World of Warcraft’s Midnight growth is coming early subsequent 12 months, and it is reimagining an typically forgotten a part of previous Azeroth to appear and feel model new–the Blood Elf lands of Quel’thalas.Blizzard threw again the veil on WoW’s 11th growth, the second in its three-expansion-long Worldsoul Saga trilogy, at Gamescom 2025. It revealed that two of the growth’s 4 new zones are literally previous ones rebuilt from the bottom up, with a reimagined Silvermoon City serving because the growth’s fundamental hub. Blizzard additionally detailed different new options coming with Midnight, like a brand new opt-in open-world system known as Prey, one other playable Allied Race, a 3rd Demon Hunter specialization, and the total arrival of participant housing. GameSpot spoke with a number of totally different builders at Blizzard, together with WoW senior sport director Ion Hazzikostas, affiliate design director Maria Hamilton, and affiliate sport director Paul Kubit, to study extra about Midnight, together with how Blizzard approached revisiting older zones, what gamers can anticipate from Midnight’s story, how the brand new Demon Hunter spec performs, and rather more.Quel’thalas RebornWoW’s Blood Elf zones have been rebuilt with all-new property for Midnight.Two of the growth’s new zones are ones that anybody who has ever created a Blood Elf character in WoW will already be accustomed to. In Midnight, Eversong Woods, the world previously generally known as the Ghostlands, and the previous raid Zul’Aman have all been reimagined as fashionable questing zones, full with all-new property.When Silvermoon City and its surrounding areas have been added again in 2007 as a part of The Burning Crusade growth, a pesky loading display separated the brand new zones from the remainder of Azeroth. It was a pattern that might proceed in future expansions, which might go on so as to add quite a few new landmasses for gamers to discover, however all the time felt bizarre on this occasion because the Blood Elf lands of Quel’thalas have been straight linked to the Eastern Kingdoms through the Eastern Plaguelands zone.In Midnight, Eversong Woods, Zul’Aman and Silvermoon City will lastly be part of the Eastern Kingdoms proper–no loading display required. Players will be capable to fly, stroll, or trip on to the brand new zones from wherever within the Eastern Kingdoms. Hamilton defined how Blizzard approached rebuilding Quel’thalas and the encompassing areas.The former The Burning Crusade raid Zul’Aman has been reimagined as a full-fledged zone.”Most of the scars of the Scourge invasion have been healed,” Hamilton stated. “Time has passed. Blood Elves like their gardens tidy and their magical trees beautiful, so a lot of those scars have faded. Because we needed to do a transition from the forest into Zul’Aman proper, into an actual zone of Zul’Aman, we needed to expand there a little bit as well, because we needed room for the mountains to become mountainous without just suddenly being sheer, ‘okay, now it’s tall.’ There was some size adjustment there, but the intent was to make the zone feel as recognizable as possible. Things are generally, relatively, proportionally in the places you expect them to be. It should be familiar to the players that are quite familiar with the zone, it should feel just like home. It’s just a little bit prettier looking, a little bit nicer graphics and graphical upgrades for the assets. We pretty much said, “If we might reimagine it in a contemporary setting and join it appropriately to the remainder of the world and now enable entry to Zul’Aman, how would we do this, what would we have to do?'”Silvermoon City itself is larger, Hamilton said, but will still include all the iconic parts of the city players know and love. There are also new additions, like the Sanctum of Light and a Memorial Garden. That all being said, it’s also still very much a Horde city. While it will serve as the hub city for both the Horde and Alliance during Midnight, Alliance players will only be able to access certain parts of the city, with the rest of Silvermoon off-limits. Some of the most iconic areas in Quel’thalas, like Windrunner Spire, Magisters’ Terrace (a dungeon first added back in TBC), and Murder Row will now be dungeons.Into The VoidThe Haranir will become a playable Allied Race in WoW: Midnight.The remaining two zones for the expansion, Harandar and the Voidstorm, are new. Many players thought Harandar, a primordial forest where the roots of the World Trees converge, was set to appear as part of The War Within expansion, but it will instead play a key role in Midnight. It’s there that players will learn more about the Haranir, a new playable Allied Race that was first introduced during The War Within.In a shake-up from WoW’s more recent expansions, how players experience Midnight’s story will be a little different this time around. Every player will kick off the story campaign in Eversong Woods shortly after the events depicted in Midnight’s opening cinematic, but will choose whether to tackle Harandar or Zul’Aman next. Whatever zone they don’t pick can then be played through after that, before players head to the mysterious Voidstorm for the story’s finale.While Blizzard didn’t reveal too much about the mysterious final zone, Hamilton said part of Midnight’s story revolves around the heroes of Azeroth attempting to figure out how to access the Voidstorm, which serves as main villain Xal’atath’s base of operations. Hamilton said the zone is unlike others players have seen before, a world drenched in Void energies where even its native creatures battle to constantly consume one another. There are low-gravity areas of the zone that will change up WoW’s normal gameplay as well.A New DPS OptionDevourer Demon Hunters will use the power of the Void to decimate their enemies.Fitting with the expansion’s Void theme, a third Demon Hunter specialization is officially coming with Midnight that sees the class harness the power of that which they fight against. Called Devourer, the spec is a “mid-ranged” DPS that uses Void energy to decimate foes.Kubit made clear that Devourer players wouldn’t be sitting at max-range casting spells, but did say that in a lot of cases, the spec’s rotation can be done at range. The core loop of the spec is for players to enter Void Metamorphosis and then try to stay in the form for as long as possible to maximize damage.”This shouldn’t be going to be enjoying like a 100% basic ranged class,” Kubit said. “You have the DH [Demon Hunter] mobility ,which goes to encourage you to maneuver round, to be leaping into the fracas and