Well, I was hoping to happily post about checking out the Shadowlands after I got my invite to the beta today, but as fate would have it, there seems to currently be a bug that is preventing me from leaving Boralus via any sort of loading-screen-inducing travel (such as portals, hearthstones, etc.)
So while I've got my Death Knight now once again wielding a two-handed weapon in Frost and tricked out with a cool beard (it's so nice that Draenei have a full beard facial option now) I haven't really been able to do anything I wasn't already doing on the PTR (actually, I've been able to do less.)
Anyway, I'm hoping that this will change soon. I'd pretty much resigned myself to not getting beta access given that in the previous four betas, the only one I didn't get into was Legion, which was the one I was most excited to see (and hey, that expansion turned out to be awesome!)
So, superstitiously, does my beta access mean this expansion won't be as good?
I know a lot of people cite Mists of Pandaria as their favorite expansion, though I ding it a bit for the breaking of valor points (and thus the elimination of dungeons as a viable daily gameplay thing) and, honestly, its focus on Alliance/Horde conflict - though I think it comes in a solid third behind Legion and Wrath of the Lich King.
While I'm skeptical about the rumors of a "team A" and "team B" that work on each expansion, I definitely agree that we tend to have a sort of quality swing back and forth between really good expansions and sort of let-downs. Wrath was great, Cataclysm was disappointing, Mists was surprisingly good, Warlords was a travesty, Legion was superlative, and Battle for Azeroth was hamstrung by broken systems and, more subjectively, a struggle to make its two major conflicts - A vs. H and Everyone vs. N'zoth - feel all that connected thematically and narratively (the fact that there was, in fact, a shadowy supernatural manipulator behind the scenes but it wasn't N'zoth feels wrong.)
However, if the alternating quality cycle is real, that would make Shadowlands likely to be one of the good ones.
As I see it, there are the following promising and worrying things about it:
The setting, with its surreal and otherworldly nature, is great. I think WoW does really well when it goes for high-concept, deeply magical, alien locations, especially after we spent our leveling (and most of our world questing) in BFA in relatively mundane locales (obviously Nazjatar was pretty different, but as a middle patch zone, it's probably the place we spent the least time.) The Shadowlands look super cool, and I'm eager to absorb their various vibes.
The Covenant system is really balanced on the edge of a knife - is it going to be cool, flavorful, and fun like Artifact weapons? Or is it going to be a joyless numbers game that requires constant re-farming of things like Azerite armor? I'm honestly kind of hoping that what comes after Shadowlands lets gear just be gear once more, and ditches other forms of character progression - having new systems be alternate ways to acquire gear, rather than a system on top of gear.
I'm a little of two minds on the way that classes are being changed. I'm sure a lot of my unease is just about getting used to new rotations and such (Shamans are really different.) But I think probably overall giving players back a bunch of abilities, even if they won't necessarily use them, is for the best.
One of the other patterns with expansions is that every other one in the past would bring us a new class. Shadowlands is the first odd X.0 patch that isn't bringing a new class (1.0 brought 9!) While they've done a lot to streamline the leveling and creation of new characters, there's no real incentive for veteran players to create new characters. I guess after adding ten new races in BFA, they figure we can have a break. But I do sort of regret that we didn't get Necromancers as a hybrid ranged caster and healer.
Anyway, I have high hopes for this expansion. Aesthetically I'm on board, and I'm really eager to see how much the cosmos of Warcraft expands and gets fleshed out as a result of this journey.
And hopefully I'll be able to help beta test it effectively soon!
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