First Ones, Eternals, and the Shadowlands' Ties to the Material World

 When Warcraft: Chronicle came out, they mentioned the Shadowlands only briefly, basically showing up in their cosmic chart opposite the Emerald Dream just outside of "Reality."

Death, as a primal force, occupied one of the six major spots on the outside of the chart. I don't know whether the existence of the Light and the Void as the top and bottom of that chart are meant to be more significant than Order, Disorder, Life, and Death, but it does seem that Death has its own realm of existence in the Shadowlands.

As a D&D fan (albeit a relatively recent one - though I guess it's now been five years) this immediately recalled their planes of the Feywild and the Shadowfell. The former is your classic Faerie Otherworld, home to beautiful but treacherous archfey (who aren't so much good or evil as... playing with a different set of rules) as well as a lot of mischievous tricksters who might not appreciate how mortal you are. The Shadowfell is a dreary and dark realm where emotions and color are sapped, and the undead are very common - tending toward a sort of gothic horror reality without necessarily being inherently evil.

Cosmologically, though, the Shadowlands in WoW are closer to the Outer Planes. These are realms that are sort of physical manifestations of the game's iconic alignments (Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc.) As sort of conceptual realms, the Outer Planes are home to most gods in its cosmos, and are also where the souls of the dead go when they die.

In fact, there's a whole campaign setting that takes place entirely within those outer planes called Planescape - where humanoids are categorized as "Planar" meaning that they're originally from the Outer Planes, "Petitioner" meaning they're the soul of a person who died and has been reborn in the Outer Planes to go to their afterlife, or "Prime" meaning someone from the Prime Material Plane who has traveled to the Outer Planes while still alive (and are treated like the dumb hicks of the multiverse by most Planars.)

What's interesting is that, given that most of the mortal souls that travel to the Shadowlands on death stay there (even if someone like Draka gets assignments that take her elsewhere) in many ways, the leaders of each realm there are arguably the really important gods of the Warcraft cosmos. You spend one lifetime in the Material World, but the rest of eternity in the Shadowlands.

But up until this point, the closest we've gotten to a true pantheon of deities was the Titans. Indeed, we've literally referred to the Titans as the Pantheon.

But the Eternals - the leaders of the various realms of the Shadowlands - are also, at one point, called a pantheon.

There are parallels between the Eternals and the Titans, perhaps most notably in the traitor amongst them.

Sargeras had been the paragon of the Titans, but when faced with the horror of the void, he went down a path of madness. When he rebelled, he struck down his fellow Titans, and it was unknown eons before the rest of the Pantheon was restored, and able to trap Sargeras within their Olympus-like Seat.

In the case of Zovaal, though, it looks as if his initial rebellion was a failure, leaving him trapped int he Maw.

We don't have any real idea of whether the Eternals are on the same level of power as the Titans. My suspicion is that they're meant to be of roughly equivalent power, though the Eternals are masters of the Shadowlands, while the Titans are powers either of "Reality" (i.e. the material plane) or some as-yet-undiscovered realm of the Arcane, as we're told that they are beings of Order, whose signature magic is Arcane.

One thing that also intrigues me is that we hear mentions of the First Ones in Shadowlands. Are the First Ones just another name for the Eternals? Or was there some group of creators who built the Shadowlands? If these were the Titans, that would seem to put them a step up from the Eternals.

Indeed, I'll be honest, I'm a little sad that we only got to see the Titans briefly in Legion. Built up through all of WoW's lifespan, we ultimately only got to see several of them sitting in chairs during the final boss fight. I still don't really know the difference between Norgannon, Golganneth, and Khaz'goroth.

I know that a lot of the stuff we're getting in the Shadowlands is just new lore - though at the same time, it's using elements that were introduced long ago. The fact that Mueh'zalla turns out to have been behind a lot of bad stuff that's been happening is pretty interesting, given that we've had that name since Zul'farrak. I also like how they managed to imply that the Val'kyr are a weirdly bastardized version of the Kyrians, which also manages to draw a connection between a Norse mythological being and a Greek word associated with Christianity.

