WoW 9.0: (Insert Shadow-theme title here)

[luckton]

So, yeah, BFA sucked balls. Turns out taking the things that made Legion cool and trying to make them cooler by doing all the wrong things didn't work out. Who knew?!

So, in light of the popularity of Classic, the backfire of BFA, and the apparent theme of 2019 in that your project must have the word "shadow" in it, we're off to the Shadowlands to fight Sylvanas and whatever other-worldly grimdank that's been giving her demon vitamins.

Some hot takes:
- The "Lich King" is dead, but Bolvar's still breathing and will be the Khadgar of the expansion.
- You have to choose one of the four factions in the new expansion to bind yourself to. You can switch later, but of course at a cost. Each faction will give you unique abilities and gear. This is the artifact weapon/necklace thing of the expansion, but they've said that AP grinding is not a thing this expansion. Just old fashioned rep grinding.
- LEVEL SQUISH: After 8 expansions, two stat squishes, and years of grind, levels are getting the axe. Everyone at the cap will go back down to 50 and will grind to 60 for Shadowlands.
- The 1-10 grind can be your choice of the classic "starter" zones, or an all new tutorial zone.
- The 10-50 grind will be your choice of Vanilla or any WoW expansion. Each expansion is being re-tuned to be a proper leveling experience, scaled so that when you hit 50 you should be at the end of that expansion's level grind content.
- Classes are being re-tuned to be jacks of all trades of their skill sets instead of feeling like each spec is a unique, stand-alone class. Specs will still be there, but classic stuff is coming back (Paladin auras, Shaman totems, Rogue Poisons, etc.)
- No new classes, no new races. Just more allied races. They are adding more advanced customization for the base classes (humans can now be sub-racial ((orient, black, etc.)), undead can hide their bones, more troll tatts, etc.)
- All races can be Death Knights

Maybe it's some combination of BFA leaving a bad taste or the years of playing, but this isn't exciting me as much as previous expansions have done. I think I could get hyped for this, but we'll see how things develop over the coming months.

[luckton]

Alpha has finally launched, and the datamining has begun!

https://www.wowhead.com/guides/world-of-warcraft-shadowlands-expansion-overview

Bliz also posted a bunch of blogs about content and class changes planned so far.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/23380362/world-of-warcraft-shadowlands-news-round-up

I'm getting a little hyped for this. 8.3 was a good patch; it didn't end BFA on a high note, but decent enough given all the problems they ran into. Covenant factions are going to be the new azerite armor powers this expansion, so many they won't fuck them up so badly this time? Need more info on this whole "soul bind" progression sytem to see what stuff you get.

[Draegan]

Amazing. I totally forgot WOW existed and I accidentally glanced at the graveyard.

[luckton]

It's a good time to get in, for first-timers and returners. They just gave everyone a 100% bonus XP on all gains from now until the Shadowlands pre-patch launches (which has no date yet).

Also, rep gains are getting a 100% starting next week for 30 days, which is nice if you want to unlock one of the allied races for play. Or just wait for Shadowlands, since they're removing the rep requirement for 9.0.

[Draegan]

I'll probably never play a tab target based game ever again.

[Kail]

The tower of Torghast thing sounds like it might be fun to me; the last patch with the horrific visions has been some of the best solo content in the game so far, and Torghast looks like it's building on that.  Otherwise, not much is looking interesting here, aside from the massive changes to the lore, and I'm more than a little skeptical on that front after the gross mess that the Battle for Azeroth storyline turned out to be.

The "revamped leveling experience" thing is really needed, but also has a high chance of turning out not great... we'll see.  The last major change they made to leveling was the level scaling thing, which I hate, and this looks like they're extending that concept even farther now.  But it does need a revamp, so maybe it won't suck.

[luckton]

After getting delayed, and now looking like they're committed to the new date, 11/24/20 is when this fires off.

I'm looking forward to the new content and shedding away the Azerite armor system. It could have been a lot better and robust, and I fear they're gonna do the same thing again with Covenants, but we'll just have to wait to see what hits the fan when.

