I've never been swept away by a WoW expansion until I played Shadowlands. Like many, I tend to complete exactly as much of the campaign as is required and then immediately jump into dungeons to grind to level cap as fast as possible. I don't skip cutscenes, but I tend just let the story wash over me, only picking up on what's happening through environmental storytelling and osmosis. Everyone knows the game begins when the story ends, and so we all try to get there as fast as possible. Shadowlands throws a major wrench in the rush to max level by telling an incredibly engaging story you won't want to ignore. It seems like the end-game loops, despite being more layered and complicated than ever, are going to give players more than enough variety and worthwhile activities to grind. For my money though, Shadowlands offers a leveling experience so fantastic that it's worth the price of admission (and the time commitment) just to see how it unfolds.
Every WoW expansion is exciting. There are new places to explore, new systems to learn, and all kinds of new and challenging content to progress through. For me, the new story content never even makes the top ten list of exciting new things. Don't get me wrong, WoW lore is fantastic and I enjoy learning about all the new places and characters in each expansion. I love lore. I even listen to WoW audiobooks while I grind. But when it comes to in-game story content, WoW expansions serve as tour guides through the new zones at best, and barriers preventing you from getting to max-level dungeon grinds at worst. When my Mag'har Orc Hunter earned the achievement for completing 1,500 quests, it occurred to me that that was 1,500 text boxes I never read. 1,500 stories I completely ignored. Now, in Shadowlands, my relationship with the story has completely changed. It's not the endgame I'm working for — the story itself is what pulled me through.
Shadowlands changes up the expansion format dramatically. Instead of presenting the player with a bunch of zones that can be completed in any order, Shadowlands tells one continuous story that takes every player through all of the new regions in the same exact order. This has a huge impact on the quality and types of stories in Shadowlands. Rather than each zone telling its own self-contained story that vaguely ties into the bigger picture, the entirety of Shadowlands campaign moves forward in one direction. Every quest you take moves the story forward. It's actually impossible to ignore the narrative of Shadowlands, and it's the best campaign experience I've ever had in WoW.
When the story is pushed to the foreground in this way, and every task is meaningful, then every quest is contextualized. Yes, you're still going to have to go kill five Googobs and collect their pelts, but it feels like you're actually doing it for an important reason. Shadowlands has managed to eliminate busywork from questing by telling a story worth paying attention to. Virtually every quest I've been given has felt meaningful and pertinent. I'm was eager to complete quests for the sake of progressing the story rather than earning XP.
In the Quest Log, there's a new "Story so far" tab on the campaign banner. Here, you can get a constantly updating story summary, so if you just blew through a quest hub and ignored all of the dialogue out of habit, you can get caught up with everything that just happened in one paragraph. That's important when telling one long story.
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I think the element that drew me in the most to the leveling experience is the incredible new zones. I absolutely loved every moment of exploration through the four new realms. Compared to the zones in Battle for Azeroth, the jungle, swamp, and desert regions of Zandalar simply don't hold a candle to the beautiful vistas in Bastion or the unbelievable skyboxes in Ardenweald. The regions themselves are an important part of the story and learning about them, their purpose, and their inhabitants has been a joy. When the story is finished and it's time to pick a covenant, I was really torn between choosing my favorite covenant and choosing the one with the best stats for my spec.
Once the endgame starts, things move really quickly. Though you've gotten a taste of all covenants and activities you'll be grinding like The Maw and Torghast, you really don't get a sense of how all the different systems overlap and interact until you've done them several times.
Shadowlands' endgame is actually kind of difficult to wrap your head around. Reputation is back but not nearly as important as it's been in previous expansions. Instead, players are focused on Renown to increase their covenant level and advance the Covenant Campaigns. You can only earn three levels of Renown per week, and to do so, you'll need to earn two different types of currencies: one by completing World Quests and one by questing in The Maw. That first trip to The Maw will introduce you to a separate progression system in which you earn a currency called Stygia to make permanent upgrades to survivability in this punishing zone (your mount ignore your call within The Maw) as well as upgrades to Torghast. Torghast progression will earn you yet another type of currency, called Soul Ash, which is used to craft legendary armor and weapons.
The sheer number of overlapping systems in Shadowlands can really make your head spin when you first jump in, especially after spending many hours in an extremely linear campaign. In fact, there are even more: Missions have been reworked into Covenant Adventures, which are tactical battles that have their own campaign progression. Professions have mostly all been reworked and almost of them play a part in crafting the new legendary gear, and emissaries, now called Callings, are even more complex. Luckily, a lot of this progression is time-gated to help players prioritize their time better with all these new systems. You can earn your Renown, hit your Soul Ash cap in Torghast, and finish all your World Quests before you get into a familiar PvP or Mythic Dungeon routine.
I'm particularly fascinated by how much inspiration these activities draw from different genres. Torghast is heavily inspired by rogue-like games. You earn abilities and currency that can only be used in each layer of a semi-randomized dungeon, earning currency at each completion for meta-progression. The Maw feels inspired by Dark Souls. In this hellish landscape, you're disincentivized from taking on big packs of mobs because deaths will cost you Stygia (the souls-like material exclusive to this zone) and you'll have to return to your body to recover them. The new adventures have elements of auto chess, and there's even a Flappy Bird World Quest. Shadowlands is still very much World of Warcraft — the core of the game remains unchanged — but seeing all these different genre elements at play definitely makes WoW feel bigger than ever.
WoW fans will nitpick, of course, but I think the player base is receiving this expansion particularly well. If you're familiar with WoW you already have a pretty good idea of what you're getting into with Shadowlands, and if you don't like WoW nothing here will change your mind. But the incredible pacing and storytelling of the campaign and the revamp of the leveling system has put WoW in a position to be the most new-player friendly it has ever been. If you've ever had an interest in WoW this is absolutely the time to start. They've even included a new Chromie Time-esque way to replay Shadowlands with alts without having to replay the entire linear story (except for the too-long intro) but honestly, I'll probably just run my alts through the story so that I can enjoy the story again and again.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was purchased by TheGamer for this review. Shadowlands is available now on PC.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
The eight expansion to Blizzard's hugely popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands takes players to the land of the dead. You must journey into this new location, and prevent a bigger catastrophe from coming to pass.