So, because tomorrow (the actual launch of the expansion) marks my second day of being on new-uncle duty with my sister's baby, on top of the fact that my roommate accidentally got the Epic Edition and had access to early access, I caved and shelled out the 40 bucks to get to play a bit before I would be spending most of my days for the next month or so cleaning bottles and changing diapers.
I don't feel great about this - while they've been good about locking certain level-cap content behind the actual release tomorrow, this leans a little closer to pay-to-win than I'm comfortable with. Any time you see a service divided into different classes, the cheap option starts to get worse in quality (dear lord, have you been to Disneyland lately?) So yeah, that's me, I'm part of the problem.
I got my main to 80 in less than 24 hours.
Yeah, the main story campaign is pretty quick - I actually got through it around level 77, with minimal side quests. There's a marked transformation in how a zone's quests fit into the story since the early days of WoW - back then, you tended not to have much of a reason to return to an old zone - particularly in Vanilla, before they had heroic dungeons and so there really, truly, was never a reason to go back to a place like Desolace once you were high-enough level not to do Maraudon anymore. But I think basically until... Legion? Maybe BFA? you still got a real sense of closure when you finished the main quests in a zone. Here, I'd argue there's more of a sense of the story quests being a beginning, rather than a culmination.
There are, to be clear, a crapton of side-quests I didn't do, and my plan with my alts is to basically do everything I can in one of the four zones on the first four alts.
My main is a Protection Paladin - frustratingly, I sold his best two-handed weapon so I haven't been able to check out Ret at max level - but I'm planning on probably leveling my Frost (sometimes Blood) DK next, then some order of my Night Elf Havoc Demon Hunter, my Undead Subtlety Rogue - who starred in a recent post about Draw Steel - and my Tauren Enhancement Shaman.
I figure I'll give impressions of the various zones and which alt I intend to take through there.
Spoilers Ahead!
Isle of Dorn (probably my DK, somewhat by process of elimination)
So, the first zone is the Isle of Dorn. This, as I see it, is kind of the pressure valve of the expansion. It's a really bold choice to have an expansion primarily set underground - essentially WoW's version of the Underdark. The Isle of Dorn is, however, the surface above the rest of Khaz Algar.
Here's the big spoiler: we arrive here with Dalaran teleporting above it, just as it so successfully served as our hub in Wrath of the Lich King and Legion. But it turns out that Xal'atath, impersonating a long-dead archmage in the Kirin Tor's Council of Six, lured us there, and even the might of the Guardian is not enough to take her out. Yes, it seems that Khadgar, my absolute number one favorite NPC in the game, has fallen in battle against the Shadow Priest artifact weapon. (I will say, I think there's room for him to have survived. While it looks like Xal'atath disintegrates him, I could also interpret that as her teleporting him. There's even, apparently, a rumor going around that he somehow becomes Locus Walker - given that Alleria feels responsible for failing to save him, this would make their relationship quite interesting.) But, ultimately, while Khadgar sends Alleria and us out of the city, we have to watch from below and see Dalaran, WoW's best capital city and a place I associate with my two favorite expansions, blow up into a million rock shards.
I mean, they had to set the stakes. And damn it, I will destroy Xal'atath in the name of the Legerdemain Lounge!
Luckily, a lot of people survive, having been evacuated, but after we save a number of civilians and old friends (I think a number of the Black Harvest folks help out, along with Jaina, Thrall, and the usual crew).
We then meet the Earthen, and essentially have to deal with the destruction of the Coreway - the main passage to the Ringing Deeps and the other zones below. We deal with some Earthen politics, and fight nerubians.
Actually, what turns out to be the only time you do this, you actually have to run the Rookery, the Isle's level-up dungeon, and I think you have to do it as a follower dungeon (presumably as a tutorial.) You also run your first Delve up here.
Once the Coreway is fixed, you can go down to the next zone:
The Ringing Deeps (probably the shaman?)
The Ringing Deeps centers largely on the Bronzebeards, specifically Magni, Moira, and Dagran (whom I guess is technically named Thaurissan... and I guess Moira also took her husband's name). Dagran, basically, is a real good kid (and somehow doesn't have a beard yet - are dwarves not just born with them?)
Here, we deal with the High Speaker of the Machine Speakers, one of the key divisions of Earthen Society. As befriend some kobolds, we also discover a weird process by which Earthen are becoming these shadow-corrupted beings called Shardyn. The source of these Shardyn becomes the subject of the story's main quest, as Magni struggles with his diamond form and the role he's had as Speaker of Azeroth - which he's grown to resent since BFA.
I know I said spoilers here, but I'm just going to say that this plot has some big developments.
Magni's story really exemplifies the clever double-meaning of this expansion's title - basically all of our central NPCs (at least the ones that the expansion foregrounds) are struggling with their own internal conflicts. I love the fact that Magni is a good king, a great servant of the world, and a bad father, and is trying to be a better grandfather than he was a father, while also trying to be a better father than he was. This game's 20 years old, and as someone who has played for 18 of those years (crazy that when Midnight comes out I'll have been playing this game for half my life) I'm really ready for more complex, mature themes and stories.
Hallowfall (probably my Demon Hunter, who might share the Arathi enthusiasm for purging evil with flames)
So, here's the surprising news: apparently there's an Arathi Empire somewhere. What?
