the Shadowlands. Garrosh ended up there, despite dying in an alternate timeline. So where is alternate Velen? If it's just *our* timeline that ends up there, then how did Garrosh end up there? What happens to Mag'har that die on Azeroth? Are there duplicate characters from various timelines? If someone sent Warchief Garrosh into the Shadowlands, would he be able to see his future self that died in the past? If time moves slower in the Shadowlands, what happens if someone stuck their head through the portal to the Shadowlands but kept their body in Azeroth?

Bolvar is a perfect example of this. Hero of the Alliance, Lich King, and the only Lich King to be de crowned. You'd think he'd had some really interesting conversations about his experiences, his motivations, and what he has learned about being the Lich King. We've so far have heard absolutely nothing. He also could of have this amazing conversation with Taelia but instead he just sits there apologizing to Taelia for something he was never sorry for: being the hero Azeroth needed. I hate what they've done to my Bolvar. Hell they burned down Teldrassil and they still haven't given Tyrande any reason to not behead Sylvanas. LIke Baine was right, behead the bitch she deserves it.

Reasons I left after almost 20 years of playing wow: 1. The Level Squish; this was placed into the game to fast track people into raid queues and nothing else, the level squish destroyed all leveling progression (what was left of it) originally a player had to level slowly over time playing through each expack one by one and 'earn' the right to go to the next and all the while they get to feel out the storyline and deeper world. 2. Static Character Limit while pushing New Races; Making alts may seem silly to a casual player but to veterans of an mmo who have already topped out easily on many characters making alts is not only easy it was streamlined over time to be almost second nature; after playing for almost 20 years it is not a far throw to imagine hitting the 50 character limit, so to see blizzard try to push 'oh here are half a dozen new races to make alts with!' and yet not raise the character account limit was never going to work for those who cant afford to or simply do not want to buy multiple accounts and as for people who 'cant imagine having that many alts' dont worry your opinions dont really apply here. 3. The Game is a Job; all of the systems they force into the game from legion on are designed with the mentality of FORCING the player to play non-stop every day without having any time to stop, because if you dont you will fall behind or not finish 'in time' because all systems have an expack only time limit so if you never did it? oh well. People complained about mists of pandaria 'dailies' but at least these were entirely optional and you can still do them even now and what is more once they are done they are done there is in fact an end. Can the same be said for the new systems? No. They continue as long as blizzard 'allows' it to and you the player WILL run it until blizzard tells you to stop. This isn't the formula for a game, it is forced unpaid labor. 4. The Progression is completely broken; players starting the game for the first time SHOULD be in a phased zone of vanilla storyline even if it had then new features and slowly make their way to BC > Wrath > Cata > Mists > etc etc but they don't and havent for a long long time they go straight into cata's reborn world which should have been a phased revisit for higher level players a new adventure in familiar lands but instead what they did was make new players jump backwards from Cata to BC for years; however now they dont even do that, now they have broken it completely, players jump from new start zone to 'new product' and everything else is an afterthought they also removed huge important chunks of the story content via the excuse of it being a 'timed event' making even the effort of trying to keep with the storyline meaningless. So basically the story is dead, destroyed be the people in charge because they didnt think it mattered, the game play is dull and has been turned into a job you dont get paid for, and all of the 'new bait; they use to try to lure players back WILL NOT WORK they structure and limitations of the game make not possible for lasting appeal. People bring up FF14 alot because FF14 actually does make you play through the lore of the game organically it even rewards you more and more for 'not' skipping content and doing small side quests they can and do often effect the main story in ways most people dont entirely realize. It is the people in FF14 who 'skip' content or buy their 'level ups' always say they regret it in the end. The problem with wow is they are only focused on day 1 sales in a long running subscription service they should have always been focused on all content not just new. Wow I feel is too far gone to save, Microsoft buying them was in my opinion a waste of money that in the end they will live to regret frankly (assuming they dont regret it already)

FFXIV has the mandatory msq- if there's a bit of the game you need to see for something to resonate, they make it mandatory. See also Crystal Tower in Shadowbringers. The moment they got rid of the *end* of the Wrathgate quests in Cataclysm was the moment they proved how little they care about a narrative throughline. The moment they stuffed the entire plot arc connecting Mists to Warlords into a book almost nobody goddamn read, they stopped caring about narrative. Somehow, Garrosh returned.

