WoW: Midnight Concerns — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Hello Internet, Tallyesson here, and today we are talking World of Warcraft Midnight.

[00:13] WoW's new expansion coming early in 2026, which honestly looks great. It's got Zalatath, Silvermoon, Angry Zalatath, Voidy Demon Hunters, Happy Zalatath, Harrowneer,

[00:25] And if you'd really like to zoom in on that one specific shot in the trailer, Zalatak feet. I mean, seriously, what's not to love? Well, I'm glad you asked that, actually, because today we are specifically talking

[00:38] all the things we currently don't know about Midnight, and which we are just a teeny tiny little bit concerned by. Now, the good news is, there is more information coming out all of the time.

[00:50] As we record this, there is a big deep dive scheduled for the launch of the Alpha Test next week. The Chris Metzen and Ian Azacostis hosted WoW Direct-style video that frankly was the central source of information

[01:02] that the initial Gamescom reveal for the expansion was very much missing. And so, you know, it's very likely that lots of the concerns raised in this video might be answered and put to bed then.

[01:15] Or they might just be confirmed. Either way, join us for all these things that we just can't stop worrying about when it comes to World of Warcraft Midnight, okay? Go go go go go go go go go. Flying? It's hard to exaggerate what a pleasant and important surprise being able to fly from the start of Dragonflight

[01:32] and then after the War Within was. Firstly because dragon riding was really cool, but mostly because it... blew in the face of pretty much every rule that Blizzard spent the last three expansions establishing

[01:46] in what I like to call the AP era. Remember, in Shadowlands, BSA and Legion, flying didn't even unlock until the second major patch. Heck, in Warlords, they didn't even want to put flying in at all, and only caved later because of the ferocious player backlash.

[02:05] So, when Dragon Riding was announced, we all expected it to be that expansion's AP equivalent. Something that we would be grinding and upgrading throughout the expansion, taking multiple major patches to even be functional, let alone fun.

[02:20] But no, that's not what it was like. There was no dicking around. You got to play the new feature, fully upgradable, with no limitations from the very start. And it felt huge, because it showed players that the devs weren't lying about learning the big lessons. The game was, in fact, different now.

[02:41] And Midnight looks to be continuing the Player First era of WoW that started in Dragonflight, and taking it even further. So I think we all expect flying to be available from the very start of leveling in Midnight,

[02:54] just like it has been in Dragonflight and WoW Within. Dev interviews have certainly hinted that that will be the case, and it's something we will have definitive confirmation on the second we step into Alpha next week.

[03:06] So my concern here might surprise you a little bit, Because, actually, I don't want flying from the start. I think it's awesome that Dragonflight and The War Within made such a ballsy statement of intent with flying,

[03:22] and those two expansions are all the better for it. But I'm at a stage now where I honestly believe Midnight would benefit from doing the leveling campaign at ground level. And I know many of you have just done a little sick in your mouth,

[03:35] at the very thought of no flying at the start of a WoW expansion in 2026, but hear me out. Everthong Woods looks beautiful. Zula Man is stunning. Harandar is very rooty, I guess.

[03:49] I don't know what on earth is supposed to be going on with Void Storm, but I look at these new zones, and I think I would really like to explore them on foot, you know? I kind of miss that feeling of getting to know every nook and cranny of a new zone during

[04:03] before I get to take off and ignore the little details. I love the zones in Dragonflight and War Within, but if I'm completely honest, I don't know them as well as I do zones from previous expansions that I quested around initially on a ground mount.

[04:17] And that feels weird to admit. I'm concerned that we are beginning to lose something in the leveling and questing experience by having flying enabled from the very start, basically. And if Blizz were to come out in their big alpha reveal video and say

[04:30] and say there is no flying during Midnight's Levelling Campaigns, and actually, I would be very in favour of that. Now, this dance does come with a very specific caveat,

[04:42] that flying is unlocked the minute that I complete the campaign and hit max level. No waiting around for another patch. I complete the story campaign at launch, I can fly now, and so can all of my as-yet-unleveled alts, too.

[04:56] This is the Player First era, after all. But in that scenario, yes, I think Midnight would benefit greatly from holding off handing the dynamic flying rings to players at launch.

[05:10] If you hate this idea, which I suspect you might, don't worry, because I'm pretty sure it is not going to happen. Which is why this is a concern that I have. I get the feeling Blizz is totally on your side with this one, and will be scooping around like no one's business from the very start.

