Confession time: I’ve been rather reluctant to give Blizzard Entertainment’s juggernaut MMORPG, World of Warcraft, a chance over the years. Despite having fond memories of playing Warcraft 3 as a kid, I just couldn’t get invested in World of Warcraft when I was younger. My reasons varied from being scared off by the extreme dedication needed to play the game, how unfriendly it was for solo players back in its early days, how multifaceted its storyline and lore are, and the fear that I would be unable to make friends or join guilds required to play the game optimally.
However, after over twenty years since the game launched in 2024 and gaining MMORPG experience during my time playing Final Fantasy XIV, I have finally converted into a full-time subscriber to World of Warcraft. This is thanks to Blizzard refreshing classic content, mountains of quality-of-life improvements that made power-leveling your characters faster than ever, finally landing an amazingly welcoming and friendly guild, and so much more.
With this in mind, you can bet I’m excited for World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, World of Warcraft: The War Within. WoW’s tenth milestone expansion is set to take the MMORPG to greater heights by kicking off an epic storyline, pitting players against new Raids and endgame Delves content, and adding all kinds of new gameplay features like Warbands, Hero Talents, and more.
Here are my top favorite new features I’m looking forward to seeing in World of Warcraft: The War Within.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — Warbands
First off, one of my favorite new features is one you can experience right now as it was added in the recently released World of Warcraft: The War Within pre-expansion patch, the Warbands. Warbands is a new system that allows players to carry over achievement progression, collection items, Renown rankings, gear, currency, flight points, map discoveries, and more across all their characters on a single Battle.net account.
With this system, you will no longer have to redo Faction quests to gain Renown levels or redo achievements on each of your player characters; you just have to do them once, and most achievements and Renown levels will carry over to all of them on your account. Additionally, you will no longer need to transfer equipment to backup characters (or alt characters as they’re commonly known in-game) to gain their appearance for Transmogrification (a system that allows players to change the cosmetic appearance of their gear) if they’re incompatible with certain character classes, they just have to collect them, and their appearance gets stored in the account-wide Collections storage.
Warbands will get access to an account-wide storage unit for items called the Warbands Bank, which can be accessed in any bank in the game. The Warbands Bank will have five tabs with 98 slots per tab of storage (the first tab is free, but the rest will need to be fought with Gold), giving you tons of space to store items and gear you find and transfer them freely between all your created characters.
I love the concept of Warbands as it incentivizes players to create alt characters in addition to your main character. It will make gathering gear, achievements, and cosmetics much easier for your alts and help them catch up for endgame content much faster than in previous expansions.
Not to mention, you get a new cool character log-in screen where you can position four of your favorite player characters together for an awesome group shot.
Blizzard has confirmed that it plans to add more features to Warbands in the future too, making it an incredibly exciting new addition to the overall game.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — Skyriding
Another new feature brought in by World of Warcraft: The War Within’s pre-expansion patch is the Skyriding feature. Formally known as Dragonriding, this system allows players to control their flying mounts at higher speeds to traverse the map more quickly than the traditional flying system (now named Steady Flight), that’s been a part of World of Warcraft since The Burning Crusade expansion.
However, unlike Dragonriding, which was only limited to certain mounts from World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, Skyriding is applied to 464 flying mounts, a number that will grow as time goes on. In addition, the Druid class’ flying Travel Form will be able to use the Skyriding feature as well.
I loved the new Dragonriding feature in Dragonflight as it made travel between zones go by so much faster and it personally made me nostalgic for the flying segment in the classic Spyro the Dragon games as they had similar, weighty, physics-based controls. But Skyriding has made it even better because now you can use it with your personal favorite mounts instead of being able only to use it with the custom Drake mounts in Dragonflight.
However, if you prefer the old-school method of flying, you can adjust it in the Mounts section of the Collections menu to switch between Skyriding or Steady Flight.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — Hero Talents
Hero Talents are new talent trees that every class will get as they level up throughout World of Warcraft: The War Within, which will be added on top of their default talent trees. These range from granting passive abilities that can augment a character’s powers or new active abilities entirely. Each will have multiple Hero Talent trees to choose from (Druits get four Hero Talent trees, Demon Hunters get two Hero Talent trees, while all the other classes get three Hero Talent trees), and they can switch between them to decide which fits their playstyle the most.
I’m excited to try out Hero Talents as they have the potential to completely change classes into something new or have them function like classic Warcraft heroes or units from the old Real-time strategy games. For example, the Dark Ranger Hero Talent tree will have a Hunter class character gain abilities reminiscent of the fan-favorite character Sylvanas Windrunner, and the Mountain Thane Hero Talent tree will grant Warriors the thunderous abilities of the Mountain King hero units from Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos.
This system seems more scalable into the future too, giving Blizzard opportunities to add more hero talent trees for new playstyles in future expansions without necessarily giving into power creep. An issue Blizzard has struggled with in the past is how to give players something new without adding reams of new complexity. Switching between hero talent trees seems to be exactly what the alchemist ordered.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — Delves
One new upcoming feature I’m particularly interested in and one that my colleague and seasoned WoW veteran Jez Corden enjoyed during his preview World of Warcraft: The War Within is the Delves. The Delves is a new form of endgame content where players will explore dungeons with an NPC companion to fight hordes of difficult monsters, solve puzzles, and traverse treacherous platforming segments. The Delves can be tackled solo or with a party of five players.
