I dont think the Jailer ever said an actual sentence. It was always delivered like a one liner quote to no one in particular. And I can't remember any of it.
Inserting a character into 20 years of lore in an attempt to claim they existed the entire time while only truly existing in person for 1.5 years is the easiest way to throw a Molotov Cocktail onto the fans enjoyment of the lore.
@@MrLolguy93 You could say that AoS brought a new faster gaming system, new amazing minifigs. The AoS may not have great/good lore, but the system is ok at least and the minifigs are incomparable to the old ones for Warhamer Fantasy. Thus, AoS lacks the polish of the lore, which we all (including me) love about WH, but it succedes in the main goals. To look good, to sell minies, to be played and to have fun while playing it. If you can swallow the damn bitter pill, that is called Endtimes, it actually opens new previously impossible ideas. For example i really love Idoneth Deepkins or Kharadron Overlords. Even the AoS "space marines" Stormcasts are not flat lorewise. Shadowlands is absolute clusterfuck lorewise and the main goals are not achieved too. I did not heard much of praise about it gameplaywise. The visuals and audio are not on top level in comparision to the previous expansions. Score is 1:0 for the AoS in my book.
*Jailer:* "I will use the sepulchre of the first-ones to recreate reality where everyone is my mindless slave!" *Also Jailer:* "Noooo why are you defeating me?! how can you be so cruel you just don't understand how benevolent I was being I was just torturing everyone into oblivion and trying to turn everyone into my mindless slaves for your own gooood!"
Legion gave me hope that WoW was finally going in the right direction. They brought back class identity with class quests and npc dialogue specific to your class (rare but at least it existed). They had fun profession quests. We got to spend time with NPCs we actually care about. BFA was so disappointing and Shadowlands is so bad I've only had a sub for two months of the two years it's been out so far. I at least followed the story of BFA even when I wasn't subbed but I don't even know the story of Shadowlands.
I only lasted the first month in Shadowlands. The covenant system meant I couldn't play a single specialization for my Priest correctly (e.g. needed a different covenant for raids and mythic plus). I also couldn't play the other specializations due to the legendary system. Torghast was another nail in the coffin.
Legion was the only expansion where a class could solo raid content and it was ok (not like the one time reckoning bomb, a farmable thing). While dope, it showed how fargone things were.
It was market as the expansion that would give closure to Warcraft 3, instead it was the expansion that gave us nothing but took everything from us. - From Sylvannas being a secretive damaged character, to a bi-polar genocide who is allowed to get a redemption because the writers say so. - To Elune being portrait as an incompetent Goddess who purposely allowed her people to die and suffer because she couldn’t be bother to do follow up questions. - To Tyrannda and her Shadow-Warrior story that promised much and ended without accomplishing anything. - To the Jailer being the ultimate master mind, and yet we are being told he is the ultimate mastermind and when we see it for ourselves he is a bigger fool. Yet he is somehow a good guy. - To Arthas the one established and beloved character being said “Get the F*ck out of here” essentially by Sylvannas and never being given the send off that was appropriate. - To the entire shadowlands who’s lore doesn’t make sense and all their rulers are incompetent at their jobs. This indeed was the worst expansion both story and gameplay wise.
I was sure they wouldn't kill off Sylvanas that easily, she is a fan favorite after all. What they did to Elune was also pretty upsetting, but the thing I hate the most is that we were in the lands of the dead, yet none of the dead characters appeared (Cairne Bloodhoof, Rastakhan, Varian and many more just to name a few), their interactions with their still alive relatives would have been so nice to see, but nothing, just disappointment
Another issues with Shadowlands is that it basically didn't even take place in the WoW universe: basically none of the races or architecture or plotlines we see have anything to do with the world previously established. On Legion we fight an enemy we've been fighting since Warcraft 3, in a location we've knows since Warcraft 2, alongside races we've known since the start; and even the new races introduced have some relation to the existing world, whether it's Highmountain Tauren or former Night Elves in Suramar. In BFA, the whole thing is about conflict between two existing factions, based around politics and rivalries between existing characters; and the whole thing takes place in locations we've been hearing about since, again, pretty much Warcraft 2. And then you get Shadowlands, where we're taken to a realm we've literally never heard of before (seriously, how did we never know anything about the afterlife in a setting with necromancers and resurrection spells?!), met a bunch of races and factions that have absolutely no connection to the WoW universe, and then fought some villain who was supposedly the biggest bad guy yet with the biggest army, but again, literally the first time we're hearing anything about him. The whole expansion honestly feels like it's from a completely different game; every time I see Thrall in a custscene I have to do a double-take, because he just seems so very out of place...
@@federerlkonig330 what do you mean by technicolor zones? The fact that every zone is a different color and theme? Almost every expansion had that somehow shoved in. I think WoW can be called a "theme park MMO". Northrend was supposed to be the equivalent of our north pole, but in the middle of it, there are warm places like sholazar basin. Outland in WC3 was all red, like today's hellfire peninsula, but in TBC it was changed to have a mushroom watery place, a beautiful forest, lush green plains, spiky mountains and then a green fire valley. You could argue that in WC3, we never got to explore everything, but even the black temple(black citadel in WC3) was in a fiery red zone, so that was slightly changed. Maybe that is not what you were talking about, if so, I'm sorry! But, yes, Ardenweald's lore is confusing, since druids that die went to the emerald dream, but now they go to the shadowlands -> ardenweald?
@@randjan8592 technicolor zones because, like Northrend, the SL were supposed to be quite homogeneous, a malinchonic realm of Lost souls. And we got 1)the puzzling Ardenweald 2)Maldraxxus, Wich retconned the "ziqqurats were orignally nerubian buildings" 3)Bastion, which Just bugs me etc. Yeah, every expansion keeps expanding certain zones(and that upsets me), but the Shadowlands were supposed to be a spectral wasteland, from the different accounts we had.
This. Even for the expansions that sounded the most outlandish at first like MOP and WOD (unfamiliar races/architectures and time traveling), we were still dealing with previously established plotlines, familiar stories, and for the most part, familiar races and characters. In Shadowlands, we have to deal with completely new races and characters, like you said, races and factions with absolutely zero connection to the developed universe. We have to deal with winged blue people with a leader who seems quite incompetent, weird vampire-looking people, furries in a confusing forest with, again, a leader who does absolutely nothing for the most part, and different factions of zombies/ghouls fighting each other. On top of that, we have to deal with the brokers and the attendants in Oribos and Korthia (now Automas and MORE brokers in Zereth Mortis) that are completely emotionless, while diving into this whole cosmic bullshit. Blizzard really expects players to bond or sympathize with NPCs that literally don't have faces and are essentially just walking/floating robots that can talk and only show up for a patch or two? Or with the bland, boring, under-developed characters (like kyrestia, winter queen, the two gay souls in Ardenweald, your soulbinds, etc.) who are constantly in the story but barely add anything to the story? Even BFA, as shitty as it was, had good bits of storytelling such as the Jaina storyline and the siege of dazaralor. Shadowlands is just utter garbage. Doesn't even feel like I'm playing wow. So sad.
By all technicality we've known of the shadowlands since somewhere around vanilla - wotlk, but we basically didn't know more than "it's where the dead go" and "it's where death knights intrude to get their steeds" The latter of which has no backing in the xpac
On the note of a *world* filled with *interesting characters* , I should remind Blizzard that doesn't have to always mean falling back on familiar WC3 characters. One of my favorite moments from Legion was meeting Runas The Shamed and I was legitimately broken up losing him despite meeting him literally like 5 quests ago. His role in the story was short, powerful, and a genius segway into later feeling the urgency to save the nightborne from their troubles in Suramar, in part by- OOH, MANA CRYSTAL! * loots *
I still follow the lore despite not playing wow anymore, and this sums up the issues of the story in Shadowlands absolutely perfectly. Extremely well said my guy I think you hit the nail on the head with the "world" thing, and half the characters actively take away from the world. Hell, even the concept of the shadowlands existing makes a lot of the world existentially irrelevant. Plus, all the zones in shadowlands being separate made transitioning between them feel so artificial. There's just 5 different large instances. That's all without ruining characters beyond repair. I genuinely wonder how it got like this. I feel like theres so many people who could out-write the writing team on this one. It feels like the writing team is just the dev team. It feels like azshara and nzoth each could've been their own expansion. Its so unfortunate.
@@Solus5048 i think the afrasiabi claim holds some water, because he didn't leave some odd 5 years ago, he got fired on June 2020, quite possible that some of shadowlands was his idea.
@@Solus5048 those are valid reasons but at the same time can be excuses because blizzard did all of this to themselves. Its obviously in their control but they won’t fix anything The only thing that is a valid excuse would be covid but companies still made it work
@@Fabriciod_Crv The problem with it all isn't just that he gave them a pretty shitty setup for a story, it's that the rest of the team were completely incapable of doing something compelling with it. What was stopping them from making the Jailer be a character who wasn't just walking around with his nipples on display and sprouting some of the most generic villain lines in history?
"I could have gotten a college degree by the point this plot point was revealed". BRO I DID I GOT A BACHELORS OF SCIENCE QUICKER THAN THAT FUCKING STORY POINT
"I hope we get a grounded story" The expansion literally ended with dollar store Thanos hinting this wasn't even as 'epic' and 'cosmic' as it can get lmao.
-They somehow butchered the most promising expansion, probably by letting an AI write the story -They managed to make Elune look like an idiot -Give the finger to the fans by giving Arthas nothing but a monologue that tells him to fuck off -They made Sylvanas the most hated idiot -Made a side antagonist (Denathrius) that's somehow better than the main antagonist -They made (tried to anyway) the Jailer to look like the ultimate Big Bad that turned out to be a discount Sargeras in every way, and didn't even get close to finish his goal, let alone leave a mark on the world (Sargeras actually was very close to destroying Azeroth) All of this in one expansion, and i probably missed quite a few
Actually, if you gave an AI all of the past WarCraft stuff and told it to make a new WoW story, it would produce something superior to Shadowlands, because it wouldn't make something so disconnected from the past lore.
They also fucked up the main draw of the setting, by giving us maybe eight dead characters to interact with. Imagine getting to give Blackmoore the penance he so richly deserved in The Maw, or getting to fight alongside 'Biggest Balls on Azeroth' Broxigar, to reunite with Rhonin and bear his final message to his wife, or even have Sylvanas face her parents. Nope. Here's Uthor, fuck off. Here's Drakka, fuck off. It's really sad.
What frustrated me about Sylvanas is that we were lead to believe she had this grand revelation, that she knew something crazy that we didnt 4 years of slow, tedious build up with her committing genocide and other acts we get to see that ultimately she's just a willing slave to the jailer and all this big talk was just nonsense. Shadowlands went nowhere and all it did was further destroy Warcraft 3's legacy beyond what reforged did
Especially when the Burning of Teldrassil actually WAS a beautiful moment in gray morality. Not only is it war, but due to the obsession with honor Saurfang had, he fucked up the entire plan, putting Sylvanas in a position she's been in most of her unlife: Does she stand by and let those who follow her rot and die, or does she commit atrocities to protect and/or provide for her people? Only this time, she acted. Not to mention Genn STARTING the whole fiasco by attacking the Forsaken unprovoked, with NO repercussions from the Alliance, leading Sylvans to doubt, and ultimately drop, the entire concept of peace.
except it is not grey morality at all it was an unprovoked attack and pure evil with the fact it was not just the burning the horde went out of the way to kill every single night elf that they could. and genn did not start this. the horde backstabbed the alliance in legion after running like cowards, and after the fact the horde was trying to enslave an ally that we were trying to make all for her own immortality. if anything the horde is the the ones that started thins. seeing as outside of the blood elves the rest of the horde did jack shit all to help in taking down the legion.
"I prefer to remember the Temple as It used to be, not the abomination that it has become" (Akama ,2007, The Burning Crusade Patch 2.1: The Black Temple)........I feel you Akama
@@Solus5048 In the context of the original quote, “me” refers to Illidan, who is a hero. Activision is far from being a hero. I would liken Microsoft to being Illidan and Activision being the abyss.
Players: "Now that we have defeated you can you please tell us what you were trying to do?!" The Jailer: Spits right in the players face "A cosmos divided will not survive what is to come...." Players: "Oh my god.. I thought Blizzard said this was the final part of the chapter yet they set up more!? What gives blizzard!" Blizzard: Spits directly into the players face "Give us more money and we'll tell ya by telling you a half truth that itself is vague as all hell."
@@darknessnaxxion Nothing, as long the plot and the characters are understand and relatable even if you don't read the books. Which, as I've heard, isn't always the case.
What I miss in the game is a frame to grow a connection with your character. The characters seem to be mere vessels for the endcontent. Doesn‘t matter which race/class you choose - everyone gets the exact same experience. Ok they can’t give every class/race their own endcontent. But the way to max level could be much more divers. Legion was great in that aspect as they had the classorders. The last straw was when they axed the tiersets. Remember: as (for example) a shaman, there was once a time were you didn‘t just level up and could do everything, no, you had to actually earn your totems. Or as a druid earn your forms. Or as warlock you had to fight and enslave the demons before you could summon them (even the warlock mounts have an actual lore). And so on. At max level I had a connection to MY character. It was I who mastered the elements/magic/demons etc. MY character is not exchangeable. I don‘t get that feeling now; if my character would get switched halfway through I‘d barely notice it. The individual flavor is missing.
I miss playing RPG games where progressing your character meant actual progress. With WoW it's all just borrowed power that will be ripped away every 2 years, and put you back on that nearly identical hamster wheel. I didn't mind the old expansions when you'd gain all new levels and all new gear. That hamster wheel at least felt like progress, you were gaining. Now, your abilities, means to gain those abilities, even your levels can just be ripped away. It's all just so pointless.
@@cibo889 But you are using nostalgic glasses when you play the games you played in the past. Having emotional connection is something that your mind constructed based on your phase of life in that moment when you played the game. Things were precious because they were new and you didn't have much reference or option. It isn't about the game, but about the fact that today you have more experience and things arent so especial in general for you because you more mature and have been playing video games for more than 20 years. You don't even seek the same things from years ago in video games.
the problem with WoWs storytelling is when they stopped using established plots and created their own "non-metzen" stories it showed just how weak the writing staff is creatively. its not the method of how they tell a story, its the fact they have no fucking clue _how_ to write a story. Metzen may not have been an award winning author but his story direction was clear, concise and interesting.
I cannot belive that with such resources a company wouldnt be able to hire someone who can come up with a good fantasy Storry. Maybe the problem is rather that peaople who do have good ideas dont make it as far in these companys. i mean how can you have a whole paied department working on Plot and not come out with a cool storry that is just mindbogeling. i bet thatt most of the whole warcraft universe came out the head of a singe nerd or a few haha
They don't remember the base of WoW storyline, and don't remember what they did before. Like 2 to 3 teams working on different parts then merged at final pieces.I loved the old team followed and created WoW - wrath of lich king.
Plus the ridiculously high amount of retcons. WoW has ALWAYS had retcons, even Metzen himself has mentioned it at times, but since BFA, the retcons are beyond insane.
@@zepho100 Even if that were the case for Blizzard, this is getting approved by the higher ups. It's not the staff problem, but Blizzard being willing to put out hot garbage to meet deadlines over quality. You can tell the story has been janky for a while and Blizzard doesn't care. they just put it out. You can tell overall the whole game direction has been cheaper and worse, for the same amount of sub price, way worse customer service and slower, less and less proper cinenatics (we only had one I believe in shadowlands and the model of Sylvanas was the same one from BfA ), way more buggy and inconsistent and running low on ideas. You can tell Activision Blizzard really wants to maximize return of investment.
Shadowlands feels like they wanted to tell a deeper story like a book, except it was like if a book released 1 chapter every 6 months, and was only 100 pages long total. So they couldn't possibly tell a good story in such a short amount of words, but they sure as hell took 2 years to tell it anyway. While setting it up for 4 years prior. Although based on leaks and hearsay, this is likely due to some development hell in the back-end, and the current writers did they best they could to salvage the story. So the next expansion should be them working with a clean slate, rather than trying to put out a constant fire of random stuff they were given and told to make sense of.
