Breakdown
- World of Warcraft announces a new battle royale called Plunderstorm
- Plunderstorm uses a different server from WoW, so players won't use their characters
- Plunderstorm seems cool, even though battle royales are pretty dated now
World of Warcraft has stealth-dropped a whole battle royale within the MMORPG, even if the company is a few years late to the trend. Called Plunderstorm, this pirate-themed battle royale came out of nowhere and won’t even have a beta, as players can try it out now.
Plunderstorm is a new 60-player battle royale within WoW, but it won’t use the same server as the main MMO. Once players boot the game up, they can continue playing Blizzard’s longtime MMO or try out the new battle royale.
Something that might shock World of Warcraft players is that this battle royale will not use a player's existing characters within the mode. Rather, this mode will have pirates for the players to customize, keeping it completely separate from the main MMO, which is surprising.
Despite how many battle royales are in the market, the devs are having fun with Plunderstorm. Speaking with PC Gamer, lead software engineer Orlando Salvatore said that the battle royale can break some rules that WoW can’t. This includes removing fall damage entirely, which makes sense since it’s pretty easy to die in battle royales.
"One of the cool parts about what we're doing with Plunderstorm is, because it's separate, we can do wacky new things that you wouldn't normally see in Dragonflight, Classic or any other flavor of WoW," Salvatore said. "Some of those things will break.”
It is admirable to see World of Warcraft attempt to launch a new battle royale like Plunderstorm, especially in a seemingly tired market. While it’s too early to say if this will succeed, WoW has a faithful audience and they don’t lose much from trying it out. The company probably could have timed this better, but there’s no harm in trying out something fresh for the franchise.
World of Warcraft users can try out Plunderstorm when launching the game, as it’s a different server from the main MMORPG. Fans curious about the game can check out the best beginner's classes here.