What makes the Delves intriguing is that the rewards you get for completing them will include high-level gear that’s on par with endgame raid gear. This means that if you don’t have a guild or need to wait for a raid schedule, you can challenge yourself and collect endgame loot. You can instead opt to take on the Delves alone or with your closest friends and farm for gear that’s on a similar power level so you don’t get left behind on content and still feel like you're making meaningful progress.
In addition, the Delves will have exclusive mounts, toys, cosmetic, and more rewards you won’t find anywhere else in World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — The new Earthen Race
World of Warcraft: The War Within will introduce a new playable Allied Race called the Earthen, an ancient race of Titan-forged golems created to help shape the subterranean caverns of Azeroth during its infancy. Many of the Earthen were cursed by the Old God Yogg-Saron to become the race we know today as the Dwarves, but some of the original Earthen survived this fate and rose to stop The Harbinger from destroying Azeroth.
The Earthen Race will be able to play for both Alliance and Horde factions, and they will be able to choose the Hunter, Monk, Paladin, Mage, Priest, Warlock, Rogue, Warrior, or Shaman class upon character creation.
I like the look of the Earthen as they’re essentially a race of superpowered golems covered in crystals, which you don’t often get to play in RPGs (Shale from Dragon Age: Origins is the most prominent example), so I will be looking to trying them out and adding to my Warband.
There are strong hints that Earthen won't be the only new race joining players in The War Within either, since dataminers uncovered the cave troll-like Harronir, which also feature heavily in The War Within's CGI intro cinematic.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — A new saga spanning multiple expansions
When World of Warcraft: The War Within was announced at Blizzcon 2023, it was stated this game would be the first chapter of an epic ongoing storyline called the Worldsoul Saga.
This saga will span the next three expansions (World of Warcraft: The War Within, World of Warcraft: Midnight, and World of Warcraft: The Last Titan) and tell a grand tale that where the champions of Azeroth fight to save the Worldsoul of Azeroth from the mysterious villain, Xal'atath the Harbinger while dealing with the Titans, and the forces of Light and the Void.
What’s more is that Chris Metzen, a legendary developer who helped direct the story, create artwork, and voice act for Blizzard’s most iconic games such as Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, to name a few, would return from retirement as the Executive Creative Director of the Warcraft universe. Long-time Warcraft fans are excited to see Chris Metzen effectively return in a large directorial role for Warcraft’s story, as his direction in the past led to some of the most memorable, cinematic, and beloved moments in the franchise’s history.
Fans are hoping that under Chris Metzen’s creative lead, the storyline for World of Warcraft will get back on track to tell amazing stories and well-written characters again. This feeling is due to that after Chris Metzen retired, the storylines for previous expansions that didn't involve any of his input like Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands left fans with a bad taste. Shadowlands was notoriously unpopular for a variety of reasons, and it contribued to long time fans leaving World of Warcraft and migrating to Final Fantasy XIV.
While I can’t say for certain if Chris Metzen’s direction will help restore fans' faith in the MMORPG's ongoing narrative, I can say that I am intrigued by the premise for World of Warcraft: The War Within. I’m curious to know what Xal'atath’s ultimate goal is, and I’m excited to see the spider-like Nerubians, one of my favorite Warcraft races from Warcraft 3, promoted to major antagonists for players to deal with to the point where they’re getting their own Raid dungeon.
World of Warcraft: The War Within — Possibility of more WoW Remix events
My last favorite feature isn’t necessarily in World of Warcraft: The War Within, but one I hope we’ll see more of in the future is the addition of more WoW Remix events. WoW Remix is a limited-time event where players get to relive a past World of Warcraft expansion but with remixed content that allowed players to experience in new fun ways.
The first WoW Remix event, World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria, was an absolute blast to play, and I’d argue, is the perfect jumping on for new players to World of Warcraft and a good method for veteran players to prepare Alt Characters for World of Warcraft: The War Within. It allowed players to level alt characters at the speed of light, obtain intentionally overpowered Remix gear that let players humiliate Raid bosses in fun cathartic fashion, and grab exclusive cosmetics rewards and other items that are almost impossible to collect in the normal, retail version of World of Warcraft.
At the time of this writing, World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria is still active and will end on August 19, 2024, upon which all Remix player characters will be transferred into the retail version of World of Warcraft for The War Within. I hope we get to see more Remix events in the future during World of Warcraft: The War Within’s post-launch patch life cycle, as I would love to see Remixed versions of Legion, Burning Crusade, or Wrath of the Lich King.
Are you ready to journey to the depths of Azeroth and battle the Harbinger?
And there you have my top reasons why I’m looking forward to playing World of Warcraft: The War Within. From game-changing Hero Talents, the new Earthen race, an extravagant storyline that will span multiple expansions, Delves, Warbands, and Skyriding, there’s just so much promising content to indulge in.
World of Warcraft: The War Within will launch on August 26, 2024, for PC, and players who pre-ordered the Epic Edition will get Early Access to it on August 22, 2024. I can’t wait to play this upcoming PC game with my guild buddies and embark on a new adventure in one of Blizzard Entertainment’s best PC games.
