Shadowlands. Since I’ve not really used my blog since September last year I’ve not gotten around to do a post about it yet. And even though I realize the expansion has been out for almost two months now, I still feel like I want to say something about it and my current state of playing WoW.

Originally I took time off at the end of October so I could enjoy Shadowlands launch and don’t get too far behind with leveling compared to the rest of the guild. Unfortunately with Blizzard pushing the release date back I had to cancel that free time and wasn’t able to take it off for the new launch date. As such when I finally got around to playing a lot of my guildies were already max level and gearing up while I was still struggling to get to level 60. I made it eventually and started to slowly tank things on my Warrior when I realized that, once again, Blizzard had decided that Protection Warriors had too much fun in Battle for Azeroth and completely broke the spec. I don’t think I’ve felt like this much of a paper tank since the launch of Mists of Pandaria, another infamous stroke of Blizzard nerfing Prot Warriors genius. I struggled a lot, didn’t like my class and didn’t enjoy tanking because I felt I was more of a burden than a tank.
As such I wasn’t online nearly as often as I intended to be. I wasn’t there to tank Mythic and later Mythic+ and as such I lost my tank spot for raids. A part of me understands but I was gutted. I don’t like playing DPS Warrior and there was apparently no way I was getting my tankspot back for this raidtier. So after a lot of agonizing and feeling like shit I decided to take a step back from raiding after we cleared normal. I play this game to have fun and if I don’t have fun and only feel frustrated then what’s the point in playing? So I stepped back and tried alts and just poking about in different things. For now I’m mostly trying to keep up with the bare minimum in content and it’s been quite liberating. I have a lot of time to play other games now and it’s really nice. Now that I’ve cleared up I’m more or less a casual player for the moment let’s get down to what really matters.

What do I actually think of the expansion itself?
Honestly, I’m very 50/50 about it. The zones are once again well made and, especially in case of Bastion, stunning. The covenant stories are fun and make me want to play through all of them atleast once. I’ve finished the Kyrian campaign this week and am slowly working on the Night Fae one on my Horde Mage. I have a Monk that I went the Maldraxxus covenant with so that only leaves Revendreth. The stories are nice and I like that they spaced it out so you had something to look forward to every week.
Overall I’m enjoying the lore. The raid lore, the dungeon lore, the Maw and Torghast lore. Blizzard never failed at making stories interesting so there’s that.

But honestly that’s kind of where my excitement ends for the moment. I really, really, dislike Torghast. It feels forced and unfun and it’s horrible to play solo. I only go there for the weekly quest and then make sure I get the hell out again. It’s not my cup of tea and the only way I’ll run it is if I do it with others while talking on Discord because I need the banter as distraction.
Endgame in WoW is still the same as it was in BfA. There is PvP, there are Mythic+ dungeons to run and there is raiding. I’m currently not doing any of that. I do want to get into Mythic+ again at some point, even if it’s just to get the reward for doing everything on +15 and I may even want to dabble in Arena to earn that mount but otherwise the endgame for me is a bit of a no-go right now. Alternatively Professions have been a bit of a bust aswell. There is no Archaeology in Shadowlands and I’ve already maxed out Cooking, Mining and Blacksmithing. They removed the star system for recipes and by the time you unlock the good stuff you’ve already outgeared it.

All in all, as much as I do like casually putzing about and leveling alts and other shit, the expansion hasn’t been able to fully grasp me so far. It kind off feels like a rerun of BfA to me and that expansion in my eyes failed terribly. Maybe I’m slowly getting to the point where I’m able to let go of WoW and move on to other things. But I have said this before and I always seem to come back. Who knows, maybe I’ll get gripped by the sudden urge to play in a few months and will pour all my time into it again. Only time will tell.