World of Warcraft's The War Within Season 1 is now live, with Mythic dungeons and raids as well as the new endgame game Delves.

The response to World of Warcraft: The War Within from the players has been generally positive. A surprising story, a premise screams fantasy, and some quality of life improvements that have made the game more alt-friendly have, in general, led to the feeling that WoW is back.

The real endgame is now upon us, along with the inevitable judgement on whether The War Within is truly the soaring expansion that it promises to be. This first season, released yesterday for US players and today for EU, brings the Nerub-ar palace raid, Mythic Dungeons and higher tiers for delves. It also includes a new PvP season. Let's take a look at the highlights, as revealed by a prerelease blog on World of Warcraft (and this handy infographic from Blizzard).

The first raid is the Nerub-ar Palace. The first wing of the raid is available on Raid Finder. The second wing will be released to the PuG masses on September 18, along with the raid's Mythic level and Story Mode, a new feature that allows players to experience the narrative in a group of up to five. The third wing will be available on Raid Finder from September 25.

The raid will bring new tier armour for every class, which, let's be honest, is the main attraction for some of you transmog addicts. The tokens for these sets will be "warbound" by default. This means that you can send them to alts.

The Mythic+ dungeons are already available. The War Within will rotate Ara-Kara City of Echoes The Stonevault City of Threads and The Dawnbreaker. The Necrotic Wake, Mists of Tirna Scithe, Siege of Boralus, and Grim Batol will all be returning from Battle for Azeroth.

Players can now jump into the new PvP season, with its own rewards. Players can earn their elite transmog sets piecemeal, at various ranks, (as seen below), and two mounts, either a Vicious Skyflayer - a creepy flying Nerubian insect with Horde or Alliance decor - or a Forged Fel Bat, which is an absolutely yoked, yoked, yoked, yoked, yoked, yo

The Delves are the most exciting part of this game. They're a new type of pseudo-dungeon that was built specifically for The War Within. These were available on release but only at tier 3, which isn't very challenging. Now, tiers 4 through 8 are available. If the community's reaction is any indication, anything above a score of eight is a challenge.

Zekvir’s Lair is "Seasonal Delve", which means you’ll want to knock it down at any difficulty in order to get the honour of wearing Zekvir’s spine on your back, like some sort of Nerubian Serial Killer. If you do it on tier 5, you'll get the title "Ascension Breaker", while doing it alone will give you a coat void paint to your dirigible.

According to WoWHead's guide, delves will get you gear at the Heroic Difficulty tiers, equivalent to Mythic+ Keystones 2-6. They can also get you Heroic Difficulty rewards, which you would normally have to obtain by completing Heroic Difficulty dungeons or raids. Not bad.

Overall, it's not a bad selection of things to do, especially when you consider that WoW is celebrating its 20th birthday soon. I'm interested to see if Blizzard is able to maintain the good community sentiment that it has worked so hard to earn. It's one thing to have a solid quest, but it's another to keep your MMO going after launch.