World of Warcraft’s latest expansion is around two weeks old. Well, depending on whether you count Early Access or not, but let’s not get into that just now. Over those two weeks, the critic reviews have been pouring in and they’re very positive.
The Open Critic Score
Open Critic is similar to Metacritic, as it aggregates review scores and recommendations from gaming sites. There are two scores shown off there, the “Top Critic Average” which does exactly what Metacritic does and, well, averages top critic reviews. The other is “Critics Recommend”, which shows the percentage of them that think a game is worth trying out.
So now that that’s out of the way, let’s see how The War Within is doing!
The expansion earned a review score average of 84, placing it in the highest rank of “Mighty”. The category is described by Open Critic as “The top 10% of game ratings. Best in their genre. Universal critical acclaim.” Among the very high review scores we find Wccftech with an almost perfect 9.5, Gamespot with a 9, TheGamer with a 4.5 and more.
The general consensus seems to be that War Within really does the storytelling well and is a great entry point for new players. It’s also mentioned as a great jumping-off point for the Worldsoul Saga. Hallowfall also gets a few shout-outs, as do the new solo-oriented features, and of course Warbands. The negatives focus on the short length of the story, and in PCGamer’s case, a complaint about the “daily grind”. They definitely weren’t fans of Classic then.
Also, the perhaps more impressive stat is the 93% recommended entry!
Metacritic
Speaking of the other review-aggregating site, the critics’ side is pretty much the same. It has The War Within at a slightly higher 85! The user reviews, however, as is very often the case with Metacritic, are significantly lower.
Coming in at a 5/10, the user reviews are mostly of the standard 10 or 0 variety. Complaints range from the paid Early Access, to Earthen being “just dwarf recolors”, and even a few users coming up with the brilliant “WoW is dead” now 20-year-old phrase. There are plenty of valid criticisms in there as well, however. A lot of them hover around the more quality-of-life improvement-focused nature of the expansion, as opposed to big new concepts. There’s also plenty of mentions of some of the major bugs at launch, from the AH to sound in cinematics, plenty of maintenance and more.
But in the end, it seems this latest expansion is very well received overall. Critics seem to love it, and players who can look past initial bugs and the Early Access issue are enjoying their time with it. So in case you were wondering whether to come back, it seems like a pretty safe bet.