World of Warcraft “Midnight” Expansion Review Part 3

NOTE: This is part 3 of an ongoing review of “Midnight”

Finally, we come to the end of the “Midnight” review. I’ve talked a lot about the story to this point, but really, at the end of the day, what makes a video game a game is… well… the gameplay itself.

So, for this final part of the review, I wanted to delve into the systems that “World of Warcraft” is built upon and actually discuss the game itself. Let’s get into it!

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Game Systems

A lot can be said about World of Warcraft’s story.

And I do mean a lot… For the last month, it’s all I’ve ever really seen on my Twitter and Bluesky feed. Admittedly, a lot of it also colored my own perceptions of the game as I went along, as some people made good points, counterpoints, and observations.

But the real meat of the game is its content and gameplay loop. Once you finish the story, think about it, and then move on, the game HAS to do something to keep your butt in the seat, right? What about the game itself? Is it any fun?

To that I say YES.

Back during Vanilla, all the way to early “Wrath of the Lich King“, the game was predominantly about exploration, leveling, and then dungeon grinding with some raiding in between. Vanilla had large 40-man raids and mega-dungeons that took hours, if not weeks, of prep time and needed a lot of organization. TBC lowered the number of people you needed to raid from 40 to 25 (Except Karazhan, which needed 10). However, the endgame was still largely grinding out dungeons for blue quality items, PvP, the few daily quests we got, and maximizing reputation with various factions.

Early WoTLK was the same thing till later in the expansion with the introduction of Looking for Group. Before that, one had to form a party the old-fashioned way: Asking people to join your group. You either did this through a guild or a network of friends that you made. It wasn’t uncommon to sit in trade chat for HOURS looking for one more member for your group, and God be with you if you needed heals for a PuG raid.

After that, the endgame shifted away from exploration, dungeons, and reputation grinding, with maybe some mild raiding, to becoming all about the raiding experience. Cataclysm’s endgame was either PvP or raiding. MoP changed it up with the introduction of Challenge Dungeons (the prototype of Mythic Dungeons), and after that, it was all about grinding out dailies, maximizing challenges, raiding the dungeons, and joining the PvP meatgrinder.

I won’t get too into the weeds with history here. Suffice to say that in “Midnight,“ there are now countless ways one can level up and gear their characters. The endgame shifted away from reaching the highest tier of raiding, and it has made the game extremely casual-friendly. Which helps since “World of Warcraft’s” average player age is in their mid 30s now.

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Delves

Delves return from “The War Within“ and continue to be my favorite way of gearing up.

For those that don’t know, they’re essentially dungeons you can solo or go in with a small group, and have rotating stories to keep them feeling fresh. Often, they’re non-linear, so you can tackle them in any way that you see fit.

What makes them great is that they’re based on a tier system from +1 to +11 with high-end rewards at the +11 level. While you won’t get the HIGHEST tier of gear (Mythic Quality) from doing them aside from a chance with a Treasure Trove map once a week, you still get Champion Quality gear upon completion, with your Great Vault gear maximizing at Hero Quality for just doing +8s.

And you know what? I’m fine with that. It’s a slower way to grind out gear, but it’s great for those who only have a few hours to play every few days. Delves take roughly 40 mins, and you only need to complete 8 a week for three chances in the Great Vault.

What I really like about the Delves in “Midnight“ is that they improved the levels. Not only are they varied and interesting, but some are just arenas you jump into and start whaling on. Valeera is an alright Delve companion, too. While she doesn’t have Brann’s personality, she does hit a lot harder with more utility, so I can’t complain.

Critiques

As far as critiques go, I do have one minor one. I wish that if you completed +11s, you would get a chance at Mythic Quality gear in the Great Vault. You only need +8s to reach heroic quality, so it makes sense that beating eight +11’s should earn you a possible roll for Mythic.

I understand why they don’t, since I’m sitting at 263 ilvl and I complete +11s relatively easily, but this is just me being greedy at this point.

