The trailer/cinematic being weirdly uninspiring actually gives me hope.

The cinematic for BFA have been absolutely brilliant. Especially the Saurfang ones, but gameplay and the actual storyline was uninspiring.

Right now I'm hoping the content will be better in Shadowlands.

I'll play of course, but I'm not expecting much.

 

Was it? Because the way it's presented, the Helm of Domination (an artifact crafted by the demons of the Burning Legion), somehow broke through the walls of reality and opened up a path to the Shadowlands. Which doesn't really make sense given it was just meant to control large numbers of undead.

 

Just watched the cinematic, and I've gotta say, I'm very much not impressed. The whole thing shits all over the established lore up to this point, with all kinds of problems such as "now there's a nigh-infinite army of zombies who hunger for the flesh of the living with nothing keeping them contained to Northrend", "Why has Sylvanas not simply steamrolled all over everyone already since she's clearly capable of it?", and "How the fuck does a helmet that contained the soul of Ner'Zhul somehow open a portal to the Shadowlands?". It's all very stupid, but it fits with the expectations they set with BFA and Sylvanas spontaneously achieving god mode out of nowhere.

 

I look forward to WoW's new expansion, where we crush the Orcs of H'ongk Ong for daring to speak out against their benevolent rulers, and then send all the members Tib'etti and Uyg-hur tribes to special camps to be reeducated.

 

I found the cinematic to be okay, but mostly uninspiried. Yeah, okay, Bolvar is not Arthas and Sylvanas (and really everyone) has grown a lot in power in the time since Arthas was killed. Fine, predictiable, whatever. The sneakpeak of Shadowlands left much to be desired though. Looks like it was ripped right from Diablo 3. I was half expecting Imperius to show up.

 

Sylvanas is a parody character atm. Bolvar being made to look like a bitch really pissed me off (he probably didn't bother levelling his 2h Mace skill after getting his new wpn hurhur).

The only bit of the lore I saw they actively shit on is Frostmourne's. It's supposed to be crafted by the Nathrezim, now it's an artifact form the Shadowlands?

The one good thing is the Shadowlands look incredible... There are so many things you can shit on the WoW team for... the art team though...? I don't think you're gonna get much support if your argument is 'Oh, these two places that are supposed to be heaven look kinda similar! LAME!'

Finally have some proper 'race' options within races too. I didn't get the VT, I'll wait for a proper break down later.

 

The one thing Blizzard have always been fantastic at is cinematic art.

The Warcraft III cinematics are still incredible. I’ll never forget the one in which Arthas kills his father.

 

Blizzard's art team is, and has always been, top-class. I don't think there's ever been a Blizzard game that didn't look and sound just fantastic all the way through.

I really want to like WoW again, as I adore the core gameplay loop and style of the game, but I've always been a big story guy, and with both BFA and what we've seen on Shadowlands, Blizzard has been dropping the ball pretty hard. Especially when Sylvanas is in any way involved; everything about her somehow gets stupider with every new revelation/progression/etc. At this point, it's just dumb, and I'm so over it, which makes it really hard to want to play the game at all.

What few rumblings I've heard about the gameplay reveals have been pretty positive though, and it's possible they'll get me playing again. They just need to drop titanforging, and most definitely the hideous abomination they replaced it with for 8.3, and then either drastically limit or entirely eliminate the post-leveling leveling systems they've been insistent on using for the last 4 years. I don't have much hope though.

 

I'll wait for Preach's verdict. He's usually spot on with this kind of thing.

 

What's worse is Blizzard said that Bolvar knew she was coming to Icecrown to face him. So that makes it even worse, he knew Sylvanas was coming for a confrontation with him and he was still very much unprepared for dealing with her. I see a ton of people handwaving it aside with "Oh she's getting a power-up from someone in the Shadowlands" but that's still not good enough. Unless she's had plenty of practice with these powers and we've never seen them actively use them or even hear about hints about them being used, her duel with Saurfang aside, this just comes straight out of nowhere for the players and the addition that Bolvar somehow knew about her coming for him just makes it even worse.

 

It's definitely a cop out either way, but Bolvar is no Arthas. All he has done is sit on his arse since ascending, he probably hasn't even keybound his new skills yet. But they need to start explaining shit with Sylvannas soon, atm she reads as a badly written self insert in a beloved franchise going around one shotting everyone without doing her obligatory shopping trip first.

 

I have a weird feeling... with the way Blizzard's PR is going these days, I'm kinda expecting them to bring back either Arthas or Uther in the Shadowlands the same way they "brought back" Illidan in Legion.

And I can't say I'll complain either way, lol.

 

You know, I didn't think of that, but now that you mention it, that shadowy figure behind Sylvanas in the features trailer does look like an updated Lich King sillhouette, doesn't it?

Here's the relevant part for anyone curious (1:58 timestamp, if it doesn't embed properly):


I could easily see that turning out to be Arthas.

 

How do you guys feel about the expected leveling system though?
I'm honestly excited about it.
Lvl 50 to lvl 60 for shadowlands.
Complete choice (supposedly. For ex. from the video, I could go from Lvl 1 to 50 in Pandaland alone) in where you can level...
Create a character specifically for a expac I want to play and then exclusively level it in that expac (Ex: A DK in Wotlk; A Panda Monk in MoP; Mage/Warrior in classic; etc)...
I would very much like that...
I still have my first created char of a Human warrior doing quests in Northrend...

 

I most definitely like the level squish. It's a very neat idea, and it makes leveling new characters a lot easier. If i go back to wow I'd definitely be making use of it.

 

If there was no level squish, I'm pretty sure I would've stopped playing. I'm curious how long it'll take to do 1-50.

 

From what I understand it is 50-70% faster to hit level 50(compared to hitting level 110). It's a ballsy move and will eat into their revenue from character boosts. Definitely a good thing.

 

The story is read like bad fanfiction and the cinematic was Fem!Indy!Harry defeating old cot dumbledoor. But I would be happy if they fixed the classes, reverted the GCD changes (lol). Garbage content and systems are at least fun if the classes are in a good state.

But... I would enjoy it if this also happens.

Spoiler: Salvation

 

Or Kel'Thuzad. I had completely forgot about him and the loose end he represents within the lore....

 

By what Blizzard said that thing is older than Azeroth, so it cant be Arthas and I cant see Sylvanas working alongside Arthas.