Shadowlands so far: The good, the bad and everything else...

So Shadowlands has been live now for a week. Thoughts so far?

Where to begin?

Initially the glut of new content and later, systems, took as usual, a few days for me to get to grips with the entirety of it all. However a week in I think I've got a good handle on the gameplay cadence now, at least the one we'll have for the next few months.

This was an odd one. First up, the storyline was excellent. Each zone told a solid, cohesive story that added narrative not only specific to that zone, but built upon the storyline already established in previous zones.

A linear experience this time, at least on your first character, this enabled Blizzard to lean back into telling a cohesive and structured narrative that they weren't able to do in either Legion or Battle for Azeroth. That was down to how the levelling was structured in those expansions, in that players could choose any zone to level in and the world would scale around them.

This time through though they've decided, along with a lot of other systems, to go back to basics. What we get now, as mentioned above, is a single structured storyline, interwoven with the stories of each zone and how the Anima drought caused by the Jailer's actions is affecting them.

As a side note, I still find it thoroughly odd that the life force of the dead in the afterlife is both a currency and a power source. Anyhoo...

Actually levelling, storyline aside, was fun, for the most part. Unfortunately you hit 60 long before you finish the storyline in Revendreth, the final zone. And the way the levelling process is structured, you only get access to endgame systems once you polish off Revendreth's storyline.

For me, that meant having to play on for another 2 hours at level 60 before I could start actually getting into the endgame systems, such as choosing a covenant and beginning to gear up properly.

Blizzard could have handled this a lot better, and smoothed out the experience gains right across the levelling experience so that players hit 60 a lot closer to the finish of Revendreth's storyline than they do. As it is, the awkward situation is that you need to do a few side quests here and there in order to be a high enough level to progress to the next zone, which means that you need to be at least level 58 in order to move to Revendreth. So if you finish the storyline in the previous 3 zones and are still below 58, you cannot progress and move on in the storyline until you grind out however many sidequests are required to push you over to level 58.

However, the progression in Revendreth takes a lot more time to do than the time required to hit level 60 from there, even just concentrating on pure campaign missions from that point onwards.

So, a bit awkward, and easily avoided on further characters. On alts you can choose, as I have on my first couple to get levelled, to skip the campaign entirely and level using world quests and the content of the side quests available to players. Doing this, especially if you avoided the side quests during levelling of your first character, is a nice change. However it's not faster, though it is different.

What you can do though, is choose to go through the campaign again, and at level 59.9 head back to Oribos and speak to the NPC to switch to Threads of Fate, which you can't do at 60! If you do this before hitting level 60, you will be able to avoid getting caught, as first characters through the campaign do, having to finish off the final 2 hours of campaign questing before hitting Covenant endgame. Do it at the right point and you'll have to do a handful of world quests to push yourself over the brink to 60, then immediately progress onto Covenant choice and the rest of the game proper.

The zones. Man the zones! The artwork teams, both character and environmental have once again thoroughly outdone themselves.

Personally not a fan of Maldraxxus, as I'm not a huge lover of the whole Scourge aesthetic and never have been. However the rest of the game is simply gorgeous.

In reverse order, my favourite zones rack up as follows.

Not only does this zone drag on while levelling, the zone itself isn't the most pleasing to me personally. The story is fine, but the progression of levelling, coming here after Bastion, is excruciatingly slow. And to do it in a drab, depressing environment is even worse. Definitely my least favourite Shadowlands zone by a country mile!

A gothic, Stoker-esque vision of classic creepiness and Hammer Horror Vampire chic. The fact that a good proportion of the male Vanthyr sport the same hairstyle as Gary Oldman's Dracula in the eponymous 1992 version of the film is hilarious and fitting. I love the old school creepy factor in this zone, a veritable year-round celebration of Halloween!

Heaven in autumn. That's how I'd sum up the Kyrian zone. A beautiful exposition of angels and purity, the art of the zone is just simply stunning. Elysian Hold in particular, the Kyrian Covenant base, is both ascetic and divine. Very open air and easy to get around, the visuals of the structures in Bastion are on a par with anything else in the game.

My Gnome hunter's home Covenant zone. Ardenweald is quite possibly the most beautiful zone in the entire game. The forest itself is beautiful, and traversing it on a daily basis is never a chore. But man, the skies here! Oh god, they are easily my favourite in the whole of World of Warcraft. So stunningly gorgeous, there aren't words to describe how much I enjoy just sitting watching the sky here. Forever night time in the forest, the starlight streaming through and from the trees in Ardenweald is just so beautiful and mesmerising.

