Battle for Azeroth is here and for a lot of us that means returning to a long relationship with World of Warcraft. Some people have been around since 2004. Because WoW can be a long game and caters for a large variety of play styles, and also because people take long breaks from it between expansions, there’s a hard-to-resist temptation to settle into a groove when you resume play. You have relaxed into one thing that you enjoy doing, whether that’s levelling or running dungeons and you do it repetitively until eventually an achievement notification pops up, telling you that you’ve completed 3,000 quests. At moments like these, it occurs to you that if you really want the best value out of the expansion pack you’ve just bought, you should not do the same thing 3,000 more times. You already know it is fun. Let’s see what else is out there. You can do all of the following things while you are still working towards level 120 – you don’t need to be at the top already.
Challenge! Decide that you are going to do 3 new things in Battle for Azeroth
3 goals or actions that are outside of the way you would normally play. Guaranteed to freshen up your game. Here are 12 suggestions.
- Play in a Battleground. Go the Group Finder button on your toolbar, then the Player versus Player tab. You can choose from a long list of Battlegrounds for 10-40 players. Some, like Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin offer a nostalgic experience to longtime players, and if you don’t usually PVP, the new battleground The Seething Shore could be something you haven’t tried before as it was introduced in 2018. In total, there are 10 battlegrounds to choose from. I played the Seething Shore, a resource-capturing game set on an island and the Horde won. I also played Twin Peaks, a game of capture the flag that I’ve never played before and won 66 gold and a Mark of Honor. Marks can be exchanged for gear at PVP vendors. Screenshot: Teams of 10 Horde and Alliance players arrive at the Seething Shore on flying ships.
- Go looking for trouble. Go your capital city – Stormwind or Orgrimmar – and turn on War Mode. You are now flagged for player-versus-player combat. This is Blizzard’s improvement on the old system where entire servers were either PVP or the more peaceful PVE. You don’t have to keep War Mode switched on all the time but if you leave it on you get improved xp and quest rewards and of course you can now attack other players in the open world. Go to the BfA continent of the other faction and bother your Alliance or Horde neighbours.
- Improve your Honor Level to get rewards. You are awarded Honor for doing PVP activities, which could be battlegrounds, arenas or open-world PVP. Honor is ranked in levels up to 500. At various landmark stages on the way to 500, you’ll get a reward. At the top level you’re rewarded with an exclusive mount. At level 5, which should be achievable by anyone, you get a faction-specific pet in the form of a small orc or human. Players are reporting that ranking up through the PVP levels system is more demanding than in previous expansions, so this one might keep you busy for a while. Screenshot: Tap ‘h’ to bring up the PVP menu. Your honor level is displayed on the right.
- Get a new mount. If level 5 Honor is more aspiration than reality, look for some other ways to get a new mount. Battle for Azeroth introduces a lot of new mounts and not all of them are high-end raid rewards. Four can be farmed from open world play in BfA zones. Go to Vol’dun, Nazmir, Drustmar and Stormsong Valley for a chance at random drops of a hyena, spider, goat-dinosaur hybrid and serpent to ride around on.
- Get a new pet. You don’t have to be a hunter to have a pet. Hundreds of cute and entertaining vanity pets can be collected in WoW and made to battle with each other to win upgrades and rewards. Over time, the pet battles system has evolved from something very simple into a more complex and satisfying mini-game. BfA introduces new currency, toys and mechanics to pet battles. It also introduces around 100 new pets, of which 27 can be captured in the wild. I’d actually forgotten that pet battles award xp, so I was pleasantly surprised when I started catching butterflies in Zandalar and saw that I was levelling up. Pets can also be sourced from crafting professions; achievements; reputation rewards; BfA vendors. Screenshot: A pet dragonkin torches a Zandalarian butterfly.
- Do an achievement. Battle for Azeroth introduces lots of new achievements to work towards. Use the Achievements button on the toolbar to bring up a menu. I found that I’m half way to earning the achievement ‘Life Finds a Way … to Die!’ which requires you to kill 8 named dinosaurs in Zuldazar and Nazmir. Killing these creatures is the focus of several quests and they are the type that has a spiny silver dragon portrait framed around their avatar – a little bit more of a challenge than your average mob and dropping slightly better rewards.
