With The War Within, the tenth expansion has launched in World of Warcraft. MyMMO editor Benedict Grothaus has been playing since release and has been doing so more extensively than in years. The expansion improves many things, but one thing is still missing: long-term engagement.
World of Warcraft lost me quite a bit with the end of Dragonflight. I didn’t even touch the last season and took a break for months. What I’ve picked up about The War Within hasn’t fully engaged me:
- Azeroth as a theme – meaning the “person,” not the planet itself
- Xal’Atath as an antagonist, to whom I never had any connection – I wasn’t a priest during Legion and I’ve never been very interested in the Void
- Hero talents as a new feature, most of which I didn’t find very exciting
Now, The War Within hasn’t been out for two weeks, and I already have 8 characters at level 80, leveled all professions, and for the first time completed the Loremaster achievement for an expansion — this means I have completed all storylines in the side quests.
Nonetheless, I’m currently logging in every day and continuing to play, wanting to level at least one or two more characters before the raid launches. I’m even playing classes that I never cared about before because I’m having so much fun. I wasn’t even this excited during Legion. What’s better about WoW now compared to before?
The cinematic is, to be fair, quite cool:
Warbands are the best thing to happen to WoW
If I had to pinpoint my entire joy to one feature, it would be the Warbands. Actually, it’s not such an exciting change: All characters now share certain loot, and a few of them gather around the campfire at login.
However, there is a lot more behind the Warbands that is particularly interesting for me as a twink player. Every character at level 80 contributes 5% additional experience for the entire Warband (up to a maximum of +25%). This allows secondary characters to be leveled within a few hours.
By the way, sometimes I wonder: Why are twinks called twinks?
Additionally, there’s the Warband bank. In this, I can store anything that isn’t soulbound. This means: If I find a really good item in the open world, it is often “bound to the Warband” in The War Within. Two-handed swords that my rogue collects can therefore simply be gifted to my warrior.
The best part is that the Warband functions across servers and factions. So if I decide – for whatever reason – that I want to play a Horde character somewhere else, they benefit from all the advantages my Alliance characters have earned.
The campaign is shorter – and that makes everything better
Only after leveling did I notice that there is something else that The War Within does really well. The campaign in the new expansion is significantly shorter and that is intentional.
Within a few hours, you’ve completed the entire story and are not even at maximum level yet. This had many advantages for me:
- The story is no longer fragmented, as it was in Shadowlands. There are no boring fetch quests that later make me forget what the main plot was about.
- The story in the areas could be enjoyed at a leisurely pace with my first 3 twinks, so I always had something new to discover while still making “progress”, nothing felt repetitive.
- After the first playthrough, the campaign can even be easily skipped to catch up on the latest events.
Like with the Warbands, I initially thought that the change was too small to really have an effect. Now I know: The decision was exactly right to bring the story closer to the players and not lose them somewhere in the middle.
Can Blizzard maintain the pace now?
Even though I still don’t have enough and want to keep leveling, I’m not sure how long this will last. In the past, my biggest problem was that the endgame eventually felt like work.
The first raid will be released on September 11, and the Mythic dungeons will start. A week later, the Mythic raid and the first season for Mythic+ will come. From then on, the real grind begins for me as a raider.
That’s not a problem in itself. It only becomes annoying when you find yourself standing still, not progressing, or have already seen everything too many times. This especially happens when raids are too hard or seasons last too long. In particular, the “filler seasons” have often dampened the mood in the past.
Whether my concern will be confirmed, I will see in two or three weeks. However, The War Within is the first of three expansions in a trilogy and is intended to be, as far as I understand, somewhat shorter. This is likely very beneficial for the fun of playing – and apparently also planned that way: WoW wants to deliver more content than ever before and is making smaller expansions.
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