Once of the nice things about World of Warcraft’s post-Shadowlands era is its ability to experiment—I never thought I’d see WoW get a Battle Royale-style pirate mode, or a zany, high-powered remix of a past expansion where actual drama happens over something called a Gulp Frog, but here we are.
World of Warcraft: Midnight means to carry on this new philosophy, as stated in a roadmap included in a State of Azeroth video posted to Blizzard’s official channels today.
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In it, a post-launch roadmap laid out a step-by-step plan for what players could expect to see after the expansion’s launch. First up: Prop hunt. WoW’s just getting a prop hunt. No I am not kidding, they are putting a prop hunt in World of Warcraft.
I mean, it makes a certain kind of sense—Blizzard’s player housing system has been in early access for a while now, meaning hundreds of different assets have been broken off into unique, collectible furniture models. The question you might ask yourself as a developer is, indeed, “what do we do with all of these moveable assets?” and the first answer that comes to mind is probably going to be “prop hunt, I guess?”
While I’m sure it’ll be a jolly old time, that’s actually the least interesting bit of the new expansion’s first year—first up, Blizzard’s going to be experimenting a lot more with single-boss raids going forward, scattering them throughout the expansion. One of them, included in patch 12.1.5, will even be a part of the game’s main questline.
It’s similar to how Final Fantasy 14 sometimes works its single-boss fights—dubbed ‘trials’—into its main storyline. And given the new story mode introduced in The War Within, it makes sense that Blizzard will start doing similar. After all, why not add a little spectacle into your questing?
The real meat on the bone, however, is the “Labyrinths” coming in 12.1.5. Details on these are fairly light, but they’re intended to be mega-dungeon variants of Delves, 1-3 person mini-dungeons that were introduced into The War Within. Labyrinths will be able to be completed in little chunks or all at once, and as someone who greatly enjoyed Delves in The War Within? I’m simply feasting.
Lastly, while there’s no specific details on it yet, there’ll be a new experimental game mode from the same slice of the WoW team that brought you Plunderstorm and Remix. What it actually is is unknown, but given how wild these modes have been so far? I expect great things (and maybe one or two forum arguments).
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