Joyful Chaos
So what exactly is Warcraft Rumble? Having never played other mobile games of this ilk, I would describe it similarly to how Blizzard itself did: as a kind of tower defense game. However, instead of putting up towers to defend your base, you summon troops (or "minis") of various Warcraft factions as an army to hold off the enemy forces. You must consider your offense, as well, in that your team also needs to march down the lanes and defeat the enemy boss within the time limit. You'll be scrolling all over the map, air-dropping your units into position so they can push back the opponent, take key structures, and lead a counter-attack when the time is right. Matches are fast, and Rumble's slogan of "Joyful Chaos" is a very apt description of how much chaotic action and fun strategy is pumped into this action-strategy title. And the game is, thankfully, fun in its moment-to-moment gameplay. It's a cute, entertaining experience.
When in doubt, embrace Grommash Hellscream's aggro tendencies and base-race the enemy! 15% of the time, it works every time.
Basic combat in Warcraft Rumble is a rock-paper-scissors kind of affair, where a Melee mini will defeat a Ranged one, Ranged is strong against Flying units, and Flying is superior versus Melee troops. Of course, it's a bit more nuanced than that, with Area of Effect abilities, attack and movement speeds, and the number of available combatants contained in one mini all needing to be considered in the heat of battle. There is also one's Leader, a key member of Warcraft lore who comes with their own special effects that'll influence the kind of army they work best with. Whether it be the mighty Grommash, the tanky Tirion, or the cunning Sylvanas, among others, picking the right leader for the job is your first and most important decision before heading into a mission.
That said, you can't just freely summon minis however you want: you'd quickly overwhelm the enemy and your phone's capability to realize what was happening on-screen. Individual units cost a particular amount of Gold, a resource that you can accumulate passively or mid-battle through treasure chests or from mining nodes. In the picture above, the Troll spear-thrower, Raptor squad, and Harpy squad each cost 3 Gold, while the tanky Tauren costs 4. These costs can range anywhere from 1 to 6 a piece. After choosing and placing a unit, it is cycled back into...let's call it your "deck", and the mini shown on the far left takes it place, ready to be used in its stead. By not giving us access to every troop or spell in our army at all times, timing and correct placement are everything, as it might be a hot minute before you can cycle back to that mini again.
All of this has to be learned, mastered, and put into practice in missions that only last about 4 minutes total. Decisions must be made quickly, and you can win (or lose) right out of the gate by making a good/bad play. Thankfully, you can usually go right back in and try again should you fail, but that does mean you'll be seeing the loading screen over and over.
Worlds To Conquer
Warcraft Rumble comes with a ton of stuff to do right out of the gate, with the promises of even more as we move forward. You can complete story missions for Coins and Sigils, which unlock new features like Quests (infinitely repeatable stages for XP), Dungeons (3 missions stapled together to form a run, earns you Arc Energy and improves your leaders), and Arclight Surges, which puts a spin on past stages for more Coins and progression towards Guild rewards. This doesn't even mention PvP, which of course has its own value. So many stages to conquer, and with co-op Raids around the corner, the game just might entertain you for a long time.
Heh, look at that Fluxflashor guy, 12 sigils behind me. What a scrub smh
Of course, another, perhaps more cynical way to view things is through the lens of "just how much grind is expected of me?" and the answer is: quite a bit. Unless you buy your way out of problems via XP-boosts and/or obtaining your units via the shop (with Coins or IRL money), you can quickly find yourself running into a proverbial brick wall blocking your success. Even with my penchant for... "capitalistic answers", I still ran into bosses I just could not seem to find an initial answer for, which is frustrating when they literally stop you from collecting the Sigils one needs to unlock new features.
Now, the "git gud" argument can come into play here, and I did eventually figure out those stages via restructuring my army, but I had the benefit of owning every basic troop after a couple days; others will not be so fortunate, especially free-to-play people. If your choices of free troops or leaders don't lead toward the best ones for a hard mission, you might be screwed unless you grind out levels or get lucky in the Coin shop. And don't talk to me about a PvP "meta", one of which is already forming before the game is even officially a week old: let's just say you had better own Tirion or Baron Rivendare, or you can expect to get dunked on by your superiors.