Thing is I'd love to be just a disposable mercenary - I feel like Warcraft is at it's best when it isn't doing character-driven narratives and instead relying on worldbuilding for you to just explore as some nameless questing adventurer... the problem is that recent expansions (at least since WoD) decided to go down a path of making you "the main character" and constantly praising the player as "General", "Champion", "Hero", "Maw Walker", etc. - so we simply can't ever go back to having "evergreen adventures on Azeroth" because we''re now "cosmic big shots" in the story that are supposed to be personally connected to characters like Jaina, Sylvanas, Anduin, Thrall, etc. - and yet, why be connected to a character who may either simply sit out the next expansion entirely or take a massive heel-turn to fit whatever the next story is? If people want a more world-oriented story with less personal character elements: Shadowlands invalidates too much of the established world, cultures and practices and made it so established Azeroth lore simply doesn't matter anymore and didn't build on it or even offer it's own new but familiar stories, cultures, etc. - like Pandaria did much more successfully; Personally I'd love to see some kind of great reset and go back to being a jobber/quester and for the story to focus on Azeroth, it's people, their cultures and their local problems and conflicts between opposing factions (not just alliance and horde but defias vs nobility; lordaeron undead vs scarlet crusade; etc.) - a more evergreen fantasy tale rather than a grand character epic in cosmic planes, but Blizzard hasn't been designing the game that way since at least WoD where we become "The General" If people want a more character-driven story: Well Shadowlands fails there as well, since characters are paper thin, their motivations often unexplained and changed mid-way through an expansion; your player character is simultaneously really important and powerful but also never directly having their actions acknowledged beyond the current patch; characters are added to fill out a roster but never developed or given storylines to complete over the course of the expansion - heck, BFA did this better with Jaina in Boralus, Talanji & Rastakhan in Zandalar and even Wrathion in 8.3 - yet none of that mattered going forward, it's no longer current content so it never gets used, mentioned or referenced (and we're lucky it hasn't been retconned like so much else) It feels like they simply have too many cooks in the kitchen, people pulling the plot a million different ways with no clear vision of the story they want to tell - do they want to tell a character driven story with strong interpersonal relationships and dynamics between characters? Do they instead want to tell a story about new peoples and regions of the greater world/universe and how they influence each other and the established world so far? Do they want us to be jobbers/adventurers or "The Highlord, Slayer of Deathwing, Helper of Jaina's Family Trauma, Wearer of a Nice Necklace given by Azeroth to fix that giant sword problem"? Do they just want to sell more "Lore Bibles" to be replaced by "Lore Bibles" released 2 years later? I'm going to wait until they figure out what they want to do with the world, it's characters and "our" characters; and are able to communicate it clearly to everyone, preferably without Ion saying they always "intended it" this way

It seems as if WoW’s storyline was fleshed out up to a certain point, and some ideas were floated after that but not yet set. The game surpassed the storyline using just the ideas to continue on. Devs came and went, and stuff had to be made on the fly, possibly? Something along the lines of the game version of GoT.

