They have better writers now. There's no other way of fleshing out stuff that was really lackluster when it was first introduced.

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Ah. I'm sorry for being presumptuous.



Getting back on-topic, has anyone seen this video showcasing Bastion:
A tauren arrives and is told he has to forget his family and is then turned into a blue human(the kyrians). All souls have to do this if they want to ascend in rank in Bastion. This feels rather disturbing that you have to forget all you loved ones and then be turned into something not resembling in the least your mortal form. And as someone on the official forums put it better then I could:

"The lore of Bastion destroys the native faiths of Tauren and Orc ancestry veneration. It would be pretty awkward for you to contact the spirits of your honored ancestors and be answered by some random blue human that only vaguely remembers who you’re supposed to be."

I'm not really bothered by it. I see it as one of the many infinite planes in the Shadowlands and when there are infinite numbers, bizarre morals are pretty much expected.

EDIT: several interesting remarks in here: https://www.gameinformer.com/feature...nds-revendreth

The article confirms the presence of ethereals in Revendreth and also confirms the possibility of souls moving between realms.

Now there's the possibility of uther having been in The Light before being sent to Bastion.

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Small news: 8.3 PTR updated, new eye glow is in (but apparently it’s not totally finished yet).

Instead of flashlights in front of their eyes, characters have glowing eye textures.

But when I try to see NPC skins in the Wowhead dressing room, the blood elf green eye texture is still present over high elf and dark ranger skins. I’m not sure if it’s because those textures are missing or a problem with the viewer, but this means one thing:

The update to separate skin color from eye color is already in, at least for some races. (But the option to do so is not available for players, just to clarify).

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- Sorry for any typos; english's not my primary language.

- A better signature coming soon(ish).

I just was thinking, since I keep hearing the flow of souls was broken during Legion(thus directing them all to the maw), wouldn't it be funny if it happened when Genn broke Helya's lantern? Since the scene is entirely pointless now(since Sylvanas can just make more val'kyr anyway), might as well dump on the worgen some more by having their leader create this mess.

I hadn’t thought of that....... but it makes sense.

Adding in details doesn't have to mean changing origins.

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http://www.formspring.me/TerrorhoofMayo

I just thought the Scourge had an interesting enough origin in Reign of Chaos as it was. There were plenty of plothooks to draw on for future storytelling.

They just literally dropped almost all of them in Wrath of the Lich King.

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"The Demons did their job well. You creatures are as reckless and bloodthirsty as they ever were."

Taken from the Shadowlands Retcon thread over in the lore section. With that in mind, who else are we going to be seeing?

What we know:
Bastion: Uther
Maladraxxus: Draka
Ardenweald: Ursoc (https://elexonic.com/2019/11/07/worl...gest-problems/)
Revendreth: Kael'thas

If I were to pick more for each -
Bastion: Reginald Windsor
Maladraxxus: Garrosh
Ardenweald: Zaetar, perhaps Ysera (unless being turned into a constellation precludes that).
Revendreth: Garithos, perhaps Malygos?

The Maw (Undeserving) - Shadra, Zelling, Rezan, maybe Rastakhan (I mean Bwonsamdi was right there to collect the soul, I doubt he lost it), Delaryn's druid boyfriend,
(Deserving) - Kel Thuzad, Arthas, Deathwing?

To name a few.......

Why do people can saying KT is dead? Was it off-screen or in the Chronicles thingy? If nothing was said I would put money on him being a future threat.

Cause we killed him...... I mean yeah, it may not be permanent but we did put him back down again. Besides, why should him being dead preclude him being a future threat. He’s been dead since RoC. Never stopped him before.

Also Chronicle vol.3:

ChVI, pg 175.

Let's be honest here, the Shadowlands is an opportunity for them to bring back whatever popular character they want to bring back.

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"The Demons did their job well. You creatures are as reckless and bloodthirsty as they ever were."

Well yeah, a Chronicles thing.

Before it was just made painfully obvious to us in a quest that without securing and destroying his phylactery he will return. And as we did not...

I guess that is another minor retcon >_>

The fact that Chronicles doesn't mention the phylactery doesn't mean it ceases to exist.

Just like spirit healers.

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This is hilarious. Blizzard really can’t stay consistent with themselves no matter how hard they try. I can’t wait until they have to release a new chronicle series to explain that everything in the first chronicles series has been rewritten.

At least Games Workshop admits that they cannot stay consistent due to the sheer volume of material and chalk up all inconsistencies to unreliable narrators and time travel.

Want to try predicting the retcons?

I think they’ll introduce “light lords” as the opposite of the void lords and the real big bads of the franchise. Then it will be revealed that, no, there are even bigger bads! The titans are actually children of the primordials! Who are the REAL big bads. Until the next expansion reveals new bigger bads again.

The first Chronicle series was clearly not meant to explain everything, despite it being marketed as such.

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Is there a discord link somewhere?

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Sylvanas shook her head. Her locks had been pale blond in life, but appeared to be silver, and now they looked almost as white as her sisters. They were the moons, Alleria had teased, calling them Lady Moon and Little Moon, while she and Lirath the eldest and the youngest were the suns of the family, with their bright golden tresses. Alleria .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArJe--CGatg

An interview with interesting tidbits: https://www.windowscentral.com/world...ry-shadowlands

-The undead night elves from Darkshore have rejoined the Alliance. Sylvanas used their rage and grief at feeling like they were abandoned by Elune to manipulate them into serving her. Now Calia and Derek are rehabilitating them for a new "life." (UPDATE: Steve Danuser clarified on twitter that the night elf dark rangers rejoining the Alliance was a miscommunication with the interviewer, they're still Horde).


