It's been a busy few weeks for World of Warcraft. Both retail and Classic WoW saw a lot of new content drop this week and there's been a lot of excitement for both the new and vintage game. Shadowlands is enjoying a lot of positive attention for both visual appeal and technical improvements, some that are so overwhelming that they obscure other important details.
As the days roll by, players are discovering more hidden quests, Easter eggs, rare mounts, and other details that were initially lost in the excitement of a whole new World of Warcraft. There's a lot to unpack here and there are hundreds of keen players that are just getting started, so check this page for frequent updates in the coming months as more is discovered.
10 Save Blanchy
One of the first things that players complained about when Shaowlands first dropped was that they couldn't use their mounts in the zone. There are plenty of mounts that players can obtain within the Shadowlands, however, and one of them is the bloody red ghost, Sinrunner Blanchy.
Horde players won't know her as well, since she's a recurring character on the Alliance side and part of an early quest in Westfall. Between taking six days and various items to obtain her as a mount, has anyone asked what fatal flaw she had that doomed her to Revendreth?
9 Could It Be...Satan?
Are there any original ideas in the fantasy genre? Even Tolkien took his ideas from ancient local legends and Scandinavian mythology. It's hard to miss that the Maw has some obvious parallels to the Christian idea of Hell, but we can take that a step further and say that the whole Shadowlands is based on Dante's Inferno, where souls were regulated to different parts of the afterlife based on their deeds in life. Dante also wrote about Heaven and Purgatory, so places like Revendreth and Oribos also sound familiar.
8 The Non-Mystery of Spirit Healers
How many times have you rezzed in the graveyard and wondered, what's the deal with these spirit healers? Wouldn't it be cool to know what they were and where they lived? Oh, right, you never wondered that.
Welcome to Bastion, the answer to the question nobody asked. It's an interesting bit of lore, and this zone sure is pretty, so the players are distracted from the fact that this isn't one of the eternal mysteries players were curious about. What about that weird snake tail in Gundrak, are we ever going to find out about that thing?
7 Let the Hound Begin
"Let The Hunt Begin" sounds like an exciting quest indeed, but if you've leveled a character in Classic you must have gone through the Scarlet Monastery and killed this guy already. And at about level 35, no less. That's right, it's ol' Houndmaster Loksey! Being a member of the Scarlet Crusade would naturally doom him to Revendreth. He's part of a long quest chain that takes place in Revendreath and ends with the player killing a fearsome creature known as the Fearstalker.
6 Things Don't Really Die in Ardenweald
Here's a unique zone that nobody really understands yet, and this might be yet another mystery that has yet to unfold. Until it does, players won't think very much about how this one zone does its own thing as far as judgment, rehabilitation, and reincarnation go. Other zones seem to send rehabilitated souls back to the Arbiter or send dommed souls to the Maw, so is being a Druid a way to cheat judgment, or at least escape the Maw?
5 Nothing Escapes from the Maw, Except You
Good thing that player character is exempt from this special rule that's supposed to be for everyone. It's a good thing, too, otherwise, this would be a boring expansion with a lot of impressive graphic displays and little else. Have we already said too much?
This doesn't go entirely without explanation, since apparently, the player is a special snowflake with an extra-strong connection to the world soul of Azeroth or something, which is why they can leave while others can stay behind.
4 "All Myths Are True."
If you hear a person talk about a myth or legend in the first act of a movie or TV show, chances are that myth or legend is true. The writers who put the Shadowlands together have decided that the afterlife of Azeroth is made up of infinite realms, so everything you took away from the afterlife from previous expansions was true even if it contradicts the new lore from the expansion. Doesn't that work out great?
3 The Level Squish is Lower than Classic
Weird, didn't someone say this isn't what we wanted? The cap in Classic WoW is currently at 60 with no firm plans to change it, despite there being some rumors of Burning Crusade servers or other ideas for enhanced versions in the future. That hasn't kept the Classic servers from holding their own when it comes to competing with retail, so other than annoying a few whiners who started at level 50 with their Death Knights anyway, maybe the level 60 cap wasn't such a lame idea after all.
2 Some Unpleasant Retcons
There's plenty of literature for those keen on Azerothian lore and anyone who has read "Before the Storm" might have already considered this tidbit of information. Wyll Benton is dying, and although Anduin Wrynn can save him, the noble old servant asks to pass away peacefully and be with his wife Elsie, who has already crossed over. In a tear-jerking scene, Anduin watches the man who acted as a father to him in life die.
In hindsight, Wyll didn't go to see his lost beloved after all. Instead, according to the new lore, his soul was sucked into the Maw. What an awful way to end an otherwise touching moment. It would be like finding out dear old Blanchy from Westfall had been brutally murdered by Defias Bandits.
1 Rebuilding the Zones
This detail gets lost in the idea of the information that you get about past lore and current storyline while playing through the Shadowlands the first time. As part of your mission as a hero, you're helping to rebuild the zones that make up the expansion. They look pretty good anyway, which is why you might not notice that they need some tidying up in the first place.