World of Warcraft: The War Within review

In a world where the likes of Concord come and go in a matter of weeks, World of Warcraft continues to embody a staying power that’s hard to come by and easy to envy. Blizzard’s genre-defining MMORPG megahit has been around for two decades and while it's almost certainly past its peak in terms of broader popularity, the world of Azeroth has never been more rich in reasons to return. 

As someone who first started playing World of Warcraft around the same time I started playing tabletop roleplaying games, perhaps it's inevitable the two are linked somewhere in the back of my mind. But the more I think about the reasons why I keep returning for one more expansion and yet another climb to the level cap, the more I think there’s something to the comparison. Perhaps part of the reason Blizzard’s MMO has held sway all these years is that it’s not so much a follow-up to Everquest as it is a follow-up to Dungeons & Dragons. 

Like D&D, the appeal of World of Warcraft isn’t just the lore, loot and character progression. It’s the people you’re playing with. Even if you’re mostly playing alone, WoW has always been an inherently social gaming experience and one that’s rich in reasons to return to an existing character or re-roll as a new one. The same could very much be said of many tabletop games. 

There are plenty of differences between D&D and WoW, of course, but at this point the arrival of a new expansion like The War Within has started to feel less like DLC and more like the release of a new module or edition of a roleplaying game that I’m never going to get tired of inventing reasons to return to.

The War Within ties together threads from across the last two decades of Warcraft lore as classic characters like Thrall, Anduin and Alleria Windrunner are drawn into conflict with new and ancient adversaries lurking below the surface of Azeroth by a suitably sinister new big bad named Xal'atath. 

That’s about as classic and conventional a setup for a WoW expansion as you could imagine, but this time around these familiar narrative hooks here are made all the more compelling by the pitch that this is the first installment in Blizzard’s MCU-esque Worldstone Saga. Perception is reality and that framing is everything here, turning the tenth expansion pack for an aging MMORPG into the start of an ambitious fantasy trilogy. 

So much Warcraft lore lives rent-free in my head, so it’s basically impossible for me to imagine what it’s like for newcomers trying to make any sense of the game’s sprawling lore. Despite that, the early and introductory quests in The War Within do a decent job of getting you up to speed and familiar with the expansion’s most important names and faces. 

In contrast to the purer emphasis on discovery seen in Dragonflight or Shadowlands, there’s a definite sense of urgency that pushes you forward through The War Within from the get-go. It rarely feels like you’re just going through the motions, even though you are. 

The War Within brings with it new quests to complete, a new Allied Race to unlock, new hero talents to empower your character, four regions to explore plus a new activity called Delves. These mini-dungeons are playable both solo and with a group, offering up a short 7-15 minute adventure with some light boss mechanics, fun level design and an NPC companion that levels up alongside you. While this is far from the first time Blizzard has tried to bolster the game’s roster of in-game activities, the fact that Delves rewards loot that’s on-par with PVP, raids and dungeons is a promising sign that it might stick around through future expansions.

The War Within might kick off in the coastal hillsides of Khaz Algar, but the action quickly moves below ground. Where previous expansions have leaned on zone diversity at the expense of cohesion, this one opts to make its quartet of biomes err on the side of believability. The Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall and Azj-Kahet are all very distinct, but they bleed into one another in ways that help them feel like an evolution and escalation of the same broader visual palette. 

The new Hero talents system follows a similar logic. Where the baseline version of World of Warcraft gives you a trio of skill trees to split your points into, The War Within ups the ante with as few as the two and as many as four smaller specializations. It’ll be interesting to see how this system evolves over time but right now it's decently fun, does a great job of furthering the existing class fantasies in the game and gives theorycrafters a whole new axis upon which they can plot out their next balance-busting build.

This isn’t to say that more casual Warcraft players won’t have a good time here. The War Within does a great job of doubling down on the verticality that the game experimented with in Dragonflight. Puns be damned, this more dynamic approach to zone design only gets deeper the further you get further underground. 

The way that Blizzard have laid zones and quest hubs out in The War Within often comes across as more than a little bit inspired by open world RPGs like The Witcher 3. It’s a great time to be a fan of hunting nooks and crannies in an expansive fantasy world. 

The other thing Blizzard is doubling down on The War Within is the idea of putting more gameplay into the mix. This isn’t to say that there aren’t any rote and repetitive quests that have you venturing into the wastelands in search of boar tusks. Thankfully, there are far fewer. It’s hard to shake the sense of purpose behind the design of the quests. 

Even if there are plenty of the usual suspects in the mix, it feels like most of what’s in The War Within is either pushing on or playing with your expectations of what a quest can be either narratively or mechanically. The most ambitious of these are generally tied to major plot moments, but there are a few gems waiting off the beaten track for those who seek them out. 

Across the board, The War Within generally finds a balance between giving you more without overdoing it. There’s plenty to sink your teeth into if you’re a completionist, but the core plot thread moves briskly enough that you could zip through it over the course of a few days if you wanted to. More likely than not, there should be more than a few major content updates between now and the next installment of The Worldsoul Saga. Still, if you pick it up today, The War Within has more than enough going on to justify itself a meaty serving of more Warcraft.

World of Warcraft: The War Within is available now on PC.