Returning to Azeroth for another adventure in World of Warcraft has become a well-established tradition. For two decades, Blizzard has consistently released an expansion roughly every two years, interspersed with major and minor updates that ensure players always have new content to engage with. This strategy aims to retain a loyal player base while also attracting newcomers. However, it’s the long-time fans, those who have invested hundreds of hours into their characters, who increasingly hold the most significance.
The Worldsoul Saga — an unusual trilogy that began with The War Within — now continues with Midnight. This expansion carries the burden of being the “middle chapter,” serving as a bridge between a strong beginning and the forthcoming conclusion in The Last Titan. Midnight’s critical role is to maintain the current momentum, keep dedicated players engaged, and attract new recruits. The question remains: how well has it managed these significant responsibilities?
All Together at the Sunwell?
Before penning this review, we completed Midnight’s introductory campaign and then awaited the launch of the first raids — Void Pinnacle and Dream Rift — to conclude this initial narrative arc. This storyline will further develop later in the March on Quel’Danas raid. Blizzard made an unconventional choice by releasing three smaller raids within a few weeks during Season 1. While this approach reflects their philosophy for this chapter of the Worldsoul Saga, it ultimately feels more disjointed than truly innovative.
The campaign kicks off in Silvermoon City, which has been reconfigured to serve as a new community hub for both factions. After a brief introduction, the narrative branches into three main pathways that players can complete in any order. While this structure isn’t new, we found ourselves rather indifferent to the stories presented this time around. Despite the frequent use of cinematic interludes intended to enhance engagement, these often felt so dated in their execution that they achieved the opposite effect. The most enjoyable part was undoubtedly Arator’s adventure; Blizzard is clearly grooming him for a leading role, but our appreciation stemmed primarily from its generous fanservice and deep dive into Warcraft’s extensive Paladin lore.
Arator’s story, likely opaque to newer players, primarily serves to unlock a small, new neutral zone called the Arcanist’s Library, designed specifically for lore enthusiasts. The questline focusing on the Amani Trolls of Zul’aman and the descendants of the late Zul’jin is more contained than it initially appears, mostly contextualizing nearby events. However, it soon delves into the familiar intricacies of Troll culture, with its Loa and tribal customs. The last of the three regions, Harandar, exists solely to justify yet another allied race with a somewhat absurd contortion: the Haranir, who supposedly lived underground all along, only now emerging because the Sunwell’s malfunction threatens their existence.
The three storylines ultimately converge in a final zone, Voidstorm, where the decisive battle against Xal’atath’s forces, threatening to invade Azeroth, takes place. There, in the Void Pinnacle raid, we once again confront a Windrunner who has succumbed to the dark side. As you might infer, we weren’t exactly captivated by the writing of this campaign. It persistently emphasizes the gravity of the Void threat without ever bringing in the allies we’ve gathered across various expansions to lend a hand (let’s not even mention the forces of alternate Draenor, forgotten beyond a common portal). In this regard, World of Warcraft continues to suffer from a narrative approach that starts with grand ambitions only to scale them back, perhaps due to the challenge of integrating so many characters and multidirectional connections.
However, the campaign’s main issue, despite flowing quite smoothly without tedious stretches and maintaining a good pace, lies primarily in its constant, continuous, and pervasive sense of déjà vu. This isn’t just limited to the narrative but is especially prominent in the environments. Midnight reuses two old zones — Eversong Woods and Zul’aman — revised and updated, while Arator’s storyline is set in locations belonging to previous expansions or the original iteration of World of Warcraft.
Voidstorm is essentially a rehashed version of K’aresh, the map added at the end of The War Within, and Harandar is just another subterranean biome, too reminiscent of Un’goro Crater. Everything feels seen before, already explored, and while the map design remains excellent as usual in its geometry and placement of enemies, treasures, and collectibles, we felt much less compelled to explore than in the past precisely because almost nothing we encountered truly surprised us.
A Middle Chapter, or Half-Finished?
Ironically, the best stories in this expansion are tucked away among the hundreds of available side quests, often written better than a main campaign that largely revolves — to put it mildly — around the Windrunner family soap opera and the machinations of an antagonist, Xal’atath, who has frankly said all she needs to say over too many expansions, ultimately becoming a Sunday morning cartoon villain. The ending of Void Pinnacle does offer glimpses of a potential narrative resurgence that might finally involve other heroes of the saga, but it’s too early to declare victory. Midnight’s problem is multifaceted: it simply feels like an uninspired expansion, even in its art direction, making us long for spectacular zones like The War Within’s Sacred Chasms.
It’s unlikely to improve significantly based on player feedback either. As mentioned, it’s a middle expansion, a bridge connecting to the upcoming The Last Titan, which Blizzard has reportedly been actively developing for some time. Consequently, we risk playing through a rather “stagnant” expansion due to its intermediate chapter nature. Fortunately, on the gameplay front, we have fewer complaints, though it must be stated clearly: World of Warcraft hasn’t changed one bit this time around. But we’ve repeatedly asserted that it’s an unchanging formula, so expecting anything different now, as we enter the twenty-second year of Blizzard’s MMORPG, makes little sense.
Instead, we can observe the refinements the Irvine developer applies with each game iteration, striving to perfect what’s possible, even if it sometimes feels a bit monotonous. This is evident in the new “Apex Talents,” which reward players in the race to the new maximum level, granting each specialization three unique nodes to spend extra talent points. While not revolutionary, these additions — mostly passive abilities — help better express each class’s potential and fantasy. As for balance, we won’t even comment; it would be a waste of time. Blizzard, as always, will apply a round of nerfs and buffs each season, overturning delicate balances to reshuffle the deck and perhaps encourage players to level new characters.
