How Shadowlands Went From Saving WoW To Killing It
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Shadowlands was good, until it wasn't. What went wrong? Asmongold watches "The Problem With Shadowlands (What Makes Warcraft Lore Good?)" by Platinum WoW to find out how a WoW saver and a "WoW 2.0!" has turned into the worst expansion Blizzard has come up with. What once was the best selling point of WoW in Vanilla is now gone, and all we have is an awkward Jailer cinematic in Patch 9.2 Eternity's End...
Original Video:
The Problem With Shadowlands (What Makes Warcraft Lore Good?)
• The Problem With Shado...
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#Asmongold
If Shadowlands was 100% new lore, people would have just dismissed it as another sub-par expansion.
The problem was Shadowlands dug up old lore, put it in a dress, have it dance on stage then strip; then was shot.
I got to personally put you at 69 likes and your comment is awesome. You’re right also… they made her dance for us while they killed her 😭
Btw I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up with 69,000 lol.
@@A5tr0101 "The world waited on baited breath for one Astrophel to give the final word on the legacy quality of Warcraft lore. Now the debate is finally settled."
Thank God we have you to tell us what writing has quality.
@@patchwurk6652 He's not wrong.
@@VelvetSkyye "He's not wrong" How helpful.
Hey guys, completely void of context I'm just gonna take this moment to say "Everything Tolkien has ever written sucks dick."
No need to elaborate on that point, y'all know exactly what I'm talking about, it just sucks and you know I'm right. Can't imagine any situation where someone would disagree with me, we all just Know Tolkien gargles cock as a writer.
What y'all fail to understand is that The Jailer was mind controlling the devs the whole time.
Don’t think you can mind control zombies like Ion “I’ll take your feedback but never take it seriously because I know everything.” Hazzikostas
His ulitmate goal was to have every player quit WoW and therfor save them from the horrors of the next expansion, the jailer realky is a great hero!
The devs failed to stop Eren. Sadge
the jailer is supposed to be asmon they're both bald and both ruining wow
The real DreadlordJainas were the Development Directors who fucked the player base along the way.
Classic didn’t need a single story, it had a hundred little stories. From VanCleef to Arugal, from Titan Relics in Uldaman to Blackrock Spire. Classic was the first time we were introduced to the *world* of Warcraft.
This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I kind of prefer those little stories in the individual zones in Classic, really made me feel more immersed
@@mathelgar You can see its the little zone stories where Blizzard ACTUALLY shows their writing chops. Even as late as Bfa the stories for the zones on Zandalar and Kul Tiras were good. It's the overarching meta storyline where they keep bumblefucking and failing to make anything satisfying/cohesive.
@@mathelgar the problem is the assumption that everything has to have a purpose in a meta story and you need everything leading up to gods and the gods of gods and their supervisors.
You play an adventuring hero/villain and that’s usually the best recipe to tell narratives that are both engaging and understandable as you can slay a boss of a rogue faction but killing gods and then dying to a random Murloc makes every scale totally mundane.
Classic: hello, here's the result of the third war
TBC: remember illidan, lets pay him a visit
WotLK: Remember arthas, lets pay him a visit
Cataclysm: if you read the book you know the lore
MoP: What if Samwise Didier dream came true
WoD: What if Outland less burning
Legion: War of the ancients round 2
BfA: we're not running out of ideas *scraping the bottom of the lore barrel*
Shadowlands: we swear the lore is still in piece
Dragonflight: remember the developer island
I fully approve this message. I couldn't have said it better 👌
Fun fact: Vanilla wow actually DOES have a cliffhanger, but it's incredible well hidden and obscure. When you hand in the quest item from killing Kelthuzad, it somehow gets "lost", and the argent dawn leadership doesn't notice, because there's a traitor among them. This comes back in Wrath and is the in-universe explanation for why Kelthuzad is back AGAIN. there's a questline with Bolvar that ties it together.
Of course, all this is explained in quest text, so barely anyone noticed
...Y'know I never really noticed because I've played WoW since forever, but in hindsight probably not the best idea to keep all the important plot shit in bricks of bland text the entire Rest of the game largely trains you to skip past as unimportant.
It doesn't get lost. You literally make a decision as a player character to risk a powerful lich being reborn for a material gain.
@@patchwurk6652 where else should they have put it? it's not important or in depth enough for that if you compare it to wrathgate. in a book even brickier than the quest log?
Some rando (named after Montoya from The Princess Bride) literally just went "hey I'm bringing the phylactery to base" and didn't actually do it. Either way, shitty writing.
@@tylerp5259 Hold up, I'm not saying they did Bad, more wondering why they still sort of kept doing it.
Like okay, fair enough for vanilla, I'm just saying the format of information kinda sucks this many years onward, and because (as you said) the writing has gotten worse.
Like you're absolutely correct, no one should care about the formatting of the quest info. In fact I'm pretty sure No One, myself included, gives a shit about it.
So why am I remarking on it? Because the format being this boring after a decade was more weirdly fascinating from a multi-billion dollar franchise than the writing itself was.
@@tylerp5259 I will pick 'What are cutscenes?' for 500, Alex.
I've said it 100 times and i'll say it again. Your story doesn't need to be larger than life for it to be good, it just needs to be fun and interesting. For example, I think that literally any storyline involving Blackrock mountain is more interesting than whatever it is we got going on in retail right now. Think about it, you got the son of frickin Deathwing, Nefarian, who controls the upper portion of the mountain attempting to create his own Dragonflight through brutal experimentation on other dragons while simultaneously controlling the remnants of the old horde faction. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the mountain, you got an entire dwarven city beset into chaos through the accidental summoning of god damn Ragnaros, the elemental lord of fire, and are now being subjugated. And while all that is going on, there is also the storyline involving the Dwarven princess who was kidnapped by the blackrock dwarven king, and actually fell in love with the guy and didn't want to be rescued. And that's all just in one area!
