When my second daughter was born 13 years ago, my guild mates in World Of Warcraft were among the first to know. I remember returning home to freshen up after two nights at the hospital and slipped in an hour of gameplay before heading back.

At the time, World Of Warcraft was the rage, played by more than 10 million people around the world. I was spending an average of two to three hours a day on the game. But after a few years, it became a grind.

I stopped playing regularly after the second expansion, Wrath Of The Lich King, in 2008. One reason was that it was very time-consuming and I was unable to commit to 40-man, five-hour guild raids to get a chance to win the best weapons and armour.

Every two years, Blizzard would launch another World Of Warcraft expansion and I purchased most of them to have a look-see, but never went beyond spending more than a day or two in each of the later expansions. It felt like more of the same.

When the opportunity came to review Battle For Azeroth, the seventh World Of Warcraft expansion, I decided to have a go at it to see if the new release offered anything new to a returning World Of Warcraft player.

ALL-OUT WAR

In Battle For Azeroth, Blizzard has created a new plot that pits the Alliance against the Horde in an all-out war. Under the new leadership of the undead elf Sylvanas Windrunner, who massacres friend and foe indiscriminately to gain a battle advantage, the lines are clearly drawn between the good Alliance and the evil Horde.

For World Of Warcraft veterans, the expansion offers a lot of new content.

Like the previous expansions, you get a free boost to level 110 for one of your characters. I chose to be a human mage and was soon sent by the young human king Anduin Wrynn to accompany the heroic sorceress Jaina Proudmoore to her homeland, the islands of Kul Tiras, to win back the trust of the people she once betrayed. For Horde players, you get to start in the troll island of Zandalar.

In Kul Tiras, I helped human civilians and leaders with relatively child-friendly quests that brought back memories of the early days of World Of Warcraft. Delivering parcels, helping street urchins escape from villains and showing off equestrian skills were the type of regular quests you would expect in Kul Tiras. This was a sharp contrast to the previous expansion, Legion, where you had to fight evil demons in a largely dark universe.

I liked these quests, but it just seemed a little disconcerting that a high-level wizard who could rain down flaming meteors from the sky would use such powerful spells to defeat brigands and sharks instead of sending demons back to hell.

NEW FEATURES

After 20 hours of gameplay and completing more than 30 quests, I moved up to only level 112, still a long way from the new maximum level 120.

There are two new features I want to try - Warfront and Island Expeditions. But I have not progressed far enough to try them.

Warfront is a 20-player cooperative battle inspired by the old real-time-strategy genre of Warcraft 3, while Island Expeditions lets you team up in three-player missions to gather more Azerite than the opponent. Azerite is a new resource that you must also collect to power up your new magical item called the Heart Of Azeroth.

Doing various quests lets you earn Azerite and when you have collected enough, it unlocks new powers in special Azerite armour that boosts your character's battle skills. My mage, for instance, has unlocked Duplicate Incineration, which lets you cast more powerful fireballs and Vampiric Speed, which heals him every time he kills an enemy.

Another new feature - eight new races to choose from should you be willing to start again from scratch. To my dismay, starting a new character with one of the new races requires days and weeks of additional gameplay just to unlock one of these new races.

I really wanted to start a new Lightforged Draenei Paladin and the Void Elf Mage just seems so alluring, but I really do not have the time to spend another 50 hours of gameplay to unlock them.

• Verdict: The new content will keep World Of Warcraft fans on the edge of their seats for weeks and months. But returning players might find that it takes too long to run quests to get far enough in the game to try out all the new features.