-Sylvanas being "Garrosh 2.0" was intentional. Her line "ours is a cycle of hatred" from the expansion cinematic was intentional foreshadowing of this. The story they wanted to tell was the Horde falling into the exact same issues as before, but then Saurfang would "break the cycle" by having a peaceful resolution instead of there being another Siege of Orgrimmar. Now the Horde for the first time is capable of learning and moving on, while the Alliance is fracturing.

-The aftermath of the Fourth War will be an important part of the storyline in Shadowlands. There will be faction content and story content, especially about Teldrassil.

-Staring with WoD, they've had a trend of giving your character a title that NPCs will address you as in voiced lines instead of your name. In WoD it was Commander, Legion it was your class order title, BfA was Champion, and in Shadowlands it will be "Maw Walker."

-They probably won't do another world revamp like Cata ever again. The new leveling system in Shadowlands will circumvent the issues since new players won't level in EK and Kalimdor at all, and Cata took too much work as it was.

-Interview ends with Danuser pretty strongly implying that N'Zoth is not dead and we did exactly what he wanted us to do.

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I am now a writer for Blizzplanet!

1. *general cranky vibes on everything else.*

2. "Maw Walker" is too mouthy, they should trim it to just 'walker' or something.

3. Shame there won't be any other revamp, the old world is all janked up forever.

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My Worldbuilding:
http://bloodinkworlds.tumblr.com/

I always thought the WoW story was bad, and this doesn't change my opinion at all.

I doubt the EK/Kalimdor will be left behind completely. They'll probably get the Warfront Treatment, with occasional relevant content taking place in them.

If I'm gauging things right from the (admittedly limited) information pertaining to the leveling squish, most of the old world will become one of several leveling options for 11-50 to choose from alongside each of the old expansions, the racial starter zones will remain optional alternatives to the new shared Shadowlands-related 1-10 starter zone, and Shadowlands will be the new max-level 51-60 zones. Though as far as real estate involved compared to expansions one could argue that it'd make sense for Kalimdor and the EK to each be treated as their own "path."

That will potentially allow them to avoid having to adjust the entire world's balance and stats every time there's a new expansion. Instead, all they'll have to do is knock the player's stats back to 50, implement the newest expansion as the next 51-60, and scale down the previous one's content to become another range of 11-50 old world content.

With so many optional paths for 1-50 to (hypothetically) keep leveling alts from getting repetitive, they could theoretically make a new practice of each expansion bringing its own contemporary, thematically appropriate starter zone for 1-10 to start familiarizing new players with the current expansion's story right away. So instead of churning out new isolated starters every time there's a new player race or class, they could feasibly roll any new classes' or races' introductory quests going forward into a shared starter experience that ties into the newest expansion's associated themes and backstories.

The old world's not going away, but it makes sense that they don't want to revamp it either, as even in its current story state under the new scaling system it will serve as one more variable "time-locked" path for leveling from 11-50 just like the old expansions' continents will become.

Insofar as portraying contemporary events in the old world, it's hard to say where they'll go with tat (beyond the pre-expansion event, that is.) The way Warfronts' subsequent iterations were rolled out doesn't exactly suggest that they worked out as viable content; between multi-difficulty dungeons, multi-difficulty raids, world quests, the patches' catch-up gear systems and instanced PvP, BfA very much felt like there were already too many preexisting gear sources to accommodate the addition of the new Warfront and Island Expedition mechanics, so both of them fell kind of flat.

Heck, I didn't even realize there was a Heroic Darkshore Warfront until it had been around for two weeks because it was given zero fanfare whatsoever, like even as the Devs released it they kept mum because they weren't really sure where it could even fit into the gearing curve by that point. So it feels moderately likely that they may either go completely back to the conceptual drawing board or just chuck the Warfront idea altogether.

Though frankly, I felt Warfronts would have been more appropriate as a way to have the player defend and/or reclaim familiar locales in Azeroth against demonic assaults during Legion anyway. Always seemed to me a waste to resurrect all these RTS visual themes and assets from WarCraft 3 as part of an expansion whose story had nothing to do with that of WarCraft 3. BfA was basically the "faction war expansion," hearkening back to the First and Second Wars, yet they packed the Warfronts with stuff from WC3, the only RTS where the Alliance and Horde barely fought each other.

I was referring more to the Worldquest/patrol phase of Warfronts. Or maybe something similar to what they’re doing in Uldum/Vale of Eternal Blossoms right now.

Maybe have the covenants start occasionally invading different parts of the Lordaeron Continent. The Kyrians take Western Plaguelands from Uther’s Tomb; the Necrolords move into the EPL, the Night Fae set up shop in the Hinterlands once in a while; and the Venthyr in the Ghostlands (if they can), or have them take EPL and bump the Necrolords down to Hillsbrad/Alterac (move Draka closer to home).

An old idea of mine might become more applicable and work well with this: Monster Play. You get to play as a covenant themed world boss (Vampire, Lich, Faerie, Angel, Gargoyle, Abomination, etc)., that other players can go against for loot.

Oh, so along the lines of the Zidormi thing to swap between old and new versions at max level.

Maybe, though it doesn't seem likely the Covenants themselves would invade, since they'll be our allies by the end of our questing experience, or we wouldn't be able to champion them at the end. If something were to bring their agents through to Azeroth I would imagine it being some of their own local threats (like the Forsworn in Bastion or the Drust we'll be supposedly encountering in part of Ardenweald) crossing over and needing to be re-killed or banished to send them back. Or maybe some renegade Necrolords or Venthyr who split from the rest and try to poach anima from living souls or something.

That said, I feel like keeping us questing exclusively in the Shadowlands may be a priority during this expansion, so I'm not sure how much time we'll really be spending back on Azeroth outside of doing one's Auction House chores and such in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.