Death does not lurk in the background in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, lingering as a threatening aura, out of sight. Death is everywhere in Shadowlands. Death is everything.
The entirety of World of Warcraft’s eighth expansion takes place in the afterlife, sending players into the realms of the Shadowlands to shift the balance of power away from evil for the thousandth time. And yet, despite 16 years of World of Warcraft asking players to repeatedly head into the unknown to stomp out a new or reinvigorated evil threat, Blizzard managed to make Shadowlands feel new and exciting, if a bit heavy-handed on making each of the millions of players feel antithetically like the One True Hero yet again.
For context: Shadowlands has been out for a bit longer than a week and I’ve put in something like two dozen hours. I’ve completed the main story, ran through most of the new dungeons, and begun the endgame. I have played WoW on and off since 2005 and sunk untold months of time into this game.
Shadowlands brings with it that classic New Expansion feeling that has accompanied almost every iteration since 2007’s The Burning Crusade. There are new lands to explore! New quests! New challenges! There’s always been some inherent pull like that at the beginning of expansion cycles, even if the expansions themselves turn out to have lackluster or boring endgames.
It’s too early to tell how successful this expansion will really be a few months, a year, or two years from now. All we have is a first impression. Shadowlands makes a good one.
Off to the Shadowlands
The Shadowlands are an expansive collection of realms that process and house the souls of the dead from across the entire game universe. As the heroes of WoW, the story leads players through four main realms. We're tasked with assisting their inhabitants to build them back up and ultimately unite them against the big bad, the Jailer. The Jailer maintains a fifth realm, the Maw, which is an inescapable hellhole for irredeemable souls. Normally in the universe where WoW is set, the souls of the dead are divvied up between all the realms. But the Jailer has recently been taking every soul for himself, leaving the other, decidedly less evil realms starved for power.
Our arrival into the Shadowlands has a great setup, story-wise. Sylvanas, a leader on the homeworld of Azeroth, has been involved in some increasingly genocidal, war crime-y activities, destroying two capital cities and killing innumerable beings. This pissed off a lot of people in the game and outside the game, who all viewed Sylvanas as a redeemed individual and didn’t see the purpose of her destruction.
Well, once she broke the barrier between Azeroth and the Shadowlands, that purpose became clear: She was working with the Jailer, and all the souls of the people she killed went directly to him. It’s a power move that endangers all of Azeroth.
So at the behest of the world's leaders, we head with them to the Shadowlands.
It’s immediately apparent that Blizzard is once again giving each player running through this content the starring role of the One True Hero. For most of the game's life, players have largely been treated as pieces of a larger puzzle, not the stars of the story. That changed in 2016's Legion expansion, which doled out heavy-handed, ego-stroking dialogue that turned every player from simple heroes to the One True Hero. 2018's Battle for Azeroth toned it down a bit, but Shadowlands seemed to bump it back up a notch.
While I made my way into and back out of the shadowy, oppressive Maw (the first person being to ever do that, I’m told repeatedly), I’m listening to non-player characters tell me how I’m the first mortal they’ve seen. Meanwhile, I see about a dozen other players walking around in my field of view. What about them?
Despite journeying alongside countless human players, the adulation for my "singular" achievements continued throughout the whole story until I hit level 60 and it began to wrap. Why not acknowledge those other people from the start? It's been handled better in the past without detracting from the overall experience.
Outside of that, the story is engaging as it weaves linearly through each of the four new zones and their ruling Covenants: Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and Revendreth, while dipping into the Maw and the eternal city Oribos from time to time. We see how the lack of souls is affecting each area, meet their leaders, stave off some enemies, and unravel the mysteries of the Shadowlands.
There are some tedious tasks here and there, but that’s always a part of the MMO experience. The new environments pull a lot of weight in terms of making everything feel fresh.
The new frontier
As new expansion zones go, the ones in Shadowlands are all standouts.
Bastion, inspired by Greek and Norse mythology, has rolling golden plains interrupted by sheer gray cliffs and deep, hazy depressions. It's populated by angelic goody-two-shoes blue people called Kyrian. The story here is riveting mystery in which we try to figure out the root of the evil seeping into Bastion, and which culminates in a full-on invasion. It helps make up for some of Bastion’s annoying terrain, with an abundance of cliffs that make it difficult to get around.
Maldraxxus is a might-makes-right pit of darkness and war. I found the story here to be the least engaging out of the four new zones, as it went off in too many different directions. But those different directions led to some great environments and quests. The glowing green lakes of the House of Plagues, the creepy, mushroom-y marshes of the House of Rituals, and of course, the center of attention: The Theater of Pain. This arena is a massive fighting pit where all kinds of creatures and warriors come to fight and prove their mettle, which also sums up the whole vibe of the Maldraxxus.
