I hadn't played WoW for about 3 months before today. I say this even though 9.0 was an excellent opening patch to an expansion. It's just that, since Shadowlands' launch in November, we've waited this long for the first (of what I hope is the normal number) update due to, well, the plague really gumming up the works.
That delay was understandable, but it also meant that I was burned out on what we had and didn't want to feel totally burned out by the expansion. So I took a break and focused my gaming nerdiness on D&D and, recently, a return to MTGA (I'll confess I'm a sucker for the Forgotten Realms crossover and splurged on the pre-order 50 packs).
But with 9.1, we've finally got new stuff to do.
And boy is there a lot to do in the first day. I spent several hours entirely on my main today just playing through the initially available quests. These center primarily on a battle in Ardenweald and the discovery of Korthia (with one annoying bug that forced me to repeat a quest, though thankfully it worked the second time.)
The patch also did what I always find exciting when we're in a new and different environment - it tied things back to the familiar bits of WoW lore. In some ways, Shadowlands has felt a little similar to Mists of Pandaria, in which we traveled to a very different place where the history and specifically the conflicts in that history seemed all-new. But just as Mists eventually revealed its connection to the Titans and the Old Gods, we're seeing some familiar faces (and not just dead people) in the story here.
Let's go into spoiler territory.
First off, the patch story starts off with the cinematic that shows Anduin being puppetted by the Jailer to steal the sigil off of the Archon. I'm glad there's no ambiguity here that Anduin could have truly been corrupted - I would never believe it. Instead, it's clear that the Jailer is using him as a sort of avatar that can go where he cannot.
Anyway, the Jailer's forces had already gotten the sigils off of Denathrius (who gave it to him, presumably) and the Primus (whom he had defeated in combat) and so that puts the target on the Winter Queen.
We fight a battle in Ardenweald as the Maw's forces assault it, and confront Sylvanas. However, just as it looks like she's about to take us out, Tyrande shows up and starts kicking her ass. Night-Warrior-empowered Tyrande is, I think, the most powerful we've ever seen a mortal be, but for some reason, the power leaves her in the middle of the fight, and Sylvanas is able to escape - and reveal this was all a distraction, as Anduin get to the Heart of the Forest and takes the final sigil.
We then travel to the Maw and go with Ve'nari to Korthia, though we just barely avoid being spotted by the actual, literal Eye of the Jailer (2nd boss in the new raid!) Korthia is a land that was hidden away in the In-Between and has its own order of Attendants. In theory, this place has incredibly important secrets.
After establishing some travel networks stuff and a new system for getting upgradeable gear, Bolvar leads a new alliance between the covenants to establish a foothold in Korthia and fight off the Mawsworn. Also, the attendant we meet there confirms that we've got some kind of unique anima that, among other things, allows us to finally summon our mounts in the Maw.
That's not all, though:
We do some work with Ve'nari that eventually leads us to a Val'kyr trapped in the Maw. Not a Kyrian - a Val'kyr, who works for Odyn. Freeing her, we travel to Skyhold and talk with the big fire-bearded one and he has us forge a horn and recruit a group of tough-as-nails val'kyr to help deal with the Eye of the Jailer - which, as it turns out, is actually Odyn's eye, whom he traded to Muehzalla to learn how to create the val'kyr in the first place. (Danica, the val'kyr, and Polemarch Adrestes, note their similarities, though whether we're going to get further into that whole thing is anyone's guess.)
Taking the val'kyr to the Maw, we use the horn that Odyn crafted to lure the Eye of the Jailer to us and engage it in battle. After pulling the orbiting eye things off of it and killing them like a Link to the Past boss fight, the Eye flees to Torghast, which means yes, we can now stay in the Maw indefinitely.
I'm not 100% sure how I feel about that. I might be one of the few people who found the Maw's hostile design kind of refreshing. It felt genuinely dangerous to go anywhere there, and the Eye of the Jailer really reinforced the notion that we were trespassing in hostile territory.
That said, this reflects the story: we're going on the offensive, and we've struck at the Jailer's home turf in a way that we're hoping will put him on his heels. It makes sense, narratively, that we would chip away at the ominous power he holds.
Finally, there are some additional quests in Korthia that had us actually retread some of the territory that we quested through to get the whole Archive/upgradeable gear thing, and once again we start doing quests for someone who really telegraphs that she's a bad guy. A weirdly snarky Attendant asks us to help find the Fatescribe she claims to serve, but when we actually undo his illusory hiding spot, she reveals that she's not an attendant at all.
She's a nathrezim.
Now, I actually knew that the dreadlords were going to show up in this patch, but even then I was still shocked at that reveal. I assumed it was some Mawsworn spellcaster or something, but nope: full on demon dreadlord. And then we fight one, and my Wake of Ashes ability suddenly got a little more useful.
Obviously, everyone's clocked a lot of strong hints that the Nathrezim have something to do with Revendreth and Sire Denathrius. And we get some new dreadlord models that look very, very similar to the Stoneborn. We don't have the full story here, but the Nathrezim are in play.
From there, there's a weekly quest to basically do stuff in the Maw that will earn you some renown (also I think that the quest to free souls no longer does, at least past Renown 40, so if you find that tedious, I think you can ignore it unless you want to large amounts of anima from it.
In fact, at least on day one, they really throw anima at you. I'm hoping this means the weekly 1000 anima quest is going to get a lot easier to complete, and I think generally accelerating the pace of anima acquisition would be welcome given the massive number of cosmetic and other items that you can spend it on.
Anyway, it's nice to be back in WoW. Here's hoping 9.2 comes a lot quicker.
No comments:
Post a Comment