WoW Plunderstorm brings a Battle Royale to Azeroth, with unexpected changes and exciting possibilities

World of Warcraft has been teasing an upcoming content update for a while, but now we finally know what it is. Meet WoW: Plunderstorm, a limited-time battle royale game mode that changes up most of what players expect from the MMO and one that is available today!

Arriving as part of Patch 10.2.6, Plunderstorm is a new game mode accessible to every WoW player with an active subscription to the game (even without any expansions purchased) that works a bit differently from what we’ve come to expect. Gone are the multiple classes of the games, the point-and-click nature of combat, and the min-maxing of dozens of pieces of armor and equipment. Instead of playing as regular characters, you take control of members of a pirate crew, collecting abilities scattered across a region where combat with other pirates takes place in the search for treasure.

Players will have the chance to create a character specifically for Plunderstorm, and just like that you can start queueing (either solo or with another player) to get into a match. Up to 60 players will be able to participate in every session, with combat taking place in the Arathi Highlands, which has been transformed into basically a massive arena for this battle royale. And if you’re familiar with the genre then you already know a bit of what you can expect.

Just as in other BRs, you drop (via parrot gliding) into the map with nothing but your basic attack. Any other abilities you can get are obtained through looting treasure or by defeating NPCs or other players and taking their spells. After a bit of time, a storm will begin to shrink the playable area, forcing players closer to each other into fights until only one pirate remains victorious. But the objective is not only to survive but to gather Plunder throughout the match. This treasure works as a sort of XP exclusive to the mode that will allow you to level up your Renown, which in return grants unlockable cosmetic rewards like mounts, pets, transmogs, and more for use in both WoW Classic and Modern.

World of Warcraft like you’ve never seen it before

A Battle Royale in WoW was a concept that many have previously imagined, as one of the longest-running online games of the past two decades has had enough evolution and growth to basically be an entirely different beast to what it was originally. But what the developers have done with Plunderstorm is truly a massive shakeup to what we’ve come to expect from the MMO.

Yes, it still looks like regular WoW at first glance, with the same models for characters and familiar visual effects and music. But then you start paying attention to the UI, and then its combat mechanics, and you find that there are some huge changes with heavy implications for the title’s future. To begin with, Auto-Attack is gone. It sounds like a minor thing but now you’re in control of every single attack you throw during gameplay, a simple change that makes combat much more action-oriented.

Classes are completely gone as well: instead of having dozens of abilities and spells to choose from, you’ll find these in the map during each match. These are both offensive and defensive, but everyone has access to all of the abilities. Just as with the new attack, most of these abilities have been transformed into skill-shots that require you to track and aim at enemies instead of simply clicking on them. In every match you also get to level up to level 10, which gives you more health, more damage, and better loot.

When you put all of it together, Plunderstorm is an experience that is set apart from World of Warcraft’s traditions. It is experimental and different from what we’re used to, and that in itself is exciting as it opens up the game in general to more permanent changes. Curiously, the team even skipped testing the game mode in the PTR servers, instead opting for internal testing only. “We not only had the plunderstorm team play testing every week. We also had the entire wow team joined in in support to also play tests,” said Ray Bartos, lead producer at Blizzard.

However, as mentioned before this is only a limited event for now. Plunderstorm will be active for around 6 weeks, after which its fate is still a mystery. “When we were talking about, you know, how long should an event like this take? We were coming up with a lot of kind of different numbers,” said WoW’s lead software engineer, Orlando Salvatore. “We want to make sure players have enough time to earn all the great rewards that are that are available, but also not feel like they need to log in every single day and play plunderstorm for hours to be able to achieve that we have a lot of really cool rewards. We have 40 renowned levels.”

“We want to hear feedback from players. Is this something that they want to see more of? Is this something that you don’t want to continue? That’s something we’re gonna be looking for on social media on forums, you know places like that.. are people enjoying this, and are people having fun rather than saying. “Hey, this is a permanent fixture”.”

The experimental nature of Plunderstorm is evident in every aspect of its design, which is why it could be very exciting for old and new players alike. It is not common to see the devs behind this nearly 20-year-old game try out such radically different ideas, but now this surprise release is here, available for all subscribers to enjoy and try out. Who know, maybe we’ll see more experiences like this in the game’s future. Maybe some of its ideas could bleed into modern WoW. And maybe, it could be the beginning of its revitalization.