Ardenweald is a dreamy, hazy, purple land of magical twilight and large trees. It’s a realm that takes in souls who were connected to nature, nourishes them in seeds, and sends them back to new worlds to continue the cycle. It’s a very pretty land without a doubt, but there’s little variation for the few hours spent there talking to fairies and killing giant bugs.
Revendreth is a sprawling vampire haven that feels like it’s been ripped right out of Castlevania. I went into this one thinking it would be my least favorite, but it turned out to be the most fun I had. The Venthyr that live here are imposing vampire-like creatures that were close to being sent to the Maw where the worst, irredeemable souls are sent, but were given a final chance for redemption in Revendreth. The aesthetics of this place with its dreary landscapes overshadowed by massive gothic architecture is cohesive, with just enough variation to make exploration exciting. The realm's story of power struggles, lies, and a bombastic culmination of betrayal at the end is searing.
The fifth and final zone, the Maw, is unlike anything else in World of Warcraft. While many zones are built to entice players to spend their time there, the Maw is the opposite. The longer you spend there, the more the Jailer notices you and starts sending increasingly powerful denizens to take care of you. The Maw actively wants you to leave with its tougher-than-usual enemies, oppressive atmosphere, and frustrating dangers that can immobilize players and even deliver one-hit kills. It’s a refreshing take on endgame content that really feels challenging, especially when you hang around too long.
As far as leveling and the main storyline goes, Shadowlands is among the better WoW expansions. The varied, inventive landscapes are a refreshing departure from the duller locales in 2018's Battle for Azeroth. And the flow of the story is strong, maybe not quite as strong as 2016's Legion, but better than most.
Some of the bits that I’ve loved the most are parts that remind me of earlier moments in World of Warcraft history, or which reference other things. In Maldraxxus, the fungus-covered House of Rituals areas brought me back to the Burning Crusade zone Zangarmarsh, which housed the old raid, Serpentshrine Cavern. Its final boss, Lady Vashj, which I defeated back in 2008, has wound up in Maldraxxus with a new title, Baroness Vashj, a wonderful nod back to the game’s history.
There are a handful of moments like this in Shadowlands, from a little item called “Miserable Pile of Secrets” that can be found in Revendreth, a reference to a line from Castlevania, to major story moments like the rebirth of a major soul from Azeroth in Ardenweald. These flashes of the past that have been a part of WoW since the beginning anchor this otherworldly expansion to the broader landscape of the game in a seamless way.
The great beyond
What lies ahead for Shadowlands? A lot is unknown, but for now, the endgame content that’s been laid before us looks ample. There are daily quests for the Maw and through our chosen Covenants, a system that I worried could be limiting but which actually leaves room for exploring more than just the realm one chooses.
There’s also Torghast, the ever-shifting randomized dungeon located in the Maw that offers new challenges and rewards to improve characters’ powers. In a few of the runs I’ve done, both solo and with a friend, it’s been a fun way to mix up the usual grind of conquering dungeons for gear improvements, PvPing here and there, and daily quests. Having an extra Thing To Do in the mix is entirely welcome, especially given Torghast's procedurally generated nature.
Even just working on dailies to get gold and resources has been fun thus far, with quests popping up all over the place. The addition of ongoing story beats as you progress through your chosen Covenant is a nice carrot on a stick too, promising more of that sweet, sweet story in the lead-up to however this expansion is going to end. Probably a raid fight against the Jailer, and maybe Sylvanas, if I had to hazard a guess.
Once I finish up with my chosen Covenant, the Venthyr, I'm excited to hop over to the next one, to see how their story progresses and spend more time in that zone, whatever it may be.
The impact that this expansion reaches beyond the endgame, too. The maximum level cap has been squished down from 120 to the original cap of 60, and leveling is much faster. That makes catching up (or leveling "alt" characters) more manageable, especially with level scaling letting you choose what you’d like to experience.
This squished level cap has been a long time coming, and it makes the whole game seem less daunting. When new content required you to get all the way up into the 100s, it just felt too out of reach for starting a new character. Now it can be done casually in a matter of days or weeks. Back in the day it took me months.
Shadowlands is a step forward for World of Warcraft. A strong step forward. On the surface, it has what a good expansion needs: Pretty new lands to explore and an exciting story, as well as new, inventive features to shake up the cobwebs that inevitably appear on a 16-year-old game. Not only is the new content satisfying, it also improves the experience of the old content. Shadowlands stands out alongside some of WoW's best expansions to date.
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