I get that there are a lot of valid gripes about this expansion, but hasn’t anyone had fun with the leveling experience? Yes, the questing was painfully linear (ugh, so linear!), but I did enjoy interacting with some old WoW favorites, like Lady Vashj. And I really enjoyed the Thrall / Draka interactions and others too.
I also really enjoyed the covenant quest lines, especially the Venthyr one. I haven’t done Kyrian yet because it involves a dungeon, and I don’t do group content anymore. I’ll save that story for the next expansion when I can solo the dungeon.
So, content and class complaints aside, am I the only one who enjoyed the the covenant / class hall stories and the re-introduction of old NPCs? I kept thinking I would run into Kingslayer Orkus in Maldraxxus or maybe Johnny Awesome or John J. Keeshan somewhere. Sadly, I didn’t, but dang…it wasn’t all bad, right?
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When did you run into her? I’ve got loremaster, and I never saw her while questing.
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She’s part of the main Maldraxxis questline. You help her take revenge on a lich to get one of the runes for the blade.
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I’m an altaholic. I enjoy the leveling process in MMOs. WoW is no different. Especially now that everything scales and I can go wherever I want without out-leveling the zones, it’s letting me see a lot of the stories that were connected to those zones that I missed in a rush to catch up and keep up.
Disclaimer: on my main, I’ll rush through the leveling process and not read most of the texts and not really follow the story. Then on alts, i’ll go back through and read the quest dialogues and what not and get caught back up
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At first I wasn’t thrilled about maldraxxus… but it grew on me. Pelegos however I find very annoying kills the kryian campaign for me.
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I believe in the shadowlands she is referred to Baroness Vashj
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I did. I genuinely don’t buy into the “SL lore sucks” rhetoric that goes around.
I thought the covenant zones were cool and did a good job showcasing their cultures and purposes. It was interesting and they had a bunch of likable characters too. It’d be neat to see some of these people again eventually in the future. The campaigns were enjoyable. 
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The problem with the game and this expansion for that matter is not really the initial experience.
The problem is that is has low-to-none replay value on the things that matter and almost the entire end-game. Something absolutely essential for an MMO.
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From the perspective of the linear questing to level 60, you aren’t wrong. You make a fair point. But the covenants all offer different stories, so there is some replay there.
But, again, getting to 60 is the same every time. Definitely not wrong about that.
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I think it’s just hard to care about these stories when all of the lore is completely new and fairly disconnected from Azeroth besides the presence of familiar characters. Nothing here has been hyped up for a decade, unlike the lore in previous expansions.
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Nope! I didn’t care and I was bored. I had zero connection to anyone or anything.
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I kind of liked Venthyr. The stories feel so… otherworldly and blown out of proportion these days. I kind of miss doing the simple things, not constantly saving the universe.
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That’s a fair point too. Well put. When I think back to Wrath, for example, I had background with the Warcraft games, so I was hyped to see Arthas. I do remember feeling a bit blindsided with the MoP expansion for the same reasons you just mentioned. Felt a little like that too with WoD but was super excited to see Illidan back for Legion, so I get where you’re coming from.
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I think we have to get used to that though. The reality is WoW has now moved past the old guard of villains. The Burning Legion’s defeated, Old Gods are dead, Lich King’s gone, Deathwing too. Azshara’s still alive, but we did the Nazjatar story. We had like three expansions fighting orcs.
For the most part from SL onwards pretty much everything will be brand new uncharted territory that was not established even remotely in WC3 or vanilla. The big villains too. WoW’s moving into a new age of newness and it has to since we killed the previous guys already.
So Blizz is trying to start laying the groundwork and working in all the stuff they have planned. SL is only the beginning and Zovaal surely won’t be the first out of the woods Captain Apocalypse we encounter.
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I hadn’t really thought about it like this. I like how your brain works. I suppose it was inevitable that this would eventually happen.
I think they’re off to a good start overall. I do quite like the new NPCs a lot, especially Margrave Draka and Prince Renethal. Vashj is really good too. Hopefully, we will see more of them in the future. I am excited to see where this all goes.
Edit: still super sad I didn’t get a quest or two with Kingslayer Orkus. Dang it. 
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I do agree with you, but…
They need to do a better job of building up their characters. Zovaal, for example, should’ve been introduced as the Arbiter back in Legion, then we should’ve seen his fall in real time between Legion and Shadowlands, and then dealt with him in this expansion after witnessing his fall.
Unfortunately the writers kept so much information hidden from us that most players could care less about Zovaal despite his massive impact on the story since Legion. Not to mention Sylvanas’ transformation made no sense until very recently.
I hope they do a better job of building up characters by the end of this xpac.
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I actually had a lot of fun the first time around. I picked an alt for my first playthrough to get fully immersed and avoid meta thinking. And I had fun the first two months, and felt RP attachment to the Ardenweald covenant, which added a bit of extra purpose to everything.
My only complaint is that Ardenweald felt disconnected from the main storyline the most. There was just a lot of drust threat which I didn’t really feel like it connected to anything going on outside.
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This is another fair point. To be honest, I think this expansion may have been an experiment in the unknown. Hopefully, it starts to build from here. We have had lots of good stories and memorable characters through the years. I hope SL is the start of some fun new lore!
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