On June 18, 2026, Blizzard Entertainment unveiled the next major content update for World of Warcraft: Midnight, titled "Curse of Ula’tek", which will be dropping on July 7, 2026.

This update will take players to the Coiled Isles to help the Troll Zul’jarra retrieve her kin (including her Zul'jan) while battling hordes of giant snake-like monsters in a collection of new Raids, Dungeons, and Delves, and other forms of battle content.

Here's what you can expect from the Curse of Ula'Tek update.

First off, the update will feature a new zone called The Coiled Isle, where players will explore ancient ruins and partake in several outdoor activities.

These include exploring the Vaults of Atal'Ulek, mastering a new custom talent tree to help you survive this land's venomous traps, and killing Elite Enemies spawned at Curse Surges to unlock Cursed fishing locations to earn with a tortollan sea captain, named Tokka.

The main course of this update will be its new Eight-Boss Raid called "The Venomous Abyss", where you fight eight poison-themed snake bosses culminating in a final battle with the five-headed snake monster, Ula'tek.

In addition, this update will feature a new three-boss dungeon called the Altar of Fangs, a new Lairs system where 15-25-players can challenge World Bosses that scale up to Mythic difficulty, and several new Delve Dungeons with a new Venomfalls Deep Nemesis Delve boss to fight.

The Curse of Ula'tek update will also bring a new rotation of Mythic+ dungeons, Prey targets to slay, new Arcantina Quests, and a new Players Vs. Bots feature in its Arena PvP mode.

This content patch doesn't just include new battle and outdoor content. It's also bringing user interface improvements for the Cooldown Manager and Ping System, updates for Player Housing that will allow players to save, export, and import their house Blueprints, new Neighbourhood Endeavours, and finally giving players the ability to welcome pets into their homes.

Of course, the update will introduce a slew of balance changes for all the game's classes, and a metric ton of new gear, mounts, and cosmetic rewards up for grabs.

🗨️ Over to you

What do you think of this content update for World of Warcraft: Midnight? Does it sound cool enough to make you want to come back for another season of raids, or are you holding off on playing World of Warcraft for a while?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, please let us know through the poll below, the comments section, or our Reddit page.

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World of Warcraft offers another wave of controversy this week, but for a shiny, new, and different reason.

I've written recently about how World of Warcraft: Midnight has taken the storied franchise in a frustrating direction. My 7/10 review hailed World of Warcraft's rich endgame, which is arguably more fun than ever (albeit not perfect), alongside its incredible art treatment. But, there's a lot of flaws to speak of right now.

The World of Warcraft's writing has become incredibly saccharine, the Horde and Alliance are losing their identity, and the game has more bugs and polish issues than ever, potentially. But World of Warcraft fans found themselves irritated for a new reason today.

Revealed today, Blizzard showed off a new Cozy Treehouse Retreat bundle, which includes two housing exterior styles, and a bunch of decorative items for interior designs.

World of Warcraft's housing system is a truly fantastic feature overall, and represents a pretty significant technological investment on Blizzard's part. They have effectively handed players their own level editor, allowing users to create homes in painstaking detail, using hundreds of in-game objects, furnishings, and other items.

The vast vast majority of items for housing can be earned in game. Some are incredibly rare and are tied to difficult in-game achievements and accomplishments. Others are tied to pre-order bonuses and collector's editions. Indeed, I have a shiny Horadric Cube from Diablo 4's Collector's Edition in my house.

Increasingly, though, World of Warcraft is drawing the ire of the community with its paid cosmetics store. Indeed, the housing exteriors alone are $40 each. The bundle all together, which includes two housing exteriors and a range of interior items costs $75, or 7,500 Hearthsteel, which can be earned via WoW Token trades in exchange for in-game gold earnings, but it's not exactly easy to acquire that much currency in-game for most.

Needless to say, the community definitely has thoughts about this.

Most opinions seem to revolve around a common theme: that Blizzard hasn't exactly earned the right to charge these types of prices as of late. Given the state of the game, the lore, the bugs, and beyond, it all comes off in bad taste, to some degree.

Given the item budgets for exteriors, it doesn't feel even vaguely fair

World of Warcraft player housing is entirely cosmetic, and doesn't offer players power in any way, shape, or form. But, I'd argue Blizzard is really pushing the community with some of this stuff, particularly given the state of the game as of late. World of Warcraft expansions cost money, in-game services like race changes cost money, and there's a monthly subscription fee on top — which just got a price bump in the UK, by the way. I know "line goes up," but ...

These new housing exteriors are far, far more detailed than what is offered in game for "free", and in addition, aren't subjected to the same item limit. You could create a similar exterior in-game yourself using the items therein, but you'd easily hit the item cap before finishing it off. If housing had any form of "pay to win" this might be getting concerningly close to it.

But aye, it's "just cosmetic" right? You could argue none of it matters, and people can spend their money however they want (and you should!) But, I think it's fair to acknowledge that it could be a slippery slope ... accept a $40 house here or a $100 mount there, who's to say the subscription fee won't also eventually go up by $5 here or there?

I think the pushback is important to remind Blizzard that people are cognizant of value with regards to WoW. I would argue that WoW does offer great value for money for what it is. They just announced another 1 boss raid for this season on top of everything Midnight has offered in its endgame so far. But, the quality in other areas of the game doesn't exactly reflect the notion that Blizzard is reinvesting the money its extracting from its user base in raw quality.

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World of Warcraft is awesome, World of Warcraft is frustrating.

Patch 12.0.5 has been a bit of an inflection point for the game of late. The latest World of Warcraft update introduced a variety of fresh content, including Void Assaults and catch-up mechanics for gearing up alts and the like, but it also introduced a megaton of new bugs and other problems into the game.

World of Warcraft: Midnight has been a bit of a mixed bag so far. The story pacing and delivery have been particularly irritating in World of Warcraft, with Blizzard's self-imposed patch cadence taking precedence over quality. This can be felt nowhere more heavily than in the polish department, where bugs and other anomalies seem more rife than ever. Is this World of Warcraft's AI vibe coding era?! Perhaps that's an article for another time.

In any case, Blizzard has been speaking out about the problems, acknowledging bugs and polish, but also balance. A new interview offered some hints about what we might see for the state of the meta going forward, and it's actually a bit worrying.

Crazy idea: Maybe tanks being weak is why nobody wants to tank OR heal?

A new interview with Associate Game Director Paul Kubit (via WoWhead) covered a range of topics, including the bugpocalypse that has been plaguing World of Warcraft for some time. Kubit offered usual platitudes that "lessons would be learned" and the like, acknowledging that the patch cadence had been perhaps a little over ambitious.

The interview didn't offer a ton of new details about what's on the horizon for World of Warcraft, unfortunately. Next patch will introduce a "flexible" option for Mythic raiding, allowing guilds to experience harder content without the hard requirement of specifically finding 20 players. In an era where players are getting older, having kids and such ... some flexibility with the most challenging content is probably a smart decision.

Blizzard also said it has "heard feedback" on playable Forest Trolls, which was honestly frustrating to read. I feel like people have been asking for playable Forest Trolls for decades ... yet Blizzard's M.O. for adding new races all too typically revolves around adding stuff nobody asked for, for some reason.

Similarly, Blizzard seems to be hinting that a nerf to Brewmaster Monk tanks is on the cards. Blizzard says it will make "light touches" to prevent disrupting the "meta," but I feel like there's a bigger problem at play here.

I'm by no means a super-hardcore M+ player, but through mostly quite painful pugging with random players and enduring all the toxicity therein, I'm very close to a 3K rating and have managed a 2.1k PvP rating as well this season. But what I have noticed more than usual is the lack of tanks at moderately higher keys. Finding a tank for a +13 seems more difficult than ever, as more and more players seem to opt out of playing what is arguably the game's most challenging role in Mythic+ dungeons.

Tanks are not only often expected to lead the dungeon, but also have to manage the ebb and flow of the run on top to make the timer. They also have to execute their own damage rotations, manage one-shot tank-buster mechanics — all while getting smashed to bits by all the mobs and adds along the way.

Players have been gravitating to Brewmaster Monks for higher-end play more than usual, and it's not just because it's perceived to be (or actually is) the most powerful — any opportunity to reduce stress on the group is what's creating this meta. Since Brewmaster Monk got reworked, it is now in a good place. Other tanks like Blood Death Knights and Protection Paladins can get squashed in 0.1 seconds far too easily with only minor lapses in near-constant concentration. Every tank has (and should have) strengths and weaknesses, but when things are too punishing even in moderate keys, it can actively discourage tank players but also healers from active participation. Poor DPS can also make and break a M+ key, but responsibility is diluted between the three DPS players in the group. Brewmaster, right now, is the spec that introduces the least amount of "stress" on the group comp all up.

Blizzard, in my view, needs to do more to make tanking more pleasant in general, without disrupting the reasons people play tank in the first place. Some players like the leadership role and the challenge ceiling that is associated with the role. But there has to be a way to maintain that without making the role completely unappealing to the vast majority of players.

More tank specs might help (shaman tanks plz?). But I think bringing all other tank specs up to Brewmaster level, in terms of mitigation, pressure reduction, and utility, should be the strategy. Nerfing Brewmaster absolutely should not be the goal here.

More healer and tank specs would be nice too ...

Druids have long been the only class with four talent specs, but maybe it's time to break that tradition. Warlocks and Shamans have had "tanking" abilities in previous incarnations of the class, and WoW: Season of Discovery introduced concepts like Mage healers as well.

I think it would help solve the tank and healer shortages if more players had access to those kinds of roles as part of their current mains. I have a Blood Death Knight alt that I do enjoy, but with such limited free time on my hands these days, I try to focus on my 20+ year Warlock main. Faster queues as a Warlock "tank" would be fantastic, and I'm sure others feel the same way about their classes.

What would a Shaman tank with Rockbiter weapon look like in 2026? A Rogue tank with shadow copy images to mitigate damage? A Death Knight healer that uses necromantic energy to repair wounds? Evokers with draconic earth and magma shields? Or a new class like Tinker with gnome and goblin tech armor ... okay, I'm just fantasizing now.

Point is, I've found the pressure of grouping to be more difficult as I've gotten older, and I'm sure other players have, too. Nerfing tanks should never be the answer, in my view. It should be more appealing, not less, to play one of the game's most crucial roles.

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It's a rough time in World of Warcraft land.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion is arguably its buggiest, glitchiest launch yet, with issues ranging from balance issues, client crashes, and UI error messages plaguing the game. It's led to widespread accusations that Blizzard has settled into an AI "vibe coding" development pipeline, leading to widespread cascading problems.

Every day, World of Warcraft players seem to be discovering new issues with patch 12.0.5, which looked like it was set to offer a decent amount of content on paper.

Today, Blizzard responded with the below message, acknowledging frustration and suggesting that the patch was not up to parr.

"The 12.0.5 patch launch was not up to our standards, and we know this disrupted your time and caused justified frustration.

The team has been working around the clock since launch to stabilize the game and fix the biggest issues players were hitting right away: see our hotfixes update here and our posts on the Bonus Roll issue here and here.

The team is taking lessons learned from this launch to help ensure this doesn't happen again. We will also work harder to communicate openly, early, and often when a launch doesn't go as expected: the known issues we're working on, fixes as they roll out, and any other information that would be useful to our community as problems are worked on and solved.

We care deeply about this game, and we play it right alongside you. We will do better.

Thanks for sticking with us."

As a veteran WoW player, I can't help but be a tad cynical about the note, although I appreciate the sentiment. I feel like we've been here before, repeatedly, and we'll doubtless be here again.

Blizzard is rushing, and I'm not entirely sure why. If I had to guess, telemetry data is telling them that an 8-week patch cadence is absolutely crucial to prevent players from unsubscribing. It's probably telling that Blizzard has been announcing its roadmaps years in advance of the content delivery, and seems intent to stick to that roadmap cadence by hook or by crook — even at the cost of quality.

Blizzard, chill

The Worldsoul saga was the first time Blizzard attempted a 3-expansion "trilogy," announcing all three expansions at once at Blizzcon a couple of years ago. So far, though, the delivery hasn't exactly been stellar.

The War Within was a decent expansion overall with some cool characters, but so much of it never really came full circle. A lot of what was teased or showcased in The War Within ended up ultimately going nowhere, with subterranean Harandar actually appearing instead in Midnight instead of The War Within as cut content.

Midnight's endgame is really good right now, and I've played it more aggressively than I have in a while, but there's this gnawing feeling that something is going horribly wrong with the game's development overall. The writing is painfully poor and ill-thought out. And knowing Harandar was originally supposed to be in The War Within makes you wonder how anaemic Midnight would've felt on overall content without it. The sheer volume of issues is unlike anything I've known since the launch of vanilla back in the day. And for what?

I've argued recently that Blizzard could afford to slow down a fair bit and focus on World of Warcraft's quality across the board. There are other Microsoft-owned games I want to play, and even Blizzard-owned games. Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred drops soon, and Overwatch 2 has a new season in progress.

Why is Blizzard so desperate to rush everything out?

It might produce some nice quarterly wins on a spreadsheet, but the long-term health of World of Warcraft is looking increasingly tenuous ... please let's have a rethink here, and plan for the long term instead.

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More content is always a good thing right? Well, maybe not all the time.

Microsoft and Xbox purchased Blizzard as part of its Activision acquisition a few years back. Since then, World of Warcraft and Blizzard both have been operating more autonomously than they have been in the past. In a recent interview, game director Holly Longdale hailed the development speed of the latest expansion, Midnight, noting that there'd been zero crunch at the studio, with "zero compromise on quality."

I recently wrote an article asking Blizzard to slow down a bit on its patch cadence for World of Warcraft. I didn't know how much of a predictor that would end up being.

Longdale's comments have been recirculating a bit again as of yesterday. World of Warcraft: Midnight shipped patch 12.0.5 yesterday per the roadmap from January. It added a sizeable chunk of new content. There's new fishing activities, a new PvP prop hunt mini game, and new PvE activities to help people catch up gearing their mains and alternate characters.

However, it has also introduced another wave of bugs and other issues, on top of what has already been proving to be a particularly buggy expansion.

World of Bugcraft, and I don't mean Silithus

My article asking Blizzard to slow down revolved primarily on the story delivery above all, which I frankly think has been quite awful in WoW: Midnight so far. The pacing, lack of depth, and respect for previous lore and character history is making the game less engaging than ever for lore fans. But most players I feel probably don't even read the quest text, which is fine. But even those players are suffering now under this new era of "rushed" patches.

More mainstream players are perhaps more than ever thinking that Blizzard should slow down on its patch cadence as well, this time because of bugs, polish problems, and a massive lapse in quality control.

World of Warcraft has been delivering a ton of content in recent years, tasking itself to an 8-week patch cadence. It's likely great for player retention on paper, but the issues this patch cycle is creating seem to now be compounding and multiplying.

Dear Blizzard - Ion, its time to reflect here... from r/wow

The above thread on Reddit and mountains of comments attached to it are only the tip of the iceberg. WoW has bugs and anomalies dating back years upon years, many of which are still not fixed. I race changed away from goblin due to a weird glitch that can occur where goblin and gnome characters are "too short" to click on the Warlock demonic gateway spell. As of Midnight's launch that still wasn't fixed. That's only a small issue in a much bigger sea of other problems on-going in WoW.

During last night's raid, our two Unholy Death Knights lost anywhere up to 20% of their usual damage output. Blizzard seemingly introduced a new bug with the class, rendering certain spells inoperable. Last week, we couldn't continue the raid because critical NPCs refused to spawn, forcing us to wait for a fix. Organizing 20 adults with IRL stuff to deal with is hard enough, and these kind of game-breaking issues put a real downer on what should be a relaxing end to the day.

I've mained Demonology warlock for the past twenty years, and I can't remember a time where there were so many weird bugs affecting gameplay. I had to switch the spec out for some dungeons due to my demon pets targeting mobs at complete random, screwing up high-end M+ dungeon runs.

World of Warcraft patches used to arrive on a 10-12 week cadence back in the day, and sometimes even longer. There has been notorious droughts for content over the years for varied reasons, which undoubtedly batter player retention. The 8-week patch cadence seems designed to prevent subscription churn. We see similar content drop cycles for Xbox Game Pass, which adds new games towards the middle and end of every month to keep people subscribed. Netflix and other similar services also tailor content drops to offset churn.

World of Warcraft is one of the only remaining successful subscription-based MMORPGs. In my opinion, it offers very good value for money overall. I've met lifelong friends through the game, as have many of you reading this, for what is effectively the price of a couple of cups of coffee every month.

I think Midnight's endgame has also been very good overall. The dungeons and raids are interesting with fun mechanics (although the void stuff everywhere is starting to get old), and there's plenty to do. The problem, more than ever, is polish, and I've argued in my WoW: Midnight review that Blizzard is spreading itself thin.

There's mountains of feedback being ignored from World of Warcraft's public test realms and beta tests. Why have beta tests and the like if you're not going to act on the feedback offered?

The only conclusion one can surmise is that Blizzard is simply not capable of delivering on this 8-week patch cadence, and needs to slow down a bit. I think people would be willing to accept a 10-12 week patch cadence in exchange for higher-quality content drops as long as the roadmap remained transparent.

There's a ton of stuff to play. Heck, there's other Blizzard games to play. While in an off-season mood in WoW, I could drop into Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred or the latest Overwatch season. They even patched up Heroes of the Storm lately too. I don't need a drip feed of mid-tier content just to hit an 8-week cycle ... I'd rather have 10-12 weeks with more quality, more stuff. But I'm sure Blizzard has the spreadsheets and telemetry say this is best, even at the cost of polish.

Will Blizzard respond?

I've reached out to Blizzard to see if they want to comment on this, but I figure we might see some kind of communication from game directors Ion Hazzikostas or Holly Longdale up on the World of Warcraft blog before long. The backlash is growing, and major WoW YouTubers are probably editing videos to release as I publish this. It's poor timing for me too, as a Brit, considering Blizzard just increased the subscription price here by 10%.

These have all been an on-going issue now for some time. Whether it's crazy balance issues with different classes, gameplay-breaking bugs, transmog features going haywire, glitches and Lua errors with Blizzard's new addon API ... the list of problems is exhaustive, and tiring. This is before you even discuss the downfall of World of Warcraft's writing quality. Bugs are one thing, but shipping badly conceived writing due to rushing is difficult to fix after its canonized.

Comment from r/wow

Every layer of World of Warcraft is suffering under this rapid update cadence the firm has set for itself. Midnight has some really strong aspects to it. Player Housing is grand and ambitious. The endgame gameplay loop is meaty and conceptually fun. Some of the side stories and characters have been engaging too. But man, there's an on-going downward trajectory with WoW lately that I'd hoped we'd put behind us. Is AI to blame? Are there mandates and targets from Microsoft on-high that Blizzard feels compelled to chase? Whatever the cause, this doesn't seem particularly sustainable.

Blizzard, please rethink how you're approaching World of Warcraft. It's getting tough out here.

All will be forgiven if you give me playable ogres though.

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Blizzard Entertainment has finally succeeded in killing off pirate server "Turtle WoW," which has been a bit of a thorn in World of Warcraft's side for some time.

If you don't know the history, Turtle WoW is a heavily-modified World of Warcraft Classic server, often described as Classic+ in the community. The rise of private servers for the "old school" WoW experience has been so popular over the past decade, that Blizzard itself began offering minimalistic "Classic" experiences, basically re-releasing the original game with minimal changes.

Blizzard has been battling to kill off Turtle WoW and other similar private servers recently, and effectively won out recently. The team behind Turtle WoW said the game will shut down fully in May, 2026.

But, why are these servers so popular? There are real lessons Blizzard needs to learn here.

The Turtle did not make it to the water

As noted, Blizzard itself has begun offering a "WoW Classic" experience as of late in various forms, including Classic Hardcore, Classic Anniversary servers, and most likely Warlords of Draenor Classic soon too — although the re-release experiences are starting to get a tad redundant as it draws ever closer to modern Retail WoW.

In any case, many WoW Classic players haven't exactly been satisfied by the experience, which is partially why these "pirated" modified servers have gotten increasingly popular. Turtle WoW not only re-balanced broken specs from Classic to make them actually viable to play, but also added a substantial amount of original "Classic" content, including dungeons, playable races, and additional story content. Turtle WoW also polished up and finished off unfinished zones from the original game.

The private server was likely always on Blizzard's radar, but when it began advertising in-game services and marketing itself, Blizzard (and by extension, Microsoft) became obligated by copyright law to put an end to the project. And this past week they won out.

In a post on X, Turtle WoW confirmed it will fully cease operations in a couple of weeks, and has shut off all donations, and is closing down its forums.

It's a fairly obvious ending here. Turtle WoW had started to really poke the bear and tempt fate, including everything from in-game monetization to mocking posts on social media. To be fair, the project had an incredibly good run; 8 years in operation. It was only really when Turtle WoW started advertising and attracting more mainstream attention that Blizzard really seemed to take a keener interest in getting it shuttered.

Turtle WoW was "free" but heavily monetized via "donations" in exchange for in-game benefits, which I suspect was particularly ire-inducing for Microsoft's lawyers. If you don't defend your copyright, you ultimately end up losing it. Turtle WoW was hardly a fan project "inspired" by WoW as it often claimed — it directly co-opted Blizzard assets and systems.

But still, there are hard lessons to be learned about why Turtle WoW got so popular in the first place, and in my opinion, it's not just because it was "free."

Turtle WoW was popular for a reason

Many players yearn for what WoW Classic offered back in the day, and Turtle WoW was offering that. A more consistent and immersive levelling experience, rather than simply flying instantly from quest mob to quest mob foregoing all danger and stakes. Itemization that actually felt rewarding and unique to the dungeons and bosses, as opposed to just endless per-season recolors. A more sensical and grounded storytelling experience. A more careful hand with the classic old-school Warcraft lore and expectations therein. Playable races that people actually asked for.

As addicted as I am to retail WoW, the shortcomings are increasingly painful and difficult to overlook. I've played through every iteration of WoW. Thousands of hours across Classic, to the MoP era, to Battle for Azeroth and now. I can't remember the last time I was excited about an item drop. Heroic raiding takes a lot of organizational effort, but if you're even lucky enough to get loot you've likely already got something better from the random loot-box style weekly Great Vault — often from doing painfully easy Tier 11 Delves too. It's not just about the "power progression" either. The items are usually just recolors of existing items in the game, and Blizzard rarely actually includes unique models for specific bosses like it used to.

The levelling experience and seasonal model feels designed to rush you through and incentivizes speed and "efficiency." Players ask for flying in WoW's levelling experience, sure, but it feels like a monkey's paw scenario. If Blizzard knows players are just flying around the zones instead of walking around on foot, they're disincentivized from designing a game world that actually feels alive at ground level.

Nothing in modern WoW has come close to the feeling I had entering Stranglethorn Vale for the first time, or Felwood, or Ashenvale, or the Wetlands. It's not a simple case of rose tinted glasses either ... it was actually engaging, and challenging to wander these zones. At a time where WoW respected the intelligence of its players, rather than prioritized the endgame rush above everything.

Comment from r/turtlewow

I am probably not what you would describe as a casual WoW player. Since World of Warcraft: Midnight came out, I've sunk well over 300 hours into the current endgame in a few weeks already. I've almost hit 3k M+ rating, nabbed my 2.1k PvP rating yesterday, progressing Ahead of the Curve Heroic raiding, gearing up alts, building my sweet Player House, etcetera. Yet, as much as I love WoW and can't see myself quitting on it ever, I'm hardly content about its overall direction.

Turtle WoW was undeniably offering something that a huge part of me still yearns for, things that neither WoW Classic or WoW Retail really offer.

I want an Azeroth that feels consistent and ordered. Every time I step into a different zone, I'm traversing decades-old dead content that flows into overlapping, convoluted timelines. There are lore figures long-dead in the main storyline that still appear in major cities for my characters. The game's world is an absolute mess and, Blizzard's policy is to push ahead with isolated areas that keep players stuck in the flywheel of its endgame loop.

Comment from r/turtlewow

The old school WoW experience also designed the game wholesale around RPG systems, rather than MMO systems. Every race had a starting zone experience, crammed with lore, flavor, and context as to why you're there and the current state of factional politics — while dealing with low-stakes, evergreen local threats.

In modern WoW, you're always "the champion." If you're a new player? You're the "champion," hero of Azeroth. There's no sense of your place in the world in modern WoW, for old or new players. There are no levelling zones for new players per race anymore, just one-sock-fits-all bare-bones-basic-brainless tutorial island, before you're shipped off to a timeline that makes little to no sense in the modern narrative.

A lot of what makes Turtle WoW and other similar Classic experiences appealing is that sense of progression from a true Level 1 character, a rookie soldier — towards eventually becoming a known adventurer or merc-type figure in the wider WoW storyline.

I'm simplifying a lot of the arguments here for brevity. I'm sure you have your own issues with modern WoW, WoW Classic, and the situation here too. But I think there's really something to be learned from the death of Turtle WoW.

I'm sure Blizzard knows better than me, and the way modern WoW is designed is probably better for engagement in their metrics ... but I think there's an immeasurable quantity. There definitely seems to be a lot of players want something that feels a little more crunchy. Something with a hard shell. You know, like a Turtle.

Will Blizzard make its own "WoW Classic+"? What about Retail+?

I feel like World of Warcraft's own take on the "Classic+" format is likely around the corner, as per teased by WoW director Holly Longdale at the most recent WoW broadcast. World of Warcraft already experimented with it via the "Season of Discovery" server format, which revamped some old school dungeons into new raids, and let players earn Diablo-like runes which modified abilities and mixed up some existing classes.

But ... I can't help but feel like this should all be in the modern game.

I think for WoW to actually grow, they need to look at the reasons why Turtle WoW and Classic are so popular, and win some investment, perhaps from Microsoft itself, to repair and clean up decades of dead, overlapping content in the base WoW experience.

For new, returning, and old school players alike, I think the real key here is revamping the old school WoW levelling experience. Every race should have a starting zone, with evergreen low-stakes threats to deal with, and a content pipeline that's easy to modify and modernize to keep pace with the current lore figures. Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor should be how you level 1-60, battling regional low-stakes threats, to immerse new players in the world and contextualize and ground their chosen character fantasy.

Add normal, heroic, and mythic modes to the levelling experience too, with appropriate rewards for those who want a more immersive challenge. I can't remember the last time I died in outdoor content unless it was from auto-piloting off a cliff out of boredom.

Add new races people have actually been asking for, for decades. People wanted High Elves, they inexplicably got Void Elves, which have had several expansions' worth of story insertions trying to forcibly explain their existence. High Elves were right there, Blizzard! People have also been asking for playable Amani Forest Trolls for what feels like decades at this point. Yet, we got another as-of-yet-undiscovered Night Elf variant, even more nature-y than the last one. Huh?

It's paradoxical that World of Warcraft spans multiple planets, dimensions, continents, but somehow still feels simultaneously smaller and also less dense than WoW Classic did. I'm cognizant that many will expect me to be wholly endowed with heroic-track rose tinted glasses here, but it really isn't. Compare the Forsaken or Night Elf starting zone experience in Classic to the new, utterly lame homogenized "Exile's Reach" starting zone. I would bet nobody on earth would opt for the new one.

World of Warcraft has a mountain of untapped potential in my view. Player Housing is an amazing addition to the game, the endgame is overall fun even if I'm not a fan of the "everything looks the same" approach to itemization, and I think the emphasis on the procedurally-generated random loot vs. monster drops isn't as rewarding.

For me, the biggest barriers to WoW's potential can be found in the reasons why Turtle WoW has been so popular. I think Blizzard should really reaaaaaaaaaallllllly swallow its pride a bit, and sit down, and examine why these experiences keep proving to be incredibly attractive for many new and old Warcraft fans.

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World of Warcraft's story delivery has been the subject of intense criticism over the years; some of it is in bad faith, but a lot of it is not.

I don't want to pretend that story writing is easy; I certainly couldn't do it. The best I can muster is poorly-penned blog posts on this tiny corner of the internet. Layer live ops, ongoing game development on top, nailing timelines, overlapping disciplines, and the rest of it — I would argue MMORPG storytelling is another level of hard.

In all fairness, it's a testament to World of Warcraft's writing overall that I and many others still passionately care about its direction and lament when things seem to be taking the wrong turn. Keeping millions invested over decades is an achievement few game dev teams can claim, and it's an accolade that deserves the highest praise.

That passion was hard won as a result of the combined work of hundreds of developers over years upon years. And it's only passion like this that can also breed such strong disappointment.

Those "wrong turns" I mentioned in WoW's story have come in increasing abundance in recent years, I feel, and the problem seems to be getting worse over time.

For me, it comes to a head in what I think will be remembered as one of World of Warcraft's biggest historical mistakes — the erasure of the game's iconic player factions.

Gameplay has always led story delivery in World of Warcraft, and that's fine. But Blizzard is also erasing decades of comfort, healing, and representation from the game with this strategy, and I hope they aren't taking that lightly.

An ode to the Horde, my faction; the band of misfits that didn't quite fit in, but found brother and sisterhood in a shared will to survive in an unforgiving world. Lok'tar ogar.

The Horde is more than just a silly video game faction to me, and many others

The Alliance and Horde comprise the two main factions in World of Warcraft. Like many games, factions serve as a bedrock for storytelling. Particularly in a universe that revolves around conflict, the very visible, very different player factions in World of Warcraft took on something of a life of their own.

It felt so seamless and "right" going from Warcraft 3 into World of Warcraft: the events of the original games very neatly and tidily coalesced around eight original nations, four on the Alliance and four on the Horde, representing different races, cultures, mythologies, backstories, and decades of lore building.

Worldbuilding has long been Warcraft's biggest strength. There are four main games, dozens of books, reference materials, and tens of thousands of hours worth of quest text in World of Warcraft. Of course, it's difficult to be fully perfect and consistent with all of that material, but few other collaborative multi-modal mega-projects have ever really reached this level this side of Warhammer itself.

For World of Warcraft, Blizzard actively fostered players to become engaged and immersed within their roleplaying experience. This was supposed to be an MMORPG after all. The original game gave each race their own starting zone, complete with lore building, story crafting, and mountains of flavor that simply no longer exist in the modern game. Every time we get a sliver of flavor in the modern retail World of Warcraft, it's celebrated so heavily — the community is actively telling Blizzard it wants more of this, but Blizzard repeatedly says no with its actions.

Indeed, nowadays, new players get one starting zone experience. You choose your race and faction, then you're dropped into a single-track storyline that does nothing to emphasize the backstory of your faction or nation. Increasingly, I feel like this is by design.

Blizzard has moved rapidly away from faction or nation-exclusive storytelling in recent years, and I can only presume it's to do with short-sighted cost-cutting.

Nothing sold the World of Warcraft experience more to me than the game's unique and divergent factions and races. I feel like leaning more into this would actually boost WoW's adoption, rather than hurt it. But for whatever reason, Blizzard is speed-running through decades of very bloody conflict to make player factions and nations super-friendly-happy-friends. If this is some kind of misguided attempt to make the game seem more friendly and appealing — it will fail.

World of Warcraft won on the basis of fantasy representation. Where people from all sorts of cultures, backgrounds, and socioeconomic situations could find some form of "safe" fantasy-inspired representation within the game's world. I liken it to sports fandom a bit, but speaking purely for myself and others who feel similarly — it was more than that.

As someone who grew up in what was recently literally called the "most deprived region" of the United Kingdom in the backyard of Black Sabbath's home city, I found myself drawn to the Forsaken. A playable zombie? I can't think of anything more awesome. I found myself drawn to the orcs; beastly-looking, bearded aliens that were particularly unpretty, you know, like me.

The dark, undead faction spawned during the closing chapters of Warcraft 3, out of the ruins of a blighted kingdom. My town, a former industrial-manufacturing center, is quite literally crumbling. The Forsaken climbing out of the blighted sludge and building a nation for themselves was inspiring to me, and their heavy-metal leanings seemed clearly intentional, given that the famous Warcraft Ozzy Osbourne commercials represented the global icon as a Forsaken too.

Today, it feels like Blizzard finds the "less pretty" races to be unmarketable. Indeed, the Forsaken, orcs, and other Horde core races have been almost completely left out of the narrative as a faction, save for a couple of token appearances here and there. And even those appearances smooth off all of the faction's rough edges, making them feel painfully bland in the process.

The Forsaken allied with the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls into a faction of convenience, known as the Horde. Each of these races were outcasted and ostracized in some way. Underdogs. It's probably super lame and immature of me, but my inner child found the Horde story to be genuinely healing. The honorable orcs, noble tauren, cunning trolls, and twisted Forsaken; they forged together, despite all the odds, and became strong. The entirety of Midnight's Season 1 is about the Horde Blood Elves, yet they're not the Blood Elves I remember and celebrate ... they're softly-gently-cozycore elves armed with apologies, begging former enemies for help — the Blood Elves used to literally eat the god-like Naaru. That was badass. Now their iconic Sunwell font of power has been turned into a neutered swimming pool for ... some reason, I can only surmise is somehow ideological in intent.

What little "Horde" still exists is barely even present in the narrative. And, when they are, for sure, none of that survivor spirit remains. None of that defiance, rough edges cynically smoothened off, deprived of vigor and strength. There's no flavor, no immersion, and no representation. I want to be a darker character. And I'm sure many Alliance players want to feel like they have a real enemy, too.

It's all a shame either way, and honestly makes me feel less invested in the game overall.

Times change, and maybe I am lame

The Horde and the Alliance have been through a lot. They've fought cosmos-ending threats time and time again. It makes sense that their terrestrial disagreements would seem increasingly petty in the face of galactic-scale threats.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the Horde and Alliance go back to full-blown open warfare, and that has never been needed to achieve representation for the factions here. The voice of the player is nowhere to be found in the story. The representation is all but gone, and the sense of "RPG" in the "MMORPG" is waning quickly.

World of Warcraft: Midnight has an incredible endgame loop. I never in a million years saw myself doing rated PVP, but I'm sitting just shy of 2K rating thanks to the new solo rated queue. I love doing a quick Delve mini-dungeon to gear up alts, I love pushing high keys with my guild, and I love progressing towards the "Ahead of the Curve" raiding achievement every season. I've barely scratched the surface with the amazing Player Housing system.

Midnight also has some great, small storytelling moments, often hidden off the beaten path, where shimmers of that flavor I find myself missing remain. Astalor in Midnight has been a particularly awesome bit of old-school, darker Horde edginess, although I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard has us killing him off at some point, like many of the other cooler Horde characters over the years. And I can't praise Blizzard enough for what it pulled off at WoW: Midnight's Race to World First event.

