World of Warcraft: The War Within Review In Progress

World of Warcraft’s latest expansion — The War Within — hit on August 26th after about a three-and-a-half day headstart for players who bought the Epic or Collector’s Edition. So far, I’ve been spending a ton of time leveling my main, leveling alts, gearing up for raiding, and diving into all the new content Blizzard has unleashed on us. 

That said, we’ve decided to go with a Review in Progress for now because neither raiding nor Mythic+ are available yet, and they are such a significant part of endgame that excluding it from consideration didn’t feel right. Therefore, this review in progress will primarily focus on my leveling experience and issues I have encountered while leveling.

Leveling

One of my big question marks regarding the launch of The War Within was how the destruction of Dalaran would happen. I purposefully didn’t participate in testing this scenario because I wanted it to be a completely new experience when I played through it for real. The destruction of a city isn’t a particularly new way to start an expansion. However, this was the first time the city was a shared hub of both factions and had been the central hub city for two separate expansions. Additionally, I was keen to find out what happened to Khadgar.

The set-up for why we decided to go to Khaz Algar was done well and also filled in many of my questions regarding why Magni seemed so incredibly disgruntled anytime he talked during the alpha & beta. Also, the reveal of Xal’atath being in Dalaran and how she helped coax us into her trap was perfectly executed. I was right there with Alleria, feeling rage and frustration when the veil was lifted on that one.

There was a whole section where I had to go around saving NPCs and helping them evacuate. I usually don’t like these types of quests because I am saving no-name NPCs with which I have no real connection, so the stakes are low. However, so many of these NPCs were characters I have seen many times throughout the years, so it had a more