After many moons of anticipation, World of Warcraft: The War Within is finally here.
So far, the expansion has been incredibly well-received, continuing the game's winning streak following on from the similarly well-received Dragonflight expansion.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is entering its 20th year in 2024, marking one of the most successful video game runs in history. While not quite the zeitgeist-buster it used to be, WoW has changed it up a lot in recent years, baking in a wide variety of different modes and features to accommodate a broad array of different playstyles. Blizzard revived a classic version of the game, as well as a remixed version of the classic experience with new features. They also did a seasonal Mists of Pandaria: Remix event based on a previous expansion, allowing players to be overpowered and earn rewards in the process. They even tried out the battle royale PvP craze with Plunderstorm.
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"Retail" as its known continues unabated, serving the bulk of the playerbase, while also pushing the game's story forward. The War Within sees the start of a new saga that Blizzard has named The Worldsoul Saga, featuring the mysterious entity known as Xal'atath as its central antagonist. The game has taken a decidedly dark slant for this expansion, owing to Xal'atath's cosmic horror origins. With the story showing up increasingly well with new cinematic tech and more investment in writing and storytelling, Blizzard has also been keen to boost the MMO's gameplay for its evolving player base, particularly when it comes to gameplay styles.
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Recently, we were treated to interviews with Blizzard's Michael Nuthals (Senior Games Designer), Tina Wang (Associate Art Director), Maria Hamilton (Associate Design Director), and Mateusz Albrewczynski (Assistant Lead Quest Designer). We talked Blizzard's goals for The War Within, how the team is exploring boosting solo play and time constraints for those of us with a lot of work and family commitments, and the overall direction for the legendary MMORPG.
Note: Some responses were edited for brevity.
On boosting solo play, and respecting players' time in World of Warcraft: The War Within
I suppose these days, I'm what you might describe as a casual-hardcore player. I don't raid up to Mythic difficulty chasing server-first boss kills anymore, but I do try to max out my Mythic+ dungeon rating each season with my guild, and raid on Heroic difficulty. Back in my late teens, I would raid almost every day of the week, back when I didn't have regular work or a family to consider. For many players like myself, times have changed, and it has been Blizzard's ability to adapt to evolving habits that has kept World of Warcraft relevant for over two decades.
To that end, Blizzard has expanded The War Within to incorporate a feature it is calling Warbands. Warbands extends the amount of content that is tied to your account, rather than simply your character. For example, once you've completed the campaign story once, you can effectively skip it on alternative characters if you want to. Reputation with in-game factions now increases for your entire account, rather than on a per character basis. You can also easily share gear, currencies, and other items between other characters in your "Warband" too, allowing players to explore the game's vast array of classes and races without feeling like there's another big grind to do.
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I asked the team what drove some of these thought processes, and if there was any concerns that easier access to content would increase churn — meaning players burn through the content more quickly than previously, leading to increased demands for fresh content.
"We have a really incredible Global Insights Team that look at all player activities, and the types of content these players engage in — segmenting them into categories based on the types of activities," Tina Wang explained. "This has been so helpful to help us develop features targeting the variety of ways that players play, even if they're not always the most vocal. It reinforced our technological investment into Warbands."
Michael Nuthals emphasized that The War Within is all about delivering content for everybody, regardless of their free time and preferences. "We wanted The War Within to really feel like everybody who logs in is going to have the opportunity to find and have an adventure. We want each group of players to be able to seek that type of adventure. If your main interest is the story, we now for the first time have added the ability to defeat the major raid season end boss solo, as part of a new difficulty called Story Mode. Previously, these types of solo players would have had to step over to YouTube to see how the climax of the story plays out."
I asked for more information on how Story Mode works here. Essentially solo players will be able to enter the raid as part of a quest, complete with NPC followers to give it that "raid" feel. The Story Mode, however, only features the final boss, skipping the rest of the raid. Players will also be able to, of course, experience the climactic story beats of the season in a more traditional raid too, comprised of anywhere between 10 and 30 players.