Our understanding of humanity in WoW has basically always been that they came about more or less with the arrival of dissenting vrykul and their human offspring following Tyr to the Eastern Kingdoms (well, the continent that would come to be called that) and eventually carving out a home in the Arathi Highlands that would become an empire that eventually split up into seven kingdoms - Stormwind, Stromgarde, Alterac, Gilneas, Lordaeron, Kul Tiras, and Dalaran. But that empire, as far as we know, just dissolved. In fact, I think the last kings went to Stormwind - the Lothar family (and if the movie is to be believed, Varian's mother was a Lothar, making current sabbatical-king Anduin an heir to the Arathi Empire).
But where the hell is this empire? We meet a badass and friendly Lamplighter - basically an elite paladin - named Faerin Lothar (who also happens to be missing most of her left arm but does not let that slow her down).
The empire, I'll note, appears to be fervently, zealously devoted to its emperor, as well as the Light (which they really tend to associate a lot with flame imagery).
Now, to be clear, for the most part, they seem to just be good guys (at least in the main quests). There is, of course, a dungeon in which we fight a bunch of Arathi zealots, but the main quest line doesn't really tell you why we go there.
Instead, primarily we learn about the Arathi here, and the giant crystal called Beledar that provides sun-like light to the vast cavern (which overlooks an underground ocean - the size of which we don't really know). We also find that some of the Arathi have been swayed by a Cult of Shadow, another proxy tool of Xal'atath.
Here, Anduin befriends Faerin (who might be his distant cousin?) but also considers his own fractured relationship with the Light ever since his experiences in the Shadowlands. Ultimately, after defeating the leader of the Cult of Shadow (or of Night? Can't recall) we prepare for an offensive against the Nerubians in...
Azj-Kahet (gotta be my Rogue, who lives for cloak-and-dagger intrigue)
The airship you take down into the zone gets stuck in place with spiderweb (maybe shouldn't have used a flying vessel to attack a spider kingdom) and Anduin more or less does what his dad when an airship was stuck, going in for the heroic sacrifice that he's now maybe feeling desperate to make (yeah, the Jailer forcing him to be Arthas 2.0 for a stretch was not good for his mental health).
However, after our arrival and the intervention of an interesting troll druid (who I suspect will be a big part of max-level story quests, but only makes a brief appearance in the leveling main quests) we get swept into the web of one of three masters of intrigue within Azj-Kahet who is no friend of the new, Harbinger-directed regime. Working with the Weaver, we then make contact with the General and the Vizier, who each become members of the Sundered Thread, a (benevolent) conspiracy to end the corrupted Queen Ansur'ek's rule (note: she's the final boss of the first raid).
Central to this zone is Alleria, who is probably the character in this expansion with the toughest internal struggle - she carries the endless whispers of the Void within her, but has, so far, been able to bend them to her heroic purpose. But how long can she hold out? How long can she be sure that she's making the right choices? In the zone's, and thus the leveling campaign's, big climax, you and Alleria (and Anduin and Faerin - yes, Anduin is ok, rescued by the Vizier) are spying on Ansu'rek's big announcement of her campaign to basically take over the world with Xal'atath's help. While you're there only to observe, Alleria believes she has a shot at Xal'atath and takes it - exactly as Xal'atath hoped she would, as it reveals your position and brings the entire Kaheti army down on you.
And here, I want to point out that I'm really enjoying Xal'atath as a villain. This is WoW, so she does have her boisterous boasts and mustache-twirling, but it feels like finally - finally - we have a villain who is reputed to be a manipulator and we get to see her... actually manipulating! She's doing what N'zoth and the Jailer were both supposed to be doing. Xal'atath feels smart in a way that most WoW villains haven't quite hit the mark. We are invited to remember that she's not some elf - she's something wearing that elf like a skin-suit, and is far more ancient and clever than... maybe anyone we've faced.
I mean, hell, the fact that she was one of three sapient artifact weapons during Legion only makes it richer - she was stuck in that knife, and she helped us defeat the Legion for sure, but what better way to get herself some leverage and opportunities? (I will say, I hope that they keep making the artifact weapons plot-relevant. Blizzard basically just made a giant list of plot devices to be used later.)
Anyway, with the campaign completed, I did the remaining dungeons and a few Delves. The short description of Delves is that it's a bit of Torghast, it's a bit of Mists-era Scenarios, and a bit of an old-school dungeon.
I've also done the quests I can do for now to unlock the Earthen. I'm drowning in alts (see the name of the blog) so we'll see if I actually do much with a new race that doesn't come with a new class. But I've got to make one, right?
Professions will look largely familiar to how they were in Dragonflight, though at least with Engineering, there's a new system that's a little like the Alchemists' experimentation system (though rather than a chance to have a catastrophe, you just get a 24-hour cooldown after you "invent"). Engineers will pick up Scrap from basically any enemy they defeat, which is used in a lot of recipes, but also used for inventing, and you can "scour through scrap" to sometimes find parts or prototypes. Prototypes (created with inventing) can be disassembled to created disorganized notes, which then can be assembled into organized notes, which will let you select one of three random engineering recipes to learn.
Without a ton of skill points or new mining equipment, I'm getting tiny amounts of the new minerals (Bismuth is your base metal, but you also use Aqirte and Ironclaw. There are four variant nodes - webbed ore will often drop spider silk that I think Tailors will be using, EZ-Mine nodes take longer to mine and will toss out little explosives, forcing you to reposition, which is annoying, then we have Crystalized nodes that drop a special reagent and when empowered give you a little portal like the ones in Dragonflight that gave you awakened order, and finally, "weeping" ore that poisons you and drops some shadow-themed stuff.)
Anyway, the expansion launches for real tomorrow.
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