If you had said a year ago that World of Warcraft's Midnight expansion would be its most transformative since 2010's Cataclysm, few would have taken you seriously. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that Midnight has already brought more foundational changes to Blizzard's 22-year-old MMORPG in the last few months than in the entire six-year period between Legion and Dragonflight. And it's not even fully out yet.
It's a more subtle transformation to be sure. Whereas Cataclysm overhauled all of Azeroth in an impossible-not-to-notice planet-wide catastrophe, Midnight is instead overhauling the game's underlying fundamentals in a number of ways that may not be all that visible to those on the outside.
Many of those major changes are live right now, ahead of the expansion proper. Housing, a feature players have been daydreaming about for almost as long as WoW has existed, went live in December for those who preordered Midnight. Housing is one of the biggest additions to WoW in its history, a new pillar of the game going forward that will grow and expand over time. But that's just part of WoW's Midnight metamorphosis.
Where players will truly feel how WoW has changed is everywhere else. Combat add-ons, something players have relied on for years in order to survive WoW's endgame, are now far more restricted in what they can do or tell players. Instead, Blizzard now offers in-game tools like a damage meter, cooldown manager, and boss timeline as part of the game's default user interface. The result is a more even playing field, one where a player doesn't need to go beyond the game's tools to find the information they need to be successful.
Going hand-in-hand with players having more built-in information than ever before, Blizzard took the pruning shears to the game's classes in dramatic fashion. Classes are more streamlined and less bloated than they've been in a decade. When combined with a new philosophy around endgame encounters that puts an emphasis on readability and reactability, the actual act of playing WoW has never felt more approachable.
Ahead of Midnight's early access release on February 26 and its full launch on March 2, GameSpot chatted with a number of developers from Blizzard about the quietly ambitious expansion. We discussed a number of different topics, like if Blizzard's recent streak of adding more and more evergreen features could eventually become a burden rather than a boon, and whether Blizzard always planned for Midnight to be a major turning point. We also talked about Blizzard's approach when it comes to reimagining existing zones, the efficiency of the new Prey system, and how players have surprised the team with their endless housing creativity.
From 2014-2020, each new WoW expansion made a point to introduce a flashy new feature or system that would exist for a single expansion. In Warlords of Draenor, it was Garrisons. In Legion, it was Artifact weapons. That trend continued all the way to 2020's Shadowlands. At the time, keeping new features relegated to a single expansion helped minimize feature creep and kept the game from being overloaded with systems and activities as the years rolled on.
Starting with 2022's Dragonflight, that philosophy changed. Instead of one-time, back-of-the-box features, Blizzard instead began to emphasize making lasting, evergreen additions to the game that would last beyond a single expansion. In Dragonflight, it was dynamic flight, now seen as a core part of WoW's gameplay. In The War Within, it was the addition of a new form of solo content in the form of delves, something that for many people has become their preferred way to experience WoW's endgame, and account-wide unlocks via the Warband system. Now, in Midnight, it's player housing and the new Prey system.
In just a few years, WoW's list of features has grown quite a bit beyond the typical dungeon, raid, and PvP experiences many players have grown accustomed to. I asked associate game director Paul Kubit if adding too much to WoW in a short period was ever a concern, and if Blizzard planned for the long term when deciding to introduce new evergreen features. Kubit said the topic does come up, but that it's ultimately a good problem to have.
"There's so many ways to play World of Warcraft," Kubit said. "A lot of folks look at something like delves, which were added in The War Within, as literally one of the reasons they play the game now. It's a legit and supported gamestyle. Once again, it's a good problem to have. We're going to keep adding cool stuff to the game, and then figure out exactly where we want to apportion our focus from time to time."
Blizzard's approach to endgame encounter design is another area that, while not technically a new feature, will persist beyond one expansion. Lead encounter designer Dylan Barker said Blizzard has had to "hone" its craft to more effectively show players what's happening moment-to-moment. That has meant a focus on visual effects and attack animations to better highlight what an enemy is doing and how dangerous an attack or spell is. It has also meant reducing the overall number of threats a player has to worry about, but making those threats more critical and demanding of players' attention, Barker said.
"I think the space we've triangulated is really healthy," Barker said. "Players are going to find it's a little bit more approachable in that when something tells you it's going to kill them, it means to kill them. Which is a pretty honest space to be in."
