It's a momentous time for World of Warcraft. The next expansion, Midnight, will shift how the game is played for everyone with sweeping changes to the most popular combat mods and the long-awaited introduction of player housing.
This new era for the MMO will begin when Midnight launches on March 2.
Blizzard dropped the release date today, which is also a deadline for the beta that's currently running. Reactions have been mixed on how the developers are simplifying the many classes of WoW to work without needing mods, or addons, to tell you what to do. Game director Ion Hazzikostas made his case for why these changes needed to happen now and promised to be listening carefully to players as the beta continues.
Everything else seems to be going pretty smoothly—well, except the fish that ate everyone's frame rate. Every day I see people coming up with new and clever ways to make skylights and libraries with player housing. And, while it's not all positive, discussion around the story now that Azeroth has been invaded by towering void monsters seems to have everyone curious about how it'll play out.
Next month, Blizzard will be opening the gates to player housing early for anyone who has preordered the expansion. Patch 11.2.7 will act as a prologue to Midnight with a new storyline and some extracurricular quests to get you back up to speed on who the big players are.
Then, sometime before March 2, the pre-patch will come out with all the class and addon changes. It will basically include all the new systems coming with the expansion but without the new zones and quests.
It's still strange knowing roughly where things are heading from here. Blizzard announced three expansions at once way back at BlizzCon 2023: The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan. We know next to nothing about The Last Titan, but will be able to start making educated guesses once Midnight is finally here. Maybe that's when WoW will finally get the dance studio that Blizzard canned 15 years ago.
WoW: Midnight releases on March 2, and you can preorder it on the Blizzard store.
