Shadowlands Has the Potential to Be Incredibly Good, or It Could Be a Disappointment

In many ways, Shadowlands is exactly the expansion I was hoping we would get.

I've always loved the way that Warcraft uses the undead, and giving the power of death not just a turn in the spotlight for the first time since Wrath but also greater nuance - like the fact that Death is not all evil, which contrasts strongly with the Fel and the Void - is really cool. I know that some lore purists are going to take issue with this massive addition to the Warcraft cosmos and I am very eager (and somewhat anxious) to see how, for example, the various Shadowlands covenants relate to things like Titans, Naaru, Demons, and Void Lords, I'm happy for them to expand things, essentially giving Warcraft its own Outer Planes.

It's very early to judge the system changes. I think the profound change to leveling - both the squish and the notion that you can just pick an expansion (I'm going to be very curious how this works when the subsequent expansion comes out) - could make the creation of a new character far less daunting. Being able to take a character (that is not a Demon Hunter or boosted) directly to the Broken Isles, for example, sounds fantastic.

What I will say is that it seems as if there are fewer new "ideas" coming into this expansion.

Is that a bad thing, though?

I actually enjoy Warfronts, or rather, I enjoyed them a lot when they first came out. I also don't mind Island Expeditions, though the whole AP grind as the main motivation to run them made me feel less enthusiastic about them.

I've been thinking, in the days since Artifact weapons were first introduced, that maybe it's time to return to a simpler era of WoW. Being able to get a character to a point where they're just "done" for the time being (until the next major patch comes out) is, honestly, the most alt-friendly thing you can do. Letting your main sit, knowing that they're fine and ready for what's next, allows you to play alts guilt-free. Meanwhile, in BFA, I even feel unmotivated to play my primary alts - the characters I've considered "vice mains" like my Death Knight or Demon Hunter. There's so much for me to unlock on my paladin that it feels like playing them is just taking away from energy I need to spend on the main character.

The real question is where to strike the balance. In Warlords, it was too easy for you to feel "done" on a character. If you were doing your mission table, you were basically good, getting great gear. The legendary chain did keep you running the raids, but that was about it. There also wasn't much to do.

Ironically, while BFA has given us tons of things to do - between Azerite farming, raiding, hunting down essences - for me at least it's actually contributed to a serious lack of motivation to really play much. I still haven't set a foot in the Eternal Palace and only briefly skimmed a couple bosses in Dazar'alor. I'm hoping to take Ny'alotha seriously because, well, I've been wanting to go there for a long time. But I'm definitely not going in with a character who's geared to the teeth.

I think Shadowlands could, potentially, really benefit from a simpler approach. If the covenants manage to strike a balance between not being too time-gated but also not too grindy (which might be a contradiction in terms) they could be really cool.

I am very curious to see how the Tower of the Damned works out. I'm sure there will be people who detest it simply because it's a new system. To me, this seems like the biggest risk of the expansion - I'm hoping that a once-a-week run will be all that hardcore players need to stay optimal, while there'll still be some reward if it feels fun to keep people coming back if they like it.

The lack of a new class is tough, and I think Taliesin & Evitel really nailed the issue: WoW does not need a new class. But Shadowlands might. WoW's best expansions - admittedly a subjective question - have, at least in my eyes and theirs, been the ones that introduced new classes. Not getting a new type of character to play around with is a bit of a let down, even if the current array of twelve is lot for them to keep balanced.

If the Covenant Campaigns truly turn out to be Suramar-level deep, I'll be very happy. In BFA, the War Campaign felt less like a really compelling throughline to the expansion and more like just the standard story quests you get with a new patch. Having an ongoing story at max level that will take months to complete, and hopefully has the kind of charming and interesting cast like the Dusk Lily revolution did would really help get us invested in the world. (I will say that I also hope it continues into later patches. The Broken Shore "campaign" was a really dull introduction to systems you were already sick of by the time you finished it, and the Argus quests, while epic, were over far too quickly - the various named Lightforged characters felt like they were an attempt to be big personalities like the Nightborne NPCs, but we didn't spend nearly enough time with them to get much of that.)

Again, I think thematically and aesthetically, I'm incredibly happy about Shadowlands. While I get the appeal of more grounded settings, I tend to prefer when WoW goes really out there.

I'm also really glad that we have a centerpiece villain from the start of the expansion. I get that N'zoth's all about hidden influences and background plots, but I really would have liked to see his influence earlier in BFA. We might still discover new things in 8.3, but the fact that it seems this Jailor and Sylvanas were planning the big war and all the death from the start is pretty disappointing for those of us who really like the idea that N'zoth is the ultimate schemer.

For those who are balking at this massive chunk of lore being added to the game, I'll remind you that before Legion (well, and Chronicle) we didn't know, for example, that Azeroth was a Titan (though many of course had suspected that - indeed, when you kill Yogg-Saron, he refers to the world as a "miserable little seedling" which should have been a big hint.) There was a massive influx of lore in Legion, and I think most of us have pretty much adjusted to it.

We've had disappointing expansions in the past. Cataclysm and Warlords were kind of content-thin (well, Cataclysm was content-thin unless you were leveling up a new alt - in fact it's probably the biggest overall expansion they've done.) BFA has, I think, been bogged down in systems that felt more like an interesting developmental challenge than actual fun gameplay and also a plot that requires our characters to forget lessons we've learned before about the faction conflict. That being said, even the bad expansions have had their redeeming features. And of course, the good ones have had their flaws.

Mists of Pandaria these days is considered one of the good expansions, but I'll confess (and you can see in the early days of this blog) that there were a number of problems I had with it, and at the time I was not terribly enamored of it. I think in the long run I have fond feelings for it, between the fantastic world-building (and boy was that another expansion that really created massive amounts of new lore whole-cloth) and real steps up in storytelling (the 5.1 Landfall campaign quests were the spiritual predecessor for Suramar.)

We're still probably about a year out from the launch of Shadowlands, and there's a ton of stuff we don't yet know about it. Indeed, there's a ton of stuff that Blizzard doesn't know about it, because they're still building it.

I'm excited to play it. I want to see the story and the zones, and I want to see how deep the Covenants are. And I need to figure out which of these things my characters are going to choose!

With Blizzcon over, the agonizing wait for more information begins. We've gotten the big stuff, but that means Blizzard is under no obligation for, potentially, months to give us anything new. We still have 8.3 to look forward to, and indeed, there's some very interesting stuff coming in that that we shouldn't be too eager to blow right past it.