It’s fair to say the incoming player housing update for Warcraft has caught near everybody by surprise with how sophisticated and thorough it appears to be—this is no half-baked feature.

One thing that caught my eye in the Blizzard post about interior decorating was that there would be meta-specific décor on offer:

One thing we’d like to give you a heads up about here is that we intend to offer décor rewards for past expansion “meta-achievements” (A World Awoken, Back from the Beyond, and A Farewell to Arms are the three currently available). If you think you might be a décor completionist, it’s worth starting these in your downtime!

I’d recently finished off the Dragonflight meta when this was announced and enjoyed it so this was a klaxon call to try the remaining two.

As mentioned in the last post, Battle for Azeroth seemed too high a mountain, but I was pleased to find I was had completed around 75% of the Shadowlands meta. So back to the land of the dead I went.

Shadowlands has been much maligned, sometimes deservedly so, but I have been pleasantly surprised revisiting it. That’s probably largely because the majority of the grinds were behind me, but it really was an impressively content-full expansion—maybe too much content.

A goblin holds a tray of drinks in the foreground, whilst a castle towers over it in the background

Four full zones on launch, each with a completely self-contained and unique aesthetic, plus Oribos, and the dreaded Maw and Torghast. The patches brought more still with Korthia and Zereth Mortis. Within each zone there is an entire standalone storyline (that occasionally cleverly meshes with the others) that has its own very distinct flavour. Each of the zone Covenants then have their own game-within-a-game, from the Ember Courts of the Venthyr to the Stitching of the Necrolords. It’s overwhelming and quite different to the far more streamlined and less individual zones we got with Dragonflight and now The War Within.

I found that my main characters naturally fell into a matching Covenant, which I’m sure is by design. Rogues to Revendreth, Warriors Maldraxxus, Hunters in Ardenweald, and Paladins to Bastion (of course). When I swapped my Paladin to Necrolord it felt so wrong I had to swap back and wheel out my Warrior instead. I imagine all classes felt drawn to a specific Covenant, which speaks to the cleverness of the design.

The raids are some of the best I’ve played; Castle Nathria is near perfect as a Gothic Chapel, and Sepulcher has several of the most iconic bosses in Warcraft history (looking at you Anduin and Halondrus).

Going back the Maw made me re-evaluate what Blizzard accomplished there. It feels like a legitimate and interesting take on what a hellish Warcraft Limbo would be like, without being simply fire and brimstone (though there is plenty of that). A river of lost souls, towering constructs, bizarre creatures and punishing landscapes. Even Torghast has moments, particularly when you can one-shot your way through everything. They really tried to do something different and I think it works.

Dragonflying everywhere makes questing much more tolerable; it shrinks the world significantly and that’s important, because one of the real drawbacks of Shadowlands is the amount of zone-to-zone travel that is required. Some of the daily quests would send you to all four zones, forcing you to travel through Oribos each time. There is an awful lot of waiting.

Another thing you need an awful lot of for the meta is Anima and Lost Souls. Thankfully I had a cache of Anima on my Paladin main which could be freely transferred (after Blizzard fixed the woeful Covenant locks that Shadowlands launched with), because having to grind thousands would probably have sunk this mission. But as it stands, after a few weeks I only have one Necrolord daily, one Venthyr Court, and a bunch of Night Fae dailies to complete the meta—now I just need Blizzard to deliver the Revendreth décor we all deserve.

An undead rogue stands on the threshold of a chapel decorated by a huge stained glass bat in red glass

Strange that Player Housing would be the thing to make me take a fresh look at Shadowlands, but I’m glad it did.