Nah, Danuser is a talentless hack that made a self masturbatory story just to simp on a fictional character making more damage than he isn't capable to fix. He and Christie Golden left a wound so deep in WoW that personally I have no hopes in the future, and this comes from a player that has been in love with Blizzard since Tides of Darkness on Windows 98. I'm pretty sure that those 2 will be gone after Shadowlands if there's still a quality control department in Blizz or Microsoft but the damage has already been done and the bleeding is not stopping
I mean, they promised so much for SL and I thought Devs would've learned the backlash & criticism from players during BFA just like they did with WoD going to Legion, as well Cata going to MoP. Honestly, I really don't have any hopes anymore for the next expansion and pictured it that devs would actually make the story plot more understandable then it is now :/.
It's like they wanted to tell an intricate story with lots of foreshadowing and mystery but chose to limit their medium to circus clowns and interpretive dance.
I understand their situation. It's not an easy one to be in. BfA and likely Shadowlands and the Jailer were likely already set in stone by the time the whole Afrasiabi thing happened. The thing is, they had a very long time to try and steer the car away from the cliff and they just kept plowing forward. The Jailer still being a blank slate after all this time is all on the current narrative team. I hope 10.0 is good, but I won't be going in with any expectations, if I decide to go in at all.
A word that keeps coming up from the community is "grounded". I think this is the heart of the narrative's issue. It just keeps ballooning out of control and there is only so far it can go. I think it's time for smaller-scale stories back on Azeroth.
People connected with Azeroth when it was literally the *World* of Warcraft. When we were mud-rolling adventurers in that world, killing murlocs and quillboars. Getting out butts kicked fighting zombies and the Scarlet Crusade. When it was a place with a community. The devs biggest mistake and the first step on the Path of Damnation was the groupfinder at the end of Wrath. That took away the impetus to engage with the community. Then the devs stripped professions more and more, cutting out even more community engagement. They made leveling alts easier, which let everyone be able to have an alt to do everything, again cutting down on community engagement. And, step by step with the blows against the community, they've hammered in make-work borrowed power and progression systems. No longer did "progressing your character" mean working on maxing out professions and getting the best gear. Now, it started to mean jumping through arbitrary hoops for incremental power gains that would be meaningless come the very next patch. It replaced a rich, vibrant *World* full of people and experiences with a ghost town full of hamster wheels.
it doesnt matter where you tell the story if you're screwing it up like they're screwing it up - BFA and SL had the same issues and SL is worse Cosmic stories can be amazing and so can "otherworldly places" (TBC was not grounded at all) but this villain has less backstory than Hogger
Something I will never forgive the writers at blizzard for is the "closure" they gave for Arthas. This is one of the most iconic characters in the entire lore and they basically just wrote him off, they couldn't even be assed to give him an in-game cinematic like they did with Garrosh in Sanctum of Domination. Its like in the next expansion the faction leaders receive a letter which says that Illidan is dead and everyone just accepts it and we are not shown any cinematic or conclusion of the character of any kind. Absolutely pathetic.
I personally don't really mind that they "removed" Arthas as his story pretty much ended in wotlk and it should have stayed that way. (Granted, the bastion afterlives cinematic was pretty good) In the cutscene, I can understand him being a just remnant, mere wisp as being in the maw for decade cannot be healthy but still, they could have added him with more stylishly or just not add him at all.
They shouldn't even put him there if they didn't want to do it respectful way. They just said "go fuck yourself" to him. They could honor his character in many ways - big and small, but they did this...thing. And music they used...it's painful. Bli$$ used Arthas to explain Uther's actions, they have put him where expansion takes place and and then show him in this form at the end, doing nothing and letting everyone to shit on him. I can't get it how they were able to bring back Illidan, fill gaps in his story and give him nice closure but with Arthas, poster boy of Wacraft, most important character from lore perspective for many years was treated like some random guy. It hurts even more because Arthas thrown to Maw was not Lich King, he was this part of Lich King who was holding LK from releasing scourge on Azeroth, he was this last good part of this entity. He does not deserve this level of disrespect. Even if they just stayed silent while music from his death scene was playing, letting him vanish, in my opinion would be much better than mocking him.
@@Grizzfor Its funny because Sylvanas is literally worse than Arthas in terms of the crimes committed, but she gets a random redemption arc and has nonstop plot armor. As I said initially, absolutely pathetic writing.
@@fluffyfraud Na the problem here is that they fitst said they wouldnt touch his story not to mess with it. Then they bring in Uther and Jaina. Have Uthers entire story based on his past with Arthas. Jaina referencing him etc. All this builtup. All this pitential with Sylvanas even. Futhermore Anduin living the Arthas expirience where he could have been the key to bteak free from control or something. And after you do all that.. its a wisp that fades after a condecending monologue of an elf that was a dozen times worse then Arthas himself.
Absolutely true, but I'm just thinking.. what if it's not true about what they think has become of Arthas. Maybe this is not the end of him, I desperately hope so. (I mean.. there's no real proof that what they think has become of Arthas, is true, right?) But if it's true, then it's truly pathetic indeed. It's definitely a cliffhanger anyway, obviously much more explanations are still yet to come, it has to be. If Blizzard still wants to 'successful' at least.
@@Krigzulv exactly bro. I would say Hopefully after this it will go back to way it was but I'm pretty sure if it did we are going to be hailed as heroes of azeroth and be even more in the spotlight.
its weird because in BFA they tried to do that with things like the warfronts and island expeditions (keyword TRIED those were awful) all while doing the most extreme 'you are the champion of all of azeroth' shit. I don't even know what to call this, its like they wanted to have their cake but also a pie too
Yup- just go back to Before the Storm where both Anduin and Sylvanas both got visions from Azerite. Make it that they both fell into comas where they dreamed BFA and Shadowlands. Wake them up and reset to them fighting just Ashara, or just N'zoth, or just working on removing the sword from the planet. Focus on one thing, grounded into our survival on Azeroth.
Their first big mistake was in making the leveling experience a glorified tutorial for the expansion, rather than an integral part of the experience. The zones only exist as a place to stuff the handful of dailies to mindlessly grind while waiting for raid night. The way they've been going, expansions are just glorified reworks of the Darkmoon Fair. We get walked to each attraction and then given a handful of tickets each day to spend on a randomized selection of attractions to visit.
“To stuff the handful of dailies to mindlessly grind,” me when obtaining anima for their stupid reserves! F*ck that anima drought! You only get so little when you need WAY much more. And all the while doing the same “world” quests.
This problem has roots in the earlier expansions. WOW had already a great story, and great characters which were left behind. Why not use the already existing plots/characters? Also Azshara was done dirty :(
@@cristhianmlr To be fair, the never really talked about any of the new lore. The most recently introduced story he covered in the last year was Lei Shen from Mists of Pandaria, 9 YEARS AGO.
I don't know. I think that's been a boon. We've gotten to see more people exploring many of the MMOs that are better than WoW. FF14, Lost Ark, Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic. Far too many people have been so brainwashed that WoW is the only MMO, if you play it you can't play anything else, that they've missed so many great games out there.
I liked it though, it would be terrible if no matter what they did everybody would still stick to them. the current team is incompetent for a franchise this big.
@@Maria_Erias I was going to add that onto my last comment, I want to make it clear that it's unquestionably a good thing that people are not only trying out new games, but that even if they don't return to WoW, that they've might've found a game that they enjoy more. This however doesn't change the fact that from a personal standpoint, it really has sucked to lose all the youtubers that you used to watch.
Argus brought a tear to my eye. The quests where you go round up the fallen heroes of Argus. It reminded me of Broxxigar. Standing up to Sargeras is the simple story telling people enjoyed and I had wanted to see what Argus was like since WC3. BFA and Shadowlands are like pure circus clown music and instead of a tear brought to your eye, you're pied in the face.
Bfa at least made _some_ sense narratively, it was just bad, but reasonable enough. Shadowlands is just narrative diarrhea, you can't even criticize it constructively, as it is just a pile of liquid shit, not even fit for fertilizer.
World of Warcraft never really had good Story-telling but what it definitely had was very strong world building, little details and quest-lines everywhere, mysteries all over the place, conspiracy theories, a deep history that you can deep up as well and all this made it feel real. the current Writers don't seem to be able to write a story that has a connection to those roots, their story seems completely detached and in a vacuum and that's why it doesn't feel like World of Warcraft anymore.
Way I see it, the Warcraft 3 story we knew and loved ended with Legion. We defeated the big baddy that existed as the catalyst of the entire series; Sargeras, and that was it.
When Blizzard said '' We are going to end the warcraft book'' (or something in those lines), i hoped for a revemp. New systems, tales and adventures. Each and every expansion since pandaria feelt a bit dislocated. New mechanics are added and removed all the time, and i feel a certain lack in consistent. For a moment, i hoped that Jailer actually would win and reset the world, giving some life to this fading world. I do love warcraft, and because of it, i hope for it to thrive. But it is not because i love it that i will overlook its failures. For one moment, they could do a full reset, just like FF XIV and start anew. I'm not saying to be like FF, i'm saying to be new, innovative and espetacular, just like it was some 16 years ago, when blizzard actually tried and take risks.
I wish they would have smashed the reset button, but the difference is: what do you keep from the "old" world? Do people get to keep their stuff? I wouldn't want to lose 15 years of achievements, items and characters. But I wish they would use this to reset the story, to have players come back to a version of Azeroth a few thousand years back or ahead in time. The possibilities.
@@IvyTinwe But you're going to lose all that stuff anyway when the game dies. I've already given up on all my mounts and transmog, because I don't care about the world anymore.
Yes, I absolutely agree with everything you said. I started playing TBC classic because I really missed exploring and questing in Azeroth. They have created such a beautiful and interesting world and they’re fucking it up.
Yeah, that sums up what I've noticed about the game lately. Also, this comment is going to be a bit lengthy but I want this off my chest. For years I was curious about WoW. I only started playing it once my nephew and I wanted to play something fantasy related. WoW and a few others were our picks. We began right at the closing days of Legion so we never played the end game. We were still low level characters at the time. Now for obvious reasons, my nephew couldn't play as much because of school. Yet I continued to play WoW. What interested me the most was it's lore. No, I didn't learn it from the game itself, but by other RUclipsrs who knew about the lore. This channel, Madseasonshow, and Nobble87 included. I learned about WoW's history both lore wise and even history made by players in game. Though I wasn't part of that history, I can still pass by key locations and know that history was made in someway. I can even feel something when I pass by old raid and dungeon locations. And I'm sure many of you do too as well. Especially all you WoW vets out there. What do you think of when passing by Blackrock Mountain, or even Icecrown Citadel before that Shadowlands mess? Even when you hear the music ambience from within the raid itself. Going through BFA, you can tell there was some work put into the zones, music, but not the story sadly. Or at least the late game part of the story. Playing through both Kul Tiras and Zandalar, I could tell they had something. Just no real pay off. Now with Shadowlands... I can't even get myself to even play the basic zone quests. I feel nothing from the modern game at all anymore. Just when questing in older zones or playing through older campaigns that I missed out on. Now this comment may be overlooked but for anyone that sees this comment, thank you for taking the time. As for WoW, I cannot say much since everyone else has already said what they needed to say. All the heart and soul of the game is gone... And that's just sad. And I'm sure many of you can agree on that.
If ever there was a justification for a novel length comment on youtube, a comment about what went wrong with shadowlands would be it. You have no idea how many of us feel exactly like you do. Ive actually scrolled through and made several comments roughly as lengthy as yours, all in response to different peoples comments, but all of them were essentially the same thing at their core. Man it feels so damn good to get all of this off my chest and recognize that thousands of other people have the same issue with Shadowlands. My biggest gripe is that they ruined the leveling experience of level 1-50. At least with WoD(which i disliked most of all until shadowlands showed me how good it was) WoD permitted you the opportunity to pretend it didnt exist and play through vanilla, bc, LK, Cata, MoP etc, and you could just immerse yourself in the lore and level alts over and over again until a new expansion came out. Shadowlands is the first expansion that i cannot even bring myself to try and progress. I played for a month at launch and hit level 54 and i was disgusted with everything. If china copied WoW and sold it on Wish.com, Shadowlands would be its title.
I’m curious about WoW now myself but have never played it and never would want to. I do play FF14 and became curious during the “WoW refugee flood.” I don’t really know why I’m so curious about it. Maybe I just wanted to see what the fuss was about.
I simply cannot put into words… how shit the story has been for the last 2 years… it all feels so wrong I hate to use the word but they have cosmically raped the foundation of the warcraft story. They are trying to come up with something new just for the sake of something new, and didn't stop to think whether it's actually necessary or even a good change at all. In trying to create originality, they made the universe really unoriginal and actually detracted from the wonder that was there before. The Titans already fulfilled the cosmic order concept in wow, with Titans overseeing the universe, each having a connection to a force like life or time. The Titans also created Titan Keepers (like Freya, Thorim, Mimiron) who similarly fit into a pantheon of duties and existed to fulfil the Titans' grand design. Now apparently there is a TitanPlus 'First Ones' cosmic creator group that literally made everyhing including the Titans, and Pantheons and workshops for all the forces in the universe. It's really derivative and unoriginal, and only makes lore more boring "Get your Pantheon in 5 other flavours now!". When we fought the Legion, it felt natural and made sense to involve the Titans in some way as they represent Order and had a large role in the Legion's lore with Sargeras - but apparently there's also a Pantheon of Fel (that nobody ever knew anything before)? Lol does the force of Disorder sound like something that would organise into a Pantheon? The Old Gods (awesome villains conceptually) are servants of the mysterious Void Lords... who apparently are a Pantheon of Void created by the even more mysterious First Ones? And there is a Zereth workshop pumping out Void stuff somewhere? This "the First Ones made it, also Pantheons and Zereths for everything" angle goes against what those forces were meant to represent, what made those forces interesting and unique. Jesus what does this add to the lore other than cheapening everything by codifying even the most unique forces in the universe into a copy-pasted and cookie-cutter "Pantheon of 3Dprinted BS"? The afterlife, a mysterious concept of the great beyond was made into a color-coded 5-zone theme park. Sure they tell us that there are more Afterlifes... but the center of the Afterlife is opened by the sigils of only these 5 Eternal ones, and the Forge of Afterlives 3Dprints only these 5 zone leaders, so...yeah. 5-zone theme parks work when we're exploring an island or parts of the world like Pandaria, the Broken Isles, the Cataclysm elemental zones... but NOT when you're trying to depict something as vast and mysterious as the Afterlife. Which as it turns out is 3D printed into existence by a large glowing technoball - which is also possibly the furthest thing from Death and the afterlife you could think of. So honestly they keep ruining the most interesting things about this universe with their contrived shoehorning. Let the Titans have their Pantheon and Forge of Origination and Hearts of Azeroth, the universe is just worse off by forcing the same codified nonsense onto Death and Life and Void etc. In their amateurish drive to create originality, the writers created a world devoid of originality. Oh wow there are floating trees and water you can walk on (as if we didn't have that before) but now the Emerald dream which was such a beautiful and mysterious magical place is just 3Dprinted by a technoball of life, and Elune is just a servitor in the Pantheon of Life, on the same level as this random 3Dprinted blue broad that only exists for color-coded Covenant theme park purposes. So yeah - sure the Jailer and Sylvanas storylines were utter garbage, but even without those the story direction is full of bad ideas that is just a detriment to the wonderful universe we had before... The Jailer is the most boring uninteresting disgraceful attempt of a villain in the history of the Warcraft franchise. 20 years of lore ruined just because you needed to make this random guy seem important. I genuinely hate more than anything that Zovaal was actually the real big bad all along, ruining 20 years of lore because of what? Because you were so desperate for the story to be engaging so you made this bald fraud out of thin air and claim he’s behind everything ever so people would care?? You may aswell have written please give a shit about me on his character model!!!! I fucking hate it more than anything. Everything about the jailer gives me the vibe of a kid saying this character I made is so cool and so amazing and can shoot mega lasers from his eyes, he can beat superman in one punch and everyone thinks he's so strong and the biggest bad guy ever, but it's written by fucking adults. The worst part is they COULD flesh him out and make him even mildly interesting but they couldn't help themselves in writing a compelling character, or even a fucking stupid WWE saturday morning cartoon villain - but instead they stand on the shoulders of established characters and lore and take a big fat shit directly on their head and go "SEE IT WAS ME ALL ALONG" Warcraft, the story, ended with the end of Legion and everything else after is fanfiction by people who don't like Warcraft. I'd rather them full reset the game 30,000 years in the future so they can't touch current characters anymore. They turned a certain undead elven archer into like the second most powerful character in the story because they like her so much in the writing room. Seriously what would the reaction be if slowly Lorthermar or Baine slowly got more powerful to the point of they could just start to fucking fly and 1v1 the Lich king and break icebergs with regular arrows Does it not seem problematic to anyone in the writing team that they completely took the myth out of not only death but creation itself from the perspective of the player character? How does one respect death after saving the entire realm of death and all the clowns within it? They just made the player characters one of the most powerful beings in existence. How can you go back to treating them as regular mortals doing pick-up quests in 10.0? Imagine dying from the perspective of the player character, how could you even take any of the guys in the Shadowlands seriously? You literally saved it all.
i completely agree. i really wish i could say it'll get better with 10.0 but there's really no way to fix any of the lore without basically just making shadowlands noncanon.
