World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Review

After the launch of World of Warcraft Classic, the perceived downfall of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, and a notable delay, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is finally here.

The release of a new WoW expansion comes with a level of anticipation, dread, and curiosity that we don’t typically see in expansions to other live service games. Chalk that up to both the extensive nature of WoW‘s content offerings and the fact that every expansion writes the opening pages to a new chapter in a legendary MMO that has revolutionized the genre (and gaming) for over 16 years.

That being the case, reviewing a new WoW expansion is also a somewhat unusual process. Each new WoW expansion features a campaign to work your way through along with a variety of endgame content that typically isn’t even available when the expansion launches. That’s why we’ve broken our review of Shadowlands down into looks at the expansion’s leveling and endgame in order to tell you whether it is worth losing your free time to.

World of Warcraft Shadowlands Leveling Review By the end of World of Warcraft‘s last expansion, Battle for Azeroth, the usual fatigue that accompanies the final days of a WoW expansion was amplified by the belief that Blizzard was no longer in control of its 16-year-old MMORPG giant. There were some players who felt that Activision’s influence on Blizzard had corrupted the company’s spirit. Others who had just gotten a taste of World of Warcraft Classic bemoaned the loss of the social elements that had once defined the game. There was a general feeling that Blizzard was doing all it could to keep WoW afloat while longtime fans were impatiently waiting for the MMO to embark upon its next great adventure.

In many ways, Blizzard wants Shadowlands to be that great adventure. More importantly, the studio seems to want Shadowlands to be the expansion that helps reset WoW and wipes away some of the mistakes that the team has made in recent years. After hours of playing Shadowlands, it seems the expansion is on track to do just that, even as the ghosts of the past decisions threaten to drag the MMO back down into a void of complacency.

Shadowlands makes a good first impression. Shortly after starting the expansion’s primary questline, you’re thrown into The Maw, a kind of uber-Hell where the worst of the worst go when they die. The problem is that it seems every soul has been sent to The Maw recently, which has allowed the realm’s ruler, a Thanos-like creature known as The Jailer, to build an army of the damned. With help from the recently crowned Lich Queen, Sylvanas Windrunner, The Jailer plans to use this army to take over all the realms of the Shadowlands and Azeroth as well.

This setup is a simple, but effective way to not only introduce players to the lore of Shadowlands but to once again put all players under the thumb of a universal threat. You will miss out on many, many bits of lore by hopping into Shadowlands without knowing anything about the history of World of Warcraft mythology, but it’s easy enough to understand and enjoy the standalone plot that Shadowlands offers.

More importantly, the entire Shadowlands concept seems to have brought out the best of the game’s talented artists and designers. Each zone in Shadowlands essentially serves as a different version of the afterlife. This idea is beautifully demonstrated by Shadowlands’ starting zone, Bastion, which is a kind of an Elysian Fields version of the afterlife where angelic figures roam fields of wheat. It stands in stark contrast to the next zone, Maldraxxus, where necromancers train the souls of the damned as well as warriors who refused to stop fighting even in death.

It’s entirely possible to enjoy your time in World of Warcraft without diving into the story or lore, but it’s a testament to the design of Shadowlands‘ worlds that the lore is built into every corner of each new zone in such a way that you end up appreciating what the team has built even if you skip every line of dialogue en route to the endgame.

Yet, the biggest highlight in Shadowlands is the level squish. Blizzard’s decision to reduce the level cap from 120 to 60 not only helps the game feel much more approachable for new players (even if the leveling time is about the same) but also ensures that reaching a new level feels more significant. While vital talent points are only acquired every five levels from level 15 on, each new level typically rewards you with some kind of new skill or dungeon to explore.