It’s summer and it’s been a busy day and it’s late and my laptop is sputtering. There’s a cold McDonald’s burger on my desk, a beat-up headset perched on my head and not a single light on in the house. Mom and Dad are both far away and tomorrow is sprinting towards me. But tonight I’m booting up World of Warcraft. It’s 2024 and I’m 36 and somehow I’m right back where I started.
The thing about WoW, about these games that seem to subsist somewhere outside of time, they carry with them all the ghosts of their past iterations. I don’t just log in; I reach through time and connect to a younger, distant version of myself. The pixels may be sharper, the mechanics more mindfully tweaked, but that feeling—the swelling orchestral of the loading screen in a dark room, the satisfaction of moving towards a private little goal, the click and clop of my Priest’s footsteps in a world that feels more real than my own—none of that has changed.
There’s a comfort in it. Like slipping into a well-worn pair of shoes, even if those shoes now come with microtransactions and an in-game shop. But sitting here, with eyes twenty years more tired and a heart twenty years more heavy, do those old comforts still hold up in a world that’s moved on? In a world where I’ve moved on—or at least, I thought I had.
As the milestones of my life, so are WoW’s varied expansions; I remember precisely where I was when the burning portal to Outland split, pouring unto us a flood of Space Goats and the revelation that orcs were not always green. I remember the unhappy person I was when Arthas fell, the exhaustion of a youthful depression as I wandered the Jade Forest. When the Warlords of Draenor marched in, darkness took me and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. When the Legion descended, I had since emerged and found love. Then someone remembered that a faction war was, in fact, the entire point of a faction wargame, and we had a Battle for Azeroth apparently. Then I guess everyone died because we also got sent to the Shadowlands? I’m not sure, I was catching up on other stuff.
A few breaks later, I found myself checking back in at the end of Dragonflight. My darling wife had a new job and with it a new schedule, and with a sudden embarrassment of free time I found myself wondering about the provenance of my forgotten worlds, and filled with the indescribable urge to begin tinkering iteratively on something which could develop into a greater and more fulfilling work, given steady time and attention. Like a degree, or a collection of short stories. Or a live-service mmorpg.
Story had never been WoW’s strongest suit—not for me. WoW’s story to me was written in the RP foolishness I would instigate with my guild, little adventures and trysts across the myriad unfolding lands and dungeons introduced in each new content patch. I don’t know enough about the Warcraft characters to care about them, and what little I do know isn’t enough for me to care about caring about them. Besides which, being born as I am with a contrary nature I’ve a poor record of feeling what I’m told to feel, and for whom, and Dragonflight’s narrative wrap-up leaned so heavily on telling rather than showing that I checked out hard enough I dropped out of PvE entirely and crash landed in the Arena.
So for a while PvP had become my refuge. Raiding is only as fun as the people I do it with, and my constant comings and goings have emptied out my friend-list like a wet fart in the back of a dry bus. And I’m not compelled to sit through Raid Finder, the baby version of end-game content where ego is more fragile than pringles and the points don’t matter. Mythic dungeons? Mythic+? No interest. I’m not a fan of rushing where speed itself is the goal. I prefer evolving problems, puzzles with no obvious solution—thus, Solo Shuffle. 3v3 arena fights with randomly filled teams, which re-shuffle between matches. No two encounters are the same, and I have my toolkit and the shaky confidence to apply it. Fun! As far as diversions go. But not long-lasting. Eventually I rank up to the point where even PvP fights are just a back and forth slog between two unkillable teams, where all finesse and capitalizing on minor mistakes is replaced with sweaty dick-punching for 5 minutes until heal-dampening starts to kick in and someone’s healer goes oom first.
I didn’t remain somebody who could find that sort of thing interesting, for very long. I drifted away again, let my sub run out, let my Priest continue his handsome frowning unattended. But nearly a year has passed now, my weathered husk painfully molting off a newer me, and with this next steep step on the climb to my inevitable end, they’ve gone and released another expansion. The War Within. A title that suggests it’s themed around the gastrointestinal distress of coding a live-service feature on a deadline, but no—the theme this time is dwarves.
Ugh. Dwarves.
