WoW Midnight early access review — an enthralling homecoming for World of Warcraft fans

Drawing deep from the game’s history — both real and imagined — the new expansion hits hard

Over 20 years and in 10 other expansions, players have ventured into the cosmos, the afterlife, and an alternate timeline, and explored multiple undiscovered landmasses on Azeroth or caverns beneath its surface. But this is the first time since 2010’s Cataclysm that the new adventure has taken them back to their old haunts. Midnight, which is the second part of a planned trilogy of expansions called the Worldsoul Saga, refurbishes the northeastern corner of the Eastern Kingdoms, the homeland of the Blood Elves. Silvermoon City has been rebuilt as a seriously majestic new hub; the sparse starter levelling zone of Eversong Woods becomes a gorgeous new questing area, saturated with wild magic and subterfuge; and Zul’Aman, formerly a raid fortress, has been expanded into a vast, rugged homeland for the Amani forest trolls.

Only the subterranean jungle of Harandar, with its unlockable playable race the Haranir, smacks of the free-associated fantasy non sequiturs that have plagued some past expansions. Otherwise, Midnight is a magnificent return to familiar soil that, despite being a rework, feels more exciting than something wholly new. It’s not just nostalgia (although it certainly is that, too). You don’t have to have been with WoW since the start to sense that the geography and stories of Midnight share a deep connection to the essence of Warcraft. After all, WoW at launch constantly referred back to the events of three strategy games that had taken place earlier on the same map. Tribal rivalries, old sins, and terrain soaked in bloody history; this is what Warcraft is all about.

Nor does it stop there. I was stunned when one major questline took me out of the reimagined zones and deep into the lands of Lordaeron, to even older locations: Light’s Hope Chapel, Hammerfall, the Scarlet Monastery, Blackrock Mountain. (The latter two locations are legendary dungeons from launch-era WoW.) There’s even a flashback to events from 1996’s Warcraft 2. Whether you were there at the time for any of this or not, the sense of history is potent, not least because the span of time is measured in decades in the real world. Through its sheer age, WoW can muster a poignancy few other games can.

This questline follows Arator, a young half-elf paladin, son of two notable Warcraft heroes: Turalyon and Alleria Windrunner. (Turalyon and Alleria vanished from the timeline for a while to spend 1,000 years fighting demons in another dimension. It’s a whole thing.) Arator needs cheering up and reminding of his purpose after a fight with his dad, so undead priest Alonsus Faol arranges a kind of paladin-themed historical tour for him. On one level, this is a pretty cheesy therapy quest, but on another, it’s a reminder of Blizzard’s gift for making vivid, personal storytelling stand out on the maximal canvas of strategy and MMO games. That’s hard to do. You might roll your eyes at the conclusion of Arator’s questline, but by that point he’s real to you, and you’ll care about what happens to him next.

There’s some overt fan-service in Midnight, like the Arcantina, an interdimensional tavern where you can hang out with famous Warcraft names. (I was excited to prop up the bar with none other than the legendary orc hunter Rexxar.) But this expansion is more about returning to the spirit and themes of the game’s early years. There’s a major existential threat, of course. The Voidstorm summoned by current big bad Xal’atah is ever-present, a dark locus in the typically luscious skybox, skewered by an answering spear of Light from the Sunwell.

But this threat also stimulates factional tensions and rivalries, and to expose the cracks in the ideologies of Azeroth. The haughty blood elf guards of Silvermoon tolerate your presence, but might have some choice words for you, depending on your race or affiliation. Meanwhile, the cosmic opposition of the Light and the Void might seem like a straightforward conflict of good against evil, but Midnight routinely calls out supposedly heroic characters for their blinkered faith or compromised motives. Again, this is very Warcraft — a vivid cartoon world with a messy, tangled morality.

It’s ironic, perhaps, that the full-throated classicism of Midnight’s content arrives as Blizzard makes some decisive breaks with World of Warcraft’s past in its systems. Housing is a huge play for more casual players, but somewhat siloed off from the rest of the expansion. Meanwhile, a push to disarm mods that help players in dungeons and raids, alongside a streamlining of all the character classes, has completely upended how hardcore players interact with the game.

Although these changes have already been in place for a while, it’s too early to say how they will pan out within Midnight. As of this writing, the expansion’s only been available in early access for a few days and I’m not even at max level yet. I will say that new dungeon boss encounters that have been designed for this brave new world definitely feel more legible with no addons installed, while still delivering on novel, exciting mechanics. I’ve tried a few of the Delves — soloable dungeons that were previous expansion The War Within’s greatest and most popular innovation — and found them as refreshing as ever, but I’ve yet to experience the Prey system that will essentially allow you to hunt (and be ambushed by) boss-level enemies in the open world.

It certainly seems like the community, which was in such a febrile mood pre-expansion, has fallen hard for Midnight. But this is the honeymoon period for every WoW expansion. The reality of how the endgame grind feels, and how well Blizzard’s roadmap supports it, lies in the future. Previous expansions with great settings and storytelling, like Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth, have floundered in the long term over poor support or ill-considered systems. That may still be Midnight’s fate.

But right now, this is a magical moment for World of Warcraft. This is the most the game has felt like itself since 2016’s brilliant Legion. Arguably, it’s more so, because this time our boots are on familiar ground — ground trodden by generations of fictional heroes and 20 years of real ones. It’s an enthralling homecoming.