The story mode for the raid in World of Warcraft was announced with great fanfare. But the feature isn’t really that good, says MeinMMO demon Cortyn.
Not only did the first season of World of Warcraft: The War Within start yesterday, but a new raid mode is also available – the “Story Mode”. This gives you the opportunity to take on the last boss of the new raid, Queen Ansurek, on your own. This should give everyone the opportunity to experience the finale of the raid – even without a raid group.
WoW: The War Within – Powers Within
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What bothers me the most is the fact that the mechanics don’t play any role in story mode. That’s not a problem in principle – because in LFR the mechanics are often so simple that they hardly matter. But there’s one difference: the mechanics are at least fully present.
Even if the major abilities cause little damage, they are at least playable in their entirety. However, this is not the case with the story mode variant.
This means that the story mode variant teaches the boss “wrong”. What you see here is simply not the mechanics experience that you get in normal or heroic mode. The mechanics are there in parts – but not completely. And that makes it very strange.
When Queen Ansurek sends out a poison wave, you’re supposed to jump over it and avoid the damage. But the sub-mechanics to jump over that wave simply don’t exist.
Even in the final phase of the boss fight, where you actually jump through portals to avoid a deadly mechanic, these portals are simply missing.
In both cases, the answer is: the mechanics that cause the damage are there – but not the mechanics to avoid that very damage. So the correct answer to the problem is missing.
I realize that you can’t or don’t want to achieve the complexity of a real boss fight for the story mode. But mechanics that work “wrong” on purpose only lead to these players making mistakes in the long run when they visit the normal raid (or even in LFR). That’s just not a good solution.
There is no loot for the story mode, by the way, although the reward from the quest is relatively generous. This means that you can have a pretty strong item made, so the (one-time) visit to the story mode is definitely worth it.
The presentation feels wrong
The way the boss fight is presented in the story also seems strange. You complete a small series of quests in the City of Threads until the vizier – relatively suddenly – says: “Now it’s time to kill the queen.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. But the transition into the raid also seems a little strange. You say “I’m ready” and are teleported into the raid – together with 9 NPC companions, right before the boss fight against Ansurek.
This just feels wrong – especially since everything else in the story mode raid is already dead. This results in you just being thrown to the end of the raid, which feels historically incongruous and rushed.
In my opinion, the story mode is a nice idea, but so far it’s only experimental and not really thought through to the end. The idea can certainly be improved in the future and be a good alternative if you just want to see the story. But in the current case, this variant seems more like a foreign body that doesn’t really fit into the story – strange for a “story mode”.
If you want to vote on how good the new expansion is, we have a big poll about WoW The War Within and its features here.