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After many moons of anticipation, World of Warcraft: The War Within is finally here.
They even tried out the battle royale PvP craze withPlunderstorm.
World of Warcraft: The War Within takes place largely underground, but far from feeling cavernous and claustrophobic, the game has some of the best zone designs in its history.
The game has taken a decidedlydarkslant for this expansion, owing to Xal’atath’s cosmic horror origins.
Note: Some responses were edited for brevity.
To that end, Blizzard has expanded The War Within to incorporate a feature it is calling Warbands.
World of Warcraft: The War Within takes place largely underground, but far from feeling cavernous and claustrophobic, the game has some of the best zone designs in its history.
Warbands extends the amount of content that is tied to youraccount,rather than simply your character.
Reputation with in-game factions now increases for your entire account, rather than on a per character basis.
It reinforced our technological investment into Warbands."
It’s not all artificial sunshine in the deeps.
We want each group of players to be able to seek that bang out of adventure.
I asked for more information on how Story Mode works here.
The Story Mode, however, only features the final boss, skipping the rest of the raid.
World of Warcraft: The War Within kickstarts a new story saga for the franchise, that will take place over the next several expansions.
And to great effect, I might add.
We have no intentions of slowing down.
We have lots of ideas, the team is very happy to try this new format."
World of Warcraft: The War Within might have fewer zones than Dragonflight, but they represent some of the highest-quality work Blizzard has ever committed to WoW.
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.
World of Warcraft’s dungeon and raiding scene was notoriously time-intensive back in the day, but Blizzard has worked hard to add new difficulty levels and auto-grouping features for more casual players.
Hollowfall for example, has an endless sea at its edge.
There’s intent and purpose, hinting at things you might want to think about.”
“So, we have our big story beats, we know what those are throughout the entire saga.
Delves can be anything from raids on enemy military bases, clearing out haunted mines, and even battling underwater.
We know the themes we want to explore.
It’s unlikely we’d make changes to the broad strokes, however.
Mateusz Albrewczynski elaborated,“We keep working on what comes next, what comes after The War Within.
Xal’atath was once a simple side character, but she has evolved into something far more.
There’s lots of ideas.
In 20 years, that is a lot of storytelling.
It’s not an easy choice, as people have their many favorite characters.
Worldsoul is a big journey for all of them, though.”
“There’s a lot of stories we’ll be looking at.
There’s a lot of cool faces coming back.”
Blizzard is hoping that its new Delve system might be for you instead.
“In a Delve you’ll experience a cool little adventure and get a cool reward for doing it.
Of course, we want to confirm that folks who engage with more organized activities are rewarded appropriately.
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?
“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.
This potentially gives them an outlet to find more gear between raids.”
What about on the high-end, though?
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.
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.
We’ll reassess as feedback comes in.”
On building Xal’atath, Blizzard’s unlikely central antagonist
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
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.
We will be dipping back into some of that.
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.
It seems as though Blizzard is having a lot of fun keeping us guessing, here.
She has a very different way of doing things.
She pulls strings from behind the scenes.
“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.”
Maria Hamilton says,“Never say never.
We all really, really like Class Halls.
It’s an opportunity.
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.”
And this is all pre-season.
There’s a lot of question marks I still have.
But the broad strokes have been fantastic so far.
And then there’s Xal’atath.
World of Warcraft: The War Within is out now on PC.
World of Warcraft: The War Within
Defend Azeroth’s very soul in The War Within.
Take the fight to Xal’atath, who has descended into the very planet to corrupt Azeroth’s subterranean denizens.
Some of the best storytelling the franchise has ever seen, WoW is on a big winning streak lately.
