Ardenweald Impressions

 The progression of zones in Shadowlands for your first playthrough is very clearly built along an alternating pattern - "pretty" and "scary." Bastion is heavenly, pristine (well, mostly) and seems like a pretty good place to turn up (I don't know about abandoning my identity, but if your only duty is to go fetch the souls of the dead and then hang out there, it doesn't seem like the worst gig.) And then Maldraxxus is a disgusting, fetid eternal battlefield that seems to be literally made of flesh, which feels like a punishment? Though I guess it gives people who are really obsessed with the glory of combat (living up to the ideals of Orcish culture, for instance) a somewhat Valhalla-like afterlife (though not quite Valhalla, as Odyn really built that - speaking of whom, I haven't yet seen that fire-beareded bastard... hm.)

After the grossness that is Maldraxxus, your next stop is Ardenweald, which swings far back in the pretty direction.

Think of Warlords' version of Shadowmoon Valley, the nicer, southern parts of Val'sharah, and maybe a hint of pre-fire Teldrassil and you'll get the general vibe of Ardenweald. This is a land of otherworldly but natural beauty, where it's eternally a sort of pleasant night time. The locals here are the Night Fae, (which is the name for the covenant.)

Following the revelations of Maldraxxus, the "clue" that sends you here is not quite as direct as it was for Bastion or Maldraxxus - you're there more or less because there's a lot of anima that flows through Ardenweald, and if the folks in Oribos need some, they want to go here for it.

However, as it turns out, Ardenweald is also in crisis, and they've been forced to allow parts of their realm - and the Wildseeds that house nature spirits awaiting rebirth - wither away.

Over the course of the zone, you fight against a group of Night Fae who have taken to wearing odd masks, possessed by some power that is draining the anima from the forests. As a player character who's paying attention, the "dark magic" that the bad guys are using is very familiar to anyone who journeyed through Drustvar. Similarly, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to guess at the identity of a particular spirit who is afflicted by some kind of nightmare (though the "reveal" such as it is, has you reliving one of the most heartbreaking parts of Legion, but from a flipped perspective.)

There is definitely a sense of anticlimax here, as there is in all the zones, given that each has a story that awaits the Covenant Campaign to see its completion. While I think this should make for some great max-level content, it does make me wonder how well you'll be able to piece together the full story for each zone on a single character. I'm naturally planning to play several characters (see the name of the blog) but if my Paladin goes with the Kyrian (and you bet your bottom dollar that I'm eager to see where Uther's story goes,) it'll be weird not to see how stories conclude in the other zones until I've done them on my other characters.

Ardenweald is a zone I could really imagine spending a lot of time in (to be honest, the only one that I'm not really crazy about is Maldraxxus... I don't know, I was kind of hoping for more, like, endless storms and lightning.)

I have yet to do any of the dungeons, though through the main campaign quests I rather easily got directed to do the Necrotic Wake in Bastion and Plaguefall in Maldraxxus. I suspect that The Mists of Tirna Scithe is the leveling dungeon for Ardenweald, but unless I just missed some obvious quest marker, I didn't see it.

I'm now actually about halfway through Revendreth (maybe slightly more) and I'll have impressions about that when I'm done (overall good, though.)

I will say that while the zones are generally pretty cool, I'm not quite blown away by them as I was in, say, Legion. Now granted, we're missing a lot of cutscenes that could act as punctuation - there are epic moments that just aren't implemented yet.

But structurally, I think it wasn't until I got to Revendreth that I started to see some really interesting environmental concepts and variations on quest mechanics. I mean, this is still WoW, and you're still going to have to collect your twelve bear asses now and again.

I'm really curious to see how the pacing will feel on alts. Right now, I'm charging through the main "campaign" quests, which is basically one solid quest line through the entire expansion. 4/7 of the Revendreth story chapters completed, I'm now level 57, so I suspect that unless those last three chapters are each worth a whole level, the expectation will be that you do some side quests (I also haven't run any dungeons, which could be what makes up for it.)