Absolutely agree. And what makes it worse imho: the player character is still a figure in the back that gets thrown at whatever threat is on the horizon. It's not about your character, the story always revolves around others. You're never in the cinematics. So while you fight, your character's reaction to whatever unfolds is never shown, and that makes me feel disconnected from everything.
A good read that I completely agree with. It really bums me out that these last two expansions did as much as damage as they did to the lore, especially Shadowlands. Everything that was so vast, mysterious and interesting has all just sort of felt simplified, with newly-written lore that's been forced into the Warcraft Universe. It's absolutely upsetting, and I honestly almost wish the writers would do a full retcon of everything introduced in the Shadowlands, despite the fact that something like that would never happen. Either way, hopefully the excessive amount of criticism the writing team is facing right now can help sway their writing in a more favorable direction for the player-base. Otherwise, I truly hope they don't spit on the Warcraft Universe even more than they already have.
Not gonna lie I teared up at the end there. It's so incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking to see all the potential WoW has on a storytelling level get wasted again and again and again for a shallow spectacle...
As a WoW lore geek, this expansion kinda hurt. I am left confused on the storyline of the expansion (if there is one), and am left confused about the "mysterious enemy" Zovaal mentioned. It may be the void lords but that was the main reason Sargeras went on his Burning Crusade. I still love WoW lore, just not the insane retcon that Shadowlands has made. I also hope that the Dreadlords and Denathrius come back in some way, too, as they were my favorite villains (mostly Denathrius). Maybe they'll be working for the void lords this time? IDK
I genuinely think they don’t know what the mysterious enemy is and are just saving it for later. BFA at least had pretty cool overarching lore still, this xpac sucked worse than WoD imo. Draenor content was dope they just didn’t make enough of it.
As someone who started playing WoW when SL was already released the lore doesn’t make any damn sense. Doesn’t help that the game makes it hard to order things chronologically and not start something from another expansion by accident.
Glad to know I'm not the only one with an odd appreciation for Mordretha, the Endless Empress. Also, I find funny to hear that you could get a college degree in the time we found out who manipulated Vol'Jin, because I DID GET my college degree during that exact period of time!
I've been saying this for years now. The plot and lore of WoW has been ruined because of Steve Danuser. You can blame Alex Afrasabi for being a piece of fucking shit all you want, but the lore was still fuckin awesome up until BFA. And BFA is when Steve took over as the lead story director. Steve Danuser is a hack and has destroyed WoW's lore and history for his own ego. Steve Danuser has Last Jedi'd the game.
another thing im confused about though is im pretty sure in blizzcon 2017 metzen said that they had the next 6 expansions planned out already? so was he part of the creation of shadowlands? i will never understand how a shitshow like this ended up happening
I fully agree with this video. I actually stopped playing Retail wow and started playing classic realms solely based on the fact that i stopped caring about Shadowlands narrative and decided to relive old and better narratives, and to rediscover zones with rich details that were lost with retail's new leveling system.
Classic wow is just reliving the past though. I mean I loved classic 2019 but that’s finished. SoM doesn’t excite me. Wrath sounds fun but idk, it’s hard to care about an experience I’ve already played.
@@EviIM0nk3y its different with wow at least for me. I'll never relive the glory days of wow in today's gaming culture. The entire community is changed and it doesn't feel the same.
I love WoW lore because it manages to make magic, zombies, pirates, voodoo, rocket ships, ninjas, aliens, dragons, radiation, lovecraftian horror, and walrus people all fit into the world yet somehow still make complete sense.
It never made complete sense. It only made for the most part. Then came draenor. Then it never stopped outreforging itself. Also, no: You love its story because it's a favourite game of yours' story, not because it makes complete sense. And you love WoW because it was a good game.
Shadowlands is the first time I've ever been completely burnt out on in WoW. Everything about it has put me off of the game I've loved for 14 years and it feels awful to have to say that.
honestly plat, you hit it out of the park with this one. even with all the ham-fisted writing and design decisions over the years, the world always kept me coming back. it was cool to be able to go around and adventure! it really felt like youre really an adventurer in this big open world, youre not alone and together with allies you can overcome any challenge. i think thats the essence of wow, which is something that both pcs and npcs are ultimately beholden to, and its when people forgot what that meant that the game really took a downturn.
Tyrande: takes the power so she can kill sylvanas Elune: *takes it back the moment she's about to kill her* Elune like 10 minutes later: tyrande has to choose between vengeance or forgiveness I still can't get over that hahahaha
I'd imagine she has some harsh truths to tell her people when she returns home :) "Night Elves, hear me! Elune, our precious god, is a false idol! Her impotence cost us our homes, our lives!" "It is time we reject our balance with nature... It is time we embrace Slaanesh!" ruclips.net/video/zB6FaGBz0Lo/видео.html
@@A1Steaksauce58 she was forced to choose forgiveness by the incompetent writers "oh that person who massacred my people was doing it because it was not herself?, and my goddess only made the death of millions of night elfs painless because her sister needed the souls? I forgive you"
Never understood why they just didn't make the soul of Ner'zul and Arthas the Jailer, twisted into one. With time moving weird in the Shadowlands they could have easily made them the rulers of the Maw. Might even give Arthas a proper sent of once we break him from Ner'zul.
Hit the nail on the head with this video - the slow drip of lore being dispersed once every 6 months has been incredibly painful. It feels like Blizz has been asking us to hold on just one more story beat for 4 years now because surely something poignant or exciting is coming. In the end, like you said, even mediocre story beats end up feeling horrible instead because it doesn't live up to fan theories and hopes. Also Blizz somehow managed character driven stories in Legion, I think because like you mentioned it was still a straightforward story. The Rejection of the Gift cinematic was my favorite moment in Legion for that reason.
There is one way Shadowlands may redeem itself in my eyes. Have Ner'zul, now free of the Jailer, do a prison break on Tor'Ghast and free a bunch of dead characters so they can return to the Warcraft setting. Merge the two Gul'dans into one being and have him become the Warlock class-leader, while Ner'zul seizes Tor'Ghast to act as the new Necromancer Class Order Hall, with him as the Necromancer Leader.
I have legit searched for information for years about the audio dramas and WHEN there will be more of them. I absolutely love both the tomb of saergeras and a thousand years of war and still listens to them. Please blizz make more with the exact same narration
Hey I'm a big fan of your channel and Warcraft lore. Great video, you provided a different way of looking at things. I would like to add that in my opinion, Warcraft excels at telling sub-plot or minor stories. Like the smaller stories of less important characters and stories told through quests (like Suramar in your example). However, for some time now, Warcraft have been unable (in my opinion) to give a strong and compelling main story, and that is most apparent in expansions such as Warlords of Draenor (where they used lazy time traveling), or Shadowlands (Retconlands). I could rant on for ages as to why that is, but I'm sure you've already heard every opinion out there :) Anyways keep up the great videos.
Main plot aside, There's a ton of side characters I'd love to keep seeing. I'm sorry but I love most of the venthyr side cast, and a few of the others too. Theotar, Tubbins n Gubbins, Lady Moonberry, Venari, The Accuser (with Kael!), And of course Daddy D. I think Blizzard knows Denathrius is an actually good character so they salvaged him early, but the unfortunate reality is if they're going to dumpster SL like WOD then these characters are gonna go the way of Yrel.
Legion's Suramar is the most WoW thing i've ever experienced and by far my favorite, I was fond of the ancient war and Warcraft 3 before this expansion so it hit right on the money for me. Also yeah the Tomb of Sargeras audio was absolutely amazing. I think you're right for the most part but I kinda like the Shadowland factions and their individual characters and their personalities it really feels like WoW when you're gathering a ton of followers with different styles and behaviours, I wish we'd see more of them instead of some content that isn't fun or useful. For example delete the Venthyr's Ember court and focus more on characters like Theotar or idk fucking Simone or Laurent or whoever. The idea to build up your own abomination was great even if I didn't really commit or tried much of it it looked like a mighty good idea and appropriate for this covenant. It would all contribute to fleshing out more these characters which are now a big part of the lore and "have always been there"
I still remember when Shadowlands first came out and introduced the covenants and zones and I was like "there's nothing here to be excited for". The overall aesthetics of each area and the stories behind them just felt uninspired... Like when you go from say, the fantasy imperial China of Pandaria or the fantasy Mesoamerican Zandalari in BFA to these sort of bland and uninspired cultures and realms in the cosmos, you just don't feel drawn in. The world, atmosphere, art direction, and music in Shadowlands just doesn't really have the same power to draw me into the game that much as the previous expansions did.
Shadowland zones and their atmosphere, compared to the rest of Warcraft world, are the WoW equivalent of corporate music: _Technically_ not bad, but so obnoxiously soulless you just instantly hate it, and the more you think about why it was made in the first place, the more you hate existence itself. Lol.
On that regard, Legion was already crap, with all zones being very similar to older ones. Surprisingly BFA did introduce new environments. SL is indeed so blend and boring.
you hit the nail on the head the thing that makes Shadowlands so boring is that it's really nothing like the regular World of Warcraft Storytelling(BFA wasn't really good neither) it feels like a whole different game and not in a good way neither
I actually got a degree from Uni between the Vol'jin's death and the Mueh'zala reveal. August 2016-June 2019. It was still unknown when I finished it 💀
This really reminds me of the last Jedi. When force awakened came out everyone was speculating who snoke was and what would happen in the next movie cause force awakened was essentially the same as some old Star Wars movies so they focused on the characters. Then they released last Jedi and straight up made snoke useless and replaced him with palpatine in the next movie after that
Thank you for this video. I think it's a really important perspective about character narrative. I personally have had issues with WoW's "single player" story telling since, WoD. It kind of started in WotLK, but the only real example of that was when the Alliance reach Borean Tundra and the first quest text we get is proclaiming us as an important hero of the Alliance. Now, while I do dislike the _"you_ are the general of Alliance forces on Draenor" and _"you_ are the new Ashbringer", I mostly hate those because I'm in a world filled with other player characters who are experiencing the exact same thing. It would be like taking Skyrim, making it an MMO. The special treatment of being _the_ Dovahkiin is diminished when everyone is shouting dragons out of the sky. It's ok for player characters to become _a_ general, it's another matter when players become _the_ general. The former means you are part of something, the latter means you *are* the something, and I wont lie, the playerbase complaining during WoD that they "don't feel important enough" is one of the (subjective) reasons for an ending like we received at the end of BfA. A group of people are working together to defeat an amazingly cool villain, but its only *you* that channels the power of Azeroth. One person. Not the group. Not the MMO. You. You were the only person carrying the Heart of Azeroth. You. All 500,000 - 4,000,000 of you(singular). That drives me crazy. Its not what I play an MMO for. However, I personally don't feel this complaint extends to non-player characters. NPCs are suppose to be the lens through which events of the world affect an individual. Blizzard have attempted this before, and they didn't quite get it right. Thrall in Cataclysm. But here's the thing (for me), the issue there isn't that Thrall had too much focus, it was that he was the _only_ NPC with focus. The Aspects were doing what they could to hoist him up. He ended up being the only NPC that the story's finality was told through. Player agency is already a difficult thing within an MMO if you want it done without diminishing all of the other player characters around you. When the story is then hyper focused on an individual character, that you never get to choose, the question of "why am I even here" becomes too frequent. While it would be easy to just keep using Thrall becoming Green Jesus as the main outlet for this complaint, I feel I need to spread some of the examples on to Magni. the 'Champions of Azeroth' was really just a Magni Bronzebeard rep bar. No one else was given any purpose within that faction, and that was the game's best opportunity to provide character development to so many faction neutral characters. Better still, by giving players a variety of NPCs within that faction to "mentor" them, you provide agency to the player because they got to choose whose perspective to experience that part of the story. When you approach it this way, you spread the weight of a story on to more shoulders than either a single NPC (which tends to ruin them, aka, Thrall) or from placing it all on to the player character at the expense of every other player character around you. There are degrees of good and bad to story telling. So, by taking what I've just described and apply it to a bad ending like BfA's. So, yes, cheesy homage to LotR aside, focus of the power of Azeroth being pumped through the player character. Flip it around. ALL of the player characters instead channel that power in Magni, his diamond body refracting the power until it is controlled with the aid of other neutral NPCs (like poor ol'd Hamuul) to eventually kill N'Zoth. But don't stop there. Because Magni is the conduit instead of the player, you have the options to maim, sacrifice or transcend him through this act. These options do no exist for the player beyond waking up in a bathtub in Dalaran, because game developers can't just perma death your character. It would still be a lame Return of the King rip, but there is more weight and consequence there than attempting to provide MMO players more agency only to reveal that our involvement carries no choice. Being front and centre is _not_ true player agency. Both players and developers make this mistake. Complaining about *you* not being the centre of attention is a small part of the problem.
Can you explain the "Christie Golden" bit to me? Never been interested in books but I know of some changes to the lore that I hated that was first introduced in the books by, I assume, Christie Golden. I remember people liking them a few years ago though. Has the books gone downhill or have they always been bad?
I think another major issue with the wow lore is that it's suffering from a major case of Slideshow syndrome. The writers have obviously written major plot points, but didn't map out the path between them. Leading to dramatic shifts in story moments. They wanted the Jailer to collect all five sigils on screen. However, The Primus is already in his custody and the arbiter should be out of his reach surrounded by all the other eternal ones. Well... I guess the Primus hid his sigil in a vault and then the player character brings the sigil into torghast and gives it back to the primus in the lair of Zovaal. And I guess the arbiter gets dragged into the maw and all the eternal ones are just missing at the time. We need to chase after the jailer into Zereth Mortis, but we need 5 sigils and Zovaal took them. Ehhh, just make new ones. Oh, and the caretakers can just sub in for the Arbiter because... Sylvanas needs to switch sides, but she has no reason to and especially wouldn't want to after committing MULTIPLE war crimes in order to serve him. Wellllll, Zovaal didn't tell her about Nathanos and she didn't want to mind control Anduin and the Jailer mask slips and says "serve" and now suddenly she really doesn't like the word Serve (for some reason). These aren't the only instances of this issue, I'm sure you can find many more. But they really need to flesh out their plots BEFORE making future major plot points so that they can avoid this issue.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Blizzard's greatest enemy is narrative scope-creep. They keep trying to write bigger and more complexly deep stories... and they just can't. They fail every step of the way. WoW's narrative was far better when it was focused on worldbuilding and small-scale problems. Like how the Defias Brotherhood was a bunch of smaller, interconnected stories that happened to coalesce around a single important figure pushing things into motion, or how a bunch of the problems in various zones (all four human ones particularly) were independent problems being caused by local politics (and also, the same damn dragon, funnily enough.) Blizzard can write a world. They can't tell a story, and they need to stop trying.
