World of Warcraft: The War Within Season 1 Details

With a release date finally set for the next expansion of World of Warcraft, players have finally been given details as to what they can expect for the first season of that expansion, The War Within. Set to be released on August 26, 2024, Season 1 of The War Within will feature a lot of new content but also include some controversial old content. Players that have purchased the Epic Edition of the xpac are able to play all this Season 1 content right now in the War Within beta, which was released on June 5^th. Let’s dive into what these Epic Edition players are saying as they are having their first experience with what Season 1 will look like.

First and foremost, The War Within Season 1 will start exactly three weeks after the August 26^th release date. This gives time for players to level and gear up through quests; normal, heroic, and mythic dungeons; the new Delves content; and whatever else the new expansion has in store for players. During this three-week period, mythic plus (M+) dungeons and the new raid will not be available, but four of the new dungeons that will be in Season 1 M+ will be available to play in regular mythic from day one of the expansion.

Once the three-week waiting period is over, everything included in Season 1 except for mythic raiding will be available to play – mythic raid comes a week after. Here is what players can expect on the first day of the Season 1 launch:

• A completely new raid called Nerub’ar Palace, which will feature 8 bosses, new gear, and tier sets based on class hero talents. There is also a new difficulty being added to the raid, Storymode, which allows 1 to 10 players to play through the raid and experience the story of the raid rather than any difficulty. This means the raid will have 5 total difficulties from easiest to hardest: Storymode, LFR, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic.
• A new PVP season, featuring the same tier set from the raid. Everything else about the new PVP season is basically the same as past PVP season though.
• Delve difficulty scaling. There of 12 different delves that each have different stories and mechanics. Similarly to M+, each delve scales from difficulty 1 to 12. Once a player beats all 12 delves on difficulty 12, a 13^th delve unlocks for the player, which unlocks more difficulty and other rewards.
• Perhaps the most exciting yet controversial is the M+ dungeons featured in Season 1 of The War Within. There will be 8 dungeons total, four of which will be newly released The War Within Dungeons and another four from past expansions:
  • Ara-Kara, City of Echoes (from The War Within)
  • City of Threads (from The War Within)
  • The Stonevault (from The War Within)
  • The Dawnbreaker (from The War Within)
  • Mists of Tirna Scithe (from Shadowlands)
  • The Necrotic Wake (from Shadowlands)
  • Siege of Boralus (from Battle for Azeroth)
  • Grim Batol (from Cataclysm)

Here’s the dilemma. The four new dungeons from The War Within are all fine – it’s too early to say whether they are bad or good dungeons. However, the four dungeons from past expansions are decidedly BAD. For example, the Siege of Boralus has long been called the worst M+ dungeon ever by much of the community. The issues go on – the Shadowlands expansion ended less than two years ago, and it was the worst expansion in WOW history. While the Shadowlands dungeons themselves are not too bad, the fact that players were still playing them as current content less than two years is unsettling. Why could they not bring back more dungeons from older expansions? The only silver lining is the Cataclysm dungeon but seeing how hard the last Cataclysm M+ dungeon was, Vortex Pinnacle, even that could turn out bad.

All that being said, these dungeons could be reworked in some way to make them good for The War Within. Overall, there is more good than bad to be had in The War Within and if M+ does turnout bad in Season 1, there is plenty of other content to do instead.