Officially released during BlizzCon 2023, Warcraft Rumble has come to mobile devices across the world. Players had the weekend to give it a go: buttons are being mashed, word-of-mouth is spreading, and YouTube guides are beginning to percolate. Naturally we have our own opinions, so here we go with our first impressions of Warcraft Rumble!
 

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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