Maldraxxus is a very gross zone full of gross things — and I love it very much. I love every gloopy puddle of ooze, every disgustingly pockmarked hill, the slimes, the skeletons, the things that are both slime *and* skeleton, the cute little blood-sucking beasty that hatched from this hairy egg I found, just everything about it. I especially love the ultra-gross skinning nodes, giant warts. Whoever thought those up is a genius and they probably aren’t being paid enough.

I didn’t think I’d like it that much just hearing about it and poking around on the beta, but it’s grown on me — maybe even literally in some cases. It wasn’t enough to tempt me away from my friends the Venthyr, but it was close! Much closer than I would’ve thought. There hasn’t been a zone this polarizing in a long time, or at least one that I can remember. Just reading a lot of the comments from Friday there are a lot of people who don’t share my love of the gross stuff.

While I go play with the oozes, it’s time for — the Queue.

Every expansion to World of Warcraft goes through a cycle, starting out fresh to the majority of players (those that weren't in the alpha or beta, anyway) and then, over time, as we all level through it there's a feeling of growing familiarity.

We all may be hanging out in the Shadowlands right now, but the land of the dead needs to work on their hospitality and food situation.

Okay, so here’s the thing — I’m not saying it’s bad, or poorly designed, it’s clearly an excellent zone. But all the Wow, Maldraxxus is awesome hype had me really thinking I might love it, but then I got there, and it’s just slime and crap everywhere and corpses littering the ground and a lot of it grosses me out or turns my stomach. I’m also never a fan of ruthless Darwinism and while I appreciate the idea of Maldraxxus as the home of the Shadowlands’ defense force, it’s not really getting past all the stuff I’m not fond of.

Still, I’m level 57 now. Maybe I’ll start playing one of my alts on nights my wife is occupied. Don’t think I’ll ever join the Necrolords, though. Just on an aesthetic level, it’s not my bag.

This week, Matt Rossi and Joe Perez give their first impressions of the new WoW Shadowlands expansion.

Do a google search of Assassin's Creed Valhalla and look at the images.

I admit it: Despite Jellycat existing, I hated Maldraxxus for months.

So yeah, my wife and I finally got to run around in Bastion and even got some Maldraxxus in last night, and we’re both level 55 heading towards the final stretch. Leveling definitely feels less painful this time around, which I think is an excellent thing — I expect when I get to my alts, I might just level them through the questing again, it’s been fun.

Some actual lines from our time playing together include “She’s awfully proud of her job as Death’s mall cop” and “Who would ever want to come here? No one. No one wants to come here, but we’re stuck here so we might as well make the best of the blasted, undead choked hellscape.”

It's been a while since we had a linear leveling experience in World of Warcraft, where the game's story took you from Zone A to Zone B with no decision on your part. Warlords of Draenor had a single starting zone for each faction, but you could more or less decide which zone to go to next after that, while Legion and Battle for Azeroth both allowed you to pick and choose which zone you wanted to run.

Hearthstone is a game with a dizzying amount of modes and options.