Shadowlands will go down in the history of World of Warcraft as a “filler”. MeinMMO demon Cortyn believes: This is the best solution.
By now, the last person should have noticed that WoW: Shadowlands wasn’t received as well by players as originally thought. While the expansion was initially considered “good” by many, that opinion dropped rapidly. By the time of Patch 9.1, only a few players were still interested. Even improvements from Patch 9.1.5 provided little relief.
So the developers are pulling the emergency brake and preparing to give Shadowlands a rather swift, but also shameful, end.
Spoiler warning: This article also discusses datamining and purported content from Patch 9.2. You have been warned.
What is a filler-addon? Similar to “filler episodes” in TV series, filler addons also serve a simple purpose in World of Warcraft: Something is supposed to happen just for the sake of it. A filler addon has a coherent storyline, but once the filler content is completed, the situation is basically the same as before. Only a few details have changed.
And honestly, Shadowlands has also offered itself for this from the very beginning. The whole concept of the “afterlife” with its various realms, where different versions of the afterlife exist, is so unreal and detached from the rest of the Warcraft cosmos that one can just easily put a lid on it. Just like back in the day with “Warlords of Draenor,” you can simply say: The connection to the Shadowlands has now been cut off again; story-wise, you are no longer in connection with these creatures.
However, I find the decision good.
Sure, I enjoyed the new areas. Because everything was so new and unfamiliar, the developers could really let their creativity run free. I still find Ardenweald breathtaking, and I also remember Revendreth fondly.
Blizzard could have also tried to steer the story of Shadowlands in a different direction to capture the players they lost. A Patch 9.3 and a Jailer that persists through other expansions – that could have been an option.
From the first information about Patch 9.2, it is now revealed that the Jailer is ultimately defeated and destroyed. Completely, nothing remains of him. Pelagos will be appointed as the new Arbiter and will take on the role of sending all souls to their corresponding afterlives. He presumably gains this power through the First Forge.
That the Jailer is defeated in the end and presumably destroyed for good is a good thing. He was a “filler-boss” introduced in Patch 9.0 and will already disappear from the scene with Patch 9.2. Sure, they somehow “burned” him – but at the same time, it allows for a clean break to try something new or to pick up the old, tried-and-true story again.
Shadowlands thus becomes a small – more or less – self-contained story.
Of course, it’s also worth mentioning: So far, most of the information about Patch 9.2 is only datamined. It is quite possible that Blizzard might reveal a major twist in the final cinematic and the Jailer is not quite as dead as one might have thought.
The only slight downside is that Blizzard tried to give Shadowlands significantly more importance than was actually necessary. That the Jailer was essentially behind all the major events of the past 20 years of Warcraft could have been a cool plot point, but was unfortunately not well implemented.
This reason will surely cause the story team to chew on it for several years. Because if the “big boss” who has been pulling the strings of fate for millennia turns out to be a boring character that nobody can relate to, then that is a damage from which Warcraft will only slowly recover.
However, I want to be optimistic. World of Warcraft has delivered exciting and interesting stories over many years – and that was often the case in Shadowlands as well, albeit often hidden in the side quests. If Blizzard can build on that with 10.0, give its adversaries more profile, and create a Warcraft that doesn’t get tangled up in more and more parallel dimensions … then I hope that the next addon will excite us again.
Because if that’s not the case, it’s looking really bleak for World of Warcraft. And that would be a shame.
