The one dungeon I have left is De Other Side, which is actually the one I've been most excited for (so it's kind of fun to have it saved for last.)
I hit 60 yesterday - while I always try to stop and read the quest text when an expansion goes live, having done the whole 50-60 climb on my Death Knight in the beta, I wasn't exactly poring over every detail, and so my ascent was rather quick.
Thankfully, since that time of the Beta, they've fixed the experience required for the last few levels, so I was 60 before I tried the final scenario in Revendreth (I had been about halfway through 67 on the Beta, and it was unforgiving - they also fixed it so that your Stoneborn allies are a buff rather than NPCs you can lose - and dying doesn't remove said buff.)
Playing through with all the cutscenes has of course clarified some things. The quests here are very good.
There are a ton of things to do at the level cap, which the game walks you through individually. I've capped my renown for the week.
I guess I'll go through the dungeons and my general impressions (just a paragraph a piece.)
Necrotic Wake:
This will be the first dungeon you run if you do that while leveling. Fighting through the evil Maldraxxi who are invading Bastion, I'd say most of the fights are rather straightforward except for the third one - as a PSA: IF YOU GET THE MEAT HOOK ON YOU, AIM IT AT THE BOSS. I anticipate the first few weeks of this expansion that fight's going to be a pain, but people will figure it out eventually.
Plaguefall:
I think the oddest thing about this dungeon is that I'm not sure you can clear all the trash before you get the second boss. The other thing is that those tentacles are real nasty on the final boss - remember to treat it as a series of void zones, not something that can be out-ranged (actually, it's a bit like King Dazar.) I will say I think it's slightly cheating that Maldraxxus effectively has three dungeons (including the Necrotic Wake in Bastion,) but it earns that thanks to the level-cap one, which is really cool - and we'll get to that.
Mists of Tirna Scithe:
It feels like each dungeon so far has a "you really need to know this before you start" hint. Here's the key: the puzzles before and during the second boss are all about finding the one thing that doesn't fit - There'll be an element that everything else has, and you want to go with the passage or clone that doesn't have it. Again, this is going to be a pain for the first couple weeks. I will say that I hope there's a little more depth to the Drust - they were one of the cooler minor villains in BFA, but there's no personality like Gorak Tul to give the Drust in Ardenweald a real identity beyond "these guys are bad."
Halls of Atonement:
While I had done this on the Beta, and it is a level-up dungeon, I cannot seem to find a quest for it, so I actually only ran it live after doing three of the level-cap dungeons. There's nothing terribly obscure about this (though I do like how the Stoneborn boss smashes out of the doors when you try to open them.) I'm sure there will be some strategies that develop for the first part to most efficiently kill the three golems to empower the boss.
Spires of Acension:
This is a remarkably large dungeon, but one in which much of the ground is covered on the wings of Kyrians. Most is rather straightforward, but the final boss is actually pretty tough - and I can only imagine what it'll be like on Mythic. Basically, collect those globes while dodging (if you possibly can) the patches of nasty stuff, and toss that spear as soon as possible. As a sidenote: I find the Forsworn to be a really interesting quasi-villain group. While their leadership has made a deal with a seriously bad dude, the cause for their rebellion is, like, reasonable. And it's nice to see that the Archon recognizes that when you finish the dungeon and hints that reforms are coming.
Theater of Pain:
I did not expect this dungeon to be so cool. After a rather easy first boss (which feels more like a major trash pull) you get sucked into the arena's depths, where the middle three bosses are (or is it four?) Anyway, you can do these bosses in any order, and each has their own little short old-school Scarlet Monastery wing-sized mini dungeon. Once the bosses at the bottom are defeated, you can fight the final boss.
De Other Side:
Haven't run this one yet!
Sanguine Depths:
This one is almost all tight quarters. A couple things - first, the second boss took me by surprise, as it's in a really narrow part of a long hallway, so I pulled without realizing I was targeting a boss (we were fine.) The second thing is that the player that's carrying the escaped prisoner, and thus gets a special ability, is apparently supposed to save it for a particular attack the final boss does, which screwed up because I used it too early.
Now, this is a point in the game (like, two days an a couple hours since launch) where more or less everyone's playing their mains, so we're cutting through these dungeons like butter. I suspect they'll feel a bit more challenging later on. Still, I think the difficulty's about right - not so hard that it's a constant wipe-fest, but tough enough that you need to pay attention to most of the boss mechanics.
Of course, this is all normal mode. I'm not geared enough for heroics yet (I wonder who is) and I'm sure there will be some new wrinkles to deal with.
Anyway, I want to run De Other Side and then finish out what I imagine is my weekly Torghast Soul Ash quest. I'm looking forward to my roommate getting to that point, as I hope to do some Torghast runs as a pair. It's pretty fun solo, but I actually don't know how anima powers and such work with multiple people.
Shadowlands has a really great aesthetic and a ton of interesting lore - and I'm really eager to see how that lore ties into ongoing stories. The quest you get in Sanguine Depths (which seems to be unique among the level cap dungeons - unless De Other Side has one) remind us that while the Shadowlands are sort of their own universe, it's still part of the larger Warcraft multiverse. I'm reminded of Mists of Pandaria, when everything felt so new and almost disconnected from what we had already seen - but then we found out that there was some really major lore surrounding the Titans and the Old Gods to be found there.
I will also suggest that people keep an ear out for mentions of mysterious new figures in the Shadowlands - having done the Venthyr campaign on the Beta, I'm pretty sure that I know who they're talking about, but there are some nice, subtle "blink and you'll miss it" mentions that seem to refer to this, well, established lore figure.
Oh, and we need to talk about that cinematic showing the Arbiter getting shut down. What was that? Was it a direct attack, or was it a particular soul? And in the former case, fired by whom? And in the latter case, who was it?
Big questions posed, and big answers to look forward to!
Also, we're all agreed that the Brokers are up to something really sketchy, right?
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