World of Warcraft‘s 10th expansion, The War Within, has been officially live for nearly three weeks and it’s time to take a look at the review consensus from the game press. As you’ll see while diving into it, there’s a heap of very positive reactions with a healthy smattering of complaints and reservations thrown in. Overall, the press thinks The War Within is a winner. That lines up with my thinking. Explore the reviews.
Gamespot: “The War Within Review – Stay Awhile And Listen“
Quote:
“It’s only fitting then that The War Within builds brilliantly on what came before, not only from a story perspective but also in continuing many of the trends and design philosophies that helped make the game’s previous expansion, Dragonflight, the course-correction WoW desperately needed.“
PCGamesN: “The War Within review – the best Blizzard’s MMO has been in years“
Quote:
“As someone who found himself driven away by Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands, it feels like The War Within is aimed directly at me. You can tell by the game’s advertising – constantly exhorting us to get back in the fight – with Blizzard knowing that due to time, life, and myriad other reasons, our WoW subscriptions have paused and we haven’t set foot in Azeroth for a while.“
Windows Central Gaming: “‘The War Within’ has some of the best art and story delivery we’ve ever seen from the MMORPG genre, but rushed key features holds it back“
Quote:
“The headline act here, for me, is the story delivery. World of Warcraft’s central gameplay loop hasn’t changed in an enormous way for the most part (save for solo play, and we’ll get to that in a minute), but I would argue that The War Within represents a huge evolution for how Blizzard thinks about story telling in its flagship product. Arguably, The War Within has the best story delivery the game has seen since Legion, and potentially, maybe ever.“
IGN: “World of Warcraft: The War Within Review“
Quote:
“This is, simply put, a vastly more enjoyable way to play a video game for me. And it might be the biggest step WoW has taken forward design-wise in the two decades I’ve been playing it. They’re even adding a story mode for raids in a later patch, and while I’m a little bit disappointed it will only feature the final boss instead of the whole instance, at least it will let you see the goddamn ending. In almost every previous expansion, I’ve had to look that up on YouTube, which is absurd considering I paid for the whole expansion.“
Kotaku: “The War Within: The Kotaku Review“
Quote:
“It’s a blast navigating The War Within’s areas on dragonback, or whichever flying mount you’d like, soaring down the cavern in the center of the Earthen city of Dornogal down to the Ringing Deeps, taking a sharp left into the radiant Hallowfall next door, and continuing into the depths of Azj-Kahet where the creepy crawly Nerubians reside.“