We spent early access and the first week after the official launch with the new World of Warcraft expansion, Midnight. How is the granddaddy of the MMORPG genre doing in 2026?
The long-awaited Midnight expansion for the legendary World of Warcraft is finally here! Just like with the The War Within (TWW) expansion, I’ve spent the last few days diving into the game so I can give you a quick rundown of my impressions, talk about the story, introduce new stuff, and gripe about some changes. Finally, I’ll wrap it up in a way that helps you decide if it’s worth dusting off the game of your childhood or teens after all these years. So, without further ado, let’s jump in.
What’s New?
Let’s kick off with the updates. The biggest one, of course, is Housing. A feature that players have been asking for years is finally in the game with the arrival of Midnight, and honestly, it couldn’t have turned out better.
Housing introduces a completely new dimension to World of Warcraft. It’s like a game within a game, where players can build their own little house and customize it however they like. Big props to the developers because the freedom you get in designing/decorating your house is mind-blowing. It’s led to entire communities online focused solely on this aspect of the game.
People are sharing tips, advice, and tutorials both in and out of the game, and it’s clear that Blizzard hit the jackpot with this feature. This is emphasized by the fact that there’s now a dedicated page in the shop for selling decorations for real money. Basically, after more than 20 years, they’ve found a new way to cash in, and honestly, I can’t complain because I’ve spent dozens of hours just on Housing and I’m still not 100% satisfied with my final house design. There’s always something to improve, collect, or make.
Let’s go through the rest quickly:
- New maximum level: 90
- 4 new zones (revamped Eversong Woods with new Silvermoon City, Harandar, Voidstorm, expanded Zul'Aman)
- Prey system
- Talent revamp + Apex row
- New Haranir race (for Alliance and Horde)
- New delves, dungeons, and raids
Era Without Major Changes
While I’m praising Housing as probably the best feature ever added to the game, let's be real. The rest of the updates in Midnight aren’t all that groundbreaking. The new race is cool, especially with the new druid forms, but honestly, there are plenty of races in the game already.
It won't surprise anyone that the new zones look stunning, especially the revamped Silvermoon, which I’d call the nicest and most practical city in the game. On the other hand, we got two old zones with a new coat of paint and two brand new ones. Personally, that feels a bit lacking. This ties into the length of quests in each zone. This time, I think the devs overdid it a bit. Even if you’re not doing all the side quests a zone offers, you still spend way too long there, in my opinion, before moving on. I think we should’ve gotten one more unique zone and cut back on the overwhelming amount of stuff in the existing ones.
As for raids, I can’t judge yet, but I’m super happy with the variety and creativity in dungeon design. Blizzard knows what they’re doing, and once again, they didn’t disappoint. It’s too early to review delves, but they’re planning to add labyrinths—huge multi-level delves you can explore in different ways, which might make this feature even cooler.
The biggest letdown for me was the Apex talents. This system doesn’t offer any choice, doesn’t add new skills, and doesn’t change how your character plays fundamentally. And the Prey system? Just a bunch of dressed-up weekly quests with nice rewards. Nothing groundbreaking.
If I had to sum it up, Blizzard hasn’t strayed from the formula set by (the very successful) Dragonflight expansion and later refined in TWW. Which I totally get, but it bums me out a bit because there’s no new class, not many significant changes to professions, a stagnant leveling system, and an unchanged skyriding. These are things that not only bug me but judging from feedback since launch, they bug a lot of other veterans as well. After so many years, it’s fair to expect that these aspects will get some love and a revamp soon. While it’s not stale yet, it’s getting there. Now, onto my biggest gripes.
Story Without a Punch – This is Where It Gets Real
...where was I? Ah, I remember now. Two and a half years ago, I wrote about my excitement for the first part of the so-called Worldsoul Saga, a trilogy of expansions for the still-popular World of Warcraft including The War Within, the freshly released Midnight, and the upcoming The Last Titan, which Blizzard announced along with the return of series mastermind Chris Metzen (voice of Thrall) during BlizzCon in 2024.
The reason was simple. The game was finally getting an epic story back, with character arcs and a world that evolves and feels deep, just like it did in Wrath of the Lich King (I personally liked the Garrosh story during Mists of Pandaria a few years later, but you get the point…). And at least at the start of TWW, it seemed like this would really happen. The main villain Xal'atath and her teasing with the central characters felt like we’d finally face a threat that wasn’t out of nowhere, but instead was being gradually built up and layered, making it all the more fun and possibly more emotional to deal with.
I’m probably not the only one who’d say by the end of the previous expansion, many of us were a bit tired of Xal'atath (except for her legs, of course) and the thought of spending two more expansions with her wasn’t that appealing. Which brings us to Midnight. Spoilers ahead.
After an electrifying opening cinematic and a great intro questline defending Silvermoon from Void forces, we manage to repel the attack using Sunwell and hold off Xal'atath for a while. But soon the main story falls apart, and we (players) are asked to resolve a troll conflict here, investigate Light magic effects there, and head back to space to the planet Voidstorm where Xal'atath is amassing troops for a Sunwell assault. While I don’t expect a super-strong storytelling from an MMORPG like in classic RPGs, I can’t shake the feeling that the devs are just finding ways to stall the main Worldsoul Saga plot to stretch it across all three planned expansions, instead of letting the story flow naturally. Maybe even let a character die now and then.
Of course, we’re just at the start of the second expansion, and Blizzard promises to speed up the pace of new updates (and thus the story) over the coming years. Still, the lack of momentum and so few changes or real innovations in these early Midnight days caught me off guard.
In summary, if it weren’t for Housing, World of Warcraft might be in a bit of a lull—a sort of waiting phase before an epic trilogy finale that will hopefully bring a shake-up of changes and new features to revive and maybe slightly re-direct the game for the years to come. If you enjoyed TWW and don’t mind that Midnight is pretty much just a bigger patch, you’ll have a good time playing, especially if you take it seasonally. But if you quit the game a while back and are on the fence about whether it’s changed enough to be worth returning, you might want to hold off for The Last Titan. Based on what Blizzard previewed a few weeks ago, hopefully, it won’t be a long wait.
