World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Review (PC)

World of Warcraft has just turned 10, and its latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, attempts to bring the game back to its roots.

In short, the expansion proves that not only is the game still relevant in this day and age, but that it still has a lot of steam and is able to offer an experience almost as exciting and satisfying as in the days of vanilla.

Granted, Warlords of Draenor doesn’t turn the game on its head but is instead merely content to add more of the same, with some slight improvements and fresh content to explore, as well as a few new features to try out.

Then again, it’s not like it’s easy for anything to have the same impact that The Burning Crusade expansion had. The world is now full of great massively multiplayer online role-playing games, so if you’re expecting a miracle from Blizzard, you’ll be disappointed.

However, if you’re on the fence about returning to the green pastures of Azeroth and its monthly subscription fee, know that you might just find the greatest piece of content since Wrath of the Lich King.

I hope there are no werewolves around

Story

Following the popularity of the Siege of Orgrimmar campaign, the final raid in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, and the mixed reception of the Pandaren race, Blizzard decided to do things old-school, revisiting one of the turning points of Warcraft history.

The action takes place on Draenor, the home world of the orcs, back when it was a lush, luxuriant place, and not the broken husk known as Outland. In addition to this, a lot of legendary characters from throughout the universe’s lore make an appearance, making the story very engaging for people who have been playing since the days of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.

Somehow, it’s just more exciting to follow Blackhand, Ner’zhul (who will go on to become the Lich King), Grom Hellscream, and other VIPs around than it is to follow people you don’t know anything about, and after an expansion exploring a completely new angle, the decision to return to the roots has some impeccable timing.

The Mists of Pandaria expansion ends with the joined forces of the Horde and Alliance capturing Garrosh Hellscream, who then escapes through a portal to the past, establishing an alternate timeline where the orcs don’t drink the blood of the pit lord Mannoroth, and don’t become the slaves of The Burning Legion, a pivotal moment in Warcraft lore.

However, since Garrosh has been blinded by his thirst for power and has gone down the path of dogmatic orc supremacy, he still wants the orcs to conquer everything and is intent to make it so by any means necessary, including employing technology brought from his time and the use of foul magics.

Your adventure explores the past of the Draenei race and many of the key events of alternate Warcraft history, and the core storyline is presented in a very meaningful way, complete with cutscenes that punctuate the main events of the narrative and make your journey feel more epic.

Additionally, after killing pretty much every major character that has ever strayed from the straight and narrow, you are finally recognized as a champion of your people, and are put in charge of one of the armies opposing the Iron Horde, Garrosh’s rebranded band of unruly orcs.

You will still have to assist people who can’t be bothered to put out the fire in their own house, but such is the life of a true hero.

Garrisons introduce a lot of neat mechanics

Gameplay

Thankfully, and a bit surprisingly, the game feels very engaging, and Warlords of Draenor does whatever it can to keep you immersed in the world of Draenor. There are no more flying mounts, which makes you focus on your surroundings more, with the trade-off that it now takes longer to travel.

The upside is that everything is more full of life now, and you are no longer greeted by the same lonely at the top feeling you got when mounting and flying off into the sunset.

Things seem to have slowed down, and there is an increased focus on exploration and discovery, done through a higher incidence of rare monsters and through emergent gameplay, through additional quest objectives triggered by your surroundings.

The rare spawns offer good-quality loot, and there is a small chance that every drop or quest reward is automatically upgraded to a better quality item, a small but satisfying addition.

The core quest-based single-player experience feels better than ever, with an abundance of stuff you can do (or skip and leave for alts to do), and a variety of options at any one time, with the exception of the main quest lines, which you have to go through in order to progress.

The PvP experience focuses on the new area of Ashran, a dedicated, instanced, cross-realm zone where gamers (around 100 per side) can engage in a never-ending battle, complete with a variety of towers to capture and other objectives to complete.

However, the expansion does not come with any new battlegrounds or arenas, focusing all its PvP energies on the new area. The zone has a great potential, but since it’s not easy to coordinate with so many people, it tends to become a mess where everyone just runs to the center and ignores everything else.

Furthermore, if you haven’t been paying attention lately, you can level your toon through PvPing, so if the colossal quest grind is something you would rather avoid, there’s always a more pleasant alternative.

And on the subject of quests, there are significantly fewer of those annoying kill ten rats and bring-me-their-scalps type of errands, which were made increasingly annoying by the fact that, somehow, not every rat seemed to possess a scalp.

The Warcraft universe is still full of people too lazy to get their own bear skins to put in front of the fireplace, but overall, the team at Blizzard made a significant effort to make questing more exciting, following the trend set with Mists of Pandaria’s scenarios, and since I've always loathed the leveling part of WoW, I couldn’t be more pleased with this.

