World of Warcraft's in-game anniversary event could've been a joyous celebration of the last 20 years, but instead it's a disappointing grind

GamesMMOWorld of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft’s in-game anniversary event could’ve been a joyous celebration of the last 20 years, but instead it’s a disappointing grindWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

World of Warcraft screenshots of its 20th anniversary event

The 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft deserves an epic event: a celebration of the world’s most successful MMO, one that has transcended generations. Instead, it’s a jumbled mess of nostalgia with no clear throughline and a grind to earn anything fun.

A token attempt at solving the problem

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

World of Warcraft screenshots of its 20th anniversary event

We’ve had Timewalking dungeons and raids before, even without an anniversary event.

Blizzardmassively buffedthe amount of tokens that drop after the celebration had been out only a week, but it still feels like it’s not enough; particularly because the anniversary events themselves are a bit of a yawn. One of the easiest ways to complete a weekly quest for tokens, for example, involves turning yourself into your pet, jumping into a basket… and sitting there for a full minute while a counter slowly ticks up.

But even those instances don’t feel overly special, because we’ve had Timewalking dungeons and raids before, even without an anniversary event. The Korrak’s Revenge PvP event is a returning feature, and the stalls and vendors at the anniversary area in Tanaris are fairly similar to the stalls and vendors from previous anniversary events—which weren’t as dramatic as this one should be.

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Huge rewards, hidden behind teeny tiny increments

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

World of Warcraft screenshots of its 20th anniversary event

I love transmog. I love pets and mounts and toys. I ground through every level of the PvP Plunderstorm event last spring—even though I despise fighting other players—to get those cosmetic rewards. I played Pandaria Remix until I had fully leveled a dozen new alts just to buy every available mount, appearance, and toy. I should be all over this event trying to earn everything, and yet it’s been a struggle just to play through it all to write this piece.

It’s not the rewards—they’re lovely. Tier 2 was a glorious era for Warcraft raid armor, and the high resolution versions are very pretty. I want them all. The meta-achievement blue phoenix for the event, while nothing like the iconic Ashes of A’lar mount Blizzard shamelessly compares it to, is still beautiful. (It’s not the skeleton, my artist friends, that makes players love the Ashes, it’s those wildly over-the-top glittery streamers as you fly.) The new armor appearances modeled after Blizzard employee rewards are a nice touch, rewarding players in a similar way for loyalty, and they’re attractive to boot.

Did it have to feel this way? Absolutely not.

But every single one of them requires a grind. In previous anniversaries, I got something just for logging in. This year, there were no free items. Even the typical reputation and experience buff requires a quest to unlock every few days, albeit an easy one. Token rewards drop eight at a time from significant weekly activities, but you need 60 to buy your first armor set. The cost lowers over time, but you don’t get any for free. It would be like telling a Blizzard employee they get that cool sword or shield as a loyalty reward—but only if they put in 60 hours of overtime.

What if we exchanged the grind for quests or achievements?

(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

World of Warcraft screenshots of its 20th anniversary event

Mindlessly grinding for currency is one of the least enjoyable aspects of Warcraft, and it’s part of what brings down these anniversary events. The lack of any real incentive to do any particular event, since they all offer largely interchangeable rewards of that currency, doesn’t help. (I amnot the only person to feel this way.)

The meta-achievement that rewards the Coldflame Tempest phoenix mount is a step in the right direction. It at least asks you to try everything out, which is a good reason to do everything once. But what if the entire event had been structured that way? What if the event was just a series of 20 achievements (or 30, if you wanted to represent the 30-year anniversary of the Warcraft universe)? Each achievement could bestow one of the nifty rewards, and lead to the next.

You could even take the additional step of adding story quests for each. If it were more linear, it could feel like a grand adventure, from start to finish, a combination of battle and exploration and dungeoneering and showing off, instead of all of those things thrown into a messy catch-all basket with a ‘for sale for 60 tokens’ sign thrown on top. I’m honestly fine with having to grind for the other armor sets for other classes, but the first one should be my reward for participating, not grinding.Perhaps the game could even give me a terrific, engrossing story to go with my achievements too. Clearly, there were writers involved in this project; getting them together as a team and making this a real questline would have gone a long way toward hyping up this event. What about an epic achievement-wrapping mini-film from Blizzard’s terrific cinematics team? It’s insulting whenthe trailerannouncing the 30th anniversary Warcraft Direct broadcast orthe announcementof the 15th anniversary and the release of Warcraft Classic feel more inspiring than your 20th anniversary celebration.

The most promising part of the entire event is another not-new feature: a secret-finding exploration (similar to the Secrets of Azeroth event in Dragonflight), which is still underway. There are precious few new rewards from this series if you did the last one. But at least one heart-tugging appearance of an old character has occurred thus far, and I have hopes for more.The celebration is hardly over. But so far, the 20th anniversary event has sadly been reduced to just another grind.

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A token attempt at solving the problem#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Huge rewards, hidden behind teeny tiny increments#

What if we exchanged the grind for quests or achievements?#

A token attempt at solving the problem

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Huge rewards, hidden behind teeny tiny increments

What if we exchanged the grind for quests or achievements?