I am so glad you brought up Suramar and it's story. I loved and adored it, it truly was captivating and honestly if they just did think like that I would love the game more. Everything in Shadowlands just makes me angry from basically my completion of the base story, but Legion and it's story of each of the zones I actually cared about and made me look forward to each of the raids
I do agree that the games strength is when it focuses on the world and the smaller aspects rather than grandiose elements. Suramar at the start of Legion was also my favorite zone, and it was amazing to feel the progression over time since I was the one causing that progression. After progressing through the zone, and infiltrating the city piece by piece, it all led to to the tier raid, which had the antagonist(Gul'dan) which had set everything in motion for this expansion. Progression that was understandable, effected the world, and was directly created by you, fantastically built. However, I disagree where the faults are. The gaps in the narrative are not problematic, especially since they have always been there. While Suramar was more continuous, the rest of Legion did have those gaps as well. Each patch still had time in between them, progressing to the next chapter of the story still took time. But that time isn't an issue when the story itself is told well. The real issue with the story is not that there is too much time in between each chapter, or that its character focuses, or that its not zone focused...It's that is fucking sucks. The story these days is focused on the pay off without caring how it gets there. It's all about the spectacle, but there is no meaning behind it. Sylvanas was character assassinated. The Jailer is mustache twirling evil guy and nothing more. Remember the one cinematic where Tyrande beat the crap out of Sylvanas for her to randomly lose her power cause...reasons? They are just trying to fast track to the spectacle, but that spectacle doesn't mean anything if it hasnt been built up. Arthas was arguably Blizzards most iconic character. But why was he iconic? We saw him start as a proud and noble Prince, and saw him fall. We saw this man go from righteous and stalwart defender of his home, to be consumed by vengeance and accidently become the before thing he swore to destroy, and be consumed and forced against his will be then destroy his very home. When WOTLK starts, we know the kind of power we are up against, and as we battle through northrend his presence is literally everywhere. The scourge littered the continent and flying over Icecrown showed you his tremendous force. Then at the final climax we actually lose, and if not for Tirion breaking Frostmourne, the Lich King would have actually won. And that is why video games are such an amazing medium for story telling, because we didnt just see all of that, we PLAYED all of it. We played as Arthas picking up Frostmourne, we played as Arthas leading the Scourge, we played our characters invading Icecrown, we played the game we saw it happen, and it makes the end result statisfying and meaningful. All of that is absent in the modern day. They keep throwing cliffhangers at you in an attempt to keep you interested because the story is devoid of meaning. Cliffhangers only work if I cared about what was happening to begin with. Classic WoW shows that sometimes bigger isn't always better.
Warcraft fell into the trappings of power creep hard. It is very difficult to keep a continuous story engaging for as long as the franchise has gone on for. There are many ways to address this, but blizzard took the easy route and resorted to introducing a new villain that's more powerful than anything else before and the heroes powering up alongside them. This can work for a little while, but there comes a shark jumping moment where the audience expects this power up and gets bored, defeating the purpose of the decision in the first place. WOW was hit particularly hard because the blew through what was considered the ultimate evil in the universe at the time in the second expansion and have been chasing that peak with increasingly ridiculous new threats ever since.
I've always seen my character as just a travelling adventurer exploring Azeroth and beyond who happens to get wrapped up in world-ending events on an alarmingly regular basis. I've been given many titles; some know me as "Commander" or maybe "Champion of Azeroth". Some call me "High Priest", and lately it has been "Maw Walker" spoken in my general direction with equal parts awe and derision. But the title I wear with the most pride, the one that means the most to me, is simply "of Ironforge". Must say though, it's kind of awkward being in a state of knowing what happens when we die and still now knowing what will happen when I die.
Nailed it. The storytelling has been so alienating in most regards lately, they could have been better off introducing a robot evasion trying to hi-jack the titan facilities.
3:44 A way to put into perspective how long that reveal took is to look at how many people in that room got graphical updates between then and the reveal. Baine, Gallywix, Lor'themar, AND Sylvanas.
The issues with WoW you mentioned remind me of Brandon's Sanderson lectures on book writing (available on youtube). In one speech Sanderson talks about a point of promise in plot and what happens if author does not write to fulfill it. In that context: - in Legion we were promised to defeat BL and we did - in BFA we were promised a war between Horde and Alliance and.. we fought N'zoth - in the Shadowlands we were not promised anything so no one is waiting for anything (we know there is the Guy, but we do not know anything about him or his goals, why do we even fight him? there is no reason to, he had not done anything evil tbh, but the plot makes us)
Yeah, i agree with this video. Especially considering the so called "looming threat" wow keeps teasing is THE DARKNESS, which is the most overdone threat in all of fiction. I think blizz overestimates how much players care about faction leaders. They take the focus away from the player, which is the opposite of smart.
I really appreciated the way you stated your criticisms succinctly without clickbait or stretching it out for views. I know how tempting that must be given how many other lesser youtubers just whine constantly for easy credibility and monetization.
i absolutely adore the suramar questline. it's one i do on all my characters, because it's a really good source of xp, and i just love the story so much. the zone itself is so much fun, and the quests are amazing.
WoW, as a universe, has such great potential to be such a well of fantastic lore. Available if you wanna dig into it or talk about it, or you can accept the surface of it to go around the world day to day. Depending on how deep you want to dig into it or especially theorize about it, it can offer you everything you'd be interested in. And since it's a 'world', you can tell almost any and all stories within it that you'd ever want to tell. Happy, sad, emotionally mixed. The possibilities are so vast it is mindboggling, and even the most boring ones could be interesting. I understand the team has been under pressure, and not every decision was something they would have gone for. But after seeing BFA and Shadowlands....really?!??! Of all the vast possibilites THIS is what you go for? This is the best you can do? There's some little things they did right but long run have fully butchered. Taelia could have been an interesting character to see in the world, without being connected to any existing characters. Did she REALLY have to be the 'long lost daughter'? She's perfectly fine as just a fresh face, brand new character. And the Drust! They were so cool as just this threat that lurked in the background, angry at their ancestral home being taken from them. Why were they in Shadowlands? Literally zero reason to be there and since then have had almost no elaboration onto why. And why was Baine JUST SITTING THERE THE WHOLE TIME. I sympathize that there were behind the scenes issues but please blizzard, the only way this could have happened if someone very important (who is still at the company currently) forced very stupid decisions. Not even saying it was someone on the writing staff, but someone with push who thinks they know best has made terrible decisions.
Baine was important to sit there. He was just like a observer from the type of Stan Lee in MCU. And when he saw the bullshit with sylvanas being awaked ala twillight style, he just said "Maybe we shouldn't"
Thank you Platinum for everything you do. Your passion for this universe is inspiring and makes me want to start playing WoW classic just so that I can experience that passion again for a game that I grew up with and loved.
Mists of Pandaria, alongside Wrath of the Lich King and Legion were pretty much the best expansions in my opinion purely for the whole world building aspect and amazing lore alongside extremely fun gameplay. Expanding old content introduced so long into something massive and captivating has almost all the time been my favorite aspect of an expansion. Even the Pandaren used to be an obscure race back in Warcraft 3 with the exception of Chen Stormstout who was mentioned during Classic until Mists of Pandaria came out which gave this world a huge overhaul with a brand new continent, new races, new lore, new cultures, new wildlife, and even a fun new class, all packed with some of the best graphics during its time, I never saw anything this beautiful in my life. Even Battle for Azeroth (which I still despise so much to this day) have some really impressive worldbuilding in this expansion and it was fun exploring Zandalar. I really do miss that special experience in exploring the World of Warcraft.
God I remember at the start of shadowlands I thought they were making all the right decisions ... then they decided to totally fuck everything up right down to even the lore.
Wow! That theater of pain boss voiceline was part of what kept me goin in season 1 haha love denathrius too, personally i dont think shadowlands is that bad more like bit too much bit too fast lorewise
WONDERFUL video! I agree with legit everything you said here and it was said so succinctly and efficiently. Really, amazingly done Personally, I actually did enjoy most of the new characters and worlds of the Shadowlands. Mostly Ardenweald and Revendreth's casts, but overall I thought the story told while leveling was fine. The main characters we brought with us, though... Well, either it was 'why are you here if you got no lines huh' (ie Baine, Taelia) or 'omg shut up already we've been focusing on you for too long' (ie Anduin, Sylvanas). Along with a villain that the writers didn't seem to know what to do with, revists of old characters retconning themselves to fit the villain, and no clear goal in mind... It hasn't been a very good time I really really agree that the Legion was very clear with every patch storyline and MAN I miss that. BFA had a lot of weird illogical jumps to me. Like we spun hard around from faction war to Old Gods and that connection is still a bit ?????? like jeeze that was a thing that happened I guess Now hopefully we can do something about that giant sword in the world huh :^)
Thank you very much for bluring out jailer's chest or as I like to call him: Nipples Magee! (Christ put a shirt on get some self respect) I personally say (story wise) WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN! Make the player not the chosen one but just another solider. That's what I want. Also I agree if ya got no passion why make a vid on it?! Plus I like looking back on good (and funny) lore.
Shadowlands should've been a really world building focussed expansion along the lines of Pandaria. I mean we've been here for ages and we still don't know a bunch of fundamental aspects of this place. Like, why don't the other realms of the shadowlands have pantheon members? What happens when you die in the shadowlands? Why did they have to pump Argus full of death energy to get him there? Do entities like demons or Naaru go to the shadowlands when they die for real? Why can the titans just strut around in reality and why are they birthed through world souls when none of that applies to their death equivalent? What is domination magic? Is it death fueled? Is it outside the cosmology we know? How did the Jailor find out about this "bigger threat". What's up with Elune and the Winter Queen? And the list goes on. Back in Pandaria every villain and plot point that came up was clear, they had a couple of questions like this, but they felt purposeful, not just like stuff that got left out for no reason.
EXACTLY. overarching stories should be simple, but fun and badass. where the complexity comes in should be in questing storylines and worldbuilding. i still know so little about the zones in the past few expansions, because they all just felt like unimportant vessels to house a "greater" narrative, rather than an actual writing focus.
Very well said. This is why I love your channel; you are always diving deep into the lore, even the stories that have big holes in them or have not been completed or have even been changed over the years. In most media today, I have noticed they are all using the same formula of stringing things along so people will want to continue to watch (consume) so they can find out the next juicy secret. Some are better at doing that than others, and I agree with you that Shadowlands has been the worst at telling a story, even with the different side stories. I am one who loves questing, more than anything else, and I read the text from the quest givers, not just when I first play through with my main toon, but with a few of my alts as well. This helps me develop a better understanding of why I should feel vested in each zone. For Shadowlands, the only regular leveling zone I have enjoyed has been Ardenweald. Even though some key things are left unanswered, what we are given provides an understandable and linear goal. Plus, the ambient zone music is nice. Even though the Shadowlands represents the afterlife for many worlds, not just Azeroth, they could have simply connected things from Azeroth for us with NPCs. I don't mean the significant ones, like Draka, but random people the main character (us) have helped in the past (from quests) who have died and are in one of the zones now. Also, speaking of Ardenweald, the connection between us and Ysera was a great sub-plot for the zone, but the re-use of Legion cinematics felt lazy to me. It would have been interesting to see a flashback from Ysera's perspective. We at least fought the same fight at the Temple of Elune from her perspective and we received a bit of the thoughts she had that led up to the fight, as well as during it. Anyway, keep doing what you are doing and thanks for your passion!
Игры
I dont think the Jailer ever said an actual sentence. It was always delivered like a one liner quote to no one in particular. And I can't remember any of it.
Marvel movie syndrome
It's so bad that the only thing I honestly remember him saying was "Pitiful Mortal"
As far as I'm concerned, he never said anything
That questionable mawshroom is case in point.
"Foolish Mortals!"
Inserting a character into 20 years of lore in an attempt to claim they existed the entire time while only truly existing in person for 1.5 years is the easiest way to throw a Molotov Cocktail onto the fans enjoyment of the lore.
On the bright side, at least it's not on the same level as what GW did with Warhammer.
Look at The End Times and Age of Sigmar
*shudders*
@@MrLolguy93 The thing is nobody cares about Warhammer, we care about Warcraft
@@CsStoker I know, but what I'm saying is that I hope we don't end up as Warhammer
@@MrLolguy93 You could say that AoS brought a new faster gaming system, new amazing minifigs. The AoS may not have great/good lore, but the system is ok at least and the minifigs are incomparable to the old ones for Warhamer Fantasy. Thus, AoS lacks the polish of the lore, which we all (including me) love about WH, but it succedes in the main goals. To look good, to sell minies, to be played and to have fun while playing it. If you can swallow the damn bitter pill, that is called Endtimes, it actually opens new previously impossible ideas. For example i really love Idoneth Deepkins or Kharadron Overlords. Even the AoS "space marines" Stormcasts are not flat lorewise.
Shadowlands is absolute clusterfuck lorewise and the main goals are not achieved too. I did not heard much of praise about it gameplaywise. The visuals and audio are not on top level in comparision to the previous expansions. Score is 1:0 for the AoS in my book.
not just lore, any franchise that has attempted that stunt has failed miserably and ended up botching their story.
*Jailer:* "I will use the sepulchre of the first-ones to recreate reality where everyone is my mindless slave!"
*Also Jailer:* "Noooo why are you defeating me?! how can you be so cruel you just don't understand how benevolent I was being I was just torturing everyone into oblivion and trying to turn everyone into my mindless slaves for your own gooood!"
Legion gave me hope that WoW was finally going in the right direction. They brought back class identity with class quests and npc dialogue specific to your class (rare but at least it existed). They had fun profession quests. We got to spend time with NPCs we actually care about. BFA was so disappointing and Shadowlands is so bad I've only had a sub for two months of the two years it's been out so far. I at least followed the story of BFA even when I wasn't subbed but I don't even know the story of Shadowlands.
Dont worry not even its own writers can follow through their own shit.
I only lasted the first month in Shadowlands. The covenant system meant I couldn't play a single specialization for my Priest correctly (e.g. needed a different covenant for raids and mythic plus). I also couldn't play the other specializations due to the legendary system. Torghast was another nail in the coffin.
Legion has literally the worst plot hole in all wow lore
Honestly BFA started alright lore wise it just ended really poorly.
It's biggest fault was the games mechanics in all reality.
Legion was the only expansion where a class could solo raid content and it was ok (not like the one time reckoning bomb, a farmable thing). While dope, it showed how fargone things were.
It was market as the expansion that would give closure to Warcraft 3, instead it was the expansion that gave us nothing but took everything from us.
- From Sylvannas being a secretive damaged character, to a bi-polar genocide who is allowed to get a redemption because the writers say so.
- To Elune being portrait as an incompetent Goddess who purposely allowed her people to die and suffer because she couldn’t be bother to do follow up questions.
- To Tyrannda and her Shadow-Warrior story that promised much and ended without accomplishing anything.
- To the Jailer being the ultimate master mind, and yet we are being told he is the ultimate mastermind and when we see it for ourselves he is a bigger fool. Yet he is somehow a good guy.
- To Arthas the one established and beloved character being said “Get the F*ck out of here” essentially by Sylvannas and never being given the send off that was appropriate.
- To the entire shadowlands who’s lore doesn’t make sense and all their rulers are incompetent at their jobs.
This indeed was the worst expansion both story and gameplay wise.
Shadowlands is the WoW equivalent of Warcraft 3: Reforged.
I was sure they wouldn't kill off Sylvanas that easily, she is a fan favorite after all. What they did to Elune was also pretty upsetting, but the thing I hate the most is that we were in the lands of the dead, yet none of the dead characters appeared (Cairne Bloodhoof, Rastakhan, Varian and many more just to name a few), their interactions with their still alive relatives would have been so nice to see, but nothing, just disappointment
@@pwpqwq7648 I mean, we did get Kael'Thas, Lady Vashj and Kel'Thuzad. That was kind of nice.