It might just be me but I find that to be way more interesting and engaging than the current clusterfuck we got going on right now with World of Sylvannas. They need to bring the WORLD back into warcraft.
I remember the Tirion Fordring quests 100 times more clearly than anything else I've seen in WoW.
So true and real. The problem is now that we can’t go back to those types of stories, because they’d feel insignificant compared to the grandiose cosmos mind bending shit we’ve done.
@@xx1219
Wrong.
@@Trakesh why? If you’ve literally defeated the equivalent of Satan, gods and entities that govern your very creation. If we were to go back to less grandiose foes, how can the lore justify that they wouldn’t just be steamrolled by us? If we’re strong enough to banish gods, how could a dwarf in Blackrock mountain pose a credible threat to us? It’s the same with Dragon ball Z, the next foe has to be stronger than the one before to pose a struggle to the heroes, so now they’ve reached the point of fighting gods. How do you top that? Where do you go from there? I’d love to go back to simple smaller stories, but I don’t see how Blizzard can pull it off sadly.
@@xx1219 They can pull a god of war or something haha and retire 😂 I have no idea how you can fight beyond gods unless they allow players to become gods themselves but at that point youd have to go beyond azeroth and venture to other worlds which at that point is just wild af
Compare how they did Illidan in Legion versus how they did Arthas in Shadowlands, enough said
TRUE
And at the time even as an Illidan fan I was like "this edgelord fanservice is a little over the top", but man I had no idea what unholy mess awaited us in this xpac.
At least it was fanservice. Who knows what this is.
in fact illidan is probability itself so whatever he did all of us accept
@@kungfuvoodoo9889 In hindsight Legion was a masterpiece (by blizzards standards.) It had flaws but they were all flaws that could have immediately been fixed but blizzard chose not to. The core game of Legion was the most fun I've ever had playing wow, it was great.
YES THE LOADING SCREENS! Drives me insane. Wrath was the peak of “here’s open huge spaces”. Land. Terrian. Variety. Fauna and flora. Loved it. Love exploring. Still love just riding around. And since then it’s more and more like there’s closed world instanced content and open world instanced content. Everything is an on the rails experience. Tons of phasing. Very lame.
I was mining in howling fjord the other day and was like “god damn this zone is incredible”
Legion was really good too though. Lots of diversity with a big continent.
Im glad my loading screens only take 2 to 3 seconds max
That quest back in the maw where you had to go through 4 portals (both ways) for a grand total of 8 load screens and one cutscene to round it out…that shit says it all
That was the only point I really agreed with lol oribos would be so much cooler if we could fly around it, hang outside in space on our flying mounts, they could've made it multiple stories with cool stuff on each level. Also flying through empty celestial space between each shadowlands zone would be way cooler than the stupid worm flight paths we have to take.
Cliff hangers work when you have a ratio of about 95% story to 5% cliff hanger, when it is like 50% story 50% cliffhanger you haven't built enough cliff to hang off its just confusing and frustrating.
Brilliant comment my friend
theres less cliff and more hanger.
Wow story is always vague because they dont want to be locked into a big ass story that they will need to figure out how to wrap up. Thats why no matter how many expansions come and go, we are still left with the same fucking main cast of characters and we still know little to nothing about the motivations of the main evil bad guys. Its written by people who either dont know how to write a story, or simply are not passionate enough to care that much.
I remember being hyped for SL because apparently blizzard recognized the discontent with BFA and were gonna make changes to bring the game back to how it was supposed to be that fans all desired. Well that didn't happen.
Well that was a fucking lie.
Yup. I remember being SO optimistic at the beginning, especially with some of the class changes like shadow priests and enhancement shaman, looked to be moving in the right direction. Boy was I wrong. I’ve never witnessed this disastrous of a “narrative” in my entire life
Wich then brings us to DF where blizzard apparently recognised the disconnect with SL. I think I am starting to see a pattern here.
The sad thing is that these might be the changes they thought would fix the game's rep. I remember reading a rumor that they thought fans would love the story when the postgame BFA patches showed where it was going, only to go OH SHIT when they saw fans hated it too.
@@FelixHawthorne there’s nothing more hilarious than someone who is really excited about something and then when they show you and describe every exciting thing about it: you find every point they make to be reprehensible and put you off of the thing.
Had a buddy describe Alexa to me, to hype me for one, and I couldn’t imagine a worse pitch…just like Shadowlands.
Let’s hope the words about them getting their heads out of their ass, when it comes to Dragonfligth, are actually true.
You know you're reading a hack fiction writer when they make it clear they're withholding the info that should make the story understandable and interesting. "You're not allowed to dislike my trash story, because you don't know yet what I refuse to tell you." Eventually you realize the "reveal," if it comes, will likely be garbage too, and you're done waiting for a story to be good.
Indeed. For a game its good to do that with the side stories but the main story needs to be fully complete. Elder Scrolls does it well and thats why those game are played for so long. There is enough branching stories that keep us interested and guessing. But the main story/stories like the guilds and stuff need to be as complete as possible.
Cough Half Life 2 cough
True Eternal Purified Copium is, when you go through TWO garbage expansions back to back, provided by a scandal-ridden company that hasn't produced a good product in soon to be a decade, and you're still looking forward to the next expansion to "move on" to.
@@Nasty_Riffs room temperature iq retort, even 4chan retards do better. See me after class.