Decisions, Decisions
When you're not busy conquering the battlefield against bosses or your fellow players, you'll find yourself managing your teams...and this is where the cracks in the game's shiny packaging really make themselves known. There is a lot going on here, and not all of it is explained very well. Each individual mini needs to be acquired via the store or progression then leveled up with XP, but then you also want to increase its Rarity for bonuses; increasing their Rarity requires Arclight Energy, Star Points, and Energy Cores. Arclight Energy is earned from some missions, delving into Dungeons, and can be purchased with Coins (the game's universal currency that can be acquired via real money or from winning new story missions). Star Points are found in the shop or rarely acquired from progression, and Energy Cores are also a very rare resource that can only be found sometimes in the shop or as a daily reward. You need all of this, repeatedly and at greater and greater levels, to boost the mini from Common to Uncommon, then Rare, Epic, and finally Legendary Rarity.
To see this via the numbers, let's say you want to improve a basic Common (gray) unit to an Uncommon (green) unit. You must have 500 Arc Energy and 3 Star Points at a base level; that's roughly two successful runs through a Dungeon for the Arc Energy, and the mini must appear in the randomly-rotating shop three or four times. Once to actually buy the unit if you didn't have it already, then again to buy the Star Points, one per additional appearance. Do all this and you can boost the mini to Uncommon, yay! That earns you a bonus level (a level that gives you stats but doesn't count against your XP), and earns you a talent slot. Note that this doesn't actually earn you the talent: you still have to buy that talent in - you guessed it - the rotating shop. As you only have the one slot at that Rarity - and purchasing a talent is a permanent decision - it's imperative that you wait to purchase the exact talent you want for that mini. All of this has to be repeated, for each troop or leader in the game, just to get your army to Uncommon; that's not including the ballooning costs required to reach Rare/blue (2000 Energy, 10 Stars, 1 Rare Core), Epic/purple (8000 Energy, 25 stars, 1 Epic Core), or Legendary/gold (God only knows what you need for that).
Found in all my team comps, Blizzard is seemingly the best spell in the game. Coincidence?
This leads me to the talent system, which again is not explained perfectly. If you were to improve a mini to Rare, you would gain a second talent slot; that sounds awesome - after all, with the effort and resources spent to get this far, surely a second talent would result in a significant power boost? Except, it doesn't: acquiring a second slot (and finding then buying a second talent to fill said slot) only allows you to switch between them. This is extremely unintuitive: everyone I've questioned on this assumed you would - justifiably - gain the power of both talents together, but instead you merely earned the "right" to change your talent between the option you initially wanted and the alternatives you already turned down. So, in reality, all the additional resources you dumped into the unit has netted you one more bonus level and a slight increase in flexibility, which is frankly insulting given what is asked of us. Some have speculated that, hopefully, if you can somehow reach Legendary status with a mini, you can finally benefit from all three talents together, but I wouldn't hold my breath considering just how insanely far down the road that is for a player.
If you ask your players to grind for a reward that's not worth it, how can you reasonably expect them to stick with your game for the long haul? I didn't mean for this section to be as negative as it is, but the more I type it out the more I realize the truth of the matter: Warcraft Rumble is a fun game with a lot of dead weight holding its head beneath the water. And that doesn't even mention the bugs, which brings me to...
Rumblings of Bad Tidings
The game is, frankly, a bit of a mess right now performance-wise. There are a lot of annoying bugs (plus some frankly stupid design decisions) that get in the way of the good times. My phone may be two years old (gasp!), but that doesn't explain away some of the poor quality.