KT... for the third fucking time. Classic Naxx, wotlk naxx and suddenly was a big deal in SL
well, shit
@@ip5676 KT was such a disappointment is SL
Another issues with Shadowlands is that it basically didn't even take place in the WoW universe: basically none of the races or architecture or plotlines we see have anything to do with the world previously established. On Legion we fight an enemy we've been fighting since Warcraft 3, in a location we've knows since Warcraft 2, alongside races we've known since the start; and even the new races introduced have some relation to the existing world, whether it's Highmountain Tauren or former Night Elves in Suramar. In BFA, the whole thing is about conflict between two existing factions, based around politics and rivalries between existing characters; and the whole thing takes place in locations we've been hearing about since, again, pretty much Warcraft 2. And then you get Shadowlands, where we're taken to a realm we've literally never heard of before (seriously, how did we never know anything about the afterlife in a setting with necromancers and resurrection spells?!), met a bunch of races and factions that have absolutely no connection to the WoW universe, and then fought some villain who was supposedly the biggest bad guy yet with the biggest army, but again, literally the first time we're hearing anything about him.
The whole expansion honestly feels like it's from a completely different game; every time I see Thrall in a custscene I have to do a double-take, because he just seems so very out of place...
Also, the Shadowlands: from a realm of Shadows, Smoke and mists we Get technicolor zones. Ardenweald? We had the Emerald dream with that function!
@@federerlkonig330 what do you mean by technicolor zones? The fact that every zone is a different color and theme? Almost every expansion had that somehow shoved in. I think WoW can be called a "theme park MMO". Northrend was supposed to be the equivalent of our north pole, but in the middle of it, there are warm places like sholazar basin. Outland in WC3 was all red, like today's hellfire peninsula, but in TBC it was changed to have a mushroom watery place, a beautiful forest, lush green plains, spiky mountains and then a green fire valley. You could argue that in WC3, we never got to explore everything, but even the black temple(black citadel in WC3) was in a fiery red zone, so that was slightly changed.
Maybe that is not what you were talking about, if so, I'm sorry! But, yes, Ardenweald's lore is confusing, since druids that die went to the emerald dream, but now they go to the shadowlands -> ardenweald?
@@randjan8592 technicolor zones because, like Northrend, the SL were supposed to be quite homogeneous, a malinchonic realm of Lost souls. And we got 1)the puzzling Ardenweald 2)Maldraxxus, Wich retconned the "ziqqurats were orignally nerubian buildings" 3)Bastion, which Just bugs me etc. Yeah, every expansion keeps expanding certain zones(and that upsets me), but the Shadowlands were supposed to be a spectral wasteland, from the different accounts we had.
This. Even for the expansions that sounded the most outlandish at first like MOP and WOD (unfamiliar races/architectures and time traveling), we were still dealing with previously established plotlines, familiar stories, and for the most part, familiar races and characters.
In Shadowlands, we have to deal with completely new races and characters, like you said, races and factions with absolutely zero connection to the developed universe. We have to deal with winged blue people with a leader who seems quite incompetent, weird vampire-looking people, furries in a confusing forest with, again, a leader who does absolutely nothing for the most part, and different factions of zombies/ghouls fighting each other. On top of that, we have to deal with the brokers and the attendants in Oribos and Korthia (now Automas and MORE brokers in Zereth Mortis) that are completely emotionless, while diving into this whole cosmic bullshit.
Blizzard really expects players to bond or sympathize with NPCs that literally don't have faces and are essentially just walking/floating robots that can talk and only show up for a patch or two? Or with the bland, boring, under-developed characters (like kyrestia, winter queen, the two gay souls in Ardenweald, your soulbinds, etc.) who are constantly in the story but barely add anything to the story?
Even BFA, as shitty as it was, had good bits of storytelling such as the Jaina storyline and the siege of dazaralor. Shadowlands is just utter garbage. Doesn't even feel like I'm playing wow. So sad.
By all technicality we've known of the shadowlands since somewhere around vanilla - wotlk, but we basically didn't know more than "it's where the dead go" and "it's where death knights intrude to get their steeds"
The latter of which has no backing in the xpac
On the note of a *world* filled with *interesting characters* , I should remind Blizzard that doesn't have to always mean falling back on familiar WC3 characters. One of my favorite moments from Legion was meeting Runas The Shamed and I was legitimately broken up losing him despite meeting him literally like 5 quests ago. His role in the story was short, powerful, and a genius segway into later feeling the urgency to save the nightborne from their troubles in Suramar, in part by- OOH, MANA CRYSTAL! * loots *
I still follow the lore despite not playing wow anymore, and this sums up the issues of the story in Shadowlands absolutely perfectly. Extremely well said my guy
I think you hit the nail on the head with the "world" thing, and half the characters actively take away from the world. Hell, even the concept of the shadowlands existing makes a lot of the world existentially irrelevant. Plus, all the zones in shadowlands being separate made transitioning between them feel so artificial. There's just 5 different large instances.
That's all without ruining characters beyond repair. I genuinely wonder how it got like this. I feel like theres so many people who could out-write the writing team on this one. It feels like the writing team is just the dev team. It feels like azshara and nzoth each could've been their own expansion. Its so unfortunate.
Budget cuts .. Layoffs... Accusations... Toxic environment... Scapegoating... Over burdened employees
@@Solus5048 i think the afrasiabi claim holds some water, because he didn't leave some odd 5 years ago, he got fired on June 2020, quite possible that some of shadowlands was his idea.
Man I could come up with a Robot crisis plot in WOW and still probably pull something better than whatever this was supposed to be
@@Solus5048 those are valid reasons but at the same time can be excuses because blizzard did all of this to themselves. Its obviously in their control but they won’t fix anything
The only thing that is a valid excuse would be covid but companies still made it work
@@Fabriciod_Crv The problem with it all isn't just that he gave them a pretty shitty setup for a story, it's that the rest of the team were completely incapable of doing something compelling with it. What was stopping them from making the Jailer be a character who wasn't just walking around with his nipples on display and sprouting some of the most generic villain lines in history?
"I could have gotten a college degree by the point this plot point was revealed". BRO I DID I GOT A BACHELORS OF SCIENCE QUICKER THAN THAT FUCKING STORY POINT
Congrats!
Ye man gratz
LOL! grats
Congrats!
grats!
"I hope we get a grounded story"
The expansion literally ended with dollar store Thanos hinting this wasn't even as 'epic' and 'cosmic' as it can get lmao.
-They somehow butchered the most promising expansion, probably by letting an AI write the story
-They managed to make Elune look like an idiot
-Give the finger to the fans by giving Arthas nothing but a monologue that tells him to fuck off
-They made Sylvanas the most hated idiot
-Made a side antagonist (Denathrius) that's somehow better than the main antagonist
-They made (tried to anyway) the Jailer to look like the ultimate Big Bad that turned out to be a discount Sargeras in every way, and didn't even get close to finish his goal, let alone leave a mark on the world (Sargeras actually was very close to destroying Azeroth)
All of this in one expansion, and i probably missed quite a few
Actually, if you gave an AI all of the past WarCraft stuff and told it to make a new WoW story, it would produce something superior to Shadowlands, because it wouldn't make something so disconnected from the past lore.
Sylvanas was a big-boobed dumpsterfire long before Shadowlands, but I get what you mean. She's basicly zombie Illidan with tits.
@@Skyblade12 Exactly. AI really is all about patterns. If its whole baseline was Warcraft lore, it'd actually create a Warcraft story.
Oh boy, that's terrible. You know, it reminds me of like nearly every wow expansion.
They also fucked up the main draw of the setting, by giving us maybe eight dead characters to interact with.
Imagine getting to give Blackmoore the penance he so richly deserved in The Maw, or getting to fight alongside 'Biggest Balls on Azeroth' Broxigar, to reunite with Rhonin and bear his final message to his wife, or even have Sylvanas face her parents.
Nope. Here's Uthor, fuck off. Here's Drakka, fuck off. It's really sad.
What frustrated me about Sylvanas is that we were lead to believe she had this grand revelation, that she knew something crazy that we didnt
4 years of slow, tedious build up with her committing genocide and other acts we get to see that ultimately she's just a willing slave to the jailer and all this big talk was just nonsense. Shadowlands went nowhere and all it did was further destroy Warcraft 3's legacy beyond what reforged did
Agreed, the entire expansion one just a pile of retcon after retcon with no actually main story…it was terrible
The Sylvanas build up was sooo bad indeed
You nailed it!
Especially when the Burning of Teldrassil actually WAS a beautiful moment in gray morality. Not only is it war, but due to the obsession with honor Saurfang had, he fucked up the entire plan, putting Sylvanas in a position she's been in most of her unlife: Does she stand by and let those who follow her rot and die, or does she commit atrocities to protect and/or provide for her people? Only this time, she acted.
Not to mention Genn STARTING the whole fiasco by attacking the Forsaken unprovoked, with NO repercussions from the Alliance, leading Sylvans to doubt, and ultimately drop, the entire concept of peace.
except it is not grey morality at all it was an unprovoked attack and pure evil with the fact it was not just the burning the horde went out of the way to kill every single night elf that they could. and genn did not start this. the horde backstabbed the alliance in legion after running like cowards, and after the fact the horde was trying to enslave an ally that we were trying to make all for her own immortality. if anything the horde is the the ones that started thins. seeing as outside of the blood elves the rest of the horde did jack shit all to help in taking down the legion.
"I prefer to remember the Temple as It used to be, not the abomination that it has become" (Akama ,2007, The Burning Crusade Patch 2.1: The Black Temple)........I feel you Akama
"No king rules forever my son"
Follow Activision... Into the abyss
Akama is more memorable than this entire expansion
@@Solus5048 In the context of the original quote, “me” refers to Illidan, who is a hero. Activision is far from being a hero.
I would liken Microsoft to being Illidan and Activision being the abyss.
"Times change.."
Players: "Now that we have defeated you can you please tell us what you were trying to do?!"
The Jailer: Spits right in the players face "A cosmos divided will not survive what is to come...."
Players: "Oh my god.. I thought Blizzard said this was the final part of the chapter yet they set up more!? What gives blizzard!"
Blizzard: Spits directly into the players face "Give us more money and we'll tell ya by telling you a half truth that itself is vague as all hell."
He means ioan
Of this chapter …
Blizzard: Don't forget to buy the books!
@@Tiberium10332 What’s wrong with books for more extensive lore? Which has been apart of the game since the inception?
@@darknessnaxxion Nothing, as long the plot and the characters are understand and relatable even if you don't read the books. Which, as I've heard, isn't always the case.
What I miss in the game is a frame to grow a connection with your character. The characters seem to be mere vessels for the endcontent. Doesn‘t matter which race/class you choose - everyone gets the exact same experience. Ok they can’t give every class/race their own endcontent. But the way to max level could be much more divers. Legion was great in that aspect as they had the classorders. The last straw was when they axed the tiersets.
Remember: as (for example) a shaman, there was once a time were you didn‘t just level up and could do everything, no, you had to actually earn your totems. Or as a druid earn your forms. Or as warlock you had to fight and enslave the demons before you could summon them (even the warlock mounts have an actual lore). And so on. At max level I had a connection to MY character. It was I who mastered the elements/magic/demons etc. MY character is not exchangeable. I don‘t get that feeling now; if my character would get switched halfway through I‘d barely notice it. The individual flavor is missing.
The other thing about those class quests is that it taught you what the fuck it actually did, so you'd know what you were doing in group content.
I hate how we've gone from unique sets of armor for each class to identical sets for everyone... There's no identity, nothing special.
I miss playing RPG games where progressing your character meant actual progress. With WoW it's all just borrowed power that will be ripped away every 2 years, and put you back on that nearly identical hamster wheel. I didn't mind the old expansions when you'd gain all new levels and all new gear. That hamster wheel at least felt like progress, you were gaining. Now, your abilities, means to gain those abilities, even your levels can just be ripped away. It's all just so pointless.
It is just your nostalgia crying.
@@cibo889 But you are using nostalgic glasses when you play the games you played in the past.
Having emotional connection is something that your mind constructed based on your phase of life in that moment when you played the game. Things were precious because they were new and you didn't have much reference or option.
It isn't about the game, but about the fact that today you have more experience and things arent so especial in general for you because you more mature and have been playing video games for more than 20 years. You don't even seek the same things from years ago in video games.
the problem with WoWs storytelling is when they stopped using established plots and created their own "non-metzen" stories it showed just how weak the writing staff is creatively. its not the method of how they tell a story, its the fact they have no fucking clue _how_ to write a story. Metzen may not have been an award winning author but his story direction was clear, concise and interesting.
Probably cheaped out on young, woke staff. Which is a common trend.
I cannot belive that with such resources a company wouldnt be able to hire someone who can come up with a good fantasy Storry.
Maybe the problem is rather that peaople who do have good ideas dont make it as far in these companys.
i mean how can you have a whole paied department working on Plot and not come out with a cool storry that is just mindbogeling. i bet thatt most of the whole warcraft universe came out the head of a singe nerd or a few haha
They don't remember the base of WoW storyline, and don't remember what they did before. Like 2 to 3 teams working on different parts then merged at final pieces.I loved the old team followed and created WoW - wrath of lich king.
Plus the ridiculously high amount of retcons.
WoW has ALWAYS had retcons, even Metzen himself has mentioned it at times, but since BFA, the retcons are beyond insane.
@@zepho100 Even if that were the case for Blizzard, this is getting approved by the higher ups. It's not the staff problem, but Blizzard being willing to put out hot garbage to meet deadlines over quality. You can tell the story has been janky for a while and Blizzard doesn't care. they just put it out. You can tell overall the whole game direction has been cheaper and worse, for the same amount of sub price, way worse customer service and slower, less and less proper cinenatics (we only had one I believe in shadowlands and the model of Sylvanas was the same one from BfA ), way more buggy and inconsistent and running low on ideas. You can tell Activision Blizzard really wants to maximize return of investment.
Shadowlands feels like they wanted to tell a deeper story like a book, except it was like if a book released 1 chapter every 6 months, and was only 100 pages long total. So they couldn't possibly tell a good story in such a short amount of words, but they sure as hell took 2 years to tell it anyway. While setting it up for 4 years prior.
Although based on leaks and hearsay, this is likely due to some development hell in the back-end, and the current writers did they best they could to salvage the story. So the next expansion should be them working with a clean slate, rather than trying to put out a constant fire of random stuff they were given and told to make sense of.
Nah, Danuser is a talentless hack that made a self masturbatory story just to simp on a fictional character making more damage than he isn't capable to fix. He and Christie Golden left a wound so deep in WoW that personally I have no hopes in the future, and this comes from a player that has been in love with Blizzard since Tides of Darkness on Windows 98.
I'm pretty sure that those 2 will be gone after Shadowlands if there's still a quality control department in Blizz or Microsoft but the damage has already been done and the bleeding is not stopping
I feel there is a story but they failed to deliver it
I mean, they promised so much for SL and I thought Devs would've learned the backlash & criticism from players during BFA just like they did with WoD going to Legion, as well Cata going to MoP.
Honestly, I really don't have any hopes anymore for the next expansion and pictured it that devs would actually make the story plot more understandable then it is now :/.
It's like they wanted to tell an intricate story with lots of foreshadowing and mystery but chose to limit their medium to circus clowns and interpretive dance.
I understand their situation. It's not an easy one to be in. BfA and likely Shadowlands and the Jailer were likely already set in stone by the time the whole Afrasiabi thing happened. The thing is, they had a very long time to try and steer the car away from the cliff and they just kept plowing forward. The Jailer still being a blank slate after all this time is all on the current narrative team. I hope 10.0 is good, but I won't be going in with any expectations, if I decide to go in at all.