@@VaernSul You should upgrade your opinion on 4chan. If it was a 4chan tard, this guy's response would have been fire xD
@@moodycxnt As a fan I have given up on Warcraft as an IP years ago, I'm sorry but it's just so depressing. Even though I already cut ties with it, they keep doing shit like this Arthas thing to show that my leaving couldn't have been sooner xD
@@EhhmmmNo My opinion of 4chan is up to date, I assure you. While there remains some good flaming roasts from seething autists and seasoned grognards, most of the posts are useless trash, the unfortunate spawn of sparse neurons firing in incoherent, retarded spasms unworthy of being called human thought.
@@VaernSul solid response ngl 🤝
The cool thing about Gimli + Galadriel + Legolas interaction of the gift of hair on the base of the movie(and book) alone is that elves and dwarves have a disdain towards each other and they don't hide it at all.
When Gimli says that to Legolas in all his honesty even after a lifetime of hatred, Legolas can do nothing but lose his preconceived notions as well.
If you know even more about the "story of Galadriel's hair" that interaction becomes greater, or even better to some people, but still on it's own two feet it is already amazing for the amount of disdain given from/to Legolas to/by Gimli before that could happen.
Seeing WoW in this state breaks my heart. I used to adore this game. I haven’t played at all since the end of MoP. Sometimes you have to know when it’s over 😭
Without a heart and soul, it's nothing.
I too used to live this game but let's not act like the writing has ever been Tolkien levels.
What is killing it for me is the obvious cash grab of time- locking content because 2% of the base grinds it all out at the beginning or end otherwise.
I'm not talking the big patches. I'm talking about how if you do mythics you have like a 3% chance to get gear. You then have to work to 15s and every week do at least one to get a max ilvl piece. Only one though so you'll keep playing.
Or how about a 0.05% chance to get a mount?
Its sad, it was the game Ive always wanted to play but never could and when I got a job it was the mmo I insta bought and played during bfa released, sad to say it was meh and only really played it for 3-4months
Same I always get a deep sense of dread thinking back to the old days and how the game has just lost its soul. It’s so sad and heartbreaking because I made some amazing friends and had my favorite gaming moments back in BC and Wrath days and now it’s become an empty shell
imagine me as a kid geting this when it first came out ,nooooo =( havent played shadowlands tho
It is impressive how much they ruined the lore of all the expansions with just one
The Expansion To Ruin Them All
Shadowlands
In an interesting way Shadowlands was a very gloomy WoW chapter. Mainly for the player though. The name is very suiting.
It fits,Shadowlands...keeping us in the dark half the expansion
They honestly should just retcon this expansion and label it non-canon and just say it was filler or some shit they really fucked the legacy of warcraft 3 and all previous expansions before it like holy shit
It's pretty telling when the overwhelmingly desired end that people wanted from Shadowlands was for the bad guy to win and just end the clusterfuck that the world had become.
God damn it, Zovaal did nothing wrong.
Modern WoW story reminds me of when I was 8 years old and the teacher told me to make a theatre piece and the end result was obviously horrible because 8 years old me had no flippin idea what I was doing.
Hilarious big truws
“And then the big bad guy wasn’t really the big bad guy all along! It was this other big bad guy that was super big and super bad swe have to team up with the old big bad guy so take out the new big bad guy and now we know that all the big bad guy things the first big bad guy was doing were REALLY big good guy things to help set us up to drop the true big bad guy.” -an 8yr old story manager at Blizzard, probably.
After Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne I did not have questions about the fate of Illidan or Arthas. That was not a cliff hanger and if they never revisited those stories I would have been ok with it. Burning Crusade and Wrath did NOT have to exist. They did and they were awesome.
The single thing that killed it for me was all the daily retention mechanics. Don't make me feel FORCED to log in or I'll just resent it.
16:09 as kel'thuzad said in warcraft 3 regarding medivh, the knowledge he had about demons is staggering he must've been even more powerful than he thought, he said something about that when he got medivh's book for the dreadlords if im not mistaken the scenes. So gul'dan may be the most powerful warlock, i mean he used fel more and controls it like a beast, but he was made that way when he needed this power, medivh was literally born (with a demon in his soul) to be one and could have been better warlock than guldan i kinda wish he never died...
Medivh is still alive and well... They just forget about him after return to kharazan...
But knowledge isn't power. It is just knowledge. Power is power.
Also Medivh is a fing idiot. In everything he does he is a fk up. He was tricked into opening the portal, he gave the most ineffective warning to the humans in WC3 which made him sound like a crazy person instead of presenting logical well thought out arguments backed by verifiable evidence. And the elves who were there didn't give any shits or pay attention or monitor for the demons return. Even the elves that were 10,000 years old. The elves who by the way should be 1000 times stronger than Medivh but aren't pictured as such because Blizzard is speciest against elves.
"These characters are really interesting... you just have to take our word for it."
"These stories are really deep and interesting... you just have to take our word for it."
"The payoff for playing through this expansion is epic.... you just have to take our word for it."
"This game is amazing to play... you just have to take our word for it."
How fucking dumb does Blizzard actually think we are?
Considering that there are _still_ plenty of people (blindly) supporting the game...I'm gonna go ahead and say: _extremely_ dumb.
we have not yet reached our final form of dumbness. theres still money to be made of us till the hype dies completely
pretty fucking dumb from what I see on the forums. Youd think the Copium Stocks alone would be able to fund a small country.
