Blizzard's Vision For Warcraft Is Clearer Than Ever

It may sound like we're being unrepentant hopium dealers, but that Blizzcon left one message for all to see. Blizzard have a level of confidence in World of Warcraft beyond anything we've seen - maybe ever.

Story: The Worldsoul Saga

What expansion hook, what single storyline could possibly match such a historic occasion?
We started thinking about, well I did, the good ol’ days, right? and some of those early mythic ideas that kind of established the background of Warcraft.

The one thing WoW has been missing for years now, more than anything else, is a director with a vision for more than just the nuts and bolts. A creative director, one who lives and breathes the Warcraft universe, understanding why we've all loved the world from the start. That's Metzen. So to hear from him directly that he's going back to the roots of Warcraft's mythos for ideas means that, whatever the First Ones are, whatever the Cosmic chart has to say, whatever was cooking in Shadowlands - that's going to take the backseat while Metzen drives us home. Mostly.

I started thinking about, even some of the newer ideas that played out more recently, but still in a way feel a little unresolved.

A storyline that, in almost every way, feels like the culmination of the first 20 years of our storytelling.

The creative roadmap laid out is a final one, a complete one. Between the confidence in finally showing us Anduin and THAT SWORD, and telling us that this will be a culmination, we can trust that we'll stop the perpetual introduction of new things before old things are finished with. More importantly, that they know that's what they were doing and know not to.

The Worldsoul Saga is so epic it cannot be contained within any single expansion. It is built to play out over multiple expansions over the next few years.

For the first time, they set out a plan longer than "What can we release next?"
When your head is underwater, it's natural for your only thought to be how you're going to get your next breath. Or when you're hungry, your next meal.
Laying out a plan like this is ambitious, but it's planned. In order to plan, you can't be worried about what you're doing next.

To continue the analogy, I was taught when I was younger that one of the accelerators for human development was moving to Europe, where the cold winters were deadly. Those who didn't plan food storage and prepare to stay warm didn't make it, leaving only those who could see the future and be ready for it. I don't know if that's true, but I've always believed in the message behind it. With Metzen and their scaled-up team, it seems like they've spent the last year preparing to flourish, instead of trying not to drown.

My hope, our dear hope, is that you can see when it comes to WoW’s storytelling, we ain’t screwing around. We are playing for all the marvels. We are working to establish a thundering heartbeat for this franchise.

Towards the end, he directly promises us a future. And from Metzen, and a Blizzard now under the wing of Xbox, something we'll talk about on the channel VERY soon... we can't help but believe in it, at least a little. A thundering heartbeat sounds good after years of thinking the flatline is due any second. And no, it probably isn't a reference to the heart of Lei-Shen.

Gameplay: Delves, Warbands & The War Within

We want to meet you where you are. We want to respect your time. We want to offer you the ability to choose how you want to spend that time each day, each night in Azeroth.

Big words from a man we've lost trust in before. Can we believe him this time? Let's take a look at the Great Vault:

It now has a row for World content, which includes the new Delves. PvP gearing is moving to a choice-based system with more Conquest, and the Great Vault will be PvE-only now. For players who want to hit BiS as fast as possible, this is probably going to make them want to fill all 9 slots like usual.
But for players who don't feel the urge to engage in harder dungeons or raids, this is supposed to be for you. Many paths to the same goal. And the path is important.

If you wanted progression, if you wanted goals, if you wanted a deeper, more structured experience, frankly we were letting you down. We want to change that. That's what Delves represent for World of Warcraft.

An apology and statement of intent. Without seeing how the Delves themselves pan out, we can't say if this will be the "M+ for solo/world players" it needs to be, but that's their aim. It seems so obvious in hindsight, instead of making Withered Army Training, then Island Expeditions, then Visions, then Torghast, why not make one system that's extensible and can be evolved without starting from scratch each expansion?
They seem to have that figured out. It just took them a while. With seasonal progression, gearing for your seasonal NPC companion, attached narrative and exposition, and the weaving-in of existing world content, WoW might be scratching the one big itch it really hasn't since becoming an instance-focused theme park.