It's probably lame to find myself genuinely emotionally attached to a video game faction. But World of Warcraft has always felt like more than a mere "game" to me. I've met lifelong friends as a result of this game. I found my partner of 13 years collaterally as a result of writing music about this game. I've spent 15,000+ hours immersed in the world, from age 18. It was there for me in the best and darkest times in my life, emphasis on darkest. So, I wouldn't be surprised if some of you are reading this, preparing a mocking comment, and that's fine and probably deserved. 🥲

I can only speak to my truth and passion, and I know I'm not alone in some of these sentiments. And I'm sure Alliance players have plenty of grievances too.

Even if you're not particularly invested in the game's factions, I think purely from a cold, marketing perspective, general flavor and immersion is a strong tool video games have to make people think about it even offline. There are books to read, speculative story discussions to be had, Horde and Alliance bumper stickers to be wielded, YouTube lore videos to be watched ... without investment in the world, "World" of Warcraft loses a ton of its uniqueness and strength.

And I'm by no means suggesting players are any less invested. I am certain that I'm a minority in my thinking here. Most people probably don't even read the quest text, and there's nothing wrong with that. I just think Blizzard could work a little harder to maintain the narrative direction it wants — it is their game after all — without glossing over aspects of the game many long-time, most passionate players enjoyed WoW for in the first place. I think the game would be stronger for it. I think the game would also be more marketable to more types of people for it, too. Maybe I'm wrong.

End of the day, I'm just a weird dude with a keyboard. I don't know why Blizzard is doing this. It feels intentional. I'm sure there are good reasons and intentions behind it, but it feels bad. Maybe that's lame, but WoW used to let me indulge and even celebrate my lameness vicariously by being an outcast video game zombie man.

It just feels like, after previously celebrating outcasts with the Horde, Blizzard itself has now effectively cast out my outcast. I lament that.

I know it's silly. But I want my Horde back.

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World of Warcraft is an enigma. Now in its third decade of live operations, using an engine concocted in a completely different technological and cultural era — Blizzard proved once again that it is still the absolute master of live ops.

Unleashed as part of Microsoft's Xbox operation, Blizzard escaped its destructive tenure under Activision's previous shareholder culture, and now functions as a separate business entity in the wider Microsoft Gaming pantheon. New leaders in place, a hands-off approach, and a renewed focus on its customers has seen games like Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Diablo reach new heights. And yes, like anything, it hasn't been perfect — but I think it's pretty undeniable that things are in a much much better place overall for Blizzard's games, and improving all the time.

The same is explicitly true for World of Warcraft. WoW: Midnight has its flaws, but it proves Blizzard still has unchecked ambition for its worlds. And yesterday, Blizzard also proved it's capable of pulling off live ops risks that are increasingly rare in this industry.

Every season, the best WoW raiders in the world come together in the Race to World First, which is an esports event where the best guilds race to be the first to defeat WoW's new bosses in the hardest difficulty modes.

In an era of datamining and public test realms, it's typically standard that WoW raiders can research and learn exactly what to expect when going into boss battles these days. Blizzard tests new content with the community to ensure its smooth when it goes live to the public (with mixed results sometimes ...). It boosts polish, but also detracts from the element of surprise sometimes. I started resisting the alure of WoW beta tests and YouTube spoilers myself to experience things when they're fully finished up, live in-game.

Blizzard turned that on its head this season, as you can see in the clips above, and below.

Battling the final boss of this season, the fallen Naaru L'ura, it seemed like US-based Liquid were about to clinch victory over EU-based Echo. The team began celebrating live on Twitch as L'ura's hitpoints hit zero ... when something odd occurred.

Despite living in an era of leaks and datamining, Blizzard somehow managed to keep L'ura's true, Mythic difficulty final phase a complete secret. The room was immediately bathed in darkness, Liquid's characters were inflicted with stuns, and L'ura began spewing void entities in every direction.

The reactions live on air were absolutely incredible, as it dawned on Liquid that their victory celebrations were unexpectedly premature. From the clutches of victory, Liquid slipped back into the jaws of defeat.

World of Warcraft is currently riding high as the top gaming category on Twitch as a result of the Race to World First, and proves that Blizzard well and truly remains at the top of its game.

The memes and reactions came in thick and fast. "L'ura has risen," in celebration of what might be Easter Sunday's best esports live ops troll in gaming history (a niche category, I know).

I've had plenty of criticism for World of Warcraft in recent years. I wrote an article just last week asking World of Warcraft to slow down on its story delivery a bit to flesh things out in more detail, but it's moments like the above that remind me why I still love this game after over two decades.

I had absolutely no idea Blizzard was still willing to try these kinds of risks in 2026. It's not the first time World of Warcraft Mythic raid bosses have had secret phases, but it has been many years. Argus The Unmaker back in 2017 had a secret Mythic raid phase. As far as I can remember, this was the last time a boss truly had a full secret phase, discovered live on air.

The sheer risk factor of launching an untested, secret boss phase in such a high-stakes esports event, live in-game, with tens of thousands of people watching is truly difficult to overstate. This could've all gone very very badly for the game had there been some kind of game-breaking bug in there. But the team rolled the bones, and the gamble absolutely paid off. I am truly stunned, but also elated for the Blizzard team that put this together. Absolute cinema.

World of Warcraft is still best-in-class

For all its flaws, World of Warcraft absolutely remains best-in-class in my view, and still has many years, maybe decades ahead of it at the apex of the MMO genre.

The game means so much to so many different types of people and types of players, with content for casual play, and as you can see above, people wanting to absolutely push themselves to the limit.

The fact World of Warcraft continues to really deliver for enthusiasts of all types really shows how much potential remains in the game. Player Housing might appeal to someone who isn't interested in getting hardcore in Mythic+ dungeoneering. For those who are invested directly or vicariously in high-end play, the high-stakes esports cinema Blizzard conjured with its Race to World First gambit is absolutely for them.

Indeed, World of Warcraft: Midnight added Player Housing, a revamped Silvermoon City and Zul'Aman, and a new playable Haranir race. It also added new default UI features, gameplay-changing Apex talents, and new side objectives like bounty hunting "Prey" alongside Delves for solo gameplay progression. New Mythic+ dungeons give players ways to push their skills to new heights, and Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulty raids allow guilds and communities to form around complex co-operative PvE content.

I haven't always liked the direction Blizzard has decided upon for WoW (um, where's the Horde?) but it's hard to deny the team's on-going passion and ambition for one of the industry's most legendary and iconic live service games. Long may it live.

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A wise Pandaren once said, "Slow down!" and I keep revisiting the mantra subconsciously when writing about World of Warcraft lately.

World of Warcraft's patch cadence is incredibly welcomed from a gameplay perspective overall. There's a ton of stuff to do. As soon as you get tired, Blizzard seems to add new stuff on top. Mechanically, the downside is quality has suffered a bit. I wrote in my World of Warcraft: Midnight review that bugs and polish issues are becoming too commonplace in the game, as Blizzard opts for pace over polish. But little bugs and annoyances aren't a game-breaking deal necessarily.

Perhaps, for me, a bigger issue for the patch cadence revolves around the game's story delivery. I may be wrong, but I feel the speed at which Blizzard is rushing ahead with its development cycle has had a fairly large negative impact on the overarching narrative, and it continues to get all the more irritating with the conclusion of WoW: Midnight Season 1, which launched this week.

Spoilers ahead.

SPOILERS: World of Warcraft: Midnight "Season 1" ends with another set of vague statements

I'm not glossing over the challenge of writing an on-going story for a 20-year-old live service game. The fact we even get something on this scale and scope, with hundreds of characters across literal thousands of years worth of lore consistency considerations is impressive in of itself.

I suppose a lot of the frustrations come from knowing how easily potentially things could be better.

World of Warcraft: Midnight is yet another Alliance story, despite the fact it takes place in and around a Horde capital. You wouldn't know that it's a Horde capital really, as there's almost zero involvement from Horde races and figures. There are no orcs, trolls, tauren, or even neighboring undead helping out the Blood Elves with their defence against the forces of the Void. The conclusion of season 1 was perhaps a vague opportunity to rectify this fact, but instead, Blizzard once again opted for Alliance characters doing the heavy lifting.

RELATED: Some are celebrating, but World of Warcraft's move away from the "Horde" and "Alliance" faction split will be seen as a historic mistake

It's Alliance High-Elf Vereesa Windrunner and her nephew, Arator, son of two Alliance heroes, who take center stage. They enter the corrupted Sunwell (which everyone now collectively agrees is now named the Darkwell), to face off against saga antagonist Xal'atath. Inexplicably, former Horde Warchief and genocidal pariah Sylvanas Windrunner shows up via a portal, deus ex machina style, and deters the all-powerful Xal'atath by firing a single arrow.

Always the softy, Vereesa hugs her genocidal sister, who then proceeds to explain ... well, nothing.

Sylvanas Windrunner is supposed to be trapped in the Maw, watched over by Tyrande's spirit owl Dori'thur. I guess Dori' was having a nap or something, but I digress. Sylvanas explains that she can escape the Maw temporarily, luckily. She also vagueposts that the Shadowlands apparently aren't all what they seem, and then vanishes back into it saying she needs to uncover the "truth."

I can't help but feel like there were several big missed opportunities with this cutscene. There was no Blood Elf representation in the cutscene, no Horde representation. There was an opportunity to show why Xal'atath might actually be afraid of confronting Sylvanas — there has been some speculation that death and undeath have some kind of advantage over the void, for example. Sylvanas also leaves us waiting for the next "episode" without really giving us anything concrete to chew on. Like Shadowlands itself, The Jailer leaves us with the passing phrase "a divided cosmos will not survive what is to come." Will we ever find out "what is to come?"

Cliffhangers aren't necessarily a bad thing, but the problem with World of Warcraft is, Blizzard has kind of built up an expectation that the pay off won't be worth it. Evoking Shadowlands is a big risk in this vein, as we waited literal years to find out why Sylvanas was behaving the way she was — for the reasons to materialize in the least convincing way possible.

Putting aside criticisms of Horde representation, even beyond that, the benefit of the doubt runs shallow at this point. But what IF Blizzard ends up pulling off something good here?

The Shadowlands once against casts its shadow

The Shadowlands expansion remains World of Warcraft's most controversial lore topic in history. In the Sylvanas book, we learn that the Shadowlands contains infinite afterlife scenarios for millions (billions?) of species across the Great Dark. Sylvanas joins forces with The Jailer after learning that afterlives are dictatorially assigned on an individual basis, potentially separating families across dimensions and consigning souls to an eternity in afterlife scenarios they actually might not fancy.

Sylvanas then resolved to help The Jailer re-write reality, Thanos style, by accessing reality-bending machines hidden deep in the Shadowlands created by a mysterious race known only as "The First Ones."

Those are the basics, anyway. The lore proved controversial for a variety of reasons. The fact people can seamlessly step into and out of the afterlife undermines the very nature of death in the World of Warcraft universe, lowering the stakes for everyone involved Dragon Ball Z style. But furthermore, Sylvanas' character was pretty heavily undermined.

Sylvanas is supposed to be a tactical genius. She unapologetically committed the Teldrassil genocide to send souls to The Jailer to help power his machinations, fully invested in forcing all of reality to accept her new reality. The fact she couldn't foresee the painfully obvious real plan was to use the machines of the First Ones to enslave reality rather than help it — was more than a bit frustrating.

Hypocrisy in leadership is nothing new (in fact, it seems to be a feature if you look at politicians across the world), but these inconsistencies are rarely acknowledged or explained in the narrative. It's why so many now find any appearance of Sylvanas in WoW's story as irritating at best, and many hope that Blizzard would just ignore the fact Shadowlands ever even happened.

I disagree, though. Although my reasons may be naïve.

The Shadowlands and simply having some form of "afterlife system" is absolutely crucial for WoW's cosmology. Fully explaining the consequences of death was a mistake in the first place, but we don't have a time machine to prevent it from happening now. Trying to mechanize the afterlife robbed it of its mystery and fear factor. When Sylvanas returned from near-death saying that all she could see beyond was darkness, was far more harrowing to imagine than what we ended up being shown in Shadowlands.

But now the curtain has been peeled back, Shadowlands and its nature leaves WoW with a lot of issues. Death is supposed to be the great equalizer and consequence all mortal and immortal races should fear. For the long-term health of the game's narrative, Shadowlands needs to be "fixed," and I think if Blizzard execute here, it could be a good thing overall.

However, that's a big if. And if that's what Blizzard is going for as we head into Northrend for the next expansion "The Last Titan," where the Shadowlands plot arc arguably began all the way back in Warcraft 3, Blizzard NEEDS to slow down and take a breath.

Blizzard, please get this right, even if it means slower patch cadence

Shadowlands and its execution has been the singularly biggest lore black hole in Warcraft history. The demystification of death, the haphazard handling of classic characters, the missed opportunities to experience lost heroes ... the weird Covenant system ... Shadowlands was a whole thing, for sure.

Blizzard seems to be exploring repairing some of the damage without ignoring the fact it happened. That's a noble goal. But also, a goal fraught with peril and landmines. There's an opportunity to improve upon the Shadowlands lore here, but there's also an opportunity to make things worse if poorly executed.

I can only assume that one of the things making WoW's story delivery poor right now is the rapidity at which Blizzard is pushing forward. Some of World of Warcraft's side-quest writing has been truly incredible this expansion, with tear-jerking moments for characters you literally only just met. The capability for good writing undoubtedly does exist at Blizzard. But when dealing with big cosmological concepts and arguably the more crucial story beats, World of Warcraft just hasn't been landing lately.

I really think Blizzard could afford to slow down a bit here. I would rather wait an extra few weeks and get more powerful story beats than get more rapid content drops bearing rushed quality. I'm sure with more iteration and forethought, Midnight Season 1 conclusion could've packed in more depth, and more detail, while representing more of the characters and fleshing out some of the world building going on here.

I truly think the overarching concepts are good ones here. There are myriad good ideas being presented, and some parts of Midnight's writing have been fantastic. Shadowlands itself isn't even a bad concept, it was all about its execution in my view.

I'm invested in the Zul'Aman story, the side questing in the Voidstorm was arguably the best I've seen in the game ever. And, I would be lying to suggest a shallow part of me didn't feel moved seeing Sylvanas back again ... but the frustrating part is knowing how easily it could reach a higher clip, just with a bit more iteration.

Blizzard, slow down!

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World of Warcraft is near and dear to my heart, as many of you will know. If you're reading this, it's probably near and dear to you, too, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

I just reviewed World of Warcraft: Midnight, and my review score hinges largely on the bugs and polish issues. Whether it's Haranir missing voice lines and texture bugs, new talents not actually working, bugs with crafting, the Great Vault, and beyond ... Blizzard's self-imposed patch cadence is welcome for content pace, but it has come at the cost of polish.

I also wrote about polish in the game's story. WoW's overarching story has been incredibly controversial for a number of years now ... from convoluted time-travelling shenanigans to out-of-character behaviors, World of Warcraft has struggled to deliver the cohesive narrative that its historical lore is built on. And I'm generally forgiving of that, frankly. Building an ongoing story as complex as Warcraft on top of a live service is arguably among the most difficult jobs in the writing business today — but there's one aspect of WoW's story that I think represents a huge tactical mistake for a variety of reasons.

The death of the Horde and the Alliance

Blizzard seems to be intentionally erasing the Horde vs. Alliance faction conflict that has been the backbone of the entire franchise for decades.

Since Warcraft 1, various permutations of the Horde and Alliance have battled against and in collaboration with each other, battling to defend and control the planet Azeroth.

Alliance historically represented the classic Tolkien-esque heroic races: noble humans, druidic elves, hardy dwarves, and studious gnomes. The Horde had a darker edge; it comprised shamanic orcs, nomadic tauren, savage trolls, and twisted undead Forsaken. No matter your preferences, there was something for everyone. But WoW has become a little more homogenous over the years with regard to this.

In the name of gameplay, WoW has added tons of new races to the Horde and Alliance split, many with quite loose and arguably underdeveloped reasons for doing so. It's only gotten worse over time, too, as more and more races come in to feature as "content" for expansions. Blizzard hasn't been shy about putting gameplay before story expectations, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that — it's something that comes with being a live service game. But the core of the philosophy is undermining one of the game's most iconic and differentiating factors in my view.

When players choose their race in WoW, previously, you'd be treated to an entire story arc explaining your place in the world and giving context to your faction. Horde and Alliance players couldn't directly communicate previously, and could even kill each other on PvP-enabled servers. It created a lot of memorable moments for me, but I concede, as an aging player, I don't have a lot of time for being corpse camped in Blackrock Mountain anymore. The ability to play alongside opposing-faction players is convenient, and isn't exactly lore-breaking either if you consider all players are kind of "mercenaries" in essence. But the fact that this is largely ignored from a story perspective is aggressively undermining the sense of immersion WoW used to impart.

These days, WoW's new player pitch is incredibly basic and almost child-like in its simplicity. One zone for all races, one dumbed-down, 10-minute story, and then you're sent off to one of the modern expansions — all of which assume you're a veteran player.

Over the last few expansions, Blizzard has given up creating separate storylines for both the Horde and Alliance player base. In expansions past, we'd effectively get two main campaigns that offered different perspectives on the same story. It was a great reason to make alts for one reason, but it could also inject a lot of flavor when done well.

It's in these storylines where we'd get per-race lore and context, something that has been sorely lacking in recent expansions. We've seen odd quests with an orc here or a dwarf there, but the game has increasingly focused on "neutral" races as it de-emphasizes the Horde and Alliance player factions.

In Midnight, this came to a head for me when Silvermoon City, a Horde city, was being openly assaulted by Xal'atath and the Void. A gigantic void laser beam is blowing up the Sunwell. To whom have the Blood Elves turned for help after twenty years of formal allegiance with the Horde?

The Night Elves. After Blood Elven complicity in burning down their entire city, presumably killing thousands by the way.

Not the Forsaken, who are next door. Not the orcish army, who are supposedly the Horde's core. I get teleported to the newly-constructed Night Elf city, where with only a pinch of doubt immediately commit their armies to defending the Blood Elven Sunwell — with me as their ambassador. Me who quite happily participated in the in-game Warfronts at Darkshore, killing hundreds of Alliance NPCs and players, and merrily burning down Teldrassil, while also pledging allegiance to the then-Warchief Sylvanas.

Blizzard seems to be actively and intentionally de-emphasizing the Horde and Alliance in general, but for Horde players, that increasingly seems like de-emphasizing the Horde. It's easy to come up with conspiracy theories around this. Is Blizzard pushing the "prettier" races to make the game more appealing? WoW now has like 100 different types of "elf" players can pick from, for example. The sentient zombie-like Forsaken undead used to be core to the game's entire story. Now they're nowhere to be seen. Is it because they're seen as too violent and unapproachable? It seems wilful and intentional to avoid featuring the Forsaken here in any capacity, considering the Undercity is literally within walking distance of Silvermoon City. If there are story reasons for this, what's the explanation?

The problems from a story and immersion perspective present themselves pretty obviously. It's meant less content, less context, less flavor, and diminished immersion. But above all, I think it's harming the entire franchise's sense of belonging and community — which is a core pillar of why the game has remained so strong.

Killing Warcraft's sense of belonging

World of Warcraft's iconic Horde and Alliance have for decades formed a pillar of the game's community. Players historically identified with one faction or another, and Blizzard itself frequently leans into this with Horde and Alliance-branded merch, hype at BlizzCon and other events, the game's PvP systems ... the whole franchise has historically revolved around it.

The Horde and Alliance have frequently put their differences aside to battle a bigger threat, but to me, it's intensely unrealistic to assume that these sentient creatures would just forget all past transgressions, cultural differences, and values after just a few years of tepid peace. I can't help but feel like Blizzard knows this and is therefore doing it for gameplay or ideological reasons rather than more sensical, well-informed ones.

Blizzard created a bit of a furore recently when it seemed to imply that basing the franchise around "War" made it "unapproachable" and thus limited its marketability. It's hard to ignore these types of comments, even if playful, when you look at the way the game's writing has been heading in recent times.

From a gameplay perspective, it must be convenient to reduce friction between the factions. Even as a player, as I mentioned, it's great being able to easily group with friends from the other faction. But it needn't come at the cost of the faction conflict, but more importantly, factional identity erasure.

A big part of WoW, for me, is the sense of community the game has. It's an MMORPG after all. Blizzard seems to be increasingly falling into this trap of focusing on the mechanical, telemetrical aspects of the game and franchise — I can only assume some spreadsheet somewhere has identified factional conflict as a potential road bump for finding new players, as Blizzard eluded to in that previous interview.

I may be wrong, but I can't help but feel like faction identity is actually one of Warcraft's biggest historical strengths. That sense of identity and belonging is how you retain players when they're not playing. I played Horde because they felt like the outcasts. I identified with that, and it felt healing to celebrate that within the safe context of a video game with other people who felt similarly on some level. It's not really as deep as some like to make it out to be — to me, it's just fun. Being a Forsaken rogue with a missing jaw and exposed bones, ganking Alliance players is as far removed from reality as it comes. In modern WoW, I feel weirdly more disconnected from my characters than ever, as their past behaviors are glossed over by the game's increasingly "safe" writing.

If it's about wanting to avoid real-world parallels, I would argue that virtual tribalism with elves and werewolves and fox people is a far healthier way for people to express themselves, as long as it remains in the spirit of fun and banter.

Turning WoW's races, factions, and characters into a homogenous sludge that all behave the same way, with the same values and morals, does a disservice to the game's story on one end — but also the game's wider, diverse community. People have a wide variety of perspectives and motivations for playing, and Blizzard has done a great job generally appealing to these varied playstyles. But one area that has suffered as a result, in my view, is around faction identity.

The passion and identity around the Horde and Alliance cannot be willed away as a result of a boardroom meeting. Many players have decades of tenure in this world. That's decades of history Blizzard's current game runners seem to be intent on downplaying, as quickly and sometimes haphazardly as possible. If Blizzard is doing this because they think it'll make the game more broadly appealing ... I think they're making a historical mistake. But hey, I could be wrong.

If you're a WoW player, I'm eager to hear what you think about it.

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I should preface this by saying I have over 15,000 hours played in World of Warcraft, and have been playing largely non-stop since the U.S. launch back in 2004. I've played WoW at its best and at its worst, and never in my wildest dreams did I think back when I was a teenager that I'd still be playing it even now.

It's a testament to Blizzard and World of Warcraft's development team that the game is still as popular as it is. Nothing I say here can detract from that success story. But as a long-time player and passionate fan, Midnight has been something of an inflection point for the current regime, I feel. It's as if the update cadence is creating cascading quality issues that are coming to a head in Midnight.

It's difficult to review an "ongoing" game in that context. What Midnight does well it does very well. Player Housing is easily the most ambitious new feature WoW has added since launch, and it's absolutely brilliant. Endgame content remains infectious and satisfying. And the new (old) zones are equal parts nostalgic and fresh.

But, Blizzard's current "ship first, questions later" patch cadence is hurting the overall experience in a way that compounds with every patch.

World of Warcraft: Midnight review — Art and Setting

World of Warcraft: Midnight is the dark middle act of a trilogy saga, dubbed the Worldsoul arc. Players are hunting Xal'atath across Azeroth and even the cosmos itself, in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that threatens the entire planet.

Xal'atath's sights have become firmly set on the Sunwell in the northern end of the Eastern Kingdoms, which is where the bulk of the game plays out. Herein, we see zones like Zul'Aman, Silvermoon City, and Eversong Woods revamped to upgrade their two-decade-old textures and design, and the result is as stunning as we've come to expect from Blizzard's art department.

Silvermoon City is incredibly impressive, and arguably now represents the best "city" design in the entire game. Previously destroyed by the Scourge in Warcraft 3, Silvermoon City has been fully rebuilt by the magical Blood Elves, who have since reconnected with the religion of Light. The font of power, the Sunwell, is visible from miles away. All the way from Zul'Aman, you can see the font of power radiating in the distance, which creates a sense of scale that defies World of Warcraft's aging engine. What Blizzard is still able to draw down from this game's engine is nothing short of incredible.

Perhaps the only downside is that it feels like there's comparatively little here compared to previous expansions. It's hard to do direct comparisons, particularly given how densely packed Silvermoon City, Zul'Aman, and the new zone Harandar are. But previously, we explored entire continents in World of Warcraft full-price expansions, rather than a few contained zones.

It doesn't feel like we're getting as much "bang for our buck" with Midnight, particularly since Harandar was quite clearly originally intended to be shipped with the previous expansion, The War Within. Although it's true that having access to rapid flight out of the gate is probably impacting my perception of the size of Midnight to some degree ... but I don't remember feeling that way about Dragonflight, which also had flying mounts almost immediately.

There was probably a missed opportunity here to explore more of the northern end of the Eastern Kingdoms, revamping down into the Plaguelands, maybe. Given that the story actually takes us to some of the other old zones in the region, the graphical whiplash can be jarring at times. I'm cognizant of the fact that World of Warcraft: Midnight also includes Player Housing, which has been an absolutely massive undertaking for the art team, likely detracting resources from beefing up the Midnight setting.

Even if it's "fewer" zones than previous expansions, what we did get is impeccable regardless. The music in Silvermoon and Eversong is masterful in its blend of nostalgic notes and forboding undertones. The Voidstorm is also a uniquely vast and terrifying expanse, offering a glimpse at the fate that should befall Azeroth if the player champions fail.

Blizzard's side quest content continues to deliver at a strong clip, too, adding a ton of context to these new landscapes — even if the core campaign story delivery has some issues.

World of Warcraft: Midnight review — Story

Story delivery in WoW has been controversial for some years now. With Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard controversially sundered the Horde vs. Alliance dichotomy that has defined player identity for decades, casting Horde players in the role of a genocidal army led by, essentially, a dictator — for reasons that remain somewhat unclear at best, and straight up dumb at worst.

This was followed by Shadowlands, which demystified and muddled Azeroth's afterlife, and to this day, has lowered the stakes for "dying" in the game's universe. None of this exactly went down well, and the disruption to the lore has continued to ripple throughout subsequent expansions.

In a vacuum, the Worldsoul saga has had some pretty great moments, delivered in part by Blizzard's industry-leading cinematics team. It's the story beats that tie the events together that I feel could use more work and iteration, and I suspect it's Blizzard's self-imposed patch cadence preventing the overarching story writing from reaching a higher quality bar.

We're in the second year of the Worldsoul Saga, although the events leading up to this have been brewing since World of Warcraft: Legion all the way back in 2016. Xal'atath's victories in The War Within have afforded her the power to open a gateway to a void-corrupted planet known as Predacea, or the Voidstorm as it is now known to most of Azeroth.

Xal'atath's ultimate goal remains to be seen, but the epic stakes playing out here are incredibly intriguing for lore fans, particularly given that we know the final part of the trilogy is known as "The Last Titan." Who is the last Titan? Is it franchise antagonist staple Sargeras? Is Xal'atath going to make some kind of void Titan with Azeroth's worldsoul? There's a ton of intriguing and exciting questions about where it could all go, and it's certainly holding my attention.

Where Midnight struggles is often in the details. WoW has become so vast and complex, with literal hundreds of characters and plot threats that run concurrently or not-so-concurrently. There's also time travel, regions where time travels slower or faster, and everyone has a favorite character or faction that feels either well-served or neglected based on the current patch iteration.

World of Warcraft: Midnight does incredibly well when weaving in some of these smaller stories. A couple of side quests in the Voidstorm, despite being delivered wholly via text, without cutscenes or motion capture, nearly made me tear up. Blizzard continues to do some incredible work here in low-stakes side-stories, continuing a trend that has held true for quite some time now.

However, when stories require a bit more iteration and attention, Midnight doesn't always deliver, continuing another trend. Story beats that could've used a strong motion-capped cinematic often get undermined with canned in-engine animations that really look silly in 2026. Characters often behave in decidedly uncharacteristic ways, particularly if you read some of the World of Warcraft official lore books and novels.

Furthermore, I can't overlook the fact that we used to get Horde and Alliance-specific storylines in expansions past. Blizzard now ships one single storyline per expansion, which largely ignores decades of faction conflict. It harms the sense of belonging World of Warcraft used to deliver like no other game in history, particularly given the fact the main factions, particularly the Horde, really are totally absent. You're telling me that a major Horde city is being actively attacked, and not even the neighboring Forsaken are involved?

For all of Blizzard's efforts to make player expression central to the game, the fact World of Warcraft's main story only very rarely now represents the franchise's historical factions is a big problem for me. I'm cognizant of the fact I may be in the minority here, though — this is just my opinion, after all.

What is perhaps less subjective is how buggy and unpolished aspects of Midnight have felt, which, like the game's story delivery, could be due to favoring patch rapidity over polish.

World of Warcraft: Midnight review — Gameplay and Endgame

Midnight has been somewhat pivotal for World of Warcraft for a variety of reasons. We now have Player Housing, after waiting decades, and it's arguably one of the best systems of its kind in all of gaming, really. Blizzard also massively restricted UI addons, breaking features players have relied on for literal decades. It also did a big pruning pass over the game's various classes, with the goal of reducing ability bloat. The success of some of these initiatives has varied quite wildly.

Player Housing is a big plus point for me. The system is completely optional and unrelated to player power. It's also incredibly generous, allowing every single player to have two houses per account (one for Horde, one for Alliance), with a dedicated plot of land with very large interior item budgets.

The exterior restrictions on Player Housing are a bit annoying (as are the prices for furnishings), but Blizzard said it's working to improve this over time. But on the interiors, creative players have been able to build absolutely incredible works of art, using thousands of furnishing assets and almost developer-grade environmental tools to create realistic home spaces.

Boss kills, crafting, reputation, PvP, PvE — the huge variety of sources for housing items means you're never far away from building something cool. My skills here are vastly limited, but I'm working towards building a museum of sorts where I can store artifacts from all of my achievements and accomplishments in WoW.

The new Prey system in WoW is also quite interesting, and has potential to be even better if Blizzard iterates further on it. You can now take on bounty targets of sorts while out and about in the world, adding extra challenges to world quests and general outdoor gameplay. Blizzard has perhaps identified that the outside world in WoW has become far, far too easy in recent years, to the point of being utterly unengaging. Prey brings some of that challenge back, but I feel like there's more Blizzard could do here. The recent outdoor Heroic mode from Legion Remix felt like a step in this direction, but it sadly didn't materialize into retail (yet).

World of Warcraft's raids change it up a bit for Midnight. Instead of a single raid, we now have three separate raids in different environments. It's an interesting approach, and ties into the game's story — without spoiling.

Raiding and dungeoneering in WoW continues to be fun, and the new smorgasbord of soloable Delves are interesting with interesting new mechanics. But it has been a bit of a roller coaster with all the changes Blizzard has injected via class pruning and addon restrictions.

Blizzard intentionally restricted UI addons from accessing a variety of features with Midnight, arguing that the addons shouldn't feel necessary to play optimally. Blizzard moved some of the functionality from these addons into the default UI, but its implementation for some of these features has been clunky at best. For example, healers are struggling with dispel visibility right now, as the default UI doesn't give clear enough information compared to third-party addons. Some of my spells have weird interactions with the new personal resource viewer as well, offering poor differentiation between a spell coming off cooldown or actually being active as a buff. Augmentation evokers can no longer see their contributions to group damage clearly, either, using the Blizzard-made damage meter, which is egregious in my opinion.

Additionally, some of the class changes have been a mixed bag. Unholy Death Knights got an impressive rework, turning them into an undead army master, fulfilling a necromancer fantasy. Other classes have had controversial reworks. Survival hunters got a shotgun, for example, which, for some players, interferes with their racial hunter class fantasy. Could you see a classic Legolas-style elf using a shotgun? Would an undead sniper use a regular eagle for spotting, or would he use a bat or something more racial flavor-appropriate?

But therein lies some of the problems with modern WoW. As the game has grown and become bloated, different parts of the game that desperately need attention get increasingly neglected. The new player experience is still absolutely abysmal, designed to haphazardly speed newcomers through the game to the more lucrative endgame. The problem is, they won't get a good knowledge of WoW all up, let alone learn the game's setting or emotionally connect with their chosen class or faction. The confusing mess of overlapping systems and outdated quests still hinders the experience, as someone who has tried to get multiple people to play WoW since Midnight launched.

Blizzard also adds new races without addressing issues with previous ones. I want playable Ogres, High Elves, Broken Draenei, and Forest Trolls as much as the next person — but it's irritating that the previous ones are neglected as Blizzard rushes ahead with the new. The new Haranir have an obscene amount of customization compared to some of the existing races. Dracthyr added in The War Within still can't access transmog equipment, for example. It also doesn't help that Haranir also have a ton of clipping issues with certain types of armor and skins on top.

It feels odd to be complaining about getting "new" anything, but if it comes at the cost of quality, I think Blizzard could have a bit of a rethink here to some degree — across the board.

World of Warcraft: Midnight review — Conclusion

All up, I think Blizzard could stand to take a little more time iterating on the game before shipping. Whether it's bugs with the new UI features, rough edges on new additions to the game, iteration to major story beats, or general polish — to use that famous Pandaren proverb, slow down.

World of Warcraft still delivers for me, arguably more than ever in fact. That's both a good and bad thing, in some ways. The patch cadence and roadmap has been impressive, for sure. Blizzard has maintained a patch cycle that has kept players well-endowed with things to do, new goals to chase, and meaningful story beats to explore. But the speed does feel like it comes at the cost of quality in some regards.

Haranir are great, but perhaps polishing up the existing races might've been more positively received than adding yet another elf variant to the game. Some of the new class features and Apex talents are fun, but the polish issues with some specs are undeniable. Baking more features into the default UI is welcome, but if Blizzard's versions are less polished than the previous third-party options — that's a problem.

I don't think anyone would mind if Blizzard took a little more time to bake things before rushing to shipping. I play WoW a ton, and I feel like I'm barely able to do everything I want to do right now before another patch drops. Perhaps it's all designed around subscription retention data above all else, and I appreciate that the business logic has to come first in some regards.

But, Midnight proves to me that polish issues can and will compound over time if they're left unaddressed. I think the game would be in a healthier foundation for growth if a little more time and attention was being paid to every corner of the game, even if it means slowing down a bit.

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We're just a week away from the release of World of Warcraft: Midnight, World of Warcraft's 11th expansion and 2nd chapter of the legendary MMORPG's ongoing Worldsoul Saga.

To keep fans from missing out on its launch, Blizzard Entertainment has released a blog post reconfirming when World of Warcraft: Midnight will launch for the general public and for those who have early access from purchasing the game's Epic Edition.

