After being mostly disappointed with Dragonflight, I was wondering if my decision to return to World of Warcraft for the Worldsoul Saga was a mistake. I’d already pre-ordered The War Within, so I it gave it a shot anyway, but I did so without much enthusiasm. After 20 years, was it even possible for the game to still be as exciting as it once was?
I am relieved and a bit surprised to say I think the answer may be yes. It’s very early, and I’ve yet to dive deep into endgame, but my early impression has been strongly positive. Let’s break it down by feature.
Warbands
Warbands are a fancy term for what is really a set of quality of life changes for those who play alts, and it’s something I still manage to find fault with despite it being an unambiguous win.
It’s one of those situations where I feel bad complaining because it’s objectively all positives and no negatives. If you play multiple characters (and pretty much everyone does at this point), warbands have made it a lot easier to share progression, rewards, and items between them, and we’ve lost absolutely nothing in the bargain.
But there are a lot of ways things could be even better. It’s great that we can share many currencies between characters now, but I don’t understand why we have to go through an incredibly clunky UI to do so instead of just having a shared pool across the account. Gold, meanwhile, doesn’t even use the transfer system but instead must be shared via the new warband bank feature (or the mail for characters on the same server).
Still, again, we’re really only coming out ahead here, even if they could have gone further. Shared reputation across your account especially is going to save a lot of trouble.
Delves
Delves are the new casual-friendly micro-dungeons for one to five players. My impression of them so far is mostly favourable, with a minor asterisk.
Each delve consists of a mostly linear path through a small dungeon where you’ll complete some kind of objective, such as rescuing NPCs or collecting items, and then eventually fight a boss. If you have less than five players in your party, you’ll be assisted by a customizable NPC who levels up as you complete more delves. Currently the only option is renowned Dwarven explorer Brann Bronzebeard, who can be built as a DPS or a healer, but the implication is other NPCs will be added later. Along the way you may also encounter random treasures, dodge environmental hazards, or fight rare enemies that provide a buff when defeated. A full run takes about 15-20 minutes.
Delves have 11 (!) tiers of difficulty, so no matter your character level or player ability, you should be able to find one that fits you, which is great. With greater difficulty comes greater rewards, and delves can eventually award gear of equivalent power to that of heroic raids or all but the highest level mythic+ dungeons, so the devs seem serious about making this a viable progression path.
I think they did a great job balancing Brann, as well. His power is such that he feels useful without overshadowing your character. I’ve been running him as a healer while I play a DPS character, and he does boost my survivability a bit, but I still need to use my self heals and defensive abilities if I want to get through the tougher fights.
A solo endgame mode that provides meaningful challenge and rewards is something that WoW has needed for a long time (same for most MMOs, really), so I think delves are definitely a win, but there is some room for improvement.
My main complaint right now is a lack of variety. There are over a dozen delves with three variants each that cycle daily, but they all feel very samey, both visually and mechanically. Run through a darkened corridor, dodge some hazards, click five to 12 shinies, fight a boss, get your loot. We’re not getting the level of creativity seen in the similar scenario feature from Mists of Pandaria.
Blizzard seems to be done throwing out major expansion features at the drop of a hat, so there’s plenty of potential to improve on delves in future patches and expansions. But for a first draft of the feature, I think the team did a decent job, and there’s lots of room to grow.
Hero talents
As you level in The War Within, you’ll be prompted to choose one of two hero talent trees corresponding to your base specialization, eventually unlocking the full tree by max level. Hero talents are the one true miss of this expansion for me so far.
There are basically two kinds of hero talent trees: the ones that do change up how your character plays in a significant way, which feel irritatingly disruptive, and the ones that don’t, which feel pointless.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is a problem of tuning. I think it’s a fundamental flaw of the concept of stapling a new talent tree on top of the old one. Adding additional complication to a build you already enjoy is unlikely to do anything but add bloat and disrupt your existing gameplay flow, but if it’s not changing anything, what’s the point of learning new talents? There’s no “Goldilocks zone” here.
