World of Warcraft’s latest expansion - The War Within - hit on August 26th after about a three-and-a-half day headstart for players who bought the Epic or Collector’s Edition. So far, I’ve been spending a ton of time leveling my main, leveling alts, gearing up for raiding, and diving into all the new content Blizzard has unleashed on us.
That said, we’ve decided to go with a Review in Progress for now because neither raiding nor Mythic+ are available yet, and they are such a significant part of endgame that excluding it from consideration didn’t feel right. Therefore, this review in progress will primarily focus on my leveling experience and issues I have encountered while leveling.
Leveling
One of my big question marks regarding the launch of The War Within was how the destruction of Dalaran would happen. I purposefully didn’t participate in testing this scenario because I wanted it to be a completely new experience when I played through it for real. The destruction of a city isn’t a particularly new way to start an expansion. However, this was the first time the city was a shared hub of both factions and had been the central hub city for two separate expansions. Additionally, I was keen to find out what happened to Khadgar.
The set-up for why we decided to go to Khaz Algar was done well and also filled in many of my questions regarding why Magni seemed so incredibly disgruntled anytime he talked during the alpha & beta. Also, the reveal of Xal’atath being in Dalaran and how she helped coax us into her trap was perfectly executed. I was right there with Alleria, feeling rage and frustration when the veil was lifted on that one.
There was a whole section where I had to go around saving NPCs and helping them evacuate. I usually don’t like these types of quests because I am saving no-name NPCs with which I have no real connection, so the stakes are low. However, so many of these NPCs were characters I have seen many times throughout the years, so it had a more personal touch. One of the first things I did was head for the leatherworking/skinning building because I wanted to ensure all of them were saved. I spent so much time there over the years, and that was particularly important to me. Sadly, though, I haven’t found Windle and Jaxi Sparkshine. I hope they made it out as well.
Moving on from the intro, the quality of the stories in each zone, and the continuous payoff on bits of stories laid years ago was terrific. I thought that since I had previously played through the storyline of each zone, I had a great handle on everything that was going to happen, but I underestimated that by miles. The end cinematics for The Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall, and Azj-Kahet hit far more than I thought they would when I read the descriptions of what happened on alpha. Between all three, I can’t say which one was the best. All three were masterclasses in visual storytelling in very different ways.
My one huge concern throughout the leveling campaign was that Alleria seemed to be going the way of Tyrande, and I didn’t want to watch that unfold again. That said, it was necessary to see her struggle and how she overcame the urge to go full rage mode. I didn’t like how Alleria survived Dalaran; it was precisely how Jaina survived Theramore. However, doing that meant Jaina was uniquely positioned to understand what Alleria was dealing with and allowed for some other significant payoffs.
There’s been much discussion regarding the leveling campaign being so much shorter than it was in Dragonflight and how that is a bad thing, but it seems that people have forgotten why that is. The Dragonflight zones were jampacked with interesting and fun sidequests, but doing those meant players would hit max level long before they finished the leveling campaign. I was level 77 when I left the Ohn’aharan Plains and didn’t do any side quests in the Waking Shores. This time around, it seemed the goal was to let players do more of those side quests without feeling it would mess with the leveling experience.
That said, the balance is still off. I focused on the campaign storyline and did some quests, and as a result, I was level 77 when I finished. Whereas, some of my guildies chose to do everything in each zone before moving on and they were level 80 long before finishing the leveling story. I’m not sure there is a great way to balance the two approaches to leveling. As it is, I didn’t mind finishing at level 77. It allowed me to go back and do some of the quests I had skipped and to start running dungeons to finish up. Lastly, the leveling campaign, in addition to the max level story, which opened up last week and this week, makes the launch storyline feel on par with previous expansions.
There was also a nerf to level scaling soon after the full launch arrived, which seemed poorly timed. The nerf on scaling for leveling dungeons was completely necessary. When I was working on getting my last three levels, I grouped up with some friends who were all either 80 or high-level 70’s, except one friend who was level 70. As a level 70 Windwalker, he could pretty much solo the entire dungeon. I was having remix flashbacks, and it was utterly ridiculous. The open world nerf felt a bit more of an odd choice, but I’ve been leveling my Prot Pally recently, and even though her ilvl is only 480, it doesn’t feel any more difficult than it was on my overgeared Guardian Druid.
Soup to nuts, leveling through The War Within felt even better than in Dragonflight. It feels like Blizzard has honed in on what made the zones and leveling storylines so great and iterated on them brilliantly. Everything isn’t perfect, and everyone will have their preferences, but for me, this leveling experience has been great. As I mentioned, I’m even spending time on some alts, which is unusual for me.
Issues While Leveling
Unfortunately, I ran into an issue right at the beginning of the expansion. Magni woke up and told us we needed to go to Khaz’Algar; Khadgar said we needed to confer with the council… and then suddenly said we needed to prepare to leave. At the time, this struck me as a bit odd, but I was excited to be on my way, so I didn’t think about it too much. It wasn’t until I took my Evoker through the Dalaran scenario that I realized a whole cutscene didn’t fire the first time. Once I saw that, it all made sense and flowed much better. It was not the hugest issue, but it was slightly off-putting.
There have been a host of cutscene issues this time around; one of the weirdest ones was a cutscene was setting player’s sound settings to zero. This was particularly frustrating because it wasn’t obvious what was happening, and needed a script to fix it after it happened. These issues are incredibly frustrating because the cutscenes always add so much to the story, and missing any of them can be extremely confusing and disappointing. Likewise, the auction house has seen many issues that rendered it unusable when players were trying to work on professions and earn all the gold they could. That also appears to be fixed at this point.
I encountered a terrible issue early on, which would have been catastrophic if it hadn’t resolved itself. It was the second or third day of early access; I don’t remember the exact date. I decided to complete a delve, but when I returned to Dornagal, no players or NPCs were anywhere in the city. I tried reloading, but it didn’t help at all. I thought if I flew back down to The Ringing Deeps, it would cause everything to catch up and fix it. However, at the end of the coreway everything went white, and I dc’ed. I tried to log back on, but I was immediately disconnected again. I logged onto an alt and then tried to switch back - but I had the same problem. I tried to use the unstuck tool on the website, but it wouldn’t let me select my Druid. This went on for about 10 minutes, during which time I thought I might have lost the character that has been my main since Legion. Eventually, the unstuck tool came through for me, and I could get back to playing… it was a pretty scary 10 minutes, though.
While these issues have been frustrating, they haven’t dampened my enjoyment of The War Within. When I return for the full review, I’ll have a lot to say about the max-level campaign, the experience of trying to gear up for raiding, and how raiding and Mythic+ are going. Oh! And how the higher difficulties in delves are. I’m very interested in how those stack up against the other endgame activities.
Full Disclosure: This review is being conducted using a code provided by Blizzard for the purposes of this review.