[05:27] Of course, Midnight will give us the much-anticipated Devourer Demon Hunter, a new Voidy Demon Hunter specialization which lets us do great new Voidy Demon Hunter things just like you always wanted and Void Elf Demon Hunter options to do it with

[05:44] I don't know if I've ever felt like I needed a Demon Hunter that could throw Void Meteorites, to be honest, but I was born needing Demon Hunters who could grow saucy little bears like this, so I'm happy with Devourers.

[05:58] My concern, though, is that the new specialization for an existing class is all very well and good, but it's not a new class, is it? And I hate to do this, but I'm going to tap the sign.

[06:11] All the Best Wow expansions have had a new playable class. Wrath, Myst, Legion, Dragonflight, all bonafide top-tier expansions, all with a new class.

[06:23] Dragonfly's class even managed to be a little bit shit and it still didn't matter. The very existence of Evoker was enough. And we want Midnight to be a Stone Cold Classic expansion, so in all honesty, we kind of need it to have a new class, don't we?

[06:40] There's another new sign I can catch, which is even more concerning by the way. New classes are famously introduced on a two expansion schedule, time they haven't met that two expansion schedule is Shadowlands. Or was Shadowlands, because now

[06:58] it's midnight as well. Scared yet? I know, this is unfair. We don't just have Devourer to kind of scratch the new classic, but we've got a whole new allied race too in the Terran era which

[07:12] Shadowlands didn't have. But what do you think? Is that enough? Apex Talon. In every single expansion and reveal, it's usually pretty easy to identify the thing that might be shit about the expansion.

[07:26] And it's usually the thing that we have the least information or details on. So, in BFA, it was obvious to me that Warfront might be the thing that's shit. And they kind of were. Chorgath was the thing that might be shit about Shadowlands. Dragonriding was the thing

[07:42] that might be shit about Dragonflight. And Delves was what I thought might be the thing that was shit about War Within. This time, I'm tempted to say the Prey system, but I'm going to go ahead and say

[07:54] Apex Talents are the thing that might be shit about Midnight. Expanding the talent trees, giving players more stuff, I liked the basis of the idea behind Apex Talents, for sure,

[08:06] but as a general concept, they seem way more vague, way more directionless and harder to grasp than, say, Hero Talents were. They genuinely feel completely pointless to even talk about before they're testable on the alpha,

[08:19] which they won't be until max level testing in phase four, because there's nothing to really discuss about them as an idea. The discussion is only ever going to be, what is the specific one for your spec, and do you like it or not?

[08:32] And that's not very exciting for a new system in my mind. Now, the good news is that, compared to the things that might be shit about other expansions, Apex talents are also not relatively impactful

[08:44] and easily fixable and tweakable. Warfront's being a bit boring was kind of unsalvageable. Torgath needed to be completely disconnected from its initial legendary player power reward system

[08:56] to get anywhere near its potential as a fun gameplay mode. Dragon Riding and Dells turned out to be huge successes, but if Blizz had dipped up Dragon Riding in particular, it would have had a disastrous impact on the entire expansion.

[09:10] Apex Talents, though? I mean, if they're boring, that's a shame, but they shouldn't really break the game because most issues that will possibly arise in Apex Talents could be solved with just plastering them.

[09:22] So really, Apex Talents should probably be the thing that might be uninspiring about Midnight. Either way, I'm still concerned. Character customization. Hey, did you know that Taliesin was completely wrong

[09:36] about there being no Haranir in Midnight? And actually, not only are there loads of Haranir in Midnight, but we have playable Heronir Midnight? How wrong is it possible to be? Whatever is the most amount of wrong,

[09:49] that's how wrong Tali was about the Heronir. And these guys look great if you like trolls that are also kind of porcupines and have hair in places you wouldn't expect. But all these great customizations

[10:01] also serve to highlight another concern we have about this new expansion. What about customizations for other races? The last big customization revamp was in Shadowlands, and whereas some of us did very well out of those updates, like humans and

[10:16] night elves, others weren't quite as lucky, and some felt flat out neglected. If you were a panda, you basically had a headband to look forward to. If you were a night horn, then f*** you. Like,

[10:29] seriously, f*** you. F*** off. And since our video about those new Shadowlands customizations is now five years old, it's starting to feel like it might be time to have another go around with some of these. This is a Blood Elf expansion in many ways, isn't it? Wouldn't it be nice to,

[10:47] I don't know, maybe have Seriously Like Any New Blood Elf customizations? Cool Tier Inhumans and Volpira will be nudging 8 years old, which is over 60 in Fox series, with no updates by the time

[11:00] Midnight launches. Mechanomes are going rusty over here. Somebody help the Nightborne, please. Now there is reason to be optimistic about this concern especially if you play a Darkseer troll Paul Cubitt confirming that certain new customizations made for those characters will be unlockable for you on the completion of the Amani part of the campaign

[11:21] He only mentions hairstyle specifically, so be wary of AI summaries lying to you about beards confirmed for trolls. But, I mean, it should mean beards too, right? It should mean these cool orc-feeling body shapes, right?