Sqare writes non-player characters who have fears, motivations and character development because consequences exist in the world. Blizzard writes non-player **caricatures ** who hey think are cool, but become ridiculous once you stop to look at it for 5 minutes.

grigori potemkin would be proud of blizzard. when i played some shadowlands after a long abstinence i couldn't help it but feel disconnected from everything. the surrounding players mostly felt like bots, a cluster f of a story i had no interest in following and the constant celebration of my heroic deeds in form of picking 5 flowers or any of the other random bs - all this reminded me strongly of my feelings playing guildwars 2

Watching Pyro lose his shit over the Sylvanas/Shadowlands story, it's not hard to see the exasperation about beloved lore being overridden with new higher-level explanations. The lore drives and constrains the storyline, the storyline drives our immersion and investment ... if you start dicking with stuff at the upper end in a major way, that then inevitably flows down as a torrent. Nothing about the Shadowlands made any sense to me, nothing about the behaviour of any of the NPCs made any sense (ie: search our your heroes and recruit them..?). They should have kept the storyline simpler and less bombastic, and focused more on the implication of SL/death/undeath and relationships. Every time I was told I had to do all the work there were 20 uber-powerful NPCs just standing around having a meeting or watching me do all the heavy lifting. And that's something where FF14 does a pretty good job of making it seem like you're working as a team to achieve things, even if you're mostly playing solo - the other characters are explicitly achieving other goals and you're all contributing, so you don't build up an implicit seething resentment against the NPCs and their lack of impact.

As a lore nut from vanilla through Legion (and wincing as I peek at the newer lore through my fingers ever since), I give a hearty amen to everything said here. The points were all extremely well articulated, especially the bit about devaluing lore knowledge by making it so changeable and short-lived.

I think this shows the error of doing nothing but setup without a concrete plan of paying stuff off. Everything in WoW storytelling now just feels like a teaser for a teaser for a teaser for a set up for a cutscene that teases a plot point that pays off something we’ve forgotten about because we’re not invested.

Even if it was still only 2 patches, the sheer amount of annoyance and disbalance and not fun mechnanics killed the game. if all quality of life improvements were in the game from the beginning, and 9.0.5/9.1.5 were a little content updates with more quests and or mini dungeons, or like including tazavesh in m+ in 9.1.5 and not in 9.2, it would be fine, not bad, not good. And the expansion would end a lot faster, than dragging the thing for 2 years, when it could be done in less than 1.5 years.

Some great points!! Some, I'd noticed for some time but others, well, I hadn't thought about, but are very accurate. I noticed that since they kept CHANGING what the "truth" was (noticed most when reading "Chronicles 1" which is a gorgeous book but the ret-conning, or rather saying "well, you see, that's not how it ACTUALLY happened." When that keeps happening, then you can't trust the story. If you can't trust the story (because what you learn today could be rendered completely irrelevant or false in a few months) then there is no reason to get invested. It just feels like a waste of my time. A well-timed and sparingly used TWIST is one thing, but to just say "yeah, I know we told you this, but it's not like that" being done again and again? No. The gameplay and system issues I recognized early. Seeing fewer friends and guildies log on, I couldn't ignore, but there were other things I couldn't put my finger on that made me just . . . apathetic, and I believe you have a good theory. It's the badly-written major lore figures and how absolutely unimportant we are to them. When you go to certain places, they know you - they see your achievements and act accordingly (like "OH there's so and so, she did this, blah blah.") I wish there were some kind of trigger so that MAJOR NPCs could know that you did certain quests, etc. Overall, I enjoyed Legion, but one of my disappointing moments was, when my Warlock, with the title "Of the Black Harvest" showed up in Dalaran, Jubeka (the Warlock who is a major NPC in your Warlock Order Hall BUT also, instrumental in the Green Fire questline) does not recognize you. At all. Nor my buddy, Kanrethad, who spent hours kicking my @$$ before I finally beat him. It would have been SO cool if they could act differently if you had gotten the green fire and especially, if you had the achievement that gave you "Of the Black Harvest." But I think it's even worse in SL. You're right. They are all interchangeable and so are we. As for making the story so a BRAND NEW FRESH PLAYER could come into it? Yeah. I think they hate veteran players. I really do. They chase after the new people, but forget to take care of the long time players - story, system, bag space, etc. They have zero appreciation for the people, if treated right, would probably if not stay, would come back whenever new content came out. They have history, nostalgia, some community already in the game. They have more reason to stay, but Blizzard has no issues alienating those players, pretty much doing all they can to chase off the birds in hand. Well, they probably figure, they still have to play the sub to play Classic, so why put in the effort, I guess? Except a lot of veteran players really aren't interested in Classic. We want new stuff, new locations, stories, etc. But we want it done well.

