World of Warcraft: The War Within has enjoyed, overall, a pretty decent response from the playerbase at large. A surprisingly solid story, a premise that screams high fantasy, and some peak quality of life upgrades that've made the game all the more alt-friendly has, by and large, led to a real sense that WoW is back, baby.
But now the real endgame begins—alongside the inevitable judgement of whether The War Within truly is the banger expansion it's promising to be. Released yesterday for the US and today for the EU, this first season brings with it the Nerub-ar Palace raid, Mythic Dungeons, higher tiers of delves, and a fresh PvP season. Let's go through the marquee features, as revealed in a pre-release blog on the World of Warcraft website (and this handy infographic, courtesy of Blizzard).
First up, there's the Nerub-ar Palace raid. Starting September 11, both Normal and Heroic versions of the raid can be played through, while the first wing is available in Raid Finder. September 18 sees the release of the second wing to the PuG masses, as well as the raid's Mythic difficulty and Story Mode—a snazzy new feature that lets players experience the narrative as a group of 1 to 5, turning it into, essentially, a small-scale scenario. September 25 sees the third wing hit Raid Finder.
The raid brings with it new tier armour sets for every class—which, let's face it, will be the main draw for at least some of you transmog fiends. What's really exciting is that the tokens you can grab for these sets are, by default, "warbound". This means you can send them to your alts, which is huge for collectors.
When it comes to Mythic+ dungeons, those're already here. Ara-Kara, City of Echoes, The Stonevault, City of Threads, and The Dawnbreaker will be in the rotation from The War Within. Meanwhile, The Necrotic Wake and Mists of Tirna Scithe will be returning from the Shadowlands expansion, Siege of Boralus will be coming back from Battle for Azeroth, and Grim Batol from Cataclysm has also been included.
PvP players are able to get stuck into a new season with its own rewards—letting players earn their elite transmog set piecemeal at various ranks (seen below) and two mounts: A Vicious Skyflayer, which is a creepy flying Nerubian bug with Horde and Alliance decor, or the absolutely yoked Forged Fel Bat.
Delves, more than anything, are the most interesting bit here—being an entirely new kind of pseudo-dungeon built for The War Within. While you could play through these on release, they were only available at tier 3 difficulty, which isn't much of a challenge. Now tiers 4 and above are unlocked—and, if the community's initial reaction is anything to go by, anything above an eight has some kick to it.
Zekvir's Lair is the "Seasonal Delve"—meaning you'll want to go knock it over at any difficulty for the honour and privilege of wearing Zekvir's very own spine on your back like some kind of Nerubian serial killer. Do it on tier 5 or higher and you'll also get the "Ascension Breaker" title, while doing it solo gets you a coat of void paint for your dirigible.
In terms of gear, as per WoWHead, delves can get you Champion-level rewards starting at tier 7, equivalent to Mythic+ keystones 2-6, and Hero-level rewards from the great vault at those same difficulty tiers—which you'd usually have to go into Heroic Difficulty raids (or high-level Mythic+ dungeons) for. Not too shabby.
All in all, not a bad spread of stuff to be getting on with, especially considering WoW's got its 20th anniversary around the corner. I'll be interested to see if Blizzard can keep its hard-earned good community sentiment afloat. After all, some solid questing is one thing, but keeping your MMO's post-launch momentum going is another entirely.