Of course, if we're talking Gods, there's none more mysterious than Elune, who seems to be tied into a lot of things in Shadowlands, but also defies categorization, with deep connections to the Titans (Tears of Elune, Eonar found on "Elunaria") the Wild Gods (Cenarius is her son) and the Naaru (Khadgar claims a book in Karazhan says that she created the Naaru). Now, we've also got the Winter Queen possibly referring to her as her "sister" (though I'll admit there are other candidates for whom she's referring to - though not a ton of them) and once again I find myself wondering what the hell Elune is.

While a lot of Shadowlands is adding brand new lore to the Warcraft cosmos, not only is it really interesting and cool lore, but I also suspect we're going to get some major reveals that will resonate even after we leave this realm behind.

Crafter's Marks and Missive Might Save Professions

 Professions, in WoW, were actually one of the first things that drew me to the game - the idea that I could craft my own gear was pretty cool. Of course, that was 14 years ago, and while I'll never let go of Engineering on my main (the best profession, obviously) in general, it's a game system that has struggled.

On one hand, they want it to be worthwhile, but on the other, they don't want to make the game a case of "who has enough gold to buy this on the Auction House" - especially given that they are, effectively, selling gold at this point.

Now, I'll confess that I'm not sure that the new systems fix this. But I do think that the actual appeal of crafted gear could be way better in Shadowlands, depending on how much they use Crafter's Marks in future patches.

Most professions (at least Engineering and Inscription, so I'd guess all the production ones) can make various ranks of Crafter's Marks with their own typical professional materials. When used as one of the optional ingredients in a recipe, this will change the item level (and required level).

Scribes can also create Missives, which can be applied to a piece of gear one is crafted as another optional ingredient to guarantee that a particular secondary stat will show up on it.

And as such, Blizzard doesn't actually need to add any new crafted recipes beyond new Crafter's Marks for the rest of the expansion.

Basically, item level and secondary stats are what defines a piece of gear these days (well, and armor type/slot). Item level tells you the amount of primary stats on it and its armor, and how much of its secondary stats you get. So if I can make, for example, some plate engineering goggles with Haste and Mastery, I'd be happy to keep making those at higher item levels because that'd give me all I want out of a helmet.

Rather than having to make tons of new items for every profession with each patch, they can just add a new Crafter's Mark recipe - one that will probably get harder to attain (maybe requiring some raiding) and perhaps some more difficult to acquire materials (perhaps that drop in said raid) to keep the gear locked behind the content. But it will make it much easier to make sure every profession's stuff gets updated.

I also like that it gives Inscription a key niche in the professional landscape - something they've lacked since Glyphs stopped being a major player-power mechanic.

Now, as of right now, the highest Crafter's Mark A: requires that you be at Cordial reputation with Ve'nari and B: only raises an item level to 161, which is only going to be useful if you don't have heroic dungeon gear.

I hope that we'll see this system expanded, as I think it's pretty elegant.

Pre-Raid Endgame and Systems on Top of Systems

 Ah, it's that odd part of the expansion where I'm not far behind the mythic raiders in terms of gearing. My Death Knight, who got to 60 in week one as well, is having absolutely rotten loot luck (of the four heroics I ran today on him, only one dropped a single piece of loot for him - thankfully the tank gave me a pair of boots - with top Frost stats - from Spires of Ascension, so it wasn't a total loss). The main paladin has had much better luck (so far) and now has a decent number of epics from Mythics, including a shield.

Hitting the level cap on your main often comes with a big blast of stuff to do, especially with the many systems they've been introducing in new expansions these past few years.

Shadowlands might take the cake for the most. Let's go through all the things you'll want to do to progress your character in terms of power and story.

Weekly:

Get your 1000 anima.

Get your 5 souls from the Maw.

Run as high up in the two open wings of Torghast as you can to maximize the Soul Ash you're getting.

Daily:

Do Maw content - as much as you can before your Eye of the Jailer level is too high to do so safely.

Do your Callings.

Farm up supplies for your covenant's special minigame. (Actually not sure if this is a weekly or daily thing).

Do your anima-conductor thing and go kill the rare or get the treasure.

Manage your adventure table (I mean - you don't have to).

Now, I'm sure that as the expansion goes on, some of these things will be more or less "completed," or we'll get to a point where we don't really need to work so diligently on them. For instance, once we've fully upgraded our covenant sanctums, and once we've finished our covenant campaigns, the weekly quests will probably be a lot less important.