Tl;Dr: Real problem is that there is no room for the feeling of player agency. All of these are valid points but they're, imo, secondary. The principle issue is that the player has no feeling of agency in shadowlands. Everything happens to us, everything we do is reactive, not proactive. Trying to stop something that has already happened. In all the other expansions it has felt like we were actively involved in what is going on. Vanilla's story doesn't pull you along, you have to find it. BC, the gate opens but nothing forces us to go. WotLK we take the fight to Arthas! Cata, we're taking back what's ours, we have a plan of action and we implement it, and against all odds we come out on top. MoP, we're exploring a new land. WoD, we go back in time to stop a new horde invasion due in part to our actions from MoP. Legion is similar to Cata agency wise, but puts us even more in the drivers seat. BFA is the real start of the slide, we go to war because we're told to, we don't actuality solve anything or even do anything, we just react to things that are happening to us. The sword is still there! And now Shadowlands. We go there because we have no choice, the veil between realities has been shattered due to nothing we did, we go there and find out we're magically special, not due to effort, just our existence. and everything's royally fed. We're then booted out the magic door and told to save the world, no, the entire universe, because we're literally the only one who can. Then we go out and just react to stuff after it's happened! They don't even give us the dignity of having our plans and actions be used against us in the final push, just nope. Party finished before you got here, now pick up the trash. This even bleeds into the game systems. Long gone are the days when you didn't feel like you were losing out on massive gains if you didn't do literally everything. For all the talk of "meaningful choice", the only choice is "do you want to be bad"? No? Then do everything. There is no working on reps like in Wrath. Doing the occasional heroic, working on crafting, and still being able to join in raiding. Nah, you have to do your Torghast, all your dailies, make sure you get the upgraded things for that stupid table. It's an infinite list of pointless busy work! I just want to get some gear and go hit things for a bit! And let's face it, you have to do it. At least for the first while, beyond a certain point you can stop, but at the beginning it's mandatory. Why? Because the game is 18 years old and there's only one patch worth of relevant content to do. If you want to take it slow, then the next patch will be released before you can participate 🤷‍♂️ everyone else is pissed because they've been given the list of things they have to do, they've done them, now they've run out of things to do, and anyone who didn't is always so far behind they don't feel like they're actually playing an mmo. Blizz trained the players to do what they're told, by telling us what we want to do. "You want to save the world, so run on this treadmill forever." I understand the fundamentally players don't actually have any real agency in a narrative game, the tech doesn't exist yet, what is important is thay they ~feel~ like they do. People will overlook the details if they feel like they have some sort of impact. That what they ~decide~ to do has a meaning in the world. If you simply tell people that what they do is important no matter what, then, apart from being totally wrong, what they are actually doing doesn't matter. In Shadowlands, what I do doesn't matter because it all happens ~to~ me. Success is reduced to something more like not dying, while being told that I'm super duper special and an ultra hero because of it. This has no meaning. By removing the feeling of agency, we are reminded that this is just a game. It only matter if we decide it matters. And we've just been told our decisions don't matter in the game. Well, then I'll make a decision that does matter. I'll do literally anything else. WoW right now, is a bad game. It's not a bad expac. It's a bad game.

I don't even play alliance, but did Jaina ever encounter her dad in Shadowlands at all? Could have been cool to see them hash things out over the decision she made

In regards to the Urianger bit, his speech pattern/vocabulary was also written extremely well into his own story and the group as a whole. Caused him issues as a child, found his best friend Moenbryda because she accepted him regardless, and a few comic relief spots where characters are just kinda like wtf are you talking about.