Honestly, I think they started dropping the big hints about the shadowlands *way* too late. The speculation and questions should've started at least 3-4 expansions ago (and with more than just a single tidbit here and there). With just about every other entity/group we've encountered so far, we knew about them from basically the very beginning (or at least had *some* level of references towards them) - sometimes dating back even to the Warcraft games. Characters and storylines started ages before they became relevant - even in BFA, to some extent, although it ended up executed pretty poorly - so when they showed up it wasn't a surprise as to who they were and what they wanted (except maybe pandaria in and of itself, but at least it had connections to the bigger picture with the titans and old gods). Nothing FELT complex because we had a huge amount of time to process it. Shadowlands was the first time where I really asked "who, what, and why" when the big bad was revealed, and even now that question remains largely unanswered. It could've been good, Blizzard.
First time I heard about shadowlands was at the beginning of BfA when someone said they thought the next xpac would take place in the shadowlands. Dude was right, I'll give em that.
"The speculation and questions should've started at least 3-4 expansions ago"
But why?
Also that would suggest that the Shadowlands were made up before Battle for Azeroth was being finished. Do you really think that's the case? I can guarantee you that it wasn't.
@@Trakesh Oh no, I agree with you that it wasn't made before then. What I'm saying is that it *should have been* made up before BfA. That last minute inclusion - compared to everything else we've been through so far - screwed it up for us, is what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the idea of the shadowlands had been introduced and built up to a long time ago instead of last minute, it wouldn't have felt *nearly* as jarring or confusing, as we'd have had (presumably) a lot more to think on and speculate about, and they wouldn't have had to half-assedly try to shove an entire multi-tier story into a single expansion.
But the Shadowlands story was entirely made up AFTER they started working on Shadowlands. There has been no long term story since Wrath of the Lich King.
Arthas was the reason I truly fell in love with wow from WC3. Then he was “meaningfully” coming back in shadowlands…
He’s a blue fading whispy flame soul for 3 seconds. I waited over a decade for that?
Duck you Blizz…I’m done 💔
I see everything they do as some sick sense of spite from them over Diablo Immortals & Overwatch's story telling
It seemed like a fuck you to fans for sure. But however they could bring him back
Shadowlands was literally a fucking hate letter for us especially DK mains
@@Irken_Invader_Zim What does Dk stand for?
@@khebre6032 deathknight...
Both BFA and Shadowlands were the weakest expansions specially in terms of lore, both of then were Sylvanas centred , coincidence I think not.
it should been arthas redemption and the light getting a powerup and arthas get a second chance maybe make arthas the chosen one and light order counter chaos
If you think its because Sylvanas centric then you don't understand anything. They are the worst because they are only focusing on one characther. BFA starter fine actually when you think about it when Jaina, Saurfang, Anduin, Talanji and many others played some part. But it slowly become Sylvanas show and nothing else started to matter, all the characthers maybe except Anduin became side characthers with one liners.
This is terrible writing not only because some people already hated Sylvanas and other people got bored with everything being about her, but also, they wrote themselves into a corner. If Sylvanas dies today, there is noone that could take story any further. If she is alive and still in the mix, then they are again giving her the focus which people dislike. Warcraft is at its best when they write many smaller stories instead of one big. For the last 2 expansions we are watching the Sylvanas show tho
They should made it seems like jailer was bad but was actually good trying make souls who fate are predetermined lay at rest instead being ghost have true death to become energy for a weapon to destroy what is to come but nope and he could have use fire destruction god forgot his name with sword plunge on planet as the weapon they needed be power up to face oncoming threat maybe aliens that have their own dimension in space similiar to world of warcraft etc. But foreignors and he become arbiter ally and only dominates enemy foreignor but new enemy are op will wise and hard to kill beat etc
So what
@@ericx6969arthas is evil. He didn’t deserve a redemption story and arguably sylvanas doesn’t either but at least she is doing her penance in the Maw and has some good interactions with anduin
Blizz execs ability to short their own stock probably killed wow.
Unironically though Anduin and Wrathion gay murdering Sylvanas would have been the best way to open the next expansion and I'm not accepting any other takes.
The cinematics aren't for the players; they're for advertisers and anyone that will be suggested it on youtube. They can't put in the 'insight' that they should be providing for clarification on storyline to players because it would take too long and no one, except players, would understand it. They can only show what may be cool aesthetics for revenue and investors.
They did Arthas so wrong in the end. I don't think Blizzard knows how to tell a story anymore.
Mists of Pandaria had a drawn-out, complex, character-driven storyline. They used to be able to do it; they just can't anymore.
I think a major problem also with Shadowland's story is the fact that it's barely connected to the rest of the World of Warcraft. Pandaria worked because while they spent time exploring the new continent, the main beats of the story revolved around the Alliance/Horde conflict and Old Gods lore. Suramar worked because it revolved around a subspecies of night elf and their history with the Legion. But Shadowlands feels too disconnected. It seems like they came up with ideas for new fantasy worlds and just used the excuse of it being the afterlife to shove them into WoW. They barely did anything with it being the realm of death either, as barely any dead characters appeared and had prominent roles in the story. Revendreth, a zone with fantastic potential to bring back fan favorite villains, only had Kael'thas, and he barely did anything. And as of 9.3 Uther's the only dead character that's stuck around. So while other zones feel like we're exploring new parts of the same world, Shadowlands feels like we took a trip to fantasy Disneyland with no bearing on the rest of Azeroth.
There cannot be an other Wow killer.....Wow kills itself on its own
You mean bobby kotick?
@@pulseofme6884 yeah, keep lying to yourself dude. 🤡🤡🤡
@@rosemccartney1538 lol
@@rosemccartney1538 can I quote you in 1 year, when the next beta starts?
have you logged into wow in the last month or so? its literally a ghost town even on high pop server. you will ONLY see people in zereth mortis on daily reset. there is no players leveling or hanging out in any areas, it really seems dead. after I saw that it was depressing I was basically paying monthly for a single player game. cancelled and bought end of dragons lol. blizz did kill their own game with systems, and we all warned them.
