I signed up for the subscription to WoW and am playing through content in Zandalar, which is new content for me. I haven’t played in 15 years prior to this. My main toon is level 39.
I joined a guild, but everyone in the guild is playing Shadowlands content and they’re anxious for me to buy the game and move over to the new content. I’m not against the idea, but I’m wondering when I should do that. Should I wait until my toon hits a certain level before jumping into the new expansion? What are the pros and cons?
At some point in the not too distant future, Blizz will release Dragonflight, the new xpac, at which time I believe SL will become part of the standard subscription package (i.e., free). Unless your guild is overly anxious to get you into the new content, I would wait a bit.
While this is true, we’re likely not looking at seeing the expansion until 1st quarter next year. There’s still an entire content season left to go in Shadowlands which isn’t scheduled to start until late this summer, so there will be plenty of time to explore and play end game SL content until it gets rolled in with Dragonflight.
To OP, as Btq mentioned, level 48 is when you can enter Shadowlands zones, so if you were going to wait to get it, I’d start thinking about it around there.
Typically when a new xpac comes out, it becomes more difficult to do the group content from the previous xpac.
When Dragonflight come out, your guides will abandon SL for Dragonblight.
Without SL gear, you are likely to be under geared to join them unless you purchase a more expensive version of Dragonflight that includes a boost to a level to start Dragonflight along with some very entry level gear.