[11:35] It should mean this beautiful, beefy prey boy, right? Well, it should, but that doesn't mean it will. As for the other races, it feels likely Blood Elves might end up with something new by the end of the expansion,

[11:50] but there's no indication there's going to be another Shadowlands-level influx of new customizations anytime soon. Housing. Hello, beautiful people. September is here, and if there ever was a back-to-school lover, it's me.

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[13:45] Like me. And, okay, York. At squarespace.com slash TaliesinEvitel. Now, I have a concern about player housing and the first impression that it's going to make. I've been lucky enough to play two different builds of WoW housing now,

[14:00] and I'm here to tell you straight up, it's awesome. It blows every single expectation of the system out of the water. In just the scope of its decor placement and room decoration alone, no one thought WoW would be able to achieve anything like what we are getting with housing.

[14:15] And that's even before you mention the new zones and the neighborhoods and the private neighbourhoods. This is all brilliant. It's going to get more brilliant with every addition to the catalogue and feature list over the coming years.

[14:27] A million out of ten. Thank you, honestly. So why am I concerned? Well, the builds I've played have been housing as I'd expect many of us will experience it in Midnight. With all the different types and size of room unlocks,

[14:41] a good healthy catalogue of decor items to choose from and a very generous interior item limit to play with. And I do think this will be very representative of the early expansion experience.

[14:53] But what about the pre-expansion experience? Because for probably millions of players, their first one, two, maybe three months of housing play won't be at the beginning of Midnight.

[15:05] It will be in patch 11.2.7, during early access to housing from pre-ordering Midnight. And I think there is going to be awesome things about this. Those months are going to be a joyous collect-a-thon

[15:17] of going to complete old quests and achievements for decor items, farming old dungeons and raids, buying stuff from the housing vendor in Legion Remix, maybe crafting stuff? Maybe? Or maybe the crafting portion of housing, which is huge,

[15:30] won't be coming until the midnight launch proper. Not ideal, but understandable if that's the case. My concern, though, is with endeavours and player progress. Because housing is something that, initially at least,

[15:42] players will level up, at least a certain amount. That one-player progress panel that we've seen in a blue post basically shows a renown track which awards housing items, but also new room shapes and sizes and interior decor limits.

[15:56] This renown bar is apparently progressed via monthly neighbourhood endeavours, which are basically travellers' logs, the same kind of everyday activities filling the bar. But I'm thinking it is very unlikely that this renown track will be activated in early access, though, right?

[16:12] I mean, can you imagine a shit show if early access players didn't just get to play housing a month or two in advance, but got to unlock a whole renown track before your average midnight enjoyer even sets foot through the door?

[16:24] But then, if these things aren't unlockable in early access, that means that the options players have in their early access building fund could potentially be way more limited than we'd really like. At the very least, you wouldn't have this room, you wouldn't have these items,

[16:37] and that's just a single screenshot that we've seen. And since, in my experience, one of the most joyous parts of housing is the freedom that players have, I concerned that early access players who are the players don forget whose opinion of housing and reaction to it are going to set the tone in the public consciousness could potentially get a less than ideal first impression of housing because of those limits imposed I

[17:00] basically worried that initially housing is a system designed to be levelled, and the levelling won't be enabled, has that? I'm probably fretting over nothing here, because the system is robust and exciting enough, even without that levelling dimension, I'm

[17:13] Sure, I just worry because I'm a warrior, ask anyone. I also have a concern about player housing. Lumber. The new player housing-specific crafting material that seemingly all player housing crafts will need

[17:26] alongside their other ingredients and reagents. So far, we know nothing else about lumber apart from this screenshot of a guy chopping stuff down from a Gamescom slide. So, is it a gathering profession?

