World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is a smorgasbord of endgame stuff to do, and this time it's all actually worth doing!
World of Warcraft (WoW) enters its 17th year in 2021, hot on the heels of the launch of Shadowlands, the MMO's next big expansion. In Shadowlands, players become the Maw Walker, capable of shifting between the realm of the afterlife and the lands of the living. The Shadowlands is a mysterious other-worldly dimension, where souls appear after death and are judged an afterlife deemed suitable for their deeds (or misdeeds). However, something has gone terribly wrong.
Throughout the previous expansion, Battle for Azeroth, former Horde warchief Sylvanas Windrunner betrayed her faction. Sylvanas set the Horde on a genocidal warpath, taking thousands of lives in what is now known as the "Fourth War." Realizing Sylvanas no longer seemed to be acting in good faith (to say the least), other Horde leaders set about bringing about yet another coup to reform the Horde leadership into a council-like system.
In the process, Sylvanas revealed the true extent of her otherworldly powers, derived from the Shadowlands itself, killing long-time Horde hero Saurfang in the process.
The ancient cycle between life and death has been broken, and Sylvanas is at its core.
Sylvanas fled to the Icecrown Citadel, of Warcraft 3 fame, and shattered the Lich King's Helm of Domination, breaching the veil between the living and the dead. Agents from the Shadowlands appeared and kidnapped many of the Horde and Alliance faction leaders, spiriting them away to be tortured within the afterlife. But why?
In Shadowlands, players embark on a quest to discover why innocent souls are being fed into the Shadowlands' hell equivalent — The Maw — and why its ruler, The Jailer, has refashioned the hellscape and its denizens into his own personal army of the damned. The infinitely ancient cycle between life and death has been broken, and Sylvanas is at its core. Over the course of the expansion, players stand to discover the fates of various vanquished Azerothian heroes and villains, including Warcraft 3 figures like Kael'thas Sunstrider and Uther Lightbringer, and unravel a plot that started all the way back in the Legion expansion.
Here are my Shadowlands impressions, after getting to grips with all the new systems, diving into the new raid, all to answer that burning question: is World of Warcraft still worth playing in 2020, into 2021? Emphatically, I say yes.
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