High Fantasea

With two gorgeous new continents to explore, WORLD OF WARCRAFT: BATTLE FOR AZEROTH is a welcome departure from the cataclysmic drama of Legion.

- Steven Messner

When Rodrigo, the Freehold flight master, offers me a sum of gold to get revenge on the pirates that have been bullying him, I can’t refuse. Rodrigo asks me to fly around on one of his giant parrots and drop bombs on the brigands. I soon realize Rodrigo wasn’t being literal. At the push of a button, a green turd erupts from the parrot’s rear and splats on a pirate. Far below me, I hear a scream, “Argh, my eye!”

Welcome to World of Warcraft, a place where I’m shitting on people one minute, and an hour later slaughtering civilians who have become infected by Lovecraftian brain slugs. Don’t get me wrong, though, I love that WoW flashes between serious and goofy. Battle for Azeroth embraces that tonal duality with conviction. The end result is a landscape full of moments that are sometimes bleak, other times hilarious, and always fun.

BLOOD IN THE WATER

During the finale of Legion, the previous expansion, the titan Sargeras stabbed his continent-sized sword into the planet, wounding it so deeply that its crystalized blood began bleeding to the surface. Without a common enemy to unite them, the Horde and Alliance are at each other’s throats and Azeroth’s blood, called Azerite, turns out to be the perfect weapon. After an explosive pre-expansion event that spanned two cataclysmic battles, the warring factions set sail to find allies to help break the stalemate.

For the Alliance, that means trying to repair its relationship with the human maritime superpower of Kul Tiras. The Horde, meanwhile, ventures to the lost continent of Zandalar to treat with the ancient but powerful Zandalari troll empire. Giving each faction a separate continent to level on massively increases the scope of this expansion. Now that I’ve taken the time to level both a Horde and Alliance character to the new cap of 120,