Originally Posted by
music49
From the view of a higher end raider:
Leveling: First time through is always the best, each zone is beautiful in its own way, and individual stories in each zone has me hooked. Music and art work always an A+ from blizzard. This time around there is a campaign quest line is clearly marked that has to be done to unlock stuff, so you may hit max level in the second to last zone, but you don't get a ton of pop up quests until you finish the campaign which is great so you never really feel overwhelmed. There are also tons of side quests that you can do as you go or save for later for days you have extra time on WoW
Second time through: I'm taking my time and doing all the side quests and gathering mats both to use and to auction off. There is a skip campaign feature which I've only heard bad things about but I don't know how it works to give a proper opinion except that everyone has told me to avoid it, I'll try it on my next alt.
Hitting lvl cap and completing your leveling campaign: Once you finish the campaign questline and hit lvl 60 you will get a quest to choose your covenant for a HUGE majority of the games population go with what is fun is the only advice I can give. If your doing high end raiding your going to go with what performs better . But if your even a casual mythic raiding guild, your covenant choice doesn't really matter. That being said some covenants just make some classes better to play. (Example: Elemental Shaman is LOADS more enjoyable to play with necrolord covenant, I personally don't see playing elemental on any other covenant). As per usual once you finish leveling and the leveling section of the campaign you will start getting a bunch of quests. Seems like a lot, but just need to knock them out one by one to unlock the few end game features.
END GAME:
Covenant: What I thought the biggest issue was going to be isn't so round of applause to blizzard for that. As long as you do the weekly anima quest and campaign quests, your caught up performance wise. This will give you renown (different from anima) which unlocks your soulbind tree. Everything else is optional, upgrade your covenant in what ever order you want. The mission table is a little more interactive allowing you to "mid-max" your followers and what slot you put them in, but at the same time so easy to use its not an annoyance. With no flying yet, the transportation upgrade for your covenant is great way to get around your zone your covenant is in. But some zones (Revendreth) are a pain to get around. I'm should be able to get my build-a-bear/monstrosity upgrade next reset which again is all optional but sounds fun.
World Quests/Callings: (formally emissaries): Nothing has really changed here. Some WQs are easier than others. Callings you now have to accept from a given NPC in your covenant hall, however its little more varied than just doing WQ's. It could be fill the bar by doing anything in the zone (collecting treasures, killing rares) to clear the dungeons in the zones.
Dungeons: Each dungeon is a part of the zones story, and each boss is varied enough to not feel like a grind when running multiple in a row. I can see a few bosses being pug killers if even one person doesn't know the fight (find a guild), but all fun and I'm excited to start running a couple mythic +'s
Maw: This is by far my least favorite part of the expansion. Down to the bar bones its do the two dailies and event, kill as many rares as you can, then leave before dying. If you die you loose half your currency but can recover it if you go back to your body, if you die again while running back to your body you loose half of what ever you have on you and the original lost currency disappears. SO if your unlucky you could multiple days of collecting if your not careful. As a higher end raider I want to get exalted with the person in the maw and collect as much stygia (maw currency) as possible to be able to buy sockets for my gear. With that, if you don't care about getting sockets for your gear then the maw is optional for you
Torghast: My favorite feature so far, I can see people playing Wow just for this feature alone. A little confusing at first. Each week only so many wings are open( I think two) and each wing has 8 layers. (only 3 layers week 1 not sure about week 2, but all will be available to unlock when raid comes out) You unlock any layer of any wing by doing the previous level layer of any wing. You collect soul ash your fist time through to go towards building or upgrading you legendary item. I believe you only need to do the highest level of each wing that rewards soul ash to get the weekly cap. So if your not a fan of torghast you only have to do minimal content of it to get what you need. I'm guessing layer 4 or 5 and past that will give you some sort of torghast currency for cosmetics, or maybe nothing at all and it's all just for fun, which I will do. I do hope they add more anima powers to torghast per raid teir, but if they don't I'm okay with that too.
Legionaries: Pick your best one for the content you "main" and go get the recipe for it, some might be better off waiting until mythic raid launches to craft their legendary, some already have there BiS and can crafting this first reset after collecting enough soul ash from torghast, and some might be better off collecting their second best legendary.
PVP: I don't pvp and I don't think rated pvp is even available yet
Overall opinion: Shadowlands is starting off strong. I think the maw could use a little tuning or something else maybe a place to bank your stygia for the day so its not ALL at risk every time you go to the maw. Torghast is super fun and I hope more anima powers get added as we go. As a higher end raider, the required content is fun, and the optional content is even more enjoyable. I feel the more casual a player you are the more enjoyable this expansion gets because you can focus on what is really fun for you and ignore the rest
This is only week one with the first reset still not here, so I'd check back in maybe a week or two into raid progress as things can ad will probably change