Slow down—World of Warcraft: The War Within's best stories lie in its side quests and optional conversations

It is beyond strange, as someone who hasn't committed to World of Warcraft's story (and considering how Shadowlands went, I don't feel bad about that decision) to sit here and wholeheartedly recommend to anyone with even the slightest shred of interest: Read the quest text.

A disclaimer, before I get into things: I hesitate to up and say that 'World of Warcraft has a good story, now' in the same way I might glowingly recommend Final Fantasy 14 (Dawntrail aside) to someone. Objectively, the game's narrative is a convoluted, 20-year mess with plenty of baffling decisions. It's a history that The War Within, as a game, is inescapably linked to—even Anduin's compelling character development is joined at the hip to Shadowlands.

What I can say for certain, however, is that the current writing staff at Blizzard are making the best of a bad situation. If Dragonflight felt like damage control, a hard reset for a franchise that was being swept downstream, then The War Within feels like a downright heroic effort to swim against that current.

If you read that headline and scoffed, or feel like Blizzard has let you down too much, I'm not here to disagree with you or even ask you to change your mind. Many of my more WoW-embedded friends who I've voiced the above opinions to have responded with understandable bitterness, and I don't blame them.

Blizzard's dropped the ball enough times that the cynicism is warranted, and it's only because I've kept this game's narrative at an arm's length for decades that I feel able to hop in and enjoy this expansion without baggage. That being said, if we're looking at the here and now? What Blizzard is doing with the lot it's given itself? Its storytelling department is flexing.

Keep an ear out

If you're even the slightest bit fascinated, like me, to see how Blizzard is currently salvaging its messes—I encourage you to play through The War Within and, whenever you get an opportunity to "stay a while and listen", do so.

Having this option is great for players who just want to zip through the main campaign for XP's sake, but if you're at least trying to follow along, they feel downright mandatory. The War Within's story is genuinely very invested in its characters, their interlocking tales, and the way their struggles relate to each other—and these conversations are where the meat of that development takes place.

Almost every conversation is a heartfelt dialogue where the main cast airs out their feelings—they're a little tell, not show, sometimes, but even the worst of them provide great context to help you get invested.

Spoiling as little as I can, here: There's a cutscene in the expansion's second zone, the Ringing Deeps, which I wouldn't have cared for at all if I'd missed the conversations between walking crystal lollipop Magni Bronzebeard, his daughter Moira Thaurissan, and his grandson Dagran.

Likewise, newcomer Faerin Lothar (who has become one of my favourite characters) has lovely development in these optional conversations. A back and forth with a blacksmith not only helps worldbuild the Arathi, but helps explain why she chooses not to have a full-arm prosthetic and instead opts for that rule-of-cool shield.

Captain Steelstrike also shares that Faerin, originally a stowaway on the armada's ships, had preserved their holy flame after they crashed in Hallowfall—something that helps bolster her support of Anduin as an undyingly optimistic paladin, and an example of how our traumatised king-on-sabbatical wants to be.

While these conversations help to add meat to The War Within's bone—and I certainly have enjoyed my time with its main quest far more than I'd expected—the real flavour of this expansion comes in the form of its side quests, which I've been downright feasting on these past few play sessions.

Raising the sidebar

The War Within's side quests are so good, they almost steal the show away from the main plot—they're some of the best I've gone through in recent MMO memory.

There are a lot of really heartfelt, fun character stories playing out here, with more side quests leading to their own story chains than one-off "kill X" bounties. The Earthen are stars of the show, with one popular, tear-wrenching questline following the tender of a graveyard (filled with the actual, shut-down rock bodies of his brethren) as he prepares for his own demise.

But that's far from the only standout story. In no particular order, here are some of my favourite tales I've experienced while levelling my alt these past few days:

• Helping an Earthen storyteller sneak out of his post so he can finally see the world with his own eyes.
• Drafting a letter from an Arathi airship engineer to his girlfriend.
• Helping an Arathi mage develop a teleportation spell so he can, among other things, see his cat again—as a mage, I even got class-specific dialogue for this.
• Assisting a Nerubian spy in ascending with old blood god like their brethren to better give covert information to the resistance—and seeing their trepidation as they meet their former, now-ascended friends who now treat them as dirt.
• Avenging a little girl's parents after she stowed away on my flying mount.

There's even a couple of quests that exist just to freak you the hell out. In particular, "And now I'm arachnophobic" and "For the love of gems" left me staring at my screen, wondering what kind of horrors my character was just party to, and being very glad there weren't any eye witnesses to see me bungle this whole 'heroic adventurer' thing.

They're not all bangers, mind. The questline that leads up to the otherwise gorgeous Priory of the Sacred Flame was an emotional miss for me—but I've had far more memorable experiences than bad ones. Bare minimum, they've been worth my while.

The only quibble I have is that, like with its lack of UI elements for hero talent mechanics, WoW really needs to update its dialogue delivery systems to help convey these excellent stories to players better. Both the addons Immersion and DialogueUI (I use the latter) are great solutions to this problem, but considering how hard Blizzard's been going on these things it's astounding to me that the baseline framework is so outdated.

Otherwise, I am—in spite of myself—very pleased I paid attention to a bunch of World of Warcraft quests, which I can't imagine even saying even a couple of years ago.