I've been playing WoW again.
You know, it's a bit weird. For one thing, after having been dutifully keeping up for so long, finding that my main (not to mention my alts) is way behind on Renown is an odd feeling.
There's not really anything new per se - and I'm not one to hop between covenants, so I haven't even tried doing that (I was considering changing my Demon Hunter from Venthyr to Night Fae, though I haven't actually logged in on him yet and I'm not sure if I want to).
But there is some comfort to grabbing the old Avenger's Shield and flying around the Shadowlands.
Obviously, the biggest issue with Shadowlands for me has been a meta-narrative about the company that produces the game. But even if we set aside the stories of abuse and harassment at a company that had put a lot of effort into seeming like "one of the good ones," the expansion has also suffered from a major slowdown in content production, likely due to the pandemic. In a typical "normal" expansion cycle, we'd have gotten 9.2 around July. But instead, 9.1, which felt like a good amount of content for about three or four months, has instead had to be the major substance of the expansion for most of 2021.
The good news is that 9.2 is coming. We've seen a teaser of some strange glyphs (likely for the smarter/more committed nerds to puzzle out) that could tell us what's happening - though the end of the Sanctum of Domination raid made it seemingly pretty clear.
WoW desperately needs new stuff, so anything will be welcome.
The big question I have is what 9.2 means for Shadowlands - is this the end of the expansion?
While I had big issues with Battle for Azeroth, I would never complain that it felt too thin. In fact, one of the major problems I had with it was that it tried to tell two somewhat disconnected stories that could have each carried an entire expansion at the same time. I think N'zoth got short shrift by having to share the stage with the Alliance/Horde war (and the fact that we didn't see some major change to the way the factions worked at the end of BFA meant that the war seemed narratively pointless - but that's a whole other thing).
Even if I probably played it less consistently, I still think BFA was a better expansion overall than Warlords of Draenor, which I consider to be the nadir of WoW's quality. One of Warlords' biggest issues was that it just didn't feel like a complete expansion. Even if you set aside the profoundly weird premise that made the stakes extremely vague (ok, so we need to deal with a threat in an alternate universe, on another planet, 35 years in the past... and the threat is just the same army of orcs that we beat in our own timeline? How is this even a threat to us?) it was also just... over and done so soon. Despite the premise, the expansion started off strong, with good storytelling in the leveling quests and some great dungeons and raids, but then we just got one patch that really added anything and... we were done.
Shadowlands will, I think, at least beat out Warlords for content. There was a ton with 9.0 - way more to do and see. And 9.1 gave us a new (somewhat dull) zone while also changing the way we interacted with the Maw (though honestly I wish that the Maw assaults were given a little more focus). It wasn't as big as Tanaan Jungle, but it was the kind of thing you'd expect for a mid-expansion patch. If we get something like that (preferably a little bigger,) in 9.2, we'll still have a more substantial expansion than Warlords of Draenor was.
But I worry that this will elevate Shadowlands to only a Cataclysm-level expansion. Cataclysm was only the third expansion, but I think it was also the first expansion that, even with a few years to reflect, really seemed to be a drop in quality (there were people who thought Wrath was infinitely worse than Burning Crusade had been while it was live, but in the long run Wrath has proven to be a more popular expansion). Shadowlands comes at a time of more ups and downs, but after the disappointment of Warlords and the disappointment of BFA, I think most of us were expecting and hoping for a rousing success like Legion, and I worry Shadowlands might be an expansion that is known for starting out strong and then petering out too soon.
Now, is this contingent on there being a 9.3?
That's a good question. And maybe it's not the case. The truth is that nothing is going to erase the long stretch of anemic content that we've had since 9.1 dropped. And 9.2 will be coming at a time we'd usually expect an X.3 patch to arrive. So if 9.2 is, in fact, the final patch of the expansion, we've got to think about it on its own terms.
So, let me tell you what I want to see:
Shadowlands has had enormous stakes. We've seen the alien way that the Shadowlands function, and identified some big problems with it. The Kyrian story, for instance, has been largely about recognizing the need to change, and seeing this profoundly ancient institution adjust its policies in order to account for a new perspective. (Having the Forsworn be antagonists while not all of them are strictly "villains" is the kind of nuanced story I really like).
Clearly, we've got to stop the Jailer. And, I hope, we've got to save Anduin, who has clearly not been "corrupted" but is instead being puppetted.
Again, assuming this is the final patch, another thing I think we need to address is Arthas. Arthas' shadow looms over this story, and as we've seen, his soul was tossed in the Maw extrajudicially - it seems obvious that his soul was meant to go to Revendreth instead, and indeed, there might be some part of him that is actually deserving of redemption. We're in the land of the dead, and that's the dead guy that I want to actually see and interact with. In fact, given the parallels between him and Anduin, I'd love to see Arthas be the one who frees Anduin, redeeming himself by allowing Anduin to be the person he was supposed to be in life.
Most importantly, though, I want to see the expansion resolve itself the way that I felt Mists of Pandaria did, regarding the deeper lore. Let me explain:
In 2012, when we arrived in Pandaria, the place was alien. There was no sign of Night Elf ruins, or Trolls (other than the invading Zandalari) - it was all cultures that we had never before seen. The conflicts and lines of allegiance were all new. And it was a bit disorienting.
But as we explored, we discovered that Pandaria was actually connected to the established lore after all - the Mogu were not just some random empire, but were actually Titan constructs who had turned tyrannical when the Curse of Flesh changed them (it was also a fun twist to see that the Titan-affiliated things were the bad guys). We found out that the Mantid were related to the other bug-races like the Qiraji and Nerubians, and worshipped the Old Gods. And finally, we found out that the weird curse of the Sha was actually the consequence of killing the most powerful of the Old Gods - finally explaining why the Titans couldn't just squash the other ones (it would still be a while before we learned that Azeroth itself was a Titan, though we should have probably guessed that after Yogg-Saron referred to the world as a "little seedling.")
The connections to Azeroth in Shadowlands are a little more obvious, but it's a bit of a one-way street. We had the Scourge making trouble in the pre-patch, but very rarely during this expansion have we come to check in on what's going on down there.
One of the things that's great about the vast and established game-world that is WoW is that even as we explore new places, we can sometimes see the consequences hit places we've already been. And it feels to me that we're really due to see how our actions (and the Jailer's) have affected Azeroth.
Now, I don't mean to say that the final zone has to be just an established zone - we just did that in Battle for Azeroth and we sort of did that already in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. But I do think it would be cool if we got some big quest or scenario in which we have to deal with things happening in the world of the living.
After all, one of the more memorable phrases Zovaal gave us was "Death comes for the soul of your world." The Old Gods wanted the World Soul to make their Void Titan. Sargeras wanted to make Azeroth into a Fel Titan like himself. It sure stands to reason that Zovaal wants to make her some kind of Death Titan.
I mean, really, what's his plan? That's been the somewhat vexxing thing here. We know that Zovaal has been planning and plotting for an absurd time - the very creation of the Burning Legion seems to have been part of his plan. What the hell does he actually mean to accomplish? Escape the Maw? Well, he's done that. But now what?
Anyway, I imagine we'll know a lot more tomorrow.
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