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Prey

Prey is an interesting system. You’re essentially being hired by a very creepy elven man to hunt down troublesome enemies that present a danger to Silvermoon, and by extension, all of Azeroth itself. There are three tiers to it — Normal, Hard, and Nightmare, and each level brings with it unique challenges you face while hunting your prey.

Normal Mode is pretty straightforward. Go and hunt the bastard down. No frills, minor thrills. Sometimes you get ambushed and have to fend them off, and other times you have quests that you can use to fill up your hunt bar. It’s fairly straightforward, and it feels like Warmode, just with one persistent person wanting to kill you in the middle of big pulls.

Hard Mode is tougher, as the name implies. It does admirably ramp up the difficulty by making you take a stacking debuff that increases damage received the further you are in discovering your prey, and it creates a blood pool beneath your feet that you need to move out of unless it hurts you and even cripples you in a fight.

Time really isn’t against you in this mode. If you don’t complete the prey hunt, you just randomly get ambushed with the occasional blood pool. The difficulty in this mode is simply trying to complete it without taking too much damage but a good strategy is to spam traps and the occasional coalesced mote of anguish to keep the debuff down.

If you die, you lose a large chunk of your progress. So this is very much a ramp-up that’ll test your hunting ability.

Nightmare Mode is tough and is really a race against the clock. Not only do you have all of the previous issues to deal with, but it also changes how the incoming damage debuff is applied. Instead of increasing in incremental steps the closer you get to your prey, it increases every minute regardless of what you do (aside from sitting in a place of rest, such as an Inn or outside of the hunting zone).

Not only that, but occasionally you get followed by what looks like your own ghost, tethered to you via a red line of anguish and if that ghost touches you, you take massive damage with a DoT applied to you. Though you can sever its connection with a ranged interrupt. Also Alastor gets a little creepy sometimes and demands you kill something for him within a 15second window, and if you fail, you also take massive.

Unlike in Hard Mode, if you die, you lose ALL your hunt progress, severely hampering you if you are barely able to finish it.

Critiques

My main critique lies mostly with Nightmare Mode.

Nightmare Mode’s biggest problem is that it’s not difficult until it throws all of its bull crap at you. While the systems by themselves are interesting — such as your ghost following you, hurting you if it touches you, having to kill for Alastor to satiate his bloodlust, or the ramping additional damage received debuff — it has the propensity to stack it all at once.

One at a time, or even on a clear timer, is fine. But more than once, I’ve been gathering hunting intelligence to find my prey, only to be ambushed, have the anguish pool spawn beneath my feet, be told to kill something, have my ghost chase me down, AND then get stunned by something and hit with everything all at once. And when that happens, and I die? It’s all resetted back to zero.

That’s not a skill issue. It’s bad RNG, and I’ve never been a fan of that in a game where the purpose isn’t to waste your time. Warcraft is not a rogue-like, and shouldn’t ever be. It’s a game that’s based on knowing your class and its limits, what your abilities do, threat assessment, and teamwork. As stated, if everything was on a clear timer so I knew when these debuffs would hit, I can at least assess whether pursuing a threat while the anguish damage debuff stacks is worth it, or to wait for the ambush/ghost/killing debuff to trigger, deal with that, and continue the hunt. Punishment should come from negligence, not an instantaneous obliteration via a bad luck of the die roll.

Another minor critique I have is that the Prey system is simply not a good way to gear up. It’s good for farming crests, which is what I feel its true purpose is, but after you do your first hunt at each tier, you only get a handful of gold, marl, and that’s it. You only get gear for the first kill on each tier.

Of course, this is minor. Prey Hunts count towards your weekly Great Vault chance, and Nightmare is equivalent to a +8 Delve. Doing all four Nightmare Prey and doing four+11 Delves gets you three Heroic Quality gear chances a week in the great vault.

