Review: Who is D&D World of Warcraft actually for?

D&D: World of Warcraft is the weirdest Wizards of the Coast product I’ve ever reviewed. This is Dungeons and Dragons’ debut product in its new Universes Beyond line, and it makes a bizarre first impression. The actual mechanics of it are (mostly) excellent. Strong character options, intriguing spells, and diverse dungeon encounters make this a grab-bag of excitement. But the book has so many conceptual issues, I’m genuinely unsure whether to recommend it.

Let’s start with the big picture. D&D: World of Warcraft is a tabletop adaptation that marries the RPG’s mechanics with the MMO’s setting. In theory, it’s designed to give you everything you need to roleplay in the world of Azeroth, at a tabletop rather than a desktop.

This gives us three potential target audiences. Option one: D&D World of Warcraft is for WoW players who are curious about D&D. Option two: it’s for D&D players that are interested in learning about WoW. Or, option three: this book is for fans of both games, who want to celebrate their hobbies with a crossover episode. We’ll bear these demographics in mind as I explain the book’s contents.

After spending three pages summarizing D&D and WoW as concepts, the book dives straight into its rules for DnD classes. This is standard for books by Wizards of the Coast, which tend to prioritize gameplay over worldbuilding with its limited page-count. But, in this case, when the world itself is the main draw of the book, it’s an odd choice.

Each class entry includes a decent chunk of lore (more than D&D usually gives us in its flavor-starved paragraphs), explaining the origins of this community. That lore is presented entirely without context, as the book doesn’t properly introduce Azeroth until chapter five.

Existing WoW fans might appreciate these concise nods, but when each sentence is stuffed with so much unexplained jargon, it’s easy for outsiders to get confused. The art (which is, in D&D 5.5e fashion, both stunning and page-greedy) often does a better, more evocative job explaining the core concept of each class.

This might lead you to believe Wizards is catering to the WoW crowd rather than its existing D&D audience. Why, then, has it made the task of choosing your class more difficult than ever before?

D&D has re-themed each of its 12 core classes to fit WoW’s existing character options. Mechanically, it’s hard to mess with its system to make things fit. Basically, D&D WoW offers three types of class rules.

The first is your bog-standard subclass, the kind you’d find in any supplementary rulebook. We get seven of these: the Warrior of Mystic Brews Monk, the Holy Paladin, the Discipline Cleric, the Shadow Cleric, the Swashbuckler Rogue, the Path of the Elements Barbarian, the Path of the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian.

Some are better than others, but overall, these are excellent. Those reprinted from fifth edition see some welcome upgrades, and the new subclasses are, mechanically, exciting. You can learn more about them in my full breakdown of WoW’s best and worst classes.

D&D WoW also offers two ‘hero classes’, and here’s where things get complicated. These are alternate versions of a basic class – the Paladin and the Ranger – that can only be played from level three onwards. These classes, now known as the Death Knight and the Demon Hunter, are basically subclasses that replace some of the original class’ abilities with new, more thematically appropriate options.

Are they well-designed classes with more strengths than weaknesses and a fun playstyle? They sure are. Are they difficult to explain to someone who’s never seen a regular D&D class before? You bet. Especially when this book’s idea of handholding is repeating the phrase ‘you can find out more by buying a copy of the Player’s Handbook’.

Lastly, we have ‘specializations’, an incredibly vague category. Every class in D&D WoW comes with several specializations, but their function often differs. For some, they’re simply a recommended character build. Others introduce additional feats or abilities for a core class. And some alter the mechanics of your chosen subclass, depending on which specialization you take.

For a few classes, specializations are all you get, along with a handful of new spells. This is your typical grab-bag of D&D spells: some mediocre and some utterly fantastic. Overall, I love more than I loathe – you can find out more in my breakdown of the best D&D WoW spells. Similarly, the new species options are a real highlight, with some of the best mechanical picks since 5.5e launched.

I’ve used the word ‘mechanically’ quite a few times in this review already. That’s because theme is one of D&D WoW’s iffy areas. I’m no World of Warcraft player, and the book doesn’t do much to convert me. Plus, the WoW lovers I interact with have loud complaints about this adaptation.

Why are Shamans represented by Barbarians when they can use magic in the MMO? Why can Worgen only shape-shift for one minute when they’re best known for their wolfy forms? In more than one place, the marriage of theme and rules makes little sense.

Let’s return to our core question: who is this for? It’s not for the D&D beginner, who needs to cross reference the core books to make heads/tails of these edge-case classes. It’s not for the WoW beginner, who might have been recruited by clear, compelling worldbuilding. And it’s not for the hardcore WoW fan who expects a bespoke system that faithfully represents their favorite game.

Who does that leave us with? A gamer with a little experience in both areas – and enough goodwill to tolerate the occasional thematic teething problem. That’s a narrow target market, and it’s about to get narrower, because the second half of the book targets a very specific kind of D&D player.

Chapters three and four introduce professions and factions. Wizards doesn’t have to work too hard to bring these key aspects of WoW to D&D. Professions adapt the rules for tool proficiency, and they’re usually resolved with a simple skill check. Faction relationships, meanwhile, are tracked with D&D’s optional Renown system.

These are seamless additions, and they actually give you ways to use parts of the D&D rules that are often underutilized – spare gold, unpopular skill proficiencies, and so on. The catch, however, is that they significantly up the bookkeeping aspect of D&D. You’ll be tracking resources, recipes, and relationships on a more granular level than usual. That’s a delight to some, but it’s a grind to others.

There’s an element of grindy-ness, too, to the bestiary (though not in the traditional WoW sense). D&D WoW is largely populated by mid-to-high CR monsters, some of which have a second or third phase after you kill them the first time. Many of them have delightfully mean tricks up their sleeves, often including healing or ways to reduce incoming damage.

These encounters are diverse and dynamic. They’re also bound to last far longer than the standard three-to-four rounds of combat D&D players expect. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – many will welcome boss fights that feel more epic in scale. However, not everyone loves spending six sessions on the same fight.

Roleplayers continue to be neglected in WoW’s D&D dungeons. Despite Wizards’ best efforts to add alternative methods of traversing the MMO’s most famous dungeons, these still feel incredibly linear and combat-focused. You can occasionally sneak past a horde of enemies instead of attacking them, but beyond that, there’s not really anything to do other than fight.

Again, that’s not necessarily a flaw. D&D was, once upon a time, a wargame with storytelling tacked on. Many specifically flock to this game for a gauntlet-like hack-and-slash fest. That style of play is no more or less valid than roleplay-focused social intrigue – if anything, the D&D rules are better-built to serve that audience. However, it means D&D WoW gives an incredibly limited impression of what’s possible in the RPG.

For the select few, this book is going to tick all the right boxes. It gives you all you need to build strong, consistent characters, and they have an interesting selection of dungeons to crawl, complete with dastardly, diverse monsters. There’s even a bit of WoW-flavored nostalgia to bask in.

I fear those “select few” are more select than Wizards of the Coast would like, though. A lot of people will find this book fails to meet expectations. It feels like an attempt to please everyone in the Venn diagram between D&D and World of Warcraft – and in trying this, it manages to excite almost no one.

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Source: Wargamer