Hands-on: World of Warcraft: The War Within is a solo-friendly action epic

The Nerubian army floods the beach of Tranquill in the first minutes of World of Warcraft: The War Within. Thousands of magical projectiles whizz across the horizon, arachnoid infantry hack the armor of our troops to pieces.

As Orc Warlocks, we throw ourselves into battle, a water spirit at our side pushing back the enemy troops, but General Thrall can barely hold the line.

He gives us orders to bring the wounded to a protected assembly point, while easily 100 arachnoids attack us in close formation. It’s a bit like Starship Troopers. If you’re having a lot of fun with Helldivers 2, you’ll get your money’s worth here.

It feels like Blizzard is finally ready to throw off the shackles of the old WoW and take World of Warcraft into the next generation.

In recent years, WoW has seemed too old-school, too unambitious, too little staged. Why couldn’t we have Game of Thrones-style aerial battles between dragons in Dragonflight?

Blizzard had hardly any competition in the MMO segment for many years, but now Funcom wants to saw at their chair with the most powerful blockbuster brand that Hollywood can currently muster. Dune Awakening, a work in Unreal Engine 5 with the directorial power of Oscar-winner Greg Freiser in barreling in fast — and it looks like Blizzard is up for the challenge. The War Within blew us away during a one-day hands-on event in London and made a lasting impression.

Reading tip: Exploring Azeroth is one of the most beautiful WoW novels about the area where The War Within starts.

The War Within: A new era of staging

First we are confronted by hundreds of Arachnoid infantry who slash the armor of our soldiers. There’s also a tough intermediate boss fight not long in coming, against the Queens Guard Zitrix.

She gathers a whole line of Warspinner bodyguards around her – time to hop on our trusty Dragonflight dragon to get an overview of the battlefield and find weak points in the enemy’s defense.

It is striking how well The War Within works for solo players. It’s less hard grind, more fun action and emotion, where Blizzard has taken inspiration from the great fantasy pop culture.

As we fly towards the fortress city of Dornogal on Stormgrasp, a majestic metropolis emerges that feels a little like Minas Tirith – only built by machine dwarves with titan technology. Like Minas Tirith, it is carved directly into the stone, with pillars rising above the city streets and piercing the azure sky.

There are nooks and crannies in every alleyway, the city stretches across many levels that combine a classic dwarven design where a Gimli would feel at home, with glowing blue veins of magical energy that power many defenses and guns.

It’s also nice to see how varied this battle is, and not just on the ground. We also hurl lightning bolts and launch orbital bombardments from our assault attack on the attacking arachnoids.

The Delves: mini-dungeons as a 15-minute snack

Delves are the Snickers of the MMO world: instead of a long grind, they’re a quick snack for anyone who loves WoW but doesn’t have the time for a big raid. We are all busy and generally have more responsibilities as we get older, which Blizzard has recognized:

“We keep hearing from players who say, ‘I have a family, I have a job, I can’t play WoW for three hours every day anymore,'” Executive Producer & Vice President Holly Longdale tells us during our interview in London.

A delve takes around 10 to 15 minutes, and we can tackle it solo with an AI companion or in a team of up to 5 players.

As Game Director Ion Hazzikostas also tells us, Blizzard already tested and trialled this feature in the Zaralek Caverns in its May 10.1 patch. Zaralek Caverns is basically a huge underground landmass, the likes of which WoW has never seen before.

“When we go in with our NPC companions, it feels like an epic solo quest with a really cool buddy,” explains the Game Director.

By buddy, he means Brann Bronzebeard, for example, a legendary historian with the epic dwarf beard. At the beginning, we choose a tier, i.e. a difficulty level – the higher the tier, the better the XP yield and loot.

We can specialise Brann as a healer or sniper, which unlocks different ultimates for him – as a damage dealer, he summons his combat grip and hurls lightning hammers at the arachnoids on the ground. The longer we play with him, the more he levels up and unlocks new abilities.

For delve kings: Fully level up Bann Bronzebeard and unlock a damn cool golden airship as a mount

“Dungeons have so often been these epic, important places, but we had to deliberately separate them and make them offshoots of the main storyline… Now we can, if it makes sense, run the main storyline right through these places, which is very cool and gives us a lot of freedom in the storytelling,” Game Director Ion Hazzikostas explains.

The same 12 delves await us at launch, with a different story NPC accompanying us each season, and there are even delve bosses such as the armoured mutant crab Zevzik.

Delves are also designed to be replayable and change dynamically: one day we might have to save dwarf miners from the Nerubians. The other day we might have to work with the Arathi in the same place to burn down all those Nerubian nests.

At the end of the delve, a treasure chamber awaits with chests. Everyone gets guaranteed rewards, but there are also special delve currencies that can only be used for special skills for “delving”, as Blizzard calls it.

And then there’s a particularly cool mount to unlock – Bronzebeard’s golden propeller plane. We have not yet been able to try out how it flies. And ultimately it’s just a cosmetically customizable aircraft. But there will certainly be some cool races and who knows, we would still like to see a lot more action and aerial combat in WoW. Maybe they’ll surprise us with The Last Titan. It would certainly fit thematically.

Warbands: Account-wide levelling and banking

Hands up, who feels the need to constantly create alts? Now we no longer have to level them up individually. Warbands is that much desired account-wide levelling and banking that WoW has been wanting for many, many years.

Our warband not only shares a level, but also a bank – so we can simply move items, weapons, mounts etc. back and forth.

Incidentally, this even applies to Delve progress, which is pretty cool. Fancy switching to Master Panda and want Mr Orc to go on holiday? No problem – thanks to Warband you can continue in the same delve.

This is also a real game changer for all transmog fans: completing quests unlocks every transmog option for our account, regardless of the weapon or armor type. So if we receive a pair of leather boots as a quest reward, we automatically unlock the corresponding equivalents for chainmail, plates or cloth armor.

A bit of a shame: Blizzard insists on its current system, i.e. an Evoker can’t just run around with a cool golden plate armour because it doesn’t match his class. Blizzard could go a few steps further here and open up all armor sets to all classes, even retroactively. We all have plenty of powerful transmogs from past expansions that we would like to have as a complete set.

World of Warcraft: The War Within will launch exclusively for PC in 2024 and can now be played in alpha.