This was anticipated. But I'm having a hard time finding out if this is either being streamed to consoles like Star Craft 2 is on the PC Gamepass or if it's an actual proper port to consoles.
Indeed. By all accounts, the only things the Old Gods hated more than each other was everyone else.
So I played the campaign a little on the PTR:
The biggest bombshell is that Locus-Walker has struck an Enemy Mine with Xalatath and she is the one who helps us with the new artifact cloak. In fact she was the one who turned the Kareshi people into energy beings in exchange for them to blow up their own planet to "kill" Dimensius back then.
Edited by Kiefen on Jun 18th 2025 at 3:42:08 PM
TBF, after the Jailer, any half decent Big Bad of the next Warcraft saga would look amazing.
It helps that Xal actually is a pretty good villain even by Warcraft standards.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Ah, gotcha.
See, this is the kind of reward you get worshipping the Void instead of treating it like a disease that can be helpful like the Void Elves.
Say what you will about the Light, but at least they have better healthcare.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I think the reason of why it a great villian it because it was allow to breath and having multiple expasion to do things, it was also so vaguely you can add mysthique without subtracting.
meanwhile all other villians can only last one expansions and after arthas it was dificult to carry over because of it, deathwing was know mostly for warcraft 2 fans, garrosh was knew and controversial, legion really did a good job showing the demons in all their glory and Sylvanas was...controversial, the jailer even more
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"I think Warcraft is getting better at making original villains within the MMORPG, I fully expect Sire Denatheras to end up a successful villain. Iridikron also has some potential, though his story might get largely wrapped up by the end of The Last Titan.
Azshara is the last big pre WOW villain they've still got in their back pocket.
I agree that the Jailer would have made for a more interesting villain if he'd been built up more, but the core concept is solid: some dude in the Death pantheon gets all mad and wants to take over. It's not like it's the first time that's happened in the history of the setting, nor is it the first battle for the existence of Azeroth and/or reality itself.
It seems to be a running theme that each major force (Chaos, Order, Light, Void, Life, Death) has at least one character that becomes a Big Bad and wants to destroy or corrupt everything. I'm just waiting for the Light and Life shoes to drop — although one might note that the Emerald Nightmare already did the Life thing, sort of. I just don't think Xavius was all of it.
Anyway, what made me love Shadowlands — and apparently puts me in a tiny minority — was all of the character storylines that got payoff and/or resolution during the expansion. In contrast to Zovaal, Sylvanas has a strong story, along with Anduin. Thrall finds his mom, Uther has an arc, even Arthas' story gets a conclusion — even if it's not the one that the fanbase apparently wanted.
And of course there's my favorite arc of all: Tyrande, Elune, and the Winter Queen. Such a great payoff there, even if it — again — wasn't exactly what the alleged fans allegedly wanted.
Heck, the Final Boss of The War Within is some void god thingy that was only ever mentioned in passing before. (I think we did face Dimensius previously; I'll have to reminisce on it.) And once again it's a thing that will eat all of existence if it gets its way.
I thought we were all supposed to be sick of universe-destroying threats.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 20th 2025 at 10:11:56 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I do agre that from a lore point of view Shadowlands was more hits than misses.
It just strained under the extended COVID patch cycle and from being so detached from the old world.
I'm really glad for having seen so much of the shadowlands. Revendreath and Ardenweild especially are fascinating to me. And Uther's storyline is great.
Yeah, and the scandals going on at Blizzard during that time didn't help either. I freely admit that and think it's fair if people got disillusioned over those things, but projecting their hurt feelings onto the writers is unfair and toxic.
I do find it endlessly amusing that people are fawning over Xal'atath so much, despite her being fairly generic as far as villains go. I think it's the combination of a sexy female body (that she's literally stolen, yikes) and the fact that she goes barefoot. Because there's nothing that gets the Internet's bedsheets wet more than barefoot girlies with seductive voices, especially if they're also villains.
Xal'atath is barefoot dommy mommy and every time I encounter that fact my faith in humanity dies a little.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 20th 2025 at 11:23:58 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I’m not into Dommy mommies and I don’t find her attractive at all. Plus like Sylvanas, she’s a corpse.
But damn she has presence and competence, blowing up Dalaran is a hell of an opening move and I just love the way she messes with Alleria.
It’s not just people being horny. She’s actually doing shit and being charismatic.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Yeah I pointed that out, so like Sylvanas I don’t find her attractive at all.
I’m just saying her being a great villain has nothing to do with her being attractive.
Hell I love Gul’dan and he is ugly as shit.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I was never all that impressed by Gul’dan. At least not the og one. He went down like a chump to demons in Warcraft II and screwed the Horde out of near certain victory. Alternate universe Gul’dan had a better showing at least.
It’s funny reading the WC 2 manual which had Gul’dan bragging about everything he did and how he has all these grand ambitions…only to see him fall in an undignified manner in the game itself.
Edited by M84 on Jun 20th 2025 at 11:50:41 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised

The War Within: Ghosts of K’aresh Development Notes
The major new items here are the class updates. Big changes for quite a few specs, although I won't write them all out in a post.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 18th 2025 at 6:20:04 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"