Beta testers are complaining about the lack of quests in World of Warcraft: The War Within. We asked Blizzard what this was about – and got an answer.
The beta of The War Within is accessible to many people because you can buy your way into the test of the latest WoW expansion. When leveling through the new areas, there was always one point of criticism: there are few quests. We confronted Blizzard with this accusation and received an answer as to what it was all about.
WoW: Trailer for the release date of The War Within
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We had the opportunity to speak to Blizzard and ask some of the pressing questions about the upcoming add-on “The War Within” in an interview.
Maria Hamilton, lead game designer of World of Warcraft, answered our questions.
We asked: The areas in The War Within seem to have fewer quests than usual and some players are unhappy about this. Why did you decide to reduce the quests?
Maria Hamilton explained:
The campaign is shorter than it has been in the past, but the amount of quests is quite comparable in terms of local stories, so it’s possible that players haven’t found these stories or that they weren’t available during the beta.
We made the campaign a little shorter this time because we know there are some players who don’t enjoy the story aspects as much and don’t want to play it as much. That’s totally fine.
What we’ve made part of the campaign is what we think is necessary for you to understand the basics of what’s going on. And then we’ve moved our other stories about the places and characters into our local stories. They’re not marked with a campaign sign, they’re just regular quests.
That was a conscious decision. We want people to understand what they need to understand, but then they can level up in a way that they like.
We don’t want to force anyone to play a long campaign if they don’t enjoy it.
Up until now, it was often the case in World of Warcraft that the campaign had to be completed in order to unlock important features. Often, this even had to be done with every character. This is not the case in The War Within. Once you have completed a quest chain, it is considered “completed by your warband”.
Your twinks can then enjoy all the benefits as if they had already completed these quests and can even hide the corresponding quests completely. If you want, you can of course play the quests multiple times.
Optional dialogues and questions for all story fans
But that doesn’t mean there’s less story, as Hamilton further explains:
We have included a lot of optional stuff for people who [sich für die Geschichte interessieren]. You can ask many of the characters lots of questions and listen to longer “stay a while and listen” dialogues to learn more about the characters or the world. This is always optional. We don’t want to force players to stop and listen to dialogue if they aren’t interested in it.
In addition, parts of the quests were not playable at all. A large part of the quest series that leads to the new expansion was not available. Instead, the journey begins after the end of a catastrophic incident – and we will find out how that plays out in a few days.
What does that mean? In plain language, this means that The War Within has roughly the same number of quests as Dragonflight or other expansions. The main campaign is just a little shorter. So if you only follow the most important missions, you will complete the areas relatively quickly. The “mandatory part” is therefore significantly shorter.
Even in other expansions, there were always many camps spread across the areas that had no quests but still offered interesting missions.
We’ll probably see for ourselves in a few weeks how long it takes to complete all the quests. The launch of World of Warcraft: The War Within is in about 5 weeks. Then we can finally level up to level 80 and see what Xal’atath has planned for Azeroth.