Yeah..saying WoW doesn't have the tools is making excuses for the writers, even if the conclusion is that they are still doing poorly. Nothing about the Covenant questlines *required* saying nothing about Zovaal's motives and history. Apparently, according to the end raid cinematic, all the leaders knew what was up with him, so it could have been sprinkled in there. They didn't. Elune and Tyrande cinematic was garbage. We still don't know why Teldrassil burned. The Primus asked Zovaal what the fuck gives but didn't tell the Prophecied Maw Walker anything about it because reasons?
Nothing about the medium or the tools required the story being shit. That's all on them.
Best ending idea i heard was from Asmongold where the jailer won and it turns out he was a good guy
I feel like one of the big problems in wow storytelling is the two faction system. With all the different races with leaders who all have different or sometimes aligning priorities, the story sometimes gets a bit convoluted or downright stupid in order to reignite or maintain conflict between the two factions. The Horde and Alliance seize to make any sense several times throughout multiple expansions imo. (Caveat: I haven't played since eternal palace and don't really know the story beyond it.)
No you are right. There is no reason for the two sides to be fighting each other. Especially since the majority of the species either don't know other species exist or don't care. Same as in reality. Most people don't care about people in another part of the world. They just care about living a good life.
Me watching sylvanas get a chance at redemption and seeing them throw arthas to the wind. “Look how they massacred my boy”
I saw the writing on the wall the moment they made Sylvannas the new Warchief, and then she started to do the same as Garrosh and Gul'dan.
I always liked the mysteries of the old Gods, lesser known and less explored zones, dungeon lore. It felt like an adventure.
Shadowlands is like when an abusive parent hits you (BfA) and then tries to make you feel better by saying how much they love you (Shadowlands alpha) but ultimately they're still a piece of shit.
I don't know why I'm laughing so hard at such a dark analogy but man my eyes are watering..
BFA would have been ok at the core except for the itemisation. Loot and AP was awful, the stories and stuff were largely ok with a few major exceptions. The Sylvannas centric element was a pain, burning of Teldrassil was such a mistake, and still never resolved, no resolution to UnderCity or the sword as well. But still better than Shadowlands by some margin
I quit wow December of 2018 I now have 5 associates degrees, a BA in psychology, and now I'm in a master's program to be a clinical mental health therapist. Quitting a toxic game that sucked the life out of me from 2014- 2018 was the best thing I could have done.
@@Zhohan- not everyone is murrican
My debt is not horrible but anything in America will come at a cost if it takes academia to get to.
The obsession with sylvanas killed the world of Warcraft story for me. It's been about her for over 6 years!!!!!!!!!!
LOL 🤣
They wanted us to hate another undead and make her the villain
I just saw it as lazy writing
When I first saw the BFA cinematic it was amazing because I thought that Sylvanas embraced her role as the Warcheif.. then the story we got? It's so one note of Horde Warchiefs being the bad guys, and ruined her character arc.
Dude, the main issue with WoW story telling is the completely ambiguous and vague information we get from every damn character in the game. No one knows what the hell is going on and the only thing driving the story is.. SPECULATION. Its stupid. Its like one of those movies where you watch it and you think, "What did I just watch?" then go to google to find out from someone more informed that you, what the movie you just watched, was about! I mean seriously? I have to research and dig and get insight into a movie that should have told me what it was about in the story itself, but no, I have to go to other people and videos to explain it to me because, dear God, what did I just watch. WoW is nothing but "doom is coming", "Death is coming", "the void is coming", "the legion is coming" ...someone is always coming, but know one EVER knows why in the hell they are coming at all! Its just stupid platitudes, hyperbole and pabulum, but nothing to tie all these vague stories together. Nothing! Now once again, with the death of the Jailer, we now know, once again....something bad is coming. I mean bro, what? Really? Thats all you guys have? My God, not only are the stupid story lines nothing more than hooks, but the game itself is nothing a big hook. You get hooked to drops, raids, currency, mounts, patches, expansions......but the issue is that in the end, the players are left with ashes in their mouths and severe sense of underwhelming disappointment. The donkey will only chase the carrot until he realizes you have no intention of ever giving him what he wants. Then he sits on his ass and says, "nope". You've lied to me too many times.
17:58 You know... what was the coolest moments in WARCRAFT 3?... Those super long cinematics. Like when Grom Hellscream kills Mannoroth with Thrall... I still remember that one, a good 20 years later. Warcraft 3 had many long... and extremely good videos. Blizzard was famous for producing those. The first few of WoW's Expansions had cinemas manage that induced goosebumps, just look at the opening cinema of Vanilla WoW. Pure adrenaline. I started the game wanting to make a Hunter, but deceided to make a Nightelf Druid because of the video, lol.
The sad thing is SL made me miss parts of BFA and I didn't think I would ever say that lol...
Yeah it’s one of those “It’s so bad it makes me _miss_ the previous one. And even *that* sucks!” scenarios
Would be nice if i could have my own little adventure in wow. Just like when i first played wow. The world was huge the music was amazing and it felt like i was in azeroth.
@@DrewPicklesTheDarkTotally agree. Back then malfurion wasnt a total clown and simp. Sadge
27:42 yes, that’s part of the problem. It was over 5 years ago. How did it deteriorate from that to shadowlands.
Bring back legion
Honestly, I wish they would focus more on the story. I don't like dungeons and raids, I just like experiencing the story and questing.