The expansion will launch for Early Access players on February 26, 2026, at 3:00 pm PST, and will later be released for everyone else globally on March 2, 2026, at 3:00 pm PST.

Of course, these dates will differ depending on your home region's time zones. So, we have gone through and converted these dates for various regions, so you know when World of Warcraft: Midnight will be available in your homeland.

Are you ready to save the Sunwell from the Voidstorm?

World of Warcraft: Midnight is looking to be one of World of Warcraft's more significant expansions in recent years.

In addition to the expected slew of new Dungeons, Raids, and Delves, we'll be getting a new outdoor monster-hunting activity called Prey, a new playable Allied Race called the Haranir, a new DPS specialization for the Demon Hunter class, and more.

The biggest gameplay addition World of Warcraft: Midnight will bring is Player Housing, a feature players have been begging for since World of Warcraft's debut in 2004. With Player Housing, players will be able to create a virtual home and decorate it with furniture and trophies.

If any of these features sound enticing to play, then mark down your calendars with the release times we've rounded up so you don't miss out on World of Warcraft: Midnight's launch on February 26, 2026, 3:00 pm PST (early access) and March 2, 2026, 3:00 pm PST (globally) for PC.

What are your thoughts on World of Warcraft: Midnight?

Are you looking to play World of Warcraft: Midnight? If you are, which of its gameplay features sounds the most interesting and fun to you?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, let them be heard in the comments below.

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On February 18, 2026, Blizzard Entertainment released a new animated short film for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight.

This short has an art and animation style similar to The War Within, which focused on Alleria Windrunner, except this one is focused on Liadrin, an important character players will ally with in the upcoming Midnight expansion.

The animated short gives players a glimpse of Liadrin's backstory. She was a kind-hearted priest who became a retribution-seeking Paladin after suffering the loss of her home and father when the Undead Scourge invaded Quel'Thalas during Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos.

Years later, Liadrin became the Matriarch of Silvermoon's Blood Knights and is currently defending the city from Xal'atath's invading forces to steal and corrupt the power of the Blood Elves' magical Sunwell.

Like the Alleria short, the Liadrin short has some gorgeously detailed animation and tries to maintain the dark, gritty tone that many Warcraft fans fear has been lost since the World of Warcraft: Dragonflight expansion.

Even the recent, motion-comic-style Xal'atath 'Supremacy' short proves that Blizzard Entertainment is still capable of telling dark stories within the Warcraft universe.

However, to me, what's important is if the execution of these stories lands, regardless of tone. For example, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is one of the game's darker expansions for its grim depictions of the afterlife and diabolical characters like Denathrius.

Yet much of Shadowlands' storytelling and handling of fan-favorite characters like Sylvanas Windrunner were so poorly executed and invalidated so much established lore that it was one of the main reasons many long-time players left World of Warcraft for Final Fantasy XIV in 2021.

As for how the story is being handled right now? I'm sort of split on it.

I like how we're revisiting like Silvermoon, but completely reimagned with new areas and graphical fidelity. Plus, as someone who played Warcraft 3 back in the day, I love that the Voidwalkers are the central antagonists of World of Warcraft: Midnight.

We barely know anything about these creatures, so this expansion can give players a chance to finally learn about their culture and history, along with learning more about how the Void works in general.

On the other hand, the overall story of World of Warcraft is still almost impossible to get into for newcomers, despite Blizzard Entertainment's efforts with the new Catch Up Experience feature and Lorewalker Cho quests.

There's just too much lore and stories for the player to keep up with and invest in. Plus, there's no proper prelude arc that introduces the player to the world and slowly gets to know its characters like Final Fantasy 14 does.

In World of Warcraft, you're just inserted into the world as a hardened champion that's expected to already know everything that's going on in the story.

However, aside from a total reboot of the game's story (which is not really viable or possible at this point in WoW), this problem of making the story accessible for new players can be potentially solved...by making a TV Show with the animation style and direction of the Liadrin and Alleria shorts.

With a World of Warcraft TV show featuring adaptations of the Warcraft RTS games and World of Warcraft expansions, you can give newcomers a condensed and entertaining way to experience Warcraft's entire story without making them do weeks' worth of homework reading Wikipedia pages online.

Fans are already clamouring for a World of Warcraft animated series, and silver screen adaptations of video games are all the rage these days, like the Fallout TV series and Netflix's Castlevania series, so why not make one? I know I would watch it.

In the meantime, while we wait for dreams of a World of Warcraft animated series to come true, we'll have to deal with Xal'atath and her Voidwalker armies when World of Warcraft: Midnight launches on March 2, 2026 (or February 26, for those with early access privileges for pre-ordering the Epic Edition) for PC.

Is a World of Warcraft animated TV Show a good idea?

Would you like to see a World of Warcraft animated TV Show? Do you have any ideas on how Blizzard Entertainment could improve Warcraft's narrative and make it more accessible for newcomers?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, let them be heard in the comments below.

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It's been a couple of months since World of Warcraft players got their hands on the early-access version of Player Housing (via pre-ordering the game), a feature that fans have been begging for since the MMORPG's early years in the mid-2000s.

Judging from the glowing positive reception from the community, it was worth the wait. Fans can't get enough of using Player Housing to design their dream home and decorate it with furniture, knick-knacks, trophies, and more items they find during their adventures.

Blizzard Entertainment has noticed this passionate response as well and has decided to give players a chance to show off their homes in style through a special collaboration with the social media platform, Pinterest.

Starting from February 18, 2026 (around 10:00 am PST), Pinterest will allow World of Warcraft players to capture screenshots in-game and post them to their linked Pinterest accounts through a new in-game toy called the Pin-o-Magic Camera.

By posting screenshots onto Pinterest using this toy, players can create mood boards and collections of their favorite moments (whether it's climatic finale to a raid or goofing off with friends at the Darkmoon Faire) or Player Housing creations to express their creativity to the world and inspire others to do the same.

It's insane how quickly Player Housing has become one of the most popular features in World of Warcraft, and this is just the early-access version.

When the full version of Player Housing launches alongside the upcoming World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion, who knows what over-the-top creations players will come up with? In early-access, some players have already managed to convert their homes into laboratories, flying airships, giant mechas, or even recreations of nostalgic locales from the Legend of Zelda series.

Plus, this is just the beginning as Blizzard Entertainment has big plans for Player Housing's future (as well as plans for improving player customization and animations via Glyphs), including adding Guild Halls, more decor items, raising the cap on decor item limits, and much more.

World of Warcraft: Midnight is set to launch for PC on March 2, 2026, for the general public, with a 3-day Early-Access period on February 27, 2026, for people who purchased the expansion's Epic Edition.

Stay tuned for further updates as we inch closer to one of the most anticipated expansions for Blizzard's legendary MMORPG in years.

Have you been enjoying Player Housing in World of Warcraft? What changes and improvements would you like to see for Player Housing in future updates?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, please let them be heard in the comments below.

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World of Warcraft: Midnight is around the corner, and I'm starting to feel that familiar hype set in.

World of Warcraft entered its third decade of operation recently, crossing the 20-year milestone few service games can boast. It's arguably one of the best PC games of all time, and it remains the apex of subscription-based MMORPGs. Furthermore, Blizzard is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, now that it's part of Xbox and Microsoft, it's arguably shown greater acceleration than we saw under the old Activision regime.

We recently caught up with Blizzard's Maria Hamilton, Design Director, and Jay Hwang, Principal Artist, to discuss World of Warcraft's impressive roadmap and the renewed focus on player customization.

On player housing and its future

On February 28, 2026, WoW: Midnight goes into early access, with a general launch hitting on March 3. A big part of the overall package is the game's new player housing system, which is currently live for those who have pre-ordered the expansion.

Some of us (old people, like me) have been waiting 20 years for this feature. It's basically a full-blown level designer baked into the game, allowing you to customize a space cosmetically that you can call your own. Furnishings can be acquired in all sorts of ways, with trophies celebrating your in-game achievements and the like.

But, some racial architectures are better represented than others. I was a bit dismayed as a goblin player to find that there are only four racial exterior housing styles so far. I also brought up the fact that many quite basic goblin pieces require a ton of rep grinding in Undermine, whereas other races can just buy their basics with gold. Blizzard says it plans to add more styles and optimize the economy over time.

"We have 100% thought about this," principal artist Jay Hwang says. I asked if it would be a slow, painfully-long roll out like Heritage Armor quests. Jay said no. "We don't want you to be waiting years to get your goblin house, or gnome house, and so on. We are working on a solution already."

I asked if one day housing and its systems could integrate into the main game. Could we see in-game quests or community efforts that use these tools to alter the game world, as seen in persistent games like Fallout 76 and Death Stranding? Jay Hwang confirms that the housing mechanics can function in the main world of Azeroth, too.

"We're only just beginning with how it works right now. We're building the strong bones of the system. As you guys use it, play with it, we will try to support things that you guys want to see," Jay Hwang says.

"I would be lying if I didn't first thing about how this could be used to make interesting content. Can I use this to build quests, activities, and events – how do we build that out?" Maria chimes in. "But, our first priority is getting the basics and optimization right. We don't want to melt the servers down, and the focus is on giving players the ability to express themselves. I know players have already tried their hand at simple user generated content, like jumping puzzles, and traps. The way people use the system helps us prioritize."

On boosting character customization, glyphs, and even animations

One thing I wanted to really mention was player customization. Putting the emphasis on expression with player housing has led to even stronger calls to boost the ways players have to express their characters. I mentioned to Maria and Jay that, as an avowed goblin player, I was taken aback by how much customization other races have by comparison. The new race being added in Midnight, the Haranir, also has a mountain of customization options. I asked if the team plans to add more and what players can expect.

"I would say yes," Maria affirms, "but we don't have a roadmap just yet. We've taken runs at it from time to time, and we know players love it. But now we're looking at it as a sort of larger project, rather than drops here and there like we did with Heritage Armor. We've even discussed improving character animations and things like that — what sorts of improvements we can make there. It's down the road, though, it's not soon."

"You can see even now with the remake of the transmog system that we understand the need," Jay Hwang explains. "We're starting to move down that road. That's why we've been investing in things like housing which aren't player power related, and focused more on avenues of expression. So, in the future, maybe goblins will get more ears and noses for you. These are things we're definitely interested in for ourselves too."

After promising the team I wasn't just there to spread goblin propaganda, I asked once again about the glyphs system. Added years ago, Glyphs are a system that allows players some mild cosmetic customization for spells and abilities, but the feature has been a bit neglected. I asked if Glyphs were something that could also eventually end up integrated into the new transmog system.

"That is the path we would take for glyphs, and that kind of customization," Maria explained. "On the longer term agenda, we may want to look and rethink how we offer some of those sorts of customizations. We're collecting a lot of information on how that's being used. We have abilities and toys in the game that can change the way something looks, we can attach audio and visual effects. There's, over the years, been an astonishing bunch of different things overlapping, and none of it is part of a consolidated system. There's an untangling that needs to happen, and then a look at the pros and cons."

Maria reiterated that these ideas represent further-out possibilities and that they could all encompass some sort of new customization system that not only allows you to customize spells, but also animations too.

"It's a fairly thorny question," she explained, "what does it look like when we pull all of this together? what if we wanted to improve customization across the board. Adding and improving animations have come up more than you might imagine. People want animations that are appropriate to the role they're playing. How could we integrate that? It's all part of a larger project for the future."

Express yourself

World of Warcraft is in uncharted waters to some degree. The game has survived and seen off all sorts of industry instability and challenges, from free-to-play mobile games to big-budget imitators and even issues of its own making. There's not exactly a blueprint for operating a game on this scale, while simultaneously appealing to new younger players and an aging legacy player base (me, it's me.)

World of Warcraft still has a fair few flaws, I'd argue. The game's open-world levelling experience and new player onboarding systems are still quite poor, despite various attempts to put band-aids on them. The dizzying array of overlapping endgame systems, timelines, and features can immediately put off newcomers — I've seen it happen firsthand, trying to induct family and friends. Blizzard should seriously consider investing in creating a neutral new-player experience closer to the vanilla or Cataclysm levelling experience in my view, but it would be a pretty hefty undertaking I imagine.

Indeed, the player base has increasingly split between "Classic" and "Retail" players, with many Classic players opting away from Retail simply to experience that old world levelling experience. They're often nostalgic for a more immersive, less telemetry-driven "hyper-optimized" experience, as opposed to the more "modern" hyper-fast season-driven endgame experience.

Blizzard has done a fairly good job catering to both player bases so far, although the rise of private servers shows that there's still a big audience for the old WoW, yearning for a slower-paced experience that perhaps doesn't hold their hand as much.

Player Housing and player expression features definitely lean into the Gen-Z cohort to some degree, where skins and in-game flair drive player spending and retention. Sometimes I worry that WoW is leaning a little too hard towards being cozy, however, to the point where it becomes a little disengaging — particularly in the open world. Although, new systems like Prey in Midnight, coupled with Legion Remix's world tier difficulty experiments could help solve that gap down the line.

World of Warcraft will have another big info blowout towards BlizzCon 2026 at the tail end of the summer, and we'll likely learn even more about what's next for this most legendary franchise in the coming months.

World of Warcraft: Midnight is up now to preorder for $49.99 on Windows PC.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

I'll be real, walking into Blizzard's campus for the first time, I was as nervous as all hell. While I've interviewed people like Rod Fergusson and some of the Diablo 4 developers before, it's never been on their home turf and in the presence of all the weight of Blizzard's empire.

The campus itself left me awestruck (and yes, I took a photo of the Lilith statue). But what I was really there for, during a month's worth of celebrations for Blizzard's 35th Anniversary, was to sit down with Johanna Faries.

This year marks 2 years at Blizzard with Johanna at the helm, and it's a big year to be steering the ship. We've already seen huge announcements for flagship titles like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and Overwatch (which has ceremoniously dropped the 2) with more to come later today from the franchise closest to my heart, Diablo.

This is, of course, just the beginning, with I'm sure some big news yet to come later this year at the return of Blizzcon.

I chatted to Johanna about how the studio is balancing its legendary past with a "bold" new future under the Microsoft umbrella.

"Meeting players where they are"

This is Windows Central, of course, so I had to lead my questions with the Xbox of it all. With Xbox pushing the Play Anywhere initiative harder than ever, I asked Faries about smoothing the seams between Battle.net and the wider Xbox ecosystem.

With Xbox pushing harder into the PC space, and their own work on the Xbox Full Screen Experience for handhelds, where does Battle.net fit in with these plans?

Faries was clear that Battle.net remains a "shining star" and a "premium" platform, but she emphasized that Blizzard’s strategy is becoming more nimble.

"Battlenet, as you probably already know, is a shining star of our Blizzard portfolio. It's something that we have deep passion for, and it's as much a community platform as it is a game platform in many ways. So I think what we want to make sure we do is continue to position Battle.net to be best in class.

We want it to be delivering PC experiences at the most premium level and making sure that we're meeting players where they are.

So, to the extent that we [Blizzard and Xbox] want to make sure we're dot-connecting, I think collaboration is always incredibly high across the Xbox team. And we're going to continue to share notes. We'll continue to share best practices and learnings. But, you know, I think in many ways, we want to stay focused on making sure that when Blizzard players come to Battlenet, they're getting the type of experience that they expect. That is, you know, exceeding their expectations and continuing to improve in that way."

She added that there is no '"one size fits all" approach anymore. "What might be right for one game or one game launch might be different than what we do from a distribution perspective or platform strategy for other parts of our portfolio. So we want to remain nimble and make sure that if players are expecting a type of experience from Blizzard, that it's world-class and that we're going to meet that moment appropriately."

Following this part of our chat, I prompted Faries more about potentially bringing more Blizzard games to Steam. Overwatch (formally known as Overwatch 2 is currently doing well on the platform, and Diablo 4 is a great Steam Deck game.

"It goes back to the focus on finding ways to meet players in the destinations of their choice, right? And so there's always going to be an active conversation across every one of our game launches.

Where do we want to show up? How do we make sure we show up in the right way? Right? So again, Steam has played a great role, as have so many other distribution partners for us. And so we're going to continue to just kind of be learners with respect to making sure that when we show up, we show up in the best way possible."

Surprise, since this interview. Diablo 2: Resurrected is now on Steam!

2026 is the comeback year for Blizzcon

While many developers have moved toward purely digital showcases, even Xbox itself has not put on a fan fest in quite some time.

Blizzard, in contrast, is leaning back into the physical world of fandom. BlizzCon is returning in 2026, and I told Johanna it felt like they were going all-in this year, particularly with all the hyped-up messaging. For Faries, the event is more than just a trailer showcase.

"Blizzcon is all about the community, and we think about that in a very intentional way. We want to make sure that we continue to bring forward what has been such a singular part of what makes Blizzard special. And Blizzcon is this gathering... it's this place for people to have those in-person experiences, whether it's because they're reuniting with their people or they're finding their new friends and forging new bonds that often are lifelong."

Given that Blizzard has had 2 years off from running Blizzcon, I asked what had been done in that time to make sure 2026 was a success? What would make Blizzcon an event that absolutely had to take place each year?

She noted that the downtime over the last few years was spent being very intentional about how the event returns.

"I think we've been taking a lot of time over the last couple of years to say when we come back, how do we make sure we come back in a way that celebrates the spirit of what Blizzcon has always represented for our community? While also making sure that it sets a tone for the future we're writing for ourselves here? And so I feel there's a sense of excitement about being able to shape this type of experience for so many people. And I do believe that we have a real passion for gathering in person and being able to lock arms as people who all just love Blizzard and want to continue to forge those bonds."

You'll notice that many of the announcements this month from Blizzard tease Blizzcon and more to come, so from a fan perspective, I'm confident this year will be one for the books.

This year also marks Xbox's 25th anniversary, I wondered if there was any coordination between the two going on behind the scenes to plan their celebrations and marketing?

"There's always this constant back-and-forth about how we calendar together. How do we think big about the big celebrations going on across all of the Xbox portfolio, right? And so it's awesome because we have a year chock full of special anniversaries. It's an honor to be a part of things that have stood the test of time in that way.

When we think about 35 years for Blizzard, it certainly encapsulates so much passion, so much creativity, so much boldness over decades, and it's something that we take really seriously. And at the same time, we've talked a lot about this moment being both a celebration of that legacy and a launching pad for a very bold future ahead. And so those are the conversations we have. How do we make sure that when we're celebrating together, it ladders up into something bigger?"

Bridging the generational gap

One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was how Blizzard handles it's intergenerational nature. Blizzard games inherently have a very millenial and older-skewed audience, many of which have been playing its games for 20 years or more.

There's a nostalgia embedded that keeps people coming back, but it also means a shaky balancing act between the expectations of old veteran players, and trying to bring in a new audience.

The Gen X/Alpha gang has very different expectations around monetization, progression, and the like. How, then, does Blizzard balance this?

"We have learned over and over again, how do you keep winning hearts and minds with bold new experiences? ... It's going to be predicated on making sure that we're delivering for the fans who have been with us and the players who've been in our games and created these communities with us for decades now, while also shaping the fans of the future, the players and the communities of the future."

"It requires this interdisciplinary way of working right? Be ahead of trends, set new trends, tell new stories, think out of the box in certain ways. But also... don't reinvent the wheel. So much of what I think our secret sauce has become is that we believe deeply that our IP, in many ways, is singular to all of entertainment. And when we continue to invest in these worlds and continue to deepen the content experiences in these universes, we find, more often than not, that players new and players long-lasting continue to want to come back and enjoy that right?

We're very excited about what's to come. This is just the beginning. In many ways, even the past couple of weeks of announcements are just the start of something we believe is quite bold and sets a tone for the future that we're shaping."

A perfect example of this is the studio's commitment to not just Diablo 4, but continuing the patch Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. New games don't mean the old audience are left behind. They also manage to serve the WoW Classic and retail crowds. Faries pointed out that continuing to update these games "will also bring in players who may have never experienced it before. This might be their first time... and it reshapes the dynamics within that community."

The relationship with Xbox is "highly empowered"

Since the acquistion of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, there's been plenty of talk about Blizzard's identity and how the two companies work together side by side, with Blizzard still retaining its autonomy.

How does that look on a meaningful day-to-day basis? Faries described the day-to-day collaboration with Xbox as one defined by "agency" rather than oversight.

"It's highly empowered. I feel a lot of agency and support from our Xbox partners and collaborators, and more often than not, the questions are, 'How can we help? How can we support?' There's also this focus on communication. Let's just share. What are we learning together? What are we seeing? Are there places where we should connect dots? Are there places where we should be independent? But let's make sure that we're great communicators and collaborators, so that we're all kind of rowing in the same direction. But by and large, I feel a phenomenal amount of agency to be able to write our future for Blizzard and to operate as we need to."

Looking beyond the existing catalog, is there room for new IP?

While the current focus is clearly on deep-diving into the worlds of Diablo, Warcraft, Overwatch and Hearthstone this week, I asked Johanna if there was room in the next 35 years for something entirely new. A new IP for Blizzard.

"We're always going to think about, you know, what does it look like to win both with our existing IP and maybe into the future? ...we have this amazing portfolio, and we have really said we want to focus in the near term on making sure we continue to invest in these worlds. There's still so much territory we have to cover together. And yet, where do we want to be? 5, 10, 20, 35 years from now? And what are those bets need to look like so that we continue to, you know, stand tall within the industry."

When I asked if there was pressure for a new IP to "fit" the existing Blizzard art style or theme, she pointed directly to the caliber of the team.

"Great creatives offer up ideas maybe we never even thought of before, right? And so I find our role is to create the space for people to be able to think big and think about where do we want to go next... I'm not worried about how anything might fit together. It's really about making sure we're creating the spaces to feel empowered in doing so."

Beyond the games and lessons from Fallout

The success of the Fallout TV show has everyone asking when their favorite game is going to make it to the silver screen. It's clearly had a halo effect on the games too. I had to ask about Blizzard's ambitions for this. And yes, I’m still holding out for that Diablo Netflix show.

Faries confirmed that "exciting conversations" are happening, but the "Blizzard bar" remains incredibly high.

"We just want to be responsible with the IP, right? We want to make sure that if we bring anything forward, whether it's gameplay or whether it's beyond that, that it represents what we want it to signify. On behalf of Blizzard, it's got to be best in class... we have set the bar in many ways, in terms of creative excellence, and so that's really what we're going to focus in on."

Two years at the helm

As we wrapped up, I asked Johanna about her own journey. She has been with Blizzard for two years now, and I wanted to know what about her experiences has stood out during that time.

"It's gonna sound so corny and it is so honest. I mean it. I just every day I'm — I get to pinch myself and say, this is just a total blessing of a job and an opportunity. I get to work alongside the most special, talented, creative people across every discipline in entertainment that you can imagine. And so it's more about... it's very humbling to be a part of what we're trying to continue to shape."

She was candid about the fact that the industry isn't always easy, noting that there is "no one specific day" that stands above the rest because of the natural volatility of the business.

"There are highs, there's lows. That's gaming for you, right? But I think it's a real sense of pride and fulfillment to be able to do it with the types of people that I get to work with and learn from. There's a way that our teams show up in the world that I think is just very unique and special and inspiring to me, both as a player and as a professional. And so I — I can't think of one example. I'm just always reminding myself of that every day."

Of course, you can't lead Blizzard without being a fan yourself. When I asked if she had a particular affinity for one franchise, she admitted that her "diplomatic" answer is actually the truth: she plays virtually every Blizzard game out there.

"It really depends on my mood. It certainly depends on if we're in a big launch... but I'm deep in Diablo right now. But then you asked me next week I'll be deep in Overwatch. It just kind of depends... you have so many different sandboxes to play in."

I did give her one piece of advice: be careful with that Diablo obsession; you might find yourself walking out of a party with a new tattoo.

35 years of Blizzard... and counting

As Blizzard enters its 35th year and Diablo hits its 30th, the atmosphere on campus was electrifying to experience firsthand. "This moment is both a celebration of that legacy and a launching pad for a very bold future ahead," Johanna told me.

For those of us who have spent decades in Sanctuary or Azeroth, it’s clear that while the technology and the platforms might change, the "secret sauce" that Blizzard has isn't going anywhere. I meant it when I said Blizzard is going hard this year, and I can't wait to see what the next 35 years have in store for us.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

I've spent thousands of hours in Blizzard games, but Hearthstone isn't one of them. I was recently invited to Blizzard's 35th Anniversary celebrations, and somehow found myself part of the Hearthstone showcase despite having a total blindspot when it comes to it. I thought the worst as I sat down to my first game against another journalist, but luckily for me there were a few others there just as clueless as me (while some were impressively experienced and could reel off card stats like their phone numbers).

Regardless of experience level, we all had a great time. Hearthstone has a surprisingly addictive gameplay loop, and I took my time with my first game very, very seriously (Lewis from The Mirror, if you are reading this, we are due a rematch).

Today marks the first announcement of Hearthstone's next expansion, Cataclysm, which arrives on March 17, 2026.

Yep, "Cataclysm," the expansion that shattered World of Warcraft as we know it, is also now coming to Hearthstone but with its own twist.

Sliding Doors but make it nerdy

Hearthstone has spent over 12 years following the World of Warcraft lore. During the showcase, Lead Designer Cora Georgiou explained that Hearthstone: Cataclysm is exploring a timeline Blizzard never let happen in the MMO. What if Deathwing had actually succeeded in his plans during the Cataclysm?

"As his final act, Murozond pulled this alternate Deathwing into our universe, and now it falls to us to defeat the most powerful Deathwing of all time.

Time-traveling Chromie and the Dragonflights need your help to hold off Deathwing’s forces while she rallies Heroes of Time from across Hearthstone’s history to stop the chaos. Players will battle to save our reality through a new story, powerful cards, and limited-time events."

"Alternate versions of beloved characters feel like a very Hearthstone thing to do," Georgiou explained. This Time Travel-esque narrative allows the team to play with different versions of characters, like they have in the past with a Ranger General Sylvanas.

The Dragon's Hoard is a new players dream

If you've been initimidated by other players building up a decades worth of card history, Blizzard just removed that barrier with this update. Under the "Dragon's Hoard" event which starts on March 10, two full expansions worth of cards, Into the Emerald Dream and The Lost City, will be completely free for all players during the Cataclysm cycle.

The team has built deck recipes using only these free cards, so you can jump into ranked play straight away without spending a cent (though I do recommend getting some practice against the AI first).

There's also a skill-based matchmaking involved, call it newbie protection, where you enter a dedicated track and will only face other beginners, so no worries about being stomped by 10-year veterans day one.

Mechanics that really shake up the game

For the veterans however, Cataclysm will be bringing back the Colossal keyword, so minions so massive they will take up multiple slots on the board. These were originally features in the Voyage to the Sunken City DLC in 2022.

• Class Lieutenants: Classes like Warlock get ChoGall, whill Rogue gets Sinestra.
• The Worldbreaker: Deathwing, Worldbreaker arrives as a Neutral Hero card available to six classes, and will have world-ending abilities like Raze, Topple and Enthrall.

There'll be new keywords, in particular "Herald" used by classes aligned with Deathwing's Lieutenants. The more you use this, the stronger your lieutenants become.

Also being added is "Shatter" for those who ally with the Dragonflights against Deathwing. A “Shatter” card splits into two halves when drawn, on opposite sides of your hand. You can cast them separately, or combine them back together for twice the power and value.

Finally, Triumphs and Last Stands are class specific spell cards that feature each class’s Hero of Time, showing them either claiming victory or making a final heroic stand in the fight to save Azeroth from Deathwing.

All the new cards being added with Cataclysm

• Warmaster Blackhorn (Neutral)
• Supply Run (Hunter)
• Flight Maneuvers (Paladin)
• Battlefield Blaster (Neutral)
• Chamber of Aspects (Paladin)
• Chromatus (Paladin)
• Green Head of Chromatus (Paladin)
• Red Head of Chromatus (Paladin)
• Blue Head of Chromatus (Paladin)
• Bronze Head of Chromatus (Paladin)
• Ebyssian (Hunter)
• Envoy of the End (Neutral)
• Ragnaros, the Great Fire (Warrior)
• Hand of Ragnaros (Warrior)
• Hand of Ragnaros (Warrior)
• Soldier of Ragnaros (Warrior)
• Deathwing, Worldbreaker (Neutral)
• Ruthless
• Dragon's Reign
• Progeny of Deathwing
• Topple
• Raze
• Enthrall
• Dark Iron Harbinger
• Disciple of Demise
• Sands of Time

Year of The Scarab and Blizzcon tease

The Core Set rotation is about to change, and with it, the game meta.The Year of the Raptor is ending, and so begins the Year of the Scarab. The Core Set rotation is about to change and with it the game meta.

Some cards, like Brawl and Shadowstep, are rotating out to be replaced with Decimation and Shadow of Demise.

Players who hit Legend in the 2026 Hearthstone competitive season will get a new cardback. Those hitting it for the first time this year get both the class and new cardback. The Spotlight also had a sneaky joke about something coming at Blizzcon (a theme of most of the spotlights we have seen so far!)

Will you jump into Hearthstone?

It's hard not to get caught up in the celebrations as we get announcement after announcment of all this new content coming to Blizzard games.

Overwatch has already seen a resurgence in players since it's own anniversary spotlight, with Diablo coming later this week. I hope Hearthstone will welcome a bunch of new and returning players, too. Whether you're like me, a totally clueless novice clicking around the board and hoping you'll "get it eventually," or a devotee looking for deeper class identity, Cataclysm looks to be a turning point for the franchise.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

World of Warcraft enters its third decade of live operations, at the apex of the MMORPG genre. The next expansion is none other than World of Warcraft: Midnight, with early access going live on February 27, 2026, ahead of an official March 3, 2026 launch.

World of Warcraft is an odd place in some ways. It's straddling two different playstyles as player behavior diverges wildly as fans enter new stages of life. Some want a hardcore and challenging experience, while others want a relaxing, casual experience. World of Warcraft has done a pretty great job at catering to multiple different audiences, offering WoW: Classic for those seeking nostalgia and more challenging open world gameplay, alongside WoW retail which pushes the story forward.

Retail WoW has tons of content for casual players these days, with soloable mini dungeons offering high-end loot at a reduced cadence, alongside Player Housing, which lets players collect furnishings and flex their creativity.

At today's World of Warcraft: State of Azeroth event, World of Warcraft directors Ion Hazzikostas and Holly Longdale spoke at length about what players can expect from the near and far future of the legend that is, WoW.

Holly Longdale explained how the current era of WoW began development at the end of Shadowlands and through Dragonflight, with features like Player Housing taking shape around this time. Microsoft famously acquired Blizzard for its Xbox operations during these years, and has been pretty hands-off with regards to how the company operates.

Blizzard formed a new team specifically to target an 8-week major patch cadence to keep players equipped with plentiful things to do. Generally, WoW has done well to meet this patch schedule, but it has occasionally come at the cost of quality. The current pre-patch for Midnight has caused a range of issues and bugs with the game, and the schedule Blizzard has imposed on itself hasn't always led to the kind of polish players expect for their subscription fee. Players will likely be judging Midnight more harshly than usual when it drops, owing to the deluge of major changes Blizzard has implemented into the expac.

Longdale discussed Midnight's story, which revolves around Xal'atath's forces of the Void, and the re-emerging Army of the Light. She said that the campaign is designed to be emotionally evocative — with themes of loss central to the plot.

Blizzard spent a lot of time talking about Player Housing, which the firm has invested a ton into turning into a new pillar for the game alongside raiding and so on. Blizzard said players racked up over 4 million hours in just two weeks in Player Housing, and promise to invest more to keep the system fresh.

Blizzard reiterated upcoming modes for WoW: Classic, but stopped short of announcing anything beyond existing content. Players have been yearning for some sort of "Classic+" mode that would retain WoW's original flavor while adding actually new content. Longdale says that the Classic teams are working on more stuff, "hat’s not all we’re cooking up. I can say with confidence that all Classic players across the globe have a lot to look forward to."

In the second half of the presentation, game director Ion Hazzikostas offered a more detailed look at the near and further out future of Midnight.

The full World of Warcraft Midnight roadmap (so far):

• Pre-launch events featuring magisters Umbric and Rommath, for mounts, pets, transmogs, and housing items.
• Experience and rep boost buffs will be live to help players catch up and level alternate characters.
• Dark Portal time-limited housing decor will be available for anyone who logs in between now and the launch od Midnight.
• WoW will be free to access until February 1st for returning players to try out the new stuff, including the new mid-range Demon Hunter Devourer spec.
• Recap on Midnight: Level cap raised to 90, four new zones, eight new dungeons. Eleven soloable Delve dungeons. "Prey" bounty hunter system, Arcantina social hub (think a magical pub in a pocket dimension.)
• Midnight Season 1 includes 6-boss Voidspire raid, 1-boss Dreamrift mini-raid, and a 2-boss "March on Quel'danas" mini raid mid-season.
• Player Housing will get improvements to its economy, endeavours, and UI, alongside pet and mount integrations, advanced tools like group select copy/paste, import/export sharing builds, and more.
• A prop-hunt PvP mini event will drop in 12.05, coupled with PvE void assaults.
• 12.07 will escalate void assaults, adding a new single-boss raid mid-season as Blizzard looks to Onyxia for inspiration.
• 12.1 will add a large new outdoor zone, including a new major raid, new season, new rewards, and a friends system overhaul.
• 12.1.5 will add new Labyrinths, which are mega-dungeon inspired Delves complete with checkpoints, alongside another mini-raid, and a new "experimental event" from the Plunderstorm team.
• Blizzard will share more about WoW's long-term future, including the third Midnight season, the next full expansion, and more at BlizzCon 2026 — slated for September 12, 2026.

World of Warcraft continues to impress with its ambitions, but gaps remain

Despite cramming WoW with more activities than ever, there are some long standing issues revolving around the game that the team has yet to address.

Outdoor content and the levelling experience is still abysmal, even with the Midnight updates. Players actively yearn for something more like WoW Classic, hence the rise of popular modded servers (often the subject of cease and desist orders). Blizzard also hasn't spoken much about adding more customization to the existing races in the roadmap either, many of which have become quite neglected over the years.

Not everybody has been happy with WoW's writing either, as the major player factions and lore character begin to become homogenous in their views, culture, and behavior.

Blizzard has taken the bite out of the game's writing with the apparent goal to avoid all controversy and real world parallels it feels like, with both the Horde and Alliance factions becoming simplistic and Disney-like in their behavior. The Horde in particular has lost all of its dark edges, with "morally grey" factions losing a lot of their character and flavor.