A word that keeps coming up from the community is "grounded". I think this is the heart of the narrative's issue. It just keeps ballooning out of control and there is only so far it can go. I think it's time for smaller-scale stories back on Azeroth.
People connected with Azeroth when it was literally the *World* of Warcraft. When we were mud-rolling adventurers in that world, killing murlocs and quillboars. Getting out butts kicked fighting zombies and the Scarlet Crusade. When it was a place with a community.
The devs biggest mistake and the first step on the Path of Damnation was the groupfinder at the end of Wrath. That took away the impetus to engage with the community. Then the devs stripped professions more and more, cutting out even more community engagement. They made leveling alts easier, which let everyone be able to have an alt to do everything, again cutting down on community engagement.
And, step by step with the blows against the community, they've hammered in make-work borrowed power and progression systems. No longer did "progressing your character" mean working on maxing out professions and getting the best gear. Now, it started to mean jumping through arbitrary hoops for incremental power gains that would be meaningless come the very next patch.
It replaced a rich, vibrant *World* full of people and experiences with a ghost town full of hamster wheels.
Lol no .... Look at BFA...ppl hated that too even though it was supposed to be orcs v humans
@@Solus5048 and yet it wasn't? Azshara? N'zoth? Azerite?
it doesnt matter where you tell the story if you're screwing it up like they're screwing it up - BFA and SL had the same issues and SL is worse
Cosmic stories can be amazing and so can "otherworldly places" (TBC was not grounded at all) but this villain has less backstory than Hogger
@@Solus5048 "Supposed to be". Except it wasn't. BfA was 15,000 different story lines crammed into one expansion.
Something I will never forgive the writers at blizzard for is the "closure" they gave for Arthas. This is one of the most iconic characters in the entire lore and they basically just wrote him off, they couldn't even be assed to give him an in-game cinematic like they did with Garrosh in Sanctum of Domination. Its like in the next expansion the faction leaders receive a letter which says that Illidan is dead and everyone just accepts it and we are not shown any cinematic or conclusion of the character of any kind. Absolutely pathetic.
I personally don't really mind that they "removed" Arthas as his story pretty much ended in wotlk and it should have stayed that way. (Granted, the bastion afterlives cinematic was pretty good)
In the cutscene, I can understand him being a just remnant, mere wisp as being in the maw for decade cannot be healthy but still, they could have added him with more stylishly or just not add him at all.
They shouldn't even put him there if they didn't want to do it respectful way. They just said "go fuck yourself" to him. They could honor his character in many ways - big and small, but they did this...thing. And music they used...it's painful. Bli$$ used Arthas to explain Uther's actions, they have put him where expansion takes place and and then show him in this form at the end, doing nothing and letting everyone to shit on him. I can't get it how they were able to bring back Illidan, fill gaps in his story and give him nice closure but with Arthas, poster boy of Wacraft, most important character from lore perspective for many years was treated like some random guy. It hurts even more because Arthas thrown to Maw was not Lich King, he was this part of Lich King who was holding LK from releasing scourge on Azeroth, he was this last good part of this entity. He does not deserve this level of disrespect. Even if they just stayed silent while music from his death scene was playing, letting him vanish, in my opinion would be much better than mocking him.
@@Grizzfor Its funny because Sylvanas is literally worse than Arthas in terms of the crimes committed, but she gets a random redemption arc and has nonstop plot armor. As I said initially, absolutely pathetic writing.
@@fluffyfraud Na the problem here is that they fitst said they wouldnt touch his story not to mess with it.
Then they bring in Uther and Jaina. Have Uthers entire story based on his past with Arthas. Jaina referencing him etc. All this builtup. All this pitential with Sylvanas even.
Futhermore Anduin living the Arthas expirience where he could have been the key to bteak free from control or something.
And after you do all that.. its a wisp that fades after a condecending monologue of an elf that was a dozen times worse then Arthas himself.
Absolutely true, but I'm just thinking.. what if it's not true about what they think has become of Arthas. Maybe this is not the end of him, I desperately hope so. (I mean.. there's no real proof that what they think has become of Arthas, is true, right?) But if it's true, then it's truly pathetic indeed. It's definitely a cliffhanger anyway, obviously much more explanations are still yet to come, it has to be. If Blizzard still wants to 'successful' at least.
unless they get a new lead writter I dont think the narrative will improve
I just miss being regular and not a anime like OP protagonist. Being a regular soldier helping the war effort. I hope we can go back to that one day
Never gona happen
@@molitva8832 yeah. Like how we where just there, helping not being the center but being the witneses
@@Krigzulv exactly bro. I would say Hopefully after this it will go back to way it was but I'm pretty sure if it did we are going to be hailed as heroes of azeroth and be even more in the spotlight.
To be fair, the closest they've done to that was nathanos not licking the player's boots and he was hated for it
its weird because in BFA they tried to do that with things like the warfronts and island expeditions (keyword TRIED those were awful) all while doing the most extreme 'you are the champion of all of azeroth' shit. I don't even know what to call this, its like they wanted to have their cake but also a pie too
I really wish this expansion would be treated like an anime Ova and we forget all of this happened
It's just an Old God-induced acid trip. N'Zoth has been laughing his tentacles off for the past two years.
Yup- just go back to Before the Storm where both Anduin and Sylvanas both got visions from Azerite. Make it that they both fell into comas where they dreamed BFA and Shadowlands. Wake them up and reset to them fighting just Ashara, or just N'zoth, or just working on removing the sword from the planet. Focus on one thing, grounded into our survival on Azeroth.
@@Sorakeyblademaster37 Man I'd rather prefer this than whatever new dumb shit the lore writers are currently cooking up...
Their first big mistake was in making the leveling experience a glorified tutorial for the expansion, rather than an integral part of the experience.
The zones only exist as a place to stuff the handful of dailies to mindlessly grind while waiting for raid night. The way they've been going, expansions are just glorified reworks of the Darkmoon Fair. We get walked to each attraction and then given a handful of tickets each day to spend on a randomized selection of attractions to visit.
This sounds bizarrely accurate
This is precisely why the phrase "theme park MMO" exists
“To stuff the handful of dailies to mindlessly grind,” me when obtaining anima for their stupid reserves! F*ck that anima drought! You only get so little when you need WAY much more. And all the while doing the same “world” quests.
This problem has roots in the earlier expansions. WOW had already a great story, and great characters which were left behind. Why not use the already existing plots/characters? Also Azshara was done dirty :(
The naga have been done dirty for about 15 years or so now, from Vasj to Azshara. At least they brought Illidan back to give him a proper send-off.
The Naga should have had their own expansion tbh instead Blizzard gave it to the literal April fools joke pandas.... Bruh
@@themage1016 It always pleases my heart when I see a comment hating on PANDAS. Thanks.
And when WoW lore needed him most…
He returned
I mean, he wasn't really gone.
@@cristhianmlr To be fair, the never really talked about any of the new lore. The most recently introduced story he covered in the last year was Lei Shen from Mists of Pandaria, 9 YEARS AGO.
Worst part of Shadowlands imo was losing many of the WoW youtubers.
They'll be back
@@27nightjars Thought so too at first, but I'm less optimistic now. Preach was the big one for me, he seems to enjoy other games too much.
I don't know. I think that's been a boon. We've gotten to see more people exploring many of the MMOs that are better than WoW. FF14, Lost Ark, Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic. Far too many people have been so brainwashed that WoW is the only MMO, if you play it you can't play anything else, that they've missed so many great games out there.
I liked it though, it would be terrible if no matter what they did everybody would still stick to them.
the current team is incompetent for a franchise this big.
@@Maria_Erias I was going to add that onto my last comment, I want to make it clear that it's unquestionably a good thing that people are not only trying out new games, but that even if they don't return to WoW, that they've might've found a game that they enjoy more.
This however doesn't change the fact that from a personal standpoint, it really has sucked to lose all the youtubers that you used to watch.
Argus brought a tear to my eye. The quests where you go round up the fallen heroes of Argus. It reminded me of Broxxigar. Standing up to Sargeras is the simple story telling people enjoyed and I had wanted to see what Argus was like since WC3.
BFA and Shadowlands are like pure circus clown music and instead of a tear brought to your eye, you're pied in the face.
Bfa at least made _some_ sense narratively, it was just bad, but reasonable enough. Shadowlands is just narrative diarrhea, you can't even criticize it constructively, as it is just a pile of liquid shit, not even fit for fertilizer.
World of Warcraft never really had good Story-telling
but what it definitely had was very strong world building, little details and quest-lines everywhere, mysteries all over the place, conspiracy theories, a deep history that you can deep up as well and all this made it feel real.
the current Writers don't seem to be able to write a story that has a connection to those roots, their story seems completely detached and in a vacuum and that's why it doesn't feel like World of Warcraft anymore.
Legion concluded anything worth while at this point. What's left is zombie waifu fanfic and one shot side stories for everyone else.
Way I see it, the Warcraft 3 story we knew and loved ended with Legion. We defeated the big baddy that existed as the catalyst of the entire series; Sargeras, and that was it.
When Blizzard said '' We are going to end the warcraft book'' (or something in those lines), i hoped for a revemp. New systems, tales and adventures.
Each and every expansion since pandaria feelt a bit dislocated. New mechanics are added and removed all the time, and i feel a certain lack in consistent. For a moment, i hoped that Jailer actually would win and reset the world, giving some life to this fading world. I do love warcraft, and because of it, i hope for it to thrive. But it is not because i love it that i will overlook its failures.
For one moment, they could do a full reset, just like FF XIV and start anew. I'm not saying to be like FF, i'm saying to be new, innovative and espetacular, just like it was some 16 years ago, when blizzard actually tried and take risks.
I wish they would have smashed the reset button, but the difference is: what do you keep from the "old" world? Do people get to keep their stuff? I wouldn't want to lose 15 years of achievements, items and characters. But I wish they would use this to reset the story, to have players come back to a version of Azeroth a few thousand years back or ahead in time. The possibilities.
@@IvyTinwe But you're going to lose all that stuff anyway when the game dies. I've already given up on all my mounts and transmog, because I don't care about the world anymore.
Yes, I absolutely agree with everything you said. I started playing TBC classic because I really missed exploring and questing in Azeroth. They have created such a beautiful and interesting world and they’re fucking it up.
Yeah, that sums up what I've noticed about the game lately. Also, this comment is going to be a bit lengthy but I want this off my chest.
For years I was curious about WoW. I only started playing it once my nephew and I wanted to play something fantasy related. WoW and a few others were our picks. We began right at the closing days of Legion so we never played the end game. We were still low level characters at the time.
Now for obvious reasons, my nephew couldn't play as much because of school. Yet I continued to play WoW. What interested me the most was it's lore. No, I didn't learn it from the game itself, but by other RUclipsrs who knew about the lore. This channel, Madseasonshow, and Nobble87 included.
I learned about WoW's history both lore wise and even history made by players in game. Though I wasn't part of that history, I can still pass by key locations and know that history was made in someway.
I can even feel something when I pass by old raid and dungeon locations. And I'm sure many of you do too as well. Especially all you WoW vets out there. What do you think of when passing by Blackrock Mountain, or even Icecrown Citadel before that Shadowlands mess? Even when you hear the music ambience from within the raid itself.
Going through BFA, you can tell there was some work put into the zones, music, but not the story sadly. Or at least the late game part of the story. Playing through both Kul Tiras and Zandalar, I could tell they had something. Just no real pay off.
Now with Shadowlands... I can't even get myself to even play the basic zone quests. I feel nothing from the modern game at all anymore. Just when questing in older zones or playing through older campaigns that I missed out on.
Now this comment may be overlooked but for anyone that sees this comment, thank you for taking the time. As for WoW, I cannot say much since everyone else has already said what they needed to say. All the heart and soul of the game is gone... And that's just sad. And I'm sure many of you can agree on that.
If ever there was a justification for a novel length comment on youtube, a comment about what went wrong with shadowlands would be it. You have no idea how many of us feel exactly like you do. Ive actually scrolled through and made several comments roughly as lengthy as yours, all in response to different peoples comments, but all of them were essentially the same thing at their core. Man it feels so damn good to get all of this off my chest and recognize that thousands of other people have the same issue with Shadowlands. My biggest gripe is that they ruined the leveling experience of level 1-50. At least with WoD(which i disliked most of all until shadowlands showed me how good it was) WoD permitted you the opportunity to pretend it didnt exist and play through vanilla, bc, LK, Cata, MoP etc, and you could just immerse yourself in the lore and level alts over and over again until a new expansion came out. Shadowlands is the first expansion that i cannot even bring myself to try and progress. I played for a month at launch and hit level 54 and i was disgusted with everything. If china copied WoW and sold it on Wish.com, Shadowlands would be its title.
I’m curious about WoW now myself but have never played it and never would want to. I do play FF14 and became curious during the “WoW refugee flood.” I don’t really know why I’m so curious about it. Maybe I just wanted to see what the fuss was about.
I simply cannot put into words… how shit the story has been for the last 2 years… it all feels so wrong
I hate to use the word but they have cosmically raped the foundation of the warcraft story.
They are trying to come up with something new just for the sake of something new, and didn't stop to think whether it's actually necessary or even a good change at all. In trying to create originality, they made the universe really unoriginal and actually detracted from the wonder that was there before.
The Titans already fulfilled the cosmic order concept in wow, with Titans overseeing the universe, each having a connection to a force like life or time. The Titans also created Titan Keepers (like Freya, Thorim, Mimiron) who similarly fit into a pantheon of duties and existed to fulfil the Titans' grand design. Now apparently there is a TitanPlus 'First Ones' cosmic creator group that literally made everyhing including the Titans, and Pantheons and workshops for all the forces in the universe. It's really derivative and unoriginal, and only makes lore more boring "Get your Pantheon in 5 other flavours now!". When we fought the Legion, it felt natural and made sense to involve the Titans in some way as they represent Order and had a large role in the Legion's lore with Sargeras - but apparently there's also a Pantheon of Fel (that nobody ever knew anything before)? Lol does the force of Disorder sound like something that would organise into a Pantheon? The Old Gods (awesome villains conceptually) are servants of the mysterious Void Lords... who apparently are a Pantheon of Void created by the even more mysterious First Ones? And there is a Zereth workshop pumping out Void stuff somewhere? This "the First Ones made it, also Pantheons and Zereths for everything" angle goes against what those forces were meant to represent, what made those forces interesting and unique.
Jesus what does this add to the lore other than cheapening everything by codifying even the most unique forces in the universe into a copy-pasted and cookie-cutter "Pantheon of 3Dprinted BS"? The afterlife, a mysterious concept of the great beyond was made into a color-coded 5-zone theme park. Sure they tell us that there are more Afterlifes... but the center of the Afterlife is opened by the sigils of only these 5 Eternal ones, and the Forge of Afterlives 3Dprints only these 5 zone leaders, so...yeah. 5-zone theme parks work when we're exploring an island or parts of the world like Pandaria, the Broken Isles, the Cataclysm elemental zones... but NOT when you're trying to depict something as vast and mysterious as the Afterlife. Which as it turns out is 3D printed into existence by a large glowing technoball - which is also possibly the furthest thing from Death and the afterlife you could think of. So honestly they keep ruining the most interesting things about this universe with their contrived shoehorning.
Let the Titans have their Pantheon and Forge of Origination and Hearts of Azeroth, the universe is just worse off by forcing the same codified nonsense onto Death and Life and Void etc. In their amateurish drive to create originality, the writers created a world devoid of originality. Oh wow there are floating trees and water you can walk on (as if we didn't have that before) but now the Emerald dream which was such a beautiful and mysterious magical place is just 3Dprinted by a technoball of life, and Elune is just a servitor in the Pantheon of Life, on the same level as this random 3Dprinted blue broad that only exists for color-coded Covenant theme park purposes. So yeah - sure the Jailer and Sylvanas storylines were utter garbage, but even without those the story direction is full of bad ideas that is just a detriment to the wonderful universe we had before...
