Shadowlands

One of the most surprising announcements for Shadowlands and World of Warcraft in general was that WoW is going to see added customization options.

Once again the folks at Wowhead have datamined up a crucial piece of information: namely the voice files of Highlord Darion Mograine and the Lich King himself, Bolvar Fordragon, that are part of patch 8.3's change to allow Death Knights of every Allied Race and the Pandaren.

First up, in this Know Your Lore I'll say that I generally think that Shadowlands looks amazing.

We all already have crazy Shadowlands theories, right?

In the past, Blizzard has been slow to announce just how it will handle digital bonuses for the people who collect the physical Collector's Editions — but this year Blizzard let us know how it will handle Shadowlands' many editions in advance, which is a pleasant surprise. During Legion, people who bought the Collector's Edition of the game also had to order a digital copy to get pre-order bonuses, they could gift a copy of the digital game to friends when their Collector's Edition arrived.

Shadowlands is bringing back the class fantasy feeling of Legion, so much that they're cheekily calling it "The Unpruning" — undoing the "surgical pruning" that has been happening since Warlords of Draenor.

It's weird how a new expansion announcement hits me -- every time, it feels like I've just let out a breath I've been holding.

Out of all the announcements about World of Warcraft at BlizzCon 2019, two things spoken by Ion Hazzikostas stood out to me over anything else: "unpruning" and "player agency." I'm hopeful that this is a sea change in the design philosophy for WoW.

I got to play Shadowlands at BlizzCon 2019, and I have opinions.

I mean, we know what the Helm of Domination is.