Anyone who has ever loved World of Warcraft should give Patch 10.0 a shot

If you ever liked World of Warcraft, you should look forward to patch 10.0 and the new expansion – at least that’s what the WoW demon Cortyn from MeinMMO believes.

Whichever way you look at it, if you associate many good years of memories with World of Warcraft, then the last few months and also the last expansions have been quite difficult to bear. Regardless of whether it was the fundamentally negative mood surrounding Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands or all the incidents surrounding the sexism scandal at Blizzard – none of it was nice to look at.

I’m no different. Even though my job here is to report as neutrally as possible about the incidents surrounding Blizzard and World of Warcraft, I personally want the game and the developer company behind it to do well – including all employees there.

The last two years have bothered me all the more. Covering World of Warcraft, apart from a few positive stories, has been exhausting. Whether it was the nasty sexism scandal or the general mood surrounding the game, it just didn’t feel good and there was an overwhelmingly negative vibe everywhere.

But I have hope that that will change with the next expansion, which will hopefully be announced within the next few weeks. The clues point to a dragon addon – one of the original races of Azeroth and hopefully a story that’s a little more “grounded” than the Shadowlands plot.

It’s cool in itself with some afterlife dimensions and strange locations, but it doesn’t really match the flair of Azeroth.

The story chaos can only get better

I’m sure the story will get better. An important point here is the incident surrounding Afrasiabi. Even if not all details are known, there is a lot to suggest that the current storyline around Sylvanas is mainly due to ex-story boss Alex Afrasiabi. The storyline isn’t necessarily bad, I liked the fire of Teldrassil and the war that ensued from it.

However, I was missing a resolution, a coherent narrative style and the feeling that I was finally getting any reasonable answers. None of this happened because Afrasiabi – according to current information – pushed the story through single-handedly and was then dismissed without leaving a red thread for the story.

The current developers had to put something together from this shambles and somehow end it in a meaningful way in Shadowlands.

It’s no secret that this has worked rather poorly than right and has turned even the most devoted Warcraft fans away. Few liked the fact that the jailer was suddenly the great evil behind all the machinations of the Warcraft universe.

At the same time, the Afrasiabi incident also explains a lot. He offers an admittedly very simple explanation for why the story of World of Warcraft since patch 8.3 no longer feels really round. It’s as if everything doesn’t quite fit together anymore, important aspects have been forgotten and you somehow get the impression that characters are being forced into situations that don’t really suit them.

But that also fits perfectly with the statement by Steve Danuser, the new story boss at WoW, who said in the trailer for patch 9.2 that this is now “the conclusion of a chapter in the Warcraft saga”.

I smiled at that a bit mockingly at first, but considering the latest information, it makes sense. It is also consistent with other statements that Patch 10.0 – the next expansion – will be entirely Steve Danuser’s baby. Historically, this probably represents a new beginning or at least a reorientation of the team.

That means, at best, new stories in a world that finally feels like home again, with characters you love.

Less geared systems – less borrowed power

So I believe, and I do so with conviction, that World of Warcraft will see a turning point in 10.0. Not only because the story is now coming from a team that hopefully pulls together and the penny has finally dropped that players don’t want to grind indefinitely anymore. Not just because Blizzard has just “cleaned up” and fired problematic developers, and not just because after patch 9.2 a chapter of WoW is finally coming to an end that hardly anyone wanted to see.

Patch 9.2 already shows that the developers are willing to change something. In the current version on the PTR, a lot of the compulsive grind has already been said goodbye. Sure – if you want, you can farm reputation again, but as an optional option if you want additional rewards. A competitive compulsion does not exist according to the current status.

However, there are also a number of things that I don’t see as drastically as the “loud part of the community”. Whenever I read that “World of Warcraft is dead” I have to raise my eyebrows in confusion. Because either these people have never seen a truly dead game, or something completely different is happening on their realms and realm pools than mine.

If I log into World of Warcraft at anything other than 4:00 am on a Wednesday, it doesn’t give me the impression that the game is dead. It doesn’t matter whether it’s “Mythic+”, visiting a raid, PvP battles or role-playing – a group is easy to find.

The hard core of my guild is still there and the capitals haven’t been emptied. I don’t have the impression of a “dead” game. Sure, it’s not as crowded as it was when an addon was released, but it hasn’t been since the sharding system was introduced.

But I don’t just want to protect WoW in its current state. The ever new “borrowed power” systems have simply been poison over the years. The same applies to the compulsive interlocking of more and more game systems, which have created a confusing bead of tasks that hardly any newcomer can see through.

As a PvP fan, I can’t just play PvP. I have to complete the PvE campaign, level up my pact, farm legendary materials in Torghast, farm legendary recipes from dungeons, grind media and reputation in Korthia and best of all visit the current raid for Shards of Dominion.

But I also think that WoW has produced a lot of good things in recent years. The Mythic+ system has long made dungeons interesting beyond their intrinsic fun factor. The different levels of difficulty in raids offer incentives for different groups of players.

But even with these systems, there are enough players who say that it started the demise of WoW and anyone who defends it is only hanging on a big bottle of copium. Difficult to understand when they are just options that offer more variety and variety and appeal to different types of players.

If this content is solved by other systems so that only those players who really want to have to visit it – it would be much better.

Patch 10.0 sounds good without us knowing anything about it

The first leaks of the next expansion – no matter if they are “legit” or fictitious – at least let me be positive. It made me realize that I’m still interested in how WoW will continue and that my basic interest in starting over is still there.

I think so too, because I still have a lot of trust in the current development team. This isn’t just due to Patch 9.2, it’s just the feeling of what Blizzard’s communication is about right now. It seems as if everyone is pulling together again and pursuing a common idea. I’m ready to see real improvement.

Mainly because I really believe patch 10.0 is the last chance for World of Warcraft to be really relevant again. Because the last few years have painfully shown fans and skeptics alike that a rule that Warcraft taught us decades ago actually applies: no king reigns forever.

I think it’s perfectly legitimate not to return for the 9.2 End of Ages patch. It’s the conclusion of a story that many simply don’t care about in a game world full of systems that many don’t enjoy. The patch can’t fix everything. It’s okay to leave that out to make a point and be clear: we don’t want that and we don’t ever want to see that in WoW again.

But anyone who has viewed World of Warcraft as an important game over the past few decades and has enjoyed it for any length of time should at least approach the next expansion with a completely open mind and try to embrace whatever comes next.

And if the new expansion really doesn’t please you and falls short of all expectations – then WoW really deserves to be slowly but surely forgotten.

I hope that the developers can convince us otherwise. I’m at least cautiously optimistic. And yes, I am, without having seen a single solid proof of patch 10.0 so far.

Now the only thing missing is the housing and I’m satisfied…