FIXING SHADOWLANDS: WHAT IF DENATHRIUS WAS THE ACTUAL BBEG OF THE EXPANSION INSTEAD OF ZOVAAL
Everyone already knows that Shadowlands sucks ass. And I say this as a certified Shadowlands enjoyer. I am one of the few people that i've ever seen publicaly state that they legitimately loved playing through the expansion. Everyone also knows that The Jailer = trash. Zovaal is a uncharismatic, tasteless, tactless aberration spawned from the creative minds of an overinspired team of writers that frequently bit waaaaay too much more that they could chew, adding more crazy shit into a lore that was fresh from BFA, which was crazy and questionable by itself. Everyone also agrees that Denathrius is a much better character, and is remembered as one of the few good things in that expansion's story.
Therefore, i come to thee with my ideas of how the expansion should have been, and how the story and the progression of the content would make more sense to me. I am not gonna go too deep into how these changes would affect the mechanical side of the game (gameplay systems, in game activities etc.) because I am not a game designer. Just focusing on lore here.
Well, just to get it out of the way. I would not TOUCH. OLD. LORE. I don't know what the fuck they were thinking when they decided to retcon the fuck out of ARTHAS AND WARCRAFT 3 to make the Jailer as the mastermind behind it all. Like, that's just insane. Arthas one and only appearance in this expansion should've been that cinematic with Uther and Devos and that's it.
Anyways, in this version Sylvanas would still have abandoned the Horde, killed Saurfang, broken the Helm of Domination, and everything that took place in the cinematics with Devos and Uther throwing Arthas in the Maw of the story everything up until BFA would remain unchanged. Part of this exercise is focusing only on Shadowlands, and while BFA's story and that whole N'Zoth stuff was... certainly a choice, it honestly wasn't THAT bad, and ppl wouldn't bat an eye if Shadowlands payed off and delivered all that BFA promised.
I also wouldn't change the inactive arbiter plot and the anima drought. The leveling campaign and 9.0 would suffer some major alterations.
To me, one of the main problems with the expansion is Denathrius being dealt with way too soon. So I suggest pivoting to another crisis happening in the Shadowlands:
The Drusts in Ardenweald.
We focus on the invasion of the Drusts in Ardenweald, where our 9.0 raid would be located. The leveling quests would be altered, in fact, we could put the plot points fo the Night Fae covenant campaign, such as the fall of Ara'lon, to the leveling campaign, have it switch places with Revendreth or something.
However doing so bring us to the first road block:
Without Nathria and Denatrhius as the 9.0 main antagonists, how do we resolve the drought and all the anima being sent to the Maw? We need to justify putting
THROS, THE BLIGHTED LANDS! What if Gorak Tul and Gorak Zhar were working with the Jailer? What if part of all that anima the corrupt Venthyr were funneling to the Maw was going to the Drusts?
"But wait, isn't Thros a place in Azeroth? How can it be in the Maw?" Well, Thros is a foreign dimension, and if they were able to invade Ardenweald, it wouldn't be farfetch'd if they were being helped by someone as powerful as The Jailer to be able to walk around the Maw and the realm of death easily. I mean, I think at this point in the story we have encountered monsters of the Maw roaming about in Shadowlands, or at least some derivative of them.
Denathrius would still be built up as an antagonist in the leveling campaign, but instead of him being the one causing the drought he would be neutral, and Renathal would sic the player onto him just because, well, he doesn't like the guy. Denathrius would just be locked in his castle, being indifferent to the chaos happening, which would justify the rebelions against him. The changes would be appearing in the Covenant campaigns, and the story as a whole: The 9.0 covenant campaign for the Venthyr would have the player and the convenant collecting intel for the cause, uncovering the corruption happening with the vampires and stuff, and we wouldn't be going into the castle yet.
The raid would have 10 bosses, and half of them would be in Ardenweald, like, the zone, and the rest would be in Thros itself. In the Ardenweald half we would face corrupted members of the Night Hunt, one of those tall lanky dudes, a Drust general, and the fifth boss, the one before going into Thros, would be Ara'lon himself and his fight would involve the seeds, like the ones from his cinematic. As soon as we enter Thros we'd face Gorak Zhar and the final boss we would get aid from the Winter Queen against be Gorak Tul, the big boy himself.
The raid would justify the sheer ease Sylvanas had to snatch the Winter Queen's emblem and all that stuff with Tyrande and Elune, provided we justify it. How, that's for the team of writers to figure out.
9.1 - LET'S GO TO KORTHIA.
This is where this starts to get juicy. We save the Primus, we learn about the existance of Dreadlords here, everything with Korthia remains unchanged (reminder that i'm only talking about story here), and then, finally, we go to the Sepulcher of Domination, which also remains mostly unchanged. We wouldn't see Ner'zhul nor Kel'thuzad, and Kaelthas would be down here with Garrosh. Anyway, we go and beat the shit out of Sylvanas but she is NOT the final boss of this raid, she is the penultimate because the final boss of Sanctum would be:
The Jailer himself. Yes, we would be facing the supposed BBEG right now in 9.1. We defeat him before he can claim the Arbiter's sigil and then we would have a little surprise:
The cutscene that plays when we defeat him in Normal and Heroic would be the same as the canon one we have, where he would turn into a robot and wither away. However, that ending would not be canon. The canon ending comes in the Mythic difficulty, where in the mythic only phase we learn that what we thought to be the the Jailer is none other than:
MAL'GANIS BABYYYYYYY! As it turns out, the person we thought to be the Jailer and who we defeated after sooooooooo many wipes is Mal'Ganis!
