Into The Shadowlands – The Climb #640

Monday 23^rd November 2020

And we’re off! At 11pm, the quest popped up and we were into the Maw!

During previous launches I’ve tried to race to the new max level. That’s meant playing through the night and skipping a lot of the quest text.

It’s resulted in me missing a lot, but I’ve had to weight that up against getting behind and not being ready when various endgame material unlocks.

This launch is a little different. I have so many alts I want to level that it’s a long term project. This expansion will be around for two years, so there’s no rush. But at the same time, I don’t want to get to the final patch of an expansion and THEN worry about alts and professions.

I didn’t play a lot of BFA until earlier this year, by which time patches were out and the expansion was pretty much over.

So, as much as it might not seem it over the next few weeks, the plan is to go slow and steady. I’ll burn myself out on this expansion over the next couple of weeks to the point where I want to dabble.

On the list of things I want to get done: I want to get my main, and my raiding alt (if raiding happens) to max level and into endgame. If I can get a few others done as well that would be good. But I want to get all my alts through the starting experience so they are in Oribos where they can learn the new profession updates. I’ll then funnel materials from leveling characters to them and hopefully have it so that at the end of the two week staycation, I’ll be well into advancing all my professions.

Given that Blizzard have deliberately held back some content to allow players to feel like they don’t need to rush, I’m going to enjoy the story. I intend to play through the entire campaign and side quests, reading all the text so I have a deeper understanding of the story. Warcraft has so many npc characters and subplots it is easy to forget characters you’ve already met and quested with.

That means that I’m not going to feel bad about speedleveling alts at a later date, either while watching Netflix or listening to an audiobook.

This short two week burst followed by a long tail should hopefully mean that long term goals in Shadowlands get met. I don’t want a repeat of the bronto incident (which I’m still salty about).

Anticipating log in queues I logged in several hours early and then twitch-streamed the entire lore backstory to the Shadowlands. I had a number of watchers and they seemed to appreciate the string of cinematics I used to tell the story and explain some theories to watch out for, It was perfectly timed as well as just as I finished, the new expansion launched and we were sent into The Maw.

I’d done the intro quests on beta, but stopped just after that as I didn’t want to spoil it. But it’s amazing how streaming causes me to stop and read the quest text. And because I didn’t feel in a rush to level, I enjoyed it.

We’ve got a couple of years in this expansion and beyond the intro I don’t know too much of what to expect. I can’t wait!