Behold the Shadowlands -- four zones full of interesting and compelling content.

I come from families where life revolves around food.

Is there anything more delightful than watching as a bunch of folks on the internet summon each other to World of Warcraft?

WoW Classic is about to get its Phase Six, with the patch for 1.13.8 going live on December 1 and the opening of Naxxramas and the Scourge Invasion starting on December 3.

Easily lost amidst the excitement of the Shadowlands release last week was the publication of Exploring Azeroth: The Eastern Kingdoms, a fun book that sends our favorite Rogue couple traveling through the Eastern Kingdoms.

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.