To be fair, it can be any dreadlord, but I'd throw Mal'ganis here because 1) we need a big name so the twist can land and be super impactful and 2) Mal'ganis appears in the campaigns and is a raid boss on sepulcher anyway. What matters is, as I said, he Zovaal has been a dreadlord all this fucking time. And what are the dreadlords? They are called NATHREZIM! And who do the Nathrezim serve if not the master of Castle Nathria, the one and only: SIRE DENATHRIUS, who shows up, reveals himself, puts Sylvanas in a coma, takes the fifth sigil himself and bamfs away with Anduin, but not before killing Mal'Ganis for good this time.
He goes to Castle Nathria and ravages the place around it and do just like Garrosh did to this panda zone, and we could have a maw-scarred Revendreth or something, maybe that light attacking Sinfall interferes. The bulk of the 9.2 story would focus again in covenant specific campaigns:
Kyrians have to deal with the Mawsworn and Uther, pushing Devos away (Yes, Devos. I fucking hated how she had all that build up throwing Arthas in the Maw and stuff just to be thrown as a meager dungeon boss and die uncerimoniously while for some goddamn reason her pupil, some random bitch without a drop of charisma, becomes the Kyrian's main antagonist. I think her name is Lysonia or something, yeah she should've been the Dungeon boss).
The Necrolords restitute the Primus and his power and Vashj, Emeni, Braka, and someone from the house of Plagues are promoted as Margraves. Marileth maybe cut for the job? I don't know. What I know is, it's bullshit to me that the House of Constructs wasn't a Dungeon. It should've been one with Gharmal as the final boss, but alas.
The Night Fae deals with all that Tyrande stuff and the Venthyr's campaign would revolve entirely around breaking into the castle. These campaigns could interface with each other so all the players could experience the lore.
Now, before we go further, I feel like I should explain Denathrius plan and everything:
When the four leaders had Zovaal arrested, it was because he really was a corrupted arbiter and he really wanted to fuck shit up and remake the cycle of life and death. And you guys probably remember Denathrius attitude was like "Dude! You gots to let me know!" So yeah, Zovaal was thrown into the Maw.
Denathrius then went down to the Maw to talk to Zovaal, but when he got there he was shocked with the raw power and potential from that cursed place. Instead of negotiating with Zovaal, he engages in a conflict and kills him, and takes the Maw's power for himself.
He then starts the manipulation and to execute his plan all the way back in Legion. Of course he wouldn't be the mastermind of everything ever like they did in the canon with the Jailer, (again, I wouldn't touch anything before Legion with a ten foot pole). His plan starts while we are leaving WoD and going to Legion:
He was the one who knocked out the arbiter with Argus, he was the one who made a deal with Muezahla to put Sylvanas as the Horde's Warchief. All of this is happening because he is pulling the strings while Mal'ganis, his servant, is posing as the Jailer. Does that mean everytime a dreadlord ever appeared in the Lore it was Denathrius? Yeah, but like, it's probably easy to figure out reasons why the Dreadlords are working with the Legion. I mean, Revendreth is the place where all the anima is harvested, the more people die the more anima.
The Arbiter being disabled while he is in control of the maw would also justify Revendreth still having power and all that anima. They could be harvesting the souls like Soulrender was doing to Garrosh. He kidnaps the Primus, orchestrates the downfall of the Maldraxxus houses and the conflict between them and Bastion, etc.
"But why did he do all that? What's his motivation?" It's quite simple actually, Denathrius is a very simple villain. He doesn't want to RESET THE UNIVERSE BECAUSE THE CYCLE IS FLAWED AND THERE IS A BIGGER THREAT COMING BECAUSE HE IS ACTUALLY A MISUNDERSTOOD GUY DOING BAD THINGS FOR THE GREATER GOOD, SUPPOSEDLY"
He wants the power. That's it. Denathrius is a stereotypical narcissistic vampire chud who only cares about himself and sees the rest of the world as nothing more than maggots whose only purpose in life is to kiss his feet. He doesn't need any motivation other than the desire of seeing the entire Shadowlands, nay, the entire cosmos bending the knees to his greatness. Clean, cut, concise.
And finally, for 9.2, we'd be raiding Castle Nathria. The raid would play out the same way except for the fight against the Hungering Destroyer because it's too late into the expansion for Destroyers to be relevant as raid bosses in my opinion. We would kill Devos, Vyraz and the last boss would be The Boy King, Anduin Wrynn, weilding Remornia instead of Frostmourne. In this raid, the Primus would try to face Denny solo, and so he would be the second to last boss before Anduin.
At the end of the Raid, Denathrius would be able to flee to Zereth Mortis and the 9.3 patch would go smoothly with Zereth Mortis as the zone and the campaign would remain the same. Except maybe for Pelagos as the new arbiter cause wtf was that, and the Helm of Domination is restored to what it was before, because a Lich King is still needed in Azeroth to contain the Scourge. We kick Denathrius's ass in Sepulcher and we stick him into the sword, or idk he just dies. Also, one thing I dislike is Pelagos stating that he wont send anyone to the maw ever as arbiter, which like ????????????? Sir, that's your job? Instead of putting a Kyrian, the most biased bitches in this realm, as the Arbiter, we could just revive the one we have already and bring stuff back to how it was.
And then, Shadowlands cements itself as a pretty fine transitional expansion that brings Sylvanas closure and sets Anduin up for his role in the future.
10 years later, we have the events of Dragonflight and then TWW.
dededos
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