God - looking back on those Legion cinematics. So good. Legion had it's problems, but man.....overall, a great expansion with a really cool story. I miss what WoW used to be. I quit almost a year ago after never once taking a break since BC. I don't miss it and that is honestly what saddens me the most. I hope one day it can return to what it was because I never say never. But as of right now, between the state of the game AND the company....the love I had at one point is lost :(
Why you watching wow videos of you don’t miss it?
@@benstone1993 Because like my comment CLEARLY states...I miss what WoW used to be. So 1. I hope to see it return to its roots and 2. I enjoy Asmon's videos. Not that difficult a concept.
@@Nasty_Riffs Just because I don't simp your game right now means Im crying LOL. What a weird take.
Meh, as a Horde player who tried to stay somewhat invested in the story ... Legion was a weird spot. The expac overall was fairly good, but you could literally have written the entire red faction out of that expac, and maybe have only had to change half a zone (Stormheim, where in which we follow Sylvanas on her own sidestory that eventually led to both BfA and SLs). Seriously, the Horde is such a shit plot device at this point. Its not written like a Faction. Either villain batted (without luxuries like "motive") or just kinda doesn't exist. :P
the problem with fan speculation is because its usually 100x's more interesting than the eventual reveal.
Holy true.
I unironically NEED lore videos because it takes so many years for a cliffhanger to be revealed and i just forget
I loved listening to those podcasts, but I agree with you - the mixed media idea that Blizzard does now is the worst decision on the planet. We shouldn't have to buy books, find podcasts in order to get the story.
Danuser was hired on specifically for "trans media", just doesn't work for games like these
mythic for the previous raid tier instead of the new one would be a good idea imo. No need to push it out there for the neckbeards. Plus it makes an excuse for making Heroic even more challenging.
They did at one time produce some of the best cinematics in the industry so it can be done. Just needs to be a priority. We will always look back on the jailer as a complete whiff on what could have been.
Gandalf and Sauron are both Maiar angel like creatures that were around before middle earth was even created.
i want azshara back... she was the one character i was most looking forward to and most worried to see in the game since BC era. the only reason i never touched BFA was cause i didnt wanna say goodbye to that character. like sure shes attractive and whatever, but i thought she was so cool cause she was actually REALLY powerful and sort of a constant looming threat like "oh no shes still out there, plotting and planning!.... but maybe shes gonna enter the game as the leader of a new playable race in the form of naga or maybe even some kind of sea elves! ::O" and now thats gone...
Serimar was awesome. Hell, I even enjoyed grinding out the entire achievement for it. The questline was a joy.
it was so awesome you cant even remember its real name. guess that shows how much of a lasting impression Suramar left on you.
They did arthas' plot line so dirty. No forgiving that
With regards to loading screens, BFA had the same problem. How many loading screens did you have to sit through to get to the Chamber of the Heart? At least two. One to Silithus, then one to the Chamber. Three loading screens if you had to hearth to get to the Silithus portal. That was a trek literally everybody had to put up with whenever they wanted to do anything with their Heart of Azeroth, or for questlines
I was a pure PvP'er, but loves just RPG'ing on alts while not doing PvP. Picked Gnome Warrior since I'm 6'6 irl, and got known for the Mage Slayer/Terror of BRM on my server. I knew my fellow alpha's on both sides, still remembering their names, staging duels in contested zones against the best of the best while 20 people were watching.
Down the line, cross realm and Cataclysm that ruined my "safe zone" it just felt so generic. Nothing mattered anymore. No community, no competition, LFR and no true RPG feel of it.
100% I miss that community server feel. You would literally see someone at the start of your character experience and run into them 2 months later at max level. Or you would duel the same people regularly enough they would remember you etc
@@stevenashford4174 Yeah it's good, until the server gets empty 2 months after and now you can't do anything. And if that happens you guys would also complain I guess. And say blizzard is forcing you to buy a server swap and that they are greedy. (btw i also hate blizzard)
Shadowlands feels like it has no soul because the characters are literal robots, the anima/souls have been drained of life; it's boring because it's literally the core of the expansion
Imagine doing Draenor stuff and stumbling across the sword relocated to Gorgrond.
2:20 Allow me to introduce you to Warhammer 40k. Nothing has as much lore, and moves slower than WH40K.
Emerald Nightmare had a great conclusion. You un-corrupted the dream.
I'm personally not a huge fan of each zone being split off the way they are. Doesn't make the world feel big, but instead just a few large instances.
It’s a guilty pleasure at this point seeing how far wow has fallen in one expansion. Like we thought bfa wasn’t good but my god! 😂😂😂
About Legion: The interesting thing is that we never see the fight between Illidan against Sargeras, and even less who win the fight. So there is some theories about it. One of them is that Illidan in certain way won the fight or didnt win, and become a villain. So it is possible for Sargeras come back? Or Illidan?
It was HEAVILY implied that they would fight each other for eternity. Actually that might have been stated outright by Illidan where he was making a huge final sacrifice to protect Azeroth from Sargeras by fighting him for eternity.
6:30, that's what they did when they made the runecarver as primus, argus as arbiter's disfunction, and so on, creating multiple plot hole during this expansion.
