I’ve been a World of Warcraft player since April 2005. I may have been five months late to the launch party but I am a Vanilla baby. I have played every expansion and since Cataclysm, I have beta-tested almost every expansion (minus Shadowlands and Dragonflight). However, that two-expansion losing streak has been broken as I have gotten my beta invite to test The War Within, and while it is still very early in the beta (it hasn’t been an entire week yet as of this editorial), I still made the journey to level 80 and have some initial thoughts that I am sure will change as more things get added but, hey, that’s what a first impression editorial is for. It’s not to give an impression after you’ve experienced things for a second time!
The Leveling
The journey to 80 isn’t that bad; however, I do feel that compared to Dragonflight, the pacing seems off. With the advent of Follower Dungeons which were introduced late in Dragonflight, they were able to make doing dungeons mandatory as part of that leveling experience; however, The Rookery was the only dungeon that did this.
What I did notice was that not every dungeon was available as a Follower Dungeon which tells me that they are not all implemented at this stage of testing. While noting this seems like a hard left turn from my opening statement on leveling, it’s not. I think the pacing feels off because more of these dungeons were meant to be a part of the leveling process but since they haven’t had time to be implemented yet, the pacing may feel a bit skewed.
To test out the pacing, I went through the first zone, The Isle of Dorn, and did every side quest that I could (i.e. all of the ones that weren’t bugged and, trust me, there were a few that were.). By the time I finished everything, I was halfway through level 74. Four and a half levels out of ten with three entire zones left to go. That told me that I was going to hit 80 way sooner before reaching Azj-Kahet, the fourth and final zone.
I went to The Ringing Deeps next and did a bunch of side quests; however, this time, I skipped the Delves quests and as soon as I got the go-ahead to move on to Hallowfall, I left the zone behind. I’ll circle back to this in a bit. By the time I had left for Hallowfall, I was level 76. Keep in mind, I left a LOT of side quests behind so I would have been much higher had I stayed and finished but I wanted to test something.
In Hallowfall, I only did the main story quest, skipping every single side quest. By the time I was sent to Azj-Kahet, I was only level 77. That’s right… the main story quest in Hallowfall lasted only long enough to gain one level. I also noticed the Isle of Dorn and The Ringing Deeps were very short on story as well with each zone having just three chapters to its story.
When I started Azj-Kahet, my intention was to play just the story to see if I got another single level out of it when, suddenly, Beta decided to be Beta and the quest chain broke early on and I could not continue. I went back to Hallowfall and did some side quests until I hit level 79. I remembered that I had left some in The Ringing Deeps and decided to trek back there to finish my journey to 80. Well… something happened that, I’m quite sure is a bug but, if not, this could be seen as forced progression by Blizzard.
So, what happened? All of the quests in The Ringing Deeps that once earned you 10,000 or 11,000 experience now only rewarded 2200 -4400 experience. I was certain they rewarded much higher when I left them in my quest log before but now, on the final level, their rewards shrunk massively. I reported it as a bug hoping it was such but after finishing the remaining side quests, I had only gained half of a level. To put it into perspective, you need 445,000 experience to go from 79 to 80. This means, I did over 50 quests and only gained half a level. Had they rewarded the full experience that they normally would, it would have taken 36 quests to hit a full level.
Luckily, Blizzard hotfixed the bottleneck so I went back and finished hitting 80 in Azj-Kahet. Keep in mind, that this is beta and this will not be your experience; however, it should be noted that if you are just here for the story, you’re going to finish the main campaign and probably nowhere near 80. You’re going to have to backtrack and do side quests if that’s what you enjoy doing. Obviously, dungeons along the way and delves will supplement some of that experience and if they implement the remainder follower dungeons and make them mandatory like The Rookery was, then that will even out the pacing and also give you that supplemental experience missing from just doing the story.
It’s early but I can envision what the leveling experience COULD be if they do what I hope they are going to do. If I assume this is a live game and not beta and take it at face value then the leveling experience, I would say is faster and worse than Dragonflight from a pacing perspective.
Face Value Score: 5 / 10
Potential Score: 8 / 10
The Story
At BlizzCON, Chris Metzen emphatically stated…
“When it comes to World of Warcraft’s storytelling, we’re not screwing around.”
However, what I experienced… didn’t hit home for me.