The fact very little of the event discussed feedback on lore building, writing, and the game's characters isn't hugely encouraging. But, I suspect it's likely a vocal minority driving these kinds of sentiments. By all accounts, WoW has hit a popularity level not seen since the Wrath of the Lich King days, owing to the firm's focus on meeting player's behaviors more head on.

Midnight drops on March 3, 2026 for Windows PC, and will be available to grab via Battle.net and the Xbox PC app.

Are you looking forward to Player Housing in World of Warcraft? Are there gameplay features you want to see added for Player Housing in the future, after the Midnight expansion launches?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, let us know in the comments below.

Blizzard has just dropped a blogpost and nostalgic boost of a video covering its franchises that announced a new multi-part showcase event to kick off 2026. This is an announcement, of an announcement if you will, that some announcements are coming. And yes, this looks like it connects directly to the Diablo 4 tease we got that something was happening in February.

Blizzard will be rolling out a bunch of developer-led presentations focused on its biggest franchises, including World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Diablo. The showcases also double as part of Blizzard’s thirty-five-year anniversary celebration and will set the stage for what’s coming next this year, including the long-awaited return of BlizzCon in September.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries says the company’s teams have a strong lineup of announcements planned and that this showcase is "only the beginning" of what Blizzard intends to reveal throughout the year.

Where you can watch the Blizzard presentations

Each presentation will stream on Blizzard’s official YouTube and Twitch channels, with the following schedule:

• World of Warcraft State of Azeroth
  29 January at 9am Pacific, 12pm Eastern, 5pm UK - Youtube link
• Overwatch Spotlight
  4 February at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern, 6pm UK - Youtube link
• Hearthstone Spotlight
  9 February at 9.30am Pacific, 12.30pm Eastern, 5.30pm UK - Youtube link
• Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight
  11 February at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 10pm UK - Youtube link

For Diablo fans, that 11 February slot immediately stands out. Blizzard has already been teasing that something Diablo-related would be revealed in February, and this anniversary spotlight lines up perfectly with that timing.

Whether we see something more for the Lord of Hatred expansion, a reveal of what the second new class is, or something even bigger, I have no idea, but this is the date I'm most eager to tune in.

Alongside the showcase announcement, Blizzard also released a new video titled “Blizzard: The Next Chapter,” which looks back at the company’s history using roughly 400 physical artifacts from its archives.

The video is sure to give you chills if you are a fan of any of Blizzard's beloved franchises, and I've already watched it 10 times this morning thinking wistfully of simpler times!

More details on the showcase can be found on Blizzard’s official website.

On January 13, 2026, Blizzard Entertainment revealed in an exclusive interview with PC Gamer its vision for how it will shape World of Warcraft's long-awaited Player Housing feature

This feature is currently available via Early Access for those who pre-ordered World of Warcraft: Midnight and is scheduled to launch fully on March 2, 2026, alongside the upcoming expansion.

Blizzard Entertainment states that, "This is a system that we're not just setting up to last for the launch of Midnight, but for years to come." It plans to make it good on this statement with all kinds of activities, features, and updates to the Player Housing system, before, when, and after the Midnight expansion arrives.

Here are summations of what you expect to see for Player Housing in World of Warcraft.

New Player Housing content coming soon

On January 20, 2026, there will be a pre-patch, setting the stage for World of Warcraft: Midnight's story.

During this patch, Player Housing in Early Access will be getting Neighbour-wide Endeavors, which will see players assigned various quests to complete that will earn them decor to decorate their houses with.

Blizzard Entertainment has also stated other updates for Player Housing coming shortly after the Midnight Pre-Patch or when the Midnight expansion launches, including:

• Guild Halls
• New Decor items dropping in Midnight's first set of Raids, with a guaranteed number of items from each boss that has decor. The count scales with raid size, and the loot will be personalized and have bad luck protection.
• New Renown levels. Extra housing XP earned before the update goes live will be applied to the levels, and Blizzard Entertainment expects Housing Journey will have 5-10 levels added per major patch.
• Houses will receive "Exterior rooms" to allow daylight and exterior scenes accessible in a player's house.
• Night Elf and Blood Elf exteriors.
• "Medium"-sized home exteriors.
• Increased visible plot boundaries so players can more easily see where they can add objects to their property.
• Interactive objects for players to play with, such as holding glasses, reading books, or playing games like the Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred pre-order bonus chess set.

Blizzard Entertainment has stated that they're working on other Player Housing updates that may arrive sooner rather than later, which includes:

• Importing and exporting rooms, collections of objects, and even entire house layouts.
• Exterior decor limit increased.
• Exterior lighting allowed.
• Mounts and Pets you've collected wander around your home.
• New decor items that mimic other cultures and biomes inside and outside your home, such as snow.
• Flavor animations for certain decor items when you click on them.

Future plans for Player Housing after Midnight's launch

Blizzard Entertainment has other updates planned in the long-term for Player Housing that we may have to wait long after the Midnight expansion launches, which include:

• Guild Rank Housing Permissions, where Guild Leaders can determine if a player is allowed to build a house in their guild's neighbourhood.
• Basement levels for players' houses.
• More space and support for roleplaying and community events.
• Expansions of existing neighbourhoods or creating entirely new ones.

Are you ready to settle into your new home in World of Warcraft: Midnight?

There you have Blizzard Entertainment's plans for World of Warcraft's Player Housing feature. However, the company has stated it release a more detailed content roadmap for Player Housing close to Midnight's launch.

Personally, I'm looking forward to messing around with the Player Housing feature after getting a taste of it via Early Access.

It has tons of potential for creative player-expression, fun activities for me and my guildmates to play in, and offers more endgame variety to strive for other than Raiding, Delves, Pet Battles, PVP, and Fishing, to name a few.

So I can't wait to play the full version of Player Housing, along with the new Haranir playable race, the solo-friendly Prey content, new Raids and Delves, the new Devourer Demon Hunters specialization, and more, when World of Warcraft: Midnight launches on March 2, 2026, for PC.

Are you looking forward to Player Housing in World of Warcraft? Are there gameplay features you want to see added for Player Housing in the future, after the Midnight expansion launches?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, let us know in the comments below.

September 2026 will mark the 35th anniversary of one of the most influential video game companies of the Western hemisphere, Blizzard Entertainment.

To celebrate this occasion, I thought it would be fitting to look back on my journey of finally giving Blizzard's historic MMORPG, World of Warcraft, after nearly avoiding it for decades.

My earliest memories of Warcraft date back to the early 2000s, playing Warcraft 3 and witnessing the events that would shape the setting for World of Warcraft. These included the formation of the modern-day Horde, the Scourge ravaging Lordaeron, the debut of fan-favorite characters like Illidan Stormrage, and the rise of Arthas the Lich King, to name a few.

However, when World of Warcraft first debuted in 2004, I was put off by it. This was mainly because, as an antisocial teenager, I hated playing with other people, which was pretty detrimental, as World of Warcraft wasn't a solo-friendly game back then and encouraged players working together to survive even in outdoor content.

After decades of maturity, developing patience, learning to socialize, and learning how to play MMORPGs properly with the solo-friendly Final Fantasy XIV, I had decided to finally give World of Warcraft a shot in 2024 with its Mist of Pandaria Remix event.

During that time, World of Warcraft finally hooked me and had me playing it constantly all the way through up to the end of The War Within expansion. So, what has changed about World of Warcraft that finally made me like the game objectively, other than my teenaged self's immaturity not giving it a chance?

Let me tell you, as I count down (in no particular order) the 7 best things I love about World of Warcraft in 2026 and beyond.

A fast-paced and chaotic combat system

One of the things I love about World of Warcraft is its classic Tab-Target combat system. Compared to the slow, choreographed, spectacle-focused combat system of Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft is like a chaotic bar-room brawl.

It's fast-paced, there are tons of mechanics and enemy attacks to keep track of in raids and dungeons, and things can go wrong easily if you aren't paying attention and haven't practiced your ability rotation.

What also makes the combat system fun is how it offers creative freedom to players for avoiding certain death in battle, depending on your Class or Race.

Are you about to fall to your doom? Use a Warrior Class's Heroic Leap or a Goblin's Rocket Jump ability to cancel an enemy's knockback and get right back into the fight.

Are you being outnumbered by enemies while exploring? Use Feign Death as a Hunter class to get them to back off, or use a Tauren's War Stomp to stun them for a quick kill.

Has an unavoidable attack wiped out your raid? Use a Paladin's Divine Shield or Blessing of Protection to block the attack and finish off the boss when it's at 0.1 health left.

And that's just a few examples of the many ways you can have beating the living heck out of monsters and villains in World of Warcraft.

Challenging and epic Raid bosses to fight

Continuing from combat, what also helps elevate the fun factor of combat is the epic Raid dungeons you and your party will be pitted against.

This game has you face off all kinds of threats, including mad kings of the Undead, giant monsters, dragons, demonic alien invaders, hordes of money-grubbing goblins riding giant mechs, and city-sized eldritch horrors, among many others.

While I'm no Mythic-level raider, I've enjoyed these battles on Heroic-tier difficulty, figuring out their mechanics, coordinating with my teammates, and using the correct abilities at the right time to circumvent incoming attacks the boss wasn't expecting to decimate them while they're resetting their combat rotation.

They're tough, but most of the time, worth the effort for beating as Raid bosses usually yield the best gear, cosmetics, and mounts of the game.

Remix Events of past expansions

One thing that helped me get into World of Warcraft was its Mist of Pandaria Remix event.

It was a goofy but fun event that allowed players to revisit a past expansion while offering unique, limited-time cosmetic rewards and intentionally overpowered gear to give longtime players a chance to get revenge on raid bosses that made their lives miserable when the expansion first came out.

After seeing how popular Mists of Pandaria Remix was, Blizzard then decided to host another Remix event, this time for the fan-favorite expansion, Legion.

While Legion Remix wasn't as enjoyable as Mist of Pandaria Remix due to content being time-gated for weeks and servers being unplayable at launch, it was still a good time.

It allowed players to level up new characters in no time flat, offered new players a chance to experience the epic story of the Burning Legion's last major invasion of Azeroth, and it had some of the coolest cosmetic loot to grind for.

Not to mention, it had an awesome new feature called Heroic World Tier. This bumped up the difficulty of outdoor content by giving all enemies stat boosts and special new passive traits that made them a bigger threat.

Even normal, non-Elite/non-Rare, were no longer pushovers, and I had actually pay attention to my surroundings to make sure I wasn't about to get ganged up on by these buffed enemies.

I hope Heroic World Tier makes it in the main game someday, and I hope to see more Remix events of past expansions in the future (here's hoping for Wrath of the Lich King Remix or Warlords of Draenor remix).

Insanely diverse range of Races and Classes

Over 20 years of development have helped World of Warcraft create one of the biggest and most diverse rosters of playable classes in any MMORPG.

You've got Humans, Orcs, multi-flavors of elves and dwarves, Trolls, dragon-like Dracthyr, the otherworld Draenai, Goblins, Mechagnomes, were-wolf-like Worgen, Undead Forsaken, and my personal favourite - Tauren, to name a few.

As for Classes, we have Paladins, Warlocks, Mages, Warriors, Hunters, Evokers, Death Knights, Monks, Priests, Rogues, Shamans, Demon Hunters, and Druids.

What's more is that these classes have Specializations that alter their abilities to fit Tank, DPS, or Healer roles, along with talent trees to customize their powers to fit a player's preferred playstyle.

I have spent countless hours creating lots of character class+race combos to see which ones look the coolest, and no doubt will be spending more once the new Haranir Race and Demon Hunter Devourer Specialization drops in the next upcoming expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight.

Increased emphasis on solo-friendly content

One aspect that I love about World of Warcraft these days is its focus on introducing solo-friendly gameplay content for players who don't have time or interest in group-based content like Raids or PVP.

This started with the Delves in The War Within, a series of dungeons you can tackle solo with an NPC party member whose abilities role you can customize to your liking.

These Delve dungeons featured fun bosses, unique cosmetic rewards you won't find anywhere else in the game, and offered a viable alternative method of grabbing powerful gear for your character if you don't manage to get loot from Raids or Dungeons due to bad luck on your loot rolls.

So I'm excited to see more Delves being added in World of Warcraft: Midnight, along with a new interesting outdoor activity called The Hunt, where we will be contracted to hunt unique bosses in the overworld with various difficulty levels catering to solo or group players.

Endless cosmetics, gear, toys, and mounts to hunt for

World of Warcraft has all kinds of endgame content for players to indulge themselves in. Challenging players in PVP content, taking on Raid bosses on Mythic-tier difficulty, getting the fastest times clearing Mythic+ dungeons, or hunting for achievements and titles.

My endgame goal, however, is cosmetic hunting. World of Warcraft has endless amounts of weapons and armor you can transform your current gear into through its intuitive Transmogrification system.

In addition, there are tons of goofy (and sometimes useful) toys with special effects, capturable battle pets, and majestic mounts to fly around the world with up for grabs, that you can show off to your friends with.

Now with the addition of the long-awaited Player Housing feature, I'll have even more cosmetics to hunt down to decorate my virtual home with.

The Tree of Hope Guild

Multiplayer games live or die depending on the players you interact with, and World of Warcraft has its share of mean-spirited players out there that can ruin the entire game for you.

But if you manage to group up with like-minded individuals who have had experience playing the game and are willing to help newcomers, then you will be in for some of the best co-op gaming experiences ever.

So I thank the Earth Mother that I managed to find myself as a member of The Tree of Hope Guild. It has some of the most helpful and kind players I've ever met in any game, led by the smart and ever-patient Tauren Druid, Peacemoon.

If it weren't for this guild's guidance and tolerance when I got salty during bad runs, I would've never stuck around after playing the Mist of Pandaria Remix event or been able to clear the challenging raids of The War Within.

So, to all the members of Tree of Hope, I sincerely thank you for helping me learn to at last enjoy World of Warcraft, and I hope to continue playing with you going into World of Warcraft: Midnight and beyond.

Here's to more adventures within the World of Warcraft

There you have my top 7 reasons why I love playing World of Warcraft in 2026 and will continue do so for the foreseeable future.

While I do have some concern about World of Warcraft: Midnight's class design balance changes (which the developers have stated is NOT being dumbed down for consoles), I have a feeling things will work out once the expansion launches.

Either way, I can't wait to play World of Warcraft: Midnight and experience all its new gameplay systems when it releases on March 3, 2026, on PC via Battle.net.

Will you be joining the fight to stop Xal'atath in World of Warcraft: Midnight? Or are there other Blizzard Entertainment games you're more interested in, like Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, let us know in the comments below.

Blizzard Entertainment has given the world some of the most beloved franchises in gaming history, from Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and StarCraft, to name a few. As cool as its games have been, there are certain things I've always wished Blizzard would do with its franchises, but never did, as it clearly had a different direction in mind.

These wishes range from wanting certain franchises to make a glorious comeback after being dormant for so long, or a special spin-off game that explores universes that its most famous games couldn't.

With Blizzard's 35th anniversary this year, it's time I made my wishlist of things I want to see from it in the future. They may be pipedreams, but in an unpredictable post-2020 world, anything feels possible in my eyes.

A single-player, story-focused spin-off of Overwatch

During the mid-2010s, I was a fan of Blizzard's Hero Shooter Overwatch. It felt like what would happen if you took Street Fighter and turned it into a competitive multiplayer FPS with its fast-paced gunplay, charming characters, colorful superhero setting, and engaging lore.

However, as the years rolled by, I got tired of the competitive shooter gameplay and preferred watching cinematic shorts and Character Origin vignettes as I became more invested in the game's universe and characters.

For years, I wished that this game had a dedicated story mode that explored Overwatch's universe in greater detail because the limited-time PvE horde mode events and tie-in comic books weren't enough to satisfy my hunger for lore.

So you can imagine my excitement and crushing disappointment when Overwatch 2 was going to have a PvE Hero Mode, only for Blizzard to cancel it and instead focus on PvP content and collaboration cosmetics.

As a result, this completely turned me off from Overwatch 2. I wanted to engage in epic, dramatic stories involving Tracer, Winston, Genji, Reaper, Widowmaker, and all the other fun characters with engaging character arcs.

I didn't want to get into constant non-canon fights in small arenas and duke it out with other players dressing up as Optimus Prime from Transformers or Saitama from One Punch Man.

So instead of adding a PvE mode into the main PvP Overwatch game, I want Blizzard to make a spin-off of Overwatch that explores its characters and universe in an interactive manner similar to story-heavy CRPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 or Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, complete with tactical turn-based combat.

Heck, I would even take a cinematic movie game like 2025's last-minute hit, Dispatch, as Overwatch's beloved characters deserve to have their full stories told in an interactive manner rather than serve as avatars for esports competitions and crossover skins.

New Classes and race/class combos for World of Warcraft

Over the past two years, I have finally become a fan of World of Warcraft after avoiding it for decades, thanks to its awesome Remix event, years' worth of content updates, and being made a member of the kindest guilds in the game.

I enjoyed my time with The War Within expansion, and I'm looking forward to continuing the World Soul saga with World of Warcraft: Midnight to experience its awesome new features like Player Housing, The Hunt, the Devourer Demon Hunter spec, and more.

Although there are some things I would see Blizzard add to the game to make it even better, namely, new classes and strange race/class combinations.

The first new class I want would be a class similar to the Machinist Job from Final Fantasy XIV.

This class (which my fellow guildmates have nicknamed the Tinkerer class) would specialize in using guns, gadgets, and summoning giant mechs into battle to lay waste to enemies.

You could have a DPS spec revolving around blasting enemies with guns, lasers, and bombs, a Healer spec where you use mechanical arms and gadgets to heal and buff allies, and a tank where you ride a tank or a Hulkbuster-inspired mech suit to take the brunt of enemy attacks for your team.

Plus, having a Class specializing in mechanics would give races like the Goblins and even Gnomes a chance to shine, as they feature some of the craziest tech in all of Warcraft's universe.

Imagine piloting a Goblin Shredder mech/tank or the various battle tanks of Mechagon into a battle against Raid bosses instead of simply using them for transportation for once?

You can even give Mechagnomes special cosmetic appearances for the Tinkerer Class' abilities, where instead of pulling out gadgets and weapons, the Mechagnomes would transform their bodies into said gizmos and weapons.

In fact, when running the Tank Spec, instead of riding mechs, you can give Mechagnome Tinkerers the ability to combine their bodies with their tools to become a giant robot inspired by Mimiron, one of the most famous Raid bosses in WoW history.

I know I would play as a Mechagnome Tinkerer if it could let me play as a giant robot firing rockets and flamethrowers everywhere to give Mimiron a taste of its own medicine.

The second new class I would like to see in World of Warcraft would be a Bard class inspired by Warcraft's iconic virtual band, the Elite Tauren Chieftain. They would support allies with melodies while bringing pandemonium to enemies with rock solos.

The Bard wouldn't be just restricted to using a stereotypical harp; they would play all kinds of instruments like a one-man band that unleashes all kinds of effects depending on the type of instrument and song you perform.

A Bard's DPS spec where they shred electric guitars that would unleash lightning bolts or deafening AOE soundwaves.

They could also have a Healer spec that passively granted health regeneration with soothing melodies performed with synthwave keytars or provide damage buffs by singing emotional power ballads from the 1980s.

Finally, they could have a Tank spec where the Bard would whip a drum kit to draw the ire of enemies with drum beats before busting out intense drum solos that cause earthquakes to rock enemies off their feet.

As for race/class combinations, I would like to see the new Dracthyr race become Death Knights because the idea of playing as undead frost dragons sounds really cool.

Granted, I'm not sure how you would make the Dracthyr into Death Knights, considering there's no more Lich King, and I don't know what The Ebon Blade's stance on Dracthyr is, but I'm hopeful it can be done.

Another strange race/class combo I would like to see would be Goblin Paladins. After all, if Goblins can cheat their way into becoming Shamans by using technology to steal elemental energy, why can't they do the same with the power of light?

Plus, the idea of Goblins being Paladins would be hilarious because, being righteous warriors of justice, Goblin Paladins could be glorified, heavily-armored tax collectors that would hunt down poor sabs who couldn't pay their debts to the cartels of Undermine.

A new Warcraft strategy game

Speaking of Warcraft, I know this is an impossibility, but I would see Blizzard make a newWarcraft strategy game like the iconic Warcraft RTS trilogy, and I say this as someone who sucks at RTS games.

Warcraft 3 was how I was introduced to the Warcraft universe, and I still have fond memories building armies to take down enemy forces and its epic single-player campaigns that introduced the world to fan-favorite characters like Thrall, Arthas, Illidan, Jaina, and more.

Granted, it's impossible at this point to have a new Warcraft RTS carry on the story of Warcraft's universe, as that's mainly done by World of Warcraft (and various lore compendia), so if a new game were made, it would have to be a spin-off story with a new setting and characters.

But I wouldn't mind that so long as I get to build an army of Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren again while blitzing my enemies after activating the Bloodlust ability and screaming "FOR THE HORDE!", because I miss being in command of the Horde rather than being commanded by it.

A new Starcraft game

Aside from Warcraft 3, another Blizzard RTS I often played in my childhood was StarCraft.

This revolutionary real-time strategy game wowed players back in the 1990s for its fast-paced gameplay, cinematic single-player campaigns, engaging playable factions, and intense competitive PVP modes, which are still being played to this day.

StarCraft made a cool comeback in the 2010s with StarCraft 2, but has gone silent since StarCraft 2's last update in 2017, which made its multiplayer, co-op, and first singleplayer campaign free-to-play.

I, like most 1990s/2000s-era Blizzard fans, would like to see StarCraft make another return, as I missed blasting enemies to smithereens as Terrans, striking from the shadows as the Protoss, and overwhelming enemies as the ravenous Zerg.

If the reported rumors surrounding StarCraft headlining Blizzcon 2026 and getting a third-person shooter spin-off turn out to be true, then I wouldn't mind that either.

After all, games like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2 have proven there's still a place in modern gaming for successful power fantasy action games where you play as hardened Space Marines.

Being able to play Diablo 4 offline

One last thing I would like to see from Blizzard in the future is giving Diablo 4 an offline mode.

Out of Blizzard's most famous franchises, the one I've played the least is Diablo, mainly due to a lack of interest when I was younger, and preferring more colorful and over-the-top loot-grind action games like Borderlands and Monster Hunter.

I tried giving Diablo 4 a chance after hearing my colleague, Jez Corden, praise it with a 5/5 star review in 2023. But I couldn't enjoy it due to laggy servers being unplayable, my bad luck with poor internet connections, and none of the Classes appealed to me at launch.

However, 2026 may be the year I give Diablo 4 a second chance, thanks to the addition of its new Paladin Class (which looks way cooler than all the other classes in my opinion), internet servers being vastly improved since launch, and my home has been upgraded with better internet service providers, so I rarely experience internet lag anymore.

That being said, I would still like it if Diablo 4 had an offline mode to experience the main story campaign. With an offline mode, I can play the game without having to worry about server lag on the rare occasions that my internet provider experiences an outage.

I know that Diablo 3 eventually had an offline mode at the end of its lifecycle, so why can't Diablo 4 be the same?

Although I'd prefer not having to wait until development on Diablo 4 is completely finished before offline mode gets added, as I might turn 40 by the time that happens, and I'd be playing other games.

Here's to 35 more years of Blizzard Entertainment

Through all its ups and downs, I'll still enjoy Blizzard Entertainment's games and will continue to do so for a long time with my friends and family.

So, I can't wait to see what Blizzard has in store for its franchises when BlizzCon finally returns after a 3-year hiatus on September 12, 2026.

What things do you want from Blizzard Entertainment in the future? Do you think their games are fine as they are, or are there some changes or new gameplay aspects you would like to see added to them?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, let us know in the comments below.

Blizzard Entertainment president Johanna Faries wants the game developer to put out a couple of big launches every year, while focusing on its existing roster of franchises.

That's according to an interview with Bloomberg, where Faries discussed the studio's work under Xbox and how planning is happening for the next few years. Faries stepped into her role in January 2024, joining from the Activision side of Activision Blizzard King, where she formerly managed the Call of Duty franchise.

Faries notes that she is thinking in "five-year terms," and that she wants Blizzard to continue expanding its lineup of games across established worlds.

"We have iconic IP and in many ways it still has a lot of room to scale, so let’s focus in on the cards we have to play. It doesn’t mean we won’t go into new places and territories, but for right now, let’s home in on all the iconic stature that we have in the tank for Blizzard," she says. "That’s number one."

Faries also wants the teams to have a "reliable cadences of launches" that can see Blizzard putting out a big launch or two every year.

"Our fans are hungry. They want to get involved. They want to feel reliability as well. They want us have a sense of what’s right around the corner. Let’s look at it as a portfolio, and let’s make sure that every — let’s say calendar year — there are at least one to two really big things that Blizzard is pumping out."

When asked about the 30% margin that is reportedly being imposed on Xbox by Microsoft, Faries doesn't give specific details, but notes that while Blizzard is being held to high standards, she considers it a credit to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer and president of game content and studios Matt Booty.

"They want to see Blizzard thrive, and I think they trust in the talent that we have here to be able to write our future," she says. "I think we have our house very in order. I feel very confident about what’s coming up."

Blizzard already has two big launches set for the first half of 2026

Looking ahead, Blizzard already seems set with two big launches coming fairly early next year. World of Warcraft: Midnight is set to arrive on March 2, 2026.

Meanwhile, Diablo 4 is getting its second expansion with the launch of Lord of Hatred on April 28, 2026, bringing new story and two new classes, including the Paladin, which is available now for anyone that preorders the expansion.

I'm curious what the teams have further down the line, as it seems unlikely that new expansions will be ready for Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft in 2027. Might we see Blizzard launch some entirely new games?

Do you think Blizzard can actually hit that pace without sacrificing quality, or is this just corporate optimism talking? Drop your thoughts below and hit our poll — what do you want Blizzard’s new release era to look like?

World of Warcraft's latest expansion now has a release date, and it's not too far off.

World of Warcraft's most recent expansion, The War Within, was fairly decent. Although the story remains somewhat garbled, the raids, dungeons, and general gameplay loop has been very solid. The new "Delves" feature with its soloable dungeons and challenging solo boss tiers has added a way for casual players to participate in endgame, and a variety of quality of life improvements and tweaks made the game feel smoother for veterans.

World of Warcraft: Midnight looks set to be a bigger, and potentially more controversial expansion. And it all goes live on March 2, 2026.

World of Warcraft: Midnight adds a variety of new features. The first and most major is Player Housing. Those who pre-order the game can get early access to player housing on December 2, 2025, allowing players to build their dream fantasy abode in either Horde or Alliance-themed areas. Furnishings will be available from a variety of sources, including in-game challenges, professions, achievements, in addition to via premium currency.

Other features include jungle-inspired elves the Haranir, as a playable race. A new "Prey" system will allow players to hunt bounties across Azeroth (and also risk being attacked by said bounty while out and about in the world.) The expansion takes place in a revamped region of Azeroth, bringing Silvermoon City to the modern game engine.

The various editions of the expansion come with a variety of preorder bonuses, outlined below.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of World of Warcraft: Midnight is a huge revamp to how addons and mods work. Blizzard will no longer allow UI mods that interact with gameplay elements, attempting to make the game fully playable even for users who don't want to download addons and mods.

For years, the game has essentially been balanced around the presence of mods, getting exponentially more complex to offset the convenience being injected by mods and addons. Blizzard wants to inject difficulty back into the game, focusing player's eyes back onto the gameplay environment rather than the UI. Indeed, one of the bosses in the new Midnight raid asks players to line up icons and symbols summoned by the boss.

To accommodate this change, Blizzard has also been reducing class complexity and buttons to reduce the necessity of UI addons in the first place. Some theorized this reduction in complexity was portents for an Xbox console version, but those theories were shot down by lead developer Ion Hazzikostas in an interview with us a few weeks ago.

The changes have led to huge playstyle alterations for almost every specialization in the game, representing a large investment from Blizzard to revamp and improve a variety of skills and abilities. I've quite enjoyed the changes to my warlock, but other classes seem to require a bit more love before the game goes live proper in March. Hopefully, the on-going beta test will lead to the changes everyone is hoping for.

World of Warcraft: Midnight has great features, but questions remain ...

Another controversial aspect of Midnight pertains to the game's writing. Honestly, World of Warcraft's writing has been under a microscope for some time at this point. Some hoped that the return of franchise co-creator Chris Metzen would lead to more consistency, but it hasn't materialized so far.

With World of Warcraft's patch cadence requiring more rapidity than ever to offset player subscription churn, it feels a bit like the writing quality has suffered as a result. Characters often seem to forget previous events, behave in uncharacteristic, un-established ways, and seem to allow old hatreds to die easily. I can't imagine it's easy maintaining the lore of literally hundreds of characters, but this is the challenge Blizzard has set for itself.

World of Warcraft: The War Within was supposed to be a story about the Earthen dwarves, the titans, and exploring Azeroth's cavernous regions. It ended up taking place, once again, in literal space, revolving around the void instead. The War Within leaves a range of under-explored and un-finished plot threads, much like Dragonflight before it, and Shadowlands before that.

👉 Best PCs for World of Warcraft

The Worldsoul Saga is set to span three expansions, with Midnight being the second act. I'm hopeful that Blizzard can bring the story into tighter coherency over the course of the plan, but the demand for more content, faster! seems to be undermining that effort to some degree.

It only matters if you care about the lore, though. The gameplay has arguably been in a better place than ever, with more things to do than ever. Blizzard has been hitting its stated roadmaps extremely well, while also giving players a large variety of content to digest in rapid fashion. We're still waiting for playable ogres ... though.

World of Warcraft: Midnight goes live on March 2, 2026 for Windows PC via Battle.net.

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It's been a long time coming, but BlizzCon will at long last return on September 12, 2026, at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.

To get fans hyped for the event ahead of time, Blizzard Entertainment is announcing that, for the first time ever, it will be selling early bird tickets for the event.

This will allow players to claim a spot on BlizzCon for a cheaper rate than regular tickets, and get in on the latest announcements on all Blizzard Entertainment-related games and partake in dozens of fun activities. The key art also contains imagery representing StarCraft ... could we finally be getting StarCraft 3? Or the long-rumored StarCraft third-person shooter?!

Here's all the info on these ticket prices and what's in store for BlizzCon 2026.

Tickets, BlizzCon Pass, and Add-on Experiences

The early bird tickets will cost $249.00 USD each and will be available to purchase on Tixr from November 7, 2025, 9:00 am PST, to November 9, 2025, 11:59 pm PST (or ticket supplies run out before then).

If you miss out on the early bird tickets, the standard tickets will become available on November 18, 2025, at 9:00 am PST, at Tixr for $289.99 USD each, all in, until ticket supplies run out.

These tickets are two-day passes that will allow attendees access to BlizzCon's facilities, including all Halls and Arena during show hours between September 12-13, 2026, and acquire in-game items and BlizzCon exclusive merchandise.

Add-on experience Tickets

On top of that, Blizzard will be offering special add-on experience tickets.

The first is for the BlizzCon Charity Night event for $499.99 USD all-in, while tickets last. This is a special event where Blizzard Entertainment, in partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, gets together with various artists, developers, and community representatives to raise money in order to make critically ill children's wishes come true.

Acquiring this add-on will net you access to this event along with a reserved seat section for BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony, a signed piece of Blizzard Entertainment artwork, and a collectible credential.

Do note that all proceeds of this add-on will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, lest there are any chargebacks or refunds.

The other Add-on Experience ticket Blizzard Entertainment is offering for the Darkmoon Faire After Hours event, where attendees can extend their stay for BlizzCon's iconic Darkmoon Faire event to further partake in its fun carnival-like activities and win exclusive goodies.

In addition, this add-on ticket will grant attendees access to an exclusive three-hour show on September 12, 2026, the BlizzCon Store, 20 Faire Tokens, and a collectible credential.

The Darkmoon Faire After Hours Add-On Experience tickets will cost $89.99 USD all-in, while their supplies last.

What can we expect at BlizzCon 2026?

Blizzard Entertainment will be pulling out all the stops for this year's BlizzCon with all kinds of activities long-time fans will be familiar with, along with new ones, which include:

• BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony, where Blizzard Entertainment will showcase the latest grand reveal trailers for its popular franchises, including World of Warcraft, Overwatch 2, Heathstone, and Diablo.
• The show floor, where attendees can play World of Warcraft, Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, Hearthstone, and Diablo Immortal.
• The Blizzard Arcade, where attendees can play past Blizzard Entertainment titles like Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft, and much more.
• Developer panels where attendees can learn behind-the-scenes information on Blizzard Entertainment's developmental processes, which will take place on the Main Stage and multiple stages throughout the convention, including the new Classic Stage located at the Blizzard Arcade.
• Community Night, where fans showcase their art and take part in cosplay competitions.
• There will be
• Esports events like the Overwatch World Cup, World of Warcraft Arena World Championship, World of Warcraft Mythic Dungeon International, Hearthstone Masters Tour World Championship, and the new Blizzard Classic Cup will be hosted at BlizzCon.
• The BlizzCon Store, where attendees can buy game-related merchandise and other souvenirs.
• The Hearthstone Tavern, where attendees can socialize with friends, play esports games, or watch a panel on the Tavern’s new Content Stage.
• A March of the Murlocs centered around Warcraft's loveable fish monsters.
• The Inclusion Nexus, where attendees can chat with Blizzard Entertainment developers or members of its games' communities.
• Contacting Blizzard Entertainment's hiring teams for personalized portfolio and resume reviews, engaging panels, and exclusive networking opportunities in hopes of one day starting a career in the video game industry.

Are you ready to return to BlizzCon in 2026?

With Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard Entertainment, many fans were scared that the event would be cancelled in favor of announcing game news at Microsoft-centric events like Xbox Games Showcase or Summer Game Fest.

BlizzCon's last show was in 2023, and it was cancelled in 2024, so fans had plenty of reasons to be fearful.

Thankfully, BlizzCon has managed to outlive E3 and will return in 2026 to no doubt give more news on the future of Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, and, of course, World of Warcraft's Midnight expansion.

I've never attended BlizzCon myself, but I'm always impressed by the dedication and love that fans show off at this event, whether it's for cosplay or esports contests.

So, I can't wait to see what Blizzard Entertainment and its fans have in store for us next year when BlizzCon goes live on September 12, 2026.

FAQ

World of Warcraft's latest expansion, The War Within, is winding down. Players will soon move on to World of Warcraft: Midnight, the next part of the Worldsoul Saga, as antagonist Xal'atath takes her fight to the Sunwell in a revamped area of the Northern Eastern Kingdoms.

