You might be surprised that World of Warcraft is still going strong after all these years. Why do millions of players worldwide keep coming back for each new expansion pack?
Well, mostly because Blizzard keeps delivering the goods.
To be honest I have not really been disappointed by any of the expansion packs to World of Warcraft, and I have been a regular since 2006. Like the previous expansions, Battle for Azeroth, is worth the wait and your money.
The stuff I liked
Overall the core game is simple but still fun, and it works well for both old and new players. For the first time an expansion pack has such an obscene amount of quests, that even I, a genuine quest addict, had to give up and start doing other stuff than questing. WOW indeed.
One of the reasons the quest part of the game still works is that at its core it is as simple as Tetris or Candy Crush. The WOW core mechanic is "fetch X (insert item name) or "kill X (insert monster or villain name)" and return for a small reward. Not much different from many apps which you also get hooked on.
Sure, there is a lot more to it than that, pretty graphics, good sound effects and actors, lots of cutscenes and for me the most important one - a detailed and fun plot.
In this expansion they have gotten even better at telling one overall story and binding all the areas together to this single story, but as always there is a ton of fun subplots and general craziness.
The overall story is about what happens when Archmage Jaina Proudmore travels home to Kul Tiras and faces the music, she might be a hero elsewhere but here she is a traitor and a murderer.
Some players might see questing as boring, but not me, I always read all the texts and try to do all the quests I can find.
The quest that I enjoyed the most so far was this one which also gave an achivement:
Listening and playing those three fishermen/Kenny-diver/pirate put a huge grin on my face.
I also like the world quests, though not much different than the last expansion they are a nice way to keep using the zones longer than just for the initial leveling.
I have never been much of a PvP or an Instance or Raid gamer, though I do all of them, for me the leveling and the question is what is most fun, and I often just ended up doing the instances and raids the 1-3 times when I get a quest sending me into them.
I have always played on a PvP RPG realm so I'm no stranger to defending myself from gangers and love when I succeed, but I have never like ganking and always the last unresolved quest in my log are the ones where I have to kill other players. As I don't like people ganking me I don't like ganking others.
That being said when I saw that the new Warmode gives me 10% extra xp to enable PvP I switched it on instantly. I'm used to gankers and its always nice to level fast especially when you like me have a lot of high-level characters.
I did not get ganked once leveling, and after reaching the new level cap of level 120 I switched the War Mode off. I guess that since only a few players have war mode on the gankers find too few to pray on in the wilds, so they go to the PvP areas/battlegrounds instead.
The stuff I disliked
Actually I liked most of the things, so it’s like 95% good stuff.
During the leveling there were the odd quest here and there that did not work as well as the others, but mostly this could be fixed by abandoning the quest and redo them. One quest had to be handed in to someone hidden inside a very small tent, so I thought the quest was bugged and spent a lot of time trying to find the right place to hand in the quests but eventually figured it out thanks to a player video on YouTube.
The type of quests I enjoyed the least was the escort quests, trying to get a drunkard to his destination was the worst of the lot. He kept walking in circles and I think the idea was to drag the player to some new areas filled with quest givers, but since I had previously done all those quests this "clever plot" just seemed ever so dumb.
I went to the "horde island" of Zandalar and did the Alliance "war quests" there. They were all right, though the questline on Nazmir was not very interesting, and as I did that first I did not go back till after doing all the quest I could find in Kul Tiras.
Besides the questline on Nazmir I also disliked that all the star-marked elites on the continent of Zandalar waslevel 120 and crazy strong compared to the same type of elites on Kul Tiras, but once I went back as level 120 it was fine.
To clarify: I have no problem with an elite being stronger than other creatures of the same level, but mixing 120 elites with level 110-120 non-elites on a map is stupid, the first elite I met nearly one shotted me. At least put a skull over there level if they are going to be that hard to beat.
Another thing that could have been better was the look of some of the main charcaters in the cutscenes. I don't mean in the animated Warbringer cutscenes, they were all beautifully made, and in my opinion some of the very best new content! I could not help but get a tear in my eye at the end of the "Daughter of the Sea" animated film with Jaina.
The issue is the cutscenes which have an "ingame look" to them. One thing is that the movement of the mouth does not correspond with the speech, I can live with that, but for some reason they have made Jaina's mother look like an undead.
I doubt its intentional, but she is scary pale and the attempt at giving her wrinkles makes her look like a monster. Don't get me wrong I have no issue with wrinkles or old people (none!), but it is sad when older people in a game looks like the undead. I actually think that the Waycrest Mother Hag boss look nicer that Jaina's mother, her face is quite lifeless, yikes.
My key disappointment though, was the new Allied races. Before the expansion came I grinded so many world quests, especially on Argus, to be able to get an Army of the Light paladin and a Void Elf of my own. I was really looking forward to new "hidden" intro quest areas for each of the new allied races.
Instead I got a skin. I probably should have read the fine print better, we are just used to all new races having an intro zone to level inside, and to give that special unique feel for the race.
There was a single scenario with my main for each race, and that was ok, but I missed the into zone.
I started out making a level 20 army of light pally and void elf warlock and got some green gear.
The void elf looked very non-void elf, so that was a bust. The pally looked fine and I really liked the pink crystal hammer she got, wow! I would happily level with that forever, but to make matters worse the green gear can't be used for transmog, so I can't keep looking like an Army of the Light Paladin and no cool hammer.
Then I thought, "no problemo, I'll just transmog her with all the cool Army of the Light gear I found on my main, I even got one of those new outfits from a quest line i did in and instance and outside on Argus. Ta Daaa, two cool outfits for her to choose from!"
But no-can't-do. The leather armor I got with my main can't be used for my new paladin, and the same goues for the complet outfit. That is quite stupid Blizzard.
If I level the new paladin from level 20-110 I do get a bonus set of very good-looking Army of the Light armor (but still no hammer!), and that is sooooo many hours of leveling for a character who won't be my main character anyway. And the new "signature ability" for my level 20 is kind of boring looking visually.
Also, it is strange that the heirlooms I will be wearing for the next 90 levels cost a fortune to upgrade and lack a number of key visual pieces such as boots.
My level 20 with the old style heirlooms. Why can't I have the crystal hammer?
But enough whining, I did enjoy the questing a lot and soon it will be time to uninstall the game, so I can get some writing done!
Overall this expansion is a must, or it is if you like this sort of thing (read: "genre defining massively multiplayer online role-playing games set in fantasy universes).
Hope you have fun playing WOW, I sure did.
/Rune S. Nielsen