This will be a bit hard to talk about because I want to avoid as many spoilers as possible but to kind of give away something that will most likely happen in the pre-patch, Xal’atath destroys Dalaran. To me, this is how you open an expansion. Ever since the city left Hillsbrad Foothills, thus giving mages a way to trick raid members into plummeting to their death and getting /gkicked for it, Dalaran has been one of THE iconic cities in World of Warcraft alongside Stormwind and Orgrimmar. It was the place we called home in Wrath of the Lich King and again in Legion. It has been the center of multiple quests, including the purging of Dalaran by Jaina Proudmoore in Mists of Pandaria.
To see it destroyed was like losing a part of yourself, a part of your soul… that is until you cast Teleport: Dalaran (Northrend) or Teleport: Dalaran (Broken Shores), and all of those feelings are wiped away by the fact that the city HAS to exist for storyline cohesion in past expansions!
Still fun to see that a small purple elf accomplished what a giant blue Eredar couldn’t so many years ago. Elves were always better than Archimonde, I suppose.
Still, that opening to the expansion fired you up. You know that things got real and were about to get even more real! It was time to chase our former Knaifu into the depths of the world and, as Metzen put it, dispense indiscriminate justice!
Except we didn’t.
Instead, we meet the Earthen. The original titan creations that had not succumbed to the Curse of Flesh. We learn how they maintain the titan machinery, how they make you engage in creating pottery… (that’s an odd thing to do when the fate of the world is at stake), and learn that every single Earthen dwarf somehow sounds like Bird Person from Rick and Morty. I never bothered learning their names. I simply referred to every one of them as Earth Person and moved on with my life.
Once we are welcomed and learn their ways, we plunge into The Ringing Deeps where we continue to follow the path of Xal’atath while helping Earth Persons with even more tasks such as fixing pipes, testing machinery, and following fog to take pictures of re-used NPC models from six expansions ago.
When we got to Hallowfall, things picked up. We meet one of the newest and most interesting characters introduced to World of Warcraft: Faerin Lothar. We notice a massive crystal jammed into the ceiling known as Beledar that can change into a void crystal at night. (Admittedly, watching it transform live was super cool. Probably one of the best things the Blizzard art team has ever done. I just hate that you can’t fly up and touch the crystal. Damn you invisible ceilings!)
We learn about The Arathi and how it’s not just a battleground in the middle of a leveling zone from vanilla. We get some snippets about the name Avaloren that was discovered in Dragonflight and how there really is a continent on the back side of Azeroth. That was pretty cool. We also learned how they arrived in Hallowfall, how it’s an uncovered mystery that makes you want to know more and… they are currently fighting the Nerubians.
Without spoiling much, I’ll say…
Purple Emo Elves – 2
Boy – 0
I’ll leave it at that.
With that, we’re off to Azj-Kahet. There is some good lore here as we discover there are some good Nerubians and they become our fourth non-paid battle pass… er… renown track. We even go back in time (not literally) and recall a certain Scarab Lord that we dealt with in Wrath of the Lich King, tying all that lore together. Of course, a lot of the lore we learn here is going to set up our first raid come Season 1: Nerub’ar Palace.
All in all, the story was… not exciting. Sure, the Nerubians were everywhere but where was Xal’atath? Now, no cutscenes were implemented. It was just a big rectangle with a red X and some text so she could show up but remember when in Wrath of the Lich King that Arthas was everywhere? He was in your quests, in your dungeons, in your cutscenes… he was actively in the world as a looming menace, and since then… I don’t feel as if any main villain has had that much interaction with the players. Arthas is the measuring stick and every expansion since then has failed to surpass it. Hell, they haven’t even MET the mark, and sadly, The War Within fails to meet that level as well… at least, for me.
But again… BETA… FIRST IMPRESSIONS. Don’t pitchfork me… but even with adding cutscenes and more Xal’atath, I still think this story feels kind of flat and uninteresting. Does that mean the expansion fails? No, because we still have 11.0.5, 11.0.7, 11.1… repeat those numbers through 11.3. This is a small piece of the next 1.5 to 2 years but… this is the intro to an overall story. If you fail to hook people, they won’t be there for 11.3.7.
Face Value Score: 4 / 10
Potential Score: 6.5 / 10
Systems
Everyone’s favorite word!
We have a few of them this time around: Hero Talents, Delves, Warbands, and… did I mention Hero Talents?
Okay, the systems here are light but if Dragonflight taught us anything, the complete systems list won’t be implemented at launch. We’ll be getting new things along the way. Plus, all of Dragonflight’s systems are carrying forward and are getting some improvements.
First off, Hero Talents.