Kubit said the answer was "all very complicated" in regards to whether it was always Blizzard's intentions to bring so many changes to WoW--the gutting of combat add-ons, the addition of housing, major class ability pruning, the Prey system, the changes to encounter design--all at once. Housing, he said, had always been planned for Midnight, dating all the way back to before the release of Shadowlands. He said Midnight serves as a "dark, middle chapter" to the game's current Worldsoul Saga storyline, and including housing as part of the expansion was intentional to provide some respite from the expansion's edgier tone.
"Housing really provides a nice counter balance to the experience," Kubit said.
Housing is the ultimate evergreen addition, branching out to touch nearly every aspect of the game going forward. Midnight is the first expansion built from the ground up with housing in mind, and as such it will be far more integrated into the core game loop than it is currently. That means more decor rewards from quests, achievements, dungeons, and other sources.
While Kubit said he was excited about seeing what players will do with all the new decor options coming as part of Midnight, housing will never be a requirement. If players don't want to play house, they don't have to, and Kubit said leveling up your house or interacting with various housing systems won't ever be mandatory.
Barker said some players, like dedicated raiders or high-level Mythic+ pushers, haven't embraced housing just yet. But over time, as players explore the systems, he said those kinds of players may find inspiration from the rest of the game's community.
"With housing I've had some folks who are maybe in the hardcore community where they're raiding and doing dungeons and they say, 'I don't understand how housing is for me yet,'" Barker said. "But when you see other people doing things, whether it's lifting your house, or making artwork or setting up your ideal trophy room or something like that, you suddenly get that idea of maybe this is where this is for me. It's just like raiding. You learn strategy from watching people execute at a high level and say, 'I want to try that,' and it goes for the more social aspects as well."
The team has nonetheless been impressed by what housing aficionados have cooked up so far.
"We knew we had creative devs working with our tools over the last several years, building really cool houses," Kubit said. "But we also had the suspicion that once players get it, there's such a broad variety of skillsets that they're going to do things we didn't even think about. But how quickly that happened and to the degree that happened really blew my mind."
Kubit said he originally thought players would spend all their time designing the interiors of their homes but was surprised that it was actually the exteriors that have been the focus for many homeowners. From walking fortresses to floating airships, players have been using everything at their disposal to make some truly impressive housing creations, something Blizzard wants to support any way it can.
"That's also another area where 'Okay, expectations were not where we expected with players, players clearly want a lot more tools and ability and budget to be able to place items in their front yards,'" Kubit said. "So the team has been working hard to make sure that is the case, that as much as safely possible we can increase that budget and are still looking for potential increases in the future as well."
Prey is Midnight's other major feature addition, one that transforms the game's open world into a place where, for the first time in a long time, actual challenge and danger can be experienced. WoW has come a long way since early days when aggroing more than two enemies at a time meant almost certain death as a solo player. Prior to Midnight, players in the outdoor world can kill a dozen foes at once without breaking a sweat. Prey, however, is looking to spice the open-world experience back up by having players both hunt (and be hunted by) bounty targets within a zone.
Players who don't want to think too much can engage with Prey on its normal difficulty to experience its storyline, but for those who want better rewards and extra challenge, higher Prey difficulties will be the equivalent of high-level delves (with equivalent endgame gear as a prize to boot). That means players will actually need to think about their Talent loadouts and maybe even bring some consumables while doing something as previously mundane and worry-free as completing world quests.
While being ambushed and tracking down targets may seem like it could throw a wrench into WoW's current world-quest loop, one where completing quests quickly and efficiently is the name of the game, senior game designer Kim Flack actually said the opposite is actually true.
"If you have a bunch of world quests in Zul'Aman to do, you might think to yourself, 'How about I go grab a Prey contract, go to Zul'Aman, do my world quests, finish the Prey at the same time, and now I've doubled my efficiency,'" Flack said. "I love the multi-tasking part of Prey, it's something I'm going to be taking advantage of pretty frequently."
All the while, players will get to know Astalor, the Blood Elf NPC who serves as the face of the system, at least for this expansion. Flack said Astalor is for those who love the darker side of the Blood Elves as seen in The Burning Crusade's opening cinematic, one that isn't afraid to hurt others in the pursuit of knowledge and power. Prey as a result is infused with story and character moments that differentiate it from delves or dungeons, thanks both to Astalor himself and the targets he tasks players with snuffing out.
"The Prey targets are just oozing personality," Flack said. "All of them are creatures that can talk. That was very important to us, that they can say things to you as they ambush you, when you fight them. The hope was you're happy to see these guys pop out of the shadows to come try to kill you because they say something hilarious. Maybe terrifying, but hilarious."
