Editing World of Warcraft (section)

===Shadowlands=== 
Sylvanas is revealed to be a chief agent for the Jailer, a powerful death being who resides in the afterlife and is responsible for her increased powers.  With her newfound powers, Sylvanas [[Plot Armor|solos Icecrown and defeats Lich King Bolvar]], chained him up and shattered the Helm of Domination, which somehow made a giant hole in the sky that leads to the afterlife.  Frankly after the Cataclysm, several years of attacks by legion space fleets, a planet-sized fel portal, a planet-sized demonic titan stabbing his sword into Silithus and it being stuck there, burning down the nelf city tree... seeing a hole in the sky to a nightless hellscape wouldn't get a second glance from the typical Azerothian.

There are different afterlives, such as various purgatory-type places, afterlives for reincarnation and a place called the Maw which is post-retcon Warcraft's version of hell.  The most influential being in the Shadowlands is the Arbiter, an ancient being who assesses a person's deeds then sends them to an afterlife based on that.  But she's unconscious and unable to judge (Sylvanas and Helya were chief suspects, it was later revealed to be Dreadlord meddling and Argus' soul) and the Jailer is sucking the souls of everyone who dies into the Maw.  Meanwhile, the rulers of the other afterlives only know that there's an absence of new souls and an anima drought in addition to their own issues. 

In a weird way, the Shadowlands harvests soul energy and uses those people in their armies.  Many of the actions taken are ruthless, though some have good reasons.  Just like how Warlords let Blizzard use long-dead characters again without retcons, the expansion features constant reminders of old characters, quests, dungeons, raids, and anything else that has a reference fans will recognize. Big hit A-listers like Draka....remember her she was Thrall's mom? What a perfect and relevant character to bring back, Shadowlands is sure to succeed with such a star. /s   Thankfully, major characters like Uther, Kael'thas - a blood elf prince introduced in Warcraft 3 whose story was screwed so badly Blizzard themselves apologized for it, and Kel'Thuzad appear and have significant story roles.  Garrosh only appeared in a trailer and as a raid boss' captive in the Jailer's base... where he literally yeeted himself out of the story just as quickly to destroy his captor with him.  Also Lady Vashj is there too.  Anyone remember Lady Vashj?  

After the Jailer, with Sylvanas' help, mind-controlled Anduin into wielding his finest weapon, the Jailer starts his endgame (yes, that word was chosen for a reason).  The expansion turns out to have been the final part of plot by the Jailer to gather the five <strike>Infinity Stones</strike> covenant sigils and enter Zereth Mortis: the origin point of the cosmos and the true heart of the Realm of Death. Home and grave of the SUPER GODS that were even better then that Titans! There, he plans on rewriting the rules of reality. To what? Literally no one knows, including Sylvanas who sacrificed everything to help this guy do whatever it was he was trying to do to fate and reality and death. It is kind of weird to have a whole arc to go by without a motive for the villain, but I'm sure it will be evil!  With the help of the newly-returned Primus, we try to fight back against the Jailer, and Tyrande's "Night Warrior" story is sloppily ended with an Elune cameo and Tyrande losing said powers.  Even "better", we fail and Sylvanas, who has literally seen him have so much in common with Lich King Arthas - to the point of turning Anduin's sword into Frostmourne 2.0 and making her do to Anduin what Arthas did to her - [[Wat|turns on the Jailer after he says the word "serve"]].

It's at this point that things turn meta.  The sloppy Sylvanas double-cross was frankly the last straw for a large and vocal segment of the WoW userbase.  Multiple prominent streamers and bloggers very visibly left for [[Final_Fantasy#Eorzea_Races|Final Fantasy XIV]], in turn causing Square Enix to temporarily freeze digital sales in order to bring more servers online.  By the start of 2022 it's clear that Shadowlands was not a bold new direction for the WoW franchise, but rather part of a holding pattern - one previously hidden behind fanservice and nostalgia-bating - for a writing team that has no long term story and is scraping the dirt under the barrel for ideas.  The Jailer, the main villain of Shadowlands, ends not with a bang, but literally a whimper, his whispered dying words used as a vague cliffhanger to set up a future expansion; showing that not even Warcraft's version of heaven and hell can end the infinite regression of the bigger evil.

Once the dust is settled and the Jailer dead, there's still the matter of what to do with Sylvanas (the Jailer having given her half of her soul back to let her feel guilt and torment her after she turned on him). In a surprisingly actually-not-badly written ending, Tyrande decides that Sylvanas's fate will be to spend however long she needs to rescue every single soul she's been responsible for sending to the Maw, and only ''then'' will she be judged by the new Arbiter (Pelagos, a Kyrian who stepped up to replace the previous one).  Which gives Tyrande a say over Sylvanas's fate while also removing the banshee from the game's plot for the forseeable future ''and'' still allows the potential "redemption" (since souls that doomed entire planets are shown to still be given the chance to atone in Revendreath, completely refusing any such opportunity to the now-fully-souled and regretful Sylvanas would have been odd)