Thursday, July 8, 2021

Shadowlands 9.1: I Like It!

I can fly!

World of Warcraft Shadowlands 9.1 is a little over a week old and, I have to say, as a casual player, I really like it so far.  In pretty quick succession they allowed mounts in the Maw, removed the Eye of the Jailor (which prevented staying to long in the Maw), and granted flying for not just your main, but any alts (outside of the Maw).  This is in addition to quite a bit of story and content in a new section of the Maw.  I stated in my previous post that I would prefer to wait to work on alts until I got flying, and now that I know how quickly I got it, I'm glad I waited!

Some could argue that enjoyment by making things artificially difficult and then removing that difficulty is less than ideal and, logically, that makes sense.  However, grinds are a part of all MMOs by nature of having to provide content that lasts a long time.  I do think adding barriers that get removed makes sense both from giving the player the pleasure of seeing it removed and also of giving players who start later a way to catch up without getting frustrated.

Looking back I see it's almost been a month since my last post.  I did craft my first Legendary item not long after that post.  It didn't provide a huge boost but, on it's own, it let me complete another level of Torghast. Since then, after getting upgrades in 9.1, I reached iLvl 190 and so I upgraded it to iLvl 210.  Since I had been soloing Torghast most weeks, it wasn't too expensive to do, I just had to purchase the upgraded base item in the auction house.  I also went through the Maw introductory quest with my warrior, Kantro, and sent him to Maldraxxus to wait for flying.

Between upgrading the sanctum on Kanter and working through the Covenant levels and story and seeing the other Covenants on alts, I feel like I'm in a good place for a while.  Of course, I didn't experience the frustration of the wait for 9.1 that many others did because I started so late.  I wonder if Blizzard delayed 9.1 due to wanting to release Burning Crusade Classic first and misjudged how frustrating it would be for many players.  All I can say is it looks like I'll be busy for a while now.