A Tauren paladin rattled up on his robot mount right in the middle of one of World of Warcraft: The War Within's final quests. It would've been nice to see a sweet conversation between two major characters who were exchanging apologies after being separated for years, but instead I was staring at Commander Digbickers' set of high-level gear as he took a break from his daily routine. I couldn't even see the speech bubbles over his massive form, which normally wouldn't bother me, but there are glimmers of an older WoW here, one where I actually care what two important characters are saying to each other, and one I thought we'd left behind.
World of Warcraft: The War Within is an expansion that thrives off of its characters and their tender interactions. Missing even a second of a conversation to another player passing by reminded me that, oh right, I'm playing a 20-year-old old MMO, and the other half of it is all about funneling you into a routine that makes numbers go up. No matter how much WoW has revitalized its storytelling, it's still a game mired by the perpetual grind it's become.
I've only dabbled in WoW since spending most of my teenage years going on 25-player raids when I should've been studying, and The War Within is Blizzard's call for people like me to return, to "come home" , and it only took me a few hours of readjusting to see why. Actual storytelling, not a series of Marvel movie catastrophes, is important again; characters are important again; worldbuilding .