Game Info Box Art N/A Platform Win, Mac Publisher Blizzard Entertainment Developer Blizzard Entertainment Release Date

Warlords of Draenor is a potent reminder that World of Warcraft is still relevant.

After huge improvements to the base MMO in its first two expansion sets, 2007's The Burning Crusade and 2008's Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard settled into a steady tempo of a solid expansion pack every two years. The company has never released anything disastrously bad for World of Warcraft, but after 10 years of existence, any developer might be forgiven for opting for more of the same with expansions rather than shaking up a formula that clearly works. Apparently Blizzard is done settling. Warlords of Draenor is the first major leap forward for World of Warcraft in six years. Along with a strong, nostalgia-laden plot, it tweaks the core gameplay in brilliant ways and offers evidence that Blizzard has been paying close attention to the strides made by its competitors in the MMO space. And, in case anyone has forgotten, it proves that Blizzard can pull it off better than anyone else.

story quests have a real sense of progression to them Narrative plays a bigger part in Warlords of Draenor than it has in any previous expansion. Crushed by his defeat during the events of Mists of Pandaria, fallen Horde leader Garrosh Hellscream travels through time to the orc homeworld of Draenor. Once there, his actions split this universe into an alternate timeline — one where he controls the orc invasion that started the whole Warcraft timeline back in 1994's Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. As goofy as the concept is, Blizzard plays it completely straight-faced, and against all odds, it works. A great introductory zone sets up the titular warlords as the expansion's main villains, and each subsequent zone sees you struggling to push back the tide against one of them. The story quests have a real sense of progression to them, and since events in the quests can actually change the look of the zone around you, they have a sense of stakes as well. The plot is also bolstered by more cutscenes than ever. If you've long considered MMOs one of the few genres safe from cutscenes, you may despair, but Warlords of Draenor uses them wisely. They're generally saved for opening or closing off lengthy quest lines, and they're always relatively brief. They also tend to provide easy-to-grasp sketches of the characters involved, so you can follow along even if you haven't been reading the reams of quest text from non-player characters.

Of course, storytelling isn't Warlords of Draenor's massive innovation. Draenor pushes World of Warcraft's zone design forward with a new sense of sophistication, building on 2013's Timeless Isle update. Timeless Isle set aside questing, and focused instead on treasures, powerful enemies and other adventures for players to discover — all without the need to click on a character with an exclamation point above their head. But where Timeless Isle was a tiny proof of concept, the four or five zones you'll focus on throughout Warlords of Draenor push that concept to its logical and fantastic extreme. There are still focused quest lines to guide you through each zone, but along the way there are dozens of distractions — hidden treasure chests, lengthy bonus objectives tied to small areas, dozens of rare enemies who drop great loot and more.

Warlords of Draenor didn't ask me to make a beeline from quest objective to quest objective; I couldn't walk far in any zone before I was pulled toward something else to do. This expansion adds a sense of exploration to World of Warcraft that has felt missing for years as Blizzard has embraced slick, fast-moving, quest-heavy content. It feels like the game has discovered a balance for the first time, a way to guide players through the world with quests while also providing motivation and rewards for taking your time and exploring every inch.

Horde vs. Horde While Warlords of Draenor's plot is entertaining on a character level, it contains some thematic strangeness that I had difficulty shaking. In particular, there's something troubling about the eagerness with which the Iron Horde — that is, the majority of the orcs on Draenor — are painted as soulless aggressors. This oddity is especially pronounced when you're fighting on the side of the Horde, with dozens of orcs by your side. Fighting back against an enemy invading your home world is one thing, but Warlords takes the fight to their home and has you engaging in tactics like burning down villages. There's minor justification for these actions presented in quest dialogue, but it didn't strip away my nagging sense that players were being asked to do something wrong here. Perhaps this is part of calling back to the original Warcraft, but after Blizzard has done so much work over the last 10-plus years to build up orc characters and culture, it feels bizarre to regress to referring to them as "savages." There's still a chance this problem could be addressed as the plot progresses in content updates for the expansion, but I'm skeptical.