The Jailer is the most boring uninteresting disgraceful attempt of a villain in the history of the Warcraft franchise. 20 years of lore ruined just because you needed to make this random guy seem important. I genuinely hate more than anything that Zovaal was actually the real big bad all along, ruining 20 years of lore because of what? Because you were so desperate for the story to be engaging so you made this bald fraud out of thin air and claim he’s behind everything ever so people would care?? You may aswell have written please give a shit about me on his character model!!!! I fucking hate it more than anything.
Everything about the jailer gives me the vibe of a kid saying this character I made is so cool and so amazing and can shoot mega lasers from his eyes, he can beat superman in one punch and everyone thinks he's so strong and the biggest bad guy ever, but it's written by fucking adults.
The worst part is they COULD flesh him out and make him even mildly interesting but they couldn't help themselves in writing a compelling character, or even a fucking stupid WWE saturday morning cartoon villain - but instead they stand on the shoulders of established characters and lore and take a big fat shit directly on their head and go "SEE IT WAS ME ALL ALONG"
Warcraft, the story, ended with the end of Legion and everything else after is fanfiction by people who don't like Warcraft. I'd rather them full reset the game 30,000 years in the future so they can't touch current characters anymore. They turned a certain undead elven archer into like the second most powerful character in the story because they like her so much in the writing room. Seriously what would the reaction be if slowly Lorthermar or Baine slowly got more powerful to the point of they could just start to fucking fly and 1v1 the Lich king and break icebergs with regular arrows
Does it not seem problematic to anyone in the writing team that they completely took the myth out of not only death but creation itself from the perspective of the player character? How does one respect death after saving the entire realm of death and all the clowns within it? They just made the player characters one of the most powerful beings in existence. How can you go back to treating them as regular mortals doing pick-up quests in 10.0? Imagine dying from the perspective of the player character, how could you even take any of the guys in the Shadowlands seriously? You literally saved it all.
i completely agree. i really wish i could say it'll get better with 10.0 but there's really no way to fix any of the lore without basically just making shadowlands noncanon.
This is what u get when u get ppl, who can't even understand basic algebra, to build a story around death, aliens and some shit
I couldn't of said it better myself. This comment is a win in my book.
Absolutely agree. And what makes it worse imho: the player character is still a figure in the back that gets thrown at whatever threat is on the horizon. It's not about your character, the story always revolves around others. You're never in the cinematics. So while you fight, your character's reaction to whatever unfolds is never shown, and that makes me feel disconnected from everything.
A good read that I completely agree with. It really bums me out that these last two expansions did as much as damage as they did to the lore, especially Shadowlands. Everything that was so vast, mysterious and interesting has all just sort of felt simplified, with newly-written lore that's been forced into the Warcraft Universe. It's absolutely upsetting, and I honestly almost wish the writers would do a full retcon of everything introduced in the Shadowlands, despite the fact that something like that would never happen.
Either way, hopefully the excessive amount of criticism the writing team is facing right now can help sway their writing in a more favorable direction for the player-base. Otherwise, I truly hope they don't spit on the Warcraft Universe even more than they already have.
Wrath had better faction tension then bfa and we were working "together" instead of at war
Platinum: "I cannot think of a media that has a slower moving narrative"
Berserk: Would you like to talk about boats and boat accessories?
RIP Miura.
Not gonna lie I teared up at the end there. It's so incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking to see all the potential WoW has on a storytelling level get wasted again and again and again for a shallow spectacle...
As a WoW lore geek, this expansion kinda hurt. I am left confused on the storyline of the expansion (if there is one), and am left confused about the "mysterious enemy" Zovaal mentioned. It may be the void lords but that was the main reason Sargeras went on his Burning Crusade. I still love WoW lore, just not the insane retcon that Shadowlands has made. I also hope that the Dreadlords and Denathrius come back in some way, too, as they were my favorite villains (mostly Denathrius). Maybe they'll be working for the void lords this time? IDK
well we saw the rift closed at the end so that must mean SL is no longer canon
I genuinely think they don’t know what the mysterious enemy is and are just saving it for later. BFA at least had pretty cool overarching lore still, this xpac sucked worse than WoD imo. Draenor content was dope they just didn’t make enough of it.
20 years in making by the way
As someone who started playing WoW when SL was already released the lore doesn’t make any damn sense. Doesn’t help that the game makes it hard to order things chronologically and not start something from another expansion by accident.
It's not the Void Lords...
Why is everyone on this train?
The core problem is Danuser's philosophy of dropping hints around and letting the players try to figure stuff out. Fire him.
Glad to know I'm not the only one with an odd appreciation for Mordretha, the Endless Empress.
Also, I find funny to hear that you could get a college degree in the time we found out who manipulated Vol'Jin, because I DID GET my college degree during that exact period of time!
I've been saying this for years now. The plot and lore of WoW has been ruined because of Steve Danuser. You can blame Alex Afrasabi for being a piece of fucking shit all you want, but the lore was still fuckin awesome up until BFA. And BFA is when Steve took over as the lead story director. Steve Danuser is a hack and has destroyed WoW's lore and history for his own ego. Steve Danuser has Last Jedi'd the game.
another thing im confused about though is im pretty sure in blizzcon 2017 metzen said that they had the next 6 expansions planned out already? so was he part of the creation of shadowlands? i will never understand how a shitshow like this ended up happening
@@honeygetthebikepimp2460 I guarantee you the second Metzen left the company Afrasabi threw all of his work in the dumpster.
@@honeygetthebikepimp2460 Tbf, Metzen himself was also capable of messing up badly. Just look at TBC´s lore.
@@gamefan56 At some point you have to accept "better" may just mean "less bad" but still see it as an improvement.
I fully agree with this video. I actually stopped playing Retail wow and started playing classic realms solely based on the fact that i stopped caring about Shadowlands narrative and decided to relive old and better narratives, and to rediscover zones with rich details that were lost with retail's new leveling system.
Classic wow is just reliving the past though. I mean I loved classic 2019 but that’s finished. SoM doesn’t excite me. Wrath sounds fun but idk, it’s hard to care about an experience I’ve already played.
@@llwonder what do you think of people who replay games multiple times?
@@EviIM0nk3y its different with wow at least for me. I'll never relive the glory days of wow in today's gaming culture. The entire community is changed and it doesn't feel the same.
@@llwonder i never said i was playing on Classic wow official servers :p
I love WoW lore because it manages to make magic, zombies, pirates, voodoo, rocket ships, ninjas, aliens, dragons, radiation, lovecraftian horror, and walrus people all fit into the world yet somehow still make complete sense.
It makes zero sense. How is magic, voodoo, dragons and zombies has different categories for you? Radiation? What the f uck are you talking about?
Guild Wars and the world of Tyria has every single thing you mentioned. Final Fantasy has all of that except for the walrus people.
@@Leuk0s but the Walrus people are the most important part!
@@Leuk0s elephant people tho
It never made complete sense. It only made for the most part. Then came draenor. Then it never stopped outreforging itself.
Also, no: You love its story because it's a favourite game of yours' story, not because it makes complete sense. And you love WoW because it was a good game.
Shadowlands is the first time I've ever been completely burnt out on in WoW. Everything about it has put me off of the game I've loved for 14 years and it feels awful to have to say that.
I feel you nailed shadowland's description really well by using "artificial", for me from beginning to end it just felt off, like it wasn't even wow.
honestly plat, you hit it out of the park with this one. even with all the ham-fisted writing and design decisions over the years, the world always kept me coming back. it was cool to be able to go around and adventure! it really felt like youre really an adventurer in this big open world, youre not alone and together with allies you can overcome any challenge. i think thats the essence of wow, which is something that both pcs and npcs are ultimately beholden to, and its when people forgot what that meant that the game really took a downturn.
Tyrande: takes the power so she can kill sylvanas
Elune:
*takes it back the moment she's about to kill her*
Elune like 10 minutes later: tyrande has to choose between vengeance or forgiveness
I still can't get over that hahahaha
I'd imagine she has some harsh truths to tell her people when she returns home :)
"Night Elves, hear me! Elune, our precious god, is a false idol! Her impotence cost us our homes, our lives!"
"It is time we reject our balance with nature... It is time we embrace Slaanesh!"
ruclips.net/video/zB6FaGBz0Lo/видео.html
The dissing of Elune this expansion did is absolutely heretical.
I don’t play WoW and don’t follow the story all that much. But what happened with tyrande and elune after that?
@@mikfhan OH GOD NO! XD
@@A1Steaksauce58 she was forced to choose forgiveness by the incompetent writers
"oh that person who massacred my people was doing it because it was not herself?, and my goddess only made the death of millions of night elfs painless because her sister needed the souls? I forgive you"
Never understood why they just didn't make the soul of Ner'zul and Arthas the Jailer, twisted into one. With time moving weird in the Shadowlands they could have easily made them the rulers of the Maw. Might even give Arthas a proper sent of once we break him from Ner'zul.
Hit the nail on the head with this video - the slow drip of lore being dispersed once every 6 months has been incredibly painful. It feels like Blizz has been asking us to hold on just one more story beat for 4 years now because surely something poignant or exciting is coming. In the end, like you said, even mediocre story beats end up feeling horrible instead because it doesn't live up to fan theories and hopes.
Also Blizz somehow managed character driven stories in Legion, I think because like you mentioned it was still a straightforward story. The Rejection of the Gift cinematic was my favorite moment in Legion for that reason.
Every second Platinum was not talking about Shadowlands, I knew it was a second he was happy
There is one way Shadowlands may redeem itself in my eyes. Have Ner'zul, now free of the Jailer, do a prison break on Tor'Ghast and free a bunch of dead characters so they can return to the Warcraft setting. Merge the two Gul'dans into one being and have him become the Warlock class-leader, while Ner'zul seizes Tor'Ghast to act as the new Necromancer Class Order Hall, with him as the Necromancer Leader.
I have legit searched for information for years about the audio dramas and WHEN there will be more of them. I absolutely love both the tomb of saergeras and a thousand years of war and still listens to them. Please blizz make more with the exact same narration
Hey I'm a big fan of your channel and Warcraft lore. Great video, you provided a different way of looking at things. I would like to add that in my opinion, Warcraft excels at telling sub-plot or minor stories. Like the smaller stories of less important characters and stories told through quests (like Suramar in your example). However, for some time now, Warcraft have been unable (in my opinion) to give a strong and compelling main story, and that is most apparent in expansions such as Warlords of Draenor (where they used lazy time traveling), or Shadowlands (Retconlands).
I could rant on for ages as to why that is, but I'm sure you've already heard every opinion out there :) Anyways keep up the great videos.
Main plot aside, There's a ton of side characters I'd love to keep seeing. I'm sorry but I love most of the venthyr side cast, and a few of the others too. Theotar, Tubbins n Gubbins, Lady Moonberry, Venari, The Accuser (with Kael!), And of course Daddy D.
I think Blizzard knows Denathrius is an actually good character so they salvaged him early, but the unfortunate reality is if they're going to dumpster SL like WOD then these characters are gonna go the way of Yrel.
Legion's Suramar is the most WoW thing i've ever experienced and by far my favorite, I was fond of the ancient war and Warcraft 3 before this expansion so it hit right on the money for me.
Also yeah the Tomb of Sargeras audio was absolutely amazing.
I think you're right for the most part but I kinda like the Shadowland factions and their individual characters and their personalities it really feels like WoW when you're gathering a ton of followers with different styles and behaviours, I wish we'd see more of them instead of some content that isn't fun or useful.
For example delete the Venthyr's Ember court and focus more on characters like Theotar or idk fucking Simone or Laurent or whoever.
The idea to build up your own abomination was great even if I didn't really commit or tried much of it it looked like a mighty good idea and appropriate for this covenant.
It would all contribute to fleshing out more these characters which are now a big part of the lore and "have always been there"
The audio drama for Tyralion and his bae was soooo good. It got me into audiobooks in the first place, it was that good!
I still remember when Shadowlands first came out and introduced the covenants and zones and I was like "there's nothing here to be excited for". The overall aesthetics of each area and the stories behind them just felt uninspired... Like when you go from say, the fantasy imperial China of Pandaria or the fantasy Mesoamerican Zandalari in BFA to these sort of bland and uninspired cultures and realms in the cosmos, you just don't feel drawn in. The world, atmosphere, art direction, and music in Shadowlands just doesn't really have the same power to draw me into the game that much as the previous expansions did.
Shadowland zones and their atmosphere, compared to the rest of Warcraft world, are the WoW equivalent of corporate music:
_Technically_ not bad, but so obnoxiously soulless you just instantly hate it, and the more you think about why it was made in the first place, the more you hate existence itself. Lol.
On that regard, Legion was already crap, with all zones being very similar to older ones. Surprisingly BFA did introduce new environments. SL is indeed so blend and boring.
you hit the nail on the head
the thing that makes Shadowlands so boring is that it's really nothing like the regular World of Warcraft Storytelling(BFA wasn't really good neither)
it feels like a whole different game and not in a good way neither
You literally put all I've thought about BFA and Shadowlands into words
thanks
I actually got a degree from Uni between the Vol'jin's death and the Mueh'zala reveal. August 2016-June 2019. It was still unknown when I finished it 💀
Man I miss Legion, it was good. Despite the AP grind & legendary item gets I found it really neat & I got to see my old friends that returned again.
They said the jailer wraps up the story. Yet Azshara, Xalatath, Yrel, void lords, elune to name a few are still out there
This really reminds me of the last Jedi. When force awakened came out everyone was speculating who snoke was and what would happen in the next movie cause force awakened was essentially the same as some old Star Wars movies so they focused on the characters. Then they released last Jedi and straight up made snoke useless and replaced him with palpatine in the next movie after that
The reasons you put here are exactly why Mists is still my favorite expansion to this day
Thank you for this video. I think it's a really important perspective about character narrative.
I personally have had issues with WoW's "single player" story telling since, WoD. It kind of started in WotLK, but the only real example of that was when the Alliance reach Borean Tundra and the first quest text we get is proclaiming us as an important hero of the Alliance.
Now, while I do dislike the _"you_ are the general of Alliance forces on Draenor" and _"you_ are the new Ashbringer", I mostly hate those because I'm in a world filled with other player characters who are experiencing the exact same thing. It would be like taking Skyrim, making it an MMO. The special treatment of being _the_ Dovahkiin is diminished when everyone is shouting dragons out of the sky.
It's ok for player characters to become _a_ general, it's another matter when players become _the_ general. The former means you are part of something, the latter means you *are* the something, and I wont lie, the playerbase complaining during WoD that they "don't feel important enough" is one of the (subjective) reasons for an ending like we received at the end of BfA. A group of people are working together to defeat an amazingly cool villain, but its only *you* that channels the power of Azeroth. One person. Not the group. Not the MMO. You. You were the only person carrying the Heart of Azeroth. You. All 500,000 - 4,000,000 of you(singular).
That drives me crazy. Its not what I play an MMO for.
However, I personally don't feel this complaint extends to non-player characters. NPCs are suppose to be the lens through which events of the world affect an individual. Blizzard have attempted this before, and they didn't quite get it right. Thrall in Cataclysm. But here's the thing (for me), the issue there isn't that Thrall had too much focus, it was that he was the _only_ NPC with focus. The Aspects were doing what they could to hoist him up. He ended up being the only NPC that the story's finality was told through.
Player agency is already a difficult thing within an MMO if you want it done without diminishing all of the other player characters around you. When the story is then hyper focused on an individual character, that you never get to choose, the question of "why am I even here" becomes too frequent.
While it would be easy to just keep using Thrall becoming Green Jesus as the main outlet for this complaint, I feel I need to spread some of the examples on to Magni. the 'Champions of Azeroth' was really just a Magni Bronzebeard rep bar. No one else was given any purpose within that faction, and that was the game's best opportunity to provide character development to so many faction neutral characters. Better still, by giving players a variety of NPCs within that faction to "mentor" them, you provide agency to the player because they got to choose whose perspective to experience that part of the story.
