Pixel Amiss

AKA Shadowlands through the eyes of a filthy casual

This is part of a series of post about World of Warcraft’s Shadowlands expansion. Here we deal with the pre-patch, return to Icecrown and take a glance at levelling and class changes. You can find the other posts here:

• PART I – A mediocre pre-patch?
• PART II – Into the Maw

The deed is done. World of Warcraft is ready to close the book on Shadowlands, its eighth expansion, while the next step in the story, Dragonflight, is going through its public testing cycle and are being ferried through the lull period with the recently launched Season 4.

It’s been a messy expansion. It came hot on the heels of Battle for Azeroth, which was divisive (to say the least), and it had to face the pandemic and the massive scandal that, starting in summer 2021, rocked the very foundations of Blizzard. All on top of the usual difficulties and problems in developing the game. There were many baffling decisions, great ideas dragged down by poor execution and giant leaps forward that gave me hope for the game’s future.

It made many people mad because it continued BfA’s convoluted plot. Because it tried, with a move that proved useless, to force players to make decisions about their character’s combat identity.

The pre-patch

As is tradition, the first month of the new expansion is not really the new expansion. October 2020 brings the pre-patch, which gives us a glimpse of things to come. There’s a slew of changes, although most focus on new characters.

There are a bunch of new character customisation options, which are nice but not exactly world-changing. Of similar interest is the new starting zone, Exile’s Reach, which is a nice way to showcase what the game has to offer as we are stranded on a remote island and have to battle a variety of classic foes, from murlocs to ogres, ending in a short dungeon. It’s gorgeous, fun, modern, and a decent tutorial, but a discussion best left for another time.

Logging in, we find out that half of our levels have disappeared. Where we left our characters at level 120, we now are at level 50.

Levelling, all new

This comes with a new levelling system, the Timewalking Campaigns (or Chromie Time), that builds upon Legion’s new level scaling tech to give us the option to level 1 to 50 in a single expansion’s zones instead of blasting through each one in sequence.

I’m not going to lie, being able to play through all of Mists of Pandaria zones from start to finish is really, really nice. If I were to look for a weak point, endgame content is not included, which stops players from seeing the full story from start to finish.

I suspect it would require a good deal of work but having an option – maybe at max level – to replay through past expansions (including raids and new zones) in a “story mode” without needing to engage with endgame loops would be a great addition.

First feeling of a Death Knight

With the expanded levelling experience comes a range of class changes. Logging into my Unholy Death Knight feels better than I feared.

All classes see a bunch of abilities, previously locked behind specialization, become baseline, but in my case it’s not too impactful. I get back Lichborne (was a PVP talent), which is a nice survivability boost but not rotation-changing, and Anti-Magic Zone, which is not particularly useful in solo play. A true godsend is the addition of Epidemic as baseline, freeing a talent slot previously spent on a fundamental spell.

The main change that worried me, the removal of the AOE spread from Outbreak, which was very useful while farming mobs, doesn’t feel bad and requires only a minimal adjustment to feel natural. The limit to the number of enemies my AOE attacks can hit (which caused many debates during testing) is barely noticeable in the content I play. Overall, the spec was already fun to play, didn’t feel particularly weak in the scenarios I go through, and the changes generally felt good. Great start.

Goodbye Rastakhan, welcome Shadowlands

Lastly, there’s Death Rising, a time-limited event that sets up the upcoming story. Sylvanas has assaulted Icecrown Citadel, kicked the Lich King’s ass and destroyed the Helm of Domination, the vessel through which hordes of undead were kept at bay.

All hell Shadowlands break loose. The sky above Icecrown literally shatters, revealing an orange-ish world beyond and an ominous-looking upside-down tower (with which we’ll become very familiar in the next few years). The undead spread across the world, attacking our settlements and turning us into zombies, much like what happened in Vanilla before Naxxramas and in Wrath’s pre-patch.

More worryingly, a bunch of winged Nazgul start pouring in from the broken sky and kidnap our leaders. Thrall, Baine, Jaina and Anduin are gone. Who were the main (surviving) (RIP Saurfang) opposers of Sylvanas’ plot in Battle for Azeroth. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Back to Icecrown

Here starts our involvement. The Ebon Blade and the Argent Crusade are working in Icecrown and ask for our help. Over two weeks, we embark on a rather forgettable questline that sees us fighting, spying and running around to stop the Scourge and discover that the “Banished One”, the Nazgul’s boss, is responsible for all of this. At this point, it’s just a few breadcrumbs hinting at mysteries that might never be uncovered.

Most of our time is spent flying around Icecrown, completing daily quests in exchange for a new currency, Argent Commendation, which we can then spend on a toy, a pet and a set of catchup gear that shares appearance with the base Arathi Warfront armour and is useful only for newly levelled characters. Not particularly impressive.

The rare enemies that occasionally pop up across the zone are more interesting, at least from a nostalgia point of view. Periodically, some of the mysterious winged enemies appear to resurrect a selection of notable Wrath of the Lich King raid and dungeon bosses, which drop items we can spend to get Commendations. And a 34-slot bag.

Yeah, the rewards are not great.

Now and then, a message in chat lets us know that “Chilling Winds” are blowing across the zone. What does it mean? There’s horrible weather, and we get a debuff for the next 20 minutes that deals ticking frost damage. To avoid it, we must rest for a while next to bonfires placed in the main hubs of our offensive. Although it doesn’t impact gameplay, it’s a nice touch, and I’d like to see some iteration of this concept implemented again.

He had it coming

The last piece of the puzzle is waiting in the Eastern Plaguelands, where our old friend Nathanos Blightcaller has returned to his family home and is now a world boss, waiting for a raid of heroes to kick his ass.

The fight is relatively easy, and his defeat gives us a cinematic that shows us his final demise at the hand of Tyrande. I’ll be honest: it’s a cute epilogue, and I’m happy Night Elves get some form of revenge, but (and I know I’m in the minority) I liked the bastard. I am sure he hated me, but I always felt a particular connection as a fellow undead abomination with an impressive list of war crimes. I enjoyed his snarky remarks.

BUT! I enjoy the juicy pieces of heroic raid level gear he drops, so off with his head, I say.

A good pre-patch?

Overall, it was pretty middle-of-the-bunch. The few pieces of lore could have been given in a single quest, leaving me with a vague sense of wasted time after the whole quest line. The repeatable content wasn’t exactly inventive, and the lack of cool rewards removed any interest in it. The become-a-zombie thing was a nice throwback, but I felt it didn’t click with people… But perhaps, I’m simply on a shit server. It would have been worth checking it on a roleplay server, where perhaps players are more inclined to interact with this sort of thing.

Death Rising was not an unmissable event, but I’m probably okay with it. I still haven’t decided on these things: on the one hand, these events are useful because they help make the world feel alive. After all, most things in life are a miss and they’re gone kind of deal. On the other hand, it sucks when devs remove content and rewards from their games.

So, yeah. You won’t make long-lasting memories, but at least if you were away at the time, you know you didn’t lose much.