Midnight has a variety of improvements on the horizon. A new void-infused spec for Demon Hunters, a vast variety of default UI improvements, an outdoor bounty system called Prey, and a revamped Silvermoon City all await players in 2026. The biggest headline act is Player Housing, which is a massive system designed to bring high-quality Animal Crossing-like gameplay to the maturing MMORPG.

Last week, I published a report that the next Xbox will essentially be a full Windows PC, optimized for TVs and gaming — and it had at least one unintended consequence.

One of the more controversial changes in Midnight revolves around class design and the essential mothballing of combat addons. Is it all part of a grand plan to dumb World of Warcraft down for the console Fortnite crowd?! Stay your pitchforks — for now.

Joined by host Berzerker of the Unshackled Fury World of Warcraft Podcast, we recently caught up with WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas to learn more.

Is World of Warcraft trying to become a console game? No, says Hazzikostas.

When I reported that the next Xbox will essentially be a PC, some outlets misrepresented the direction Microsoft is taking with its console, coalescing around a conspiracy theory that Microsoft is somehow forcing Blizzard to "dumb down" WoW for the next Xbox.

Midnight will make combat addons far more restricted, with popular systems like WeakAuras effectively being killed off in this scenario. Some theorized that killing addons is specifically so Blizzard can bring the game to Xbox — but since the next Xbox is literally a PC, it would have no issue running CurseForge or offering access to system files to include addons.

Blizzard has said for some time they want to make the game friendlier for gamepads, as Steam Deck and Xbox Ally play via the ConsolePort addon has become increasingly popular in recent years. But, that's not the goal with Midnight's overarching combat design changes, says game director Ion Hazzikostas, who reiterated that there's still no roadmap for a console version of World of Warcraft at this time.

Is Midnight's class combat design philosophy inspired by a charge to target gamepads? "It is not," says Ion Hazzikostas.

"To be fully transparent, there is no reason for us to hide anything about this. If we were actively working towards bringing World of Warcraft to consoles or a bunch of other platforms, we'd be saying: 'we're actively working towards this. We have a lot of work to do but it's a place where we want to land.' Our focus remains on the PC-based experience."

"A lot of these changes, as a package, are about approachability broadly. World of Warcraft is an incredibly complex game. And as much as, I know there's members of the community who celebrate that complexity, but I think there's a big difference between having a very high skill ceiling in a game, and having a tremendous amount of depth, and just having, you know, complexity. Blizzard's goals, with all of our games, is to have them be easy to learn and nearly impossible to master."

"And I think a lot of our changes in World of Warcraft, in Midnight, are aimed at improving the 'easy to learn' side of that spectrum. I think the skill ceiling of this game is still going to be incredibly, incredibly high. The people who have been pro-level PvPers, people who run [Mythic Dungeon International], people who push the leaderboards in Mythic+, the people who race to world first — they're going to be the same ones coming out on top in this world. There's going to be countless challenges for people to tackle as they approach perfection."

"We've been talking about this for over a year now philosophically. This is us stepping back and taking stock of the state of the game, what's required to play it well. What's required to play it at a baseline level, considered by the community at endgame. What is a normal or heroic raiding guild expecting you to know, or have installed, or to do? What's an average Mythic+ PUG is expecting of you? [It's about] making those expectations more reasonable."

Hazzikostas explained that the changes are designed to lower the complexity for new players, but maintain complexity and challenge at the high end for those who seek it — while encouraging players to continue offering feedback on areas that could perhaps use more work.

"The changes we've been making on a class side, for example. Unlike the last round of pruning that we did 8 years ago, 10 years ago, where we actually just focused very heavily on button count in terms of numbers and abilities in your spell book. And we mostly pruned utility abilities, that maybe didn't feel as commonly used by the average player."

"The feedback we got around that that was doing a lot to harm class and spec identity, that was actually in some ways lowering the skill ceiling — we were taking niche abilities away that let players feel cool or smart, or differentiate themselves because they were using them properly? But what we weren't doing back then, is slightly simplifying the core combat rotation that 100% of players need to do. That's more of the approach we're taking here today."

"How many abilities do we have that are redundant that are commonly macro'd together? There's no deep gameplay to them, just 'it's the right answer to push this button when it's off cooldown no matter what', and maybe you build a WeakAura to remind you to do that. Is that really adding interesting gameplay? Is that adding depth? Or is it just adding complexity? That's what we've tried to target."

"I'm not going to say that we're finished or that we've done a perfect job there, but that's the starting point of this overall approach. The team is continuing to iterate over the course of [Midnight] Alpha and beta to follow."

Hazzikostas explained that Blizzard ultimately wants to offer playstyle variance across the specs, with some emerging as more complex than others. He explained that Beast Mastery remains intentionally among the more "approachable" specs, and remains popular even when it isn't winning in sims or tier lists, owing to its playstyle friendliness. He said, however, that some specs are intended to offer a more complex style of play, and even more simplistic specs should feature opt-in complexity via talents.

"There are certainly places where we might have gone too far." Hazzikostas impressed, "This is the simplest we're going to get, whatever pruning we were going to do upfront before hearing from players. We've heard from some players we've gone too far, they feel like there's gaps in their rotation or beloved abilities that are missing. There are things that the team is very open to returning."

"That said, it's not a bad place for us to have a range of complexity when it comes to different specs, you know? The number of specs we have in the game we have at this point, particularly pure DPS classes where you have three options, it's okay if there's one that feels a little simpler and more accessible."

"There is a very health appetite among a broad base of players for simpler specs. So do we want everything to be that? No. We also want there to be the more challenging [specs], particularly if you're spec'ing into certain talents where you can opt-in to extra layers of complexity?"

"We're trying to cast a broad net here to offer something for every type of playstyle. But, we also understand, as you know, if you've played Warlock Demonology for years and years, you don't want it to be too significantly changed out from under people in ways that contradict expectations, and things that they've come to fall in love with about the specs."

"That said, with every new expansion, we add new things. We're adding new Apex Talents, new set bonuses, and other things to layer on top of this. We have to be mindful, which is why we use the pruning analogy. We can't just have unshackled growth open-endedly where things are just going to collapse under their own weight."

World of Warcraft's broad appeal is one of its strengths, and biggest design challenges

World of Warcraft: Midnight looks to be one of the most feature-rich expansions of the 20-year-old MMORPG's history. The Player Housing feature was developed over multiple expansions and is as complex and comprehensive as games that are entirely dedicated to this type of gameplay.

The new Prey system looks as though it will add some much-needed danger to the open world, and the new Arcantina player hub has huge potential.

I'm unsure about the gameplay changes so far. I'm glad Affliction Warlock dropped the annoying Malefic Rapture spam, and the changes to Unholy Death Knight have been fun to play around with as well. I'm glad minions spawn instantly now on my Demonology Warlock as well, although it's hard to say how it'll all feel when I get into the expansions' Mythic+ pool and new raids. Some classes seem happier than others, that's for sure.

But that's what the imminent beta is all about. Hopefully, Blizzard will listen to the most critical feedback and deliver on its promise to keep the game "easy to play, tough to master" moving forward.

In the full interview with Ion Hazzikostas, we talked about his journey from WoW player to WoW game director, the way the WoW community has evolved over time, and also learned more about Blizzard's design philosophy for the future of the game. Be sure to check out the full interview here, across YouTube, Spotify, and all other podcast services.

A huge thank you to Ion Hazzikostas for sharing some time with us!

FAQ

World of Warcraft: Midnight is still a ways off from releasing in 2026, but players will get a chance to play the game early on October 2, 2025, through an exclusive Alpha Test.

To drive players' excitement even further before then, Blizzard Entertainment has just uploaded a new deep dive presentation video demonstrating the upcoming expansion's various gameplay features in action such as Player Housing, the Prey System, and much more.

Here's what you need to know from this gameplay deep dive.

It starts with a recap of the expansion's premise. Xal'atath has empowered the Dark Heart artifact after the events of World of Warcraft: The War Within and is now leading a Voidwalker army known as the Devouring Host.

Her goal is to invade Silvermoon City and corrupt its mystical Sunwell to engulf the world in never-ending, life-consuming night. In our hands-on session with the Alpha, Voidwalkers run amok in the city, slaughtering the defenders. Interestingly, these Voidwalkers don't wear shackles like the Burning Legion-controlled ones, nor do they vanish on death. These are unbound Voidwalkers exercising their free will. And their will is destruction.

Over the course of the player's adventures to stop Xal'atath, they will explore new regions and visit classic locales reimagined with a coat of graphical paint.

For example, Silvermoon City has been revamped from the ground-up with its architecture polished with modern graphical fidelity, and Eversong Forest's biomes have healed all the damage caused by previous, opening up new areas to uncover. However, we'll discover that too much Light can be a bad thing, too, with unchecked growth leading to biological mutations. In an interview with us, WoW Design Director Maria Hamilton remarked that in Midnight, we'll see that the Light can be just as dangerous as the Void, in the right circumstances.

As for original zones to explore, we have the Amani Troll homeland of Zul’Aman, the void-corrupted wasteland known as the Voidstorm, and Harandar, the fungal jungle home of World of Warcraft: Midnight's new Allied Race, the Haranir.

Every once in a while, you will need a break from adventuring and fighting back Xal'atath's army, so World of Warcraft: Midnight has prepared a new narrative hub for players to gather called the Arcantina.

The Arcantina is a tavern where Horde and Alliance players can take a break and converse with one another before going back outdoors to tackle quests. It's reminiscent of the gathering hub from Monster Hunter World to some degree, and seems partially inspired by the tavern from Warlords of Draenor's Garrison system. The Arcantina exists in a pocket dimension maintained by the Kirin Tor and sorcerers like Khadgar, full of magic and even mini-games.

Like the Garrison tavern, the Arcantina is regularly visited by NPCs (some of which veteran World of Warcraft players will recognize) who will tell tales of their adventures and offer side quests for players to take up if they want a change of pace from doing the main quest. It adds some dynamism to the world, and looks like it could become a staple feature of the game.

Best rest up well while you can, as World of Warcraft: Midnight will pit you against a deadly horde of monstrous beasts, Ethereal marauders, and Void-empowered bosses in this expansion's Raids, Dungeons, and Delves.

You will not be alone in your battles, though, as you will acquire a new Delves Compansion in Valeera Sanguinar. Valeera is a deadly Blood Elf Rogue whose abilities can be assigned to DPS, Tank, or Healer roles to assist players in clearing Delves. In the DPS role, Valeera dances around enemies using the Killing Spree ability before slicing them to bits.

As a Healer, Valeera can suck out the life force of enemies by using the Vampiric Reaping and dropping them on the ground as healing orbs for players to pick up and heal themselves with. As a Tank, Valeera taunts enemies and constantly dodges their attacks while applying damage-over-time effects to draw their ire away from the player. Valeera can also apply poisons that buff the player's abilities depending on the role she's assigned. If mobs step away from Valeera, she'll whip out a big backstab.

In addition to a Delves Companion, players will get a new class specialization to play with for the Demon Hunter class called Devourer. The Devourer is a mid-range DPS spec that uses the power of the Void to deal a flurry of melee and ranged magical attacks.

The Devourer can maintain its transformation Metamorphosis state beyond its regular duration by reaping the souls of their enemies mid-combat and unleashing a powerful super move called the Collapsing Star to finish foes in explosive fashion.

Finally, players receive further aid with the Haranir, a new playable Allied Race that made their debut during World of Warcraft: The War Within.

This tribal yet mystical race vows to help the Horde and Alliance stop Xal'atath's machinations with their nature-themed abilities and take up the following Classes: Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Monk, and Druid.

You're going to need to master the Haranir and Devourer Specs quickly in order to survive, as Raids, Dungeons, and Delves won't be the only PvE content to deal with, more on that shortly.

In the WoW Alpha, we were able to get a look at some of the game's new talents and features. Blizzard says they will publish deep dives into big class changes over time, but to give you a taste.

Demonology warlocks have received a significant revamp, with imps now spawning directly on the player rather than at the point of Hand of Guldan. The imp "economy" has been significantly reworked and streamlined, and culminates in turning Hand of Guldan into a fel laser beam when you have spawned enough of them. Oh, Demonic Tyrant can also tangle it up in melee now, too. Affliction warlocks will be happy to know Malefic Grasp has been removed from the rotation as well, with stackable Unstable Affliction returning.

Unholy Death Knights are also getting a revamp to some degree, making them closer to a true pet class. Scourge Strike will now spawn "lesser ghouls" with each attack, and a new ability called Putrify will let you target your lesser ghouls for an explosive AoE. Shadow Priests now get an AoE Vampiric Touch applicator called Tentacle Slam (and yes, it looks exactly how you're imagining). Frost Mages also get icy hands that spawn out of the ground and apply freezes to targets.

There are tons of other class changes, far too many to list here, so keep an eye on Blizzard's website for more details on that, but it really feels like Blizzard has gotten creative with classes that needed a bit of extra love.

You're going to need all of those abilities to explore World of Warcraft: Midnight's new outdoor activity called "Prey," where you are commissioned by Astalor Bloodsworn to hunt unique boss enemies to siphon a magical energy called Anguish for a secret project. In Prey, you pick a target and explore the world to hunt it down for exclusive rewards such as cosmetics, mounts, titles, Housing items, and more.

Each time you beat a Prey target, you will whittle its overall strength down until you corner it in its hideout, where it will have nowhere else to run.

Though you'd best be careful while exploring because your Prey target can ambush at any given moment, even while you're in the middle of other quests or minding your own business. Prey has three difficulty modes, each one harder than the last: Normal, Hard, and Nightmare.

Higher difficulties will have players endure Torment mechanics to make each Prey hunt harder, like randomly dropping AoE puddles on the ground, damage over time effects, or even time limits to complete a hunt.

In an interview, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas told us that Prey was about bringing more challenge to the game's open overworld area, to add some dynamism while questing. It should recreate that old school feeling of being stalked by a rogue on a PvP server, or even by The Butcher in Diablo IV. It looks fantastic, simply put.

Last but not least, the deep dive gives players an extended look at Player Housing, one of the most requested gameplay features in World of Warcraft history.

In this mode, players can buy a home and customize every facet of it from its exterior, interior, and decorations to their heart's content.

Players can acquire thousands of items to customize their homes by completing various achievements throughout their time playing World of Warcraft, visiting various vendors in their neighbourhoods, completing Endeavour activities where players participate in group mini-games, and much more.

Blizzard told us that they want Player Housing to be easily accessible and not too taxing to get into, but naturally, there will be exclusive furnishings for those who complete some of the game's biggest challenges, and legacy players can look forward to rewards for some of their own legacy achievements, too.

A Monster Hunter-style gathering hub and bounty hunting system? Sign me up!

Each day we get more info on World of Warcraft: Midnight, the more I can't wait for it to arrive on PC in 2026. Luckily, you don't need the best PC for World of Warcraft since it will run on practically anything, even the upcoming Xbox Ally if you connect up a mouse and keyboard. With the revamped new player experience, it could be easier to get into than ever, too.

I was already hooked with the addition of Devourer Demon Hunter and the Haranir race, but the new Arcantina narrative hub is something that has got me unexpectedly giddy, both as a World of Warcraft and Monster Hunter fan.

It's practically the multiplayer Gathering Hub from Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise, where players can chat and form parties before going on quests, but in World of Warcraft.

Combine this with the new Prey feature, where we get to hunt monsters and potentially get ambushed by them in the open world, and World of Warcraft: Midnight has suddenly turned into a Monster Hunter MMO, and I'm all for it.

On September 22, 2025, Blizzard Entertainment announced that World of Warcraft's next expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, will be getting an Alpha Test to let players get a sneak peek at the title on October 2, 2025.

Before that day, however, Blizzard will host a gameplay deep dive presentation on October 1, 2025, covering various aspects of World of Warcraft: Midnight, including the setting, systems, story, and more.

Here's what you need to know about these events and how to tune into them.

To begin with, let's cover the World of Warcraft: Midnight presentation that will start on October 1, 2025, at 9:00 AM PDT. The presentation will be hosted by Creative Director Chris Metzen and Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, and will be broadcast on World of Warcraft's official Twitch and YouTube channels.

It will provide information and gameplay of various aspects of the expansion, like the zones you will visit, the main story, the dungeons you will fight in, player housing, gameplay systems, and more.

Once the presentation concludes, it will be followed by a Q&A session where Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, Associate Game Director Paul Kubit, Design Director Maria Hamilton, and Community Manager Randy Jordan will answer fan-submitted questions on the game.

If you have any questions for the developers, you can submit them on World of Warcraft's official forums and subreddit.

The next big announcement is that World of Warcraft: Midnight will begin an Alpha Test on October 2, 2025.

In this test, players will get a small taste of the expansion's various features and leave feedback that will help improve the final product when it releases in 2026.

These features include the new Devourer spec for Demon Hunters, Player Housing, new story quests, new dungeons, new Delves that include a new companion named Valeera Sanguinar, new Zones, the Prey system, and more.

However, players will not get to play all this content at once as the Alpha Test will dispense it in 'phases' over time.

To participate, Blizzard Entertainment will send out invitations to specific players and their friends and family. Blizzard will also dish out invitations to community veterans, fan sites, members of the press, content creators, and more.

Beware of phishing attempts when checking your emails. If you need to check your invitation's legitimacy, log in to your Battle.net account to verify that it has a Midnight Alpha license attached to it (which can be found in the 'Your Game Accounts' option).

Be sure to check your emails for invites to World of Warcraft: Midnight's Alpha Test

While it is somewhat irksome that players who manage to get into the Alpha Test will have to wait before they can play a grand majority of World of Warcraft: Midnight's content, at least they'll get a chance to experience the most important ones in the first phase, like Player Housing and the Devourer spec.

The first phase will even include a myriad of Class balance changes that could completely alter every Class' playstyle, and that's without the addition of the new Apex Talents that will be introduced in the expansion.

I'm hoping to get an invitation so I can get my hands on the new awesome Devourer spec and bounty hunter-like Prey system. Plus, I'm curious as to what this new 'Sparks' Profession is that will be introduced in Phase 5 of the Alpha Test.

If I don't get an invite, I'm content with waiting for the full expansion to launch on PC in 2026.

In the meantime, I'll be diving headfirst into World of Warcraft's upcoming Legion Remix event and reap all of its glorious, Fel-themed rewards on October 7, 2025.

At Gamescom 2025, I had the opportunity to go hands-on with World of Warcraft's biggest new feature it's had in years.

The veteran MMORPG has entered its third decade as of this year, and remains the top option for subscription-based, persistently online games. Paying subscribers get regular massive content updates which add new dungeons, quests, story beats, and other features every few weeks — with even bigger premium expansions dropping roughly every 18 months.

At Gamescom, Blizzard fully unveiled the next expansion, Midnight, which moves forward its big apocalyptic Worldsoul Saga, while adding a variety of new features. This expansion will rebuild the Blood Elf lands of Quel'thalas, which have been left untouched in-game for almost twenty years. There will be a variety of new zones on top, as well as new features and even a new playable neutral race. But none of these represents Midnight's headline act.

After decades of pleas, Blizzard is finally adding Player Housing to World of Warcraft. The ability to curate and customize your very own dwelling is a staple of many classic MMOs, and has become popularized in adjacent genres like survival games, exemplified by Grounded and Fallout 76.

Blizzard told us during a big World of Warcraft Gamescom interview that getting Player Housing "right" is part of the reason why it took so long. I'm happy to report that they absolutely got it right, but I can't help but wonder if this is part of a bigger, potentially more ground-breaking play for WoW's long-term future.

World of Warcraft's Player Housing is as accessible as it is powerful

But first, let's talk about the hands-on experience. For the Gamescom demo, Blizzard set up a pre-made house that showcased some of the possibilities, while leaving other rooms blank for testers to try out. Naturally, I made a beeline for an empty room and started messing around.

The first thing worth mentioning here is how incredibly easy and intuitive it was to get going. Blizzard cited games like Nintendo's Animal Crossing as inspiration for Player Housing, and that shone through quite clearly.

Of course, manipulating objects with a mouse and keyboard is even easier than it is with a console controller, too, so it wasn't long before I got stuck in, placing bananas on tables and books on shelves.

Indeed, I was impressed by the granularity on offer here. Blizzard gives you the tools to snap objects seamlessly into place — basic mode, they call it. If you just want to slap a bunch of cool furniture and trophies from your grand WoW adventures down, you absolutely can. But if you want to truly make a work of architectural art, the tools are there as well.

In advanced mode, Blizzard takes off the training wheels. Here, you can easily toggle on or off object and grid snapping, and you can scale objects to comically minuscule and awkwardly large. You can also turn off 'no clipping' mode, allowing you to intersect objects with each other. Most similar base building mechanics enforce clipping generally to keep buildings looking realistic and consistent, but Blizzard opted to give players full creative control over how their creations will look.

You can also click into an object and customize its colors and, in some cases, even its textures. Want an interior that is fully furnished in black and grey in full goth fantasy? You can. Want to make an Azerothian pink Barbie doll house? Go crazy.

I was impressed by how many items there were already on offer in the demo, with hundreds of objects of all shapes, sizes, and types available for play. Blizzard has previously noted that players will be rewarded with furnishings and trophies based on in-game achievements as well, including previous accolades from prior expansions. I wonder what will await me and my illustrious 20-year career on launch day.

Each object has a number that represents how much it will cost to put down. In the demo, we had '2,500' to play with, and things like chairs and tables cost like 20 points towards that cap. It was hard in the allotted time frame to get a sense of just how much this would help or hinder creations therein, but hopefully, it will be generous.

WoW houses aren't just a single room, as I previously assumed. You can connect corridors, additional adjacent rooms of all shapes and sizes, and even add an additional floor, complete with its own floor plan. Hopefully, the build limit is beefy enough to allow us to actually fill all of that space.

Indeed, given the variety of items, clipping enabled and control over colorations, I suspect we'll see impressive works of art emerge from WoW's Player Housing system — as well as horrific amalgams of giant objects and warped furnishings.

The weirdest creations will be hidden away inside players' houses, with the neighborhood outside appearing more serene and consistent, based on both Orgrimmar (Horde) and Stormwind (Alliance) architecture.

Blizzard is even tying quests and neighborhood goals to this system, too, for players to collaborate on. It remains to be seen just how much people engage with these new mechanics, lest they become abandoned, similarly to things like Guild Achievements and so on.

You can choose who can enter your home, of course. You can keep the doors locked for all but yourself, or let it be free for anyone to come and check out. It's your space, and Blizzard wants it to feel like your fantasy home-away-from-home — and so far, I'd say they've absolutely nailed it.

But Blizzard keeps saying that this is only the beginning for housing ... whatever could they mean? Let's don some tinfoil hats and theorycraft.

... But what if the system will lead WoW players beyond simply building houses?

I've been playing World of Warcraft for 20 years at this point (yes, I'm old) and have been there for all of the game's major iterations and feature inclusions. The last time I felt so impressed with the scale and scope of a new system was probably back when Blizzard added siege weapons and its vehicle system.

It's archaic by modern standards, but Blizzard has very creatively used this "vehicle" system over the years, adapting it to all sorts of quests, activities, and features. It was originally designed for siege vehicles in battlegrounds like Wintergrasp and so on, but Blizzard has adapted it to create things like puzzle mini-games, give players flashback sequences, and practically anything that could benefit from turning the player into a "pilot" of sorts.

It's with this knowledge that I couldn't help but extrapolate what Player Housing could one day morph into. Blizzard is incredibly creative with how it uses existing systems for "unintended" purposes, and the team has just essentially given players a full-blown level design system. You can see where I'm going with this.

MMORPGs are absolutely dependent on regular content, and many of the biggest service games these days tend to have a user-generated content component (UGC). The power of the tools on offer with Player Housing truly feels like they go beyond a mere gameplay feature. You can carefully and lovingly position pebbles and small trinkets on tables if you want to. It feels far beyond what other systems offer, almost akin to a true level editor of sorts. It got me thinking.

What if Blizzard let players create and publish their own Delves? For example. Microsoft tried something similar with Gears of War 5, letting players create gauntlets using a tile-based level design system. There are other games that have been incredibly successful in this vein, such as Mario Maker, where players can create crazy Mario platform levels and publish them for other players to tackle.

What if Player Housing could be expanded to allow players to customize dungeons, create quests, and other events? Perhaps Blizzard could have final say on what gets made public if they wanted to keep things lore consistent, for example, but there are ways in WoW lore to circumnavigate story implications anyway.

What if these player-made dungeons were just warped visions from the Caverns of Time, for example? Perhaps they could be mini gauntlets like Torghast, or perhaps even give players the tools to create their own Brawler's Guild solo events?

There are many ways this kind of system could be constructed to create low-stakes, lore-friendly events, complete with fun rewards. Roblox, Minecraft mods, and even Fallout 76's player-made escape rooms showcase the potential of UGC when you give players the tools.

It's not a stretch to imagine how Player Housing could one day be expanded upon to give WoW an infinite loop of new features, on top of the premium curated content we've all come to expect and enjoy.

A whole neighborhood of possibilities.

If you know my work, then you probably know that World of Warcraft is absolutely my favorite game of all time. There's something so infectious about the combat, and something still so rewarding about the general gameplay loop, even if the modern product certainly contains flaws here and there (and I'll be writing on those too, of course).

But Player Housing represents something quite incredible for the game. World of Warcraft has been on a mission to broaden its appeal without compromising what it is at its core. So many games make these efforts with big trade-offs, but World of Warcraft has managed to maintain its hardcore raiding scene for most, while continuing to deliver large content patches filled with new quests and story beats. And yes, they don't always get it right, but to have managed to build something as comprehensive and complex as Player Housing in the background is incredibly impressive.

Player Housing is set to become another firm pillar for the game, which has long been notorious for its difficulty on the high-end, atop its ability to require masses of free time in order to engage with it meaningfully.

Blizzard has been working hard to make sure players who don't want to raid on a schedule in groups of 20 people, and players who don't want to get sweaty learning all of the mechanics, have options too. Soloable mini dungeon Delves have been successful to that end, and Player Housing potentially goes even further, giving, largely for the first time, creative players an outlet to truly express themselves.

It could open up a huge new market for WoW, from players who like titles like Animal Crossing or The Sims. And then there are the future UGC possibilities on top as well. I had absolutely zero expectation Player Housing would be as comprehensive as it is, and now that I've tried it, I think it could end up being the most important feature for the game's future in years.

World of Warcraft Player Housing launches in full alongside World of Warcraft: Midnight, slated for Windows PC in early 2026. Those who pre-order Midnight get early access to Player Housing before the end of 2025.

Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, is filing a lawsuit against the owners of Turtle WoW, which is a group of servers housing a series of fan-developed mods and updates, including Mysteries of Azeroth.

As described on the Turtle WoW website, Mysteries of Azeroth is a “fan-made expansion story for World of Warcraft Vanilla that delves deeper into exploring the original lore of the game,” eschewing the changes to the original World of Warcraft that Blizzard introduced through The Burning Crusade expansion in 2007.

Players can access Mysteries of Azeroth by downloading the free client, with the developers accepting but not requiring donations.

In the lawsuit, filed Friday in the Central District of California, Blizzard Entertainment alleges that the developers of Turtle WoW are using Blizzard's artwork, trademarks, and official code.

A Blizzard spokesperson shared the following statement:

“Our games are built on decades of innovation and creativity, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the integrity of that work for our employees, our partners, and our players. This pirate server illegally uses our code, assets, and trademarks to market an unprotected experience. Given the scale and nature of the infringement we need to pursue formal remedies to protect the world we’ve built.”

Turtle WoW’s first server launched back in 2018, with the group expanding with additional servers over the years to accommodate more players in different regions. Earlier in August, Turtle WoW reached a peak of over 44,000 concurrent players across all servers.

The developers of Turtle WoW have released numerous updates for Mysteries of Azeroth, and the group has also shared plans to release an updated version of the game that rebuilds the client in Unreal Engine 5.

This new version, referred to as Turtle WoW 2.0, is planned to have improved visuals and higher PC requirements, while remaining compatible with a Legacy version that players can use if they prefer the older look.

Notably, Blizzard Entertainment launched World of Warcraft: Classic in 2019, giving an official version of the original game experience. The developers have continued to update Classic with the original expansions, such as The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and most recently, Mists of Pandaria.

World of Warcraft: Classic requires an active subscription in order to access it, just like mainline World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft's next official chapter is coming in 2026

While this unfolds, the main ongoing story of World of Warcraft is entering its next phase.

The next expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, continues the Worldsoul Saga narrative that began with 2024's expansion, The War Within. This storyline is planned to conclude with a third expansion, The Last Titan.

World of Warcraft: Midnight does not have an exact release date right now, but is currently slated to launch at some point before June 30, 2026.

During Gamescom 2025, Blizzard took part to share details on what players could expect from the expansion, including a new race called the Haranir. The game is also finally introducing the long-requested Player Housing feature, letting adventurers decorate their own homes in Azeroth.

In wider Blizzard news, more and more teams at the Microsoft-owned game developer are unionizing, with over 450 workers on the Diablo franchise recently forming a union. The team cited numerous issues for galvanizing its organization efforts, including repeated waves of layoffs at Microsoft.

This group is following in the example set by several other Blizzard teams, including the World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 development teams, as well as the Story and Franchise team, the latter of which works on the narrative and cinematics for multiple Blizzard games.

World of Warcraft is now two decades old and has remained at the apex of its genre right from its launch.

The video game industry has changed in weird and (not-always) wonderful ways, but despite evolving player habits, costs, and competition from other mediums, World of Warcraft has remained strong throughout.

Since being acquired by Microsoft and Xbox, World of Warcraft has entered a new epoch in its lifecycle, prioritizing player expression while doubling down on enhancing the experience for players of all skill levels and time commitments. World of Warcraft and Blizzard are continuing that tradition in World of Warcraft: Midnight, the next big expansion slated for early 2026.

We caught up with World of Warcraft leads Ion Hazzikostas and Holly Longdale to discuss what fans can expect of one of the industry's most legendary franchises, as it enters decade number three.

After 20 years, why are we getting Player Housing?

I first wanted to see if we could get some insights into why Blizzard has decided that now is the time to invest in World of Warcraft "Player Housing," which will, for the first time, allow players to decorate and even structure their own homes within neighbourhoods made up of real players. It's a feature players have asked for literally since the game launched, so what changed to make it a reality now?

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas described how housing was such a significant undertaking that it its development wouldn't fit in a typical expansion cycle. This is something that required development across multiple expansions, which isn't something Blizzard had typically targeted. "It's something that has obviously come up in conversation countless times," Hazzikostas explained, "I think every time we looked at what it would take to make housing real, it didn't quite fit the development cycle of an expansion. This time, we committed to a longer development cycle that could span multiple traditional expansion cycles. The idea to make housing a reality, to have it land at Midnight, really was set in motion even before Shadowlands came out. We knew that's how long it would take to get it right, to give a version that stood 20 years into WoW's lifespan, giving players what they wanted and what they deserved."

"The other piece is building on a lot of the technological frameworks that we've built up over the years, including everything from the seamless instancing of Delves, to the modularity of things like Torghast. All of these things made it easier for us to set the stage for housing, to build out that environmental scale to support millions of players."

Executive Producer Holly Longdale also chimed in, elaborating on the evolution of WoW's philosophy to give players more ways to express themselves in-game. "Since Shadowlands and into early Dragonflight, we struck a new evolutionary path with World of Warcraft," Longdale elaborated, "we're reconsidering how our content serves all the different ways people play."

"What we're aiming for is this idea of having something meaningful to do all of the time while living your life in Azeroth. Housing is a perfect fit for that, giving you some ownership of the world that you will live in inside Azeroth — making it your own in some way.

"So, we're kind of on this evolutionary path to be able to have things like Housing, Delves, and Transmog 2.0, focusing on creating more player identity. We're going to continue. We're also here to listen to feedback, obviously. I'll be heading over to talk to players at Gamescom. The other side of this is, there is no World of Warcraft without all of you players. If we don't get the feedback right, we won't have a successful game."

On player identity and Horde vs. Alliance

I joked I only became a journalist to rise through the ranks and eventually ask for playable ogres (only half true ...) as we discussed the evolution of player fantasy. In World of Warcraft: Midnight, we're getting a new race in Haranir, and Silvermoon City will finally become part of the main Azeroth map, complete with flying and a full revamp. It will, however, be opened up to Alliance.

For years, World of Warcraft revolved around the faction war between players on the Horde and Alliance, but in recent years, Blizzard has dialled it back more and more. Players can now group with opposing faction members, and the Horde and Alliance are now officially in some sort of armistice. Both sides perceive favoritism from Blizzard, with Horde characters seemingly axed at a rapid cadence in recent years. Previously, Blizzard was accused of pro-Horde bias, having many major events revolve primarily around the Orcs and Forsaken Horde races.

"So, you're saying we need to kill some Alliance leaders?" Hazzikostas joked, "I'll let Xal'atath know and we'll see what she can do ..."

"Seriously, though, this is part of the challenge of serving such a diverse community with different interests and preferences. I think narratively, we prefer to let every faction or group have their own time 'in the sun.' It lets us tell more focused, stronger stories than it would if we tried to include everyone and everything to make sure nobody felt left out.

Hazzikostas described how players' feedback around Battle for Azeroth led Blizzard to question how hard it should lean into faction conflict, "I think it's something we've heard from players, where [the factions] have been working together to overcome a big bad, whether it's The Lich King, or Deathwing, or whatever — after so many times it starts to feel implausible. 'Okay, we're back at each other's throats again.' When I was game director for Battle For Azeroth, I was excited, as part of my creative vision at the time, to really lean into faction warfare. But a shocking number of players coming out of Legion were like, 'Why are we fighting again? It doesn't make sense.' I think we want to carve out a world where there is still room for those conflicts. We recognize that there are those who are like, they will never forgive, never forget. They should feel represented in the world, too. We want to tell a wide range of stories."

Holly Longdale agreed, emphasizing that the diversity of players' desires for expression is something the team thinks about a lot. "Identity is subjective. When we said we were doing Horde and Alliance neighborhoods, we heard feedback that was like, 'well I want Ardenweald' — it's really interesting to us. On faction conflict, it's not gone from our story, to Ion's point. When it's appropriate, when we find a story that's got the depth required, we'll probably get back to it. But we want to evolve that as well, you know?"

On adding new classes, new specs like Demon Hunter 'Devourer' and Evoker and the support spec experiment

In World of Warcraft: Midnight, we're getting a new spec for Demon Hunters called Devourer, which ties into the void-themed storyline that the Worldsoul Saga represents. It's the first expansion where a single spec, rather than a new class, has been a "headline" feature, and I wondered if that represented something of a new philosophy for Blizzard. Could we see more specs down the line? As players enjoy imagining things like Earth-based Shaman tanks, or time magic-based healing mages, for example.

