Woho, I made it to level 60!
As a disclaimer before all opinions in this post... Game is not only in beta, but they are also currently fiddling around A LOT with how things work. At the moment a lot of different systems seems to be implemented which has resulted in a lot of broken stuff, so its even hard to get what they are trying to accomplish. But there you go.
Core to the leveling this time is a VERY linear experience. Everyone on both factions starts at the same place, and have to go through the same main quest (called "campaign") - beta isnt exactly overcrowded, but still managed to have some chokepoints with 5ish people in both Bastion and Maldraxxus. That is the first major problem with this system; if you have warmode on on top yeah well, have fun the first week I guess. Otherwise it's gonna be the Burning Crusade madness again where you have to have an instant cast with good travel time to have a good time. Having a really bad feeling how this will pan out at release since they cant really change it.
You start in the Maw and go back there a few times underway. While I was there, mounting was not possible, there's no flight points and long walks where you'd want to not fight things since it's a chore. This has been the dullest place I've ever been to in WoW, ever, when it comes to zones. They said somewhere they wanted it to feel dangerous; but dangerous in WoW means you want to be a druid or a shaman so you can get places faster, or have long runs back to res. Or just stealth. Recently some have reported SOME mounts are usable in there, but not sure if its a bug or they are actually finding out they made a doodoo and lets people mount there. The zone is also visually a reminder of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, which I was also kinda tired of which didn't help with my impression I guess. The fact it's often a detour aswell is a bit eh.
Bastion is next. I didn't enjoy the story a lot here; extremist cult in white ("good") vs deviants in black ("evil") with some characters which had more meat on them but I cannot for the life of me remember what they were called or what that meat was. The second major problem with the leveling reared it's head here. The quests do not seem to scale at all on your first playthrough. A lot of sidequests went green at level 52, with a sharp drop in xp value compared to the yellow quests. If you also go in and want to do dungeons asap and get a level or two past where you are supposed to be, those quests will have no value in doing. Why they cannot scale with level like they have done since forever, or at least flag them for being a higher level so they yield the same xp until at least 54 or 55 would have been a good start. However, you level at a decent pace so while here it would seem you are en route for a quick level 60.
Next up is Maldraxxus. The xp problem was there at zone in; some side quests were green even if I had mostly done just the campaign in Bastion. Even if the screenshot says I ding 60 here, when I was there originally xp gains were slowing down a lot and side quests were worthless (and time consuming when I tried some). The zone has a very Scourge like look, and some subfactions that were friendly and some not friendly. After finishing it they were forgettable and it was even a bit unclear what the status was. So I guess it was ok, but forgettable, like a lot of blockbuster movies are nowadays?
Next up: Ardenweald. Most likely my favourite zone when it came to how it looked, it had my favourite part of the campaign, the last part of the zone chapter at least. It's also the most broken zone on beta. One of the main quests was broken for at least 6 days. Flying there from elsewhere leaves you stuck with a migraine inducing visual/audio effect that can only be removed by entering an arena match. A lot of quests have bugs in some way; misleading quest texts, mobs not always giving credit for kill quests when killed and spawn issues. On top of that at what seems like peak hours the zone lag is IMMENSE. So if you choose Night Fae as your covenant at max level, happy fun times at the moment. And most of these bugs seems to have been around for a while already, so something is so broken Blizzard can't fix in a jiffy. If the problems persist after ptr is released, I'd start to sweat a little for how this will be at release. The green side quests persisted here aswell, bit of a bummer.
Last zone: Revendreth. This zone I liked the most when it came to general storytelling. Characters I remember, some interesting enviroments that deviated a bit from the trope of it and such. But the xp gains progress reached its peak when I at level 59 was not allowed to progress further in the main story. And had well, just green side stuff left. Luckily, Blizzard had implemented a quality of life thing for alts, so after going mad about having to grind, I could make a level 60 from a template, which magically made all quests scale, world quests were available and generally happy fun times. So I could go back to Maldraxxus and do side stuff, random dungeon and hit level 60 in place it would be impossible before.
The question is: why not just let mains also have scaling for doing quests. The game already forces you to play the main storyline in a set order, along with literally every other player in the game at release. For the people just doing the main storyline, without warmode, you'd most likely be 57,5 or thereabouts and hit the main campaign level requirement preventing you from advancing at some point in Revendreth if the forums are to be believed. I am pretty sure this would result in the worst leveling experience this game has had if that happens. And wonder how many would actually quit before 60 with the current system. So I hope they do something radical, like the system in alpha where you could level to 60 without warmode while doing the main quest. The gamebreaking bugs I assume they know they have to hammer out before release anyway. But it's really weird they designed the leveling experience to be this way to begin with...
The zones and the story overall was... a bit underwhelming to me. The Maw was super dull, Bastion's premise was a bit eh but the zone was pretty, Maldraxxus was forgettable, Ardenweald had a spark of light in the campaign and Revendreth was decent. But it was like the start of Cataclysm in the end for me, I just cant get into it, in spite of the themes being my favorite fantasy theme.
Doing this several times again with the current xp system is not really enticing. The yellow sidequests from the beginning and world quests available from start will help a lot for alts on beta, and late alts when the expansion goes live will have a much easier time to catch up than they had at any point in bfa for doing the baseline content at least, while they level. But there's a lot of "listen to npcs talk" that alts cannot skip, a lot of endless running in zones made like Nazjatar when it comes to verticality and whatnot.
End opinion on the leveling in Shadowlands with the current beta build is that it's really bad mechanically (worst in game's history), the campaign is ok and the zones are one dimensional when it comes to looks so either you like the look of them or you dont I guess. If this was my reason to play shadowlands, I'd be really dissapointed.
Addendum: The quests themselves, especially the campaign quests, are nothing groundbreaking. It's drop quests, kill quests, fill the bar quests, fedex quests and click quests. So its the same world of warcraft as always. Not playing it that safe with sidequests, however. While a lot are in the same vein, there are often some kind of puzzle or or gimmic involved. While I actually liked the premise of nearly all of them, they have the same problem like most of the "other" quests and world quests in BFA. They have bad input response, bad hitbox for when you jump on stuff so the things you should hit are not in the place it looks like they are, have some weird timers that makes it horrible to do if you arent there alone and so on. If they fixed these problems, Id most likely like the sidequests better than the main story.
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