"We put so much love and care and storytelling and art into these dungeons, building out these custom spaces. This allows more players to actually get to experience that, and also allows us to invest more into storytelling within dungeons. In the past, we maybe might have kept things out of dungeons because we were like 'oh, many of our players aren't going to be able to see this' and so on."
Delivering a new story saga in The War Within
On the topic of story telling in the new Khaz Algar world, Blizzard has changed course a fair bit when it comes to storytelling in the game in recent years. In the older game, much of the story was delivered via quest text, with the occasional pre-rendered cinematic if you were lucky. These days, Blizzard has far more robust in-engine story telling tech, bringing characters to life in a much more immersive way. The Worldsoul Saga starts with The War Within, but, no spoilers now, I have experienced War Within plot points pulled from threads several decades old to weave the tapestry of its plot. And to great effect, I might add.
Mateusz Albrewczynski and Maria Hamilton noted how much ambition has gone into The War Within's story delivery in general. "We figured that now is the time to tell a story that is so epic, and so big, that it simply cannot be contained within our usual expansion cycle." Albrewczynski remarked. "This is not just the culmination of 20 years of WoW storytelling, but also setting the stage for whatever comes after ... right? We have no intentions of slowing down. We have lots of ideas, the team is very happy to try this new format."
I managed to complete World of Warcraft: The War Within's entire campaign and all of its side quests in roughly 40 hours of play, coupled with a lot of exploration and dungeoneering. While the vastness of Khaz Algar and the quality and variety baked into its zones is impressive, I did notice that it seemed physically smaller than Dragonflight previously. I wondered if it was intentional, or if I was just imagining it. Maria Hamilton explained the intent there.
"No, that is absolutely the case, you're right. Dragonflight had some of the largest zones we've ever made, because we weren't sure how much space we'd need for Dragonriding at the time. For The War Within, we figured we'd focus on building zones that were 'the right size' rather than simply enormous. As we look ahead to the next expansion, Midnight, which will take place in the Eastern Kingdoms, we're reminded that many of those old classic zones were actually much smaller than the zones we've been building more recently." Maria noted, "we want the spaces to tell stories, and have them feel closer and intimate when it's important to do so, and then deliver vast expanses too. Hollowfall for example, has an endless sea at its edge. There's intent and purpose, hinting at things you might want to think about."
The Worldsoul Saga is undoubtedly ambitious in scope, setting up events that will play out over the next ten years. Maria Hamilton explained that the structure of the story is essentially set, although the team has left room to evolve and pivot if necessary, especially going into the next expansion "World of Warcraft: Midnight," and then the subsequent expansion "The Last Titan."
"So, we have our big story beats, we know what those are throughout the entire saga. We know the themes we want to explore. The War Within is out there now, but we've already started taking feedback that will inform when we put, you know, Midnight into beta testing. We'll be considering what players have said over the course of The War Within and its content updates as well, so we're trying to leave room to adjust and pivot. If we find that people are not understanding motivations or connecting well with a character, we have opportunities to add quest content to help explain that, or cinematics. It's unlikely we'd make changes to the broad strokes, however."
One of the things WoW has been criticized for in recent years is how some major story characters have developed (or undeveloped, as it were) over some previous expansions. In The War Within, the game has an abundance of "Stay a while and listen" optional dialogue, where players can essentially eavesdrop on conversations between major characters to learn bits of additional character development. This feature has been a personal favorite of mine, and has made The War Within's story one of the most "immersive" for me personally, as a multi-decade Warcraft fan.
Mateusz Albrewczynski elaborated, "We keep working on what comes next, what comes after The War Within. There's lots of ideas. In 20 years, that is a lot of storytelling. There's lots of plots, lots of characters we want to bring in, and which of them will go on the ride with us. It's not an easy choice, as people have their many favorite characters. Worldsoul is a big journey for all of them, though."
