‘World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth’ review

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth came out of the gate strong. So strong, in fact, that it may be the best expansion in World of Warcraft‘s 14-year history — and it has a chance to keep that title as long as it doesn’t lose momentum.

I have put a few dozen hours into World of Warcraft‘s seventh expansion since its launch on U.S. servers on the night of Aug. 13 and it’s been some of the most fun I’ve had leveling since I started playing WoW in 2005.

Full disclosure on my time with Battle for Azeroth thus far: I leveled a Horde character to 120 and completed all three Zandalar storylines plus put about 20 hours into end-game content. I have also leveled an Alliance character partway through Kul Tiras and completed portions of the Stormsong Valley and Tiragarde Sound storylines. My only experience in Drustavar has been through the eyes of the Horde thus far.

Playing through these zones, each with their own unique but interconnected stories and refreshing designs, immediately brought me back to how I felt when I played vanilla World of Warcraft and some of its earliest expansions. Instead of being a hero with near god-like powers like in recent years, players are back to being more grounded adventurers (going on more grounded, but still enticing adventures).

Stellar stories

Blizzard Entertainment has always done a great job of crafting progression systems in a way that’s incredibly satisfying, and Battle for Azeroth is no exception.

Leveling through Zuldazar, Voldun, and Nazmir in Zandalar was a lot of fun, with twists and turns and genuinely entertaining quests popping up along the way. The storyline through all of it, no matter where it took me, had a consistent set of backdrops that propelled me forward and kept me interested in seeing what was going to happen next.

Both storylines are incredibly compelling and filled with great characters

The biggest backdrop of Battle for Azeroth is the budding of a war between the Horde and the Alliance, two opposing factions that have more or less been on the same side of various struggles for a number of years. The separation of the two factions was refreshing and reminded me of leveling through vanilla WoW with unique zones given to each side (at least at the beginning).

While the expansion kicks off with heavy references and scenes of this war, leveling through the Horde side of the new content it barely came up again. Except for all the times I had to mine Azerite to make sure my faction was the leader in the Azeroth version of a nuclear arms race. The Alliance side of things had some heavier references to to the war, at least in the portions I played, with one scenario in Stormsong Valley where a fleet of Horde aggressors bombed a town.

As that is going on in the background, each side faces a unique sort of threat: The Horde are fighting against the rising threat of an evil Old God creature named G’huun, and the Alliance are working to unseat the corrupt leaders of Kul Tiras who’ve been tainted by the evil Queen Azshara.

G’huun is the focus of the fist expansion’s raid, and Queen Azshara is the focus of the second raid, both of which are not yet released.

Both storylines are incredibly compelling and filled with great characters that are actually memorable beyond their attachment to plot development — something that WoW hasn’t always been so great at achieving. Bwonsamdi in particular, the loa of death (kind of like a god of death) in Zandalar, is such a great, animated character.

The Horde story was so good, in fact, that for the first time in any WoW expansion I decided to finish up all the quest lines immediately before moving onto end-game content. 

Not only that, I made an Alliance character for the first time in 13 years that I didn’t consider a joke just to see the Alliance side of the story. And I’m glad I did, because getting both perspectives on the war made the stories that much better.

The stories of G’huun and the Zandalari trolls, and Queen Azshara and the Kul Tiran humans made me look forward to seeing what happens next in Battle for Azeroth as they deal with their own troubles on the new continents and the war between the Horde and Alliance ramps up.

Questing and gaining power

That said, the quests are not always fun. At times, the three-quests-per-area standard got a little repetitive, and while there were some interesting new takes on questing, some new quests are straight up horrible.

Quests from the Tortollans, a race of turtle people, can be mind-numbingly dumb and slow. One of the standards that you’ll see is one of those matching games arranged in a grid where you can only turn over two items at once to see if they match. Another, and the worst of all the quests I’ve done in 13 years with World of Warcraft, is a turtle “maze” where you slowly guide a slow-ass turtle through a slow-ass grid for seemingly no reason other than to get a reward at the end.

But aside from those, I’d say the questing is mostly well done, if a bit repetitive. It’s really more of a vehicle for story delivery.

In terms of leveling and getting better gear, Battle for Azeroth did away with the legendary weapons players received in Legion and opted for a new sort-of-legendary item that scales up as you play and gather Azerite: The Heart of Azeroth necklace. As you gather more Azerite by just playing the game, its item level increases and so do its stats.

