WoW demon Cortyn has completed all quests in The War Within. The conclusion: It finally feels like Warcraft again, as much of it is quite dark.
In the meantime, I have completed all (currently available) quests in World of Warcraft: The War Within and thus was able to get a comprehensive impression of the story – both regarding the main campaign and the numerous side quests that often tell significantly smaller and local stories.
Although Dragonflight certainly had a few emotional and profound quests, the expansion as a whole was rather light-hearted. Most quests were more like “feel-good” tasks. That was okay too, because after the rather depressing Shadowlands, one just wanted to have a bit more positive mood in the game world.
However, because of this – and for other reasons – the story of World of Warcraft has lost a bit of its edge. All the more, I am happy to say with full confidence: The War Within does this significantly better. Some quests are even extremely dark.
Many quests with dark endings or serious themes
A few examples from the side quests to keep spoilers to a minimum:
A young woman wants to know from the Earthen and Elementals how the perfect gem is created. So she follows a legend and finds a being that can teach her exactly that. Just as she is so close to fulfilling her dream, she is abruptly turned into a boulder and can “spend the next thousand years learning what it feels like to create a gem.”
Also unexpectedly serious was a quest that dealt with the loss of memories. For the Earthen slowly lose their memories at the end of their life cycle, before they “come to a standstill” – meaning they die. During the quest line, we see how the old dwarf increasingly loses his memories and in the end does not even recognize his best friend, fleeing from her in panic.
Anyone who has ever had a case of dementia in the family can probably relate very well to how well the quest is implemented. The powerlessness and despair are well captured, and yet there is a beautiful, harmonious ending.
A forsaken in a cave full of spiders, whose creatures have already eaten his eyes. He tells how he can feel that the spiders are continuing to decompose him and eating his “still good parts” so that only his already rotten body parts remain.
A Nerubian who kills creatures of all kinds and then turns them into puppets in his theater play with threads, where he stages “funny battles” between the various races.
A young orphan girl who asks us to retrieve mementos from the house of her parents who were killed by monsters. She follows us, and when we want to send her away, she says: “I’m staying. What are you going to do about it? Tell on me to my parents? They’re dead.” Subsequently, she wants us to hunt the creatures and takes a relatable but also very painful delight when we kill the monsters as brutally and as many as possible.
Not everything is dark – but enough
Of course, The War Within also has the “typical Warcraft humor” and there are some noticeably funnier quests.
- If goblins invite you to a “recovery resort” in a quarry where you can “relaxingly smash stones with pickaxes,” then I have to grin.
- If I nibble too much from a mushroom in depth and consequently see pink Elks and Magni talking about “the wounds of Azeroth” and “Azeriiit,” then that’s nice humor that plays with the community’s expectations.
The War Within simply feels right like Warcraft as a whole. The story is gripping, the quests are entertaining, without ever being too oppressively dark or too long silly. Blizzard has simply hit the nail on the head here and – solely regarding the entertainment value of the quests – delivered really good, well-thought-out work.
If the world-soul saga continues like this, then I am sure that at least story and quest fans will be fully satisfied in the coming years. The bar has certainly been set quite high with the launch of The War Within. I hope that the level can be maintained.
