World of Warcraft has been around for 22 years, and a new music video in collaboration with singer Aurora will have players reliving every memory.
The song, titled A Place to Call Home, is accompanied by an animated music video crafted by Paris-based animation studio Brunch in partnership with Blizzard. It starts by showing a journey that will be familiar to longtime night elf players–the trek of a lone night elf from Teldrassil to the Eastern Kingdoms, requiring players to travel through the dangerous Wetlands before reaching the dwarven capital of Ironforge.
From there the trailer picks up the pace, as the night elf adventurer is rescued by a dwarf hunter and later teams up with a human paladin for a trek into WoW’s iconic Deadmines dungeon. After defeating the Defias Brotherhood, the music video goes full montage, as the adventuring party travels through WoW’s various expansions–through the Dark Portal into Outland to face Illidan, across the sea to Northrend to vanquish the Lich King, a showdown with Deathwing from Cataclysm, and more.
It all concludes with the trio cozied up by the fire in a night elf-themed home, once again reminding players that yes, after many years, housing is finally available in Blizzard’s MMORPG. Overall, it’s a fun walk down memory lane for WoW players. The run from the night elf starting zone to Ironforge is a right of passage that players still have to do in WoW Classic, and it’s fun to see WoW’s iconic raid bosses like Illidan and Arthas presented in this animation style.
The A Place to Call Home music video is just the latest animated trailer to come out of Blizzard, who released three other animated shorts in the lead-up to the launch of WoW’s newest expansion, Midnight. One of them explored the origins of WoW’s current big bad Xal’atath, while the others highlighted the stories of the half-elf Arator and the Blood Knight Liadrin–all characters who feature prominently in Midnight’s story.
As with every one of these animated trailers, many of the top comments on YouTube and on the WoW subreddit are people chiming in to state they would love a full WoW animated series in the same vein as these shorts. It certainly seems like that could one day be a possibility. In a recent interview, Blizzard president and executive producer Holly Longdale said the Warcraft IP is “underutilized,” while Blizzard president Johanna Faries recently said “exciting conversations” are currently happening in regards to adaptations of Blizzard properties.
In the meantime, WoW: Midnight is available now. In GameSpot’s WoW: Midnight review, we said the game’s latest expansion makes a “compelling argument for returning players to give the MMORPG another go with a potent cocktail of new and old.”