And thusly there I sit, cradled in the dim pale hum of my laptop’s wavering screen, cats in guard formation around the office, logging into The War Within with a heavy heart and none of the impish excitement usually reserved for expansion launches. The plan? Bumble around, skip as much of the narrative as possible, beeline to level cap, and start prepping for the next season of gladiatorial combat. Maybe this time fights would be snappier and if they weren’t I’d be out of here in like a week. I shared the intricacies of this plan with my cats, who observed with their usual inscrutable feline disinterest.
What my cats and I didn’t anticipate was that this would be a good one. I didn’t even think Blizzid had it in them—like a favored pen long run dry that still manages to scrawl out just a couple more thin lines on your grocery list.
Logging in is simple enough. Neat to see my 4 favored characters now sharing the select screen, posing like WWE superstars around a gently dancing campfire. I select my old Priest, favoring his imperious loitering over the brutish manner of his peers. I’ve always found the art direction to be charming, in its cartoonish way. It isn’t aiming for realism, which is fortunate because you don’t miss 100% of the shots you don’t take…
I pop up in good old Stormwind, and instantaneously Jaina Proudmoore (of HotS fame) starts speaking at me about Sithilus or Silithus while I hurriedly rummage through the contents of spellbook, seeking absolution in new-found or altered effects. A click here and an ‘accept quest’ there and I’m right back in it, playing The Feud.
Now the Dalaran introduction to follow was rushed, high-stakes cliché fantasy garbage, but once I landed in Dornogal and the new world unfolded before me, the vibe pivoted so hard both my ankles audibly broke. Imagine well-watered celery. I write this from the floor. Please call for my wife.
Immediately upon arrival I’m greeted by open sky and rolling, verdant hills. Simple. Clean. Believably livable! Immediately I can climb on my mount-of-choice, shove the quest-giver by the face and take off in any direction. I find myself alighting outside what appears to be in part one of the many, many humble low-fantasy villages I’ve described in my years as a DM. Idyllic, quiet. Wood and stone and little hearths and milling townsfolk, appropriately dressed for the time and place. The sort of setting which feels lived in, artisanal, hand-crafted. At complete odds with the god-killing, green fire, Come All Ye Angels At The Fourth Trumpet end of the world nonsense which scales stakes so far out of proportion as to ruin any sense of connection to their consequences.
I stay a while, and I listen. Gentle, lively strings warmly raise the cottage-core temperature of pitch-perfect cozy fantasy and I wonder if perhaps this is a mistake, a one-off slipped in by a rogue mellow-enthusiast.
My star-drake and I, resplendent as I am in my crimson halo and unfurling ghost-wings, feel woefully overdressed. We apologize awkwardly and promise to leave… The impact of our escape launch upheaves a farmer’s stall, throwing tastefully arranged ears of corn and cabbage pyramids in every conceivable direction…
Curious as to whether the narrative carpet would match the environmental drapes, I dabbled in a few starter quests. Then a few more. Then a couple more. Then just like two more. You see the pattern. Eventually I completed the campaign, and even went back for seconds, clearing out every optional side quest in my favorite zone.
The restraint displayed during this expansion fills me with the satisfying sense of adventure I wasn’t aware I had been missing. The impulse towards constructing some Great Big Important story has gone underground, simmering down instead to a patiently crafted adventure of bringing literal Light to dark places, of setting up wax enterprises with kobolds, of trading political intrigues with spiders. The focus on low-scale, returning to the fundamentals is such a refreshing take. I’m thrilled with the delightful little touches: the small gremlin spider voices, a pair of ‘traveling snailsmen’ making their way from town to town, the majesty of the Nerubian people not as an Empire, but as merchants and craftsfolk, busily solving the calculus of striving to build a life in a dangerous, warcrafted era.
The writing isn’t perfect. This is no Andor, this is no The Bear. But it isn’t trying to be greater than the sum of its own britches. It is concise, it is tight. It doesn’t presume to be quirky. The main narrative is its weakest point, but the side-content has been handled with such care as to make this underground world feel more well-lived and well-loved than anything from the surface, or beyond.
