WoW: Shadowlands has destroyed something that Blizzard will probably never be able to fix

WoW Shadowlands Jailer title 1280x720

Death was the end of a journey and a permanent danger. But in World of Warcraft that no longer applies. How will Blizzard save this story?

It’s no secret now that Shadowlands hasn’t sparked much enthusiasm among many players. You don’t just have to talk about the gameplay, but the story alone triggers a derogatory snort in many people.

One of the biggest points of criticism does not deal with the “story itself”, i.e. explicitly not with the details that take place in the shadow lands. It’s a completely different problem:

Death is completely demystified.

The problem with the history of Shadowlands is likely to be its long-term importance. Because giving death a face and clear rules in World of Warcraft is, on the one hand, a very cool thing.

Knowing what happens after death is a wish that not only the characters in the game but also most people in the real world have from time to time. Showing a clear definition of afterlife with all the rules is basically a cool framework for a fantasy setting.

However, these revelations should also mean that the peoples and cultures in World of Warcraft will undergo massive changes in the next few years. Now, when a paladin says to his dying comrade, “In the light we shall be reunited,” that is no longer belief, belief, and wishful thinking, but simply plain wrong in fact.

When a mage kills a wayward fellow-warlock-turned-warlock and declares in anger that “Only hell will be waiting for him” – then that’s just not true. Because the warlock will probably end up in Revendreth, play anima battery for a few decades and then be in peace in the afterlife.

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The different cultures, whether human, tauren, orcs, draenei – they will all be forced to get a very clear picture of death in the next few years. What does this do to cultures whose beliefs go back many centuries or millennia? Is it even possible to present something like that convincingly in an MMORPG, not just for a single race – but for a whole range of them?

Pelagos is too sweet to be the Grim Reaper

The next big problem is Pelagos. He became the new Judge of Souls, which is generally an acceptable story, albeit a little rushed and difficult for non-Kyrians to follow. However, it has become quite clear that Pelagos has lost little of his personality in his rise to the position of soul judge. He is still a person who evaluates each being individually and whose actions are primarily guided by compassion.

With this decision, Blizzard has put itself in a dramaturgically very difficult situation. For in almost all narrative forms, death is a simple but extremely powerful tool. It’s the constant threat in the background, a driving factor in the tension. Stories about adventures and almost insurmountable obstacles are often exciting because if the heroes fail, death is imminent. Series like “Game of Thrones” or “Squid Game” have clearly shown how much excitement the sheer possibility of death can unfold and how devastating it is when the main characters are not spared.

Pelagos is “too good” – death loses its threat.

Some of the most emotional and powerful scenes in World of Warcraft are just because of the magnitude of death. Whether we take the slaying of the nightmare-tainted Ysera in Val’sharah, the brutal death of Garrosh in Nagrand, the dying breath of Vol’jin in Orgrimmar, or the heroic death of Saurfang.

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All those moments, all those moments, had power because death was accompanied by uncertainty. Because death is a drastic cut that drops characters out of the story equation. Sure, some characters reappear as souls or phantoms, are invoked by shamans or something similar. But those were always brief moments or blatant exceptions that had a story reason why their souls remained.

All of that has now been destroyed – and presumably irreversibly.

Just try to imagine how differently you would have experienced some cinematics in World of Warcraft. Had the death of Ysera had the same power, would Varian’s heroic sacrifice have you staring at the screen like this if you had known that after death they come to Pelagos who judges their souls?

World of Warcraft Dragon Lore Ysera's Fall
Ysera’s death was one of Legion’s most emotional scenes – hard to match now.

No, almost certainly not. The fact that Pelagos is not – like the soul judge before – a fairly objective acting “machine” but a being driven by compassion makes this situation even worse. Any semi-heroic character or character portrayed as “good” will end up as a soul in front of Pelagos and will almost certainly be sent to “cuddly-cuddly-ball-pool-paradise for good souls” due to their kind and compassionate character.

Of course there are exceptions. For example, Varian’s soul didn’t go to the Shadowlands, it was wiped out by fel magic, because fel magic destroys souls and has the ability to consume them completely.

But the fact that death in the history of World of Warcraft is now only the end in exceptional cases and no longer as a rule could be a blow that will fall on the feet of story writers very often within the next few years.

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Blizzard will have to find a solution to this narrative problem. And the only obvious fix is ​​to create an even greater threat that threatens both the world of the living and the dead. Because only if the souls were also in danger in their afterlife would death become a real threat again.

But nobody is interested in such huge, cosmic threats anymore – and rightly so.

Dispelling the myth of death was quite a radical decision. And I hope that the writing team knew very well where they wanted to go with it. Because otherwise everything in the Warcraft cosmos simply loses relevance.

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