World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

Post-launch support will ultimately determine Shadowlands' fate, but as it currently stands World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is a fantastic expansion that once again proves why Blizzard's 16 year old juggernaut remains the king of the MMORPG genre. While we may be touring Azeroth's afterlife ourselves, it's clear World of Warcraft won't be sauntered off into the great beyond any time soon.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is a return to greatness for the franchise. The content is both accessible and fun for all types of players, and the story actually makes you feel like everything you’re doing is helping to save the Shadowlands. Torghast is one of the best features ever added and makes each experience unique and fun. While there are some issues which can slow down the time it takes to get everything you want, the journey there is still enjoyable.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands' base experience offers a variety of excellent content through new zones and endgame content. The framework for a great stream of content is there, so for now, there's a lot to enjoy.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands hasn’t quite wowed me in the way that Legion did, but it’s an improvement upon many concepts from Battle for Azeroth. There’s a clearer story that seems to have more embedded bones, with a more pronounced set of zones that stand on their own. As always long-term support remains to be seen, but for now, WoW is still one of the best MMOs out there.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has expanded the worldbuilding to such a scale that every new dungeon or quest is a chance to explore lore new and old. At the end of the day, I can’t ask for more than that.

Shadowlands might not spark a new golden age for WoW, but it's still pretty fun.

The 10 levels you'll spend getting to know the Shadowlands definitely live up to the standard of quality I expect from Blizzard in terms of zone design, music, and affecting character moments. And at max level, this is probably the most compelling World of Warcraft's beckoning call to stick around has ever been, mainly because of Torghast and the chances it presents you to craft your own legendary items. But the fact remains that max-level play is designed to keep you around as long as possible with a limited amount of drip-fed story and repetitive daily and weekly activities, even if Shadowla...

WoW's latest chapter offers a gorgeous leveling experience, interesting endgame systems, and a pile of well-designed dungeons. Though some rough edges remain, ongoing hotfixes are chipping away at them.

“World of Warcraft: Shadowlands gets lost in its attempt to offer players more choice than ever before, ultimately forgetting to restock the reward machine needed to keep patrons invested.”

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands shows that the whole World of Warcraft game is really showing it’s age, not to mention that since losing a lot of their key development people from the Blizzard side like Chris Kaleiki and many others, leading to this being a more “by the metrics” Activision based game experience than what Blizzard is renowned for. For many people, the heart and soul of World of Warcraft is dead at this stage, but since it is still early days, future patches and content additions can revive the game into a playable state for those who are still addicted to the game after over 16 ...

A far-out new expansion and major levelling revamp see Blizzard's veteran online world riding a new wave of popularity.

It's been a long time since I was a regular player on World of Warcraft. In my preview, I stated it was around Cataclysm, later thinking made me realise it was earlier. To put a date on it, 2009. I stopped being a regular player while Ulduar was on the public test realm. Since then, I picked the game back up during Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, plus I returned to review Warlords of Draenor. I haven't even tried after that; the levels were too high, there was too much to make up. The question then is if World of Warcraft: Shadowlands the expansion to bring long-lost players back to the fold?