World of Warcraft: The War Within is a ‘big and ambitious’ challenge to celebrate 20 years of franchise

If there was one moment that best defined BlizzCon 2023, it was the return of Chris Metzen to the stage. The voice of one of the architects of Warcraft, who will return as the franchise’s executive creative director at the end of 2022, rang out to applause from the audience during the opening ceremony. Metzen’s return also signaled a major change in the structure of World of Warcraft’s next expansions, with the upcoming The Worldsoul Saga, a series of three expansions that will tell a grand arc to bring closure to several storylines that have been running throughout the game since its launch.

As part of the activities at BlizzCon 2023, we had the opportunity to sit down with May Florez-Garcia, Lead Gameplay Engineer, and Jade Martin, Lead Combat Designer on the next expansion’s development team to learn more about these early stages.

Celebrate 20 Years of WoW with a Big Challenge

The next Worldsoul saga is “something big and ambitious” that the development team wants to celebrate 20 years of the franchise, and something they see as having great potential for both them and players to continue telling new stories, as well as bringing closure to the stories that have emerged over the past two decades. It’s something definitive new to development, we’ve never announced three expansions at once,” Martin commented. “There is a lot of story to tell within the World of Warcraft. The beautiful thing about the Worldsoul saga is we are giving ourselves time to revisit some of those unfinished storylines and wrap them all.”

And with those 20 years comes the challenge of having a lot of history that new players, or those who have missed several expansions, may find as a barrier to returning. With that in mind, the team believes that this new expansion has “a lot of opportunities” for players to learn about these characters and what has happened. “There’s 20 years of history and lore to catch up on, but a lot of it is how expedited expansions can be when how fast you have to tell a story between a single expansion,” comments Martin. “It takes some time to tell that story, he goal is to develop those deep connections with someone like Anduin Wrynn. He’s obviously going to be a prominent character in [The War Within] expansion, as well as Thrall. There are a lot of opportunities for players to get to know [the characters] because we are getting a lot of the Worldsoul saga.

New Gameplay Features

With a new expansion comes new features and ways to play, and The War Within is no exception. This time around, there are a handful of features and systems, but both Florez-Garcia and Martin shared their favorites. One of them is Warbands, which is something that is very targeted to play with a whole bunch of different allies,” Florez-Garcia said. “it’s the combination of all your characters in the same BattleNet account. It shares 11 reputations, factions, and getting transmogs to make everything much easier.”

“Delves offers an opportunity for me to do some outdoor exploring,” said Martin. “These are just small areas that you get to explore, you’d be able to go seamlessly and explore by yourselves or with up to 8 players. It’s not quite a dungeon, there will be bosses to defeat to unlock treasures. It’s just like an Indiana Jones kind of adventure.”

World of Warcraft: The War Within is expected to be released in the fall of 2024.