WoW: The War Within Is The Expansion I’ve Been Waiting 16 Years For

is the tenth expansion for the MMORPG, but it's the first addition in well over a decade that reminds me why I fell in love with the game to begin with. After multiple expansions that were lackluster at best, I gave up on expecting that the magic of first years would be recaptured. Now, 16 years later, I finally found the expansion I was waiting for in.

revolves around Xal'atath and Alleria, who both have a connection to the Void. Alleria wants to resist the Void within her, but Xal'atath tries to tempt her to embrace it while she works to rebuild the Black Empire, which would remove the threat Alleria poses. Meanwhile, Xal'atath has the Dark Heart in her possession, and she's finally freed from the blade she was sealed in, so it's not surprising that she's ready to be the Harbinger of the end and try to destroy Azeroth.

At the beginning of, the heroes are constantly a step behind Xal'atath, and they end up playing into her plan. This results in the destruction of Dalaran, a city that's been used multiple times since. But at the same time, having the stakes start out high and jumping right into the main campaign with Dalaran being crushed is exactly what the expansion needed to do. I like that there's one core villain in the expansion, and she's introduced in a way that makes you understand how much of a threat she poses to Azeroth.

Players can claim two weekly caches of Epic gear by completing certain quests in World of Warcraft: The War Within if they know what to look out for.

The last villain that felt this threatening was The Lich King. Blizzard tried to recreate that foreboding presence with the Jailer, but it was hard to take him seriously, andhis plan didn't make a lot of sense in general. Then, you have the villains where you see the faction they control more than the villains themselves, and this ends up reducing how threatening they feel because they're not shown often, so you don't see what they're capable of. This was the case with characters like