Our Launch Into Shadowlands

Last week I decided it was time, finally, to get Retail-WoW Ula up to level cap in anticipation of the launch of Shadowlands. In doing so I realized that I haven’t played Retail seriously since Warlords of Draenor. Not kidding.

I stopped playing because I really didn’t like that expansion. And as time passed, I became more reluctant to revive my Ula and Scscla characters there for fear that all the changes to specs and talents and rotations and additions to the game would be too overwhelming. But I did decide that I wanted to give Shadowlands a try. So with some encouragement from Wilhelm and the addition of Battle for Azeroth to the base game (I’d never bought it), I returned and got Ula from squished level 42 to squished level 50 pretty quickly.

Then, two days before launch, I began the task of pre-ordering Shadowlands. This took a while, as I couldn’t find my Battle.net password and had to reset it, then struggled to get Blizzard’s server to recognize my security code. I re-requested the code five times and deciphered as many scrambled Captchas before finally completing my transaction.

Next it was time to wait for 3pm Monday for the expansion to drop.

Just before the appointed hour, Viniki and I logged in to Twilight Cadre’s server, Eldre’Thalas (no queue!) and met up outside Stormwind Keep. It was a raucous scene filled with gaiety. We passed the time in part by performing a celebratory dance.

When the clocked ticked 3:00, nothing happened. Snide remarks filled General chat, including “Of course it’s late! Because it’s haaaard.”, etc. But within a minute or two everything changed: The entry quest became available.

There was a degree of confusion as everyone piled into a giant huddle to click on the appropriate things. It took me a little while to find where to click, being that I’m not excessively tall, and most of the characters around me were.

But! The server remained stable. I detected no excessive lag and I was not disconnected. So Viniki and I passed uneventfully into The Maw to begin our next adventures.

And I even have a video to prove it happened. As always, click into YouTube to watch in full HD.