In Midnight, two of the expansion's zones, Harandar and Voidstorm, will be entirely new. The other two, however, are remakes of a sort. The Blood Elf lands of Eversong Woods and the Amani Troll homeland of Zul'Aman (as a raid) were both introduced back in 2007 as part of The Burning Crusade, and such were separated from the rest of Azeroth by loading screens. Now, almost two decades later, they're being integrated into Azeroth proper and reimagined from the ground up.
Just because two of the game's zones are "remakes" doesn't mean bringing them to life is any easier or faster, game designer Jake Shillan said. Instead, revamping an existing zone for 2026 is just a different set of challenges.
"When it comes to Eversong and Zul'aman in particular, we're looking at places we have a lot of knowledge about, especially with Eversong," Shillan said. "We're not simply asking, 'Can we redo it?' That's not really the question. The question is, 'What is it like now in terms of the World of Warcraft world itself?' We're not erasing and redoing, that's not what this is. This is us saying, 'We've been playing in this place for 15 real-life years and a couple of decades, I believe, in-game, let's take it to the next level' and say, 'Okay, it's been quite a bit of in-game time, what is this space like now?'"
Where Eversong Woods was more of a known quantity, Zul'Aman required a different approach. It meant taking what was once a single endgame instance, recreating it, and then going beyond it. Much of the lore of the Amani has been told from the perspective of other races, like the humans and Blood Elves. With Midnight's version of Zul'Aman, Blizzard saw it as an opportunity to finally show things from the Amani's perspective, Shillan said.
"With Zul'Aman we get this interesting edge case where yes, the Amani trolls existed and Zul'Aman existed prior to Midnight, but mostly in a smaller space," Shillan said. "We truly took the raid space from Burning Crusade and said, 'How can we take this thing and blow it out and expand it into an entire zone, an entire culture?'"
It may not be as literally earth-shattering as the Cataclysm, but Midnight is proving to be an important turning point in the MMO's history. Time will be the judge of whether or not Blizzard's Midnight ambitions prove to be the correct course, but it's one that is already certain to leave a lasting impact beyond the usual expansion cycle.
WoW: Midnight releases in early access starting today, February 26, for those who purchase the expansion's Epic edition. Midnight arrives for everyone else March 2.
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It's a more subtle transformation to be sure. Whereas Cataclysm overhauled all of Azeroth in an impossible-not-to-notice planet-wide catastrophe, Midnight is instead overhauling the game's underlying fundamentals in a number of ways that may not be all that visible to those on the outside.
Many of those major changes are live right now, ahead of the expansion proper. Housing, a feature players have been daydreaming about for almost as long as WoW has existed, went live in December for those who preordered Midnight. Housing is one of the biggest additions to WoW in its history, a new pillar of the game going forward that will grow and expand over time. But that's just part of WoW's Midnight metamorphosis.
Where players will truly feel how WoW has changed is everywhere else. Combat add-ons, something players have relied on for years in order to survive WoW's endgame, are now far more restricted in what they can do or tell players. Instead, Blizzard now offers in-game tools like a damage meter, cooldown manager, and boss timeline as part of the game's default user interface. The result is a more even playing field, one where a player doesn't need to go beyond the game's tools to find the information they need to be successful.
Going hand-in-hand with players having more built-in information than ever before, Blizzard took the pruning shears to the game's classes in dramatic fashion. Classes are more streamlined and less bloated than they've been in a decade. When combined with a new philosophy around endgame encounters that puts an emphasis on readability and reactability, the actual act of playing WoW has never felt more approachable.
Ahead of Midnight's early access release on February 26 and its full launch on March 2, GameSpot chatted with a number of developers from Blizzard about the quietly ambitious expansion. We discussed a number of different topics, like if Blizzard's recent streak of adding more and more evergreen features could eventually become a burden rather than a boon, and whether Blizzard always planned for Midnight to be a major turning point. We also talked about Blizzard's approach when it comes to reimagining existing zones, the efficiency of the new Prey system, and how players have surprised the team with their endless housing creativity.
All About The Evergreen
From 2014-2020, each new WoW expansion made a point to introduce a flashy new feature or system that would exist for a single expansion. In Warlords of Draenor, it was Garrisons. In Legion, it was Artifact weapons. That trend continued all the way to 2020's Shadowlands. At the time, keeping new features relegated to a single expansion helped minimize feature creep and kept the game from being overloaded with systems and activities as the years rolled on.