I’m a returning player who last played at the very beginning of WOD. My last full immersion in an expansion was Pandaria, which was without a doubt dope. But idk personally why shadowlands has received so much hate, WOD felt way worse to me and is why I quit, I find SL quite fun and they’ve updated so many quality of life things since when I last played. I think the game feels more expansive than ever and I actually like the solo Torghast experience, solo queue in arena, the shadowlands areas themselves, etc.

WoW never had great storytelling but it wasn't thrown in your face, so you as a player could ignore it and have a head cannon that made more sense. SL doesn't let you do that

The best scenes I remember from Blizzard were Starcraft 1’s briefing room.

Wow had to choose between having you as the main character or as an adventurer, and they are trying to have the best of both worlds. It's not impossible, but seeing their results, it seems to be very difficult to make work

"They're writing this for themselves, the players are just along for the ride" is the root of almost all of Blizzard's writing problems, honestly. Writing for a game when you don't respect and center the player is bad writing.

This had to be one of your best, we all have noticed this problem and agree. Thank you for putting this all out there

Really you hit on it perfectly. Our character has never existed in the Warcraft Universe. It worked when they didn't try to do charcter based story telling, in Vanilla and TBC where the story was big and sweeping. WoTLK wouldn't have worked if we didn't have WCIII stuff to really give it a backbone. But from there forward, our character was legend status, but continually is a non-factor in the story that we are kind of just watching happen.

THIS. This video raises so many points that I've thought and a bunch of points i hadn't realized yet. I'm glad people who feel the same were able to put it into terms that make more sense... My reaction is usually to turn into Pyromancer from his epic gamer moment lol

Around the 5:30 mark you point out the Sylvanas heal-turn between Legion and BFA, this is the exact reason I gave up on WoW. It would have been really interesting to see Sylvanas have to become a fair and empathetic leader, especially since she's so reviled by major members of the Alliance. Having her go full psycho banshee-queen was such a lazy waste of an opportunity to tell an honest story about her, having her deal with disputes throughout BFA and grow as a character. All they had to do was pick literally anyone else to go evil. Not even evil really... they could have just made it so she wasn't as strict or serious about the role as she should have been leading to the Goblins doing something to the Gnomes which sets things off, hell make the alliance leaders do something reckless and stupid leading to a "necessary" counterattack on Darn..

For me it’s mostly that the game fought me so hard when I just wanted to play it and have fun. Conduit timers and needless shit like that. I just wanted to have fun running my keys.

In Pandaria they tried to make people do dailies to spend valor, it was a problem because some people ran to 90 and all the quests were resource competition, which made me and I believe others quit at the start. Blizzard relented even removing a tier of reputation grind. The legendary cloak grind was annoying, especially across multiple characters, but you could still play end game without it unlike the recent legendaries that bake in class power. The issue is known, they've tied power so closely to grind that it turned off a lot of their players. The cause is speculative that they want to do easily designed content that takes a long time to consume. In order to make people do these grind systems they gated end game making a lot of people, including myself, ask whether the pay off is worth the grind. I hope it's the end of that era, being part of a bigger corporation I hope they can focus more on growth and not be so tied to cost savings to bolster profit. I also hope SL was a prior commitment and not a sign of continuation.

Didnt they keep Bwonsamdi around because players were a fan of him and loved his voice actor? Cant really say much more, you did a fine job summarizing ShL and WoWs problems. In short: disconnecting your fans from your francise. I feel more connected to a random lvl1 questgiver in Uldah than I now feel to Thrall or Jaina... and I had many, many more adventurers with those two. Thing is, they both suffer from amnesia. Makes me wonder how you can rely on them to save the world... On the other hand, maybe you need some serious amnesia in WoW, how else are you to enjoy it?

