First Impressions of Maldraxxus

I was given to understand ahead of time, and it proves true, that questing through the leveling zones in Shadowlands is going to feel a little different. While you get a significant story and a lengthy quest chain, the game now indicates "main quests" as opposed to side quests. I charged through the Bastion story quests, and they were enough to get me about a quarter of the way up from 50-60 (well, I came in at 51, given that the intro quests in the Maw are just about enough to get you there.) There's still a huge chunk of Bastion (maybe half the zone) that I haven't seen, despite making it through the zone's primary story. My hope is that when you choose a covenant, the rest of that zone will be necessary for your covenant campaign - meaning it won't be just side quests that you can skip on every character. But we shall see!

After discovering the assault on the Temple of Courage (the setting of the Necrotic Wake dungeon) you follow the next clue to Maldraxxus.

Where Bastion is beautiful, sunny, and idyllic (if a little unsettlingly cult-y... I'm really eager to see more of the story there, because I honestly don't blame the Forsworn for not wanting to abandon their identities and memories. I mean, I feel like one of the main appeals of an afterlife is seeing loved ones we've lost once again, right?) Maldraxxus is... nasty.

The very earth you tread upon seems to be made of rotting flesh. Everything in Maldraxxus is bones, skin, flesh, and I guess maybe some steel - though I think their armor and weapons might just be bone.

We're told that this is the realm from which the Scourge pulled its power and minions, and it has some familiar aesthetics - floating necropoli, stitched-together abominations, and nasty skeletal warriors are everywhere.

But this being the Shadowlands, just because they're creepy doesn't mean they're evil.

You arrive in Maldraxxus right before the Theater of Pain, a vast arena in which combatants prove themselves against one another. As you go into the grand melee and prove yourself the most powerful fighter, once you are proclaimed the victor, you deliver the news about the incursion into Bastion, and the "Margrave" of the House of the Chosen backs you up while the other Margraves basically declare war.

Maldraxxus is where the army of the Shadowlands resides - and we hear about them fending off forces of the Void and (if I recall correctly) the Legion, and other extraplanar threats that even after over 25 years of Warcraft as a franchise, we're not really familiar with.

Of course, when things were working correctly, the Maldraxxi were just the rough-and-ready defenders of the plane. But in the midst of the anima drought, some have chosen to raid and pillage anima from elsewhere (probably also in some kind of arrangement with the Jailer.)

Unlike Uther, whose role in Bastion is still very much in development after its main quest line, the first familiar face in Maldraxxus is one you meet early - it's Thrall's mother, Draka, who has become one of the two Barons of the House of the Chosen (perhaps not surprisingly, the Shadowlands' military realm is pretty regimented.) Draka accompanies you on many of your quests here, as you discover a relic that the Primus - the original and seemingly long-gone leader of Maldraxxus - left, apparently for you.

I haven't gotten much farther than this because of some bugs (it's Beta, after all) but it's a profound tonal and aesthetic shift from the stuff you do in Bastion.

I will say that there's a lot in the quests of both zones that's sort of introducing you to the culture of the realm - both places treat you like a new recruit, as if you were assigned to that realm by the Arbiter. Maldraxxus is, by its nature, a more combat-oriented culture, but they're still looking to train and arm you much as in Bastion they were trying to have you purge all your psychological issues.

Much to my delight, the high-concept settings of these zones are introducing some really interesting philosophical questions. In Bastion, there's a sort of question of whether people who were selfless and self-sacrificing in life should really be fated to once again sacrifice and act selflessly in the afterlife. In Maldraxxus (and to an extent Bastion as well,) I find myself wondering what it means when someone dies in the Shadowlands. There are memorials to heroes of Maldraxxus who fell battling the Shadowlands great foes - but what does that mean? Are they just gone-gone, with nothing left of them except in others' memories? Or does death here send them to some kind of soul-recycling system (maybe Ardenweald?) where they get reincarnated? Or, perhaps a dead person who dies in Bastion gradually re-coalesces there? It's some real serious stuff to contemplate, which I love.

Anyway, I hope that whatever Beta build comes next fixes the issues so I can move on (I got a new weapon and I don't really want to just keep plugging away without a Runeforge on it) because I'm super-eager to check out Ardenweald and Revendreth.