If you have been following my stream lately, then you know that until New World releases on September 28th, 2021, we will be playing World of Warcraft and heading into our very first playthrough of Shadowlands. To this end, I created a new warlock named Lemundra (as seen above), who over the last several days has leveled from 1–48 in her quest to start the Shadowlands content. This blog post is to talk about my experience thus far to those whom may be interested.
The new level process in World of Warcraft is extremely fast, especially since they released Shadowlands which created a level squish from level 120 down to 60. They did not make it very difficult to level up at all from level 1 and for that, I have a couple of thoughts. On the one hand, it is nice to be able to start from scratch and work through whatever content I would like to get to the place where I can explore the new content of Shadowlands. On the other, taking the difficulty and length of time it historically took to get to max level makes it feel like less of an accomplishment than it use to be. Overall, for my specific playthrough I am satisfied with the new leveling system.
I started my playthrough as an orc and remained in Durotar till approximately level 19, after which I decided to head over to Zuldazar, the Battle for Azeroth Horde side zone that begins the content of that previous expansion. It was nice learning again about the war between the alliance and the horde, and since this was only my second time replaying that content, it felt fresh and kept the pace of leveling quite fast. From level 20–48 I continued my journey until I received that fateful quest to head back to Orgrimmar and take the initial quest to start Shadowlands. I am saving this initial playthrough for tomorrow’s stream which I plan to mirror after today’s interesting stream.
What was so interesting about today’s stream is that I decided to make it a bit of ASMR. I turned off my mic and kept the game volume to a comfortable level and just immersed myself in the gameplay without chatting about what I was doing. If there was a comment in twitch chat, I simply tabbed out and messaged in chat, almost becoming a chat participant along with the others who were watching. I took this risk because I know that my numbers slump whenever I try to play WoW. It is just one of those games that my community is not so thrilled to see. However, with the ASMR angle and the responsiveness of the chat to me chatting alongside with them via the chat window, It think it added something special to the equation while also allowing me to simply play the game I enjoy without having to feel pressured to speak for the sake of entertainment value.
To those who did stay through the ASMR portion of the stream, stay tuned for tomorrow’s stream where I plan to do the same. We will start out with some Talk Time, followed by the ASMR segment, and end with more talk time. I thank you all again for supporting me, even through games you may not personally enjoy, as we all wait for New World to come out. It’s a tough time to stream when you know the game you really wanna play is not out yet, but we are making the best of it. Thank you again!
Kind Regards,
Blackboa