I'm also really curious to see how things scale up. It's interesting to see that world quests often reward a stack of 2-4 of an item with 35 anima - rather than just a single item with 70-140. I wonder if the plan is that as the expansion goes on, we'll see quests and such giving us bigger stacks.

My roommate didn't finish his weekly 1000 anima quest in the first week, but he got a renown badge out of his calling quest, which suggests this will be a way to catch up if you fall behind. Clearly, given the way that soulbinds work, renown is going to be a major thing that every character's got to work on.

So, I believe that conduits drop for every spec, even if it's not your loot spec, which is why I've been getting retribution ones while tanking. I'm wondering if the same is true for the legendary "memories" needed to craft legendary items. Basically, my DK is 2H Frost (and yes, I went Venthyr even though that's apparently the "worst" choice for it, but A: it just seems right and B: it's actually one of the recommended ones for Blood (even if Kyrian seems to be ideal for both in single-target situations) and C: who knows how things will shift over time?

I do find myself wondering about which alt to level - normally my Demon Hunter would follow the DK, but he's also likely to go Venthyr (I tried out the Necrolord DH ability on the beta and kind of hate it) so I'm wondering if I just want to level a character who's likely to go Night Fae or Necrolords just so I can actually see those experiences.

Of course, my sense is that Kyrian and Venthyr are actually the top covenants for a lot of specs.

The alt-spec thing is a bit of a concern, although it currently kind of helps me justify what might be an un-optimized pick for my Death Knight - Blood and Venthyr go well together (and shouldn't they, thematically?) And I genuinely like using the Venthyr ability (Swarming Mist, which does aoe damage around you for a few seconds, increases your dodge chance, and gives you Runic Power when it does damage) even if it's perhaps not quite tuned as well as some others. (I'll actually admit that I'm getting used to once again actually using Death and Decay as a Frost Death Knight, but I also think that the Night Fae are possibly the least Death-Knight-y of the covenants.)

Blizzard is taking a risk here, creating a major tension between player power and the preferred story/aesthetic they wish to play with. Naturally, I'm sure all the hardcore raiders will go with the best simmed covenant regardless of aesthetic, but I also think that the vast majority of players will probably be ok. I mean, my DK is doing respectable damage so far, often topping the damage meter in boss fights (though I'd love for him to actually get some freaking gear drops.)

The Winter Queen's Sister

 Oddly, when I first did the Ardenweald quests on my main, I missed out on the climactic cutscene in which...

It's a new expansion, let's put a spoiler cut here.

SPOILERS AHEAD

An Alt in the Shadowlands

 Having blazed through leveling up and now running heroic dungeons and waiting for daily callings and world quests to let me progress other systems, I decided it was time to bring in my first alt - by tradition, it's my Death Knight (who has been, since Wrath, my sort of "Vice Main," even outgearing the tankadin in Mists of Pandaria.) I think my Demon Hunter will come next, and then I'll probably let one of my Horde characters come (though faction divide seems like it will be immensely less significant than it was last time - indeed, I think I might have leveled my Shaman prior to the DK in BFA just so I could see Zandalar).

While it looks like every character must go through the introductory quests in the Maw (which gets you most of the way to 51, actually) when you arrive in Oribos on a character after the first has hit 60 and chosen a covenant (I assume that's the criterion) time actually freezes while a special NPC shows up to let you choose - do you play through the main story again or go into a free-form mode?

Now, actually, for all of my characters, the Death Knight makes the most sense to play in this free-mode (which I'll detail below) given that I leveled him up to 60 in the beta, and thus have actually gotten to try out all the covenant abilities. You can actually switch over from story mode to this free-form mode later if you want to skip ahead, but you cannot go the other way.

While I'm tempted to try that on him, I'm also sort of hesitant to do so, given the vast number of quests I'd be missing out on - though there's obviously some content (lots of bonus objectives, I believe) that open up. The key advantage to the free-form is that you get to do the zones in any order, and can choose your covenant at 50, getting to start work on stuff like renown from the get-go.

