I’ve been absent from blogging for awhile, but I thought I’d pop back in to reflect a bit on the War Within Expansion before Midnight comes out.

War Within was really the first expansion where I actively worked on progressing my gearing ilvl. I’ve never been quite as involved in endgame content as I was this expansion. I used the raid finder feature for the first time (not including my use of it in Pandaria: Remix) and actively worked towards Great Vault rewards.

The new Delve system helped me out a lot there, as did the crests gear system. Present in Dragonflight, where I did use the system, I really hit it hard this expansion. Before the stat and item level squish, I managed to get my main character up to about 665. Considering I didn’t really participate in Season 3 content, this felt like an achievement.

War Within is also the expansion that brought back certain characters I had been wondering about, and it felt great to see them throughout the War Within storyline.

This has also been the first expansion I’ve written and blogged about, which just goes to show how dedicated I’ve been to the game this expansion.

Alright, all the said, there are some not-as-positive things about War Within I feel I should mention as well.

It is, for example, the first expansion where I’ve felt overwhelmed by the game. Dragonflight had a lot going on as well, but War Within has felt like Dragonflight times two. Maybe that was just my race to a higher ilvl, but I also feel like there was just more to do. I wrote a few posts about the amount of content and prioritizing but the truth is that I pretty much just stopped playing in season 3.

I should clarify that I still played WoW, I just didn’t really play Season 3. I never finished the K’aresh story, Ve’nari’s Ecodome has yet to receive any animal species at all, and I never traveled with Arator. Unlike Seasons 1 and 2, I never completed the Season 3 Delver’s Journey. I basically stopped running delves at all and took a hard pass at completing World Quests, Weekly Quests, or attempting any group finder content.

I did play Legion Remix and managed to get all the rewards. I messed around in various WoW Classic varieties, accomplishing not much of anything in particular. I delighted in receiving early access to Housing and working to set up a house I was really proud of (I’m struggling with the idea that I might want to change it up; every time I go into the house I can’t bring myself to delete rooms.) Finally, despite the repetitiveness of the pre-expansion event, I did my two weeks or so of loops around the Twilight Highlands.

Looking forward, this week I will receive early access to Midnight. For War Within I hit max level on my main during the early access period, but I’m not sure if I’ll try for that this time around. For one thing, I did it the once mostly to see if I could. I don’t need to prove or try that this time. I also have this idea that I should probably finish the storyline, even though I haven’t shied away from spoilers so I pretty much know how it all goes. Honestly, though, I’m not sure I’m interested enough in the story to actually play through it.

Also, to be blunt, I’m sort of already overwhelmed by all the stuff in Midnight. There’s the new prey system, new delves, labyrinths, a new race to play, new story, new leveling, new profession trees, follower dungeons, gear to try and upgrade, and more that I’m either forgetting or hasn’t been announced yet. I don’t know that I really want to throw myself into all that just yet.

War Within started out strong for me, peaked in Season 2, and crashed hard during Season 3. Similarly, the same could probably be said for this blog. I don’t know how Midnight will play for me or the blog just yet, but it has some work to do to draw me away from Housing and Collecting.