[17:39] Does it take up a specific profession slot? or will everyone be able to chop down trees? Will there be a profession progress tree? Will there be different types of lumber in different zones or expansion continents?

[17:52] The fact that one of the crafting slides we saw in a blue post months ago specifies ironwood lumber, as in from the ironwood trees found in Ferulis and Fellwood, would suggest this would be indeed the case. Will lumber be bind on pickups like artisan vacuity,

[18:07] account bound, or completely trainable? Will the new transmog system allow me to have a pretty little lumberjack outfit that automatically appears when I'm chopping down trees? All questions I have that could easily turn into concerns if I don't get the right answers.

[18:21] The three opening raids. Did you know that Midnight launches with not just one raid in Season 1, but three? And yes, granted, it's the same overall amount of bosses spread over three different instances, but that's three whole raids, okay?

[18:36] I'm going with three, it sounds better. and obviously, for the most part, I love this idea, because I love it when WoW tries anything new, basically, particularly if those ideas have improving story delivery at their heart, which I feel this one probably does.

[18:49] Having the menu voice storm raid and the Harindar one-shot open in the first week of the season before the story climax of the March on the Sunwell a couple of weeks after has the potential to be an epic moment of storytelling,

[19:02] but it also has the potential to really spoil momentum for the new expansion, because raids are one of the things that we look forward to the most. They're one of the main features of World of Warcraft, certainly from the outside. You only have to look at the numbers that WoW gets on Twitch

[19:16] when there's a new raid and race to World First for proof of that. It's not the first time that WoW has had multiple raid instances opening up in the same tier, but it is the first time in the modern era with the way that WoW is consumed by loads of people now.

[19:29] So the midnight triad of raids approach, though definitely exciting, though definitely full of potential, or is worrying just because of how many unknowns there are. Apart from anything, what will the structure be exactly?

[19:41] Will we be allowed to enter the final raid if we haven't completed the first two? Will we be allowed to enter the Harondar raid if we haven't completed Hoistform? And I don't like thinking about things in terms of race to world first, but really, what effect is it going to have on race to world first?

[19:55] Seriously though, I don't know. This is a concern I have which I kind of refuse to be anything apart from quietly optimistic about, because I want it to work so much. I love to see a risk paying off, and I really, really hope this one does.

[20:08] And I think that's about it for my concerns, really. Oh, no, wait, here's one. This is a really personal one, okay? But I really, really hope that we don't see much of Arthas in this expansion. And I know, Arthas is awesome, Arthas is amazing.

[20:22] We should definitely get Henry Cavill to play Arthas in the World of Warcraft movies, even though he's, like, 30 years too old. All of this is true. It's just, I would really like it if, just for once, we could go, like, one whole expansion without having any Arthur's stuff at all?

[20:37] Do you see what it's like? Unfortunately, it feels pretty likely that at midnight, we probably can't, since the entire recent history of Silvermoon, and most of the people that still live in Silvermoon, is kind of unavoidably linked to the surge invasion that Arthur's led on Silvermoon.

[20:53] Not to mention the fact that we know Sylvanas is coming back in this expansion, and her story is pretty much wound up with his too. Basically what I'm saying is, I don't think this is going to be the artistry expansion that I want it to be. Which is a shame, isn't it? Or maybe not. I mean, Blizz do have bills to pay, and there's no better way of paying their bills than with this guy.

[21:11] I'd still just like one expansion without him, that's all I know. But what do you think? Not about artists, I know what you think about artists. What are your biggest concerns around Midnight? Do you agree with any of the worries we mentioned?

[21:23] Or do you have whole new ones? There's plenty of others we could have put in this video, like the prey system and how that's going to impact the open world. How much of player housing is going to be stuck behind the cash stop? All those new UI updates.

[21:35] The niggling, nagging dread I feel about the inevitable Zalatath fight and probably death and how early in the expansion that could turn out to be. The fact that in 11.2.5, Blizzard started to show signs

[21:49] that they may just be slipping back into bad old time-gating habits. There is plenty to be worried about, and so help me, I fully intend to worry about all of it as much as I can.

[22:01] So thanks for joining us today, if you liked this video, don't thank us, thank our patrons who give their actual real life money to make all of our work happen, and seriously patrons, as always, thank you, sincerely, because without you, there would be a whole lot less Taliesin

[22:18] and Everkell. If you didn't like it, downvote this shit out there, and remember my name is Bee. No, my name is Talia, and from me, I'm EverTel. Until next time, cheerio.