Maria Hamilton teased that even now, Blizzard is setting the seeds for events for The Last Titan, which we probably won't see until 2027 at the absolute earliest. "I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago, where an amazing idea for The Last Titan came up. We realized, for that to land well and feel good, we needed to seed hints and clues much earlier on in the story. In addition to the expansions themselves, with Dragonflight, we started to introduce quests that would continue the story, both in larger updates but also smaller ones. We have opportunities to pace those out and touch more points, and help guide the story, rather than expand plot points out of nowhere."
Mateusz Albrewczynski hinted that The War Within has strong themes of family, as we follow the Bronzebeard clan, but also Alleria Windrunner, as she wrestles with battling the villainous Xal'atath and effectively abandoning her family to do so. "There's a lot of stories we'll be looking at. There's a lot of cool faces coming back."
How Delves are making WoW's endgame more solo-friendly than ever
World of Warcraft's story is more accessible than ever owing to the changes, and while The War Within has been a big step up in terms of overall quality (more on that in our coming pre-season review), the meat of the game has always been its dungeoneering.
WoW has some of the best MMORPG gameplay in the history of the genre, with hundreds of unique boss encounters, meticulously designed dungeons, and epic-feeling 30-player raids that reward tight co-ordination and co-operation. But what if you don't have the time, or even the inclination to go super deep on WoW's raid scene? Blizzard is hoping that its new Delve system might be for you instead.
"Delves are designed around smaller groups, folks who prefer to solo, or hang out with a few people," Michael Nuthals explains. "In a Delve you'll experience a cool little adventure and get a cool reward for doing it. Of course, we want to make sure that folks who engage with more organized activities are rewarded appropriately. REwards for timed Mythic+ dungeons or Heroic, Mythic raids are going to be better than the rewards from a Delve."
Delves are essentially mini dungeons that take place anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes, baked into the fabric of the game's various zones. Here, players accompany a hero character from the story and fight through various scenarios, culminating in an end boss and a reward trove. Blizzard has experimented with similar things before, but Delves are far more interesting than previous attempts — owing in part to the varied activities and environments.
I asked the team if there was any concerns that Delves might undercut more traditional raid structures. Guilds often have a hard time recruiting, especially on smaller servers. If the rewards can come from going solo, why bother jumping through hoops? Tina Wang emphasized that the team is taking a lot of care in their approach to solo content to that end. "Balancing Mythic+ and Heroic raid rewards against Delves is definitely something we'll be watching. However, they can also potentially help players who are raiding in Heroic. One thing we sometimes hear is that they struggle to keep up with their raid team because they don't have time to run Mythic+ dungeons during the week. This potentially gives them an outlet to find more gear between raids."
What about on the high-end, though? Delves might seem as though they're fully geared for casual play, but they have difficulty settings of their own. Delves scale all the way up to a "Tier 13" difficulty, which heaps on additional hazards (and more powerful rewards on top). However, they also have a max-level challenge mode boss battle. "The 13th Delve is really an for folks to really show off their mastery over their classes. This is something we haven't tested on beta at all, something we've intentionally played close to the chest. We don't want to let folks see the boss before it goes live."
What does the future of Delves hold? Well, that's up to you, dear player. Maria Hamilton remarked that there has been some early comparisons to Torghast, Blizzard's previous attempt at solo dungeons. "We haven't gotten a lot of feedback on Delves yet, and we haven't seen how much people enjoy them. We're aware of early comparisons to Torghast, where players felt forced to play it even if it wasn't something they enjoyed. So, we didn't want to force people to go and play Delves, in case it isn't someone's cup of tea. We're waiting to see what kind of reception they have before we invest in putting things like more quests into them. It's a tool in our tool box, but we want to be respectful of people's time and previous feedback. We'll reassess as feedback comes in."
