The lead up to the War Within expansion started officially on July 23rd, with the release of the War Within prepatch, which gave us our first look at the new warbands character screen, as well as the questline to unlock the shared warbands bank across characters, but little else was unlocked at that time.
Officially the prepatch event for War Within kicked off this week after Tuesday’s scheduled server maintenance. Players signing in this week were greeted with a couple of new quests and a cinematic that shows at least one entertainment studio is paying attention to the giant anomaly sticking out of their planet (statue *cough* mcu). Without getting too spoiler-y for you fans of the lore and story, the heroes of Azeroth and once again called to everyone’s favorite vacation spot in the sand, Silithus to assist Magni Bronzebeard with an “issue” we’ll call it.
After completing this initial meet and greet questline and cinematic explaining how a massive sword came to be sticking out of the planet, players will be given access to Radiant Echoes, special events that spring up in either Dustwallow Marsh, Dragonblight, or Searing Gorge. These events have 3 phases, with the last phase being the boss of each region, Arthas for Dragonblight, Onyxia for Dustwallow Marsh, and Ragnaros for Searing Gorge.
During radiant echo events players can earn the new currency “residual memories” by doing the following:
Killing normal Radiant Echo mobs: 1-3 Residual Memories
Killing elite Radiant Echo mobs: 5 Residual Memories
Completing Scattered Memories (Phase 2) events: 10 Residual Memories
Killing “boss” objectives during Scattered Memories (phase 2) events: 25 Residual Memories
Killing a Remembered Boss (Onyxia, Ragnaros, Lich King): 500 Residual Memories Residual Memories
Completing a Radiant Echoes Weekly Quest: 1500 Residual Memories per quest (3 per week)
Residual memories can be redeemed for equipment, pets, or mounts during the event. New gear will set players back 2000 residual memories and will earn them a shiny new ilevel 480 piece that is upgradeable to 502, while completion of the weekly Radiant Echoes quests will earn players a piece of 493 gear which can be upgraded to ilevel 515.
While the Radiant echo events are a splash of something new for those of us bored with the usual wandering around we all end up partaking in while we wait for expansion day, there has been some complaints regarding the grind-y feel and respawn time for these events, as well as the stingy reward rate for the residual memories. It’ll be interesting to see how Blizzard responds to these complaints, at least with the reward amount per mob, since the studio already has plans to reduce the spawn time as the event progresses leading up to the release of the expansion.
Overall the experience of the pre-patch events has been fun, and will aid those driving the alt bus in gearing their alts a lot quicker than in past expansions. Add in the new warband bank, and suddenly the idea of gearing up an alt doesn’t seem that daunting.
Also included in the pre-patch release, players checking their adventure book can get a glimpse of the new upcoming dungeons, and raids releasing with the War Within, along with the bosses they can expect to have to deal with when delving into challenging activities.
World of Warcraft the War Within launches for early access on August 22nd, and officially on August 26th.