Adjacent to the necklace is the Azerite gear, which is received from quests and dungeons. They are pieces of gear for your head, chest, and shoulders slots with unlockable attributes that you gain as your Heart of Azeroth necklace gains levels, allowing you to customize the bonuses you get from the gear and even boost its item level at a certain point.

It’s a nice way to add some extra customization to the standard gear system without forcing to keep the same weapon for the entire expansion (and the necklace doesn’t even show up on your character model so it’s hard to complain about that).

Zones filled with life

Every new WoW expansion brings players to new lands with new environments, and for a while there it seemed like Blizzard was trying to one-up every expansion with wilder and wilder zones, either by leaning heavily into fantasy elements or sending us to weird, rocky, alien landscapes.

Battle for Azeroth brought it back down to earth a bit, and in doing so delivered environments that felt more natural and lived-in but still didn’t back away from delivering some truly amazing areas.

In Zandalar, there are the areas where the different loas live, like the Garden of the Loa in Zuldazar, which just ooze color and emotion and awe. The reveal of The Heart of Darkness in Nazmir is one of the coolest reveals in all of World of Warcraft, showing the breadth of the blood trolls’ uprising and how much G’huun has corrupted the land.

In Kul Tiras, the mountains of Tiragarde Sound and rolling lands of Stormsong Valley are so welcoming and evocative. Drustavar brings a creepy, gothic vibe that’s been missing from WoW for a long time, and does so brilliantly all the way down to its dungeon Waycrest Manor.

What ties it all together though is the music. You can get theme and vibe across pretty decently with just visuals, but the sound design and soundtracks in Battle for Azeroth are so, so good. While in Legion I turned off the game’s music (in most zones) to listen to my own jams while I played, in BfA I crank the game’s music up.

The two new continents each have their own major city that you spend a good amount of time in, and both have these great, upbeat, jaunty songs that bring you deeper into the atmosphere.

Dungeoneering

Battle for Azeroth brought with it a handful of new dungeons, with each new zone getting at least one, and most of them are fun, refreshing, and exciting to explore with a group of five.

One of the best stand-outs to me is Waycrest Manor, a mansion whose residents have been corrupted by the evils that are spreading through Drustavar. It has a fantastically spooky vibe that runs all the way through its core, down to the basement where the root of its horrible magic resides.

In terms of aesthetic, Temple of Sethraliss in Voldun and Shrine of the Storm in Stormsong Valley are exciting to explore and each have some unique encounters that shake up the typical tank-and-spank method that most dungeons offer.

While most dungeons at least offer some interesting boss fights and mechanics in them, not all of them are particularly enjoyable to run through. Freehold, in particular, mostly takes place in a dark and cramped prison complex that feels a little claustrophobic and sloggish.

End-game offerings

Hitting 120 in Battle for Azeroth opens up a whole bunch of new activities, some of which you gain access to immediately and some others you have to work to obtain.

For one, players get access to the dungeons on the other faction’s continent and after gaining friendly reputation with the new groups they meet get access to world quests, both of which are great ways to get better gear and gold while exploring new areas.

But these aren’t particularly new ideas in World of Warcraft. One of the big new features of Battle for Azeroth unlocks at level 120 — Island Expeditions.

Island Expeditions are a new idea that digs into the island vibe brought in by Battle for Azeroth and allows players to team up in groups of three to venture out onto various islands to gather all-important Azerite while fighting against enemies on the island and completing quests. The twist is that Island Expeditions are also a race against the opposite faction — whether it’s three AI characters or three real players is up to you — but you may have to do a little player vs. player (or fake PvP) if you happen to run into them.

If you’re really into PvP, there is a new battleground called Seething Shore that was introduced earlier this year that’s also a battle of obtaining Azerite. 

Another planned Horde vs. Alliance feature is Warfronts, which isn’t actually PvP but tasks you with engaging your opposing faction in large-scale battles over various landmarks around Azeroth, but interestingly these are not yet available despite the focus of Battle for Azeroth.

As you continue to push through end-game content and you raise your reputations with various groups, you unlock more quests that send you to the opposing faction’s continent where you generally try to mess with them, gather intel on their movements, and, of course, kill a whole bunch of them. These quest lines are fun, but generally pretty short and don’t actually propel you through much of the three opposing zones.

Future of Battle for Azeroth

There is still a lot to come in this expansion, which will probably be out for at least two years given World of Warcraft‘s typical cycle, so there’s a lot unknown about what’s to come and if it will all hold up.

Hopefully BfA doesn’t go the way of Warlord of Draenor and fizzle out almost immediately.

With planned releases of at least two raids and warfronts on the way, it’s likely that the expansion will hold people’s attention for a while.