But given that I've only played through the leveling story once on beta and once on live, I'm not exactly sick of it yet. A conundrum. Of course, every other class I play I'll probably want to get a chance to use the four covenant abilities outside of some training dummies in that room in Oribos, which the linear questing experience really gives you tons of opportunity to do.

For the DK, I think I want to go Venthyr, which is seen, I think, as a kinda ok option for Frost, though it's also seen as pretty good for Blood, so I think I'll probably be ok with that.

I do want to be able to play all four covenant campaigns, but at the same time, the min-maxer in me wants to make sure that I get my characters the best stuff, so... hm. And as it happens, it looks like I'm going to have a ton of Venthyr characters among my most-played ones (I might elevate my Frost Mage a bit early so I have someone to go Night Fae.)

Also, I'll be honest, I kind of hate Fleshcrafting, the universal Necrolord ability. If the channel time were half as long, I might like it a whole lot more.

Anyway, the DK is sitting in Oribos, having gotten his professions upgraded to Shadowlands level and chilling for the time being. I'll probably return to the paladin main tomorrow and get daily content done. (Naturally, his worst piece of gear is his weapon - haven't had much luck with drops. But heroics don't seem to be a massive difficulty jump, so I'll just give it time.)

What Hit the Arbiter?

 Shortly after we arrive in Oribos, before we're sent to Bastion to start our little mystery investigation through the Shadowlands, we get a cutscene that explains why the afterlife is broken, and all souls are currently going directly to the Maw.

But one explanation just raises other questions.

What we know is that when things are working correctly, the Arbiter sees every soul and understands it immediately, then sends it on its way to the proper afterlife. But in the midst of the stream of incoming souls, there was some red (in contrast to the tranquil bluish-white of the others) missile that struck her, knocking her out and causing the entire stream to go directly down (which, ok, bad design, guys.)

As I see it, there are two possibilities: the red projectile was either a soul or some kind of magical attack.

Now, the latter case leaves a ton of possibilities open - basically, anyone who can aim something into the Shadowlands could pull it off. This could still totally be the case, but I think it's more interesting if one individual's demise was what caused this.

But who?

Ok, let's talk timing.

Thanks to the tearjerkingly tragic Ardenweald Afterlives cinematic, we know that the system was still functioning when we did the Emerald Nightmare raid. Ursoc's demise there led to his arrival as a spirit in Ardenweald, ready to undergo the long hibernation that would bring his eventual rebirth - only for the anima drought to deny him the chance to be reborn or even live on in Ardenweald (oof, still hurts).

So we have a moment it could not have happened before (even accepting that time works differently in the Shadowlands, we're talking causality here, and if the story is to make sense, it has to at least respect that a little, unless we find out the Infinite Dragonflight is behind all of this (which... sign me up?)

Now, I believe that there's been mentions of the souls that burned in Teldrassil going to the Maw (which makes Elune's putting them to sleep before they could die feel like less of an effective act of mercy). That would suggest that this violation of the system happened before the War of Thorns.

So that means that something happened during Legion or in the between-expansion period after it. If my hypothesis that the red thing is a soul, whose might it be?

My initial guess would be Argus. Frankly, there are a lot of things we have yet to really understand about Argus. When we arrived on his planet, he was still just a World-Soul like Azeroth - which seems to be a kind of formless essence at the heart of the planet. The Legion had worked Argus over like crazy, as we saw that a giant chunk of the planet had been carved away, and it had been profoundly corrupted by fel magic.

But in the very last moments of the raid, Argus manifests as a true Titanic form within the Seat of the Pantheon, and we fight him while the uncorrupted (and in the case of Aggramar de-corrupted) Titans watch. It's his defeat that seems to empower the Pantheon to capture Sargeras and seal him on his throne (though again, we really don't know what exactly happened next - the one kinda-sorta mortal there hasn't been able to call home.)

But here's a question: do Titans go to the Shadowlands?

I believe there was either an answer from a Blizzard person in an interview or possibly a line in Shadowlands that suggests that the Titans are beings of Order, and that the material world is their realm (which is kind of interesting - if each of the 6 primordial forces has its own plane, with the Shadowlands being that of Death and the Twisting Nether being that of Disorder, is "Reality" the realm of Order?) Though Sargeras had slain Aggramar and the rest of the Pantheon way back in the distant past, they lived on, and while their essences were (with the exception of Eonar) recaptured by the Legion (as we saw in Antorus,) they were able to return to their Titanic forms by the Argus fight.

