Well, after a month delay, Shadowlands is coming soon, and here, a couple weeks before its launch, we've got the big launch event!
So far, things start off with a summons to Stormwind or Orgrimmar, where Genn/Lor'themar give us the bad news: Anduin, Jaina, Baine, and Thrall have been kidnapped by freaky flying monsters from the Shadowlands, wielding the same death magic Sylvanas has been using. Awesomely, they came for Tyrande, but if you hadn't figured it out by now, Tyrande is well-past being fucked with (more on that in a moment.) Oh, and it's here that we're officially informed that Bolvar has been deposed as Lich King and the sky over Icecrown has been shattered with the breaking of the Helm of Domination.
Player are sent to nearby Argent Crusade agents posted around Durotar and the greater Stormwind region, and then have to fight off attacks against Darkshire and Crossroads, before we get our next marching orders:
First off, the Crusade needs help in Icecrown, where the Scourge has been unleashed just as we were warned after the fall of Arthas. But more immediately, we get a sighting - Nathanos is hiding out at his old homestead in the Eastern Plaguelands.
You can then go there to fight him as a world boss, with a weekly world quest that rewards a guaranteed 115 weapon, using the Darkshore warfront models.
The fight is chaotic, as he basically stays in one place and randomly targets people while his hounds fixate on random players. This fight is a nightmare for melee, as he'll often debuff a player to drop a puddle of blight at their feet after a couple seconds - in a coordinated raid, players would then step away from him when they got this to leave safe places for melee to stand, but this is world-boss-lag-land, and Nathanos cannot be moved from his spot (he's even standing there in the cutscene that plays after the fight) so you'll just have to hope that you have conscious fellow melee players.
Once Nathanos hits 10%, the fight ends with a pre-rendered cutscene. Nathanos, taunting us as he fires arrow after arrow, notices that, all of a sudden, there's an eclipse. And as a familiar sentinel owl flies down, we know what's coming. An arrow comes out of the darkness, catapulting Nathanos about a hundred feet and pinning him to the wall of his house. Then, Tyrande arrives. As Nathanos' hounds chase after her, two beams of moonlight shoot down, utterly disintegrating them.
Nathanos, arrogant prick that he is, happily takes up his handaxes to fight Tyrande, who then proceeds to absolutely kick his ass. As he taunts her while she holds the blade of her warglaive to his throat, promising that death will only send him to Sylvanas (which means, yeah, the dude's going to be a raid boss at some point in Shadowlands) she slashes his throat, ending the Blightcaller... for now.
Tyrande has become arguably the top badass in Warcraft, but the power is clearly not doing wonders for her emotional state (nor her skin - her face seems to be developing weird scales.) Still, she's very much the sort of person you're glad is on your side.
The quests in Northrend are fairly simple so far, but the real fun thing is that about every 20 minutes, a Wrath-era (including Naxxramas) Scourge boss will show up somewhere in Icecrown. These drop some fun items, including Papa's Mint Condition Bag, which is a 34-slot bag (I was lucky enough to get that one on my main.) There is also a currency you can grind to get iLevel 100 loot, and I believe the bosses drop 110 loot, so if you have a poorly-geared alt, this is a way to get yourself all nice and spiffy before it all becomes irrelevant in just a couple weeks (my hunter upgraded his weapon from 82 to 115, which weren't bad.)
I believe this is going to ramp up - for one, I think that the undead plague from Wrath's pre-launch is coming back, so get ready for the zombocalypse. What I don't know is if we're going to get any major story quests. Between the cutscene we get in Stormwind/Orgrimmar and the Nathanos-defeat cinematic, we've got some sweet cutscene magic, which Blizzard is pretty damn good at.
No comments:
Post a Comment