Starting with 2022's Dragonflight, that philosophy changed. Instead of one-time, back-of-the-box features, Blizzard instead began to emphasize making lasting, evergreen additions to the game that would last beyond a single expansion. In Dragonflight, it was dynamic flight, now seen as a core part of WoW's gameplay. In The War Within, it was the addition of a new form of solo content in the form of delves, something that for many people has become their preferred way to experience WoW's endgame, and account-wide unlocks via the Warband system. Now, in Midnight, it's player housing and the new Prey system.
In just a few years, WoW's list of features has grown quite a bit beyond the typical dungeon, raid, and PvP experiences many players have grown accustomed to. I asked associate game director Paul Kubit if adding too much to WoW in a short period was ever a concern, and if Blizzard planned for the long term when deciding to introduce new evergreen features. Kubit said the topic does come up, but that it's ultimately a good problem to have.
"There's so many ways to play World of Warcraft," Kubit said. "A lot of folks look at something like delves, which were added in The War Within, as literally one of the reasons they play the game now. It's a legit and supported gamestyle. Once again, it's a good problem to have. We're going to keep adding cool stuff to the game, and then figure out exactly where we want to apportion our focus from time to time."
Blizzard's approach to endgame encounter design is another area that, while not technically a new feature, will persist beyond one expansion. Lead encounter designer Dylan Barker said Blizzard has had to "hone" its craft to more effectively show players what's happening moment-to-moment. That has meant a focus on visual effects and attack animations to better highlight what an enemy is doing and how dangerous an attack or spell is. It has also meant reducing the overall number of threats a player has to worry about, but making those threats more critical and demanding of players' attention, Barker said.
"I think the space we've triangulated is really healthy," Barker said. "Players are going to find it's a little bit more approachable in that when something tells you it's going to kill them, it means to kill them. Which is a pretty honest space to be in."
Kubit said the answer was "all very complicated" in regards to whether it was always Blizzard's intentions to bring so many changes to WoW--the gutting of combat add-ons, the addition of housing, major class ability pruning, the Prey system, the changes to encounter design--all at once. Housing, he said, had always been planned for Midnight, dating all the way back to before the release of Shadowlands. He said Midnight serves as a "dark, middle chapter" to the game's current Worldsoul Saga storyline, and including housing as part of the expansion was intentional to provide some respite from the expansion's edgier tone.
"Housing really provides a nice counter balance to the experience," Kubit said.
Open House
Housing is the ultimate evergreen addition, branching out to touch nearly every aspect of the game going forward. Midnight is the first expansion built from the ground up with housing in mind, and as such it will be far more integrated into the core game loop than it is currently. That means more decor rewards from quests, achievements, dungeons, and other sources.
While Kubit said he was excited about seeing what players will do with all the new decor options coming as part of Midnight, housing will never be a requirement. If players don't want to play house, they don't have to, and Kubit said leveling up your house or interacting with various housing systems won't ever be mandatory.
Barker said some players, like dedicated raiders or high-level Mythic+ pushers, haven't embraced housing just yet. But over time, as players explore the systems, he said those kinds of players may find inspiration from the rest of the game's community.
"With housing I've had some folks who are maybe in the hardcore community where they're raiding and doing dungeons and they say, 'I don't understand how housing is for me yet,'" Barker said. "But when you see other people doing things, whether it's lifting your house, or making artwork or setting up your ideal trophy room or something like that, you suddenly get that idea of maybe this is where this is for me. It's just like raiding. You learn strategy from watching people execute at a high level and say, 'I want to try that,' and it goes for the more social aspects as well."
The team has nonetheless been impressed by what housing aficionados have cooked up so far.
"We knew we had creative devs working with our tools over the last several years, building really cool houses," Kubit said. "But we also had the suspicion that once players get it, there's such a broad variety of skillsets that they're going to do things we didn't even think about. But how quickly that happened and to the degree that happened really blew my mind."
Kubit said he originally thought players would spend all their time designing the interiors of their homes but was surprised that it was actually the exteriors that have been the focus for many homeowners. From walking fortresses to floating airships, players have been using everything at their disposal to make some truly impressive housing creations, something Blizzard wants to support any way it can.
"That's also another area where 'Okay, expectations were not where we expected with players, players clearly want a lot more tools and ability and budget to be able to place items in their front yards,'" Kubit said. "So the team has been working hard to make sure that is the case, that as much as safely possible we can increase that budget and are still looking for potential increases in the future as well."
