World of Warcraft has always dabbled in the space beyond Azeroth. The Orcs came through the Dark Portal to serve as the antagonists of the original Warcraft real-time strategy games, a spaceship crashes into the islands north of Kalimdor in The Burning Crusade, and Warlords of Draenor introduced a whole other alternate timeline.
But The War Within — the newest World of Warcraft expansion and the first stage of the three-expansion Worldsoul Saga arc (which includes Midnight and The Last Titan) — does a deft job of weaving these extraplanar elements in with the Azeroth players have come to know and love.
In The War Within, heroes chase an ancient, unknown threat into the deep and mysterious parts of Azeroth. The big cosmic war foreshadowed by previous expansions — between unknowable foundational forces of reality — looms over the players, and these factions’ schemes have filtered down into the very bones of our world.
“A huge part of the excitement going on with the beginning of this initial Saga is there’s a lot of familiar faces, right? There’s characters we’ve had experience with in the past, like Anduin and Alleria,” said Morgan Day, associate game director of World of Warcraft, in a call with Polygon. “If there was a main character of The War Within, I’d have to say it’s Alleria. We’re also revisiting villains of the past, like Xal’atath.
“This is the Void stepping out of the shadows,” added Day. “We’ve seen them pulling strings in the past. We’ve seen Old Gods, which are a creation of the Void. This is our opportunity to come face-to-face with the Void as an entity more holistically.”
Blizzard published a cosmic map charting the universe’s six foundational forces nearly a decade ago, and players are still puzzled over these forces and how they’re represented in-game. The War Within sets up a conflict between two of those great forces: Shadow and Light. In Shadowlands, we visited the realms of Death, a very close-up experience with an abstract concept. Dragonflight reversed course, taking those abstract cosmic concepts and injecting them into life on Azeroth instead of having them in a separate realm.
This trend of bringing cosmic elements to the homefront continues in The War Within. For instance, the new player race is the Earthen. The Earthen are dwarven predecessors, and servants of the godlike beings of Order, the Titans.. The Titans left infrastructure behind, but it has slowly fallen apart, leaving their subordinates behind to figure things out.
These golem-like beings have been running on autopilot, doing the bidding of beings who have long since abandoned them. They’re only now starting to ask what these routines are for, and this line of inquiry grants them independence — and the drive to join either the Horde or the Alliance.
“This is the Worldsoul Saga, so what Morgan shared is the entry of it, the first part of this trilogy, where we’re diving deep into Azeroth,” said Tina Wang, art director at Blizzard. “We’re starting to delve into those mysteries of the nature of Azeroth and the Titans, right up until we go into [the final Worldsoul Saga] expansion The Last Titan.”
Knife wife takes the spotlight
At first glance, Xal’atath looks quite a lot like previous antagonist Sylvanas Windrunner — they’re both sassy and smug, they’re both female elves, and they’re both extremely talented at manipulation and murder.
Wang noted that Sylvanas’ roots are “within the humanity of World of Warcraft” due to her mortal upbringing and connection with other key members of the cast, while Day said that “Sylvanas is straightforward; she would take the fight to you. Xal’atath is more scheming. That’s one of the fun things we get to see as we progress throughout The War Within and the Worldsoul Saga. What are these schemes she’s working through, and how are we going to foil her plans?”
“We really wanted to create a unique villain, someone who felt extremely intimidating. If you look at her design, she’s light, right?” said Wang. “She floats, she doesn’t walk, and even then her armor and her cloak, it’s like stars. There’s something cosmic about her.”
“One of the fun things to explore with the Void is — as a society, as a culture — one of the major themes we talk about is that they’re about who is the strongest, who is the alpha predator,” said Day. Some of Xal’atath’s manic glee shows through in the Threads of Destiny animation, showing wide, unblinking eyes, a shark-like grin, and even weird frame-skip effects.
The main plot of The War Within will center around Alleria and Xal’atath, but the expansion has a lot to juggle — it is, after all, an exception. The main plot will continue into Midnight and The Last Titan. Usually, a World of Warcraft narrative is contained in one expansion or breadcrumbed slowly across several unrelated expansions.
“As we discuss the story, we want to make sure it’s digestible and understandable,” said Day. “Something we constantly talk about is, All right, how many characters are we introducing? If you aren’t familiar with all these characters, is it going to be overwhelming?”
Day notes that the team works on a “mad scientist whiteboard,” where they’ve plotted out plans for the Worldsoul Saga. But the other side of the coin is local stories, campaigns that play out in one zone or one settlement. These characters, and their stories, are what will determine the success of The War Within. As we explore these new lands, digging into the hidden realms of Azeroth in search of ancient Void mysteries, we’ll need to stop and smell the roses along the way. No matter how cosmic and bewildering the main plot gets, much of the appeal of World of Warcraft still lies in the little people affected by the world’s endless war, disaster, and upheaval.