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Raids and Mythic Dungeons

Honestly, I really don’t have much to say in this regard. It’s the same as it’s been since MoP in terms of raiding, and Mythic Dungeons since DF is pretty much the same. The higher your tiers go, the more chances you get at loot. In Raids, it’s based on personal rolls with the bosses, and in Mythics, you get 1 chance per completion with an additional chance per timing.

I won’t say whether these systems are perfect, or get into whether the First Season is any good. Most of my critique lies with the player base and how toxic many players can be towards one another. That’s not a problem that’s easily fixable by Blizzard, and it’s a community issue, so I’ll leave it at that, as that’s another article entirely.

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PvP

I uh… haven’t PvPed since MoP. So I don’t really have much to say about this. Sorry.

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Housing

Housing isn’t a way to get gear. In actuality, it is the true endgame of “Midnight“, as you will be pouring all of your time, energy, and resources into it.

It doesn’t help that players have been asking for it for years. When it was first announced, many assumed it would be like the Garrison system, which was a prototype for player housing (neglecting the farm from MoP). With Garrisons, you really had a limited number of things you could actually change within them. You couldn’t change any of the architecture, add decorations, or even pivot and change building layouts. So many players had the impression Housing was going to be plug-and-play as well.

While I won’t get into it in this article because a lot has been said about it, the fact that it exploded in popularity says that Blizzard had gone above and beyond with the system. It’s simple, intuitive, and players have created some amazing things with it, even going so far as to create guides on YouTube…

I really, really hope they don’t monetize the hell out of it in a gross, obvious way. Foreshadowing, I know.

Critiques

There’s not much I can critique about the system. One thing I wish is that Blizzard would implement saved floor plans. This way I can switch my house around depending on my mood, or my Roleplay character (as I do roleplay on both Wyrmrest Accord and Moon Guard). I can even create different environments for events with friends without spending hours tearing down and fixing up.

There’s a rumor that Blizzard does want to implement this feature one day, and while I haven’t looked for that information yet, I certainly hope it happens.

The second thing I can critique Blizzard on is that they’re clearly intending to use the system’s popularity as a monetization tool. While I don’t mind the occasional $5 or $10 for a cosmetic here and there, they’re unfortunately being pretty egregious with it.

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Weekly Dailies

They’re fun. No real critique. Sal’theriel Soiree, Abundance, Haranir Relic, and the Stormarion Assault can be done relatively quickly and painlessly, earning you a handful of gold (2,000g on average) and other resources. The gear they drop is veteran quality, so for gearing up alts, it’s a decent way to snag Warbound loot, and they’re varied enough to be interesting and just long enough not to be a slog.

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Conclusion

In the end, is “Midnight“ a good expansion?

Well, it’s too early to tell. For that, we’ll have to see how the next patches go, though as of this writing 12.0.5 is out and it’s… well, it’s buggy (expect a late article on that too).

For now, the foundation is there. The core mechanics of the game are solid, and the story is at least good till the end-game campaign’s halfway mark. There are some structural problems with the story as well, and it’s clear that the writing team doesn’t coordinate with one another.

Instead, where Warcraft has always shone was in the art department. The world is gorgeous to behold with a distinct art style all its own, and the Music is incredibly top-notch. The story is hit-or-miss, with a lot more misses than hits; the hits at least feel good, especially some of the side quests that are very touching and pull at the heartstrings.

As long as they can keep the gameplay loops fun, reign in their FOMO, work on fixing bugs, and not overload players with TOO much to do, I think “Midnight” might be a decent slide into “The Last Titan”. Though if they want to land the Worldsoul Saga ending, they really need to slow down and stop tying loose ends off-screen. That’s my biggest gripe; they’re burning through their potential pool of stories too quickly.

For now, I know I’m still going to be playing for a while. See you in Azeroth!

~Rease Stoneheart

Author Note: This article first appeared on Rease’s Substack.