"I think it's something we're clearly open to," Ion Hazzikostas said, "we consider new specs as a tool in our toolkit to use where it makes sense. I wouldn't say 'expect,' because that can be a weighty word, but absolutely, we hear those suggestions. As I look at where our story goes — which classes will be more prominently featured or thematically connected to the story — there's some great opportunities.

I think adding new classes to Warcraft is something we'll most likely do in the future too, but it carries a very heavy ongoing cost in terms of complexity, forming groups, balance, and so on. New specs can be a new avenue for player expression, and new ways to engage with your character that you've played for a long time in a new role — it's something we're always excited for."

Since we were already talking about class additions, I decided to ask about Evokers. Blizzard added Evokers and Dracthyr as a new class and race combo back in Dragonflight, complete with a new DPS sub-role which buffs other players in the group. The Augmentation spec has been difficult to balance, notoriously so, but I wondered if Blizzard was done with creating specs that had a more "supportive" buffing sort of role, as someone who has long dreamed for a Bard-type class or something of that nature. I also asked Blizzard if there were plans to enhanced Dracthyr's transmog options, since the team has such a big focus on player expression now.

"When it comes to Evokers, the feedback around transmog is certainly something we've heard. There are a lot of challenges with representing armor on that model, the way it was built, but it's something our team is well aware of, and would love to do something about if possible. It's also a lesson learned for us in the future.

Augmentation Evoker has been an experiment, and an ongoing one. It's proven challenging to balance. At the high end, when you have a fully co-ordinated group making the absolute most of all the utility and amplification abilities, Augmentation can seem mandatory. If you pull away from that, then, they feel unwelcome entirely at the high end.

That said, Augmentation still has a place in the game today, it's played by a lot of people who enjoy that role. On bleeding edge gameplay, it can be difficult to balance. We'd like to figure it out, because we do love that vibe of what a "Bard" is in other MMORPGs, or even a Shadow Priest or Enhancement Shaman was back in the early days, where people knew you weren't going to top damage meters, but the group was excited to see you there because of things like old school Windfury. That's something we're going to continue to chase. Augmentation remains a work in progress, but it's an experiment we're still excited about."

On solo player content, difficulty, and console versions

World of Warcraft has many different modes these days, with classic versions and also remix versions where previous expansions are changed up with some additional twists.

In retail World of Warcraft, Blizzard has been working hard to make solo content more meaningful. We now have soloable dungeons called Delves, and in World of Warcraft: Midnight, Blizzard is adding a new Prey system, which will let players hunt down NPC targets and bosses in the open world — or perhaps even become hunted themselves.

In Legion Remix, Blizzard is adding Diablo-like World Tier difficulty systems, which will let players tailor the difficulty of the open world content — which is a part of the game that has become notoriously easy over the years. I asked if a feature like that could ever make its way into the main retail version of World of Warcraft, and how Blizzard's philosophy to difficulty has evolved.

On Legion Remix's World Tier difficulty system hitting retail, "I think it's certainly a possibility," Hazzikostas. "Remix and the experimental modes allow us to test out ideas in a self-contained environment, learn from them, and see how they could apply to other versions of the game. I think for people who want a challenge in the outdoor world, that's something we'd love to offer. Delves and their progression was aimed to deliver that sense of progression to a solo player, who previously didn't have access to that type of content. If we can bring some of that feeling to the outdoor world, that would be awesome."

I asked if the new "Prey" system coming in Midnight could become that outdoor difficulty progression pillar, similar to Delves, and Ion Hazzikostas said it will depend how players feel, ultimately.

"It could go either way," Hazzikostas said, "it's going to depend on player feedback and reception. Prey is definitely targeted at the type of player we were just discussing. It's an outdoor world system. It's for people who want to spice up their experience venturing through Midnight. Initially, it's anchored thematically in the city of Silvermoon. You'll get your bounty contracts in Murder Row. If it's as successful as we hope it will be, if players enjoy it, it's definitely something we'll carry forward into the future — or we'll learn and adapt it. We're very excited to add an additional sense of danger that lurks throughout the outdoor world."

Blizzard has focused intently on meeting players where they are, both in terms of features, difficulty, and accessibility. The most recent major accessibility feature was the concept of the "one-button rotation," which allows players to perform a simple damage rotation with a single key. It's not as powerful as learning to do your damage manually, but it can be a great tool for those who don't want to get into the weeds of the game's deeper complexity. It did make me wonder if this type of work could help adapt the game's inputs for console controllers, given how frequently I get questions about whether or not WoW could eventually leap over to Xbox or PlayStation.

"Never say never," said Holly Longdale. "We're trying to learn how to adapt a game like ours to a controller, and as you know, it's a challenge. But it is important for us to adapt to that controller form factor. There are people on our team who play World of Warcraft on a Steam Deck, and probably soon, the Xbox Ally, and we want to be ready for the future. For the moment, we're still very much focused on the PC audience."

Hazzikostas chimed in, "There are a lot of user experience challenges to solve with controllers and consoles. World of Warcraft has 20 years of PC development. Ultimately, any platform we're on, we want to make sure that it has that Blizzard standard of quality. For a player who favors any type of platform, we'd want them to feel like the game was fully designed for that — that would be a long road for World of Warcraft."

A big thanks to Holly Longdale and Ion Hazzikostas for joining us!

World of Warcraft has been on an upward trajectory since the doldrums of Shadowlands. For a while, it looked like Final Fantasy XIV and other competing MMOs were about to put the aging giant out to pasture, but Blizzard pulled it back with successful launches for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight and World of Warcraft: The War Within. Since then, the team has been delivering a solid cadence of content targeting players of all interests and skill levels, building out a game that has a far broader appeal than it did when it was laser-focused on high-end play.

With World of Warcraft: Midnight, adding Player Housing is likely going to be transformative for the title, adding a cozy layer of player expression and creativity that World of Warcraft has frankly lacked. Players increasingly express themselves through custom transmog aesthetic armor sets, and with housing, that's an entire new world of reasons to play, engage with your characters, and also show off to your guildmates.

World of Warcraft: Midnight drops sometime in early 2026, likely in the Spring if I had to guess, with Player Housing launching in something of a "beta" state before the end of the year for players who preorder Midnight.

I know I'm going to lose several more hundreds of hours to the game thanks to Player Housing. I'm curious how the broader player base responds when it finally drops.

Back in 2023, Blizzard Entertainment announced an epic new storyline for its popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. titled the Worldsoul Saga.

This Saga would tell an epic tale over the course of three expansions, where players would fight to protect the Worldsoul of Azeroth from the evil machinations of the new major villain Xal'atath.

In 2024, we got the first chapter of this saga, World of Warcraft: The War Within, which had us explore the depths of Azeroth while fighting hordes of Nerubians, Goblins, and Ethereals.

Now, we're approaching the second chapter of the Worldsoul Saga and World of Warcraft's eleventh expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, which is currently scheduled to be released in 2026, as revealed from its Gamescom 2025 trailer.

This action-packed expansion will feature new Zones to explore, a revamp of classic locales, a Class Specialization for Demon Hunters, a new playable race, new outdoor content, the long-awaited Player Housing system, and more.

Here is everything you need to know about World of Warcraft: Midnight.

When is the release date for World of Warcraft: Midnight and what platform will it be on?

Blizzard Entertainment has announced World of Warcraft: Midnight will launch on March 2, 2026, for PC, which will be two months after the Legion Remix event concludes on January 19, 2026.

Additionally, early access for the new Player Housing will go live on December 2, 2025.

Is World of Warcraft: Midnight up for pre-order and what does it cost?

World of Warcraft: Midnight is now available for pre-order on Battle.Net.

There will be versions of this expansion available for purchase, each containing the base game and several bonus items, mounts, and most importantly — early access for Player Housing.

The base edition will include:

• World of Warcraft: The War Within.
• World of Warcraft: Midnight.
• Level 80 Character Boost.
• 500 Trader's Tender.
• Housing Early Access.

The Heroic Edition will include:

• All the content from the Base Edition.
• Lightstrider Raiment Transmog Set.
• Lightwing Dragonhawk Skyriding Mount.

The Epic Edition will include:

• All the content from the Base and Heroic Edition.
• Voidstrider Raiment Transmog Set.
• Voidwing Dragonhawk Skyriding Mount.
• Voidlight Surger Skyriding Mount.
• Hopeflutter Pet.
• Doomfeathers Pet.
• Beta Access to Midnight Expansion.
• 3 Days Early Access to Midnight Expansion.
• Midnight Housing Bundle.
• 30 Days Game Time.

The Epic Edition will also include a massive Playing Housing Bundle which includes:

• Light-infused Rotunda (Light Gazebo)
• Void-Corrupted Rotunda (Void Gazebo)
• Light-Infused Fountain
• Void-Corrupted Fountain
• Alleria Portrait - "The Ranger-General" (Decor)
• Turalyon Portrait - "The High Exarch" (Decor)
• Arator Portrait - "The Redeemer" (Decor)
• Xal'atath Portrait - "The Harbinger" (Decor)

What is the story for World of Warcraft: Midnight?

The plot continues from the events of World of Warcraft: The War Within, which had the player chase after the mysterious Xal'atath to the depths and fighting off hordes of evil Nerubians, Goblins, and Ethereals.

In World of Warcraft: Midnight, Xal'atath gains control of an army of dark beings called Voidwalkers. She uses them to invade the elven city of Silvermoon in hopes of steal the power of the mystical Sunwell and use it for her evil plans to destroy Azeroth's Worldsoul.

To stop Xal'atath and her army of Voidwalkers, the player will need help from the Blood Elves and the forces of Light to drive them back into the lifeless Void.

What new gameplay features will World of Warcraft: Midnight bring?

World of Warcraft: Midnights continues to refine the open-world exploration and TAB-Target-based combat system that has defined World of Warcraft for two decades with an abundance of new gameplay features and improvements.

One of the biggest new features of this expansion is the long-awaited Player Housing system, which fans have been requesting for nearly 20 years.

This system allows players to buy a house for their characters to rest in between adventures.

You can decorate them with furniture and décor earned from Dungeons, raids, achievements, questlines, crafting, holidays, Endeavors, and even the Auction House.

Players can also set up neighborhoods in Public or Private servers (maintained by Guilds or Charters) that support up to 50 players.

Neighborhoods can be upgraded with NPCS, themed décor, and other items by participating in Monthly Endeavor activities or acquiring Community Coupons and Neighborhood Favors.

Another new major gameplay feature coming in World of Warcraft: Midnight is 'Prey'.

Prey is a new outdoor activity where you are commissioned by Astalor Bloodsworn from Murder Row in Silvermoon City to hunt down unique boss monsters across the four new Zones of the expansion.

These monsters are categorized in three difficulty tiers: Normal, Hard, and Nightmare. Defeating these monsters will reward you with all kinds of unique cosmetics, mounts, titles and Housing items.

To help players conquer the Prey system, as well as the expansion's new cavalcade of Dungeons, Delves, and Raids, the game will be offering a Class Specialization for Demon Hunter players called Devourer.

That's right. After nearly a decade since World of Warcraft: Legion, the Demon Hunter class is finally a 3rd Class Specilization (or Spec for short).

Unlike the Havoc and Vengeance Specs, which are pure melee DPS and melee Tank playstyles respectively, Devourer is a mid-range DPS Spec that allows the player to attack with a variety of melee and ranged magic attacks.

These come in the form of fast scythe strikes and blasting enemies with Void-empowered rays and Cosmic magic spells like summoning black holes.

Devourer Demon Hunters can also maintain their transformed state by harvesting souls during combat.

Another new addition to the player's arsenal is the new playable Haranir race.

These are bat-looking humanoids that debuted during World of Warcraft: The War Within and will be joining the fight to stop Xal'atath in World of Warcraft: Midnight.

They possess a wide range of Racial abilities which include:

• Summoning roots that can heal allies and damage enemies within their area-of-effect range.
• Passive bonus stats towards critical hits and healing.
• Bonus damage against Aberrations and innate resistance to being damaged by them.
• The ability to fast travel between locations by travelling the World Tree's roots in a similar manner to the Dark Iron Dwarves' Mole Machine Racial Ability.

Haranir can take up the following Classes: Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Monk, and Druid.

Other new gameplay additions that this expansion will bring include:

• A completely revamped version of Silvermoon City, with every building redone with updated graphics and details.
• Four new Zones to explore,
• Eight new Dungeons, eleven new Delves, three Raids to fight bosses and loot treasure in.
• A Training Ground for PVP where players can practice before fighting human players in PVP matches.
• A new PVP Battleground Mode called Slayer's Rise where players have to demolish the enemy's bases and take out their rival's Domanaar commander.

If you're a new player or a returning one, World of Warcraft: Midnight aims to make the new player experience with several improvements.

These include having the Exile's Reach tutorial naturally weave into World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Zones with the numerous updates to that expansion's overall campaign,.

There will also be Story Mode raids for Raszageth, Sarkareth, and Fyrakk, and a simplified version of Skyriding with six shared charges for Surge Forward and Skyward Ascent, and no Vigor bar to help make it easier to learn in preparation for the real thing.

Returning players are granted a new optional tour of the Arathi Highlands by Jaina or Thrall to help them catch up to speed with the story and gameplay changes.

Other story recaps include the newly introduced Lorewalking system, which lets players revisit past storylines from previous expansions, and The War Within Catch-Up.

The War Within Catch-Up is essentially an abridged version of World of Warcraft: The War Within's main campaign quests so players can learn the key plot points leading up to World of Warcraft: Midnight.

There will also be several quality-of-life improvements for the whole game provided by this upcoming PC title.

These include:

• Transmog — Slot-based, gold-free outfit swapping with the ability to auto-swap saved outfits based on your character's situation (i.e. you can select a transmog set to automatically change into when visiting a player's home or adventuring the open-world.
• Cooldown Manager — New customizable aura tracking with debuff states, and sound alerts.
• Combat Assistant — Assisted Highlights and Single-Button play have been improved with smarter logic detection based on your character's build.
• Edit Mode — It has been expanded to include all new UI elements such as the Personal Resource Bar which has now been converted into a HUD element that be customized.
• Accessibility — Adjustable text sizes, improved tooltips, and simplified professions have been added.
• Built-in Damage Meters to help players discover if their damage rotation, build, and overall item level are sufficiently contributing to a raid group's efforts.

World of Warcraft has just made good on its promise to fully reveal its upcoming Midnight expansion at Gamescom 2025 by releasing two trailers during Gamescom 2025's Opening Night Live ceremony.

Blizzard Entertainment's presentation gives players a deeper look into gameplay features already announced, like the Player Housing system, and a sneak peek at the game's plot.

More importantly, the gameplay trailer gives us a look at a ton of newly revealed features like new Zones, Dungeons, Outdoor content, a new playable race, a new Class Specialization (or Spec for short) for the Demon Hunter Class, and much more.

On top of that, this presentation reveals that this upcoming PC title will be launching sometime in 2026.

Here's everything announced for World of Warcraft: Midnight from this presentation.

The presentation begins with a cinematic trailer showing World of Warcraft's current main antagonist, Xal'atath, attacking the city of Silvermoon with an army of monstrous Void Walkers.

Xal'atath's seeks to capture the city's magical, life-giving Sunwell so she can harness its power to get her plans of destroying Azeroth's Worldsoul back on track after they were derailed during the events of World of Warcraft: The War Within.

In this expansion, the player will need to unite the Elven races of Azeroth with the forces of Light into one massive coalition if they hope to defeat Xal'altath and save the Sunwell from being destroyed.

After the cinematic trailer concluded, Blizzard Entertainment showed off a gameplay montage trailer for World of Warcraft: Midnight on its YouTube channel, highlighting all the expansion's new gameplay features.

These new main features include, but are not limited to:

• A deeper look into Player Housing — showing off all the locations we can build our homes at and the accessories we can decorate them with.
• Several new Zones to explore — Eversong Woods, Harandar, Voidstorm, and Zul'Amon.
• Silvermoon City revamped — complete with new graphical details and structures.
• New Dungeons — Den of Nalorakk, Maisara Caverns, Nexus Point Xenas, Voidscar Arena, Blinding Vale, Windrunner Spire, Magister’s Terrace, and Murder Row.
• New Delves — Den of Echoes, Parhelion Plaza, Collegiate Calamity, The Shadow Enclave, Shadowguard Point, Sunkiller Sanctum, and Torment’s Rise.
• New Raids — The Voidspire (six-boss raid), The Dreamfrift (cinematic one-boss raid), and The March on Quel’Danas (cinematic two-boss raid).
• A new playable race called the Haranir — a group of batlike humanoids that debuted in World of Warcraft: The War Within.
• A new Class Specialization for the Demon Hunter class called Devourer — Devourer Demon Hunters channel the power of the Void instead of the Fel to unleash a barrage of mid-range attacks like Void-empowered scythe strikes, Void Ray blasts, and throwing black holes at enemies.
• A new race/class combo — To accommodate the Devourer Demon Hunter Spec, player Void Elves can now become Demon Hunters alongside player Blood Elves and Night Elves.
• Prey — A new outdoor activity where you will be tasked with hunting down unique boss monsters in the open world at multiple difficulty levels for lucrative rewards such as cosmetic gear, mounts, titles, and Player Housing items.
• Training Grounds (PVP) — A new PVP mode that will help players practice their skills against NPCs before going into battle against real players.
• Slayer's Rise (PVP) — An Alterac Valley-inspired, PVP hotspot in the Voidstorm Zone where players fight to destroy enemy bases before defeating their respective opponent's Domanaar commander.

I can't wait to blast enemies to dust with the new Devourer Demon Hunter Spec

All these new gameplay details have me super excited to play World of Warcraft: Midnight. The new Zones look beautiful, Player Housing is looking better by the minute, and the new Haranir race looks so savage and interesting to play as.

My favorite new gameplay detail announcement is, without a doubt, the new Devourer Spec for Demon Hunters.

For nearly 10 years, since the class debuted in World of Warcraft: Legion in 2016, Demon Hunters were the only Class in the game that had two Specs, Havoc and Vengeance.

For those unaware, Specs in World of Warcraft allow a character to specialize in certain aspects of their class. Most classes in the game currently have three Specs, Druids have four, and Demon Hunters only have two.

Havoc was a melee DPS Spec that ravaged enemies with Warglaives, while Vengeance was a Tank spec that drew the ire of enemies with Fel magic.

The new Devourer Spec, meanwhile, is a primarily mid-ranged DPS Spec that combines the explosive power of other magic-based Classes like Mage and Evoker, with the insane agility and mobility tools of the Demon Hunter, essentially creating a whole new playstyle.

It looks so amazingly cool that it makes me want to try out Demon Hunter now, as I haven't played as that Class yet due to their limited Spec options.

With Legion Remix on the horizon, it may be the perfect time now for me to give Demon Hunters a go in preparation for when World of Warcraft: Midnight launches in 2026.

The road to World of Warcraft's grand Gamescom reveal for its upcoming Midnight expansion has kicked into high gear this week.

Over the past several days, Blizzard Entertainment has revealed new information for World of Warcraft's highly anticipated Legion Remix event and shown off a teaser trailer for the Midnight expansion.

Additionally, the renowned World of Warcraft fansite, WoWhead, has uncovered critical information via data mining the game that may suggest when Legion Remix will go live for the general public. Here's all you need to know from these World of Warcraft news announcements.

The first major announcement is that Blizzard Entertainment has given players a deep, detailed look at the upcoming Legion Remix event.

For those uninformed, Legion Remix is a special limited-time seasonal event for World of Warcraft: The War Within that will allow players to re-experience World of Warcraft: Legion's expansion, but with several gameplay twists.

These twists include the likes of sped-up levelling to help players level up characters from Lv. 10 to Lv. 80 faster, obtain absurdly powerful loot that will make the player feel like a god, take on unique challenges, and earn mountains upon mountains of exclusive cosmetic items, gear, pets, and mounts.

However, players will only be able to create Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior Character Classes for this event, as these were the classes canonically available in the original Legion expansion.

This means that you sadly won't be able to play as a character with the Evoker class introduced in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, as they weren't introduced yet at this point in World of Warcraft history.

Another unique feature of Legion Remix is that it is bringing back the Artifact Weapon system from the original Legion expansion and revamping it from the ground up.

In Legion Remix, you will be able to customize each Artifact Weapon you obtain from Legion's extremely popular Class Hall quests with powerful abilities obtained from one of five trait trees — Nature, Fel, Arcane, Storm, or Holy.

You can pick and choose whichever tree tickles your power fantasy and respec them at any time, so you don't worry about being locked if you want to experiment with them.

To activate these trait trees' abilities, you will need to find currency called Infinite Power throughout Legion Remix and spend it on the trees to unlock their powers.

Additionally, you can find jewelry that will upgrade each tree's abilities by adding Ranks to them. You can also take upgrade Ranks from other trait trees and put them in your preferred trait tree to optimize your preferred playstyle.

You will need to take advantage of these remixed Artifact Weapons quickly in Legion Remix, as this event will feature new, challenging Outdoor content called Heroic World Tiers.

This is a system inspired by Diablo, where players will contend with an alternate timeline where the events of Legion turned out much worse than they originally did.

This means that you will be fighting powered-up enemies that have more health, deal more damage, and have new passive abilities that will destroy you in one hit if you're not prepared.

Defeating these difficult Heroic World Tier enemies will be worth the effort, however, as these monsters will drop lucrative special rewards upon defeat.

The game will even help players out in taking these monsters by planting Timewarped Obelisks throughout Legion Remix that will grant players temporary buffs if they can find them.

Speaking of rewards, the major draw of Legion Remix is the massive cavalcade of loot you can obtain from this event.

In addition to the loot you can obtain from the original version of World of Warcraft: Legion, the Legion Remix will have some exclusive items up for grabs.

These include, but are not limited to:

• Fel-infused versions of the class mounts.
• Robe transmogs inspired by Azshara.
• A transmog of Mannoroth's shield.
• Varian's iconic swords corrupted with Fel energy.
• A new green color variant of Argus the Unmaker's Scythe from the 'Antorus the Burning Throne' Raid.
• And tons of never-before-seen mounts, transmog armor sets, and so much more.

A grand majority of these rewards can be bought with the Bronze currency obtained from this event, while others may drop from defeating certain enemies or completing quests.

Legion Remix is currently available for a select number of players on the game's Public Test Realm servers to help Blizzard Entertainment refine the event for its public release date, which has yet to be announced.

However, we have a hint at when we expect Legion Remix to publicly go live. According to WoWhead, it has datamined Legion Remix in the Public Test Realm servers, and it has uncovered data revealing its release dates.

This data says that Legion Remix will fully go live on October 7, 2025, and will last until January 19, 2026.

Be warned that this information should be taken with a grain as it hasn't been officially confirmed by Blizzard Entertainment and it is subject to change until further notice.

I can't wait to play Legion Remix and see the grand reveal for the Midnight expansion

To close off this week of World of Warcraft announcements, Blizzard Entertainment has released a teaser trailer for World of Warcraft's Midnight expansion.

The trailer shows the villain Xal'atath opening portals to the Void across the world and issuing a dire threat to the heroes of Azeroth.

Overall, these news announcements have me beyond excited for the future of World of Warcraft.

I loved Mists of Pandaria Remix for its absurd loot and cool transmogs, and from the looks of these announcements, Legion Remix is looking to top it in every glorious way possible.

I never experienced the original Legion expansion when it first came out, as I only got into World of Warcraft last year in 2024. So, I can't wait to finally experience one of the most beloved expansions of this long-running MMORPG when Legion Remix hopefully releases later this year if WoWhead's data-mining is confirmed to be real.

As for World of Warcraft: Midnight, I'm equally excited to see what crazy new features this upcoming PC title has in store for us and finally give my characters a house with the new player housing system.

As seen on X (via @sz_mediagroup), a special drone show took place in Shenzhen, China, themed around World of Warcraft to honor the game's 20th anniversary.

It was an epic display with the drones recreating characters from the game like Arthas, Xal'atath, Chen Stormstout, and Alexstrasza, before forming a dragon from the Mists of Pandaria expansion and a logo of World of Warcraft's 20th Anniversary.

Around the same time, the operator of World of Warcraft's Chinese server operators, NetEase, hosted a livestream celebrating the game's 20th anniversary as well.

The stream opened with a ceremony of developers from Blizzard Entertainment thanking the Chinese fanbase for their support before discussing future content updates for the Chinese version of the game.

The first news update is that Chinese players will be able to speed level their characters through the World of Warcraft Classic: Cataclysm expansion, so they will be ready in time for World of Warcraft Classic: Mists of Pandaria.

Chinese players are still playing catch-up in Wrath of the Lich King Classic due to being held up by a brief shutdown of the game's servers as a result of Activision-Blizzard cutting ties with NetEase before renewing them.

While Mists of Pandaria Classic will be released for most of the world on July 21, 2025, China will be getting its hands on it between the Winter of 2025 and early Spring of 2026.

As an added bonus, Chinese players will have an opportunity to earn mounts and experience community events they weren't able to during the shutdown.

Additionally, NetEase has promised that World of Warcraft: Classic will get new "plus-like" content as a replacement for Season of Discovery (as it will not be returning due to time constraints and technical limits) that will be available in China and the rest of the world in the future.

NetEase has also announced that China will be getting a special server exclusive to that country in November 2025 called the Titan Reforged Server. This server combines the content from vanilla World of Warcraft, The Burning Legion, and Wrath of the Lich King into a single game mode.

It is described as a "raid rush" where players will have accelerated levelling, so they can take on various past raids, which have been rescaled to Lv. 80.

All classic gear, tier sets, and reputations will scale for this server, and all class talents, spells, and abilities will use their Lv. 80 versions to help give players a fighting chance at beating these buffed-up raids.

Blizzard then announced that Chinese players will be able to play the highly anticipated, upcoming Legion Remix event, which is set to release globally sometime this year at an unspecified date.

All that is known about this event so far is that it will function similarly to Mists of Pandaria Remix, where it allows players to relive the Legion expansion with insane new powers and gear.

However, Blizzard Entertainment has mentioned that Legion Remix will include a Diablo-inspired, new tier of open-world difficulty called "Shattered Timeline". All we know about this difficulty mode is that players will be taken to an alternate timeline of Legion where "everything went worse".

Considering that the default version of Legion's plot involved a giant Burning Legion invasion, the deaths of several high-profile characters, and Sargeras piercing Azeroth with a mountain-sized sword, I can't imagine how things could get even worse from that.

But we'll have to wait and see to find out.

Blizzard Entertainment also states that Chinese players will get to experience World of Warcraft: The War Within's third major patch update at the same time as the rest of the world on August 14, 2025. There will be a preview of a new 12-month subscription bundle featuring new mounts and pets (with China getting an expanded version with extra goodies).

The livestream then concluded with Blizzard Entertainment sharing heartwarming stories of several Chinese players and developers, while announcing that proceeds from charity pet sales, plus an additional one million yuan, will be donated to the AiEr Foundation to support children with hearing impairments.

The World of Warcraft is starting to heat up in the lead-up to World of Warcraft: Midnight

We're less than a month away from the grand reveal for World of Warcraft's next expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, which will take place at Gamescom on August 19, 2025. The reveal show will show off this upcoming PC title's opening cinematic, gameplay details, public demos for player housing, and much more.

I can't wait to see what exciting adventures await us in the next chapter of World of Warcraft's ongoing Worldsoul Saga, as I had a lot of fun with World of Warcraft: The War Within.

It's pretty cool that Chinese players will be able to get their characters in time for Mists of Pandaria Classic, as I'd imagine that expansion is pretty popular in China due to being largely inspired by Chinese myths and culture.

That being said, I am so jealous that Chinese players will be getting exclusive access to this Titan Reforged Server. The idea of fighting the Lich King, rebalanced to fight Lv. 80 sounds awesome. I missed out on fighting him when Wrath of the Lich King first came out in 2008, so I never got to experience how difficult he was back then.

Hopefully, the Titan Reforged Servers will be made available worldwide in the future so we can all relive World of Warcraft's earliest, classic raid bosses rebalanced so that they'll pose a threat again, even to Lv. 80 players.

Blizzard Entertainment announced on its website that World of Warcraft's next major expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, will be fully revealed at Gamescom on August 19, 2025.

The grand unveiling will be hosted by several World of Warcraft developers, including the Warcraft Universe Creative Director and voice of Thrall, Chris Metzen.

There, they will show off the expansion's opening cinematic along with deep dives into its gameplay mechanics, features, zones, story, player housing, and more.

Here's everything you can expect to see for World of Warcraft: Midnight at Gamescom 2025.

As mentioned before, Blizzard Entertainment will debut World of Warcraft: Midnight on August 19, 2025, during the Opening Night Live ceremony for Gamescom 2025.

The show will begin by showing off the opening cinematic for World of Warcraft: Midnight, which will no doubt showcase some of the enemies players will face, new zones players will explore, hints at new playable races or classes, and set the tone for the expansion's story.

Afterwards, the developers will host a gameplay deep dive broadcast, which will exhibit the new zones, new gameplay mechanics and features, and the story of the upcoming expansion.

Then, from August 20, 2025, to August 24, 2025, Blizzard Entertainment will be hosting booths at Gamescom 2025, where attendees will get to play a public demo for the upcoming player housing feature.

Fans who have been asking for player housing in World of Warcraft for nearly 20 years will not want to miss out on this.

Blizzard Entertainment then announced that there will be a Creator Clash competition at Gamescom. In this contest, content creators will be competing in various World of Warcraft-themed activities, which will be broadcast on Warcraft's official Twitch and YouTube channels from August 20, 2025, to August 22, 2025.

The Creator Clash will include livestream showcases of Player Housing, content creators taking on Season 3 Mythic Dungeons and Delves, and a competitive Cross-Region Arena bracket tournament featuring the top four teams from AWC Season.

Blizzard Entertainment also has plenty of other activities for the general public to take part in at its Community Stage, which will include, but is not limited to:

• Developer Panels: Where developers discuss World of Warcraft: Midnight's story, worldbuilding, gameplay features, behind-the-scenes secrets, and more.
• World of Warcraft Cosplay Contest: Where World of Warcraft fans get to show off their meticulously crafted costumes of famous World of Warcraft characters.
• Arena & Mythic Dungeon Showcases: Where the developers will show off new, upcoming Arena maps and Mythic Dungeons for World of Warcraft.
• Meet & Greets: Where fans will get to chat with World of Warcraft developers and content creators.
• Taliesin & Evitel’s Weekly Reset LIVE: A live showing of Taliesin & Evitel’s Weekly Reset YouTube show, which features discussions on all things Warcraft.

World of Warcraft: Midnight and player housing is fast approaching

World of Warcraft: Midnight will be the second chapter of WoW's epic Worldsoul Saga, which Blizzard Entertainment has stated will change the world of this long-running MMORPG forever.

What we know of this upcoming PC title so far is that it will have players return to the elven city of Quel'Thalas to safeguard its Sunwell from being corrupted by invading creatures born from a twisted, horrific realm known as the Void, ruled by the Void Lords.

Players will be tasked with unifying the scattered Elven tribes and allying with the forces of Light to beat back the Void forces.

Additionally, players will get a taste of the Void's power in World of Warcraft: The War Within's 3rd major patch on August 13, 2025, where they will take on Dimensius the Void Lord, which is said to be the largest raid boss in MMORPG history — He's about the size of a city.

I don't know about you, but if Dimensius in World of Warcraft: The War Within is only a teaser of what's to come when we fight a full Void invasion force in Midnight, then I can't imagine how crazy that expansion's dungeons and raid fights will get.

I can't wait to see what Blizzard Entertainment will show off for World of Warcraft's next expansion (here's hoping they add in a Tinker class that will allow me to ride Goblin Shredders in battle). I'm also curious to see if any of my six most-requested player housing features will make it.

Prepare to mark your calendars because Blizzard Entertainment has announced the release date for World of Warcraft: The War Within's next major content update, 'Ghosts of K'aresh'.

Starting on August 5, 2025, players can start exploring the ruined world of K’aresh to take on various new challenges, Delves, and a dungeon, among other exciting new ventures.

Then on August 13, 2025, Season 3 will begin and have players take on the Manaforge Omega raid, which will feature the return of an old Warcraft enemy called Dimensious as a city-sized raid boss.

Here are all the details you need to know about World of Warcraft's next big update.

The Ghosts of K'aresh is the third major content patch for World of Warcraft: The War Within, following the Undermine(d) patch. It will go live on August 5, 2025, for the public server realms and will include a ton of new content such as:

• New main campaign quests that will conclude the storyline for The War Within and help set up the events for the upcoming World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion.
• A new zone to explore called K'aresh, a world destroyed by the Void Lord Dimensious.
• Tazavesh the Veiled Market returns from World of Warcraft: Shadowlands as a hub city.
• A new raid dungeon called Manaforge Omega.
• Reshii Wraps, an artifact that can be upgraded through various gameplay activities and acts as a key to access a new outdoor activity called Phase Diving.
• A series of Delve dungeons called The Archival Assault.
• A new creature-collector activity called Ecological Succession.
• A new dungeon Eco-Dome Al’dani.
• The Tazavesh mega-dungeon returns with a new hard mode.
• Several class balance updates for Shadow Priest, Brewmaster Monk, Frost Death Knight, Unholy Death Knight, and more.
• Several PvP talent updates.
• A new PVP World Quest that can be accessed on Vanquisher's Wake Island.
• A new Warband Campsite screen called 'The Fate of the Devoured' which can be obtained by completing the 'A Shadowy Invitation' quest.
• Tons of new Ethereal-themed armor sets, mounts, and cosmetics will be made available in this update.

The Manaforge Omega raid dungeon will be open for players on August 13, 2025.

The raid schedule for Manaforge Omega's difficulty levels will be the following:

• Week of 13 August: Normal, Heroic, Mythic, Raid Finder Wing 1- Might of the Shadowguard (Plexus Sentinel; Loomíthar; Soulbinder Naazindhri)
• Week of 20 August: Story Mode, Raid Finder Wing 2- Monsters of the Sands (Forgeweaver Araz, The Soul Hunters, Fractillus)
• Week of 26 August: Raid Finder Wing 3- Heart of Darkness (Nexus-King Salhadaar, Dimensius, the All Devouring)

World of Warcraft: The War Within is going out with a big bang

If this is the climax of The War Within then it's one insanely spectacular way to conclude this fun expansion to one of Blizzard's best PC games. The new Ethereal-themed armor sets and mounts you can obtain from the raids and dungeons look so cool, and the new raid bosses look so badass.

