#shadowlands pre patch

// @blight-of-my-life...my night elf hunter's biggest disappointment in the Nathanos pre-patch event...//

//However my green dragon got to lick him//

So, holy crap, The World of Warcraft Shadowlands pre-patch seems like a huge change to the game in a lot of ways, some big some small, but all of them pretty damn incredible!  There’s plenty of places you can go to get all the information on this thing in a way that’s far more explanatory and concise than my rantings, so i’ll for the most part just run down the things that excite me the most about it!  Without further ado:

- The Level Squish :

So we all knew the level squish resetting the level cap back to the games original 60 was coming, but did we know it was a part of the pre-patch?  Because I sure as hell didn’t!  I’m absolutely ecstatic, as someone who really loves the leveling process, that leveling a new character will finally be a manageable and semi breezy task.  No more will I have to dread certain outdated expansions being done in a hard line sequential order.  I’ll no longer need to worry that it’ll take me up to 60 hours, even with Heirlooms, just to get my new character up to the games newest content!  The level squish is so long over due that I almost can’t believe it’s actually happening.

- Chromie Time:

Chromie Time, on the other hand, is something I’ve desperately wished for for years now, and the fact it’s actually happening is astounding!  Essentially, instead of a linear path through all the old expansions, often outpacing all of them in very annoying ways, you can just pick to do whichever one you want!  Have a fondess for Cataclysm Era Old World?  Level your whole character there!  Want to relive Legions world ending stakes and excellently paced leveling zones?  You’re free to do so!  No more are expansions just pit stops on the way to cap, now they can finally be experienced and appreciated as the things they are, not just shells of the content they once were!  Hell, this will be the first time I’ve ever actually been able to properly play the Mists of Pandaria content, so that alone is huge for me!

- Plague of Undeath 2.0:

I honestly thought it was insane for Blizzard to do this event again with the whole....you know...actual real life plague going on, but damn if my excitement is proving to me why they probably stuck around with it.  I want to see it happen all again.  I want to see the zombies start out slow, not really a threat.  I want to see Stormwind devolve into a horde of the undead, I want to see it get worse and worse every day!  This was all so badass when it happened in BC that the idea of an updated version, one in which you also actually strike back at the zombies by going to Northrend to cut them out at the roots, just sounds about as cool as possible to me now.

- The Removal of Dreanor (and Legion!) Flight Requirements:

Okay this one is small, especially since I am a crazy person who already got Legion and Battle for Azeroth flying.  You know what I didn’t get though?  Warlords of Dreanor flying....and you know what I've desperately wanted for years now?  You guessed it!  Going back and earning flight in Warlords of Dreanor seemed genuinely crazy in 2020, like so much time wasted for a power that doesn’t really do anything for me now, but hot damn am I excited to hear that i’ll just be getting it for free in the Pre-Patch!  I can finally explore some of the weirder areas in Warlords of Dreanor without needing to be constrained by ground mount movement!  This could even be huge for this blog, I love the design of Dreanor so much but I never really wrote about it because it was such an odd outlier or an expansion for me to ever consider getting Screenshots of!

- Transmog Changes:

Before I get into this fairly unfocused little rant, I did in fact do Exiles Reach and I hope to have a more detailed post about that up later this week!  Spoilers it’s really good! I think it’s pretty safe to say I was looking forward to the Shadowlands pre patch quite a bit in World of Warcraft, and for pretty obvious reasons.  I love the leveling process in WoW, making a new character and taking them from level one all the way up to the level cap is something that just hits every dumb dopamine center of my brain, even if I have to do old content over and over again!  The problem arises though, when it becomes clear just how much old content you have to do as part of that leveling process...but those days are gone!

The Pre Patch has expertly condensed the wildly too high level cap down to pre-burning crusade levels, and now you can just pick any old expansion you want to do from the start of the leveling process!  I’ve been leveling a new Worgen character, and it’s a total blast to know I can just spend my time doing whatever quests I want in Cataclysm era old world, and know that there isn’t like 7 years of further content waiting in front of me to ruin the pacing!