melee, after which leaping again out once more, transferring round to gather soul shards and the like.”Some of the Devourer’s key abilities are Void Ray, a line attack similar to Demon Hunter’s existing Eye Beams ability, as well as powerful finisher abilities like Collapsing Star and Reap, which consume soul fragments on use. In an unsurprising bit of synergy, Void Elves will be able to become Demon Hunters come Midnight.Hunt Or Be HuntedThe new Prey system will bring additional gameplay to WoW’s open world.Whereas The War Within introduced a new form of instance solo content in the form of Delves, Midnight will spice up the game’s open world with a new opt-in system called Prey that will see players hunting down targets and being hunted themselves.There are three different difficulties for players to choose from: normal, hard, and nightmare. Kubit said the normal difficulty is for players who want to see the story associated with the system, which sees players working with Astalor Bloodsworn to hunt down “shady” characters. On normal difficulty, the challenge of the hunts won’t be out of line with what players normally experience from WoW’s open-world content.Those looking for more of a challenge, playing on hard or nightmare, will contend with enemies sporting more affixes and mechanics, including a secluded final showdown with their target that sounds similar to what players have seen from Delve pinnacle bosses in The War Within.Progressing through hunts will grant players additional cosmetics like mounts, titles, and housing decor items, but crucially won’t grant more raw power to those who opt-in to the system.”We’re not seeking to drive folks into content material that they are not serious about, however we have heard from lots of our gamers who actually get pleasure from spending time on this planet and exploring and questing there, that the expertise can typically really feel flatter than they’d desire,” Hazzikostas said. “This is a very flavorful, participating method so as to add an additional layer for individuals who need that.”Putting Approachability Front And CenterWoW: Midnight’s story campaign will culminate with players traveling to the foreboding Voidstorm.Midnight is also another opportunity for Blizzard to continue improving and refining the game’s user interface, something it has put a much bigger focus on since the game’s UI overhaul that was part of 2022’s Dragonflight. Many tools players currently use external add-ons for, like damage meters and boss timers, will be baked into the game itself come Midnight.Players have been using add-ons to solve various problems or encounters for nearly two decades, Hazzikostas said, prompting the team to integrate some of those key tools into the baseline experience. Giving players those additional tools is just one part of the equation, however, and Hazzikostas said the other is for Blizzard to take a harder look at the game’s mechanics and their visual clarity to make sure it never feels like players have to resort to using external add-ons to be successful.”Whereas we began to shift in our philosophy over the course of The War Within, I feel Midnight goes to be our first growth that actually places approachability entrance and heart in all points of its encounter and sophistication design,” Hazzikostas said.The recent addition of an in-game rotation assistant tool, and even a single-button rotation option, are great examples of Blizzard’s newfound philosophy. Blizzard is looking to make improvements to both features in the future, and said the single-button assistant in particular has been a major success, despite the initial negative reaction from some in the WoW community.”Honestly, it has been superior,” Hazzikostas said. “It’s actually met, and in some methods exceeded, our expectations. The thought of the single-button assistant was undoubtedly controversial in the neighborhood main as much as it. There have been some gamers saying ‘Well, that is simply dumbing down the sport, what is the level of ability?’ And what we have seen is not any, WoW nonetheless has a really excessive ability cap. The folks pushing themselves and difficult themselves to the bounds of their efficiency will not be this instrument in any respect. Whereas there are tens of 1000’s, if no more, of gamers who, from an accessibility perspective, have had their sport expertise reworked, the place they’ll now have interaction in content material that beforehand felt off-limits to them due to the flexibility to make fight work this manner.”Make It Faster, Do It BetterWoW: Midnight is slated to arrive in early 2026, earlier than the MMORPG’s normal two-year release cycle.All of the above is just the tip of the iceberg for the expansion. Despite Midnight poised to arrive earlier than WoW’s typical two-year expansion cycle (something Warcraft executive creative director Chris Metzen said was a goal back at BlizzCon 2023), Blizzard looks set to deliver just as much content as players have come to expect, with four zones, seven Delves, eight dungeons, a new PvP battleground, and for the first time in a long time, three different raids at launch. One raid, The Voidspire, will house six bosses, while The Dreamrift will include a single boss, and March on Quel’Danas packing two.Hazzikostas and Kubit said there were a number of factors at play in how the team was able to deliver content faster (and more consistently) than ever before, including better planning and having a longer roadmap as to where the game is going next.”We’re not essentially pursuing pace for the sake of pace,” Hazzikostas said. “More sooner is not all the time higher, however once we’ve had lulls, we all know no one likes content material draughts. Our focus has all the time been on attempting to remove these, and if we are able to circulation seamlessly from a collection of sturdy patches into the following growth, that appears best. Another piece of that is additionally simply plenty of pre-planning. That’s one of many actually thrilling issues from a story, world-building perspective concerning the Worldsoul Saga. We knew we have been headed right here with rather more element than we normally do earlier than The War Within even got here out. All of these issues assist.”For extra on Midnight, make sure to learn up on how early entry to participant housing within the sport’s 11.2.7 patch will work, the massive modifications coming to transmog to make it cheaper and extra handy, and the way its opening cinematic units the stage for the growth’s story. WoW: Midnight is slated to reach in early 2026.
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