It was two years ago this month that World of Warcraft players were riding out the final days of one of its most disappointing expansions to date, not knowing whether the upcoming Dragonflight would be another let down after the sad one-two slap of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. And while Dragonflight wasn’t a magical cure-all potion for WoW’s woes, it addressed many pain points and became a solid release.
With some momentum going in its favor (for once), World of Warcraft and its team banked on a simple message for its next expansion at last year’s BlizzCon: The War Within would be the comeback that this game needed — and would earn the return of disenfranchised players. So now that we’re a ways into this expansion, how’s that working out?
Are we coming home?
We all remember the deep-voiced bravado of Chris Metzen at BlizzCon 2023 when he laid his reputation and the rep of the studio on the line for the ambitious Worldsoul Saga. “When it comes to WoW’s storytelling, we ain’t screwin’ around,” he said. “Now is the time to come home.”
Metzen knew, as we do, that people love a good comeback story, especially when it’s lifting up something about which they used to deeply care. There’s a portion of ex-WoW veterans who were only going to come back if they saw the downward trajectory of the game changed. The thinking is that Dragonflight arrested and stabilized that trajectory — and that the MMO would rise once more with The War Within and following patches and expansions.
I’m not going to sit here and say that this has been a perfect expansion or a world-changing one. It’s had problems, sometimes a new batch every week. Delves have taken some time to figure out, for example, and Blizz keeps stepping in it with (to cite recent examples) terrible class balance adjustments and a certain $90 pay-to-win mount.
Well-received and respected
Yet on the whole, this has been a very, very good expansion. Its inclusion of delves and other casual-friendly slots on the Great Vault made the whole WoW community feel as though it has a seat at the table instead of an elite few. The zones are good (even amazing, in the case of Hallowfall), the stories decent, and the content pipeline chugging.
In fact, it almost feels as if stuff is coming at us so fast that it’s hard to keep up with it all! I haven’t even finished a full run of side quests on my main character because there are repeatable weeklies, delves to do, and new releases like the 20th anniversary patch.
The War Within was never going to be a bombshell of a release that rocked everyone’s socks off and put this game back at the top of its 2008 glory days. Instead, it’s gone for something more achievable and perhaps more sustainable: It’s been well-received and respected.
This isn’t a flash-in-the-pan expansion that was super-popular for like a week and then the whole community moved on to the next new thing. Ever since it came out in late summer, The War Within’s kept the spotlight on itself with high player engagement and new content. I see people generally speaking positively of this expansion, enjoying the ride that it offered and curious to see where it’s going.
It helps that there’s something for everyone here. Story people have a lot to chew on, but so do achievement hounds, progression nerds, and fashionistas. In perhaps a little over a month, we’ll even have a new zone in time for Christmas, and that will have kept The War Within in the headlines for a good solid four months. If you weigh the positives and negatives, the scales tip more in favor of the former than the latter — and that’s where we want to be at this point.
Too early to tell
Yet it also feels as if it’s too early to answer this question of whether the game’s in a comeback state or not. I’d like to say “yes” merely on personal wishing, but there are breaths being held to see the long-term plans for this Worldsoul Saga arc. Will it start to get boring before we’re even at the middle chapter? Is 2025 going to escalate the game’s narrative and give us more reasons to stay involved, or will enthusiasm begin to falter? How fast is the next expansion coming?
It’s a good time to return, I’d say, but there are no promises about the future. Blizzard needs to take a few strong risks with this expansion trilogy instead of falling into the temptation of playing it too safe with its flagship property. We need even more reasons to care about our characters and their journey ahead.
I’m keenly interested to hear what the studio has to say about the future of this franchise in this month’s Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct livestream because I think it’s going to impact long-term engagement.
If a player tunes in and is underwhelmed or even disappointed at the plans for this MMO, then a comeback might quickly reverse into a “go away.” But if we see from this announcement (plus next year’s roadmap) that the future looks amazing, what we’ve experienced so far in The War Within could be but a prologue of a true return to form.
War never changes, but World of Warcraft does, with almost two decades of history and a huge footprint in the MMORPG industry. Join Eliot Lefebvre and Justin Olivetti for new installments of WoW Factor as they examine the enormous MMO, how it interacts with the larger world of online gaming, and what’s new in the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor.