The whole underlying story to wow is the old gods and the void lords and if you look for it you’ll find void machinations in the every expansion except shadowlands and since at least half of shadowlands content was cut due to time we don’t really know if the old gods were in the shadowlands but you did gets hints of it for the reasons why the dread lords were created which was to sow as much death as possible to power the jailer with anima so he could gain enough power to complete his plan to remake reality to take on the old gods. BFa same thing war conflict and death to increase the power of the jailer and the shadowlands were broken due to Argus soul disrupting the arbiter shows that titans weren’t meant to be killed. But since we killed one they had to retcon into shadowlands to explain why the anima disruption to the Maw and behind all this backdrop was the jailer he was responsible for all of it…burning crusade lich king legion bfa etc mists of oandaria ties into it some as well with ra giving up so lei shin kills him to create more death because of lei shin’s conquests. But if you look at all this the titan structures tied into all of these expansions. The story isn’t hard to understand
I think what Wrath and Legion (my fave expansions) had that every other expansion kinda doesn’t is a progressive narrative with each patch. In Cata and WoD and in BFA and SL, every patch and their respective raid felt like self-contained stuff. Hell, in BFA, only the SECOND RAID had anything to do with the expansion premise, the other 3.5 raids simply did not. Alliance didn’t even have story reason to BE in Uldir I’m pretty sure, they just sorta stumbled across it, I guess??
Something WoW needs to do narratively is have something cohesive for the expansion. In Wrath of the Lich King, EVERYTHING we did was in pursuit of Arthas and his defeat. Barring EN and ToV, why were we in the Nighthold? Elisande allied herself with the Legion and Gul’dan was there. Why were we on the Broken Shore? The Tomb of Sargeras might hold some secret about how to eradicate the Legion. Why did we go to Argus? To attack the heart of the Legion.
Why were we in Highmaul? I dunno, the ogres were being douches, Kargath is there I guess. Why were we in BRF? Blackhand, okay cool, HE’S a Warlord. Why were we in HFC? Why was THAT the follow up to fighting the Warlords?
Why are we in Uldir? I dunno, Blood Trolls and Synthesized Old God bad. Why are we, in a faction warfare expansion, effectively UNITING to fight Azshara and help Mechagon’s resistance? Why are we simply ignoring the conflict that IS the premise of the expansion to delve into Ny’alotha?? Nothing makes fucking sense.
Edit: I posted this comment at, like, the 4-5 minute mark Lmao my b
I'll say it again, Legion was the WoW expansion for story-focused semi-casual andy like me. It was epic from beginning to end, some great plot-twists I didn't expect (Ysera :( ), I loved even the main questlines of each locations (that withered mana addict in Azsuna who sacrificed himself at the end was memorable too). Suramar questline was epic even with timegating. Only thing that was wrong with the expansion was RNG legendary and artifact power grind, but I didn't mind it much because I didn't do hardcore PvE and progress. This is the only expansion I was subbed for the entire length. Best regular andy xpac.
Ye you’re wrong
I stopped playing shadowlands about 3 months in after coming back after a year off from BFA, I returned at pre patch, maxed and maxed a couple of covenants. Hot take, BFA was a better expansion! My main is a Zandalari Troll now all because of that expansion. Get rid of the stupid azerite grind for that expansion and I’d put it up there with Wrath content wise. They are the 2 expansions I’ve had the most play out of. I’m coming back to it this year. As I’ve got a fair decent mount collection and cosmetics, so would love to get into a Asmon transmog EU competition but I don’t think I’ll be online when he hosts (I work days, and asmons days would be my night time). Keep up the good work asmon!!
I love Warcraft's story. I am one of those people that play for the story. I agree 100% they need to put in more cinematics and longer cinematics with exposition and story development so things remain clear and people can keep up. Too much important stuff is left out or only put in short-stories or books that NEED to be in the game itself. How many people actually read a Good War? It's an online short story to explain the War of the Thorns. The reason for it, the build up to it, the early phases of it planning and even action in the war itself up to the war's conclusion; and it was amazing. It was so so so good....and virtually none of it was in the game outside the burning of Teldrassil. Why? All of that should have been in-game and would have made the experience a million times more enjoyable with a lot more context, but instead it was just left on the cutting room floor.
@@prisoner817 If you want to be technically correct yes, your contributions have been noted.
Can you guys actually think of any decent story ideas to fix the Sword in Silithus?
I'm struggling to think of any cool events that could come from dealing with the sword. I think it would just be a long questline involving a bunch of manpower and construction in order to remove it. Either that or just get the Kirin Tor to teleport it into space, Dalaran style. Nothing that interesting, story wise.
Maybe in a future expansion a cult could form in Silithus dedicated to the return of Sargeras, they would build their temple around the sword. That's not really that interesting or memorable, but it would give us a reason to address it.
The part where Asmon says that they could leave every Xpac on a Cliffhanger and then see what fans speculate and go with whatever is the most popular. Followed by an silly - Anduin is a Dreadlord and he, and Wrathion fall in love. Hurts. Because at this point. THAT, would have been a better story than what we fucking got in Shadowlands.
I keep wanting to play again, but then I just listen to one of these videos and move on with my life!!! Played tbc-cata , started as newb ended as a heroic raider topping meters on death wing!
I am happy that my in game friends talked me into returning for legion. T.o.s and some of antorus we're awesome raids!
Slowest moving narrative? Try 40k. Nothing changed in 20+ years, then when the plot does advance in 8th edition? Half the players hate it and it's been promptly forgotten.
I hate cliffhangers so much, that I don't watch series nor anime that's ongoing. Only finished stuff. And usually in one go. Just binge it in one day.
Inu Yasha scarred me that deeply.
The expansion that made me quit WoW after playing from classic initial launch. I was done.
The reason Legion was so good for me was for the amount of shocking twists it had in the story. Keep in mind I never saw stuff from the PTR or spoilers, so I saw everything ingame for the first time. First was the sudden death of Varian, which completely surprised me and showed things are getting real. Then we had Illidan tearing open a gate to Argus showing that we're going all in, followed by his rejection of the Light which I still consider one of the coolest moments so far. And in the end we even got to see Sargeras for the first time and.... is he plunging a giant sword in the planet?!