Dimensius, in particular, has got me excited as this monster is being hyped as the biggest raid boss Blizzard has ever created for World of Warcraft. It's reportedly bigger than the entirety of Stormwind and ten times the size of Deathwing, who currently holds the record as the biggest raid boss in World of Warcraft.

Then, once that titanic foe has been slain, we can look forward to the much-anticipated Legion Remix event, where we get to relive one of World of Warcraft's best expansions in crazy new ways.

Considering how much I enjoyed Pandaria Remix, I can't imagine how bonkers Legion Remix is going to get when it eventually drops (possibly at the end of The War Within's lifecycle). One thing's for sure, we'll have plenty of fun to keep us busy in the lead up to World of Warcraft: Midnight and the long-awaited addition of player housing.

While Summer Game Fest 2025 and the accompanying Xbox Games Showcase are only weeks in the rearview mirror, the Xbox team is already locking in its attendance at the next big gaming event, with Xbox confirmed for Gamescom 2025 from August 20 through 24 in Cologne, Germany.

The announcement comes via a post on the official Xbox Bluesky account on Monday. There aren't many details at the moment, but we do know that Bethesda Softworks will also be attending, with the Xbox publisher confirming its presence via X (Twitter).

Blizzard Entertainment will also be headed to the annual German gaming event, with the World of Warcraft team presenting Midnight, the next chapter in the "Worldsoul Saga" that was first outlined back during BlizzCon 2023.

According to the team's announcement, the World of Warcraft booth will include "five days of non-stop community celebration," with a cosplay showcase, developer meet-and-greets, and more. This comes on top of news for World of Warcraft: Midnight that'll be shared during the show itself.

What else will Xbox show at Gamescom?

The Xbox teams have so many different projects that it's difficult to say exactly what will be present at Gamescom. With Bethesda Softworks in attendance however, we can narrow things down a bit.

Bethesda and MachineGames shared a first look at the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC expansion, The Order of Giants, during the Xbox Games Showcase. Maybe we'll get to see even more here?

There's also promised campaign DLC for DOOM: The Dark Ages, though I wouldn't be surprised if this is first unveiled at a stream accompanying the id Software-focused QuakeCon 2025.

We're halfway into the life cycle of World of Warcraft: The War Within, and Blizzard Entertainment has dropped a massive bombshell for the game's next update.

This content update, titled "Ghosts of K'aresh", promises to bring the greatest challenge for players yet, as one of World of Warcraft's oldest enemies, Dimensius the All-Devouring, will be making his grand return since 2007's World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, as the biggest raid boss ever seen in WoW history.

Here's everything you need to know about the Ghost of K'aresh update.

First and foremost, this update will have players explore a new zone called the Shattered World of K’aresh to stop evil forces from summoning forth Dimensius the Void Lord, an enormous monster capable of devouring entire worlds.

Operating out of the hub world of Tazavesh, the Veiled Market (returning from World of Warcraft: Shadowlands), players will gather allies, forge an upgradeable artifact called the Reshii Wraps, and fight through a new Raid dungeon called "Manaforge Omega" to confront Dimensious.

But that's not all, as the Ghosts of K'aresh update will also have players tackle a new Delve dungeon called "The Archival Assault" and a new dungeon called the "Eco-Dome Al'dani".

Additionally, players can participate in a game activity called "Phase Diving" to take on unique quests and enemies, and help cultivate a healthy ecosystem on K'aresh through the Ecological Succession sidequest.

Each of these quests offers materials that can be used to upgrade the stats of the Reshii Wraps to help you survive the challenges ahead.

On top of the Reshii Wraps, players will be getting new Class armor sets offering unique passive bonuses based on Hero Talents, and they will be getting PvP and PvE class balance changes for Shadow Priest, Brewmaster Monk, Frost Death Knight, and Unholy Death Knight among many others.

Brace yourself for World of Warcraft's biggest raid boss yet

According to Blizzard Entertainment's latest WoWcast, Dimensius is going to be World of Warcraft's biggest raid boss ever made, as its size is bigger than that of the entire city of Stormwind.

That means that Dimensius will be bigger than even Deathwing, who is currently World of Warcraft's biggest raid boss, and he was the size of a mountain!

I have no idea how on Azeroth the developers are going to pull off creating a raid boss that huge, but I can't wait to find out when this update eventually launches. It will certainly be a good time to kill as we wait for the next expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, and the long-awaited player housing feature.

This past year saw a major milestone for one of my favorite games of all time: World of Warcraft, who crossed an very rare 20 years of uninterrupted live service.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a special game for a variety of reasons, not just for myself, but for the game industry in general. It wasn't the first MMORPG, but it was among the first that truly popularized the genre with western audiences, making the gameplay more familiar for those used to action-oriented RPGs, reducing the grind to more palatable levels versus those that came before, built atop a truly massive world already rich with lore.

Fast forward 20 years, and WoW is a very different game, in a very different time. The game is now fully owned by Microsoft and Xbox, following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We're finally getting player housing for World of Warcraft, opening it up to all new audiences. The game is increasingly designed to respect players' free time, while catering more than ever to solo players and casual players, while maintaining high-end difficulty at an esports-grade level. We have multiple game modes, from World of Warcraft retail pushing the story forward, hardcore modes with perma-death, and even Classic, imitating the game as it once was 20 years ago. And what it was 20 years ago, was truly cutting edge — in more ways than one.

In honor of Leeroy Jenkins, I went digging for my own old WoW videos

World of Warcraft came out when I was 18 years old, which almost feels like another dimension to me now. Online video was only just beginning to gain traction, and World of Warcraft gameplay videos were on the forefront of this new wave of user generated content.

Web series like Pure Pwnage and the legendary Leeroy Jenkins clip also hit their 20 year anniversaries alongside WoW recently, and I went ahead over to WarcraftVideos.com (which shockingly still exists in full!) to see if my old WoW PvP videos still existed. Lo and behold, they sure do.

I dubbed this "the most boring PvP video of all time" since it was literally just me healing my Rank 14 warrior guild mates as they ran around the map mortal striking everything to death. It was supposed to be an ironic reaction to all the uber 1337 pro PvP videos flooding the web back in 2004.

What struck me in the video beyond the silly gameplay are variety of hints of simpler times. The cringy 1337 speak. The Ventrilo push-to-talk sound effect, back before we had Discord. The crushed .wmv Windows Movie Maker compression, before we had mp4 and h.264. The 4:3 aspect ratio, before widescreen monitors were widespread and affordable. My awful keyboard turning and minimal keybind usage before I learned WASD 1234. I didn't even have an RGB mouse, I'm sure.

I, like many others, was inspired by the likes of Leeroy Jenkins and others creating those early World of Warcraft "machinima" style videos as they were known back then. It led me down a rabbit hole of content creation — perhaps ironically leading me here, today, writing this silly article.

What are your fondest gaming memories?

It was roughly a year after World of Warcraft's initial launch that YouTube arrived in earnest, transforming online video delivery forever. I've since found a career on YouTube and the web across Windows Central and my own live podcast, covering gaming, like thousands of others out there. I'm incredibly grateful for the journey, but it would be a lie to say I'm not nostalgic for those simpler times, and friends I fell out of contact with.

If you'd have asked me 20 years ago if I thought I'd still be playing WoW as I approach 40, I'd have honestly said yes — but with the caveat that the game continued to get new content. I don't think I believed for a second World of Warcraft would still be around 20 years hence, while still getting truly huge new permanent gameplay features like solo dungeon Delves or Player Housing.

World of Warcraft may not be the zeitgeist buster it was when Leeroy Jenkins inspired a generation of young video game creators, but I think there's still plenty of potential left in this legendary game I continue to call home. Long may it live.

Blizzard Entertainment has just released the launch date for World of Warcraft's 11.1.5 content update, which is confirmed to be April 22, 2025.

This content update will introduce various gameplay activities like the Nightfall Scenario, The Winds of Mysterious Fortune Event, The Dastardly Duos boss rush gauntlet, the return of Horrific Visions, and a new Cooldown Manager added to the UI to help players see their abilities' cooldown much easier.

Here's all the juicy gameplay details you can expect to see in this upcoming update.

According to the roadmap above ^, the first pieces of content players can expect to experience are the Nightfall Scenario, the Cooldown Manger, and The Winds of Mysterious Fortune on April 22, 2025.

Nightfall Scenario

The Nightfall Scenario is a new questline/gameplay activity where players will ally with the Flame's Radiance faction to help defend the Arathi from the Sureki forces who seek to avenge their queen Ansurek.

As you aid the Flame's Radiance and to get know their leaders Thaed Pyremaker and Mylton Wyldbraun, you will earn ten levels of Renown with them and unlock special rewards.

Gameplay-wise, the Nightfall Scenario will have players fight the Sureki forces across Hallow and Azj-Kahet while being assigned to various task forces of the Flame's Radiance. You will also be able to take in various activities and quests to earn additional Renown and rewards in between scenarios.

The rewards you get for taking part in the Nightfall Scenario will include new armor sets, new weapons, a tabard that visually changes as you gain Renown levels with the Flame's Radiance, a new color variation for your Delver's Dirigible mount, and more.

As your Flame's Radiance rank increases, you will gain buffs that will grant you extra strength while exploring Hallowfall and Azj-Kahet.

The Winds of Mysterious Fortune

The Winds of Mysterious Fortune is a special passive event that will last from April 22, 2025, until May 20, 2025. While this event is active, players will gain a 20% experience buff to speed up levelling their new or alternate characters so long as their level is between 10 and 79.

The Winds of Mysterious Fortune will also grant a +200% buff for renown level gains for major factions in Dragonflight zones and a +100% buff for renown level gains for major factions in The War Within zones.

The affected factions include:

Dragonflight Factions

• Dragonscale Expedition
• Maruuk Centaur
• Iskaara Tuskarr
• Valdrakken Accord
• Loamm Niffen
• Dream Wardens
• Sabellian
• Wrathion
• Cobalt Assembly

The War Within Factions

• Council of Dornogal
• Hallowfall Arathi
• The Assembly of the Deeps
• The General
• The Vizier
• The Weaver

Undermine factions are excluded from benefitting from the Winds of Mysterious Fortune renown gain buff.

While the Winds of Mysterious Fortune event is active, players below Lv.80 will have a random chance to obtain Mysterious Satchels found while looting monsters or from quest rewards while exploring Dragonflight and The War Within Zones.

These satchels contain various items that grant temporary stat boosts or change your appearance. The satchels also have a rare chance of dropping bonus gear appropriate to your current level and class' specialization, and potions that grant two hours of 10% experience bonus gains that stack on top of the passive 20% exp boost buff from the Winds of Mysterious Fortune event.

The Experience potions are Warbound-bound items so they can transferred between your Warband account's characters that are between Lv.10 to Lv. 79. The best part is that these potions can be saved and used after the event is over, so you can stockpile them for future characters.

Do note that the Winds of Mysterious Fortune-related potions will not work in Mythic+ dungeons, Raids, or rated PvP content.

Cooldown Manager

Perhaps one of the biggest yet most subtle additions of this patch is the new Cooldown Manager. This is a new UI element that will show the cooldown timers of a player's cooldown abilities in the middle of the screen so they can more easily know when to use them again.

Players can activate the Cooldown Manager by opening up the Game Menu via hitting Escape, selecting Options, then opening up Advanced Options to see the 'Enable Cooldown Manager' option.

By toggling on this option, you can see important timers on your abilities' cooldowns and buffs in separate customizable HUD elements for your selected specialization.

You can also customize the Cooldown Manager by opening the Game Manue via hitting Escape, selecting Edit Mode to access the HUD Edit Mode, then selecting Advanced Options.

From there, you can select 'Cooldown Manager from the options and then select the Utility Cooldown Options bar, Essential Cooldowns bar, Tracked Buffs bar, and Tracked Bars by clicking on them and adjusting their visual appearances to suit your preferred UI set-up.

Horrific Visions Revisited

On May 20, the Horrific Visions event will be making its return in 'Horrific Visions Revisited'. In this event, players will be forced to fight for their lives and sanity in distorted, nightmarish versions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, as dreamt up by the Old God N'Zoth.

This event can tackled solo or with a party of players. Solo players can also recruit a follower NPC called the Construct of Soridormi to help them out. This follower can take up Tank, DPS, or Healer roles and will not be affected by sanity.

The Horrific Visions Revisited event will also feature higher difficulty levels that will reward players with Heroic-tier items and gear should they overcome the odds.

The Horrific Vision Marks will also return for this event and they include Mask of Pain, Mask of Dark Imagination, Mask of the Long Night, Mask of the Burned Bridge, and Mask of the Daredevil.

There will also be three new masks to collect and conquer with called the Mask of Vengeance, Mask of Multitudes, and the Mask of the Nemesis.

Horrific Visions Revisited will feature a new currency to collect called Displaced Corrupted Mememtos. These Mementoes can be spent at vendors to purchase rewards from the previous Horrific Visions event and new rewards which include mounts, toys, transmogs, weapon enchantments, and more.

Dastardly Duos

Lastly, this content update will introduce a six-week event that will begin on June 3, 2025, called Dastardly Duos. This event will last from June 3, 2025 until July 15, 2025

Dastardly Duos is a combat show hosted by Vinnie Sweets and it will task players to fight 'animatronic' versions of bosses from World of Warcraft's past.

This event will involve full-player parties going up against two (or more) bosses at once to rack up points on a leaderboard. Claming victory in these battles will net players bonus power-ups they can use to help the even odds, and a variety of rewards including cosmetics, toys and dungeon items based on the bosses you slay.

Dastardly Duos can be accessed by visiting special hubs for it located in Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and Dornogal and speaking with Xyggie Marou to queue for fights. The hubs will also have a Troll-Servant vendor called Wodin where you can buy the aforementioned power-ups to help you in the upcoming fights.

The first week of Dastardly Duos will only have four bosses to fight, and each week afterward will add new ones up to a total of ten bosses to fight. New power-ups will also become available to purchase as the weeks go by.

Additionally, specific achievements can grant additional game effects from them while competing in the Dastardly Duo.

I can't wait to face the new challenges and snag new loot when World of Warcraft's 11.1.5 update drops this April.

World of Warcraft has been experiencing a renaissance lately thanks to the The War Within expansion's improved gameplay elements, story direction, and art design.

Not to mention every patch introduced since The War Within's launch has been nothing short of excellent like the chaotic, Goblin-themed Undermine patch. While this 11.1.5 content update is much smaller in scale, it nonetheless features tons of fun activities that will keep us busy long after we finish liberating Undermine.

Not to mention the Cooldown Manager, a feature that was only possible through third-party add-ons like WeakAuras is a huge deal. This feature will help new/rookie players manage their abilities more easily without having to scour the internet for mods that are difficult to set up without guides.

With player-housing on the horizon for World of Warcraft's upcoming 'Midnight' expansion later this year, the future of one of Blizzard's best PC games is looking bright.

World of Warcraft has entered its 21st year in operation, which makes it a true rarity within its genre, and potentially within the industry in general. It remains the world's most popular subscription-based MMORPG, with millions of players funding large ongoing story and PvE content drops every few months, with large world-growing expansions every 1.5 years or so.

WoW has enjoyed something of a renaissance recently. The "current" retail version of the game has received what may end up being remembered as one of its best expansions ever, with The War Within.

The latest content patch delivered an entire new city, new raid, new quest hub, ambitious new story beats, and more. Beyond that, Blizzard has thrown the rulebook out of the window, aggressively pursuing what players say they want, rather than what Blizzard thinks they want — WoW: Classic delivers the nostalgic experience people of a certain age yearn for.

WoW: Hardcore's new perma-death mode has become social media fodder, creating emergent and shareable hijinks ideal for the streaming era. Blizzard has also been experimenting with "remixed" events, retelling previous storylines with new gameplay elements. Despite it all, World of Warcraft has remained relevant, 20 years after the fact.

As a long-time player, I feel like World of Warcraft is enjoying something of a quiet renaissance right now. Emphasis on quiet, because part of me wonders how ready World of Warcraft is to go truly loud right now.

World of Warcraft 'The War Within' Season 2 patch is absolutely phenomenal

I need to preface this with an admission of bias. I am a goblin, and have been since Cataclysm 15 years ago. But let's put that to one side for a moment, and speak purely analytically: WoW's Undermine update is absolutely peak.

Undermine was fairly long in development, but the results speak for themselves. Undermine has been long established in lore as the goblin home city, and it's pretty clear that Blizzard wanted to deliver on those expectations.

For those who don't know, World of Warcraft goblins are a bit steampunky thematically, wielding their engineering prowess (or lack thereof) in the construction of various mechs, tanks, robots — many of which are prone to spontaneously explode.

The goblin's iconic penchant for chaos and their hyper-capitalistic society makes for a uniquely poignant setting given the current state of, well, everything, but Blizzard adeptly satirizes its themes with grace and good humor, but it's not all light-hearted neon-washed fun.

Undermine is run by a heartless kingpin known as Gallywix, who has a long history of general villainy. Players join other goblin mainstays like Gazlowe to lead something of a revolution in the city, uniting the disparate cartels against Gallywix — who seems to have aligned himself with saga antagonist Xal'atath.

While Undermine is full of crazy inventions and wacky hijinks, Blizzard also confidently injects genuinely heartfelt moments into proceedings, while also pushing forward the overarching saga

I won't spoil for those who haven't experienced the story yet, but it was, for me, the best mid-expansion storyline in years, and beefy, with plenty of high-quality cutscenes, voice acting, and juicy lore. I also have to give a big shout out to the music and soundtrack here — absolutely sublime filthy jazz and blues is a breath of fresh air.

On top of it all, Blizzard baked Undermine with new dynamic driving mechanics, a mountain of reward tracks to grind out, a new raid, a new dungeon, new delves — so much stuff, I find myself discovering new things almost daily. But, is it too good?

Hear me out.

But WoW continues to be difficult to recommend to new or long-lapsed players

Can a patch be too good? As Blizzard seems to want to raise the bar in every way for World of Warcraft, I find myself worrying about how poor the "new player" experience continues to be for the game.

I've written about it before, but years later, nothing major has really been done to improve things.

New players in WoW get dumped into a very dull, generic zone called Exile's Reach, which tutorializes the basics of the game in a patronizingly easy and poorly paced island of banal linearity. The original WoW starting experience put players into a huge world, immersing them in a racial starting zone steeped in player fantasy-building lore.

The non-linear levelling experience of the original World of Warcraft is simply unmatched, and not really available to experience in the modern game in an intuitive way.

Players can opt in to it, but the content is painfully outdated, creating story continuity issues, replete with pacing problems born of WoW's updated levelling speed.

The reason I worry that Undermine might be too good and the upcoming Midnight expansion with its player housing might be too good is that the quality bar Blizzard has reached lately seems like it must be very expensive.

And it's all content geared almost entirely to veteran, end-game players. There's been little to no investment in actually improving the experience for completely new players, besides the bare minimum.

I feel like without a solid starting zone experience, players won't as easily get invested in their characters, or in the over-arching story of the game. I also feel like they won't learn the ins and outs of the game in a well-paced way, instead being sped through the bare basics and then thrown into the deep end with a rapid delivery of new systems and mechanics.

Selfishly, if WoW is to maintain the quality bar that I am thoroughly enjoying right now, I'm concerned that not enough investment is being made to find those shiny new players.

Although my concerns might be totally unfounded. WoW Classic Hardcore has been popping off on socials after all, and maybe players don't mind the starting experience as much as I presume.

My current conspiracy theory is that, with zones like Undermine for goblins, the revamp to the Eastern Kingdoms in World of Warcraft: Midnight, and previous recent new zones like Bel'ameth for night elves, might be part of a gradual effort by Blizzard to create new starting zone experiences for different races. But there's no real evidence that'll happen.

I sincerely hope the new World of Warcraft development cycle is sustainable, either way, because it's absolutely fantastic. Is there a universe where World of Warcraft can return to the numbers seen during the Wrath of the Lich King days? I want to believe the answer is yes, but perhaps the landscape has simply changed too much.

On March 12, 2025, World of Warcraft received more gameplay information regarding its long-awaited Player Housing feature that will be implemented in the upcoming expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight.

Last time Blizzard delved into Player Housing, it described its general overall premise while teasing a Neighbourhood system. This time, Blizzard is showing us work-in-progress, in-game footage of how Player Housing will look while demonstrating its furniture customization options.

Here's everything I know so far, and I have to say, it's already looking mighty impressive.

World of Warcraft Player Housing — Basic Mode

According to World of Warcraft's official website, players can decorate their home in two ways: Basic Mode or Advanced Mode (both of which can be switched anytime at the press of a keybind).

Basic Mode allows players to quickly and easily place furniture in a hurry, albeit with restrictions. Meanwhile, Advanced Mode gives players total freedom in how they want to insert furniture and even alter their size and color scheme.

Let's start with Basic Mode. In this mode, players can place or remove objects and move them around the house in a quick and easy-to-use manner.

Decorations can be placed and moved on the ground. Decorations will move on top of other objects as they bump into them or down to the ground before they reach the edge.

You can also rotate Decorations around their "up" axis with rotation snapping to 15-degree increments so they don't unintentionally unalign with other objects in a room.

Decorations have collisions with other pieces of furniture, floorboards, walls, and ceilings, so they won't move through them.

Decorations will align to the floor, ceiling, or wells depending on what sort of decor they're being placed on (e.g., rugs will automatically align to floors, and paintings will stick to walls).

Additionally, Decorations will align automatically if you move them around a corner or snap to the ground if you move them off an object.

There are special smaller types of decorations that will stick to certain larger types of decorations when arranged on them. This means that the smaller object will stay attached when you move the larger object.

This will allow you to do things like moving an entire bookshelf with all the books placed inside at once, saving you time in rearranging each object.

The game will also allow players to open a grid that will aid them in "snapping" decorations to specific locations and keep their house neatly organized.

The grid can also be shrunken down when placing objects on small surfaces like tables so you can arrange them more accurately.

World of Warcraft Player Housing — Advanced Mode

Advanced Mode is where the real fun begins in Player Housing. It effectively removes all the restrictions of Basic Mode while giving players more customization tools to rearrange their home's furniture however they desire.

For starters, there's no collision in Advanced Mode, so you can intentionally "clip" objects into walls like chairs or tables if you so choose.

You can also activate gimbals (3D controls on objects) so you can move a Decoration on all three axes and even position them in the air as if they're floating aloft via magic.

A second gimbal can be used to rotate an object on any axis freely, and a third gimbal can shrink or grow an object's size at will.

Advanced Mode can also allow players to interact and design objects with specific controls in mind to create entirely new Decorations. For example, employees at Blizzard have created fireplace garlands out of bushes, a boat's prow from a bed, and even spice racks out of paint buckets.

This mode will also let players dye the color of any piece of furniture with a variety of colors to suit their home's theme.

On top of all that, Player Housing will allow you to freely customize the design of your home's wallpaper, ceiling, and flooring in both modes. For example, you can build a home with Blood Elf-themed wallpaper, have the roof made of stone, and have a wooden floor installed.

You can even use "partition" objects to erect walls when none existed before, so you can create rooms with extra interior spaces.

Blizzard Entertainment has also stated the outside size of your home has no bearing on the size of your home inside.

This means you can potentially create a massive mansion or a home inspired by the "TARDIS" from the legendary show Dr. Who that's small on the outside but contains a massive labyrinth of rooms on the inside.

World of Warcraft's player housing system already beats Final Fantasy 14's by a country mile

I was already interested in World of Warcraft's Player Housing after seeing it looking to fulfill 6 of my most-wanted Player Housing features, but this gameplay demonstration exceeded all my expectations.

The ways you can freely arrange, resize, and change the color of furniture in World of Warcraft's Player Housing is insane.

I've never seen a housing system that intentionally lets players "clip" objects into walls or have them suspended in the air before, and that's without getting into the ability to create extra rooms for your home.

It makes the Player Housing system in Final Fantasy XIV look so archaic and restrictive by comparison, as you can't do any of this stuff in that game. It's this kind of player freedom that proves again why World of Warcraft is still one of the best PC games in the MMO genre.

I can already foresee all kinds of 'mage-style' interiors players will make where all the decor is floating in mid-air while floors and walls have arcane energy flowing through them.

Of course, we can't get too excited as we don't know how we'll be able to fit our transmog collection, how the Neighborhood system will work, and where we even get the furniture for our homes.

Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that these burning questions and more will be addressed at a later date.

Fortunately, we will have plenty of activities to keep us busy before then, as World of Warcraft: The War Within's Undermine Patch is now live and ready to provide players with chaotic Goblin-themed challenges and hijinks.

If you're familiar with my work over here at Windows Central or my notoriety on social media, you may be aware that I have over 10,000 hours inside World of Warcraft.

I've spent a staggering amount of time in the land of Azeroth, Blizzard's pioneering MMORPG that changed gaming forever. For a time, it felt like the game was truly unstoppable and without equal, but with its 20th anniversary recently behind it, the gaming landscape looks very different.

World of Warcraft continues to hold its own, but there's more competition than ever for "service" type games that are the cornerstone of Blizzard's entire operation.

Whether it's Fortnite, Minecraft, or more recent upstarts like Marvel's Rivals or Path of Exile, there are more credible alternatives to Blizzard's classic franchises than ever before. That's even before you begin considering the rise of new, addictive forms of entertainment like streaming and algorithmic social media.

It's against this backdrop of incredible challenge and change that I recently spoke to Blizzard President Johanna Faries, who just completed her first year stewarding some of the industry's most beloved games.

From the NFL, to Call of Duty, to Blizzard

Coming out of Harvard, Johanna Faries started her career in the U.S. National Football League (NFL). For 12 years Faries worked across a variety of roles within the NFL, gaining a broad set of skills in marketing, strategy, and business development.

Although the NFL is "sports" in essence, the parallels to the gaming industry are stark, particularly given Activision's interest in developing esports. Indeed, Faries would eventually go on to become general manager for Call of Duty, the largest video game franchise in the world, and later, Blizzard Entertainment.

"My 12 years at the NFL offered me some of the skills I'd argue Activision-Blizzard found valuable at the time, back in 2017. Activision was really looking for sports and entertainment industry leaders to come in and help build a framework for esports," Faries explains, although she did have some reservations about moving across from sports to gaming, and not because gaming was unfamiliar to her as a hobby.

Faries herself has been actively gaming since she was five years old, she tells me, a self-described "Nintendo kid," growing up in an environment where gaming was simply commonplace.

The hyper-technological, fast-paced, community-oriented, globalized operation of Call of Duty forced Faries to really sit and consider the career move — with concerns she might be considered an "outsider" on top.

Ultimately, Faries did make the leap, and rose through the ranks of Activision-Blizzard to become one of its high flyers, described by Variety500 as one of 2022 and 2023's top business leaders.

Johanna Faries took over from Mike Ybarra last year, following the final acquisition of Activision-Blizzard under Microsoft. I asked Johanna Faries about the challenges Blizzard and, indeed, other gaming companies face in today's times.

As she described herself, the hyper-dynamic nature of the industry has seen many of the biggest players struggle to find their footing in modern times. Blizzard's own games like Overwatch 2, World of Warcraft, and Diablo 4 have all had big challenges of their own to overcome in recent years too.

I asked how Johanna Faries and Blizzard are threading the needle between satisfying the existing legacy fanbase, while preparing for younger cohorts who potentially want a very different product.

"You want to retain the players who have been with you going on 20 years in some cases. They have a certain set of expectations. Taking World of Warcraft as an example, you can't have every expansion being such a 'zag' that it feels totally unfamiliar to your core fanbase."

"At the same time, there's a constant conversation — which I'm really edified by frankly — about remaining core to what we are, while also broadening the aperture."

Faries explains that World of Warcraft's recent blitz to serve all types of players, with casual solo content, catch-up content, and super hardcore content underpins this effort.

She describes how WoW's recent soloable dungeon content "Delves" are appealing to her as someone who often prefers single player games.

"There's different demographics that only have so much time in their day. Creators have a certain expectation too, even before we get to commercialization of the content. It's a never-ending chase to strike the right balance."

"We'll be spending the next several hours here at the office talking about exactly that, and I think it's happening at a creative-led, player-first way. There are always more ways we can innovate that our players continue to want to come into these worlds."

Johanna Faries' answer here reminded me of a concern I've had for World of Warcraft recently. The game has turned a corner in recent years and has begun offering a far more compelling product than it has over a few previous expansions.

Ironically, I worry that it is becoming too good, or at least, rather, too expensive. The quality bar for World of Warcraft is becoming higher and higher, with players expecting more and more for a subscription price that has barely shifted in 20 years.

Overwatch 2 has seen similar pressures from competitors like Marvel's Rivals, and Diablo 4 has seen increased competition from titles like Path of Exile 2. Faries used Blizzard's recent relaunch in China in partnership with NetEase as an example of how the team is tackling these new challenges.

"A tangible example of this, and I'll get back to quality shortly — but there was a quality bar that had to be met to relaunch our titles in China recently, bringing these titles back to China in a way that feels 'world class,' but also for players who have endured an 'undulating' past few years."

Faries refers, of course, to NetEase and Blizzard unceremoniously parting ways under previous CEO Bobby Kotick, which saw World of Warcraft and other titles pulled from the region.

Chinese gamers are a huge part of Blizzard's active player base, so bringing the titles back to the region was a large undertaking for the team. Faries said Blizzard wanted to raise the bar for how Blizzard games are perceived at a global level.

"It has been tremendously cool to witness how agile each of these franchise teams at Blizzard have been, and to say it's 'not good enough' to simply turn the servers back on," Faries explains.

"There isn't a day that goes by where we're not asking ourselves, is this up to our standards? Is this better than previous standards, even? How does the next WoW expansion outdo this one? How can Overwatch reinvent itself in certain ways?"

"There's a constant nudge for us for us to stay on the front foot with respect to quality, and do things that are perhaps unexpected to reinvigorate the conversation around the quality bar we want to meet."

"Lastly, I'll say it's easy to say, and harder to do. But this is the calibre of the talent, the quality of the people of Blizzard — that they're able to maintain a bar, raise a bar, or even reinvent a bar."

Reinvigorating Blizzard development

If you go back over some of my articles from yesteryear, I wrote several angsty editorials about how Activision was unravelling Blizzard since its acquisition.

The essence of Blizzard, and the quality bar the company was previously known for, was coming apart under previous CEO Bobby Kotick, with ideological decisions being made at the expense of players.

Overwatch's sequel, Overwatch 2, would end up being hardly a sequel at all, cancelling its planned PvE story content and falling back on PvP gameplay changes that haven't always been popular.

Fast forward to 2025, and the game seems to be getting back on track, with the return of persistent rewards, a new gameplay-changing perks stacking system, and an all-new economy PvP mode called Stadium slated for a bit later.

The same has proven true for World of Warcraft, which had a sprint of very poorly-received expansions, before vastly changing its design philosophy, doubling down on catering for players of all shapes and sizes without compromising the core experience.

The recent expansion, The War Within, is arguably the best expansion WoW has had in years.

"One of the things I've really focused on is getting more, let's say, honest, strategic, cross-functional conversations surfaced. It's on me and the leaders to shape the vision, and decide what bets we're going to take, but we need to make sure we're creating space for the best and brightest developers in the world to just have a tough conversation."

"Let's get the right voices in the room and not feel like we're being overly siloed in the wins or proverbial misses so we can cross-pollinate any learning, and disseminate that quickly and intentionally across multiple teams. But also, to keep a sense of safety to celebrate the tough strategic conversations, right?"

Faries explains a desire to flatten the hierarchy more so than Blizzard has previously known, as the team explores things that worked (or didn't) more frankly than perhaps was previously possible.

Indeed, one sign I've taken personally that Blizzard has changed its thinking post-Kotick is with the introduction of player housing into World of Warcraft. It might seem like an odd example, but this is a feature people asked for for literally 20 years — and a feature Blizzard always had to explain away why they weren't doing it.

Now, they're literally giving players what they asked for, even if it seems like a potentially risky bet.

"This is a nod to everybody showing up ready to continue raising the bar. To surprise ourselves, invigorate things, and unwind ourselves from what could be 'limiting' beliefs, right?"

"The whole rubric of 'what got us here' might not 'get us there.' Or, if a new entrant comes into the market place, we have to get into learning mode very quickly, or just have a good conversation about where to go next."

Faries explains that by having frequent internal Town Hall-style events, they've been able to innovate on new features for World of Warcraft's player housing from people who aren't necessarily in the WoW team itself.

Faries recognizes that the "risky" unexpected moves like WoW's player housing, or Overwatch 2's new perks feature, have resonated and resulted in more positive conversations around the games.

She credits the teams at Blizzard for their ability to stay agile and remaining in "strong concert."

"We just met as a whole company as recently as just yesterday, talking about some of our additional future bets too. We're in this hyper-learning, hyper-agile moment, right in time to throw out some curve balls. Create player surprise, reinvigorate, and re-refresh — but not just for its own sake."

As Johanna Faries referred to "future, unannounced bets," I asked if any of those announcements included classic Blizzard franchises like StarCraft or Heroes of the Storm. Coyly, Faries replied "we have nothing to share today," with a knowing smile.

Blizzard into the future

With Blizzard's current games like Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, and World of Warcraft in a pretty positive place, it's hard not to wonder what the future holds for Blizzard.

The company has flirted with transmedia properties before, with the (underrated) Warcraft movie for example. But competing mega franchises like League of Legends have seen a ton of success with the accompanying Netflix show Arcane.

Nintendo has also enjoyed strong outings with its Mario movie, and Cyberpunk 2077 was essentially revived by its award-winning Netflix anime. I asked if Blizzard is ready to set its sights beyond games again, given that the company enjoys that unique pedigree akin to Nintendo, where nostalgia for its franchises represents decades of good will.

"The short answer is, we're looking at everything, and I mean that very intentionally — and I can't share anything specific today — but we talked again as recently as yesterday, that we have a strong collective belief that we are Blizzard Entertainment, and not simply Blizzard Games or Blizzard Gaming."

"Our universes, our iconic IP can vector off into many interesting dynamic directions. We have to be thoughtful, responsible stewards of those franchises, right? Not everything will fit, and execution absolutely matters. We do think about what we can do to show up for the entertainment industry, as broadly as we can describe, so Blizzard can continue to be a beacon of that sort of ... magic making, fostering joy."