Why does it require several steps to switch my team around between missions? Why do my units occasionally change targets for seemingly no reason, resulting in lost skirmishes or outright-failed matches because the boss had 1 HP left and my team stopped swinging at it? Why do buttons stop working, or information changes each time I load the Guild page, or the game crashes because I had the gall to alt-tab out to check a text? The game even crashed for me mid-shop purchase: I had to complain to Blizzard Support about my situation, because the game ultimately billed me for items I did not receive. None of this is okay, and yet - even after a beta run of decent length - they are prevalent enough to frequently get in my way over the first few days of official release. Some people have been complaining about this for literal months, and it wasn't fixed before Go Time? Lo, how the mighty have fallen, the once-great "it's done when it's done" 10/10 Blizzard having been dumped by the wayside long ago, it seems.
Left - Not shown: me mashing the Try Again until it works. Middle - Surely 15000 power is a typo? Right - How informative.
Can the technical issues be fixed? Certainly, if Blizzard has the will to do so. The question might be more about the damage already done, given how poor my initial impression has become as I ruminate on what I've seen over the last couple days. Am I an outlier, or just the messenger of what's to come? I hope they clean up the game, and I hope they iron out the kinks. The game is, ultimately, very enjoyable at its core, but everything around that fun is grimy and smelly and might be bad for one's health.
What's the TL;DR?
Pros
- The core gameplay is fun, which is pretty helpful.
- The visuals are goofy and childlike (in a good way).
- A large variety of starting troops and leaders, promoting diverse team strategies.
- There's a lot to do at release, if you can defeat it.
- Missions are fast, lasting about 5 minutes at the most.
- The game is (currently) ad-free, which is more than you can say about many mobile games.
Cons
- You must maintain an internet connection, even to do single-player content.
- Prepare to see the loading screen quite a lot.
- The game is very buggy in general: buttons like to stop working, information loads incorrectly, etc.
- It crashes on occasion, which can cause additional issues upon reloading.
- Switching away from the app is a dangerous proposition, as it might trigger a crash.
- It's not hard to run into a progression-wall, pushing you to grind or pay up.
- Upgrading units can be obtuse, expensive, and seemingly not worth the effort beyond a certain point.
- Unit AI can be unintuitive at times, switching targets mid-skirmish or not focusing on important enemies.
Conclusion
I enjoy Warcraft Rumble, despite everything I've complained about thus far, and will continue to play it for now in the hope that things will get better. In the end, the game is fun, and that can outweigh smaller annoyances for the time being. But those frustrations are present and ever-growing with each passing instance, so while my initial assessment is one of entertainment, I can see my impression souring further if they are not addressed.
What do you think of Warcraft Rumble? Are you having fun? Do you have similar concerns about the game? Let us know in the comments below!
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Comments
I enjoyed the first couple of days of F2P, but have hit the progression wall. My units are too low level or not the ones needed to beat the story missions, and the only way to get more units (or to upgrade rarity and a a talent) is to wait for the next surge or pay money. So I ran dungeons and did PvP while waiting, but now I’ve hit the level wall with dungeons, and PvP meta has settled into something I don’t have the units or leaders to be competitive in. In all 3 modes I can now rarely win, and fixing that requires gold.
Gold gain in this game is horrendous, its like 800 gold a week. Good luck getting same 4 copies of your minis to get talent. And without talents you can't do heroics. Also dungeon system is terrible, rotations are too long. Waiting 5 weeks to lvl your hero was really dumb.
Yeah, after the initial "throw gold at them" it grinds to a halt.
I agree with dungeons being too long of a rotation. It super sucks if you can't do anything your first week in the game due to bad luck. I just so happened to join when it was Alliance focused and I picked Jaina as my first hero so I wasn't even aware that the dungeons weren't being uniquely tailored.
The talent system as a whole is unfortunately designed. I was able to achieve common on several minis unlocking possibilities of talents through a few weeks of play. With rare being so difficult to get though (and then epic) if you buy your first talent as the "wrong talent" then you're locking yourself out of talents with that mini for a long time.
Good article.
I don't know about other people, but when a game is so obviously in the "spend money or you won't progress" monetization model it makes me even less willing to spend money on it. I just wish they'd make players jump through one fewer hoop with this upgrade system.
