WoW Factor: Will The War Within be ready for launch?

The surprising announcement of the date for World of Warcraft: The War Within prompted a, I am sure, dear reader with a large number of helpful opinions to send me an email with a very friendly letter about how I must feel like an idiot for mispredicting the date of the expansion. Which, I suspect, a kind whether I actually predicted a date mathematically rather than using a time window, or whether you assumed I thought these measurements were some kind of law.

But they are not. The title is even “Guess to the release date.” The data showed that September was early, but it matched the dates well enough, and the expansion is coming at the very end of August, so it’s not really that far away. That’s faster than I expected, but it doesn’t make me question the fabric of reality like I just saw Shug-Niggurath in the woods. But that raises a new question: Is The war within will be ready for this start?

First of all, it should be said that this isn’t about whether there will be some secret delay. That’s not really an issue. There have been delays to expansions, but not nearly often. You can bet that the game will come out on the day of the announcement, and that’s what everyone expects from the executives down.

It is also important to note that I am approaching this from the perspective of not participating in the beta; I am not buying beta access because my current financial situation does not really allow it and because I do not like this setup Really uncomfortable, so what I would like to see and what actually happens are a pretty good match. Not that it changes much; I don’t think the game’s beta at the end of June will actually be indicative of what will happen over the next two months.

This is a more abstract question. Will the expansion be ready in time to be released in two months? If this expansion is indeed progressing faster than most other expansions – and the math says so – is there a reason for this, or are we at a point where we Mega Man 3 Levels of accelerated delivery along the lines of “as long as it works, we’ll just ship the damn game”?

Ironically, I think one of the biggest aids to releasing this game in a realistic timeframe is the fact that The war within is somehow undemanding in the best sense.

I definitely think the game has failed at class availability over the years (I wrote a column about needing more new classes than new races, and Dragonflight didn’t solve the problem at all), but just adding Earthen to the game isn’t exactly a big deal. In fact, adding hero talents is one way to make the difference between talent trees, borrowed power, And new options in a pretty elegant way. You don’t exactly make a new character, but you Also get new toys, and yet it is also connected to what you already do and to class identity, and it is special not borrowed. And it prevents the talent trees from needing a whole new line to make sense.

Other than that… the flying stays the same, even if it’s not called “dragon riding” anymore because maybe you’re not riding a dragon. That was the big change and can easily be carried over. There are some new systems to bring your alts together a little better. And of course there’s a story and quests and so on. But mechanically, Blizzard doesn’t have to reinvent the game just to release this expansion.

This may sound very simple and obvious. “It’s easier to release an expansion when you don’t have to build huge new systems that are used just for that expansion.” It’s so simple that it feels stupid to say thatbut it does hold true to the hope of getting this expansion out before the end of the summer.

Damn, the prepatch means that it will be the first time in a long time that your character probably won’t transform into something complete before the next expansion, aside from obvious talent changes. That’s kind of commendable.

This isn’t to say that hero talents are a piece of cake. You still have to design talent trees that fit two different specializations and are valuable to both, which can be difficult if one specialization is healer and the other is tank, for example. But they’re less of a design change and more of completely new talent trees from the ground up.

All of this is a good reason to say, “Yeah, it’s going to get done.” Is there a counterargument? Well, yes, to a certain extent, but I think it’s also important to note that despite Blizzard’s longstanding inability to stick to a schedule, this not was a big problem due to Shadowlands or DragonflightIt definitely seems like tighter schedules are being followed now and we are much more reliably receiving updates on time and as planned.

But that doesn’t always mean that they are very good.

The tricky thing about going so quickly between announcement and release is that you have less time to make sure what you’re building is actually good. I was just talking about how Blizzard is under less pressure than with some previous expansions. This isn’t about a few people saying “the Azerite armor system sucks” and the developers saying “no, it’s not” and then singing so loudly they can’t hear you. It’s good that that’s not up for debate.

Blizzard does have a history of ignoring unwanted feedback. And with a much shorter timeline, including a beta that took a lot paying Not only do participants have less time to repeat feedback, they also have much less time to formulate meaningful feedback in the first place. This makes it much easier to get something to market without ever being sure that it is really good or functional.

Of course, this is also the same problem that was addressed in the WoW Factor last week: Wow has the habit of failing again and again after good expansions, and The war within has to be good in some way. That said, part of the problem is really just making sure it’s good, but it also means… getting the damn thing out there and hopefully impressing players.

Part of me even thinks it would be better if parts of the expansion Are sloppy in that regard. Maybe it’s just me, but something that is coursing with passionate energy, even if it gets shaggy in places, will be a bigger boon than something that is mathematically certain but lacks an invigorating impulse. But that’s well beyond the speculative scope of this particular column, and if we’re being honest, I have something else in mind for next week and beyond.

War never changes, but World of Warcraft does, with nearly two decades of history and a huge influence on the MMORPG industry. Each week, read Eliot Lefebvre’s new edition of WoW Factor, where he examines the massive MMO, its interaction with the larger world of online gaming, and what’s new in the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor.

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