World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth – A Look at Warfronts and Expeditions

Warfronts and Island Expeditions, two new activities introduced to Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft by its latest Battle for Azeroth expansion, on paper seem like a great way to spice things up with a bit of variety. However, this PCGamesN article takes a close look at these activities and comes to an unfortunate conclusion that their current iteration is not very well implemented. An excerpt:

Warfronts, on the other hand, start with the polar opposite problem. The weekly metagame behind them is a baffling mess of timers, resource gathering, and faction-locked content. At any given time, I’m not really sure what content is available for my Alliance main.

But hey, it’s a steady source of Mythic-ready gear each week. And as the one major piece of content I managed to miss during beta testing, I was excited to finally give Warfronts a solid bash. Building up a base, capturing ground, recruiting and upgrading troops; this had all the ingredients to be a full-on reboot of the ideas explored way back in Alterac Valley’s early days.

Instead, Warfronts are a stumbling mess. For the most part, I place this at the decision to make it a PvE mode – without a substantial back and forth of control and defence, the scenario becomes unfocused. The opposition needs to not pose too much of a threat to the team of 20 cobbled together solo players, so you’re left with Warfronts that become actively difficult to lose.

I can see why Blizzard has done this: not everyone wants to jump into the meat grinder of PvP battlegrounds, and placing such a landmark feature behind that would be a shame. But rather than create a similar system to Island Expeditions – which can be played against other players or AI enemies at a range of difficulty levels – we’re left with a tedious battlefield without spectacle.