Shadowlands – Is it as good as expected?

Since the new expansion for World of Warcraft has come out and we are now a few days into its second week of life, I figured it’s time to sit down and write a review of it so far!

As of right now, there is a whole host of reasons as to why Blizzard’s new expansion is feeling so good, and a few, not so good feelings. Today I want to go over these systems and intricacies and give a little explanation to them.

First and foremost, we’ve got Torghast, Tower of the Damned. This is the new weekly “dungeon” , so to speak, taking the place of Island Expeditions from BfA. The difference is that, while they are identical in function, they are integrated and maintained differently. Islands were meant to give players some way to farm out the experience needed for their Heart’s of Azeroth, but quickly realized it would take days of grinding for very minimal results. Torghast on the other hand has completely flipped that idea on its head while still acting as much the same type of activity. Torghast is a new dungeon-type of side activity that allows you to progressively get to higher and higher floors the better prepared you come to it (i.e. Food buffs, weapon buffs, enchants). This extra activity however, comes with the added benefits of Soul Ash, the new side currency that allows players to make Legendary quality items! These items on top of giving the stat benefits of a legendary item also give you a special benefit from whatever rune you carve in. An example of this is the Darkglare Boon for Demon Hunters that give you a 20% chance that the Eye Beam skill won’t incur its cooldown after being channeled! This feature has been absolutely amazing feeling!

Next up is gearing in general and class feelings after the level squish! So far the gearing system has been alright, you quest up to 140-ish gear and regular dungeon up to 155, after which you heroic dungeon up to 171! the feeling of this gear acquiring system feels great after the level squish as your character might seem a bit floppy or slow when you play them from 50 to 60 but once they start getting gear, especially with your essential secondary stats, you start to feel really good!

The one thing that I will say so far that has been a bit negative about shadowlands is the server issues. I play on the Thrall server, so fortunately not many persisting problems or queues have hit me, however, we’re a week into this expansion now and so far, there have been persisting log-in queues, disconnects, and overall server lag issues that have yet to be addressed.

Overall the Shadowlands experience has been a big success in my opinion and I am looking forward to seeing how they develop these new systems and what changes they’ll make!

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