About that main story. Despite dutifully ignoring 20 years of lore, I recognize a couple of faces. Anduin Wrynn -the little blonde boy who used to cheerfully inquire whether I was enjoying my time in Stormwind- has grown into a Sad Son, ring-eyed and crestfallen, shrugging off shoulder armor and affecting a hipster cape within which to mope imperiously. Alleria Windrunner, sister of the Banshee Queen, is pretty pissed and looking to make that everybody’s problem. Xalatath, the knife I had in Legion, is back and she’s giving everybody headaches and all that is foul and all that runs awry functions all according to her keikaku, for she is weaver of destinies unwoven and so on and so forth and this is the corner of the narrative which glazes my eyes the quickest.
Characters have needs, and they grow. Anduin needs to learn to believe in himself again, Alleria needs to learn to stop overcompensating for her perceived helplessness at the outset of the story. And they do these things, eventually, in a very heavy-handed bit of dialogue about feelings during a cutscene where they’re fleeing from a spider-army. Which was kind of lame.
I’m here for feelings. Really. They’re the whole point. No creative pursuit can mean anything substantive without a sliver of the human condition being brushed up against it, but there is a time and a place. If you expect me to care about these two, beyond the unfair advantage of nostalgia-baiting, give them a real, human conversation. Let me hear them talk to each other like people, not like characters.
Let me see them sitting at a firepit, avoiding eye contact. Show me Anduin impotently prodding at the burning embers, and have Alleria snap how she’s sick of seeing him sulk. Let them bicker, let them lash out at each other, and let Xalatath pop up in the midst of it. Yeah, the bad guy. She’s a schemer, isn’t she? Of course she’s been listening and she’s got her Big Plans and all but she just can’t sit there and listen to this dithering anymore and tells them what they both need to hear: the Light can only fill you as deeply as you have carved yourself for it, and revenge is a dish best eaten.
Then she dips and our two heroes are left flustered and off-guarded and pissy and there, you’re compelled. That’s how I’d do it. Yes, somebody asked. Yes, my cats count as somebody.
But I don’t think the team here writes with compelling ends in mind. Frankly I don’t know what they’re going for. The same faux-inspirational hack tripe we’ve been getting for the past decade, from nearly every medium responsible for enumerating the details of the Hero’s Journey for consumer benefit? Maybe it’s a failure in the industry. Maybe I should stop expecting better from multi-billion dollar companies. Maybe defining a genre only works once.
Anyway the main story is whatever but the side stuff, all the little things you get up to between the overarching outbursts is as they say in chef’s kiss, immaculate.
The transition from a peerless, open sky to the underground setting is as simple as it is clever. Just a hole in the floor, reminiscent of the Mad Mage megadungeon, leading downward and downward before spitting me out in a beautifully appointed cavern, vast and awesome and filled with curiosities. Each region down here is uniquely tailored, and an impeccable amount of detail has been crafted in even the groundways and corners none in flight would bother to tread. A great second sun hangs from the ceiling in Hallowfall, glowing warmly as little air ships wander the barren expanse. Little thingies scurry hurriedly through Azj-Kahet, terminally late, while web-cloaked spires rise in the mid-distance. The Ringing Deeps sing with industry, the Isle of Dorn touched with a welcoming blend of sunny mountainside and sweeping pasture.
All flyable, from out the gate. The sense of exploration and freedom of movement that comes with Skyriding itself delivers something I don’t experience elsewhere; the simple act of traversal, the gaming staple of getting from A to B, has been elevated from a dull, screen-hopping chore to an interaction with the world around me. Flying doesn’t detract from the experience or the beauty of the landscape; rather, it enhances your agency, allowing you to tackle bite-sized quests with ease. Traversal is intuitive, with optional markers guiding you and a clean interface that keeps distractions to a minimum. Instead of hitting auto-run and diving into my phone to prevent the admittance of any actual thoughts into the snakepit of my head, I am instead thoroughly engaged in heading out to quest areas, my soaring mount dipping and diving and dodging while powerful flaps of draconic wings whips wind through my ears.
Speaking of, the sound design is exceptional. Webs scurrying like ribbons over the ear, the bassy impacts of the small galaxies I throw, and the friendly, rumbling grunts of Dornegal’s muttery innkeep. Even the sucking of displaced air while channeling a Void Blast sounds meticulously crafted. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into creating an auditory experience that complements the visual splendor.
