Two days into early access and I've finished the campaign for the new expansion. Also, two days before the public release of the game. Time to go spoiling the story for all the poor people who can't afford the upgrade to play early access. That's a joke. I'm not evil.
Short but concise
I approached the launch to this expansion in a different way that I did with Dragonflight. In Dragonflight I progressed through the campaign and stopped to do all sorts of side quests and side activities in each zone. This resulted in me reaching max level and basically burning out from questing when I was still in the middle of the 3rd of 4 zones. I didn't want to repeat that mistake for The War Within so instead I mainly focused on doing the campaign while only stopping to partake in a few side activities when I felt like it.
The campaign is rather short. Two days of not even playing the game constantly and it's already over. It's not a bad thing seeing as the story is far from over and will be fleshed out in the coming weeks with the release of the new raid as well as future content patches for the expansion. I won't spoil anything but I will say that I was surprised at how abrubtly it ended.
Rich on lore
One thing I did like very much about the campaign is that it's extremely rich on lore. We get to both meet and learn about ancient civilization that was first introduced as nothing but flavor text almost 20 years ago. We've heard about the Earthen dwarves since 2004, and met a few of them here and there to further build the mystery around them but we've never met them as a full on civilization.
We also get to meet the Arathi which is an old faction of humans thought to be long extinct. It's quite a big reveal seeing as the founder of the now human empire heirs from the Arathi, and Anduin, the former king of Stormwind and one of the main characters of this expansion, hails from them. I've been a World of Warcraft lore nerd for probably 15 years so all of this was very cool to me.
Amazing zones
The design team has really outdone themselves when it comes to zone design. Each of the four zones feel really unique and have an amazing feel to them. I was a bit worried seeing as most of the zones were set in caves in the center of the earth but they've managed to make them massive enough so it doesn't feel cramped.
The second to last zone known as Hallowfall, where we meet the Arathi, are probably my favorite zone in the entire game. It has a fantastic aesthetic design to it as well as great lore tied to it. I'm very excited to go through the side quests and experience more of the lore and storylines tied to this zone.
I finished the campaign at level 78 so I'm gonna go and do some side quests to make it to level 80 now.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.