World of Warcraft: Shadowlands takes players from Azeroth to the realms of death itself. Blizzard has been building up to the game’s launch with a series of animated shorts called Shadowlands Afterlives. Afterlives: Bastion revealed the fate of Uther the Lightbringer in the Shadowlands.
Now, Afterlives: Maldraxxus has given players insight into one of the other realms of death through the eyes of another important figure in WoW lore, Draka, the mother of Thrall. However, while Uther is transformed into a being resembling a relatively standard angel, Draka’s afterlife raises far more questions about the Warcraft lore that will need to be answered in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.
Maldraxxus is the heart of the Shadowlands’ military. It is established to be ruled by the Necrolord Covenant, and just as Uther ascended to Bastion because of his righteous good deeds in life, Draka’s soul goes to Maldraxxus because of her refusal to stop fighting in life, dying to save her infant son.
However, this raises some big questions about the orcish afterlife as already established in the Warcraft lore. Orcs in Warcraft believe that when they die they return to their ancestors, and there have even been in-game moments where powerful Shamans like Thrall have been able to contact these long-dead orcs for guidance.
However, the orcs are also a warrior culture, so it might strike some Warcraft fans as odd to learn that an orcish warrior who died fighting would go to Maldraxxus rather than be reunited with their ancestors. It also raises other questions. If Draka had not lived her life as a warrior but as a righteous do-gooder similar to Uther in the Bastion short, would she have ascended to Bastion instead? Do humans and orcs actually share an afterlife and, by extension, do all of the races of the Warcraft universe, categorized based on their deeds and not their beliefs or species?
The more disturbing implication for the orcs is that even those who have performed admirable deeds like dying to protect someone or leading a moral life might not be reunited in the afterlife. It appears likely that a noble Shaman like Warchief Thrall would likely ascend to Bastion while a warrior like his mother would be recruited into the armies of Maldraxxus.
Another big question which has yet to be answered is how exactly death will work as both an in-game mechanic and as a story device in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. If a character dies in the Shadowlands, where do they go? Is it possible for a soul to be completely erased in the Warcraft universe, or are they always alive in some way, and merely shuffled between realms?
The Afterlives: Bastion short seemed to imply that players might even meet Arthas in WoW: Shadowlands. This could mean that, for an expansion so thematically tied to death, the new WoW expansion may ironically imply that all beings in the Warcraft universe are in some sense immortal.
Draka’s afterlife in Maldraxxus also appears to be relatively similar to the life she led on Draenor and Azeroth. Though she says of her new associates that “their ways were not mine,” it is also clear that the beings of the Shadowlands also need to fight physical wars in a very similar way to the rest of the Warcraft universe. Draka even runs reconnaissance with a spyglass, showing that her physical limitations in life still apply in the afterlife.
Many WoW fans looking forward to Shadowlands will be looking forward to answers to some of these questions in the remaining two shorts to be released, Afterlives: Ardenweald, and Afterlives: Revendreth. Blizzard has a big task ahead of it to pull off exploring the afterlife while making death feel as meaningful and threatening as ever before World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.
World of Warcraft is available now for PC. At this point, World of Warcraft Shadowlands releases on October 26 or 27 (depending on time zone) for PC.
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