Standard disclaimer: Leave your loathing of meta, World of Warcraft, or community stories outside. If you think we should be playing your MMO instead, start a guild and write a recruitment story. Don't leave a comment here and then get all hurtful when it isn't received with flowers and candy.This goes double for people coming in to attack guildies over other stories or comments - STAY OUT! Link to your recruitment story is OK though.
Standard advertisement: Wreck List is the Daily Kos World of Warcraft guild. We are Horde-side on the Garrosh server. We're getting close to the membership cap, so we'll have to put you on a waiting list if you want to join. To get on the list, download Discord if you don’t already have it or open it in your browser, go to the #apply-to-guild public channel on the Wreck List server, and follow the directions. I guess you hit us up in game for an invite link to the server for now, until I find out how to make one that doesn’t expire in 24 hours. Yes, you have to be Horde. No, you don't have to be hardcore - casuals, PvPers, and people that just want to hang out on guild chat are all welcome.
So yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve had the energy to do one of these — staring down a fascist autocracy will do that to you — but now I have enough of a breather to tell you that 1) Yes, we are still here and still active and b.) there is a new expansion out, Shadowlands, dealing with the afterlife in World of Warcraft. Surprise! You go on quests and kill things.
The tl;dr of this expansion is that Sylvanas, on her “turn blue and go crazy” Blizzard Female Protagonist/Raid Boss character arc, broke the ugly Lich King helm which also broke the ugly, ugly reality, and now we all have to go to Angel and Druid Heaven and Snot Hell and Emo Double Hell to keep the Jailer from breaking out of Maximum Hell, and no I don’t know why he's “the Jailer” when he’s the one IN JAIL except that calling him “The Prisoner” might make us too sympathetic and calling him “The Antagonist” would be too lazy, and Blizzard cannot stand lazy character names like “the Jailer”.
I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but the first couple of zones are very much Do Not Fall Off Of Things, Seriously, Watch Your Step, and also you will meet a bunch of characters you vaguely remember from earlier expansions, most of whom were probably on the receiving end of your damage abilities rotation. They will also call you “living mortal” a lot, even if you’re undead or a death knight or an undead death knight. The good part is that this is one of those expansions where we do not for once face an existential, world-ending threat by immediately going into some bullshit war with the Alliance, so I apologize if bullshit wars with the Alliance are your thing, go back through Battle for Azeroth again I guess.
There’s a new leveling experience, where instead of grinding through all the expansions, you can either do the special leveling area or talk to Chromie to grind through your favorite expansion. Also, there are half as many levels so it doesn’t feel as endless. The character customizations are a lot more diverse as well, in case you’re sick of looking at a character selection screen full of Scruffy McWhiteDudes. There is an argument between “digital blackface” and “normalizing POC avatars” that I’m really not willing to have, so I’ll just say be yourself or be respectful.
That’s all I have the energy for right now. Good to be back, good to see you all, and we’re still around in case you need good people to kick the crap out of imaginary Internet dragons with.
For the Horde!