#maldraxxus

[kottkrig]

Commission for kaylechip_

[gobbyteeth]

what being in the maldraxxus covenant felt like

[raguonmynieceandnephew]

I fucking love Shadowlands and I am tired of being silent

This is probably gonna be long. TL;DR at the end.

Look, Shadowlands is the second worst expansion this game has ever shipped, besides WoD. I know this is a WILD opening sentence for a defense argument, but I am a romantic, not fucking delusional. This is a fact. Point blank period. The content drought was absurd, the legendary system was completely fucked, the maw in general, the lore reduced Arthas and Garrosh quite literally to dust, The Jailer as the main villain and FUCKING THORGAST, the overall alt unfriendliness, borrowed power cranked to a million, and I have expressed how much of a fucking joke I think putting Pelagos as the new Arbriter was.

It was bad.

This has been stablished, not just by me, but by the entirety of the wow community.

But even though I agree, all these things made the game worse, I still enjoyed my experience, and I have a positive outlook on the expansion overall, which seems to be the greatest sin a World of Warcraft player can commit: I liked Shadowlands. I dare to say I liked it more than I did Dragonflight, if I think really hard about it.

You simply cannot say you liked Shadowlands in the any circle of the WoW community online, from what I have seen. I remember Kraken Latte put it in first place in a rank she made of all expansions and got shit on for days on twitter, with people failing to see what she saw in the game.

Now, I feel like I have pointlessly yapping till now, so without further ado, here are some of the Shadowlands features i like the most:

1 - THREADS OF FATE

I am a simple man, who likes to do 2 things in wow: Mythic+ and leveling. That is pretty much it. I don't PvP, I rarely raid and I occasionally indulge in RPing as a Tidesage on Moonguard. And let me tell you, this baby right here was lifechanging.

Threads of Fate is by far, the single best feature (before Warbands, lol) in my entire World of Warcraft experience. I loved it. I loved it dearly. I don't think I have ever had so much fun leveling 60-70 through Revendreth and Ardenweald with ToF. I still have the route I took memorized, it was SO good. So many bonus objectives back to back to back, world quests and that goddamn gorgeous blue forest had the FATTEST questing hubs in the game.

I was so excited to play this combined with Chromie Time, like IT WAS ON BETA, until it was ruthlessly taken away from me for no goddamn reason AT ALL. Like, what the actual fuck blizzard. Y'all don't understand how delightful it would have been to level like that in ardenweald in the mid thirty levels, right after clearing Loch Modan (or the Silverspine and Hillsbrad, for horde). I barely touched SL since it got removed.

BRING IT BACK BLIZZARD, I AM BEGGING YOU, JUST DO THIS ONE SOLID FOR ME.

2 - COVENANT CALLINGS

Speaking of features I thoroughly enjoyed that were pried from my hands, we have the best iteration of daily quests this game has ever had. They actually worked as good dailies that gave actual gold, was a good reliable source of reputation and was amazing for anima and cosmetics.

This + the recent nerfs to the Dragonracing WQs make me feel like blizzard doesn't like when players make their gold independently, like, jesus christ not all of us have time to be profession moguls.

3 - THE 4 ZONES

What inspired this post was the fact that SL raids are now on legacy loot (if you didn't know, now you do) and I had to go to Bastion to buy the weapons with the thingy that drops from Nathria and...look at this. Just look at this.

This place is one of the most beautiful things this game has to offer. Like, the entire zone is gorgeous byt seeing this for the first time since DF came out legit moved me bro, LOOK AT IT.

And while the covenants were kind of a shit show gameplay-wise, in EVERY SINGLE OTHER ASPECT, it was a 10/10 feature, argue with your mom. Aesthetics, themes, everything, simply gorgeous. Also, it got bonus points from me bcs i really do not like to use training dummies in current expansions because of the sheer amount of people blasting them at any given time, so each covenant having their own Dummy Room, was a ++++ for me.

4 - THE NECROLORDS OF MALDRAXXUS

The Necrolords were the best covenant, their campaign was the best and their characters were the best. Like, come on now.

Draka? Mother. Vashj? Mother. Emeni? Mother. Sin'dane? Mother Stradama? Grandmother. Like, are you kidding me? I know lore was one of the Weakest points of SL overall, but you are insane if you include anything involving these guys. Even the Korthia campaign was enjoyable when they had the spotlight. And I only listed the female characters lmao, don't forget The Primus, Krexus's meme death, the five houses, Morgraine, Grahmal, Marileth, like C'MON!

5 - THE DUNGEONS

Except for the Theater of Pain, and arguably the De Other Side (I personaly love it), Shadowlands has the best overall roster of dungeons in the entire game.

Sanguine Dephts is, in my opinion the second best dungeon in WoW, period, behind only Freehold, Tazavesh is the best Mega Dungeon they ever made. Mists is a banger, Plaguefall is a banger except for the tentacles, Halls of Atonement, Spires (controversial take, ik), Necrotic Wake is amazing, like, you can say whatever you want about SL, but you cannot talk shit about its dungeon design.

Except ToP.

Fuck ToP.

Now, it's getting late so imma speedrun the rest of the items:

6 - COSMETICS

SL changed the transmog game, and all cosmetics from it (all the mounts and sets from all sources) look phenomenal, and if you disagree you are simply lying to yourself.