When you approach it this way, you spread the weight of a story on to more shoulders than either a single NPC (which tends to ruin them, aka, Thrall) or from placing it all on to the player character at the expense of every other player character around you.
There are degrees of good and bad to story telling. So, by taking what I've just described and apply it to a bad ending like BfA's. So, yes, cheesy homage to LotR aside, focus of the power of Azeroth being pumped through the player character. Flip it around. ALL of the player characters instead channel that power in Magni, his diamond body refracting the power until it is controlled with the aid of other neutral NPCs (like poor ol'd Hamuul) to eventually kill N'Zoth. But don't stop there. Because Magni is the conduit instead of the player, you have the options to maim, sacrifice or transcend him through this act. These options do no exist for the player beyond waking up in a bathtub in Dalaran, because game developers can't just perma death your character. It would still be a lame Return of the King rip, but there is more weight and consequence there than attempting to provide MMO players more agency only to reveal that our involvement carries no choice.
Being front and centre is _not_ true player agency. Both players and developers make this mistake. Complaining about *you* not being the centre of attention is a small part of the problem.
>what makes WoW lore good
Not having Danuser or Christie Golden for once on the story department.
Can you explain the "Christie Golden" bit to me? Never been interested in books but I know of some changes to the lore that I hated that was first introduced in the books by, I assume, Christie Golden. I remember people liking them a few years ago though. Has the books gone downhill or have they always been bad?
Well, that aged well.
I think another major issue with the wow lore is that it's suffering from a major case of Slideshow syndrome.
The writers have obviously written major plot points, but didn't map out the path between them. Leading to dramatic shifts in story moments.
They wanted the Jailer to collect all five sigils on screen. However, The Primus is already in his custody and the arbiter should be out of his reach surrounded by all the other eternal ones. Well... I guess the Primus hid his sigil in a vault and then the player character brings the sigil into torghast and gives it back to the primus in the lair of Zovaal. And I guess the arbiter gets dragged into the maw and all the eternal ones are just missing at the time.
We need to chase after the jailer into Zereth Mortis, but we need 5 sigils and Zovaal took them. Ehhh, just make new ones. Oh, and the caretakers can just sub in for the Arbiter because...
Sylvanas needs to switch sides, but she has no reason to and especially wouldn't want to after committing MULTIPLE war crimes in order to serve him. Wellllll, Zovaal didn't tell her about Nathanos and she didn't want to mind control Anduin and the Jailer mask slips and says "serve" and now suddenly she really doesn't like the word Serve (for some reason).
These aren't the only instances of this issue, I'm sure you can find many more. But they really need to flesh out their plots BEFORE making future major plot points so that they can avoid this issue.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Blizzard's greatest enemy is narrative scope-creep. They keep trying to write bigger and more complexly deep stories... and they just can't. They fail every step of the way. WoW's narrative was far better when it was focused on worldbuilding and small-scale problems. Like how the Defias Brotherhood was a bunch of smaller, interconnected stories that happened to coalesce around a single important figure pushing things into motion, or how a bunch of the problems in various zones (all four human ones particularly) were independent problems being caused by local politics (and also, the same damn dragon, funnily enough.)
Blizzard can write a world. They can't tell a story, and they need to stop trying.
I am so glad you brought up Suramar and it's story. I loved and adored it, it truly was captivating and honestly if they just did think like that I would love the game more. Everything in Shadowlands just makes me angry from basically my completion of the base story, but Legion and it's story of each of the zones I actually cared about and made me look forward to each of the raids
I do agree that the games strength is when it focuses on the world and the smaller aspects rather than grandiose elements. Suramar at the start of Legion was also my favorite zone, and it was amazing to feel the progression over time since I was the one causing that progression. After progressing through the zone, and infiltrating the city piece by piece, it all led to to the tier raid, which had the antagonist(Gul'dan) which had set everything in motion for this expansion. Progression that was understandable, effected the world, and was directly created by you, fantastically built.
However, I disagree where the faults are. The gaps in the narrative are not problematic, especially since they have always been there. While Suramar was more continuous, the rest of Legion did have those gaps as well. Each patch still had time in between them, progressing to the next chapter of the story still took time. But that time isn't an issue when the story itself is told well. The real issue with the story is not that there is too much time in between each chapter, or that its character focuses, or that its not zone focused...It's that is fucking sucks.
The story these days is focused on the pay off without caring how it gets there. It's all about the spectacle, but there is no meaning behind it. Sylvanas was character assassinated. The Jailer is mustache twirling evil guy and nothing more. Remember the one cinematic where Tyrande beat the crap out of Sylvanas for her to randomly lose her power cause...reasons? They are just trying to fast track to the spectacle, but that spectacle doesn't mean anything if it hasnt been built up.
Arthas was arguably Blizzards most iconic character. But why was he iconic? We saw him start as a proud and noble Prince, and saw him fall. We saw this man go from righteous and stalwart defender of his home, to be consumed by vengeance and accidently become the before thing he swore to destroy, and be consumed and forced against his will be then destroy his very home. When WOTLK starts, we know the kind of power we are up against, and as we battle through northrend his presence is literally everywhere. The scourge littered the continent and flying over Icecrown showed you his tremendous force. Then at the final climax we actually lose, and if not for Tirion breaking Frostmourne, the Lich King would have actually won. And that is why video games are such an amazing medium for story telling, because we didnt just see all of that, we PLAYED all of it. We played as Arthas picking up Frostmourne, we played as Arthas leading the Scourge, we played our characters invading Icecrown, we played the game we saw it happen, and it makes the end result statisfying and meaningful.
All of that is absent in the modern day. They keep throwing cliffhangers at you in an attempt to keep you interested because the story is devoid of meaning. Cliffhangers only work if I cared about what was happening to begin with.
Classic WoW shows that sometimes bigger isn't always better.
Warcraft fell into the trappings of power creep hard. It is very difficult to keep a continuous story engaging for as long as the franchise has gone on for. There are many ways to address this, but blizzard took the easy route and resorted to introducing a new villain that's more powerful than anything else before and the heroes powering up alongside them. This can work for a little while, but there comes a shark jumping moment where the audience expects this power up and gets bored, defeating the purpose of the decision in the first place. WOW was hit particularly hard because the blew through what was considered the ultimate evil in the universe at the time in the second expansion and have been chasing that peak with increasingly ridiculous new threats ever since.
I've always seen my character as just a travelling adventurer exploring Azeroth and beyond who happens to get wrapped up in world-ending events on an alarmingly regular basis. I've been given many titles; some know me as "Commander" or maybe "Champion of Azeroth". Some call me "High Priest", and lately it has been "Maw Walker" spoken in my general direction with equal parts awe and derision. But the title I wear with the most pride, the one that means the most to me, is simply "of Ironforge". Must say though, it's kind of awkward being in a state of knowing what happens when we die and still now knowing what will happen when I die.
4:09
"that's like explaining the plot to a movie after the credits roll"
good one
Nailed it.
The storytelling has been so alienating in most regards lately, they could have been better off introducing a robot evasion trying to hi-jack the titan facilities.
Ill tell you what: Competent writers that know and remember previously established stories and rules of the universe.
Have rewatched this several times and this is the first time I realized you censored Jailers nipple at 1:23
WELL DONE, PLAT! WELL DONE INDEED!
3:44 A way to put into perspective how long that reveal took is to look at how many people in that room got graphical updates between then and the reveal. Baine, Gallywix, Lor'themar, AND Sylvanas.
The issues with WoW you mentioned remind me of Brandon's Sanderson lectures on book writing (available on youtube).
In one speech Sanderson talks about a point of promise in plot and what happens if author does not write to fulfill it.
In that context:
- in Legion we were promised to defeat BL and we did
- in BFA we were promised a war between Horde and Alliance and.. we fought N'zoth
- in the Shadowlands we were not promised anything so no one is waiting for anything (we know there is the Guy, but we do not know anything about him or his goals, why do we even fight him? there is no reason to, he had not done anything evil tbh, but the plot makes us)
No one wanted the war between the Alliance and Horde, though.
Yeah, i agree with this video. Especially considering the so called "looming threat" wow keeps teasing is THE DARKNESS, which is the most overdone threat in all of fiction.
I think blizz overestimates how much players care about faction leaders. They take the focus away from the player, which is the opposite of smart.
Tbh if it's DARKNESS darkness... I'll be so hyped...
But probably not the wc3 darkness
@@Solus5048 Same.
@@Solus5048 If it's WC3 Darkness, I'd be on board. You know, the one who called the Demon Hunter?
I really appreciated the way you stated your criticisms succinctly without clickbait or stretching it out for views. I know how tempting that must be given how many other lesser youtubers just whine constantly for easy credibility and monetization.
i absolutely adore the suramar questline. it's one i do on all my characters, because it's a really good source of xp, and i just love the story so much. the zone itself is so much fun, and the quests are amazing.
Warcraft is now Terminator: Dark Fate
WoW, as a universe, has such great potential to be such a well of fantastic lore. Available if you wanna dig into it or talk about it, or you can accept the surface of it to go around the world day to day. Depending on how deep you want to dig into it or especially theorize about it, it can offer you everything you'd be interested in. And since it's a 'world', you can tell almost any and all stories within it that you'd ever want to tell. Happy, sad, emotionally mixed. The possibilities are so vast it is mindboggling, and even the most boring ones could be interesting.
I understand the team has been under pressure, and not every decision was something they would have gone for. But after seeing BFA and Shadowlands....really?!??! Of all the vast possibilites THIS is what you go for? This is the best you can do? There's some little things they did right but long run have fully butchered. Taelia could have been an interesting character to see in the world, without being connected to any existing characters. Did she REALLY have to be the 'long lost daughter'? She's perfectly fine as just a fresh face, brand new character. And the Drust! They were so cool as just this threat that lurked in the background, angry at their ancestral home being taken from them. Why were they in Shadowlands? Literally zero reason to be there and since then have had almost no elaboration onto why. And why was Baine JUST SITTING THERE THE WHOLE TIME.
I sympathize that there were behind the scenes issues but please blizzard, the only way this could have happened if someone very important (who is still at the company currently) forced very stupid decisions. Not even saying it was someone on the writing staff, but someone with push who thinks they know best has made terrible decisions.
Baine was important to sit there. He was just like a observer from the type of Stan Lee in MCU. And when he saw the bullshit with sylvanas being awaked ala twillight style, he just said "Maybe we shouldn't"
Thank you Platinum for everything you do. Your passion for this universe is inspiring and makes me want to start playing WoW classic just so that I can experience that passion again for a game that I grew up with and loved.
Mists of Pandaria, alongside Wrath of the Lich King and Legion were pretty much the best expansions in my opinion purely for the whole world building aspect and amazing lore alongside extremely fun gameplay. Expanding old content introduced so long into something massive and captivating has almost all the time been my favorite aspect of an expansion. Even the Pandaren used to be an obscure race back in Warcraft 3 with the exception of Chen Stormstout who was mentioned during Classic until Mists of Pandaria came out which gave this world a huge overhaul with a brand new continent, new races, new lore, new cultures, new wildlife, and even a fun new class, all packed with some of the best graphics during its time, I never saw anything this beautiful in my life. Even Battle for Azeroth (which I still despise so much to this day) have some really impressive worldbuilding in this expansion and it was fun exploring Zandalar. I really do miss that special experience in exploring the World of Warcraft.
God I remember at the start of shadowlands I thought they were making all the right decisions ... then they decided to totally fuck everything up right down to even the lore.
We fall in the same trap again. And it will happen in next expanction
Wow! That theater of pain boss voiceline was part of what kept me goin in season 1 haha love denathrius too, personally i dont think shadowlands is that bad more like bit too much bit too fast lorewise
WONDERFUL video! I agree with legit everything you said here and it was said so succinctly and efficiently. Really, amazingly done
Personally, I actually did enjoy most of the new characters and worlds of the Shadowlands. Mostly Ardenweald and Revendreth's casts, but overall I thought the story told while leveling was fine. The main characters we brought with us, though... Well, either it was 'why are you here if you got no lines huh' (ie Baine, Taelia) or 'omg shut up already we've been focusing on you for too long' (ie Anduin, Sylvanas). Along with a villain that the writers didn't seem to know what to do with, revists of old characters retconning themselves to fit the villain, and no clear goal in mind... It hasn't been a very good time
I really really agree that the Legion was very clear with every patch storyline and MAN I miss that. BFA had a lot of weird illogical jumps to me. Like we spun hard around from faction war to Old Gods and that connection is still a bit ?????? like jeeze that was a thing that happened I guess
Now hopefully we can do something about that giant sword in the world huh :^)
Your video editing is amazing and the closest thing to having a WoW lore TV show love the work man 👌🏽
Wow 2.0 hahahah! That aged well 😎
Thank you very much for bluring out jailer's chest or as I like to call him: Nipples Magee! (Christ put a shirt on get some self respect)
I personally say (story wise) WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN! Make the player not the chosen one but just another solider. That's what I want.
Also I agree if ya got no passion why make a vid on it?! Plus I like looking back on good (and funny) lore.
Player: Argus was a cool idea but needed more set up
Blizz: Hold my beer
3:18 Funnily enough thats exactly what I did. Insane that Legion happened in 2016. It ended my childhood with a bang for sure. I miss Legion.
Dam bro. You can tell this is a huge amount of pent up anger getting unleashed. Good for you man, sorry they did this to you
You could do a series called “wait, what?” where you reveal to us the links between plot points that we’ve forgotten 🤣
Don't change what your doing, it's why we like and watch you.
Shadowlands should've been a really world building focussed expansion along the lines of Pandaria. I mean we've been here for ages and we still don't know a bunch of fundamental aspects of this place. Like, why don't the other realms of the shadowlands have pantheon members? What happens when you die in the shadowlands? Why did they have to pump Argus full of death energy to get him there? Do entities like demons or Naaru go to the shadowlands when they die for real? Why can the titans just strut around in reality and why are they birthed through world souls when none of that applies to their death equivalent? What is domination magic? Is it death fueled? Is it outside the cosmology we know?
How did the Jailor find out about this "bigger threat". What's up with Elune and the Winter Queen? And the list goes on. Back in Pandaria every villain and plot point that came up was clear, they had a couple of questions like this, but they felt purposeful, not just like stuff that got left out for no reason.
Platinum WORLD soon!?
Platinum telling us about Historical stuff, with troll and gnome models!? Hell yeah!
EXACTLY. overarching stories should be simple, but fun and badass. where the complexity comes in should be in questing storylines and worldbuilding. i still know so little about the zones in the past few expansions, because they all just felt like unimportant vessels to house a "greater" narrative, rather than an actual writing focus.
Very well said. This is why I love your channel; you are always diving deep into the lore, even the stories that have big holes in them or have not been completed or have even been changed over the years. In most media today, I have noticed they are all using the same formula of stringing things along so people will want to continue to watch (consume) so they can find out the next juicy secret. Some are better at doing that than others, and I agree with you that Shadowlands has been the worst at telling a story, even with the different side stories. I am one who loves questing, more than anything else, and I read the text from the quest givers, not just when I first play through with my main toon, but with a few of my alts as well. This helps me develop a better understanding of why I should feel vested in each zone. For Shadowlands, the only regular leveling zone I have enjoyed has been Ardenweald. Even though some key things are left unanswered, what we are given provides an understandable and linear goal. Plus, the ambient zone music is nice. Even though the Shadowlands represents the afterlife for many worlds, not just Azeroth, they could have simply connected things from Azeroth for us with NPCs. I don't mean the significant ones, like Draka, but random people the main character (us) have helped in the past (from quests) who have died and are in one of the zones now. Also, speaking of Ardenweald, the connection between us and Ysera was a great sub-plot for the zone, but the re-use of Legion cinematics felt lazy to me. It would have been interesting to see a flashback from Ysera's perspective. We at least fought the same fight at the Temple of Elune from her perspective and we received a bit of the thoughts she had that led up to the fight, as well as during it.
Anyway, keep doing what you are doing and thanks for your passion!
Ah, the Pyro clip, always puts a big smile on my face.