Shadowlands

In the immortal words of K-2S0, it's high, it's very high.

We're getting some significant changes to World of Warcraft in the Shadowlands expansion.

First up, I've always been of the opinion that the Legacy loot system for older raids is too restrictive.

We have the full details about how account-wide Azerite Essences system will work for mains, alts, and everyone in between in World of Warcraft, which is great, because they're live now.

There is very little I enjoy more than an in-depth study of World of Warcraft and its narrative. Battle for Azeroth has been a fascinating case study in how a game's story can simultaneously impress and upset me -- it's entirely possible I just wasn't emotionally ready for the sheer devastation we've seen as the Fourth War unfolded, and watching as we go into Shadowlands without a resolution to the traumatic events of that conflict has at times felt disconcerting.

If you remember we covered the announcement of the Shadowlands prequel novel Shadows Rising, complete with an excerpt of the book.

We've had expansions to World of Warcraft come in with plagues of undeath, with a big dragon driving the elements insane, with Theramore getting blown up, with Orcs invading from the Dark Portal, with the Legion attacking everything, and with Darkshore under Horde attack.

While Shadowlands may not be changing the status quo as much as previous expansions, there is one aspect of it that's stood out to me from the very moment it was mentioned: Torghast.

I've been thinking a lot about what N'Zoth fate in patch 8.3 means for World of Warcraft going forward.

Battle for Azeroth has certainly not been all things to all people.