wow Restored Plaguelands Zone and Story (Fan Concept)

[Starym 3,775]

 

Here's an interesting concept for a zone/zones and story, as a player imagined a future WoW where the heroes never returned from the Shadowlands and the story continued for a long time.

Genegerbread came up with the Restored Plaguelands project, which is just the first section of the larger idea, where 250 years have passed since Shadowlands and the heroes that left have not returned yet. As you could probably guess from the title, the Plaguelands have been restored and this first story is set there, with plans for the entirety of Azeroth as well. The Silver Hand and Scarlet Crusade are the focus of the plot, as the leader of the Hand is colluding with the Crusade in order to bring back the Paladins from the Shadowlands. There's dungeons, Breath of the Wild-like pillars, a Paladin class campaign, and more, but let's take a look at the map first:

Source.

And here's the full story, as detailed by Genegerbread:

Made with Inkarnate Pro! Also, though this is a fan reboot project, I'm not actually making a private server or anything. This is just a concept. Alright, here’s the idea: Azeroth 250 years in the future. An entire reboot of the WoW franchise that revamps the entirety of both the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. It brings certain zones together into larger areas called regions (in this case, the Western and Eastern Plaguelands) and makes each region flow into one another. Essentially, an update for graphics, storytelling and systems. Story Synopsis: Today, I’m sharing the project’s idea of an updated Plaguelands. It’s been 250 years, and the heroes from the Shadowlands have yet to return. Though the Plaguelands have now been entirely restored (and much of it is in ruins), small groups and organizations still remain. The two major groups that players will deal with here are the remaining Knights of the Silver Hand (now a much smaller group) and the Scarlet Crusade. Players will initially help some Knights of the Silver Hand investigate what the Scarlet Crusade has been up to, but the small group of adventurers soon learns that the current leader of the Silver Hand is up to no good, and is in fact colluding with the Scarlet Crusade to bring the paladins stuck in the Shadowlands back from the realm of the dead. You and the small group of the Knights of the Silver Hand who seek to stop their leader’s alliance with the Scarlet Crusade will eventually meet with Alonsus Faol, who lives on a small parcel of land south of Stratholme. Together, you must stop the Scarlet Crusade and the Knights of the Silver Hand from going through with this last-ditch effort. Systems and Features: A few things may stick out to you! I’ll discuss them a bit further in-depth here: Ruins of Stratholme (Open Dungeon): This project (all hypothetical) is asking, “what would WoW be like with more open world-oriented content?” As such, Lordaeron Plains is one of three regions with an open dungeon, which is a dungeon in the overworld. When an open dungeon is active, players will be able to team up and fight hordes of enemies off from within the city of Stratholme. Rewards are still being decided upon, but the idea is to provide a strong incentive to participate in open-world content, so it won’t be something niche. Tyrian Pillar: This project also introduces a new mapping system that is similar to Breath of the Wild’s mapping system. Sometime in the 250 years between the shattering of the veil and the present, Tyr somehow created a mapping system of what remains of Azeroth. Each region has a Tyrian Pillar, which is surrounded by flora and fauna, as well as possible quest givers that may facilitate the story. When a Tyrian Pillar is activated, the entire region’s map will be revealed. This isn’t all, however, as you can collect various components that will make the map even more detailed, with several different cores that will (respectively): provide more detailed descriptions about regions and their species/wildlife, show where certain transportation routes are currently located, the location of Fabled Beasts (world boss replacement), and rare/patrol/PvP bounty tracking. More cores are being conceptualized right now. Paladin Campaign: This project brings back the idea of class quests (and there are class halls in the new capital!). Paladins will find themselves going to the Lordaeron Plains at max level to learn about how the Knights of the Silver Hand was created, as well as to obtain a keepsake of Uther from the Cathedral of Light dungeon. Kinda Sparse?: You may notice that this region has a lot of open space. There’s a lot of exploration to be done in this reboot concept of WoW, and though a lot of the map surely does have empty space, there’s a lot of unmapped NPCs and other things to discover. There’s a lot more to these regions than just its story, and there’ll certainly be missions from NPCs across the world that’ll take you here to complete certain objectives.

You can check out even more details over in the reddit thread.

The specifics of this post-Shadowlands story aside, it does seem likely Blizzard will try to do something with the supposed dream-like passage of time in the Shadowlands, as they focused on that quite a lot in the pre-release period, however it would have an opposite effect - more time would pass in SL than on Azeroth. What exactly could be done with that? Well, for one it would explain why the Scourge hasn't wiped everyone out, as advertised during WotLk and afterwards, and might set that up as the next big threat (although it seems more likely we get a new Lich King/method of controlling the Scourge). In any case, hopefully the difference in the passage of time will have an impact on the story somewhere down the line (despite our characters technically constantly popping in and out of the Shadowlands).

[Dejo93 983]

Wouldn't surprise me if this happens, considering it's highly likely we'll get another world revamp

[Arcling 872]

3 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

Wouldn't surprise me if this happens, considering it's highly likely we'll get another world revamp

Not sure if they are going to make something like in Cata. Seems they might stick to revamping select few zones and putting bronze dragon to have option to see previous version. And seeing how only Stormwind and Orgrimmar are a fully functional capitals, Ironforge and Thunder Bluff might be next when they need to destroy something for another huge cataclysm... Exodar and Silvermoon likely still safe, because that would require updating these zones. 😆

As for this map, I think there are too many ruins. After all these years, they should have rebuilt those cities.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Arcling

[SidonisAntares 288]

Well I suppose this is better than the ending to the So-

[durdyenglish 298]

Plaguelands are probably next or close to next on the zone revamp list. It's been 16 years, some change in the parts of the world that are still stuck in the post-Cata (but really post-WC3) era would nice.

[Prophet001 543]

This is a good idea.