When Did The Shadowlands Break?

So the Shadowlands are relatively simple, you have different realms based on characteristics of the individuals. When you fall you go before the Arbiter and based on your actions you get assigned to what you deserve. This worked for countless millennia but for some reason, everything just completely malfunctioned and souls would arrive straight into the Maw empowering the Jailer.

However when did this breaking of the machine of death occur and what is it that caused it? So all of the different realms have anima, which is soul energy and it is literally their lifeblood. The Arbiter would decide and generally, he would direct the souls equally to the corners of the Shadowlands.

Well since the Arbiter was essentially put to sleep and is dormant recently all souls have been getting into the Maw. The maw is the realm where all of the irredeemable souls go to and literally the worst place to be at, the home to the Jailer. So now all of the anima is going to the Jailer and the Jailer essentially hired an agent Sylvanas and who knows who else to cause as much death as possible to make him even more powerful as now that the seal is broken let's get as much power as we can.

In turn this completely messes up the balance and the rest of the realms as they are not receiving souls anymore and they now have to pick up any bits and pieces they can find and even sacrifice what they have. Essentially the other realms are dying as the Maw is consuming them all.

My thoughts are that the machine of death never really broke and that it was more like this dam that was hit so many times that eventually it just burst and messed everything up. And the Jailer has been having a go at this dam for thousands of years.

The first major problem that we know at least was the creation of the Lich King, that entire undeath thing that was completely unnatural, getting armour from the Jailer as well as his power. Then when Arthas died the Kyrians decided to deal out their own justice which once again even though just to an extent is completely against the rules.

Instead of allowing the Arbiter as is the law of the Shadowlands to decide the fate of Arthas they just went rogue, took him and threw him into directly the Maw. Keep in mind Arthas was an incredibly powerful character so his anima could have definitely messed up the balance there.

Then a million other things happened subsequently however with the recent Ardenweald video we realized that Ursoc did managed to avoid the Maw and his soul even grew there for some time so it definitely didn't happen at least until mid-Legion. Before that Ysera reached Ardenweald as well so it didn't happen then either.

Now some events were taught to have caused it most importantly Helya and the entire Sylvanas and the soul lantern thing, although as the Ursoc event happened after this wasn't what broke it, however, I do see it as quite a big cause. If you remember Helya she was like a mini Jailer and even had her own realm of death, she made a big deal with Sylvanas and Sylvanas served the Jailer.

Now we know for sure that Helya is also serving the Jailer so as a 'death goddess' herself when we defeated Helya she could have gone in front of the Arbiter done something to mess up the Arbiter or loosen just one more screw. Additionally, Argus was defeated at the end of Legion, the titan of death and this was literally the engine of the entire Burning Legion so you might imagine what sort of anima or balance issue this death might cause.

Related to this Sargeras also plunged his sword and we used the artifacts to cleanse it, specifically reforged Frostmourne that is related to the Jailer so this might have somehow connected his power to the Sword. An additional interesting theory is that it could also be Gul'Dan and the alternate realities as not only did alternate realities mess up warcraft lore in general but they could have also messed with the Shadowlands as the Arbiter judged Gul'Dan once but then he returned once again and was doing even worse stuff, so this copy of a soul could be like a bug that could block the computer if you see the Arbiter as a computer.

Essentially this entire Legion thing, magics that twist the life forms, undeath, shadow, fel this could somehow interfere with the souls. The reality is that at this current point in time we don't know exactly but the Ursoc thing confirms that everything worked at least until mid-Legion.

Furthermore, it is entirely possible that something happened within the Shadowlands that we are yet to find out and that we on Azeroth are really not as important as we think and that all the events that occurred could have just tipped the scales a bit and would be like 5% of what was happening in the past.

If the dreadlord spoiler lore is confirmed it might seem like the Jailer has been plotting this for tens of thousands of years and now finally the chips are falling in his favour and his plan is coming to fruition. What else is going behind the scenes we will have to find out but it is 100% certain that this entire Shadowlands engine thing is a really urgent matter.