"Blizzard's core foundational level is making world class games, but some people will go to BlizzCon and have their life changed. Meet their life partner. Some people will have a reunion gathering and watch that old Warcraft movie. That's part of what it means to stay in culture, and continue to shape it. So absolutely, that's the lens we're looking through here."

I want to give a huge thank you to Johanna Faries for taking the time to sit with me for this glimpse into Blizzard's future.

It's World of Warcraft's 20th year, Blizzard's 30th year, and my own 10th year covering gaming here at Windows Central. I am absolutely one of the people Johanna Faries is talking about above with regards to Blizzard fostering joy beyond the games themselves, as are many of you potentially reading this as well.

Some of my best friends to this day are people I met in Blizzard universes, with many of my fondest gaming, and non-gaming memories finding themselves at least incidentally linked to games like World of Warcraft.

People often find joy through their favorite sports teams or outdoor hobbies, but for those who grew up playing Blizzard games there's a special sense of community and belonging that these games potentially foster.

For my part, I found myself reassured that Johanna Faries emphatically seems to not only understand but also visibly appreciate that most crucial aspect of Blizzard during my call with her.

The highly anticipated update for World of Warcraft: The War Within's next chapter, titled Undermine(d), finally has a release date. WoW fans need to wait no longer than February 25 to get their fill of goblin cartels, a sweet new customizable hot rod, and a chaotic 8-boss raid just for starters.

In the next chapter of WoW The War Within, players will need to unite the goblin cartels to put a stop to Gallywix and uncover his connection to Xal'atath. We have a helpful overview on the story for The War Within if you need a refresher before the big update. The city suffers as a result of ongoing conflict between the goblin cartels. The four cartels, Steamwheedle, Blackwater, Bilgewater, or Venture Company, will provide players new insight into goblin culture and their society. While there's sure to be plenty of humorous explosions and mayhem, there's much more to uncover with the goblins. Players can choose to align themselves with one of the four groups to participate in their cartel's unique weekly events.

There will be two new Delves to explore, including Excavation Site 9 and Sidestreet Sluice, with updated variants of existing delves alongside Brann Bronzebeard who will now feature a new tank specialization. Players can look forward to new rewards, curios, a new nemesis, and improve rewards at the highest difficulty during Season 2. For those of you that fussed the delves were too easy, look for increased difficulty of all delves from tier 4 and above with this update.

Of course, you'll need a new way to explore all this sweet new content. The G-99 Breakneck is a customizable hot rod designed for high-speed street domination so you can experience dynamic travel with D.R.I.V.E. The Breakneck will be exclusive to Undermine(d), and it offers a faster speed than any ground mount.

Additional features are also coming to The War Within with the 11.1 content update, including Operation: Floodgate, a 4-boss dungeon where players will race against time to prevent a catastrophic dam collapse within the Ringing Deeps. The Liberation of Undermine is an 8-boss raid that leads players through the streets of Undermine for a royal rumble at Gallywix's headquarters.

If you're still looking for more to get you excited for WoW The War Within's 11.1 update, then you might be tickled to find out a new PvP Arena is also on the menu. The Cage of Carnage is a close-quarter gladiatorial arena found within the Demolition Dome. Players are dropped in through trap doors, with only haphazard metal platforms equipped with ramps to keep things separated. That sounds safe!

To go along with a new PvP Arena, WoW The War Within will also follow up shortly after the launch of the update with a brand-new season. Season 2 will kick off on March 4 with a new raid, new Delves, and an update rotation of challenging mythic+ dungeons in addition to the new PvP season. Players can also look forward to exclusive rewards and achievements for their efforts.

A new raid unlock schedule has also been released ahead of the new season:

• Week of March 4: Raid Finder Wing 1: Shock and Awesome (Cauldron of Carnage; Rik Reverb), Normal, Heroic, Mythic Difficulty
• Week of March 11: Raid Finder Wing 2: Maniacal Machinist (Sprocketmonger Lockenstock; Stix Bunkjunker), Story Mode
• Week of March 18: Raid Finder Wing 3: Two Heads Are Better (Vexie and the Geargrinders; One-Armed Bandit; Mug’Zee)
• Week of March 25: Raid Finder Wing 4: The Chrome King (Chrome King Gallywix)

Players will work their way through eight new bosses during this raid schedule, concluding with the big fight against Chrome King Gallywix himself. It all starts with content update 11.1, Undermine(d), on February 25.

World of Warcraft is a massive multiplayer online and role-playing game developed and published by Blizzard. The title is considered to be the most popular MMORPG of all time, with server counts putting the base at more than 130 million players, despite only being available on PC.

Last year, Blizzard announced a long-awaited, long-requested (read: decades) feature for World of Warcraft: Player Housing. And now, we have new details on how it'll all work.

World of Warcraft's official website has just posted a small preview of its long-awaited Player Housing feature, which is scheduled to be implemented in the World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion launching later this year. The preview details what the developer's intentions are with Player Housing, how it will work in-game, and hints on what owning a house will cost.

Here are all the important details you need to know from this announcement.

For those unaware, Player Housing is a gameplay system where a player or a guild can buy houses to live in. Player Housing has been featured in other MMORPGs like Final Fantasy 14, Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, yet Blizzard's 20+ year-old MMORPG juggernaut until it was announced back in late 2024.

Blizzard begins the preview for World of Warcraft's Player Housing by stating that it is designed to be easy-to-use for casual players while having a ton of advanced customization tools for hardcore players so they lavishly design their homes to express their creativity.

Blizzard then states that Player Housing is built to be evergreen content for the game, not just a one-in-done deal. Player Housing will even have its own personal roadmap where the system will receive new content updates in every future World of Warcraft patch and expansion.

On the technical side of things, Blizzard has confirmed Player Housing will have two Housing Zones available when it launches, one for the Horde and one for the Alliance.

The design of the Alliance Housing zone will be inspired by locales like the Elwynn Forest, Westfall, and Duskwood, while the Horde Housing zone will look reminiscent of Durotar's coastline areas and Azshara. Blizzard says they're planning to make two zones to start with because they plan on taking a 'quality-over-quantity' approach and not spread the zones thin so players can see and socialize with each other more frequently.

Blizzard then goes on to explain that Player Housing will offer hundreds upon hundreds of decorations and customization items for your house that are earned as in-game rewards while there will be a small handful of paid cosmetic Player Housing items you can buy in the cash shop.

As for how a player acquires a house, Blizzard hasn't stated what the actual process will entail. However, Blizzard has confirmed that Housing will be available to everyone and that obtaining a home will not involve exorbitant requirements, high purchase costs, lotteries, or onerous upkeeps. Plus, your house won't get repossessed if your account subscription expires so you get to keep it if you're having a break from World of Warcraft.

Player houses can also be shared with your Warband so all your created characters will be able to visit them regardless of whether they're Horde or Alliance. In addition, Housing rewards are shared amongst your Warband so you can acquire decorations no matter what character you play as.

On top of that, a player's friends or guildmates can visit their house and vice versa with minimal faction restrictions. For example, a player's Human character can't buy a house in the Horde Housing zone but their Troll character who's a part of the Warband as the Human can, and then that Human character can visit that Horde home as if it were their house.

Blizzard then closes out the preview by teasing the concept of Neighborhoods. Player houses will be organized into roughly fifty plot Neighborhoods so players can live side by side, work together, and form a small community.

Neighborhoods will be instanced but also persistent so player neighbors can see and interact with each other. World of Warcraft will feature two types of Neighborhoods:

• Public Neighborhoods, which will be maintained by the game's servers.
• Private Neighborhoods that are created by guilds or circles of friends so they can build and customize their personal Neighborhood without being bothered by the general public.

World of Warcraft's Player Housing premise shows promise

From the sounds of this preview, World of Warcraft is already promising to fulfill some of my six most requested features for Player Housing, such as making player houses account-wide available for a player's Warband, unlocking decorations through in-game content, and making houses for individual players and guilds.

The biggest request that I'm happy Blizzard is fulfilling is that players won't have to spend a small fortune to buy a house, pray to Lady Luck on lotteries to buy a house, or be forced to stay subscribed just to keep their home if they don't like playing. This already puts it leagues better than the Player Housing system I experienced in Final Fantasy 14 where my Free Company couldn't get a house for two years because of these aforementioned costs that World of Warcraft is planning to avoid.

Granted, it is concerning that World of Warcraft's Player Housing will have a Neighborhood system like Final Fantasy 14 did as FF14's Neighborhoods had limited plots of land to work with. However, World of Warcraft has far greater server resources at its disposal so I'm hopeful that it won't have the same problems as FF14 did.

Now, all that remains is a full gameplay demonstration of how Player Housing will work in execution and what the actual process of acquiring a house will entail. All of which will most likely be revealed in the lead-up to World of Warcraft: Midnight's full release during the Summer of 2025.

In the meantime, we'll be keeping ourselves busy hunting Gallywix and The Harbinger in the World of Warcraft's Undermine Patch.

2024 marks the first full year of Activision Blizzard under Microsoft, following the most expensive acquisition in gaming history. Today, Blizzard President Johanna Faries shared a year-end statement reflecting on the company's progress.

Before you get too excited, there are no juicy financials here — like the $1 billion and counting made in microtransactions by Diablo 4; this recap reads more like a gaming-themed Spotify Wrapped. Still, it includes some fun analogies, and having attended Gamescom 2024, I can say Xbox’s booth was its biggest yet, thanks largely to Blizzard’s massive presence.

8.34 billion game hours across Blizzard games in 2024

Yep for 2024 year to date across all games & platforms under Blizzard, thats the Diablo, Warcraft and Overwatch franchises, we collectively played 8.34 billion in games hours.

Pretty sure a good chunk of that was my time in Diablo 4, which topped my list for my Xbox Year in Review.

There's a lot of waffling going on through Battle.net

In 2024, more than 379 million messages were sent through Battle.net. "If you spent 5 seconds reading each message, it would take 60 years of non-stop reading to finish them all." That's a lot of "tp to me" and "I paid $90 for this mount bro don't tell my wife." I'm sure.

2025 will probably be even busier for Battle.net as Microsoft add some of it's own studios titles to the launcher, with the surprise announcement recently of Avowed launching day one on Battle.net.

Warcraft Wow and Rumble statistics

World of Warcraft saw many players return for its War Within expansion this year, which isn't great news for the Spiders/Nerubians as you killed 4.5 billion of them. This is the first in a multi-expansion story arc for the game, the Worldsoul Saga, which will unfold over another two expansions.

In Warcraft Rumble, over 400 million Cenarion family minis were played, an earnable reward in Season 7.

Hearthstone and Diablo

Hearthstone lives on, with players flexing their Murloc minions aplomb. Diablo 4 saw us killing over 1.7 trillion demons, an all-time high — what they haven't told us is if this is 50% Tormented Duriel runs with us desperately trying to earn a Mythic Unique. Blizzard launched Vessel of Hatred, the first of its expansions (plural as stated by Rod Ferguson), and it will be interesting to see how 2025 unfolds with competition from the likes of Path of Exile 2.

Diablo Immortal and Overwatch stats

480 million players died in Diablo Immortal, which is ironic, not so immortal now, are we? Then Overwatch boasts over 203 years played in-game hours combined over the new Clash maps. The traditional charity skin for Mercy was also a hit, with Pink Mercy campaigns from this year and 2018 now accounting for a total $25 million donation to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF).

"In our first full year as a part of Xbox, we've been thrilled to embrace our new community and to broaden access to Blizzard games."

Johanna Faries joined Blizzard Entertainment in January of this year. Coming from management of the Call of Duty franchise under Activision Blizzard, this end-of-year note represents her first year at the helm of Blizzard.

"As I approach my first full year with Blizzard, I am filled with deep gratitude and inspiration. The powerful work that our teams have produced—both for our player communities around the world and for each other—is nothing short of amazing. It remains a daily honor to work alongside such a talented and dedicated group of people, who are the guiding force behind what makes Blizzard such a special place. I am incredibly grateful for their camaraderie and collaboration, feedback and guidance, resilience and creativity, and their commitment to excellence each and every day."

You can check out the full blog post here, but Faries finishes her statement by acknowledging this first milestone for Blizzard as part of Xbox. "Beyond the tremendous achievements and milestone markers within our games and teams, we've also taken part in some pretty big developments. In our first full year as part of Xbox, we've been thrilled to embrace our new community and to broaden access to Blizzard games."

Faries hints at more "2025 is poised to be another big year of new and exciting experiences to come."

As for me? I'm personally hoping that means another Diablo 4 expansion and more Blizzard games on Xbox Game Pass!

On November 13, 2024, during Warcraft’s 30^th Anniversary Direct, Blizzard dropped a major bombshell announcement at the end of the event – player housing will finally be added to World of Warcraft in the upcoming Midnight expansion.

For the uninitiated: player housing is a gameplay feature that allows players to buy a house and decorate it with all kinds of furniture, trophies, and other items they acquired throughout their adventures. Player housing is a popular feature in the MMORPG genre, having been in titles like Final Fantasy 14, Ultima Online, and Elder Scrolls Online, to name a few. Yet strangely, World of Warcraft has never had player housing despite being one of the most popular and best-selling MMORPGs in history.

There were plans for player housing all the way back when the game was first conceived, but we're finally going to get it when the World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion launches sometime in late 2025. So, while we wait, I've put together a list of things I want to see in World of Warcraft player housing, from decorations to purchase requirements.

1. Let us decorate our house with rewards obtained from challenging content

One feature I’m looking forward to the most for player housing is being able to decorate my house with special items obtained during my adventures. This might include having display racks for weapons and armor sets I've obtained in dungeons and raids, trophies obtained from slaying the game’s bosses, and other nicknacks like toys.

Blizzard has already hinted this will be a key feature during World of Warcraft’s player housing teaser trailer, which showed a player’s house containing the head of the infamous dragon boss, Onyxia, alongside a set of weapons, a Goblin shredder miniature, and a Warcraft Rumble toy.

What I’m hoping for with decorations is that there will be special trophies you can obtain for your house by completing old raids and dungeons and by beating current seasonal raids and dungeons at harder difficulty levels (like Heroic-tier Raids and Mythic+ tier dungeons).

Not only will this incentivize players to push themselves to tackle challenging content, but it will also give them an excuse to revisit classic WoW dungeons and raids beyond farming for cosmetic gear and mounts. Not to mention, it’s a chance to show off just how skilled you are as a player to your friends if you obtain trophies of the most challenging enemies in the game at their highest difficulty levels.

2. Player housing types – One for players and one for guilds

Certain MMORPGs with player housing, like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Lord of the Rings Online, allow players to have two different kinds of housing – a personal house and a Guild Hall. A Personal house is a home that a player personally owns and can rent rooms out to their personal friends or even strangers. Meanwhile, a Guild Hall is a house that is shared between an entire player guild.

Having both a Personal home and Guild Hall would be beneficial in their own unique ways, depending on the player. For example, a Personal home would be ideal for solo players to set up shop and relax if they want some alone time or hang out with their best friends privately. Plus, a personal home and renting the rooms out to private tenants could also be a neat way to earn extra pocket money, provided they don’t cause trouble and earn their keep.

Meanwhile, a Guild Hall would be a good place for your guild mates to hang out and set up fun group activities such as group decorating, small parties, or even fashion competitions.

3. A wide variety of interesting locales to set up houses

Another feature of player housing I would like to see is giving us a wide range of interesting places to buy and set up houses. While it is a no-brainer for purchasable houses to be set up in the home cities of the Horde and Alliance factions like Orgrimmar and Stormwind, I would like it if we could buy houses in other locales with more diverse scenery like the Dragon Isles, Northrend, or Pandaria.

We could go even further in the scope of Azeroth and potentially buy houses in other worlds like the Shadowlands or Outland. Buying houses in locales such as these would not provide gorgeous scenic views to look at, but it would provide extra roleplaying immersion for players with certain classes.

For example, you could have a Death Knight player living in a house in Northrend as they wage war against the Scourge. Meanwhile, a Druid player could live in the Emerald Dream as they tend to the growth of the new World Tree.

4. Avoid server issues from Final Fantasy 14's neighborhood system

One feature I hope World of Warcraft’s player housing doesn't have is a neighborhood system like the one seen in Final Fantasy 14. Why, you may ask? Well, during my time playing Final Fantasy 14, the leader of the Free Company I'm a part of spent TWO YEARS trying to obtain a Medium house for our group. We'd been stuck in a smaller, cheap-looking house with barely any room due to a lack of available houses to purchase.

You see, the neighborhood system in Final Fantasy 14 only allowed small, limited plots of land for houses due to the neighborhood housing taking up tons of server resources. The problem is there was always more demand than there were available houses, which forced many people to wait for literally years for houses to go on sale (which can cost people potentially millions of Gil).

RELATED: World of Warcraft interview: Blizzard offers us an exclusive update on Mythic+, class balance, the next big goblin raid, Player Housing, and much more

On top of that, due to the limited plots of land available, players in Final Fantasy 14 could be forcibly evicted by the game and lose their house if they don’t log in within 40 days. It's gross how this feature manipulates people to stay subscribed to the game even if they don’t feel like playing anymore or just want to take a break.

Now granted, World of Warcraft has tons more server resources at its disposal, so it may be able to avoid the server limitations that Final Fantasy 14 had (if it decides to adopt a Neighbourhood system). Dynamic and clever use of server phasing could side-step issues that emerged from Final Fantasy 14, while also promoting a sense of community.

5. Don't lock player housing behind a massive grind

I'm also hoping that acquiring a house is easy. Buying a house in MMORPGs usually requires a metric ton of money and, in some cases — like Lords of the Rings Online — additional weekly bills to pay in order to maintain it.

Unfortunately, most casual players don’t have guildmates they can rely on for extra cash or the free time to earn hundreds of thousands of gold needed to buy a house for themselves. So, what I’m hoping is that the cost to buy isn’t too extreme for poorer players. Better yet, I hope players can obtain a house through a special series of quests rather than money.

A house obtained through a quest chain doesn’t even have to be extravagant. It could be a small, humble placeholder house that serves as a tutorial for teaching player housing basics to new players. It could teach them how to set up decorations, set up rooms for rent, and buy the more expensive, gigantic houses once they have the necessary funds to move into their ideal dream home.

6. Have a player's house be account-wide available with the rest of their Warband.

One of the coolest features that World of Warcraft: The War Within expansion brought is Warbands. This feature allowed a player's currency, gear, toys, cosmetic appearances, and other items to be shareable between all the characters they made on their account. I loved Warbands because it made level progression and gear collecting so much faster and more convenient between a player's main character and their backup alt-characters.

As such, I'm hoping that when player housing arrives, it will be tied to the Warbands feature. This would allow a player to share their house with all the characters they made on their account instead of having to buy a house individually for each one. If nothing else, players will save tons of money in the process if they do have a shared home.

At last, our Champions of Azeroth will finally have a place to call home

And there you have our list of the features we hope to see in World of Warcraft's upcoming player housing. Even though I’m still a rookie to the game, I'm really looking forward to this feature.

Being able to kick back and relax in a house you own instead of resting at inns all the time in World of Warcraft would be a nice change of pace and make one of Blizzard Entertainment’s best PC games feel more immersive than it already is.

I can’t wait to own a house and lavish it with all the trophies I’ve obtained from killing Raid bosses and Mythic+ dungeon bosses when player housing goes live alongside the World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion in 2025.

During today's big Warcraft 30th anniversary celebration, Blizzard outlined the immediate future of World of Warcraft, and a variety of other projects. The major announcements revolved around Warcraft 1, 2, and 3: Reforged getting remastered versions, on top of major updates for Warcraft Rumble and Hearthstone.

For World of Warcraft: The War Within players, Blizzard offered a glimpse into the future of the game. We're getting a huge new patch dubbed Undermine(d), set in the goblin city of the same name. Undermine is a vast new subterranean city, complete with a new 8-boss raid experience with Gallywix as its ultimate villain. The patch will continue the story of Xal'atath and her efforts to subvert Azeroth itself, while also giving players new gear to hunt down and accolades to achieve.

For long time players, perhaps the biggest reveal / tease for World of Warcraft is the addition of Player Housing. In the next expansion, dubbed Midnight, players will finally be able to decorate their very own homes, complete with trophies acquired for various in-game feats. The tease has been a long time coming, since the feature was originally planned for the game over two decades ago, but has never materialized until now.

During the festivities, we spoke to game director Ion Hazzikostas as well as Assistant Lead Quest Designer Mark Kelada to learn a bit more about the future of World of Warcraft.

On Mythic+ progression, Hero Talents, and Delve rewards

Jez Corden, Exec Editor, Windows Central: At a high level, are you guys happy with how World of Warcraft: The War Within has been going so far? Particularly with regards to endgame progression, Mythic+ difficulty curve, and so on.

Ion Hazzikostas, World of Warcraft Game Director, Blizzard: I think high level, I'm very happy and satisfied with how The War Within has been going. The narrative journey, the world building, the beginning of the epic Worldsoul saga — I think it's been great seeing people just embrace that, while beginning to speculate about what's going to come next.

Delves and Warbands so far has played out the way we've hoped. On Mythic+, I think that this was a season of experiments. We changed the way affixes work, the way progression is structured, and we have been iterating based on feedback. A big focus for the team right now is to smooth out some particular pain points in specific dungeons, while also looking at class balance. We also don't feel like we have a proper on-ramp into the system.

For a lot of players hitting level 8 Delves, you're getting very powerful rewards at that point. When you look across from there to Mythic+, it can feel like there's no point doing anything below a Mythic+7, and 7 and up is actually quite hard. If you're someone without experience of dungeons to begin with, +7 is not the best point of entry, and it certainly wasn't designed to be a point of entry, so we think some players are hitting a cliff wall. So we see a lot of people bouncing off that would have previously had a home in early Mythic+ tiers. So, for Season 2, that's one of the big things we're going to address there. It just wasn't something we could change in the middle of Season 1.

Jez: On that point, do you think the Mythic+ Crest system is working out how you'd like? Sometimes I feel like it's a bit opaque and confusing, even for me as a vet. For new players, I've found it hard to explain at times, haha.

Ion: The Mythic+ Crest gearing system meets almost all of our design goals, save for that clarity and intuitiveness. That is one area we want to focus on in terms of naming them, tutorialization, and so on. We want to make it more logical about what you shuold be doing with Crests. The idea is to give players of all play styles goals to work towards, with ongoing power advancements, beyond specific item drops. Crests are an important part of the tiered structure of World of Warcraft, helping sure that the best way to get stronger is to push into harder content, rather than just grind basic content massively, as we saw previously with Artifact Power and things like that. You should want to complete higher tier dungeons, but making it clearer on how to get there is something we want to address.

Jez: I noticed you have been addressing some things mid-season such as racial bonuses, which were recently updated. I wondered how you guys are feeling about the overall balance of the game right now, not only for racial bonuses, but also Hero Talents. Are there more passes to come in the near term? Should we expect that Hero Talent trees end up simply being a case of "one tree for AoE, one for single target" and so on, as is the case for some of them?

Ion: On racials, I think we are taking more passes at increasing the power of particularly underpowered races, such as the Draenei Light of the Naaru, for example. Things that just don't feel worth even clicking in the current meta. At the same time, we want to keep racial power levels to be low. Just above "pure flavor" is the goal. The race you play should be an expression of your identity and preference in that regard, then I think it's meaningful to have some mechanical flavor associated with different races based on their heritage or physical quirks. We don't want to be at a place where players feel forced to play a specific race. There are a couple of race/class combinations where, at least when it comes to min-maxing, are higher than we'd prefer them to be. Those aren't changes we'd make mid-season, though.

On Hero Talents, overall we're happy with how they're playing out. Of course there are many trees, many specs, many ability interactions. There are some where there isn't enough diversity in terms of choices, and others have some finicky aspects that we're going to iterate. It overall accomplished our goals, though.

The situation you describe is a big challenge for our combat team, regarding picking specific trees for specific situations like AoE and single target. On the one hand, some players enjoy changing their load outs to solve specific problems. Others may dislike it, though, because they feel a certain tree is an expression of their preference or aesthetic identity. "This is what I think is the coolest, and I want this to work everywhere." That's true for hero talents, and maybe even specs as a whole. We try to strike a balance between strengths and weaknesses. That's why we made Hero Talents and talents in general heavily flexible, moving from single target, to something more AoE-oriented for dungeons, and then more utility-focused for PvP. I think that's the direction class design will likely continue in.

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On story delivery, Undermine, and player housing

Jez: I feel like World of Warcraft's story delivery took a huge leap forward in terms of quality and delivery with The War Within, but my concern would be that it was probably also very expensive to deliver too ... should players continue to have increased expectations for World of Warcraft's story as we move into 11.1 Undermine(d) patch and more?

Mark Kelada, Assistant Lead Quest Designer, World of Warcraft: The goal is never to see a degradation in our story quality, certainly. In making 11.0, we wanted to make sure that our villains are on par with our heroes. Heroes are only as good as the villains, right? That's why we want to give Xal'atath a strong path through the story. What are the conflicts and successes that we can have? She grew from being trapped in a knife, and is now a focal point of the main story.

On Undermine, it's perhaps not what you might expect from a typical Goblin story, but it does connect to the main arc. We're not giving anything away today, but you will see how big characters from 11.0 feature into 11.1 in Undermine, and how the war between Gallywix and Gazlowe has begun playing out. I will say that we do want to take time to tell lighter stories too, in that vein, because you can create fatigue if we bludgeon you with heavy stories constantly.

Jez: It's music to my ears about the emphasis on villains, and I do feel like Xal'atath is one of the strongest World of Warcraft has had in years. You mentioned about the balance between heroes and villains, but many felt 11.0 with The War Within's launch was quite heavily Alliance-centric. How important is the Horde vs. Alliance narrative to the future of WoW?

Ion: I think narratively, there's no question that the Alliance vs. Horde conflict is not the primary theme of WoW at this stage. We dived very deeply into that for Battle for Azeroth, and there is a history of conflict and tensions. But the story has always been about the factions ultimately working together to battle a shared enemy to save Azeroth itself. We found increasingly that trying to shoehorn conflict into those stories, it felt dissonant for players. It's almost not realistic, and almost frustrating to watch the Horde and Alliance snipe at each other while Azeroth is potentially facing apocalyptic destruction. I think that matches how players think. We're making the game more cross-faction so that players can play with their friends regardless of server of faction. We still want the faction anchors, the thematic identity of playing Horde or Alliance, which is why we often hear feedback like "this story is too Alliance focused" or "too Horde focused." We don't swing the pendulum based on the need to tell faction-specific stories, and we think it's important to note that an elvish story doesn't necessarily need to be Alliance-associated, and Undermine in 11.1 doesn't necessarily need to be Horde-associated too. Goblins were a neutral faction long before the Bilgewater Cartel joined the Horde. Obviously Alliance characters like Anduin have been front and center right now, but other characters with other affiliations will come to the fore over the course of the story.

Mark: We are cognizant of the feedback of course, but the discussion often revolves around what cultures or characters are best conduits to tell aspects of the story as it develops. Gazlowe is a character players might recognize from Battle for Azeroth with a bit of Heroes of the Storm too, and now we have an opportunity to build him up beyond that legacy experience.

Ion: We can say pretty confidently that we didn't just do Undermine because we felt like "it was time to give goblins their spotlight," but rather really because we're already underground. What are some known locations from beneath the surface of Azeroth? Obviously, one of the big ones was the Nerubian Empire, which we'd barely seen. The second big one was, of course, Undermine. Figuring out how to lead the story arc to Undermine was an early challenge, but it would've been a horrible injustice to make an expansion underground and miss out on Undermine. It was a labor of love for everyone to pull together and figure it out. The humor, the intrigue, the "fun" that comes with goblin culture, and it's a really deep exploration. We're going well beyond the surface.

Mark: Undermine was a weird sort of turn, but the team was hyped to make it work. We wanted to follow the "rule of cool" while also making sure the story develops in a way that doesn't make people go "huh?" It's a cultural story, but we're pulling different Azerothian races in too, we want to serve players and the characters they're playing too. We're excited to go deeper on a culture when the story allows us to make sure we're doing it justice, and not just try to shoe-horn things into a position.

Jez: Just a quick one before we run out of time... I'm not going crazy right, you guys did just confirm World of Warcraft Player Housing, right?

Ion: Yes, it is a tease. I hope we weren't too subtle there. Player housing is coming in World of Warcraft: Midnight. We'll have a lot more to say on Midnight and housing in the year to come. We wanted to end our Warcraft Direct on player housing to start conversations and discussions, and listen to what people want to see most from it. We don't want to say much more about it for now, since our focus is on The War Within, but we can't wait to share more in 2025.

World of Warcraft's roadmap is looking bright

A mountain of fresh content is heading to World of Warcraft in the coming months. WoW: Classic has a new Season of Discovery to look forward to, in addition to totally fresh realms based on the vanilla experience. World of Warcraft retail is getting the big Undermine patch at the start of next year, with an expansion on the horizon with Player Housing as a headlining feature in 2025. Warcraft 1, 2, and 3 have been refreshed and updated on Battle.net, celebrating Blizzard's heritage. Warcraft Rumble is also coming to PC, and Hearthstone is getting new StarCraft-themed content as well.

As someone who has been playing for 20 years, it has been a long time since World of Warcraft truly felt like it was firing on all cylinders. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard has removed much of the old guard from the organizational equation, which has been felt as a change of direction for one of the world's most celebrated franchises. Long may it live! Thanks a ton for reading, and thanks to Blizzard for taking the time to answer some of our questions.

What you need to know

• Blizzard Entertainment has revealed several upcoming updates for World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: Classic.
• For the retail version of World of Warcraft, Blizzard has revealed a Goblin-themed patch for The War Within expansion that will have players explore the Goblin city of Undermine to take on new dungeons, Delves, and a Raid featuring the infamous Gallywix as a Raid boss, which will drop during the 1st quarter of 2025.
• Blizzard has also announced player housing, a feature fans have requested for nearly 20 years, will at long last be added to World of Warcraft when the Midnight expansion launches during the Summer of 2025.
• For World of Warcraft: Classic, Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria will be added and that Hardcore servers will progress the content updates simultaneously as the regular servers.
• Blizzard has also revealed the 2025 Roadmap for World of Warcraft and the various content updates it will receive in the upcoming months.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment's beloved MMORPG that took the genre and the gaming world at large by storm in 2004, will soon reach its 20th anniversary.

To celebrate the occasion, Blizzard has made several huge announcements for its iconic MMORPG during the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, including a massive Goblin-themed patch update for The War Within, World of Warcraft: Classic receiving the Mists of Pandaria expansion, and a gameplay feature coming in the Midnight expansion that fans have been requesting for nearly two decades - Player Housing.

Here's everything you need to know about all these exciting content updates coming to World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft: The War Within - Undermine(d) Patch

The first big announcement for World of Warcraft is that World of Warcraft: The War Within will be receiving a Goblin-themed content patch update titled 'Undermine(d)' sometime later during the 1st quarter of 2025. In this patch, players on their quest to stop the evil Xal'atath from harming Azeroth's Worldsoul will be pulled into a madcap adventure in Undermine, the capital city of the Goblin race.

In this new zone, players will be dragged into a turf war between various Goblin Cartels vying for control of the city and contending with the return of the infamous former leader of the Goblins, Gallywix.

Gameplay-wise, the Undermine(d) patch will include the following features:

• The start of Season 2.
• Two new Delve dungeons along with thematic updates to the current Delves.
• A new ground-mount vehicle outfitted with speed-boosters to help players quickly traverse the new Undermine zone.
• A new dungeon that will be included in the Season 2 Mythic+ Pool alongside the four remaining launch dungeons three legacy dungeons.
• A new 8-boss Raid dungeon where players will square off against Gallywix and his army of minions.

World of Warcraft: Midnight - Player Housing

However, this news doesn't compare to the teaser trailer Blizzard showed at the end of the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, which confirms that player housing will finally be coming to the World of Warcraft in its upcoming Midnight expansion.

Player housing is a gameplay feature that allows players to buy their own in-game house and outfit it with lavish furniture and trophies they have acquired on their adventures. Fans have requested player housing for World of Warcraft for nearly 20 years since its early Vanilla days, especially since other competing MMORPGs like Final Fantasy 14 have player housing.

Soon, players will, at last, have a proper place for their character to call home when player housing gets added along with the many other gameplay features coming in the World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion in the Summer of 2025.

World of Warcraft Roadmap

Goblin Raids, Season 2, and player housing aren't the only things to be excited about, as there are tons of thrilling content coming to World of Warcraft over the next year, as shown in World of Warcraft's recently revealed 2025 content roadmap.

These new upcoming content updates to look forward to include:

• New story quests.
• A zone to explore called Siren's Isle.
• The return of the Plunderstorm event.
• Turbulent Timeways.
• The Winter Veil event with new quests.
• Content and system changes.
• System and UI updates for the Warbands feature.
• Horrific Visions Revisited.
• The Nightfall questline.
• Season 3.
• The grand reveal of the World of Warcraft: Midnight expansion.
• and much more.

World of Warcraft: Classic - Mists of Pandaria Classic

The retail version of Warcraft of Warcraft isn't the only one getting tons of new content in the coming months as Blizzard has also announced World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Classic.

In this massive update for World of Warcraft: Classic, players will be able to revisit the Mists of Pandaria expansion as it launched back in 2012 (albeit with some gameplay changes) when it goes live on the progression servers during the Spring of 2025.

According to the newly released content roadmap for World of Warcraft: Classic, there will be several updates for Season of Discovery and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm leading up to the launch of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Classic. Additionally, the regular and Hardcore servers for the 20th Anniversary Edition Realms will go live on November 21, 2024, and will progress content updates simultaneously up to Burning Crusade Classic.

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There's never been a better time to a part of the World of Warcraft than now.

Between these gargantuan updates for World of Warcraft, player housing finally being added to WoW, and the newly announced remasters for the classic Warcraft RTS games, Blizzard has definitely celebrated Warcraft's 30th anniversary with a bang. I know I'm particularly excited for the 'Undermine(d)' patch as not only is it going to be an insane, action-packed ride as Goblin-centric storylines tend to be in Warcraft but I'm chomping at the bit to fight Gallywix in the 8-man Raid.

For many years this greedy, money-grubbing monster villain has constantly backstabbed players, enslaved his own people, and even manipulated the fan-favorite character Sylvanas into declaring war against the Alliance to acquire a special resource called Azurite, leading to the loss of countless innocent lives during the Battle for Azeroth expansion - all so he could profit off it.

Needless to say, I can't wait to put down Gallywix for good and make him pay for his crimes when Season 2 of World of Warcraft: The War Within, the latest expansion for one of Blizzard's best PC games, launches during the Spring of 2025.