The Maw

This week sees the return of a small celebration in World of Warcraft, Day of the Dead.

I can't help but imagine dancing in the streets and parades of joy with the news that alts will be able to skip the Maw intro in patch 9.1.5.

If you're like me, you hate it when you die. But even worse than just dying in World of Warcraft is dying in the Maw, especially if you've been collecting Stygia, because all that time you spent gathering that Stygia goes right out the window when you die, leaving some of that precious currency behind with your corpse.

The Sanctum of Domination raid and the new World Boss Mor'geth are both live — and both in the same hard-to-reach area of the Maw.

Shadowlands patch 9.1 has launched, and with this new patch comes a new cap on Renown.

One of the highly-anticipated features coming in Shadowlands patch 9.1 is the ability to mount up while in the Maw.

As we move forward into patch 9.1 of Shadowlands, we'll advance further into the land of death — and appropriately, one of the two new factions we'll encounter is Death's Advance.

One of the upcoming events in patch 9.1 is the Tormentors of Torghast -- reminiscent of the older Legion invasions -- where the forces of the Maw under the command of Kel'Thuzad strike back at the Covenants as they invade the Maw in force and seek to wrest control of Korthia from the Jailer.

The Maw is the seat of the Jailer's power where he likes to torment souls for all eternity, so it's a pretty scary place -- so scary that our usually fearless mounts who've carried us off of cliffs and through swarms of enemies on our way from quest to quest are too frightened to show up.

As things stand right now, while it's certainly quite doable to gather 1000 Anima a week for the Renown and all your Anima needs -- like gear upgrades, improving your Covenant HQ, or just to pick up rare mounts or other cool items -- it can be a trifle of a chore and it often feels like you're running the same errands.