It all was so amazing and I loved it. In BfA these moments already became way less and in Shadowlands there was just not a single interesting moment like that for me, it all became so boring and predictable. They completely lost their touch.
One of the things that gets me with WoW's story is that it feels like for everything that happens nothing really changes, the races and factions seem stagnant, we always unite to fight the big threat then break back up for some reasons, even when there are clear points of inter-faction issues. So often it feels like storytelling, lore, and growth is sacrificed or tossed to the side to just reinforce the same gameplay loop with little reason.
It would be better if there was really a stronger difference between factions, and that the narrative divide was far more reasonable, but it continues to feel more and more like the factions as they are are merely superficial.
Well one of the problems is that elves are on both sides when the elves should hate all the species on the Horde and want to destroy them all. All of those species, minus the cows, are invasive species. The orcs aren't even from Azeroth and it really makes no sense they weren't all killed off at the end of WC2. Hell it makes no fing sense how they weren't quickly and easily beaten in WC1 considering the huge numbers difference. But at the time there weren't really any elves so the lore wasn't that deep. It was just a handful of orcs verse a handful of humans.
2:37 OSRS says "hello." 0 main storyline developments with Guthix et al in 9 years. At least you get them every 6 months or so.
I have a hard time connecting any lore to what I am doing in the game. The two things seem quite disconnected.
In the next expansion they should just make something that deletes entire shadowlands, like it never existed/we woke up from a dream, something like that.
So sick of 'island' zones. They die out quickly and you end up feeling like your playing by yourself.
the guys who came up with all the good stuff are long gone .....
Mr Asmon do you think you could make a video about GDKP and botting problems, gold problems and how it ruins classic wow? both wotlk and perma-vanilla... like how the botting and the instant p2w gdkp raids at 60/80 completely defeat the purpose of what used to be the journey to endgame? i mean there are tons of talking points for this from botting to blizzards lack of enforcement and unwilliingness to devote even the smallest amount of resources to controling botting and how people who are looking for that real experience of 5 mans > early raids > endgame raids are again being forced to look to private servers for a real experience? I just came back to WotLK recently to level my druid to 80 and be ready for cata (havent played since vanilla) and am just shocked by how normalized and complacent everyone is with GDKP. i dont understand how quickly the community has become OK with p2w mechanics ... if blizz had announced the ability to purchase tier gear and raid gear and mounts with credit cards in vanilla, the community would have eaten them alive. but now it's just part of the game and everyone seems okay with it. its just so disappointing man it seems like everything blizzard touches these days turns to shit.
i find it extremely funny but also unsurprising that Private servers somehow offer a better vanilla - tbc - wotlk experience than actual blizzard servers, only proves my point that blizzard-activision continues to be dogshit.
Yeah this game seriously needs in game cinematics. No one bothers to read all the quest chat lmao.
Honestly I kinda miss the days that the next thing could be literally whatever Vs a grand scale narrative, I feel like it gave the devs a better stage to focus on fun gameplay first
"TBC Ended Illidan's storyline"
NOPE, Still rejecting that X'D
Legun ended Illidan's storyline.
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How the fuck
huh 🧐🧐
big if true
🤯
I remember everyone was so scared it would be like game of thrones or the top 100 dead people of wow. Funny enough both of these would have been a lot better than what we got.
Honestly if we just got rid of the jailer completely it would have been a sweet expansion. Just 4 factions fighting each other and in fighting within each faction, a bunch of death gods vying for control like bamdwandi, that other guy, and Hakkar. with a few rogue elements like sylvanas, tyrande, the brokers etc. lots of GoT backstabbing and shock scenarios would have been infinitely better.
Making the wow gods just titan forge is the straw for me.
We could have easily retuned the Introductory to Shadowlands by adding in two Playable Races that have a connection with traveling to-and-back from the Afterlife or even adding in the much-desired Necromancer Class to the game. Races and a Class that fit in with the theme most other Expansions offered: BC Gave us the Draenei and Blood Elves since Outland was the last place we saw Kael'thas Sunstrider at. Wrath gave us Death Knights because we're fighting against The Lich King. Cataclysm broke apart the world and in that calamity caused the Worgen and Goblins to emerge. Mists of Pandaria gave us the Pandaren and the Monks because they're a part of the mysterious lands of Pandaria. Legion gave us the Demon Hunters because of the third invasion of the Burning Legion on Azeroth and that we had to release Illidan Stormrage and his Demon Hunters to take the fight to them. BfA saw The Fourth War come into full-swing and the Alliance and Horde had to go recruit new allies with the Zandalari and Kul Tirans or call upon old allegiances to fight for them.
The only other Expansion in WoW that didn't offer up anything new to the mix was Warlords of Draenor... Let that sink in. Shadowlands is tied with WoD for the least amount of stuff added in to the base game: a grand total of *_0._*
Im glad to see you react to Platinum WoW again
Saw a guy in chat say "But wasn't that forshadowing WOTLK?"
As someone who played wc3, I was still pissed for a while that they ignored arthas for two expansions so I don't think that counts xD.
They went from gamer devs asking "How can we make the coolest, most fun MMORPG in history?" to bean counters and time crunchers in suits and white coats asking "How can we build a hamster wheel that offers just enough breadcrumbs to keep the hamsters running for one more month?"
I remember finishing Torghast for the first time and thinking, yeah i'm never doing that again.
When DC storyline was confusing and silly they made this big event called Crisis on infinite Earths.
They should make a Crisis in infinite Azeroths