Man, it's a shame we didn't get more time to spend with them, because there were a lot of questions I'd have wanted to ask them. Also, I'd have really liked to be reminded what the difference between Norgannon and Golganeth was - after so long building up the ultimate divine pantheon of the Warcraft universe, we didn't really get any time to see them do anything individually.

Anyway, if Argus hasn't just been annihilated like Telogrus was (I maintain that that's the name of the World-Soul that Sargeras first destroyed when he found that the planet was corrupted with Old Gods, because it's heavily implied that the Void Elf starting zone is that world) would his soul go to the Shadowlands? Or would it persist, maybe in the Seat of the Pantheon?

Let's set him aside for a moment, though.

What about Kil'jaeden? Killy J even had a connection to the Shadowlands, as it was he who built the Lich King (out of, I believe we'll discover, pieces made by the Runecarver, plus one Orc soul). But that's also an interesting question: given that Kil'jaeden had spent 25,000 years as a demon (and a particularly powerful one at that, meaning he must have been saturated with fel energy - which is probably why he exploded and took out his whole flagship when he died) can he even go to the Shadowlands? My read of his death was that he faced true extinction, dying in the Twisting Nether as he did. It made his last words all the more tragic - that he had given up his humanity (er... Draenanity? No, hold on, Eredaranity?) thinking that Sargeras could not be opposed, and that it would be better for him and his people to be on the winning side, only to face oblivion.

Like Argus, I'm not sure that there is a soul of Kil'jaeden's to even go to the Shadowlands.

But here's, perhaps, an interesting option:

What about Gul'dan?

See, there's a problem with Gul'dan. His soul had already been sent to the Shadowlands.

Now, take this with a boulder of rock salt, because even in Warlords of Draenor - the literal time travel expansion - Blizzard was resolute in not actually making use of the time-travel elements in the story. As someone who has been fascinated by the Infinite Dragonflight since they were introduced in Burning Crusade, it felt criminal that they never actually made use of them within Warlords - the only tiny reference to them being Kairozdormu claiming he would "become infinite" right before Garrosh strangled him to death.

While I think there's a lot of merit to the theory that no one is supposed to go directly to the Maw - that everyone's supposed to get a chance in Revendreth - if there's any character in Warcraft who seems 100% suited for the Maw, it's Gul'dan (Cho'gall's another possibility).

(As a side note, in the Gul'dan Harbingers cinematic from Legion, I think most people would read, and perhaps the intended read is, that the gruff warrior guy who exiles Gul'dan from his home is just another toxic "warrior culture" orc who can't understand the value of people without physical strength, and that the shaman who shows him mercy is the wise one, even if it gets him killed. I kind of like the possibility that the warrior guy doesn't exile him for being weak, but because he understands the darkness within what was then a young man, and that the shaman is just being naive.)

So Gul'dan might have just gone to the Maw immediately. But what if, when we killed the second Gul'dan, it caused an error?

The inhabitants of Bastion have a vaguely mechanical vibe to them (same with the Brokers, who, by the way, I'm convinced are up to something profoundly shady, and also feel like they would get along well with the Ethereals) and so I could understand Gul'dan Mk. II showing up for judgment causing a major error.

Now, on the other hand, plenty of invading orcs from Alt-Draenor died before he did well before Legion. And I also wonder if the Shadowlands transcends timelines the way that the Legion does (which... I'm about 95% convinced was the Blizzard lore team just wanting to get Warlords over with and let Archimonde die for real-real).

So I'm not 100% convinced that it's him either.

Of all the things that happened in Legion, the one most closely associated with the force of Death was Helya and her Kvaldir. We now know that Helya is one of the many figures in league with the Jailer (likewise Mueh'zalla, who I think is the hardest dungeon boss in the expansion, at least on normal and when we're still learning the fights) and we were told during BFA (if you got a particular drop from an island expedition) that even in death, she's been more powerful than ever.

Naturally, I think we'll find out more over the course of this expansion. But I am happy to have some major lore to speculate about.

Kyrian Covenant, Level 60, Almost All the Dungeons Run

 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?