World of Warcraft’s latest expansion has plenty to offer

THE hugely popular online game World of Warcraft has been going strong for 14 years — and its latest expansion comes with some great new features.

WORLD of Warcraft has been around a long time, with Blizzard’s hugely popular, fantasy-themed, subscription-based, multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) first going online in 2004.

The Alliance (humans, elves, dwarfs and co) and the Horde (Orcs, goblins, trolls and blood elves) have been fighting each other ever since, in a conflict which has been running longer than WWI, WWII, the Korean War, The Sino-Indian War, the Falklands War and the Gulf War combined.

Wars might be terrible things in real life, but they’re great in video games, and Blizzard is taking full advantage of the opportunities a good (virtual) war presents for the latest World of Warcraft (WoW) expansion, Battle for Azeroth, released on PC and Mac.

Battle for Azeroth kicks off with a castle siege and soon thereafter (assuming you’re playing as an Alliance character, which I was), you’ll find yourself in the nautical-themed nation of Kul Tiras, trying to convince them to sign up with you to battle the Horde.

There’s a cast of colourful characters to accompany you, and I particularly liked Flynn Fairweather, a Lord Flashheart-esque swashbuckler.

WoW has an all new war mode’.

Besides the interesting story, another big change to the game is the introduction of “war mode”, which basically puts all the players who want to fight each other on the same server and leaves everyone else to meander around and thrash AI opponents at their leisure.

The game includes 10 new dungeons as well as ‘island expeditions’, pitting teams of three against other players or the AI as they gather resources for their faction to fuel the war effort. New races including Blood Trolls appear, and the mysterious resource Azerite which is bleeding from the world, plus of course there’s lots of sweet new gear to be acquired as well.

Despite Azeroth apparently being caught in the equivalent of a World War, the conflict unfortunately seems to be a bit of a contrivance in some respects. It seems to be pretty much business as usual throughout the place, which is unusual — so your character casually wandering around doing whatever takes their fancy does come across as being a bit like someone deciding to go on holiday to India during World War II.

Part of the challenge World of Warcraft has is that, after 14 years, there’s a bit of a continuity lockout issue. If you’ve ever wandered into a long-running and complex TV series like Game of Thrones or The Sopranos halfway through, you’ve got no idea who anyone is or what’s going on — and the same is true of World of Warcraft to some extent.

Being upfront, I haven’t played World of Warcraft enough to follow its overarching plot, but the great thing about fantasy worlds is if you’re even vaguely familiar with them — and we all are — it’s pretty easy to work out what is going on, even if you don’t necessarily know the characters. The game does a good job of giving players some background (even long-timers probably need a refresher on occasion) without getting bogged down in exposition, so after an hour or two of wandering around frantically clicking on things to hit them with swords or shoot them or blast them with magic or get quest information, I more or less had my bearings.

I rather enjoyed my time getting involved in Battle for Azeroth, finding the content accessible and generally classic Blizzard, mixing humour and high drama. Some of the quests get a little bit grindy, and suffer from the classic RPG ‘hang on, why can’t you do that yourself?’ question, but it’s not a particularly egregious issue; especially when you have friends to play with.

Thankfully Blizzard has always been clear that WoW needs to be able to run on a range of computers.

Blizzard has always been clear that WoW needs to be able to run on a range of computers, from metaphorical steam-powered potatoes up to whatever bleeding-edge gaming rig a dedicated enthusiast has built, and nothing has changed with this expansion — the in-game art style remains the same distinctive one that hovers somewhere around the very best 2005 technology had to offer — but it turns out this is a deliberate choice the developers have made, both from an accessibility and an aesthetic viewpoint.

Production director John Hight said the developers were pleasantly surprised that the game was still going strong 14 years after its release, with a lot of its success attributed to decisions made right at the start — including the graphic style.

“It has a unique style. You look at it, you know exactly what it is,” he said.

“Some games try to go in a very photo-real tech and technology gets updated every few months, so a game that looked great a year ago might not look as great now.

“We do a lot of advanced techniques on texturing and modelling for art techniques and then apply our style. It’s not easy to find artists who can work in this high-texture environment and still make it look like a painting.”

While few people in 2004 expected WoW to have the longevity it has enjoyed, Mr Hight said more than 300 people worked on it now, and the work that went into an expansion like Battle for Azeroth was significant indeed.

“We treat it like the release of an entirely new product every two years or so; the size of the teams, the amount of planning, it’s same as any new IP (intellectual property; games franchise instalment),” he said.

“We’re very, very fortunate — by and large everyone on the team loves WoW and a lot of people that worked on the original WoW are still on the team or working at Blizzard, so we have this core of people who understand what the original concepts are.”

Blizzard delivers for long time fans of World of Warcraft.

Ultimately, Mr Hight said the game’s continued success was also due to its relatability and accessibility.

“People can relate to it, there’s something there for everyone. It’s generally a fairly positive place … players know there’s a generally a happy ending there,” he said.

If you’re a World of Warcraft fan, Battle for Azeroth is well worth getting — especially if you’ve been following the story — and for newcomers, the basic premise is easy enough to follow that you can get into it without too much trouble and start delving in the lore at your own pace too.

With 14 years under its belt and quality content like Battle for Azeroth continually keeping the game interesting and fresh, World of Warcraft is set to keep players enthralled in the Alliance and Horde’s tales for a long time yet — much to the delight of heroes and adventurers everywhere.

What have your adventures in Battle for Azeroth been like? Continue the conversation on Twitter: @RoyceWilsonAU