MIDNIGHT HOUR

WORLD OF WARCRAFT: MIDNIGHT changes the MMO dramatically to cater to new and returning players, with more content—and less complexity—than ever before

- Heather Newman

Midnight, the latest expansion for venerable MMO World of Warcraft, is its biggest, fastest and most ambitious. It may also mark the best time to jump into or return to the game: Blizzard Entertainment developers say they are clearing out two decades of “cruft” to make WoW simpler to start.

Making World of Warcraft less complex is a challenge while also transforming significant aspects of the game. The expansion is the game’s first story sequel, the second in a trilogy of expansions that started with The War Within and will end with The Last Titan, and adds a huge player housing system, new dungeons, raids, singleplayer delve instances and one new class specialization, among a pile of other features. “Midnight is an ambitious expansion in a lot of ways,” senior game director Ion Hazzikostas says. “We're taking some big swings here.”

Midnight will launch on February 27 for Epic Edition Early Access and on March 2 for its wider release. Digital editions cost $50-$90, with a $140 physical Collector's Edition and a monthly subscription that varies by country.

The expansion is the latest drop in the increasingly swift drumbeat of content for Warcraft players. Content update patches that in past expansions might have taken six months—or in some depressing cases a year or more—hit reliably every eight weeks during The War Within. Midnight is the fastest expansion Blizzard has ever launched, hitting the streets just 18 months after TWW debuted.

“Gaps in content are not OK,” Holly Longdale, vice president and executive producer at Blizzard Entertainment, says firmly. “At the end of the day, you're playing an MMO for content, for things to do with your friends.”