WoW Shadowlands players bemused as Blizzard “gut” main story quests
Blizzard EntertainmentWorld of Warcraft’s Shadowlands expansion has come under fire for its poor plot in the past, but it turns out WoW patch 9.1.o removed some of the story’s most important quests.
The latest chapter in the World of Warcraft story, Shadowlands, hasn’t exactly been the narrative miracle that players hoped it would be.
With Twitch sensation Asmongold slamming the story for being “the same” as Marvel’s classic movie Avengers, the plot has come under fire for having “robbed” players of WoW’s iconic Banshee Queen, Sylvanas Windrunner.
To add more fuel to the fire, coming into patch 9.1.o Blizzard removed some of Shadowlands’ main story quests without warning, confusing both fans and the narrative arc alike.
Blizzard EntertainmentWoW Shadowlands plot quests removed
As spotted by Reddit user Lenestar, several of Shadowlands’ key story quests appear to have been silently removed in patch 9.1.0.
“From what I can tell, when 9.1 dropped Blizzard simply removed the following quests in an undocumented change. Simply deleted them and marked the complete for everybody,” they note.
“Given that the core problem that starts the expansion is the capture of the faction leaders, simply deleting these quests obviously guts the bulk of the main, non-covenant story for the entire expansion.”
Taking iconic character Jaina Proudmoore as an example, Lenestar shows that the initially captured ice queen reappears back in the safe haven of Oribos without you having to rescue her, something that was integral to setting the Shadowlands story in motion. “If I go speak to Jaina at Oribos she has specifically written dialog to explain how she got out of the Maw even though I never rescued her.”
Among other quests to be removed are the introduction to the title’s roguelike dungeon, Torghast, alongside the cinematic exchange between Sylvanas and Anduin where the latter eventually falls victim to the Jailer’s corruption.
“Yeah it’s dumb,” comments one player. “None of it makes sense to someone playing sl [Shadowlands] for the first time.”
“Blizzard has zero respect for their story in their own game,” writes another. “Massive chunks of previous expansions are now missing leaving players unable to experience the story of those expansions in full.”
Despite being a pretty perplexing change, it seems like new adventurers will only have a snapshot of what the original, fleshed-out story looks like. Maybe these quests will return with the addition of patch 9.1.5 – all we can do is cross our fingers.