The story mode for the raid in World of Warcraft was highly announced. But MeinMMO demon Cortyn thinks that the feature isn’t really good.
Since yesterday, not only has the first season of World of Warcraft: The War Within started, but a new mode of the raid is available – the “Story Mode”. With this, you have the opportunity to tackle the final boss of the new raid, Queen Ansurek, solo. This is intended to give everyone the chance to experience the raid’s finale – even without a raid group.
What bothers me the most is the fact that in story mode, the mechanics don’t play any role at all. This is generally not a problem – because in LFR the mechanics are often so simple that they hardly matter. But with the difference: The mechanics are at least fully present.
Even if the big abilities cause little damage, they are at least playable in full. However, this is not the case with the story mode variant.
This causes the story mode variant to teach the boss “incorrectly”. What you see here is simply not the mechanical experience that you get in the normal or heroic mode. The mechanics are partially present – but not fully. And that makes it very strange.
When Queen Ansurek sends out a wave of poison, you should actually jump over it to avoid the damage. But the partial mechanic to jump over this wave simply doesn’t exist.
Even in the final phase of the boss fight, where you should actually jump through portals to avoid a deadly mechanic, these portals are simply missing.
In both cases, the answer is: The mechanic that causes the damage is present – but not the mechanic to avoid that damage. So the correct solution to the problem is missing.
I am aware that you cannot or do not want to achieve the complexity of the real boss fight for the story mode. But mechanics that deliberately function “incorrectly” will ultimately only lead to players making mistakes when visiting the normal raid (or even in LFR). That is simply not well done.
By the way, there is no loot for the story mode, although the reward from the quest is relatively generous. With this, you are able to craft a pretty strong item, making the (one-time) visit in story mode quite worthwhile.
The presentation feels wrong
Also, how the boss fight is presented in the story seems strange. You complete a small quest chain in the city of threads until the vizier – relatively suddenly – says: “Alright, now it’s time to kill the queen.”
That made me raise my eyebrows a bit in confusion. But also the transition into the raid feels somewhat odd. You say “I am ready” and get teleported into the raid – along with 9 NPC companions, right before the boss fight against Ansurek.
This just feels wrong – especially since everything else in the story mode raid is already dead. This leads to you being simply thrown to the end of the raid, which seems inappropriate and hasty story-wise.
From my perspective, the story mode is a nice idea, but so far it’s only experimental and not really thought through to the end. Surely the idea can improve significantly in the future and serve as a good alternative if you just want to see the story. But in the current case, this variant feels more like a foreign body that doesn’t quite fit into the story – strange for a “story mode”.
If you want to vote on how good the new expansion is, we have here a large survey on WoW The War Within and its features.
