There are few games I love as much as World of Warcraft, which is why I'm delivering some tough love to Blizzard, which has a lot of work to do to set Battle for Azeroth on the right path.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is the only game that shows I have over a year of playtime within its virtual world of Azeroth. The MMO is approaching its fourteenth birthday, and despite its engine creaking at the seams, Blizzard has nurtured and maintained its player base with unprecedented execution.
In between major expansion drops for PC, Blizzard drops in free content patches, adding new dungeons, raids, and other gameplay features to keep people engaged. The big fully-priced expansion packs, such as Battle for Azeroth, which launched in August 2018, bring about new lands, stories, and leveling content for players, as well as other new game systems and mechanics.
Battle for Azeroth had some of the biggest hype I've seen for a WoW expansion in recent times. On the back of the successful Legion expansion, Blizzard had enough momentum to take the franchise back into the mainstream consciousness. It did so with some drastic story events, which saw major beloved in-game cities completely destroyed while releasing not one, but two, incredible CGI trailers for the events leading up to the expansion.
Indeed, Battle for Azeroth has some of the most exciting narrative and story possibilities ever, as Blizzard develops new tools and pays closer attention to building up new characters. However, the end-game mechanics and systems that govern so much of the gameplay meat are, as of this writing, completely broken and will require a significant pivot to fix.
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