World of Warcraft: Midnight – The first hands-on preview
Blog Andrew Joseph 01 Oct , 2025 0
In the introductory film of World of Warcraft: Midnight, Mrs. Leadlin of Blood Elves joins with a distinctly anonymous enhancement group to defend Sunwell against this and the last big bad guy, Xal'atath. It turns out that there is a reason for their appearance to be ambiguous: it is us, the players. The first moment of the next chapter of Worldsoul Saga, which I played most of Alpha Build, made me start that precise moment, stopping this dark invasion. Quel'thalas's transformation of the Elf Kingdom deserves a sudden summon.
Clock strike
If you haven’t caught up with the midnight war event that Worth never really tried, it’s a direct follow-up to the previous expansion, and the midpoint of the planned trilogy, telling a straightforward story. At the end of the war inside, the manipulative Xal'atath uses us to eliminate a deity known as the Void Lord and drag it to her favorite plot, Bob (Bauble), which allows her to launch a full-scale void invasion of Azeroth. To achieve her plan, she had to extinguish the light itself, and therefore logically began to invade, namely Sunwell.
The designs of the new blank creatures are varied and evocative, especially in the case of more powerful lieutenants, which help sell the invasion bets. I won't exactly spoil the ending of this intro section, but Blizzard once again did a good job of telling a story using Skybox.
However, once the disaster is immediately under control, I have some welcome respite as I was quickly sent to Silvermoon City's new expansion center. It's awesome homecoming as a man has been following the story of this elf kingdom since Warcraft 2, he calls himself thalassaboo. The reimagined version is larger, richer, and denser than the one that has been around since 2007.
Now the dead scar left by Arthas tear the city into half the road to dawn, a highway that crosses the entire area and passes through the capital. The little remnants of the corruption and mana addiction that once plagued these lands. The once sleepy ghostly land is now folded into a larger Everso Forest area, and the eternal light has been restored to its farthest corner. This has been one of my favorite areas since the Burning Crusades and I'm glad to come back to see it bigger, healing and thriving.
World Summit
In the city itself, most real estate is now a faction-neutral expansion center with all the vendors and services you expect. The fair has crossed the road to dawn and formed a new city center, anchored by our command headquarters in the war with Xal'atath, a majestic light. The ruins of the Silvermoon sub-area once on the west side have been completely rebuilt by two lovely areas: Falconwing Square, the new home of Farstriders and Thalassian University, a glittering magic academy and one of the new insights. The murderous walk representing the dark alleys of Silvermoon has also been adjusted and is now part of the faction-neutral area.
About a quarter of the city is still a tribal-only area, occupying the mixing paths of the old Silvermoon Elders, Royal Exchange and Suns Region. The old faraway square has been folded to the latter two times, and the exchange goes directly into the Sun Stadium, but there is also a new partition on the southeast side called the “Blood Court” and all the things of the Blood Knight are repositioned. The Kingdom Government Center Sunfury Spire is now a floating tower above the city, limited to tribes.
League players entering these fields will get a 10-second grace period, and then all the guards become hostile like any other faction capital, but this aggro can be cleared immediately by re-entering the shelter. Overall, even if we should be ready to bury the axe, I am very satisfied with the cross-telling balance in a particular area of the faction. The tension between the visiting coalition and their tribal hosts played a role in the story’s opening time, an interesting political drama.
Concealed by lights
The first puzzle we were sent to solve in Quel'thalas was a strange and unexpected, just defeating a bunch of Void Bads. It seems that Sunwell's reignition also leads to areas called light pop-ups that become chaotic with life and brightness. In fact, the entire area looks a little flushed off and the color balance changes, which makes someone's floodlight too high. The long-standing Wow story shows that if you have too much, the light can be as dangerous as the blank, and it seems like we may be dealing with both extensions.
The problem became even more terrifying in the first game of “College Disaster” at midnight, which brought us to the University of Taracia where the lights were out of control. It feels short compared to War Inside, but my game difficulties are quite low. On the other hand, it feels more like a connecting area, similar to the best dungeons in WOW, rather than a few wars in the caves that are caves without real sense of place. You can see the rest of Silvermoon glory from the upper terrace, which really helps to make it part of the world and story.
The ruthless Valeera Sanguinar is your Delve Companion, replacing cheerful Brann Bronzebeard, a blood elf assassin who still wears like every female video game character in 2007, and she's working on it. I love the new cape. So far I've found only a few of her antiques, so it's hard to say how her fights were, but when you run with femme Fatale Edgelord the tone is very different than a lucky explorer. The speed change is a bit good. I don't know if we are BFF, but something strange happened.
In the shadow, I serve
We have not participated in the new Haranir Allied competition and no new courses have been added at midnight. But it does provide a whole new specification for Demon Hunter (Devourer) that uses voids to promote its power rather than the demon’s energy. Thematically, it's a really cool idea with a lot of grim resonance with the spin encouragement to melt a little bit, then a little bit more distance and then repeat the dance. If you played the Red Mage in Final Fantasy XIV, that's similar. The best part about Demon Hunter has always been that their fighting style relies on sports, and it is still here.
As for my trusted gun hunter, it's hard to compare Apple to Apple when it's still alpha, and my role on the test server is hilarious compared to my retail subject, but at least not much different in a single target. I went to great lengths to build my talent as close to the live version as possible, and the biggest thing I noticed was that the casting time for aiming shots was reduced, which was hard to slow down my rotation. Sentinel Hero's talent also saw significant rework, as did our main multi-field damage capabilities. We will put a pin or arrow in it.
Returning home
The biggest feature of the Midnight Period is certainly player housing, and I was happy to discover how powerful it is to customize your own small residence in Azeroth – from floor plans, decor to decor, to walls and floors. In this build, it seems like there are a bit of a hurdle to add multiple levels, so I don't have that much. But everything else is fine.
The tribal community of Razorwind Shores won the tribal community, from blooming deserts to rocky cliffs to tropical islands to rough pine forests. I do think the league might get a brief stick here, though. By contrast, it does seem like a comment near their founder’s perspective. This is mainly just a sweeping, green fairy tale forest, with several areas, with different kinds of trees, one of which is a bit weird.
I still have a lot of midnight alpha to see. Do my best, they won't even let me enter the mysterious realm of Zulman! But, basically every wake-up time has been playing with it since I got the visit, and I was impressed by the permission of the new area and custom housing when I wrote this article about 10 hours ago and I was so excited to see where the story of Worldsoul Saga is next. World of Warcraft: Midnight will expire sometime next year, but housing will be rolled out to anyone with an expansion in December.