Exile's Reach

 Starting the new 1-10 starting experience on the PTR (the servers are very unstable for high-level players, or rather anyone in the major cities - sadly I don't think there's a barber's shop in Thunder Bluff, but it's zombified anyway) on a Horde character, it has become very clear that the experiences are practically identical, except for the specific names and races of the NPCs involved (though both involve a tough female commander with whom you rescue their subordinate/child, along with the rest of the expedition.)

The experience begins on a ship heading to the eponymous island, where you're given a brief tutorial, first spamming your one level 1 ability at a target dummy before a brief sparring session with a lieutenant, who will do things like run toward you and then try to move around you so you have to turn to face them. Very basic stuff, but that's the point.

Inevitably, you get shipwrecked, and then you get your first loot quest (grab medical supplies off of non-hostile murlocs,) your first "use this thing on some targets" quest where you heal fellow survivors. You get to a little valley up from the beach which serves as a sort of hub from which you can complete two brief quest chains to rescue more prisoners.

Finally, you assault an ogre citadel (with a lot of Highmaul assets) before you queue for a pseudo-dungeon run, where NPCs act as tank, healer, or dps (depending on your class - though I've only done that final thing on a Warlock, and given that you're not 10 yet when you do this, I don't know whether it allows you to play roles that aren't DPS, with the NPCs taking tanking and healing.)

The bosses do drop actual gear, which is cool.

The enemies here are perennial mild threats - harpies, quillboars, ogres. The first things you actually get sent to kills are murlocs, which feels right. While the ogres are using necromancy, which links it slightly to Shadowlands, it feels much more like this just showcases some classic, standard monsters and evil to fight in a good fantasy game.

Another thing that's nice is that there are a few secrets to find here - like a sidequest in which you free a Lightspawn that grants you a 60% speed buff for ten minutes, or a friendly Ettin who will throw you back to your quest givers if you get to his beach. There are treasure chests and rares to find, and you'll come out of the experience with several bags.

The experience is absolutely fundamental and basic for anyone who has played the game before, and I expect that people who are still making a lot of level 1 characters might decide to move back to the old Cataclysm-era starting experiences after trying out Exile's Reach. But this is very clearly designed to be the best, most informative and educational tutorial for brand new WoW players they can make, and I think it succeeds at that pretty well.

The sole concern I have is whether they'll need to adjust the tutorials as class design shifts in future expansions.

9.0 restores the notion of the first 9 levels of the game having no spec - all Shamans will get Primal Strike, for example. The quests refer to specific abilities and spells by name, and thus it clearly means that they'll either need to keep those as part of the class (which, in most cases, shouldn't be a problem) or they'll need to update the dialogue if they change class mechanics.

The experience ends with you arriving in Stormwind or Orgrimmar, which unfortunately right now means being immediately torn apart by ghouls that are 40 levels higher than you, though once Shadowlands proper launches, that shouldn't be an issue. (I also wonder if they'll find a way to stagger the plague like they did for Wrath's launch - on the PTR, within minutes every city seemed to be fully overrun.)