Gearing at endgame takes a bit longer than previous expansions. It's very frequent to see only 2 world quests up at any given time which reward gear, so gearing a new level 60, or indeed a Threads of Fate character (my Paladin is iLevel 115 - quest & world quest gear rewards are iLevel 80...), will be very slow and inefficient. Much better is to start spamming dungeons once you hit 60, as these will be your primary source of new gear until Castle Nathria opens in just over a week's time.

The dungeons themselves are fun, not too hard, and Theater of Pain aside, aren't annoying or filled with trash mobs like Motherlode was. It's quite possible to jump into Mythic 0 runs having not long dinged at 60, and some of my guildies were running them at 140-ish item levels. That's not that much higher than my Gnome started her levelling journey at, being 133 at level 50!

Gear progression is slower, and you may only see one or maybe two upgrades per handful of dungeons, and I'm ok with that. It makes each piece that much more meaningful, and thankfully none of it can warforge or titanforge!

Gear is gear once more, which of course means that BiS lists are finally once again a proper thing! :D

I'm currently iLevel 167 after week 1, which is decent and well on my way to getting closer to 180+ which is where you ideally want to be when Castle Nathria opens up on December 8th/9th.

Man, this is fun! A new addition to the game, it can be played solo or as part of an up to 5-man group. This is just an excuse for Blizzard to let players run wild with some insanely powerful temporary upgrades to abilities, and an excellent testing ground for Blizzard to test out potential future abilities or legendary powers.

Essentially it's you versus 6 floors of monsters (well, 5, but we'll get to that), finishing off with a large Boss mob alone on Floor 6. Floors are randomly generated, which means you'll never be able to get a full guide for progressing, but mobs and abilities will remain the same across all floors. Some floors are nice and short, others are sprawling and expansive, requiring you to properly dungeon dive like an old school adventurer, similar in a way to Diablo.

You basically go in, kill everything, pick up Anima Powers from powerful mobs and chests which are powers and upgrades that last for the duration of your run, and find the exit to the next floor.

Currently there are only 3 "layers" available in 2 Wings of the tower. A "Layer" is the name given to the sub-wings of each wing in Torghast. Currently only 2 wings are open, each with 3 layers. That means 36 floors of content in total (2 wings x 3 layers x 6 floors each layer). Each floor only takes about 5 minutes or so to get through, meaning a full run of 6 floors should take at most about 30 minutes, but you'll find yourself getting through a layer much faster than that at times.

Floor 3 on each layer is a Broker floor. This means no mobs or combat, and simply a chance to take a breather, change talents, gear or spec if required (this is forbidden on any other floor), and purchase some more anima powers or healing pots from the broker.

Floor 6, as mentioned, holds simply the final boss of the layer. No other mobs exist, just you vs the boss.

Overall I really enjoy it. It's a different game mode which is something you can work on at your own pace, although it is mandatory if you want to create and upgrade legendaries for your character. It is the main source of Soul Ash, which is the main material required to create a legendary item. Soul Ash is available from your mission table, but those missions are rare, and difficult to complete right now.

I've also found Torghast useful for getting to grips with Markmanship again, which is a spec I haven't really used since Warlords. The pure combat nature of Torghast means you need to be proficient with your spec, otherwise you can find yourself over-pulling and getting annihilated! Deaths are limited as well, which means if you die too often you'll fail the run!

There's plenty else to do in Shadowlands, as you'd imagine with it being the beginning of a new expansion.

There are a glut of new mounts to immediately pick up, as well as a plethora of new Hunter pets, combat pets, cosmetics, transmogs, titles, all of the fun stuff I enjoy collecting the most when not in a raid group :)

I've thoroughly enjoyed my first week in the new expansion, and have begun levelling my Paladin via the Threads of Fate, doing the same for my Void Elf Hunter, who I chose not to use as my main character in the end. I couldn't face not playing my little gnome, so I stuck with her for another expansion :)

My Paladin is now a Kyrian, as is my Void Elf Huntress. My Gnome may very well end up Kyrian as well at some point in the future, but for now she's more than happy seeing out the content and campaign for the Night Fae. The biggest turn off for me making my Gnome go Kyrian was the fact that I knew I'd be levelling my Paladin 2nd, and that it was definitely going to be a Kyrian, and doing the same content twice over quite so early on in the expansion held little appeal.

Overall a strong start for Shadowlands, and a vast improvement in so many areas over Battle for Azeroth!