The War Within

We're about two thirds of the way through Blaugust, so I'm feeling pretty good at this point about my plan for the month.  Today, I'm going to continue the theme of discussing World of Warcraft expansions.

The War Within is the one I just finished, the expansion that carried me right up to the doorstep of where I am now. Writing about it feels strange, because it's not history yet. Midnight is the live game as I type this, so the War Within is the stretch I was playing until about five minutes ago, and looking back on it is less nostalgia and more checking the rearview mirror. Still, it earned its own post, because it quietly became my favorite way to play the game in years.

The setup was that we finally went underground. After Dragonflight brought me back, the War Within opened up Khaz Algar and sent us down into it, a whole continent of caverns and buried civilizations. Isle of Dorn up top, the Ringing Deeps with the machine-speakers, Azj-Kahet where the nerubians live, and Hallowfall with that enormous crystal standing in for a sun. I'm a sucker for a good underground zone, and Hallowfall in particular got me. A pocket of light in the deep dark, a whole people organized around keeping the crystal lit. That's the kind of setting that sticks with me.

But the real story of the War Within, for a player like me, wasn't the zones. It was two changes that felt like the game had finally been built with me in mind.

The first is Warbands. They made your progress account-wide in ways that actually matter, so all the stuff I earn spreads across my characters instead of dying on whichever one happened to be logged in. For a confirmed altoholic, this was close to a religious experience. I've spent nineteen years grinding the same things over and over on alt after alt, and the War Within finally said, you know what, you earned that once, keep it. It doesn't sound romantic. It changed how I play more than any dungeon ever did.

And I want to be honest about what that permission did to me, because it got a little unhinged. I finished the War Within with 52 max-level alts. Fifty-two. Sit with that number, because I have, and I'm still not sure whether it's an achievement or a cry for help. Warbands removed the one thing standing between me and total altoholic collapse, the pain of re-grinding everything per character, so I did what I always do with the brakes off. Fifty-two characters at the cap. That's not a roster. That's a small guild that happens to be one guy.

The second is Delves, and I've already given those their own post, so I'll keep it short. Delves gave me a real path to good gear that runs through zero other people and zero raid nights. Just me, Brann tagging along, a bite-sized dungeon I can knock out on a weeknight. The War Within is where that clicked into being the core of how I play. Solo, semi-committed, geared enough to keep up, on my own clock. I've wanted that from WoW for twenty years and this is the expansion that finally handed it over.

I'll caveat the raid side the way I always do, because I don't live there. There's a big Worldsoul Saga going on, Xal'atath pulling strings, bigger threats pointed at down the road, and Nerub-ar Palace was the raid everyone was clearing. I got the story version and the LFR version and I was happy with that. The high-end folks got their fights, I got mine, and for once the game gave me a gearing lane that didn't run through a room I'd decided not to enter. No complaints from the cheap seats.

Looking back now that I'm standing in Midnight, the War Within reads as exactly what its name half-promised. The last stretch of a certain era, the setup expansion that laid the track for everything the Worldsoul Saga is now cashing in. It wasn't trying to be the grand finale. It was the deep breath before it, and it happened to be the most comfortable I've been in the game since Wrath.

That's a strange thing to say about an expansion that's barely cold, but it's the honest read. The War Within didn't blow the doors off. It quietly became the version of WoW that fits my life best, then handed me off to Midnight without a fumble. Good handoffs are underrated. This was a good one.

Cheers,

Joar