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.

What y'all fail to understand is that The Jailer was mind controlling the devs the whole time.

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.

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

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.

Compare how they did Illidan in Legion versus how they did Arthas in Shadowlands, enough said

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 😭

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

Both BFA and Shadowlands were the weakest expansions specially in terms of lore, both of then were Sylvanas centred , coincidence I think not.

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...

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.

Blizz execs ability to short their own stock probably killed wow.

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 💔

"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?

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.

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 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.

There cannot be an other Wow killer.....Wow kills itself on its own

Best ending idea i heard was from Asmongold where the jailer won and it turns out he was a good guy

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.

Imagine doing Draenor stuff and stumbling across the sword relocated to Gorgrond.

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.

Me watching sylvanas get a chance at redemption and seeing them throw arthas to the wind. “Look how they massacred my boy”

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.

Holy true. I unironically NEED lore videos because it takes so many years for a cliffhanger to be revealed and i just forget

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.

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!

Outside the rep grin Suramar was really fun learning aout a new race

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.)

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.

Serimar was awesome. Hell, I even enjoyed grinding out the entire achievement for it. The questline was a joy.

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.

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.

1:46 Yo did Platinum really censor that?! Amazing! 10/10 video.

ohh wow Gratz on the 1mil subs Asmontv!!!

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

The sad thing is SL made me miss parts of BFA and I didn't think I would ever say that lol...

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

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! 😂😂😂

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 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.

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.

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 :(

the problem with fan speculation is because its usually 100x's more interesting than the eventual reveal.

Gandalf and Sauron are both Maiar angel like creatures that were around before middle earth was even created.

I remember finishing Torghast for the first time and thinking, yeah i'm never doing that again.

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?

The obsession with sylvanas killed the world of Warcraft story for me. It's been about her for over 6 years!!!!!!!!!!

27:42 yes, that’s part of the problem. It was over 5 years ago. How did it deteriorate from that to shadowlands.

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.

Man i remember when shadowlands was announced via the cinematics.... I still have chills whilst watching the uther one.

Is there a Jailer book on the way that explains his story?

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.

Im glad to see you react to Platinum WoW again

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...

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.

Bring back legion

At 8:00 his tangent here reminded me of something a lot of people hated but i think they should bring back: Attunement. We always had the option to skip quest dialogue and shit if we didn't care but attunement was a way for Blizzard to kinda shove lore in our faces and it added hype around certain places. At least to me as a player.

yessss more cinematic pls! I go back and watch all the WC3 cinematics sometimes just cause of how awesome they are

The balrogs were the same rank of maiar as the wizards, too.

22:42 Boom! Nailed it bro.

I have a hard time connecting any lore to what I am doing in the game. The two things seem quite disconnected.

Emerald Nightmare had a great conclusion. You un-corrupted the dream.

The red guy and the bigger red guy part was so funny XD

Glad gave gim 3 hairs because way back in the day the pre super sayian form of sauron asked for 1 hair and she said get wrecked

Funny how this was a year ago and now the what sword 🗡️ is now woah there was a giant sword here the whole time!?

BFA zones were cute asf, I really loved going to the desert for the first time, the rolling hills of sparking sand was awesome

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.

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._*

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

Audio dramas were really amazing tho. With sound effects and you could listen them for free on KZfaq. I really really recommend listening to Guldan audio drama.

I like the light touch approach that soulike games take and think it would be more fitting for an mmo where you have a huge world to explore.

Just have the audio dramas available in game through some item you click on. Easy.

4:03 hurts me bc in 2016 I was 15 in highschool. I graduate university next year.

Yeah this game seriously needs in game cinematics. No one bothers to read all the quest chat lmao.

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’m going to print a shirt with the big red guy legion plot explanation @10:45 that was the best way to describe that

on LotR: Sauron is also a Maia, or was for that matter.

I always liked the mysteries of the old Gods, lesser known and less explored zones, dungeon lore. It felt like an adventure.

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.

the guys who came up with all the good stuff are long gone .....

the only thing keeping me playing ffxiv is the story(and ultimates) frankly, i mean, we were waiting from end of ARR, to Shadowbringers, for a specific character to return, with no hint until SHB trailer dropped he would be coming back, and when it was teased, the entire fanbase lost their mind because of how excited they were. Also Lost Ark story is really really good so far, it's honestly a shame most players skip/skim through it.

"top 100 poop sockers" I literally am on tears

Does anyone knows what happend to natanos? Or just they forgot about him.

Legion did several good things, one of them in my opinion was kickstarting the direction with archimonde as the final raid boss of WoD, to tie it all together

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

It was Feanor who asked Galadriel three hairs, not Thranduil.

just forget about the store stuff and put those people on making cinematics