I was on the end game testing realm (yes, you can play the expansion as intended or go to the realm aptly titled THESE GO TO ELEVEN and you can get a fresh 80 with Season 1 tier, weapons, trinkets, etc to test out the end game) and I tested out Mage because that is what I mained since 2005.
I tried out Frostfire, Sunfury, and Spellslinger and I have to say… I believe it when everyone says Sunfury is THE BEST fire mage has ever been.
Class Fantasy: 10/10
Burn the World: 10/10
Spell Effects: 10/10
Do I feel like a Fire Mage: THESE GO TO ELEVEN/10
Now, I do have one of every class on the live realm but I didn’t exactly test them out but I am hearing similar feedback about Voidwearver Priest, Rider of the Apocalypse Death Knight, and a few other specs. Hero Talents seem to have hit the mark in some specs and missed the mark in others. To be honest, I think this is the best that we can expect. I mean, Blizzard has 13 classes… 11 of which have 3 specs, one has 2, and another has 4. Add in three hero specs for each one of those and I’d hate to be the guy crunching the numbers to make all of that balance out all while making the class feel good aesthetically. It can’t be an easy task.
There is still time but with an August 26 release date, I think some of these fantasy changes might happen in .5 or .7 patches after launch. There isn’t enough time at this point. But for Mage, I like it. Spellslinger was boring, Frostfire would have been more visually appealing but Sunfury just made me change from being a Frost Mage. Yeah… I’ll be a Fire Mage for the first time since Cataclysm. (Don’t nerf me, bruv.)
Delves
I remember some content creators saying that Delves was too easy on Alpha. Well, when you’re on Tier 1, they were right. They were too easy. So…. As soon as I was allowed to, I cranked that up to Tier 3, stepped in, and… mistakes were made.
Okay, so it wasn’t a nightmare but you couldn’t just push buttons while watching anime on your second screen… no matter how good that last episode of Girls Band Cry was, you had to pause and pay attention because if you didn’t, you’d be on the phone making an appointment with the proctologist to get your stuff unshoved.
I did manage to survive a couple of Tier 3 Delves and I have to say…. They’re not worth it at all.
So, a full experience bar has 10 bubbles you need to fill. Completing one Tier 3 delve gave me a whopping 75%……………..of a bubble. So, that means you’d have to do 12-13 Tier 3 Delves to gain 1 full level if you wanted to circumvent questing, and considering the difficulty level of it, you’re much better off just sticking to questing.
I am not complaining about the difficulty because I loved the challenge. I loved using all of my class mechanics to overcome elites with 8.8 million health at level 77 who could 3-shot you (if you wear toilet paper as I do as a Mage). What I am complaining about is the reward. Sure… the delves are short, and they are spammable but for Tier 3… as a leveling Delve… at that difficulty, I need to see more than 75% of a single bubble. If you won’t increase the experience, at least give out better rewards! (The gold piles on the ground were bugged. They only awarded 1 copper each… how cheap!) The chests promised some low-quality gear, crafting materials, and currencies but all I received was 1 piece of gear, some grey items to sell, and in one case, nothing in a chest at all! (It might have gone to my mailbox due to a bug, I didn’t check. Oops.).
The delves are fun for what they are but they are not particularly engaging. I’d love to come back and try them on Tier 4-11 or even that special boss tier delve that’s supposed to be this expansion’s version of the Mage Tower from Legion.
The delves have different gimmicks but it’s all the same. Kill some enemies, click on something, keep a torch lit, and find treasure chests that give you Torghast-like power enhancements. Same stuff with a new skin but for bite-sized content they are what they are. I do see potential for them in higher difficulties and that is what I’m most interested in trying out. Sadly, the higher difficulties won’t be available until Season 1 or 2 of the expansion so they won’t be in the Beta to test (bummer.)
Warbands
No ranting here. Warbands are the best thing to happen to WoW in a LONG time. Account-wide achievements, transmogs, reputation… a BANK… yeah…
If you paid attention to anything said by anyone be it Blizzard themselves, content creators, WoW-centered websites, etc, you already know how good Warbands are.
In case you never heard of them, it’s a new system where (almost) everything you do is shared across all characters in your account. You get a bank to share mats and items with, gear that’s marked as Warbound to trade to your alts, reputation is shared across all characters, and you can pick up transmog items of ANY TYPE and learn it on all characters (so picking up plate as a mage will cause you to learn it for your plate-wearers). Even if you sell the gear to a vendor, you learn the appearance so there’s no need to worry about “Did I sell it? CRAP! Time to put in a ticket or re-farm it.” Those days are gone.