I feel like I could probably just save 10 minutes this panel by just saying account wide everything and like click through the next slides, like kinda that.

Warbands, then - "account-wide everything". Like with Dragonflight taking the big risk, technically and design-wise, to change how flight works forever, The War Within is promising to make the game respect your time even more. Theoretically, will never again have to repeat the same progress on an alt, except for the last few item levels of gearing. Delve progress, Renowns, bank items, gold, everything. Everything.

This is change. Profound change. This is unravelling the essence of how WoW has worked for alt players since the very beginning. More than anything else, it's listening to feedback. We've been asking for account-wide everything, and they aren't bringing us an excuse, or a rationale, or an argument. Ion went on stage and might as well have said "We are bringing you account-wide everything, as long as our engineers can make it work."
He went a little bit further, to support why they want to do that too - and it's in direct opposition to what he's said before.

Going forward, we want progress earned on reputations to not really matter which character you’re doing it on, at the end of the day, it’s the same content, it’s the same experience. If you’ve gained access to some perk, or some recipe, having to re-earn it, not terribly compelling.

"Not terribly compelling." He delivered that with a smirk. Not an apology in tone, but one in essence, like every hint Metzen made that the story team had lost their way. No more "well, people might want to replay content or do the grind again...", just "yep, we're on it."

And let's not forget cross-realm guilds - they're self-explanatory, but just pay attention to how Ion rationalised it:

Philosophically, this is another step towards one of our goals, of just tearing down barriers, making the game as social as possible, as easy as possible to play with who you want to play with… regardless of your server, regardless of your faction, as much as possible, you want to play WoW with someday, let’s make that happen.

A game without barriers. With something for everyone to do. With a 3-expansion plan to finish a story. With a team that's making philosophical changes and promises.

Like with Metzen, this was an Ion with confidence. Only time will tell if these promises manifest in a way that we'll feel - because we've been down the road of hope and listening to promises before. And I'm pretty sure, as a community, we've said "no, it feels different this time" each time too. This time, though, I'm willing to trust the plan, and follow the vision.

Bonus: Metzen's Writing

It turns out the beautiful announce cinematic for The War Within was written entirely by Metzen. Christie Golden revealed to a fan at Blizzcon that she usually handles cinematics, but that Metzen did this one himself. His idea, his writing. Maybe there's a reason it landed. With his ability to tell stories as a guiding hand, every major storytelling beat could have the same gravitas, the same soul, that Metzen breathed into the franchise in the first place. Not to idolize the man's writing, because it's not perfect, but he understands what people want and that is much more important.

Bonus 2: What Didn't They Announce?

Where's the TV show or movie that Metzen and Ybarra teased? What's coming after Warcraft Rumble? Who knows? We sure don't, but we can be damn sure something is.
Here are snippets from interviews with Blizzard President Mike Ybarra and Warcraft General Manager John Hight with The Verge and Bloomberg.

In the two years he has been in charge, Ybarra said, he had to run many decisions up the chain of executives at Activision, slowing everything down. “Going to Phil and saying, ‘Hey, can we do this?’ I think he would look at me and go, ‘Run your studio,’” Ybarra said. “I do think our decision-making will be faster.”

“It’s not me saying, ‘Go make a StarCraft game,’” Ybarra said. “I need to have someone who has the vision and passion that comes with the idea, and I’ll bet on that team.”

“We’re not afraid to create new IPs,” he says. “We’re not afraid to turn models upside down.” He says he looks for teams that come with an idea — “that can be someone that has an idea for a four-hour experience or a 400-hour experience” — and for Blizzard, “I’m open to all of those ideas.”

To put it simply: Blizzard's future, across IPs but especially within Warcraft, has more potential than perhaps ever before. They've got a backer with deep pockets and the desire to grow an audience before their bank balance. Where this will lead in the far future, it's hard to say, but in the meantime, we can expect the most aggressively player-first Blizzard we've seen since the mid-00s.