The pre-patch event is live now. If you actually enjoyed the zombie invasion from Wrath's pre-patch event, it's back until launch day. Additionally, it's a great time to get alts geared up from the zone events going on in Icecrown.

[luckton]

Prepatch event was advanced a day early. The icecrown rare crawl now sucks less, and the capitals are on fire with zombies.

[Hawkbit]

Thanks! Somehow I missed the update. So busy with work I suppose, but pretty excited for the xpac.

[luckton]

Blizzard after every expansion:

[Hawkbit]

I miss artifact weapons, but this entire Azerite system from BFA can get bent. I'm guessing the covenant systems are similar but we will see.

[luckton]

Absolutely loving how the forums are on fire with people complaining about Bliz breaking all craftable items prior to Shadowlands now working past 50.

- Gunshoes? Yeet!
- Talent respec tomes? Yeet!
- 'lust drums? Pots? Flasks? Yeet!

It's glorious. The gunshoe thing is great, since you can't mount in the Maw. Everyone's been stockpiling those for weeks, just to have them get broken the other day.

[Hawkbit]

I'm slowly working through the story, but the zones seem pretty decent this go. There's way too many characters to remember and the story is somewhat bleeding together. But it all seems fun. I'm questioning why so many world quests are directly in the same place as lowbie leveling areas, because the gank is real. Non-stop getting ripped while trying to quest is getting old so I might turn WM off.

I loaded a 18 Hunter into BFA and took him from 18 to 46 on Kul Tiras alone, did a few dungeons in it. I used heirlooms but didn't have rested bonus so they didn't really matter. I think the war campaign pushed him to 50, maybe 20 hours of /played total.

[luckton]

Having a blast my Demon Hunter, and I haven't touched an alt yet. Torghast is great. The Maw is alright. The other four zones are great if it's your covenant, alright if not. I like and hate that there are fewer WQs, but they're also more complex. And without a flight whistle the time I'm spending daily to clear my map is about the same as it was for BFA launch.

Getting geared up in Mythic 0 this week for + and raiding next week. Already made my first leggo!

[Kail]

Finally made it to 60 on my hunter (been busy so it took a while, the leveling seems really fast overall), but going through this on alts seems really tedious so far.  Allegedly there's some way to skip some or all of it but I haven't found it yet.  There's an awful lot of awkward slow walking, waiting for characters to finish dialogue, slow walking some more, etc. early on.

Zones are gorgeous, about the worst thing I can say about them is that they don't seem very "Warcraft-y" but then, I can't complain too loud because I like it when the game goes to weird places.  Doesn't seem very fleshed out as an afterlife, though, there are a lot of existential questions about the implications of being able to go to the afterlife which the game doesn't even acknowledge, like, what exactly happens when I kill someone here?  Do they go to SuperHell, do they come back to Oribos, do they just vanish forever (in which case this is kind of a crappy "afterlife") or what?

Plot for most of these zones is a bit forced, too...

Terrorist: I'm going to KILL THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Me: Hey Secret Service guys, I have information that terrorists are going to assassinate the President!  I need to warn him!
Secret Service: Nobody gets an audience with the President, except for members of Congress!
NEW QUEST: RUN FOR CONGRESS - Design a slogan for your election campaign 0/1

[Goldenmean]

but going through this on alts seems really tedious so far.  Allegedly there's some way to skip some or all of it but I haven't found it yet.

The toggle that shunts you into "Threads of Fate" which is the plot-less leveling path happens right after you get out of the Maw for the first time. It's sign posted pretty heavily. There's an NPC right in front of you when you zone into Oribos that offers it as an option. If you choose to take it, you get to pick your covenant and immediately jump into what's essentially the same system as the new Chromie leveling experience.

If you were splitting time between alts and already got some of them out of the Maw before you hit 60 on your first character, it's entirely possible that you missed the opportunity. I'm not too sure if there's another way to turn it on later down the line (turning it off is not an option)