Yes, I can attest to the blackness of his hand

The Garrison

As you invade Draenor, you become the leader of a garrison, your own Horde or Alliance base, enabling you to choose how you wage war, and how to support the assault. You can build a number of structures, such as barracks or buildings that complement your professions, and you also get some new activities to fill your time when you’re in the mood for some solo play.

The bad thing about the Garrison is that there is a limited number of building slots and there are many options when it comes to what you can erect. You have to make some tough choices, but in the end, there is a ton to do and you can get resources and loot for your troubles, so it evens out.

A garrison profession building offers you access to new recipes, the ability to craft items without having that profession, a certain number of reagents per day, and a bunch of optional, fun stuff, like the many other toys that Blizzard has accustomed us to abusing while faffing about in Azeroth.

Additionally, you can also work together with your guildies, building things that they don’t have in order to get the materials you need the most when getting ready for serious raiding.

As you adventure around ancient Draenor, you’ll come across a wide variety of characters that you’ll be able to persuade to join your cause, and you’ll be able to send them on missions from the garrison, getting you better equipment, money and resources.

Each follower has a unique set of abilities, enabling them to counter specific threats during the timed missions, making the system a bit more complex and engaging. Followers level up and get better gear, which allows them to go on more dangerous missions that also offer greater rewards, culminating with raid boss-level loot, for those with enough patience.

Some of the quests you’ll be completing around Draenor are also tied to the Garrison, giving you bonus resources that you can use to upgrade your buildings and create new ones. The inclusion of the Garrison mini-game is a welcome addition for those looking for a wider variety of content, but many will regard them with the same death stare they gave the Pokemon battles, when Blizzard introduced them in Mists of Pandaria.

I for one can do without browser games tacked on to my epic MMO experience, but the guys at Blizzard did a pretty good job making the new features useful. Garrisons introduce a new way to get some gear when you’re still wearing greens (and beyond), and when you’re purple up to your nose hairs, you can still get useful reagents from your Garrison buildings, saving you some farming time, and even craft some basic recipes if you lack the respective profession yourself.

Dungeons

Dungeons are 5-man pieces of content where you get together a tank to soak up damage and distract enemies from the squishier party members, a healer to mend the bodies and souls of combatants, and three damage dealers that are likely to get into trouble and aggro everything in the level.

You then proceed to make the best out of your set of abilities with crowd control, damage mitigation, spell interruption and so on and so forth, with a lot of trash mobs and a few bosses to take down.

Dungeons are great. My feelings are mixed regarding their evolution in recent times though, because I feel a little nostalgic for a long-lost time when I would cautiously venture into the Wailing Caverns or Blackfathom Deeps.

Back then dungeons had a clunkier design and took a little longer to go through, with more fluff and sometimes huge amounts of trash mobs to clear.

In the meantime, Blizzard got cooperative content down pretty good and streamlined the process so that dungeon runs require much less time and have a more straightforward formula.

This means that your time spent in World of Warcraft will be much more efficient, but you won’t get to experience those epic, hour and a half runs of the past.

I've also got burned out and very used to doing them regularly, and my new jaded self has lost all sense of wonder, so it’s not entirely the game’s fault.

There are eight dungeons to go through in the expansion, and they each have an in-depth journal entry describing key mechanics and strategy, which is great, and is something Blizzard should have done from the beginning.

The encounters themselves are interesting and challenging, such as the Grimrail Depot, a dungeon that takes place entirely on a moving train. There are many cool mechanics and the difficulty level is very accessible but requires your full attention, depending, of course, on how good you actually are at playing the game and what group you end up with.

Play Video

Visuals and sound

The art team at Blizzard did a stupendous job with Warlords of Draenor, managing to make the ten-year-old game look gorgeous, and showing once again that art direction is much more important than pixel and polygon count.

The character models got a long overdue makeover, looking significantly better and moving a lot more naturally, and the wealth of color and shape that you’ll experience is, on its own, worth the admission price.

However, the game is still outdated in terms of graphics, and it won’t ever be as stunning and life-like as more recent releases are. It just holds its own gracefully, even after all these years.

The music is, as always, a joy to listen to, and Warlords of Draenor brings more variety to the background soundscape, constantly shifting and following your actions.

The game has always had high production values and a lot of polish, and this expansion is no different, from the variety of battle sounds to the orchestral pieces ranging from full-blown glorious charge to eerie, barely there noises that can hardly be called melodies, but that make the world more complete somehow.

I loved Nagrand when I first visited it in The Burning Crusade expansion, and this time around I loved exploring the old Draenor, teeming with life, benefiting from a much more creative approach toward terrain design, and hiding a lot of secrets, for brave adventurers to uncover.

Exploring Outland was a compelling experience, with every area looking different and telling a distinct story, and while Warlords of Draenor is supposedly showing you a much more mundane world, pitting you against a single enemy, the Iron Horde, Draenor still feels like a mysterious and wondrous place to be in.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion