Shadowlands: First Impressions

Let me preface all of this first by saying: my opinion is in no way the guilds opinion.

Now that THAT is out of the way, let’s keep going! I just wanted to give my thoughts on what I’ve seen so far, but I have not seen it all yet. I have worked my way through 2 and a half covenants, and I’m almost level 60. I have in no way been rushing nor have I had any struggles. While I probably level faster than the average bear, when it comes to new content I try to savor it and read everything.

That being said, my opinion might actually change once I reach the end of the ‘new stuff’ as it currently stands.

It’s too easy.

I am definitely not complaining that new WoW content is easier than Vanilla WoW content. Vanilla/classic was pretty rough at times, and I don’t care what anyone says – it was NOT as good as we all remember (Nostalgia is a bitch). I loved Classic but I also think at times it was too hard. Families were broken up over Classic WoW. If you wanted to reach the top in battleground ratings, get ready for papers to be served eventually.

Anyway, I think Shadowlands could be a bit harder. It’s been so mindless and the quests are kind of the same “kill 12 of these, click on 8 of these, and stand on this button” that it’s hard to stay in it. I get it, there’s literally thousands of quests and it’s going to be hard to not have some repetitiveness, but I don’t know… make me work for these levels, please? Make me earn them. I want to feel the pain in my knees, and the blood on my face when I hit 60 so I can yell at my monitor and go “I MADE IT!” But it doesn’t seem like the journey is as important as it once was. People hit 60 in less than 24 hours (Maybe less than 5 hours), and while I get that they were glued to their keyboards, smashing through everything at record speed – I feel like that should be impossible. There should be some struggle. We’ll be stuck with this expansion for 2 years, and while I get there will be patches with new content, new raids, new dungeons, new reps to grind – if we crush it too soon, will we get bored? Us WoW fans are hard to please sometimes.

I have a feeling the quick level grind is part of a grand scheme that gives us some instant gratification and then will include many patches that will drip feed content to us, to keep us cantankerous Cookies happy. Ok, not just us but maybe the entire fanbase. (With so much content at our fingertips, attention spans worldwide have shortened I’m sure, right? So this would make sense to me)

And Torghast sounds like the Ancient Cave in Lufia 2 (SNES Game from 1995), but I’m not complaining – Lufia 1 and 2 are my favorite games, so I think it sounds epic.

That all being said, once I hit 60 I’m sure there will be rep to grind with House Stark, I mean Hufflepuff, I mean Ardenweald – and there will be things to keep me busy. But we’ll see. While it sounds like I’m disliking shadowlands, that’s not true. I’ve been having fun and I think overall it’s a great expansion so far, I just wish the level grind were a bit tougher and I wish there were more epic cutscenes (although I may have missed some due to bugs!). I have a feeling once I hit 60 and start digging into the meat and potatoes of what is currently Shadowlands, I’ll be liking it much more.

What are YOUR thoughts? comment and let me know so we can see what the rest of the guild thinks!