The campaign in the new WoW addon is relatively short. This does not match what the developers want to achieve, says MeinMMO demon Cortyn.
There are only a few weeks left until the release of World of Warcraft: The War Within. I’ll say it unjournalistically: I am quite hyped and looking forward to the addon because I really like the story surrounding Xal’atath and find it very interesting.
But there is one “small” detail that is dampening my mood in advance and has already troubled me a bit while playing the beta:
The main campaign of The War Within is quite short. For each area, there are relatively few missions that belong to the main quest line before moving on.
This is quite strange considering that World of Warcraft now wants to tell a story of enormous scope with the “World Soul Saga”, which they even want to expand to three addons. It is surprising that the consequence of this mega-story is: The campaign is shorter.
Short Campaign for Whiners – As if That Were the Only Option
I know that some will jump into the comments to say: “Good, short campaign is annoying, I don’t read quests anyway and only play for raids / dungeons / PvP!”
And I also understand that some people are annoyed if they have to play a long campaign because there are important endgame features that are only unlocked once the campaign has been completed.
It seems that they wanted to cater to exactly those people according to Maria Hamilton by making the campaign shorter:
We made the campaign a bit shorter this time because we know that there are some players who do not enjoy the story aspects as much and do not want to play that much. That’s totally fine. […]
That was a conscious decision. We want people to understand what they need to understand, but then they can level in a way that they enjoy.
We don’t want to force anyone to play a long campaign if they don’t enjoy it.
I don’t understand that.
Because if you take that as an argument, it seems to imply that there are only these two options:
- A long campaign that annoys some players because they have to play it, but delights story fans.
- A short campaign that annoys story fans, but pleases everyone who doesn’t want to quest.
But those are not the only two options.
Big Campaign and “No Obligation” Are Not Mutually Exclusive
World of Warcraft has proven in recent months that it is taking new paths. Mechanics and systems are being introduced that make most players feel more comfortable.
Would it really be so hard to create a long, extensive campaign, with the option of unlocking the endgame features upon reaching the maximum level before completing the campaign?
Similar options exist in the game frequently. You can often tell many NPCs (figuratively) “Don’t annoy me, give me content” when you have already completed a quest chain once. This requirement could surely be changed and simply replaced with the maximum level. An NPC, to whom you say: “I want to access the endgame features, even if I haven’t completed the campaign. Yes, I’m aware that I’ll be skipping story context.”
The absurd thing is anyway: The pre-patch has already introduced that you only need to complete each quest once to unlock something. After that, a quest already counts as “completed by the war party” and all unlocks associated with it are immediately available.
Even if you say: Everyone must play the campaign once, then this “effort” would only be there for exactly one character. The main criticism was primarily that second and third characters have to catch up on many quests to unlock the same systems.
There are plenty of options to create an extensive campaign without the “obligation” of having to play it. But they decided against that and instead created a short story campaign.
I think it casts a very strange light on the new expansion, which is supposed to conclude one of the biggest story arcs of World of Warcraft and mark the 20th anniversary of the MMORPG. Having one of the shortest story campaigns just feels very strange.