If you wanted account-wide everything. You got it…………. For War Within and Dragonflight (previous expansions will be added over time.)
Hero Talents: ? / 10 – Varies per class
Delves: Face Value: 4 / 10 – Potential: 7 / 10
Warbands: Face Value: 10 / 10 – Potential: Uh… still 10 / 10
Miscellaneous Thoughts
I know this has been quite the read so far; however, I still have more to say and if you’re still here then I’m sure you’re committed enough to stick through until the end.
There are still some wins to be had with this expansion. First off… Dragonriding… nope, sorry, I meant Dynamic Flight… um.. nope, that’s right… they changed the name again. Okay… one more time with feeling… SKYRIDING (you better not change it, Blizzard) over-delivered.
They told us not every flying mount would be able to use it… well… as of Alpha, every flying mount except for 5… (the cloud discs from MoP/MoP Remix and the Mage class mount) could use it but… as of War Within Beta… those 5 were added and EVERY FLYING MOUNT can use Skyriding. Major win.
The artwork. I didn’t think this needed a long diatribe of a section but if there is one thing WoW has always pulled through on… it’s the art. Isle of Dorn IS a bit on the plain side but Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall, and Azj-Kahet are just dripping with atmosphere and fantasy. Hallowfall is the obvious winner because of Beledar… how can you not love Crystal-kun? Again, the art team has nailed it out of the park.
Where there are wins, there are some losses.
First off, Blizzard has done it yet again. The difficulty curve takes a steep incline around halfway through level 76. When is Blizzard going to learn that when you level up in an RPG, you’re supposed to feel stronger? I didn’t like going from killing a mob in 3-4 hits to feeling like I was slapping them with a wet noodle while getting punched for a third of my life bar (well not that extreme but still.) It has happened time and time again and it needs to stop. Let us feel strong throughout the entire journey from 70-80. Do you want to slap us with a difficulty curve? Fine! That’s what dungeons, higher-tier delves, raids, and mythic+ are for. Leave the world content out of the sharp curve (except world bosses… they need to feel like a challenge)!
Voice acting. Yeah… this is a nitpick but… there is still WAY too much campy dialogue in this game. I’m sorry but… to me, World of Warcraft is about blood, glory on the battlefield, grit, and big sweaty men beating the ever-living crap out of big sweaty orcs and vice versa. I don’t like listening to characters talk to me as if I were a child or say dumb goofy lines. Yes, it’s an all-ages MMORPG but you can have SOME edge to it.
Also… whoever decided for The Earthen to sound so dull and monotone like that… just oof. That was a bad decision. There are better ways to convey the fact that they are titan constructs than this. Their voice acting was one of the main reasons I couldn’t way to get the hell out of Isle of Dorn… then when they were in The Ringing Deeps too, it played a factor of me testing out Hallowfall as soon as possible. That was the other reason I left half of the zone’s side quests behind. Plus, the kobolds were kind of annoying, too.
It didn’t start feeling like Warcraft again until we got to Hallowfall. Sure, moms and pops will love the cheesiness of the first two zones but for bloodthirsty savages like myself, it’s way too campy and it truly made it feel like WoW had lost its edge.
Overall
Again, I will stress… This is a BETA… Things are broken. Things are missing. Things are not final, and things are not fully fleshed out. Hence why I said FIRST IMPRESSIONS. When the game launches on August 26, I will play it properly, come back, do a proper review, and compare things to these first impressions to see what improved, what didn’t, and all that fun stuff.
For now, I will say that The War Within started out with a massive hype moment in the destruction of Dalaran and faded into a whimper that wasn’t all too interesting. Hallowfall is the only saving grace story-wise as the Earthen couldn’t be taken seriously, and Azj-Kahet is what it sounds like… a cavern filled with bugs that worship a queen that made friends with a knaifu.
A lot of people play for the systems and I think what they have here is decent enough but if you’re here for the story (I’m here for both), it just feels flat and unimpactful… not the way an expansion should start off let alone a super-hyped trilogy known as The World Soul Saga.
I’ll just say that it’s sad when there is more hype in an announce date trailer where 75% is reused cinematic assets than there is in four brand new zones.
Blizzard has a LOT of work to do to make this World Soul Saga epic because it sure as hell doesn’t feel that way out of the gate.
First Impression Score: 6 / 10.
