If you had said a year ago that World of Warcraft’s Midnight expansion would be its most transformative since 2010’s Cataclysm, few would have taken you seriously. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that Midnight has already brought more foundational changes to Blizzard’s 22-year-old MMORPG in the last few months than in the entire six-year period between Legion and Dragonflight. And it’s not even fully out yet.
It’s a more subtle transformation to be sure. Whereas Cataclysm overhauled all of Azeroth in an impossible-not-to-notice planet-wide catastrophe, Midnight is instead overhauling the game’s underlying fundamentals in a number of ways that may not be all that visible to those on the outside.
Many of those major changes are live right now, ahead of the expansion proper. Housing, a feature players have been daydreaming about for almost as long as WoW has existed, went live in December for those who preordered Midnight. Housing is one of the biggest additions to WoW in its history, a new pillar of the game going forward that will grow and expand over time. But that’s just part of WoW’s Midnight metamorphosis.