The combat remains slick and sharp, customizable to suit your playstyle. I’ve always loved WoW’s combat. Twenty years of evolution (and millions of complaining players) have resulting in a fine-tuned machine, slickened with balanced class resources and field by role fantasy.
With the inclusion of Hero Talents my Shadow Priest has a whack-a-mole rotation where various spells have a chance to light up other spells on my bar, and prioritizing which one to slap in which order has been a point of amusement and satisfaction. I’ve got one that bowls a slow-rolling black hole into a clustered knot of bads; my build-and-spend resource cast makes the steadily swelling sphere of inky darkness beefier and beefier the more casts I weave in before its expulsion, leading to a sort of ‘feed the collapsing star’ mini-game which for someone cut from my cloth is as nice as a warm hug. I’ve yet to try Warrior or Warlock but they both seem to have interesting little tools for astro-navigating the constellations of warfare. It’s right there in their names.
Something WoW’s really nailing lately is the ability to customize your chosen class to a style that suits you. My omnipotence is infinite, but my attention fickle. I get bored very quickly, and being able to re-write my script as often and as regularly as I feel I must makes my Priest seem uniquely tailored to me.
The dungeon experience is superb. You can bypass other humans entirely and enter with a party of NPCs, filling the traditional 5-man roster and covering Tank and Heals as needed, or filling in as DPS if you’re inclined otherwise. These NPCs, or followers, scale with you, and are competitive on the dps meters, and can even be asked to lead the way through the run. The tank will scoot ahead of you, stopping and turning back if you ever lag behind. They jabber with each other between pulls, swapping lore insights or giving clues about how to manage the upcoming boss. The dungeon design has also been given significant care; you can expect a normal run to take about fifteen or so minutes. The mobs between bosses have been reduced, and moving through the dungeon itself has been streamlined, though not by making it a dull march from place to place. All in all an improvement from what I remember of prior expansion slogs.
Delves are new! They’re mini-dungeons, usually with just one objective. You can go in with friends or with motherlovin Brann Bronzebeard, the most irritating affront to scottish accents this side of Cait Sith. If you can plug your nose long enough to deal with his trundling you can run a quick little jaunt, fight a small boss and come out with some equipment.
There are some scaling and pacing problems when you try to party up with other random enthusiasts. The world around you scales as you level; when you sprout from level 70 to level 71, so does the rest of the world, and if you aren’t able to keep your gear on par with the new levels, you will gradually find yourself growing weaker the more exp you get. And the party-finder dungeons are tilted; if you’re level 76 and you have a level 70 on your team, you’re fighting lvl 76 mobs and they’re fighting lvl 70’s, meaning they shred right through and the content is so simplified as to become dull.
This remains one of my chief complaints with WoW as a whole; many of the balanced systems and rewarding features come online at level cap. This encourages a rush to the endgame, where the REAL game is, but that’s kind of junky. I get there are a -lot- of systems and countless factors to consider but you dickheads print so much money, you can afford to make every step, every bracket in the journey a satisfying one. Lowbie PvP has been a wreck since the dawn of time. Lowbie dungeons are just wall-to-wall pull fests, boring. Boring.
Scaling’s a nice idea, just implement it better. In a random, match-made party scale everything down to the level of the lowest member. Or up to the highest. Unlock spell/talent options from the slider, so everyone can still access their rotation. Done and done.
But these aren’t gripes to be solved with a new expansion. My time in The World Within has thus far been almost appallingly charming. If you’ve been turned away by non-sense systems or over-hype or systems designed to make logging in a daily chore, you might find more restraint here. If you enjoy fast-paced, satisfying and customizable combat, and an endless supply of ways to describe it, you will find New WoW to be deeply compelling. There’s a little something here for everyone, a few of these somethings even polished up to a quality as yet unseen anywhere else in the industry.
Entering The War Within, I was astonished by how wrong my initial assumptions had been. I am shocked to have found myself as captivated by my journey through Khaz Algar as I once was wandering Westfall two decades ago. While the latest tales of the ancient MMO might not be all that memorable, the true “war within” was the personal transformation I’ve experienced along the way. And this evidently has been a transformation into someone with plenty of time for well-crafted environs, tender sub-plots, and active, engaging fantasy combat. I’m glad to spend more time with that guy, excited to see what we get to see next.
