Blizzard is considering adding a story mode system to World of Warcraft very similar to Final Fantasy‘s Duty System, with the main aim to make WoW’s older raids easier to solo. The plans come as The War Within gets its own “story” playlists.
The upcoming story mode in The War Within is a first for Blizzard. It will let player defeat the last boss of the raids solo, so players can still experience the whole storyline without forming a raid group or, as a last resort, pugging the raid. And, as reported by VG247, the developers hope that if there’s enough interest and feedback on this feature in The War Within, they can implement something similar to WoW‘s older raids too.
In the past, the WoW devs added Chromie Time, where players could choose which expansion to level through. This was a great quality-of-life upgrade, but many newer players still found themselves left with an incomplete narrative experience because the raids couldn’t be completed solo. This is where the story mode would come into play.
Instead of creating a group, you could enter the older WoW raids in story mode, defeat the big bad bosses at the end, and get the whole experience. To implement a story mode feature in legacy raids, the devs will likely drop the difficulty of the raids for story mode, or the team will implement a system similar to FF’s Duty System, where you can enjoy the raid at a normal difficulty with NPCs to help you rather than other players.
There’s no confirmation on this front yet though; as Blizzard’s associate game director Morgan Day pointed out in an interview with PC Gamer soon after, this is still just something the devs are considering. And, even if they do pull the trigger on a Final Fantasy-style story playlist for older WoW content, it would take a fair bit of time to implement too.
The team is looking to get early feedback from new and old fans across the WoW playerbase, particularly in regards to what tools could make older raids better—and if it’s a feature that players would actually use if it went live.
I for one definitely think it would be awesome to experience all the vintage WoW raids as the lead hero, and I’m hope they implement story mode soon.
