World of Warcraft's The War Within expansion has fans of the MMO eating pretty good right now. Blizzard's approach to storytelling is greatly improved, the grind isn't as oppressive, and the place is generally friendlier to solo- and alt-inclined players. But that's not to say that things haven't been bumpy at times.
World of Warcraft's new solo-friendly dungeons, called Delves, took a few patches to figure out, the 11.05 patch's balance pass had some players protesting in-game, and a $90 version of a mount that costs even more on the Black Market Auction House left fans divided. And then there are the bugs. Just recently, Blizzard revealed that the reason some raid content became unplayable was that devs set about rebuilding "core parts" of the 20-year-old MMO.
Despite all that, game director Ion Hazzikostas is pretty happy with where World of Warcraft has ended up – even if he wished he had caught the odd scaling bug or two.
- Blizzard boss says keeping World of Warcraft players happy for 20 years is so hard because the MMO is filled with "different demographics that only have so much time in their day"
- A 13-year WoW veteran formed his own studio to make an RPG that plays like "World PvP: The Game" and feels like a mini MMO channeling "early Blizzard"
"We have a lot of work ahead of us and a lot of exciting story to tell and systems and features to unfold," he tells GamesRadar+ in an interview. "But, reflecting on the first couple of months of War Within, honestly, at a very high level, there aren't too many regrets for me as a game director."
He continues: "And, of course, yes, if I could catch that scaling bug. I'd love to go back and fix a couple of scaling bugs and things like that. But at the high level in terms of how the big bets we made and planning out the feature slate and building this world and kicking off this ambitious new story, I think all of those have been paying off. It's been awesome seeing the excitement and speculation about the narrative as it kicks off, seeing players jumping into Delves and really discovering an all-new play style that didn't exist just a few months ago, that now is, I think, on its way to being enshrined as a part of the WoW end game and so much more."
World of Warcraft has plenty ahead of it, too. The War Within's first major update, Undermined, takes us to the goblin capital next year to drive some souped-up cars, tackle a new eight-person raid, two more Delves, and much more. Even further afield is the second expansion in WoW's Worldsoul saga, Midnight. A full reveal is coming next year, though we know for sure it'll finally feature player housing. The future is bright, some more bug fixes permitting.
For more, check out our World of Warcraft: The War Within review.
"If this is just how it is, then yeah, that's the end": WoW Classic's most famous hardcore guild calls time for now after multiple raiders lose their MMO characters to DDoS attacks
My newest MMO hero is World of Warcraft Priest 'Chimneytime,' who got an official "warning" from Blizzard for making too many people get trapped inside chimneys