On building Xal'atath, Blizzard's unlikely central antagonist
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Over the past twenty years, World of Warcraft and its universe has established itself in new and unexpected ways. The franchise has always had a cosmic slant to it, with the franchise kicking off with orcs invading from another planet via an interdimensional gateway, but we're reaching even further into the depths of space now. With various other main villains defeated, the central destructive force in the universe, known as The Void, has taken center stage.
The Void and its Void Lords are cosmic horrors who feed on chaos and entropy, essentially. They seek, seemingly by their very nature alone, to devour and infect everything in the universe. If the Void is analogous to the Lovecraftian pantheon of cosmic horrors, their firm opposition, the Titans are more akin to the Greek gods of yore. However, increasingly it seems like the Titans may not be the benevolent world-shapers we once thought them to be.
"In Dragonflight, we certainly had some hints that the Titan's version of events, you know, might not be the true way everything went down. In Xal'atath, we obviously have a connection to the Black Empire, and the struggle that happened between them and the Titans from long ago. We will be dipping back into some of that. Perhaps it's a bit more nuanced, we will look at different perspectives and points of view on these events. Xal'atath is the perfect character vehicle for this, because she has nuance. Her goals are pretty difficult to understand right now. I'm also aware of those N'Zoth fanatics out there. Here's hoping everyone has a good time and enjoys the ride."
Xal'atath, indeed, seems to be something in between. She was originally a side character, trapped inside a dagger used by priest players in the Legion expansion. The fanbase took a shine to her though, as she'd whisper to players while in use. Since then, Blizzard has vastly expanded Xal'atath into a central antagonistic force in the game.
Everything about Xal'atath is a complete mystery. She seems to be aligned with the Void Lords, but there are hints that it was they who imprisoned her in the first place. So far, she has been using an artifact known as the Dark Heart to absorb various types of magical essence, including the soul of the all-devouring necrotic dragon of yore Galakrond, and the arcane power contained within the city of Dalaran. It seems as though Blizzard is having a lot of fun keeping us guessing, here.
"I think one of the most interesting things about Xal'atath is that we don't know the full extent of what she's planning, right? She has a very different way of doing things. She pulls strings from behind the scenes. She will knock somebody over just at the right time so they will fall into her plan just at the right moment."
"Plus, she can look like whatever she wants. Right now, she chooses to look like an elf... There's probably a reason for that, she's very purposeful in what she does."
While discussing Xal'atath, I also brought up the fact that she was initially tied to the Class Hall quests from Legion. I wondered why Blizzard had never revisted the Class Hall feature, which essentially gave every character class its own unique storyline to explore, which ultimately led to the creation of Xal'atath and compelling lore around that as a result.
Maria Hamilton says, "Never say never. We all really, really like Class Halls. We have some classes now that don't have Class Halls, so we would need to rebuild some of that out. It's an opportunity. It would have been an opportunity with the Hero Talents, but the decision was made to make them more systemic, and less content-based.
"I don't think there's a single person on the quest or narrative team that wouldn't love to do more with Class Halls. We are hopeful that it's something we could bring back. We're always looking for opportunities to sneak in previous stuff that we're excited about. There's a lot of great story telling in Class Halls."
Thanks a ton to Blizzard for talking with us
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I've already put dozens of hours into The War Within, and it has been years since an expansion has sucked me in like this, playing for fun rather than habit. The Warbands mechanic makes playing different classes incredibly easy and rewarding, the story has been spectacular, and the volume of content to hunt down has been remarkable. And this is all pre-season.
There's a lot of question marks I still have. I'm worried that Hero Talents will end up being a choice between aesthetics and power, like Shadowlands' ill-received Covenants system. I'm not a fan of the erosion of the Horde vs. Alliance narrative thread either, as the franchise's iconic factions increasingly cozy up. But the broad strokes have been fantastic so far. The characters are compelling, the gameplay is as good as ever, and the new zones have some of the best music and visuals in franchise history.
And then there's Xal'atath. I firmly believe that a story like this is only as good as its villain, and so far, Xal'atath is doing a bang up job.
World of Warcraft: The War Within is out now on PC.
