My Reaction to the Shadowlands Announcement

This is obviously a blog written by a single person, and so my opinion colors everything that comes through here. But with all the information flooding in, I thought I'd talk about how I feel about what we've seen revealed.

In terms of theme and scope, Shadowlands is exactly what I was hoping for. While we've gone to other worlds and fought the demons of the Burning Legion, we've never really had a "planar expansion" like this one. Indeed, the Shadowlands are emerging as more than just the equivalent of the Shadowfell, but instead something more akin to D&D's Outer Planes. Given how much we've been through in WoW, it's about time that we're really journeying beyond the simple material world and really venturing into a wholly supernatural space.

Not only that, but the realms of the Shadowlands that we've seen so far (we have yet to see the Maw) look fantastic. I'll concede that Bastion looks a little Stormheim-y, and Ardenweald looks a bit like Shadowmoon Valley (the Draenor one, not the Outland one, obviously,) but Revendreth, for example, looks incredible, and overall, I'm really excited to explore these places.

The level squish is something that I think will be relatively easy to get used to, and especially if it makes leveling up alts a faster process, it'll be very welcome.

All that being said, I really want to get a sense of just how rich the Covenant system is, and how the Maw will stand up compared to Suramar as an end-level zone. Because without a new class or other really profound system changes, the expansion does seem slightly thin. That, of course, could just mean that there are big things that weren't ready for announcement at Blizzcon, but I would hate for this to wind up feeling like Warlords of Draenor.

There are clearly some massive lore reveals to be discovered - like what Sylvanas' ally, the Jailer, really is. We also don't really know what role she's going to play - is she really just doing this out of pure hatred and revenge, or does she have some other agenda?

I was, I'll confess, a little sad to see Bolvar defeated so easily, though I also think just having us fight him as the big bad would be really boring and invalidated the ending of Wrath. Yes, in a sense, it was invalidated in a different way, but I must apologize to Terenas - I get what he meant about there always needing to be a Lich King.

Also, how much do you want to bet that we're going to see Arthas in the Maw?

I am definitely excited for this expansion - its premise is one I find far more compelling than that of Battle for Azeroth (maybe if we had had a clear connection between the faction war and N'zoth's machinations - or any connection, really - I would have liked it better.) Shadowlands has the potential to be cool as Legion. We'll have to see if it lives up to that.

Oh, and the Tower of the Damned... is either going to be incredibly cool or that one feature people complain about all the time... or both.