The War Within will be happy – and 2 that will be bored

World of Warcraft: The War Within continues the success of Dragonflight. But not everyone will be happy with it – because something is missing.

The next expansion for World of Warcraft is not far away. The War Within will be released at the end of August, ushering in the saga surrounding the world soul. Blizzard is bringing a few new features, but is skimping on the really big highlights – or so it seems. We take a look at the upcoming expansion and reveal who can look forward to The War Within and who might not be happy.

Solo players finally get real progress

Even though most of the more dedicated players travel in groups and do dungeons or raids, there is a huge number of WoW heroes who travel alone. They play through the campaign story, do some world quests and farm reputation, but are not so interested in the endgame content where you have to rely on groups.

For these characters, it was always “out of steam” pretty quickly, because the maximum equipment was quickly reached.

With the “Delves” there is for the first time a really solid progression system for solo players.

The depths can be thought of as large caves that can be found all over the world. There are 13 depths in total and what you can experience in them changes every week. Alongside NPCs like Brann Bronzebeard, you explore the depths and at the end you find a treasure chamber with some really solid loot.

By the way, the visits to the depths also ensure that your “Weekly Chest” is filled with content. This means that even solo players can receive a really strong item once a week that is on a par with heroic raids.

If you want, you can also do the depths with friends – the difficulty adapts to the group size.

Apart from that, all dungeons in The War Within can be completed with NPC companions right from the start. This means you don’t have to rely on others for the story experience and can do everything at your own pace.

Collectors will be damn happy

The second group that should be jumping for joy with The War Within are the collectors. With patch 11.0 – the start of the expansion – not only will many things be account-wide, but collecting transmogrifications will also be much, much easier.

In the future, you will be able to add any item to your collection, regardless of whether your character can actually use it.

To clarify: Currently, as a mage, you only collect cloth templates and weapons that you can use with the mage. So if you find plate or a two-handed sword, it won’t be added to your collection.

With The War Within, this restriction is removed. As a mage, you could then collect items in the plate, chain or leather category and also add weapon types to your collection that you cannot use at all.

However, your mage cannot use the plate items themselves for transmogrification. However, if you create a warrior, paladin or death knight, they can use the plate templates collected by the mage.

Finally freedom for many characters

Many people play only one character in World of Warcraft and have done so for many years – perhaps a twink to switch off with. But many players play multiple characters, sometimes even one from each class. Those who frequently switch between characters have to deal with many different problems.

Firstly, quests have to be repeated in order to unlock new items. Then each character needs reputation to be able to buy rewards and also has to farm resources.

All of this is drastically reduced in The War Within, because there is the “Warband” feature. In short, this means that pretty much all of your character unlocks are account-wide.

This is particularly important when it comes to reputation. Reputation and the fame associated with it are also account-wide. So if you have reached the maximum with one character, then all characters have reached it at the same time. Conversely, this also means that you cannot receive reputation for story quests more than once. So there is no reputation advantage for you if you complete the same quests multiple times with different characters.

The second big point is your currencies. Numerous currencies that cannot actually be exchanged or traded can now be sent back and forth between your different characters via a menu for a small fee. Gone are the days when you had to buy complicated special packages from traders to do this – this can now be done centrally via a menu item.

No big highlight as a feature

Those who might not be happy with The War Within are a group of players who are longing for a new, major feature that lasts throughout the entire expansion and is the focus of attention.

Above all, The War Within continues Dragonflight’s trend of improving the basic structure of the game and ensuring that WoW remains attractive in the coming years and improves and expands meaningful, long-term systems.

This comes at the expense of big and new features.

Anyone hoping for new systems, such as a garrison, housing or something like the Order Hall with the artifact weapons or just the covenants from Shadowlands, will probably be disappointed. Because The War Within actually has little new to offer on this front.

Because everything that The War Within announces as new in the trailers are basically just small things. Although they lead to a massive improvement in the quality of life, the depths are not suitable as a “brand new feature” – they are basically a mixture of Torghast and scenarios. The hero talents are also, if you look at them more objectively, just a small expansion of the talent system.

Anyone who is waiting for a real blockbuster as new content could be significantly disappointed by The War Within.

The War Within offers more of the familiar – but very little that is really new.

Story fans get no closure

World of Warcraft has a reputation for often not really telling stories to the end. Some storylines are picked up, followed for a while, and then discarded. Some characters step into the spotlight, only to disappear for years and essentially play no role.

Sometimes World of Warcraft seems to lack a common story thread that leads somewhere, brings several stories together and brings them to a conclusion.

Anyone who thinks that The War Within will bring such an ending is mistaken – because that is not what is intended.

The War Within is just the beginning of a three-part saga that revolves around the world soul of Azeroth. Triggered by the mysterious Xal’atath with its complex story, this is just the first of three parts and therefore cannot provide a satisfying ending.

This inevitably means that The War Within can only begin, which will then be continued and – hopefully – concluded in the upcoming expansions “Midnight” and “The Last Titan”.

Which group do you belong to? Are you looking forward to The War Within? Or are you not convinced by the features of the new WoW expansion?