Azeroth The First One. Origin of creation, slumbering to regain its strength after locking the Old One outside of the created universe in the nothingness it came from, where it has existed since before The First. Zovaal tried to warn us, the veil is breaking, the devourers are coming through to consume all of creation & return all to the nothingness it once was. Before The First arrived. The Old One comes, will Azeroth still be slumbering when it does?

Bad Systems and that the entire Plot up until this point was bent to fit in the Jailer, what's the point of telling a Story if previous Lore can be modified on a whim to introduce new Characters.

Why do I feel disconnected from the game? Because I have to write a paragraph to explain to myself where my character is , what it is doing there, how me killing this blue anima devourer impacts anything that I care about. At some point the setting of wow became confused and the internal logic muddled. The consequences of our actions as players are never shown ingame so how can I care about anything that happens?

Just glad I pulled out before the 2nd big patch of BFA. Blizz dropped the ball pretty much on everything. It was crazy just how much different Legion was in terms of quality. BFA was so bad, I just saw the quality of Shadowlands approaching. It's sad because I was hoping Sylvanas would have had a story worth following. Thanks for all the cool cinematics of her, I guess.

There are many, many, many, many reasons that are pretty much just as valid, but I think these are the reasons that made me not even give this expansion a second chance, and which made me not want to even consider the next one: 1 - The main one: Convoluted, overlapping, mandatory, and intentionally time gated "systems". This made the game insufferable, and felt more like a job than entertaining or fun. The fact you had to buy a legendary for over 100k sounded like a joke to me. Having to grind for memories, mats, currencies, soulbinds, thorghast, dailies, maw, before you could even start grinding for gear made me question why was I even playing that game. I did each probably two or three times, and proceeded to just go back to BfA and old expansions, because I refused to partake on any of that nonsense. 2 - Non-existent community. There's no one to play with, and playing with anyone feels like a hassle, as if you are dragging them down or they are slowing you down. It almost feels like you need to humiliate yourself just to get a spot in a group, and when you do get a spot the group is infinitely worse than you are, yet they still act like they know wtf they are doing. Casuals are terrible at the game, and elitists don't even give you the time of the day because you don't have parses nor item levels. So you either play alone, or you lick the boots of some narcissistic piece.of.shit hoping they will "allow" you to roll a dice that may or may not improve your character at all. Since I still have some sense of self-respect left, I simply refuse to humiliate myself just to join a fucking guild. 3 - Excessive item level dependency, and absurd item level gap between fresh and fully geared characters. Skill doesn't matter, your item level does everything for you, and since the gear-acquiring rate was so shit without carries, you were stuck with shit item level and couldn't join groups. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, anyone with a higher item level who knows what they are doing will always output better number than you, making higher item levels the default choice. The fact you can't increase your item levels unless you buy carries or engage with the INSANITY of the mandatory systems, makes you locked at raid finder item level without any prospects of improving it whatsoever because without legendaries, high item levels, and essences your character is about as useful as a paper weight. 4 - Blizzard itself The company made it clear that they don't give a fuck about any of these "problems", or that at least they don't see any of it as problems. They seem to be far more concerned with gender politics than having a game that isn't shit, which makes even interacting with these creatures feel fruitless. Speaking of fruits, the whole "fruitbowls" fiasco made one thing clear, the creatures behind this game only care about "optics". They want the twitter, the blue haired, and the hysterical crowd on their side, they want to virtue signal and crush those these crowds claim to be "the enemy", which created an extremely hostile atmosphere where the harpies in charge of the game absolutely despise the audience who although were here playing the game way before those weasels even joined the company, are now relegated as entitled and "toxic" for pointing out how bad the game became after these creatures took charge.