7 - ZERETH MORTIS

The zone was good and had tons of stuff to do and collect, plus, the introduction to the Catalysts was a plus.

also, nothing will be funnier than Taelia fucking Fordragon being the talking quest bubble for WQs in THE REALM OF ULTRA DEATH

8 - RAIDS

CN: Vibes? Immaculate. SoD: Horrible systems, cool mechanics SoFO: Cool systems, mid mechanics overall a positive for me

9 - CHARACTERS

Already mentioned a lot of characters from Maldraxxus, here are my other faves: Lady Moonberry, the gay unicorm, Denathrius, Theothar, basically ever steward, The Accuser, Kael'thas, General Draven, Remornia and many more.

There are probably more reasons to list to justify my love for SL despite all the bad it has in it, but I simply do not have the mental fuel to keep going rn, i need sleep.

TL;DR: I like Shadowlands despite it being bad and would appreciate it if ppl didn't throw a fit everytime someone talks about it in any sort of positive light. I then listed Threads of Fate, Callings, the first 4 zones, dungeon design, the fuckton of collectibles, characters and the beginning of the shift in game philosophy as positive and valid reasons to be a SL enjoyer.

[nukednick]

shadowlands piece so an oldie

[haunter-geist]

poorly colored sketch of heem.

[taggtheotter]

Shadowlands Pixel art

[rethar-quips]

This is one of my favourite quips I've made.

[mojomito]

Shadowlands was good for fashion.

[hellian-autumnheart]

Did you KNOW? That Hellian, Adelara, and Revion Autumnheart's grandparents, who died during the War of the Ancients, have been in the Shadowlands since? It's true, they have, and while they were mated in life, they have not seen one another since their deaths. Nylandrias Autumnheart, the previous Highborne Warrior preceding Hellian Autumnheart, resides in the afterlife of Maldraxxus, whereas Silnestria Autumnheart, the former Highborne Priestess, resides in the afterlife of Bastion. While they have not seen eachother, they have both done good work for Maldraxxus and Bastion in their afterlives, even while the Shadowlands were in chaos because of the anima drought and warfare that was brought to the Shadowlands by Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee, and Zovaal, the Jailer. Even though the Shadowlands have currently been at peace now, both Nylandrias and Silnestria have continued their work since the mortals and maw walkers conquered the realms of death. However, there could still be hope that these two lovers and mates will see eachother again in the hereafter, even if not now, whether they journey the inbetween to the eternal city of Oribos from their proper afterlives of Maldraxxus and Bastion or not.

[zubthal]

Taurolos mount from wow!

[azerothtravel]

Freefloating Apparition, Maldraxxus, November 23, 2020.

[saponaficionado]

I haven’t posted SHIT in a while so have a sketch dump

[xalatath]

Like the stinkiest WoW zone, without a doubt, would be Maldraxxus. Nothing could even compare to Maldraxxus stank. It's literally a theme park for rotting flesh, disease, and necromancy. The ambient track is like burping and groaning

[nz0th]

crying so so hard as i have to actually finish shadowlands' story so they'll let me into the raids so i can get my ass kicked for trying solo with mid gear instead of just sucking it up and pugging with strangers

[renaultmograine]

Whilst I agree with your basic point and Magni hasn't directly ordered the killing of children, I'll note he has done worse than simply "okayed a dig site on tauren land".

In Alterac Valley quests for the Alliance, a letter for Magni orders the "Takking and culling "of the Frostwolf and Ice Troll's land "for the Kingdom of Ironforge's imperialistic imperative" as well as the "extermination" of all the Frostwolf orcs and Ice trolls within the valley.

And the Explorer's League literally wiped out an entire tribe of tauren, the Stonespire tribe, down to only a couple of people, which is literally classified as genocide in real life in addition to being a crime against archeology. Their own journal states they knew the tauren weren't a threat, but the League did it anyway because they felt they were a superior race.

They did whilst killing nearby Horde civilians in the barrens. And Varian inexplicably promoted the asshole in charge of the genocide, Twinbraid, in Mists of Pandaria.

Yeah, as a tauren, I'm not doing the neutral quests for the Explorer's League, its like an Alliance PC being made to quest for the Royal Apothecary soceity!

I didn't answer this right away and let this stew to try and get my thoughts together on this, and I think my main gripe is just that Alexstrasza is the Dragon Queen and the Aspect of Life and nearly every expansion we deal with her involves child murder.

The racial leaders having done war things in World of Warcraft kind of doesn't bother me because that's the name of the game (literally lol) and now that Blizzard is trying to move away from the war aspect of it, it's a bit awkward. God knows that was felt in the war campaign when my blood elf in a Sunreaver tabard had to kill Sunreavers because Jaina fucking showed up.

I think you definitely have a point to not like them but like, there's a lot of leaders that that could be said for (not that I think you're saying there isn't). Sylvanas was behind the Wrathgate incident and she became leader of the goddamn Horde, not even counting for all the other shit that happened. I do mock Jaina quests when I'm on a horde character often, but it was always to me just like... eh, this is how the story has to be with the mess of the characters we got. That Gilneas reclamation quest is Horde and Alliance, after all.

That said, I'd love to do quest for the RAS on my Alliance characters lmao. I love how funky the forsaken are.

[bravest-notts]

my last session of my private wow server campaign was tonight and man i have really, really missed DMing stuff. i'll have to think about more terrible little plots to inflict on my friends >:)