When a new season of World of Warcraft starts, it always takes several weeks before all content is available at all difficulty levels. Some fans of the story mode would like to change that.
What is the story mode? As part of the current WoW expansion “The War Within,” the story mode was introduced. This allows fans of the stories from Azeroth to experience the events in the raid instances alone or with up to 4 friends.
Alongside various NPC fighters, the story mode offers a player experience that focuses primarily on the story surrounding the final boss of the respective raid, and the complexity and difficulty are significantly lower than what you would encounter, for example, in the LFR mode.
What do players criticize? Following the announcement of the release schedule for the upcoming season 3 and the associated raid Manaforge Omega, some story fans are now criticizing on Reddit that they will not be able to start the story mode until August 20. The Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulty levels, however, will open their gates on August 13. The same applies to the first LFR wing.
nightbreedwon1 writes in his post on Reddit: “WoW developers: Please, please, PLEASE release the story mode version of Dimensius on the same day as the raid. Stop encouraging your players to engage with the story through YouTube uploads.”
Not interested in the toxic community
How is the community reacting to the criticism? The post from nightbreedwon1 has so far received more than 830 upvotes and more than 370 comments. Many commenters support the desire for an earlier release. However, many comments also revolve around the general quality of the story mode. And there are the usual “Just play LFR or Normal” responses.
- Vyar writes on Reddit: “The story mode isn’t even properly implemented. You miss so much context when you only fight the final boss. I wouldn’t care if you literally got no loot, as long as I could experience the entire raid from start to finish.”
- Artanisx understands why many players avoid raids, via Reddit: “As a Mythic raider on the verge of achieving the top achievement… have you ever tried a NORMAL RAID in the first week after release? That’s the most toxic thing you can find in WoW.”
- Caronry throws a possible reason for the staggered release of raid modes into the discussion: “I’m about 99.9% sure the developers have something else in mind… They encourage you and others to actually fully play the new raid for which they’ve spent development time, instead of just killing the final boss as a training dummy.”
- Gneissisnice explains on Reddit: “With the one-button rotation, you don’t even have to learn how to play the game. Just do LFR or Normal. I don’t understand why anyone would want to play a game based on combat and then refuse to engage with the core mechanics.”
What do you think: Should the story mode be released at the same time as Normal and Co.? Or does a later start make sense in your opinion? And what have your experiences with the story mode been so far? Share them in the comments! MyMMO demon Cortyn was, by the way, not particularly impressed with the new player experience for story fans: WoW now has a solo mode for raids – and it’s not that great