The game, therefore, remains largely the same, at least for those who, upon reaching max level, want to dive into the vertical endgame of dungeons, raids, loot, and PvP (which, despite rumors, still exists). Blizzard has extended the duration of this first season slightly to allow players to align and begin their ascent more or less on an even footing, especially since the initial raids offer two options with a total of seven bosses plus one world boss. The third raid will add two more bosses, providing players with a base of ten raid bosses plus eight Mythic dungeons. In short, for those aiming to optimize their gear, there’s plenty to do, including multiple raid difficulties, timed Mythic+, crafting, world quests, and skirmishes. Enough to keep the perfectionist player engaged for a long time, without neglecting casual players.
It’s clear that Blizzard has an eye on less dedicated players, not only through an influx of cosmetic and secondary content — the addition of Player Housing, for instance, has sparked a secondary market for decorations and various amenities, a fantastic feature that we fear might only appeal to a limited number of players and lose its charm over time — but also through the introduction of mechanics designed for solo players or small groups. Midnight not only adds eight new, well-crafted dungeons, particularly in their more original and intricate boss fight designs than usual (we especially enjoyed Windrunner’s Pinnacle and Treachery’s Crossroads), but also a new series of skirmishes alongside Valeera Sanguinar, who replaces Brann Bronzebeard from The War Within as the seasonal guide.
An MMO: Predator or Prey?
Conversely, the “Prey System,” intended to be the highlight of new endgame content, proved disappointing. Supported by a rather interesting mini-narrative arc, the Prey System works as follows: players select a target miniboss, which then appears unexpectedly in a specific map while they are fighting enemies, gathering resources, or performing other actions. These ambushes can occur when players are at a disadvantage, much like open-world PvP, and the objective is to fend them off each time. After repelling a certain number of ambushes, players can finally counterattack and seek out the miniboss for a decisive duel, earning reputation with the unsettling Astalor Bloodsworn and a currency exchangeable for mounts, pets, and various decorations. On paper, the Prey System sounded highly engaging.
In practice, however, it falls flat. The issue isn’t the ease of encounters on Normal and Hard difficulties — targets are little more than rare enemies with limited mechanics — or how frustrating they become on Nightmare difficulty, where progression resets with every death or involuntary disconnection. Rather, the main problem is that at a certain point, players find themselves “grinding” resources or enemies solely to trigger ambushes. Once world quests in a map are exhausted, and with them the reasons to stay, the Prey System transforms from a secondary activity to complete while doing other things into… doing other things just to complete the secondary activity. This is effectively the opposite of its intended purpose.
Ultimately, the Prey System serves as an alternative to skirmishes for filling the lower row of the weekly Great Vault with high-level loot, benefiting casual players who don’t participate in raids or timed Mythic+ dungeons, but proving much less useful to everyone else. Once the topic of the Prey System is exhausted, there’s little truly innovative left to discuss. There’s the “Abundance” minigame, which is charming but not essential, and a series of slightly more intricate regional side quests that reward players with chests full of resources, money, and reputation. However, genuine character progression still revolves around dungeons and raids, and all these minor secondary contents, in the end, seem to exist primarily to provide collectors with a way to amass cosmetics.
In some ways, it’s absurd that a feature players have requested for many years is now at the forefront. Yet, World of Warcraft has decided to embrace a plurality of philosophies and player types who continue to support its nature as a parallel universe. Midnight, in this sense, achieves its primary goal effortlessly: the supremely tested loop, relying on what is now practically perfect gameplay — disclaimers about balance and imbalances notwithstanding — always works. Thanks to a series of adjustments, such as those related to crafting or the significantly streamlined gear upgrading process, it represents a further refinement of the dynamics Blizzard has used to entertain players for years.
Despite these considerations, and knowing that we will likely play the first season to exhaustion, striving to climb the Mythic+ leaderboards to unlock new rewards and upgrade gear, we cannot hide our considerable disappointment with a content package that feels more like a substantial update than a true expansion. Midnight lacks the sense of wonder and awe that characterizes major expansions, where new lands or worlds are explored, where players encounter new, fantastical creatures, and learn about the enemies they will face in epic battles alongside guildmates (or perfect strangers, if you’re a lone wolf). The new expansion is a constant déjà vu, a return to well-trodden paths within a campaign that struggles to take off, serving for the first time as a mere backdrop to established mechanics rather than vice versa.
Conclusion
World of Warcraft’s new expansion speaks of courage, yet possesses very little itself. It suffers from all the inherent limitations of middle chapters in trilogies, which was largely foreseeable. Blizzard has primarily refined proven mechanics, adding content and features that have minimal impact on routines unchanged since The War Within, and indeed, from previous expansions if we’re honest. The game still functions wonderfully, mind you; those who enjoy improving their characters or collecting everything collectible now have new reasons to return. However, as we followed familiar stories in already-seen zones, we deeply missed the sense of novelty and discovery experienced in earlier expansions. While we are naturally at the beginning, with ample room for improvement, for the first time in many years, World of Warcraft is severely testing our willingness to bet on its future.
PROS
- Dungeons, raids, and boss encounters remain consistently top-tier.
- Some secondary quests are genuinely well-crafted.
- Abundant content for every player type.
- Noticeable improvements to various gameplay aspects.
CONS
- A pervasive sense of déjà vu hangs over the entire expansion.
- The main campaign’s writing leaves much to be desired.
- The “Prey System” proved rather disappointing.
- Player Housing is fantastic, but the decorations can be intrusive.