So, What Do We Think of Korthia?

 Korthia is the new zone added in 9.1 - a region of the Shadowlands hidden away in the "In-Between," which the Jailer has dragged into the Maw in order to discover the secrets there. It also, of course, functions as a daily quest hub that has a light Timeless-Isle-style discovery and exploration theme.

So, how do we feel about it?

In terms of aesthetic, I'm a little underwhelmed. For something meant to be a "City of Secrets," there's very little "city" to be found. Blizzard has never done an urban adventure location better than Suramar, and while I understand that was probably a very difficult thing to pull off (and I know some didn't love the stealth mechanics) I'd really love to see another environment like that at some point.

What's a bit disappointing is that Korthia kind of looks like it could be any other WoW patch-island. Yes, it has some Oribos-like architecture that links it to the core of the Shadowlands' order, but the ruins make up only a small part of the zone, much of which I was only able to access by falling off a cliff and realizing that the graveyard/obelisk my "ghost" popped up at was on the other side of the chasm.

The initial Shadowlands zones have all had extremely strong and otherworldly aesthetics, so I'm kind of surprised that Korthia has this generic "forest with some ruins in it" feel that isn't all that different from the Isle of Thunder.

Now, one thing to remember is that this is not an X.2 patch. The long delay for patch 9.1 might make us think that this place is meant to be the big exploration zone like Nazjatar or the aforementioned Isle of Thunder, but we're really still in what would, in pre-BFA terms, be thought of as the "first tier" of content.

One of the big mysteries moving forward in Shadowlands is how many patches the expansion will have. With the scale and scope of the expansion's story, I'm really hoping that we get the full treatment and get to a 9.3, with a big raid in 9.2 and 9.3. But I also understand why the developers are being cagey, given that the end of Sanctum of Domination is supposedly a major game-changer, so I think there's a bit of an artificial event horizon right now beyond the end of that raid to preserve the surprise. (Just so we're clear, the Jailer's almost certainly going to win and kill the Arbiter, right?)

So, to bring things back to 9.1, I think we need to cut Korthia some slack. If we compare 9.1 to other expansions, this is more the equivalent of the Kvaldir invasions in 7.1 and the second Suramar story campaign. It's the equivalent of the faction assaults in BFA and the story quests to lead into the Dazar'alor raid. And in that case, this is actually a huge step up. Of course, not every expansion is precisely set up the same way.

Perhaps this is more of an equivalent to 7.2's Broken Shore - which was unique in that the zone itself existed in 7.0, but was literally just filled with boss-level enemies and no real things to do until the patch. The Broken Shore was a questing and world-quest zone, but 7.3 brought us Argus, which was a much more interesting and unique set of zones (still primarily for world quests.)

Having no clue what the expansion is going to look like after the Sanctum of Domination, I can't really comment on what we can expect for 9.2 and 9.3 - I can only hope that we'll get them and that this won't be another Warlords of Draenor-style shortened expansion.

While I don't think it's been my favorite expansion in terms of all its game mechanics, I'm 100% invested in the premise of Shadowlands, so I really, really don't want them to abandon this to work on something less out-there to fit into the 2-year cycle. Personally, I'd rather 10.0 come a bit later than normal if it means we get to have the full Shadowlands expansion that they wanted to do before the plague came.

(Also, I know Turalyon's had some warmongering lines, and it would be refreshing for the Alliance to be to blame for further conflicts, but I'd really love if we could leave the faction war to the PvPers and let the end of Battle for Azeroth actually mean something. I know that my dream of a post-faction-conflict Azeroth is unlikely, but can we at least set it aside in favor of more interesting stories that haven't been beaten into the ground?)