CHOICE & CONSEQUENCE

When it launches later this year, Shadowlands will take players on a journey to the afterlife in order to save the world of the living. And at the end of that initial story campaign, players will have to make the most difficult choice they’ve faced since the character selection screen. But Shadowlands is more than a chance to inject some much-needed feeling of consequence back into your adventure. It’s also an opportunity for Blizzard to tear the veil off an entirely new part of the Warcraft universe – one that wasn’t spelled out in game manuals, tie-in novels, or lore bibles decades ago.

“Many of our past expansions had a clear anchor in some large established villain, piece of lore, a place in the world,” game director Ion Hazzikostas tells me. “There were reams of novels that have been written or past references in games like Warcraft III or otherwise. But Shadowlands really started from almost a footnote, frankly. It’s a world created largely whole cloth from the imaginations of our artists and our narrative designers.”

THE OTHER SIDE

To understand what’s happening in the Shadowlands, players must be familiar with what happened during the climax of the current expansion, . After being ousted from her position as Horde Warchief, the undead banshee queen Sylvanas Nightrunner flees to the frigid continent of Northrend. It’s here that she battles the new Lich King, Bolvar, for his Helm of Domination that Arthasversion of an afterlife. Obviously that’s not actually a good thing.