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

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.

Let me start by announcing my bias: I adore Warcraft. I've been writing about it since six months before the game's release, and despite its many flaws, I've largely stuck with it nearly continuously since then. I was absolutely looking forward to the celebration of the anniversary, certain that truly legendary gameplay was in store.

Instead, what I got was a mishmash of unrelated celebration, connected only by a grind that locks away any interesting items. Most of the rewards for the event—some really nice high-resolution retro cosmetic armor sets, toys, weapons, and pets—are earned by collecting frustratingly scarce Bronze Celebration Tokens, which are available to some degree by playing other activities in the game and partially from anniversary events themselves.

A token attempt at solving the problem

Blizzard massively buffed the 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.

Various iconic raid bosses are now dotted about the landscape, waiting patiently to be killed by groups that rarely come. You can show off your transmog armor sets or your mount collection, turn into your favorite raid boss or your favorite pet, and watch (and participate in) the reenactment of crucial events from the game.

The biggest new offerings feel like an extension of previous Timewalking events: a new raid, based on the overly-long Blackrock Depths dungeon from vanilla WoW; and new scaled-up vanilla Timewalking dungeons, including Deadmines and Dire Maul. These are fun because they're new, if initially over-tuned. The raid in particular has required a series of nerfs to be playable by random groups. (A group from my Mythic raid-clearing guild struggled with the later bosses of Heroic difficulty BRD when it first launched.)

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.

Huge rewards, hidden behind teeny tiny increments

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.

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 a single armor set. 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.

Will I grind all those nifty appearances and rewards at some point before the event expires on January 6? Yes, begrudingly. Partially by doing content I don't care for, and partially by picking my way through the jumbled smorgasbord of activities that are fun but meaningless in combination. Did it have to feel this way? Absolutely not.

What if we exchanged the grind for quests or achievements?

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 am not 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 when the trailer announcing the 30th anniversary Warcraft Direct broadcast or the announcement of 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.