World Of Warcraft Is Making All The Right Decisions With Its Upcoming Expansion

World of Warcraft has had a rough couple of years since its Legion expansion, which came out in 2016. The expansions that followed weren’t nearly as well-received. Much of this can be owed to Blizzard’s persistence to stick to systems that players couldn’t stand. The developers were often at odds with the player base on essential features, which led to many outright quitting in Shadowlands.

That said, with Dragonflight, the team finally resolved many of the problems players had. And now, the upcoming expansion, The War Within, seems to be building up on that foundation. So far, Blizzard seems to be hitting a home run in its alpha stage. The developers have added tons of features that players have wanted for a long time and lots more. Here’s how.

A Focus On Playing Solo Through Delves

Traditionally, the MMORPGs were known for their social aspects and community-based gameplay. However, more recently, there has been a demand for more solo-focused content in World of Warcraft. Players that can’t commit to weekly raids, or don’t want to deal with the high intensity of grouped content, simply have nothing to do when it comes to endgame.

To solve this, Blizzard is introducing “Delves“, which will serve as a foundational pillar in the game, similar to Raids or Dungeons. Delves are designed as single-player content but can be done with a team as well. Essentially, they are Mists of Pandaria-style scenarios, that scale up in difficulty. Eventually, these can get as hard as the Mage Towers from Legion, making them incredibly challenging.

As a solo player, I honestly can’t wait for these to come out. While I’d love to raid, dedicating hours every week just to do it isn’t viable to me. So having content like this, that I can do at my own pace without having to worry about the stress of forming a team sounds perfect. Hopefully, Blizzard will continue to iterate on this system and expand it as the expansion progresses.

Account-Wide Unlocks

One of the biggest pain points in WoW has been the fact that things you unlock on one character don’t transfer over to any others you might be playing. Things like reputations, renown levels, and quest chains, all have to be redone every time, which can be tiresome. For a long time, players have asked the developers to make more stuff account-wide.

Blizzard has been hesitant to do this. But with The War Within, it’s finally giving players what they want. With the new “Warbands” feature, players will basically have almost everything in the game become account-wide. From achievements to reputations, banks, and even some gear. All of these can easily be transferred from one character to the other without any hassles.

This is part of a shift the dev team is working on. Essentially, they want to move away from character-based unlocks, opting more for account-wide progress. So, as long as you, as a player, have completed something in WoW, it should be easily accessible across your entire Warband, which honestly sounds perfect to me. Replaying things constantly just to get where I was previously on another character was a tiresome experience.

The Good Parts Of Dragonflight Are Here To Stay

One of my biggest pet peeves with WoW is how the dev team constantly tries to reinvent the wheel with every expansion. Even features that worked well and were liked by the fans are seemingly changed for no reason. This time, however, Blizzard is doing things differently. Things like “Dragonriding” which was a hit are here to stay. In fact, Blizzard is seemingly expanding the feature even further, allowing hundreds of old mounts in the game the ability to dragonride.

Many of the profession changes that were a part of the overhaul introduced in Dragonflight are staying too. The dev team is working to reduce some of the issues relating to work orders. But it’s clear the system, which was positively received, isn’t being changed for no reason. This helps to not only reduce the workload on the developers but also allows players to continue interacting with features they enjoy.

There are tons of other things that make The War Within one of the most anticipated WoW expansions to date. From the return of Chris Metzen to a new take on storytelling through the use of massive expansion-spanning sagas, it looks like World of Warcraft really is preparing itself to enter a new chapter. And honestly, I’m all for it!