The new World of Warcraft expansion will feature an innovation that hasn’t been seen before in the MMO’s two-decade history, so Blizzard is trying to innovate in a big way.

The next World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, will be released in August and will feature a story mode of sorts. You’ll be able to play through the final bosses of the game’s raids solo, giving solo players a chance to experience the full story. Morgan Day, the game’s associate director, told PCGamer that the story mode update may not be exclusive to The War Within content…

“In Shadowlands, we added ‘Chromie Time,’ where you can play past expansions to level up. We always talk about the strength of World of Warcraft and how we have so much cool content, and how we can better leverage that. As we’ve seen with Remix, the team is trying new and different ideas to take advantage of that. We’ve talked a lot about, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I did Wrath of the Lich King Chromie Time and I ended my leveling experience by defeating Arthas? How cool would that be? Right now, you’re ending that experience in a way that’s like, ‘Wait, what’s going on?

Raids used to be something that only a small group of people could participate in. We’ve really expanded who the core raid audience is. We respect that raids are for those people, but we also understand that the story is important to these other people. So that’s something we’ve talked about. It’s just a matter of working toward that goal over time as we add these new features that allow us to put that tool in our tool belt,” Day said.

Production Director Michael Bybee added that whether or not this feature becomes a permanent part of World of Warcraft will depend on player reaction. That’s why they’re taking the approach of putting it out there and seeing how the single-player direction is received. This is a very smart move for an MMO.

Source: PCGamer