Predator And Prey
Prey is Midnight's other major feature addition, one that transforms the game's open world into a place where, for the first time in a long time, actual challenge and danger can be experienced. WoW has come a long way since early days when aggroing more than two enemies at a time meant almost certain death as a solo player. Prior to Midnight, players in the outdoor world can kill a dozen foes at once without breaking a sweat. Prey, however, is looking to spice the open-world experience back up by having players both hunt (and be hunted by) bounty targets within a zone.
Players who don't want to think too much can engage with Prey on its normal difficulty to experience its storyline, but for those who want better rewards and extra challenge, higher Prey difficulties will be the equivalent of high-level delves (with equivalent endgame gear as a prize to boot). That means players will actually need to think about their Talent loadouts and maybe even bring some consumables while doing something as previously mundane and worry-free as completing world quests.
While being ambushed and tracking down targets may seem like it could throw a wrench into WoW's current world-quest loop, one where completing quests quickly and efficiently is the name of the game, senior game designer Kim Flack actually said the opposite is actually true.
"If you have a bunch of world quests in Zul'Aman to do, you might think to yourself, 'How about I go grab a Prey contract, go to Zul'Aman, do my world quests, finish the Prey at the same time, and now I've doubled my efficiency,'" Flack said. "I love the multi-tasking part of Prey, it's something I'm going to be taking advantage of pretty frequently."
All the while, players will get to know Astalor, the Blood Elf NPC who serves as the face of the system, at least for this expansion. Flack said Astalor is for those who love the darker side of the Blood Elves as seen in The Burning Crusade's opening cinematic, one that isn't afraid to hurt others in the pursuit of knowledge and power. Prey as a result is infused with story and character moments that differentiate it from delves or dungeons, thanks both to Astalor himself and the targets he tasks players with snuffing out.
"The Prey targets are just oozing personality," Flack said. "All of them are creatures that can talk. That was very important to us, that they can say things to you as they ambush you, when you fight them. The hope was you're happy to see these guys pop out of the shadows to come try to kill you because they say something hilarious. Maybe terrifying, but hilarious."
Remaking Azeroth
In Midnight, two of the expansion's zones, Harandar and Voidstorm, will be entirely new. The other two, however, are remakes of a sort. The Blood Elf lands of Eversong Woods and the Amani Troll homeland of Zul'Aman (as a raid) were both introduced back in 2007 as part of The Burning Crusade, and such were separated from the rest of Azeroth by loading screens. Now, almost two decades later, they're being integrated into Azeroth proper and reimagined from the ground up.
Just because two of the game's zones are "remakes" doesn't mean bringing them to life is any easier or faster, game designer Jake Shillan said. Instead, revamping an existing zone for 2026 is just a different set of challenges.
"When it comes to Eversong and Zul'aman in particular, we're looking at places we have a lot of knowledge about, especially with Eversong," Shillan said. "We're not simply asking, 'Can we redo it?' That's not really the question. The question is, 'What is it like now in terms of the World of Warcraft world itself?' We're not erasing and redoing, that's not what this is. This is us saying, 'We've been playing in this place for 15 real-life years and a couple of decades, I believe, in-game, let's take it to the next level' and say, 'Okay, it's been quite a bit of in-game time, what is this space like now?'"
Where Eversong Woods was more of a known quantity, Zul'Aman required a different approach. It meant taking what was once a single endgame instance, recreating it, and then going beyond it. Much of the lore of the Amani has been told from the perspective of other races, like the humans and Blood Elves. With Midnight's version of Zul'Aman, Blizzard saw it as an opportunity to finally show things from the Amani's perspective, Shillan said.
"With Zul'Aman we get this interesting edge case where yes, the Amani trolls existed and Zul'Aman existed prior to Midnight, but mostly in a smaller space," Shillan said. "We truly took the raid space from Burning Crusade and said, 'How can we take this thing and blow it out and expand it into an entire zone, an entire culture?'"
It may not be as literally earth-shattering as the Cataclysm, but Midnight is proving to be an important turning point in the MMO's history. Time will be the judge of whether or not Blizzard's Midnight ambitions prove to be the correct course, but it's one that is already certain to leave a lasting impact beyond the usual expansion cycle.
WoW: Midnight releases in early access starting today, February 26, for those who purchase the expansion's Epic edition. Midnight arrives for everyone else March 2.
Source