First of all, I appreciate your hard work. I love you for keeping WoW going. But we need to talk. Because Midnight isn’t what I hoped it would be and I’m starting to detect a pattern.
PLAYABLE RACES
In TWW, you gave us the Earthen allied race which very few players cared for. It remains rather nische to this day.
For Midnight, the general expectation was that we’d be getting either Ethereals, Forest Trolls, or (conventional) High Elves. But you’ve instead given us the Haranir, which truth be told look interesting, but have very little to do with the theme of Quel’Thalas or Light vs. Void. They feel like a leftover from TWW, sadly.
What goes into this decision making, is it a question of not being in tune with the community and its wishes, or are you simply determined to always follow your own creative aspirations no matter the cost?
ZONES
In Shadowlands, one common complaint was that we didn’t get the usual continent to explore, consisting of a cohesive set of zones that blend in together for a natural landscape. Players didn’t much like the zone-hopping.
For Dragonflight (and to some extent TWW), you remedied this by going back to a traditional continent. There was much rejoice to be had.
For Midnight, the general consensus was that we’d be getting a very fleshed out version of Quel’Thalas (possibly including Lordaeron), or even a revamp of the northern half of the Eastern Kingdoms. “When it makes sense, we like to revamp zones,” you once said. What better time than now?
Instead you’ve decided to only offer two zones set in the Eastern Kingdoms (Eversong and Zul’Aman) with the other two being the home of the Haranir (Harandar, commonly referred to as “Rootlands” by players), as well as a zone themed around the Void (Voidstorm).
This, seems to me, a return to the disjointed approach to zones, which will end up making the new region feel smaller and less immersive. Is there a reason why you didn’t include zones like Northeron or Eastweald in the south?
GAMEPLAY FEATURES
I’m very excited about Player Housing, but let’s be real. This feature has been built by a separate team and was announced well in advance of Midnight. It feels like you’ve decided to take an evergreen gameplay system which was meant for the entire World of Warcraft, and slapped it on as a feature to Midnight last minute.
Beyond Housing there is an Allied Race, a new Demon Hunter specialization, and the new Prey system (I will refer judgment on that until we know more).
It just doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot new in Midnight. If a separate team was working on Player Housing, then what on earth was the regular team doing?
I don’t see anything here that even remotely compare to Artifact weapons or Order Halls from Legion. There’s no mention of a new mode of transportation like Dragonriding. No new class, and not even a single word about additional Hero Talents (weren’t those meant to be evergreen?).
In fact, many would probably argue that we half-expected the new Demon Hunter specialization to arrive as a patch feature during TWW, like the Evoker Augmentation spec did in Dragonflight. Why was this kept as a Midnight feature, unless to pad the expansion’s light feature set?
CHARACTER CUSTOMISATION
You’ve said before that you want to offer players new ways to express themselves. We’ve seen the wealth of options given to the Dracthyr, and we remember when you said more races might be getting similar options in the future.
Well, it’s been a couple of years and we’ve yet to see anything like that. In fact, one could argue that after the introduction of the Dracthyr race, you almost stopped creating new character customisation options altogether, save for a few new colours.
Where is the customisation, and what’s taking so long?
Beyond customising your appearance, players have also been asking–no, begging–for years at this point for new class/race combinations. You’ve even prepared for it in the lore by giving us quests involving Tyr, and visits to the Emerald Dream itself.
So we waited for the next patch. And then we waited for the next expansion. And then the next. Yet here we are, and all we seem to be getting is the Demon Hunter class opening up to Void Elves?
Where are the Night Elf Paladins, the Blood Elf Druids, and the Human Shamans? Let’s go, Blizzard!
FINAL NOTE
I wish to end on a positive note.
I look forward to this week’s upcoming developer panels, and I’m going to be watching them with an open mind. I know Ion sometimes carries a card up his sleeve, that they’ve kept for the interviews and the deeper discussions.
But, and I say this as somebody who’s played Warcraft since he was a wee lad in the mid-90s, stayed up for every WoW midnight launch and kept coming back for more, please get your act together and start listening to the players!
Do not get complacent after recovering somewhat after the Shadowlands era. Keep listening to us. Take our requests and our wishes seriously.
Thank you!
) that The Isle of Quel’danas in updated form will be one of the patch zones. We’ll see though.