Monetization models for games as a service are just so weird. When Snap was still in beta I remember that Brode got some input from the community wondering why they were putting new cards behind the paywall of the season pass and pushing him to focus monetization on cosmetics instead - his response was something like (paraphrasing) cosmetic monetization isn't a great way to make money back, that riot was a huge outlier in that regard with LoL because the playerbase is humongous and other games just can't replicate that success out of the gate.
So obviously some sort of deal with a devil has to be made for free-to-play games, but in this case I think they'll end up losing most of their players over time unless they improve the upgrade system.
Yeah. It's kinda messed up how many games would be so good as $x purchases with cosmetic in-game purchases instead of this nonsense. I ran into that a lot with Clash Royale and is why I ultimately stopped playing it.
Rumble has such solid gameplay, and a bit of a grind is totally fine, just yeah "I just wish they'd make players jump through one fewer hoop with this upgrade system".
I've enjoyed the game so far but I do think the monetization could lead to issues in the future... seems too soon to say yet.
I did want to note that while it is unintuitive that the unlocked talent slots only allow you to switch between talents, I think this is actually a very good thing for the game because it means you won't be up against people using 2 or 3 talents in PVP just because they paid more for a bunch of copies of a unit, which would give them a massive advantage.
This way a FTP player can at least compete with just max level units at uncommon rather than needing to make all their units legendary. (of course the bonus levels still matter but much less so as you said in the article).
Yup, very well written up. I really like what this game is going for, the core gameplay is there and there is lots to do, but there is also SOOOOOOO many issues with it.
The errors being the number one for me, not only does it make extremely annoying to then having to wait for even more loading screens to get back, but I've lost so many ranked matches to just getting an error, or game lagging out for few seconds and enemy getting too much of a headstart with two chest and extra income generated.
The fact that AI targets like a drunken potato is another big thing, I learnt to love poison cause they will stop hitting bosses and let them live with no health-bar and start attacking newly spawned units instead, so poison at least has a chance to finish them off; or bring at least one dmg spell to try and finish the job. Dont get me started on attacking spawning towers and letting themselves get obliterated by one unit. Jeez.
The progression system, or leveling up units is also completely designed to make you be annoyed how long everything takes and entice you to buy gold from the shop. I get that the game has to make money somehow, but this has been taken to an extreme. I dont even mind the grind itself, but the upgrading of units being soooooo pricy beyond uncommon for a tiny tiny return in value and things not really being explained how you can only have one talent at a time, and you cant even buy and swap between more until you upgrade also feels like either a big oversight, or purposely clouded information.
It is so stupid to "have to" google information in advance to pick the right first talent, cause there is no way you are getting units to rare anytime soon if you aint paying. This game prides itself on promoting diverse team comps, but nothing could be further from the truth when that diversity and versatility is locked behind a huge paywall, or tens if not hundreds of hours spend grinding to get to a point where couple dozen dollars would have gotten you instead.
Again, I understand the model at hand, but from a longevity of the game, it seems to have been taken into an extreme right from the get go. Im sure they must have had a lot of data from Hearthstone and other titles, but I do not see how this game is supposed to stay relevant for free to play players after a month or two. They will fall behind hard. And ppl who play only few matches a day are going to be left behind completely. I guess the nice thing about it is you can advance at your own pace to a degree and still enjoy the game, but sooner or later you will be met with a wall, be it a boss you need to grind more lvls to beat it, or buy new units, or if you would want to go ranked and so on.
If you couldnt tell by my wall of text, the game has stirred up a lot of emotions in me, so i guess they achieved something. I really like the game, but it is not in a good state right now, and future prospects are also bleak simply by how the progression system was designed. I guess we shall see, im sure the early numbers will be heavily skewed by ppl buying the early super deals, so the game will show as a huge profit and will surely win bunch of awards and shit for how amazing it is on the surface, guess only time will tell if they will be willing to fix the shortcomings or if it is just intended to be an obvious cash cow and be abandoned after a while - like HS Mercenaries ... remember those?