I also don’t see how the studio plans to scale this in future expansions. Blizzard has said it wants this to be an evergreen feature, but all the problems hero talents have now will only get worse if more is added to them over time.
While it doesn’t bother me much, I have also seen some people taking issue with the fact hero talents can force you into themes that may not fit your character. I saw a Troll hunter in Trade chat grumping about having to choose between Sentinel and Dark Ranger, both of which are heavily tied to Elven lore.
Personally I think hero talents should have been optional and mostly if not entirely cosmetic, something more like a class skin. But Blizzard is not yet ready to fully wean itself off its addiction to rigid vertical progression.
On the upside, even the most impactful hero talent trees still don’t affect how your character plays very much, so the actual harm being done by the feature is minimal. It’s not great that a major pillar of the expansion is forgettable at best, but if this is the worst thing about War Within, that speaks pretty well in its favour.
Story and world
Story and world-building are always the most important thing for me, and after the disaster of Dragonflight, my hopes on that front were not high, but so far War Within has been hitting it out of the park.
I’m going to avoid any big spoilers here, but I will be discussing the broad themes of the story, so if you’d like to go in completely fresh, you may wish to skip this section.
Admittedly my experience so far is mostly limited to the leveling campaign, but it’s one of the best leveling experiences in the game’s history. So many of Blizzard’s recent stories — not just in this game, but company-wide — have felt like desperate attempts to repeat the successes of the past, but War Within is striking the perfect balance of nostalgia and originality. Most of the main characters and factions are familiar, but the story being told with them feels fresh.
I think it’s quite clever that the story of the expansion that coincides with the franchise’s 30th anniversary is drawing from the entire history of Warcraft. Alleria dates back to Warcraft II. Thrall, Jaina, and the Nerubians were introduced in Warcraft III. Anduin, Moira, and Xal’atath are all characters that have been developed entirely in World of Warcraft. No matter what part of the franchise you most connect with, War Within has something for you.
I’m mindful of both spoilers and article length, but there are a few highlights I want to call out.
Firstly, Hallowfall may be my favourite WoW zone ever. The visuals, the music, the story, the world-building around the cycles of light and darkness… it’s all 10/10. Playing through Hallowfall was the first time in a very long while I found myself losing track of time while playing World of Warcraft. It was absolutely riveting.
Second, I’m really enjoying Anduin’s story this expansion. I am pleasantly surprised at the gravity his trauma is being treated with. While we know he will regain his connection to the Light eventually (not a spoiler, just an assumption), I was worried he’d do so in one quick cutscene. I really appreciate that his healing isn’t coming so easily.
Finally, I am quite enjoying the way Xal’atath is being handled so far. She’s popping up often enough to feel like an ever-present threat, but not so much that she risks over-exposure. This is exactly the right way to handle a villain who needs to carry the next three expansions.
Praise also needs to be given to the fact that the story is now more accessible than ever thanks to the addition of follower dungeons and a solo story mode for the first raid.
The only stumble for me so far — and it’s not a big one — is the Ringing Deeps zone. Its story isn’t bad, but it’s not particularly memorable either, and the visual design of the zone was a miss in my view. I think it makes sense to have one bright, verdant zone to break up the gloom of an underground expansion, and Hallowfall did a beautiful job of it, but having the Ringing Deeps also be bright and full of plants feels like a waste of the expansion’s premise. As is, only Azj-Kahet actually feels like an underground zone.
It’s very early days, and we’ll need to see how the endgame and post-launch updates shape up over time, but so far War Within is off to a strong start. Between the addition of delves and the continued emphasis on open world content introduced in Dragonflight, the endgame is more casual-friendly than ever before.
Meanwhile the story and setting are killer, and the worst parts of the expansion so far are merely underwhelming rather than actively unpleasant. If Blizzard can keep the momentum up, The War Within is on track to be remembered alongside Wrath of the Lich King, Legion, and Mists of Pandaria as one of the game’s best expansions.