Honestly, I've never been invested in WoW lore because it was heavily retconned even before WoW's release. Prior to WC III, the orcs and demons were in an alliance. Suddenly, they weren't allies, but pawns. The original alliances were heavily inspired by Tolkien, so you had the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans, and Gnomes up against Orcs, Demons, Trolls, and Ogres, and Goblins. The Horde had warlocks and ogre mages, and the Alliance had mages. The Horde had death knights (an obvious reference to D&D's anti-paladins), and the Alliance had paladins. The Horde had dragon riders, and the Alliance had griffin riders. The Horde had troll axe throwers, and the Alliance had elven archers. All of that went out the window in favor of consistent class design as well as the desire to maintain an even number of races between the two factions. It was obvious from the very start of WoW that the focus was on systems and game design at the expense of story consistency.

Everybody wanted some kind of an Arthas redemption storyline, or at least to see him one last time. What we got instead was Sylvanas jerk-off storyline #1736. Can't even let Jaina have her last goodbye to Arthas, nope, gotta let your main girlboss get in all of her sick epic burns and not so subtly insult everybody who wanted anything substantial regarding Arthas.

This is why I won't hold my breath for Danuser's 10.0. Despite internal drama and pointing fingers these expansions he had the say over which characters stories got pushed forward. This is on him.

Ever since legion the classes haven't felt as good and there are more classes I advoid bow where legion I played everything. Meaning all of the content I got experience several times. I can't get back into shadowlands. There is almost overwhelming amount to do to get caught up to current players. The burning crusades have been a bunch of fun.

Uriange may speek in this weird old englsih style or whatever it is but he has a personality. He has his own goals , his own beliefs and his own opinion on certain matters, it also helps that the writers gave him his own little quirks , like not knowing how to swim and instead of trying to learn he tries to use complex spells to walk on water, its small details like that which make me connect with the characters and WOW for the most part lacks that human side to their characters which also makes it hard for me to get invested.

I like how you guys spent 34 minutes talking about reasons why Shadowlands was a flop, and didn't even really touch on the reasons I bounced off of it. I play Horde. I messed around with Alliance characters a bit, but I just don't care about their story even though I think the draenai are cool. But in the past two expansions, so much of the lore and plot (I won't say story because they're not telling a story) revolves around alliance faction leaders. And I don't care about any of it. I have a hard enough time still caring about Thrall and Baine after how they were written. But Anduin and Jaina? No. The last two faction leaders I found interesting were Garrosh and Sylvanas, and they decided to flush both of them for the sake of... Whatever? They've managed to create a world where I still dislike the alliance, but now I'm mostly apathetic towards the horde. When the most compelling character left in your narrative is Gazlowe, you know you managed to fuck a once beloved IP.

Completely changing the origins of things counts as a retcon, especially if, as in shadow lands, character motivations and actions don't make sense in retrospect.

The end of the Sepulcher raid had the worst cinematic I’ve ever seen. Like the soul of Arthas is right there. Bolvar, the man tortured horrifically by Arthas, says nothing. Jaina, the woman in love with Arthas, says nothing. Uther, his teacher, says nothing. Sylvanas, is the only one to talk, and her voice lines are “go away, be forgotten.” WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I agree with the emotional retcon statement

I have not played singe end of WoD. But up until this point i have cared to keep up with the lore. Blizzard's writing team seems to have really big problems with both plot-twists and finishing the stories with seemingly huge reveals being showed into one patch cycle. Reveals that could have been main meat of the expansion all in of it self. All started with WoD: remember how rushed WoD:s last patch felt: Legion gets summoned -> Legion is defeated -> Grommash is a good guy now --> No one will mention alt. Draenor ever again. End of legion: Illidan was always jesus -> Illidan summons Argus portal -> Sargeras is defeated -> no one mentions Legion ever again. BFA is bit different but the whole faction war CUOLD have been a whole expansion in of its self if burning of Teldrassil happened at the end of expansion instead of N'zhot being also in expansion so Faction war begins -> Naga + N'zoth appears -> sylvanas GTFO's -> faction war had no impact on anything ever Despite these stories taking LITERAL YEARS to being told. funnily enough the whole lore timeline feels incredibly rushed after MoP.

We are being told "Stop Thinking. Just Consume.