World of Warcraft Adding Story Difficulty Raids with The War Within

World of Warcraft: The War Within is due out later this year and will kickstart a three-expansions-long saga that developer Blizzard Entertainment is calling the Worldsoul trilogy. Blizzard is making that change to get new story content out faster. With World of Warcraft‘s success with Dragonflight and additions to WoW Classic, Blizzard must get this right because it’s the most ambitious story-telling they’ve ever done. Recently, it was revealed that the team is acknowledging some of the difficulties it has in telling stories because of how much is locked behind raids that require a group and relatively high-level play. Blizzard’s answer to this ongoing problem is a new “Story difficulty” that’s coming in The War Within.

World of Warcraft: The War Within Story Difficulty

When World of Warcraft: The War Within was announced last year during BlizzCon 2023, it was revealed that a new feature called Follower Dungeons. These were implemented into Dragonflight earlier this year, and let players team up with NPCs to take on the eight starting Dungeons in the expansion. Players still earn loot they can use to progress as they get into raiding, providing a good way for new players to learn their class and get geared up before heading into higher-difficulty content. 

However, there’s still a gap between that level of play and the end-game raids where much of an expansion’s story is paid off. Thus, the developers at Blizzard are currently playing with a new raid experience called Story Difficulty. This takes a similar approach to Follower Dungeons and gives players a relatively easy way to experience all of the content The War Within provides.

In describing Story Difficulty, a developer on the official forums said, “With Story difficulty in Nerub-ar Palace, our goal is to offer players a way to see the epic conclusion of Azj-Kahet’s story who may not see the end to that story otherwise. This difficulty is intended for a private party of 1-5 players and will allow players to face off against Queen Ansurek without the assistance of other players or Followers. This encounter features reduced combat complexity and difficulty, instead focusing on the narrative elements of the encounter. Story difficulty is intended to be experienced as a one-time chapter in the game’s story, but is repeatable for players who want to revisit that part of the adventure.

We currently plan to release this experience alongside the final wing of Looking For Raid difficulty, for players who’ve reached the appropriate point in the questing experience of The War Within. We’d love to hear your feedback on this feature once it’s released.”

As you can see, the content won’t be available from the start of the expansion. If you want to be on the cutting edge, you’ll need to group up with friends or a guild and prove your mettle against Queen Ansurek. However, after a few weeks, you’ll be able to hop into the Story version of the raid and experience everything with relative ease.

World of Warcraft: The War Within doesn’t have a release date yet, but it’s coming out later this year on PC.