Wandering the vast acres of Microsoft’s hilariously named “booth” at this year’s Gamescom, there were many sights to behold. A vast Space Marine towers over the crowds of journalists, next to an enormous flag-strewn faux-stone hut that houses half-hourly showings of Obsidian’s upcoming RPG Avowed. There’s the theater-sized temple that showed us Indy punching Nazis in the nose in Indian Jones and the Great Circle, and ghastly neon Xbox-themed counters. But amidst it all, I saw the strangest thing: a large area with just a few people sitting on what looked like enormous motorbikes, wearing VR helmets, all of them laughing or wide-eyed in terror.
This, it turned out, was Blizzard promoting World of Warcraft’s new expansion, The War Within, which releases on August 27. The game, surely to become commonly known as WoWWW, wasn’t being shown on monitors for people to experience a chunk of, but rather offered as a fleet of ride-on VR experiences. I was sure there wasn’t a VR version of WoW, so what on Earth was it? Obviously I went in. There wasn’t even a line.
It was bloody fantastic. Called Escape From Dalaran, it was also by far the most wildly exuberant spending of money to promote a game everyone already knows about I’ve experienced since an ill-fated trip to Poland for Call of Duty II. I cannot fathom how much this must have cost, to offer something completely unrepresentative of the game to those able to attend a games conference in Cologne, Germany. But I digress.
To begin, I climbed onto the enormous contraption—one of perhaps twenty in the cordoned section of Hall 7—and wondered nervously about where I was supposed to put my hands. In front of me was an enormous wad of sleek cushioned padding, with metal bars low down either side. It felt silly to hold onto something so low, like I was getting ready to put my head down and plough through a wall. I put on the VR hat, and the extremely lovely and somewhat bemused employee snuck headphones on me without me even realizing. After a peculiarly long loading screen, I was sat on the back of one of WoW’s dragon-like mounts.
The next few minutes were non-stop exhilaration, as I swooped, climbed, weaved and plunged throughout an epic battle taking place in Azeroth, with buildings crashing down around me, until in desperation me and my companion jumped through a portal to find ourselves in The War Within’s Nerubian Empire. And it only became more frantic.
At this point, the denizens of the world were not at all pleased about our arrival, and a completely improbable number of enemies rose up to attack. We were doomed, and my steed was suddenly torn away from me, leaving me falling alone. But a very cross lady with floaty magic balls above her shoulders captured me in a bubble, and spoke extremely sternly about how disappointed she was. And then it came to an end.
On top of all this, it was filming me from the outside, and then created a mixed-media video of the event, so the world can enjoy my wobbly belly flapping through a t-shirt in the considerable breeze.
What this description doesn’t convey is just how violently I was thrown about by the whole thing, tipping so far to the side at one point that I was holding on with hands and thighs. And those plunges—dear God, I know it was 90 percent a trick of the mind, the slight tilt of the ride exaggerated by the all-senses-consuming nature of VR, but it was spectacular. And I say all this as a VR skeptic who rarely has any truck with the face-melting format.
But…what was it for? This thing didn’t just throw me around like a bucking bronco, but blew air in my face and all around me, perfectly timed with the swoops and glides to match the sensation of rushing forward, an experience that must have been like seeing Twisters in 4DX. But this entire sequence was surely only built for this one experience,and there isn’t even a Blizzcon this year! It’s not like it was made for that, and we got a sneaky preview! Heck, the game’s out on August 27, less than a week from this all, making it redundant almost right away.
I had a whale of a time. I’m delighted someone decided to spend what must have been millions, just for me and the visitors to Gamescom to have such a silly, exorbitant, and utterly disconnected ride, just to remind us all that the most famous game in the world still exists. “That must have cost a fortune!” I said to the assistant as I got off. “Crazy!” he replied.
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