Warcraft Rumble has been live for a few hours now. MyMMO demon Cortyn has been gaming all night and draws an initial conclusion. Is the game any good?
Last night, my tablet suddenly told me that Warcraft Rumble was ready for installation. I had been wanting to try the mobile game in the Warcraft style for a while, but I wanted to get a real impression only with the release version. Well, now I could. Since last night, I have played for about 7 hours and therefore have a pretty good impression.
Already in mission 5, which is basically the final of the tutorial, I couldn’t get past “just spamming minis” and lost my first match. I was quite positively surprised by that, because typically tutorials in Blizzard games are “foolproof” and especially in a free-to-play game, you want to gradually build the hurdles.
Gameplay – Fast, simple, and yet complex
The actual gameplay of Warcraft Rumble is intuitive and quite simple. You wait until you have enough gold and then let a mini appear in the desired place on the battlefield – either your own base, a tower, or a gathering stone. From there, the mini wanders or flies calmly towards the enemy defense to either face the opposing minis or attack the buildings.
But what sounds quite relaxed can quickly become hectic, as tactical decisions have to be made every few seconds:
- Do I spend the gold on a goblin that can mine gold?
- Should I save the coin to buy a banshee that takes over the enemy leader mini?
- Or should I throw a chain lightning at the approaching chicken army instead?
You can take your time to think using the “Pause” function anytime – at least in PvE. It can still become hectic and confusing quickly. Since there are often 2-3 lanes where battles take place, multi-focus is a must here.
At the same time, you can already devise a strategy before the match, which mainly depends on the chosen leader. For instance, I have the undead “Blood Mage Thalnos” as my leader. He has a special hero ability that he gains a level every time I cast a spell.
This can be used tactically. If I let Thalnos start all the way at the back of my base (and protect him with a tank) and then gradually cast spells, he ends up 5 or 6 levels higher at the end of the path – which means around 70% more damage and HP. Often enemies are then overwhelmed by Thalnos alone.
Other leaders have different abilities. For example, Jaina increases the level of all spells by 3, as long as she is alive – so spells deal a little more than 30% extra damage.
But the minis themselves also follow the “rock-paper-scissors” principle. For example, my fire elemental can smash entire groups of melee fighters but can’t defend against flying minis at all. My banshee can take over enemy minis, but she is very expensive – if she takes over a single chicken, that’s wasted gold.
In a match, you always only have the choice of the 6 minis + leader that you have in the current deck. This means that even in deck construction, it is decided how effective your own team is. If you only bring flying minis, you will probably lose immediately against area spells. A balanced team is therefore the goal.
The Shop and the beloved Pay2Win
A big topic in free-to-play games is of course the shop, also in Warcraft Rumble. After the first few matches, you can visit the shop and exchange the earned gold for minis. Gradually, you unlock more optional purchases, some of which are more lucrative while others are hardly worth it.
Especially important from my perspective here is the “bow light booster.” For 20 euros, you unlock a permanent booster for your account that permanently increases the experience points earned by 20% and the gold earned by 50%.
By the way, you also get the 50% bonus gold retroactively for all completed missions.
If you plan to play the game “actively,” you should at least consider the one-time investment of 20 euros. Because the grind can become quite exhausting in later phases of the campaign. Only with this boost does the leveling speed feel “right”.
The shop also offers additional deals. Some of them are quite tricky as they have a time limit. After reaching a certain level, for example, you unlock the “Hogger offer,” where you get a big chunk of gold and some experience points for 5 euros. However, I only have 2 days to buy this offer, otherwise the package with “legendary value” expires – that’s already a nasty but sadly common trick.
It is also pretty likely that it is intentional for the shop to be relatively prominent. Because the shop is also the place where you can buy new minis with the earned currency. Additionally, there is a free bonus in the shop every few hours – so you definitely return to the site multiple times a day and might be tempted to purchase with real money.
Overall, however, the shop felt relatively fair. Whether that is still the case at higher levels of play or if you can hardly avoid purchases, I cannot yet assess at this point.
PvP – Much better than expected
The big surprise for me was the PvP in Warcraft Rumble, as it was much more fun than I originally thought.
I’m not entirely sure if this fairness will still be present later and how talents will affect it, so take this statement with a grain of caution. However, my first 15 PvP matches felt good – even though I consider Maiev absolutely OP and I couldn’t win a single round against her.
That is also the only major disadvantage of the game for me. The minis don’t seem particularly well balanced for PvP yet, and often it’s already clear within the first few seconds that you have no chance against the opponent with your mini combination.
Tacticians can probably search for weeks for the perfect mini combination and cool strategies here – or just Google “Warcraft Rumble best team” and dominate the PvP with that.
However, it’s nice that just like in PvE, you still earn a few experience points even in a defeat. This makes the loss only half as unpleasant.
What is annoying about Rumble?
However, there are also a few things in Rumble that are simply annoying. The once-famous “Blizzard Polish,” meaning that a game comes to market nearly flawless, is not present in Rumble either. A few examples:
- After a PvP match, you have to hit the “Continue” button 10 times until it moves on.
- Loading times are occasionally extremely long, even though only a menu is being loaded. It’s also nice when the loading screen hangs forever at “100%”.
- The German translation is sometimes rather poor. For example, there’s “Common Pilot” or an “Ork bank,” although in the Warcraft universe it should actually be “Orc.”
- The game occasionally crashes with an error message.
Who is Warcraft Rumble worth it for?
Basically, Warcraft Rumble can be a lot of fun. The short, snappy battles are engaging and surprisingly tactical in both PvE and PvP. However, the game can also become quite hectic. Especially in the last seconds, decisions often have to be made in a flash – anyone expecting a “relaxed” game with slowness in the style of Hearthstone will be bitterly disappointed.
All others get a solid free-to-play game with Rumble, which should sweeten some waiting times in the future. Whether the game can still captivate over 20, 50, or 100 hours is yet to be seen.
Only those who hoped to have a story experience in the Warcraft world in some way will be disappointed.
We have a tier list for all minis from Warcraft Rumble here for you.
