World of Warcraft and I have a strange relationship. We seem to fall in-and-out of love, experiencing bouts of contempt before reuniting blissfully time and time again. This “rekindling” seems to happen due to my affinity for polish and presentation: WoW outclasses its competition in these categories, but often falls short in others (gameplay depth, personalization). Nevertheless, I return to it time and time again because it runs so smoothly and feels so good to play.
Dragonflight was, by all acounts, a bog-standard expansion; One of the most milquetoast Blizzard has ever released. I continue to feel gaslit by players that champion it as one of the best. So it’s safe to say I’d reigned-in expectations for the next WoW expansion.
However, having felt unsatisfied with the other games I’ve been playing, I perused WoW news to see what I had missed since Blizzcon 2023’s big expansion reveal. It turns out there’s a War brewing.
It’s strange to me that Blizzard chose a subterranean expansion theme for The War Within, since Dragonflight’s later patches featured a new under-earth zone (Zaralek Cavern). We even got a new earth-dwelling race, the Loam Niffen rodents. Perhaps Blizzard liked the idea too much to stop there. Or perhaps they were just offering us a taste of what’s to come.
In any case, I’m lukewarm about the War Within’s general theme and style. I like what I played of Zaralek Cavern. And we certainly haven’t had subterranean expansions before. I also can’t blame them for taking us underground when we’ve thoroughly explored Azeroth’s surface. But Journey to the Center of the Earth a la Azeroth? It’s hardly exciting. I suppose it’s leagues better than Dragonflight’s painfully familiar and recycled biomes though.
Speaking of recycling, Blizzard has some balls to recycle Dwarves again with the expansion’s new allied race, the “Earthen.” We already got rock-fleshed Dwarves years ago with Battle for Azeroth’s Dark Iron Dwarf race. They even have pale grey flesh just like the Earthen. Are we seriously supposed to be excited because the Earthen have more rockiness and gems in their skin textures?
You can sense players’ lack of excitement for the Earthen in the Blizzcon presentation videos. I suppose it’s nice to have Horde-side Dwarves, since Earthen are faction-neutral. But still. What a disappointment. Keep in mind that we got a new, non-playable race of subterranean rodents just a few patches ago. I may race change my Horde-side Shaman to an Earthen, but I can’t see myself mustering up more enthusiasm than that.
So there you have it: The War Within is most certainly a mixed bag. We’ll see how things shape up in the coming months — the expansion is set to release sometime this year.
Byte-Sized Worlds 