The massively multiplayer online role playing game “World of Warcraft” recently announced its newest update called “Battle for Azeroth,” and sophomore Derrik Wilbourne said he’s ready to play.

“The two things I am most excited about are one the new races — even though a majority of them are simply variants on current ones — and two, the story is returning to its roots of Alliance versus Horde, which hasn’t been continued since, I think the base game,” he said.

“World of Warcraft” has always been a game where the player picks a side, Alliance or Horde, but those two groups haven’t done much fighting since the original game came out in 2004. Now with “Battle for Azeroth,” they are back at it, and each faction is attempting to recruit new “allied races” to their side.

“My favorite allied race is probably the Nightborne. I just really like their appearance and aesthetic,” Wilbourne said. “I will probably be playing on Horde. Most of my friends and family play on Horde. That, and Nightborne are allied with the Horde.”

Some of the players have expressed concern about the difficulty of unlocking these allied races. To unlock them, a player needs to complete each race’s story in the game and have very good reputation with the race that they want to unlock.

“The requirements seem reasonable because most people who were already playing in Legion have completed the story lines and are close to the exalted reputation, and for newcomers, the stories aren’t too long, and the path to exalted isn’t too bad,” Wilbourne said.

One of the features of the previous update “Legion” was that each player would get a powerful weapon specific to his class used in the lore of the game by powerful figures. This created some controversy though because if a player were to look in a big city, everyone of the same class would have the same weapon. In “Battle for Azeroth,” the makers look to remove “artifact weapons.”

“I feel [removing the artifact weapons] is kind of a necessary evil, so there’s not 1,000 Paladins on both sides using Ashbringer in the war,” Wilbourne said.

In “Battle for Azeroth,” horde players will be going to an ancient troll continent called Zandalar and alliance players will be going to the home continent of one of their leaders called Kul Tiras.

“I think I prefer Zandalar,” Wilbourne said. “I like the tribal troll aesthetic it has.” 

By Jordi Souto