- Look into a profession that you don’t usually invest in. While in the queue for a battleground, I went to check out the Archaeology trainer – a profession I’ve never known much about. If you’ve never tried it before Battle for Azeroth, don’t worry. For a few gold, the trainer will train you up to BfA standard in archaeology as long as you are level 110. Once you’ve acquired the skill, look on your map for a little spade icon that indicates a dig site. Go to that location and use your Surveying tool that the trainer gave you; a small telescope will appear. Walk in the direction that the telescope is pointing and then use the Surveying tool again. Pretty soon you will have 50 or 60 archaeological fragments which can be combined into a whole artifact. Completed artifacts are automatically logged in your Archaeology journal (on the Professions tab). Cheap items can be sold to vendors. Occasionally you will find you’ve made a purple or blue item, which could be a toy, trinket or weapon. Screenshot: Click the Solve button to turn fragments into a finished object.
- Join or create a social group. Blizzard introduced the Communities feature in order to give players more ways to socialise with each other. It includes voice chat. You can start your own community and invite your friends – a community could be organised around a friends-and-family model or a preferred style of gameplay, whether it’s raiding, arenas or role play. If you’re not sure about starting a community right away, look around for one to join. There’s a Battlenet forum dedicated to communities with loads of ready-made communities that are available. Examples:
Leather Workers, Hip Hop Alliance Chat and Hunter Tames. - Play a different class – a new character or one that you’ve neglected for a long time and never really got to grips with. I know the least about Paladins, Druids and Shamans, not having played them long enough to know the mechanics very intimately. I do know that players of Druids and Shammys, in particular, are often passionately loyal to their class and therefore they are probably on to something. A friend of mine used to belong to a guild that entirely consisted of druids and they were formidable. Take this opportunity to try a class that’s new to you.
- Swap factions – try out a character on the Horde or Alliance side. Tell yourself you are just doing reconnaissance. You’re not playing for the enemy, you’re gathering intelligence. I combined challenges 9 and 10 by going to a new server and making a Night Elf Druid. It can be quite an emotional wrench going from one faction to another if you’ve been very faction-loyal, but since the Horde burned Teldrassil, I now suddenly feel that I want to spend time there, because you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I apologise on behalf of the Horde for that incident of arson. A druid seemed like the right choice as the Night Elves have somewhat of a reputation for being in touch with nature.Screenshot: Level 1 Night Elf hopes that Teldrassil is still open for business.
- Look for a seasonal event and participate in it. From 31 August there’s a new fashion event called The Trial of Style – a tournament-style game where your team of 5 people competes in a fashion contest based on outfits that you already own. Talk to a transmogrifier to participate. Soon after that, Darkmoone Faire returns to town and there are regular PVP Brawl events. Brawls are special battlegrounds that are open for a week at a time and offer spicy new scenarios and mechanics. Read about them here.
- Get your character a title. I’ve never previously pursued titles on purpose, so that’s why my dozen characters have to share about five titles that I earned accidentally for things like cooking (‘Master of the Ways’) and general questing (‘The Seeker’). There’s a comprehensive list of titles here on Wowhead. For a real challenge, level up to 116 and start the quest line that will unlock Island Expeditions. These are three-player scenarios and if you complete all the available activities on each island, you can win the title Expedition Leader. At the other end of the difficulty scale, if you just want quick results, there are easy titles available in the Obsidian Sanctum in Northrend. Take a zeppelin out of Orgrimmar and then a taxi to Wyrmrest Temple. At level 110, I walked into the instance, marched up to the largest dragon I could see and emerged a few minutes later with the title Twilight Vanquisher, which certainly sounds better than any of the titles I had previously and makes my new Battle for Azeroth armour that I’m gradually collecting look more fancy. Screenshot: Twilight Vanquisher title. Within an hour of getting this title, I saw someone else run past displaying the same thing. Not the most exclusive title in the game, but one of the fastest to obtain.