Warcraft: Midnight in the Oasis

We’re on the cusp of Midnight Season Two, so here’s the very late report on Season One.

Three launch raids was certainly an interesting tactic, and I think it worked for the most part. It was fun to progress a story through quite different environments, though the one-boss Dreamrift was barely a raid. It might have been fun to have a old fashioned (mini) reputation grind behind each Raid, only unlocking the next once complete, but I can understand the modern player-base might not accept such a fake wall.

The Voidspire was an good raid with interesting bosses, and March on Quel’Danas, despite only having two bosses, was excellent. Belo’ren was a visually spectacular boss, and Midnight Falls a suitably complex finale. Having said that, Blizzard seem to have even further nerfed Normal raiding as we one shot L’ura to complete the raid trio.

---

The Race to World First was entertaining, starting with controversy when Mythic Alleria Windrunner, the final boss of Voidspire, fell almost instantly. A repeat of the anticlimactic finish to Undermine threatened, but the Race was saved by an epic and super close progression through March. Liquid completed their sweep, barely, as Echo were again pipped at the last¹.

The next race starts in a few days, hopefully another close one. Having a US and EU team as the front horses means there’s pretty much always something to see no matter the hour. And I’m looking forward to Dratnos and Tettle’s recaps which are always entertaining and educational (here’s a primer for the race as a start).

The zones in Midnight are fine, if a little disappointing in that much of it is a reworked Eastern Kingdoms. Zul’Aman surprised me by being the most interesting zone, the Trolls never having grabbed me. The story of re-establishing the Loa was great, as was seeing a grudging respect evolve between the Alliance Elves and Horde Trolls. Not convinced yet on the Harandar ancestry revelation, but perhaps it will work out.

I found myself a little detached from the world and wasn’t sure why until I realised it was because we were flying from the start. Jumping directly from quest to quest without having to gallop along overland made the entire thing a bit flat. Why explore when you could plonk down directly on the objective. Someone (Dratnos?) suggested a possible solution to this, which is an Achievement that could be granted for levelling without flying (and, obviously, awarding a ground mount for completion!). Fly your first character through everything, then spend a leisurely time with an alt learning how the land’s heart beats.

Overall I have found Midnight to be on the wrong side of too much. There are now so many sub-tasks, systems, and complications that it is overwhelming. Delves, Prey, M+, Abundances, The Arcantina, Omnium Folio, Altar of Corrosion, Cursed Surges, Prey, Weeklies, Dailies, Bonus Rolls, oof. Then the sub-patches introduced even more, from Void Assaults to Ritual Sites to new mini-zones to the one-boss Sporefall ‘raid’ (so far the two single-boss raids haven’t deserved the label).

It became so much that I immediately stopped playing after the Raids were done. Even the lure (ahem) of the Abyss Anglers wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

I wonder if the Blizzcon rumoured Classic+ is an opportunity to reset this chaos and return to a more straight-forward approach to systems. We can only hope.