World of Warcraft Adding New Raid Difficulty in The War Within

Highlights

• The War Within is introducing Story Mode, a new raid difficulty, to World of Warcraft for a more accessible experience.
• Blizzard’s emphasis on storytelling in raids, starting with Wrath of the Lich King, continues with Nerub’ar Palace in The War Within.
• The introduction of Story Mode may impact the future of Raid Finder, as Blizzard aims to give players more freedom in gameplay.

The War Within is introducing a new raid difficulty to World of Warcraft, as players will be able to challenge the upcoming Nerub’ar Palace in Story Mode. Ever since Cataclysm, Blizzard has tried to make raid content more accessible to casual World of Warcraft players. Unlike Final Fantasy 14, whose story is intertwined with trials and dungeons, the pivotal moments in World of Warcraft‘s narrative play out in raids. Wrath of the Lich King was the first to truly lean into this type of storytelling, and its success set the direction of all subsequent expansions.

The last patch of Cataclysm introduced the Raid Finder, which allowed 25 players to tackle the Dragon Soul raid via matchmaking. This new difficulty for World of Warcraft raids was met with a lot of controversy, as many in the community feared that it would further diminish the social aspect of the game. By contrast, its proponents argued that Raid Finder allowed all players to experience the story, as raids were becoming harder to clear for pick-up groups in Cataclysm. These sentiments changed little over the next decade, and with the introduction of Mythic difficulty and Flexible raids in Siege of Orgrimmar, most players became apathetic to Raid Finder and its overall place in World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft Is Adding a Story Mode for Raids

That being said, The War Within is set to introduce a new raid difficulty for the first time since 2013, and Wowhead has datamined details on what this game mode entails. The Story difficulty will function similarly to Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic, and will be available for Nerub’ar Palace, the first raid in The War Within. The Story difficulty will allow a flexible group of up to five World of Warcraft players to challenge the raid, but no loot drops have been datamined just yet. Given that The War Within will add Follower Dungeons to the game, a Story Mode for raids feels like a natural extension of that.

Cross-faction guilds in World of Warcraft have shown that Blizzard is interested in giving players the freedom to play with their friends however they want, and the features coming in The War Within reinforce that direction even further. Warbands will make juggling alts significantly easier during a raid tier, as overall content progression will be tied to one’s account, rather than a singular character.

Though the full potential of a Story Mode remains to be seen, it does place the Raid Finder in a strange position. Its main appeal was its accessibility, but if Story turns out to be the more popular way to experience the narrative of a World of Warcraft raid, Blizzard may decide to retire the Raid Finder altogether. While a release date for The War Within remains unknown, the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion is heavily rumored to launch at the end of August 2024.