The second installment of The Worldsoul Saga is arriving in World of Warcraft with the launch of the Midnight expansion in just a few days, and it’s already promising to bring some big changes to the game. Despite being the middle of a trilogy of expansions, developers assure players that Midnight stands on its own, so even if you missed out on playing The War Within, there’s no reason to think you can’t come back to Azeroth now.

In anticipation of Midnight‘s launch, ScreenRant had the opportunity to chat with several of the developers who worked on the expansion. Associate Game Director Paul Kubit, Lead Encounter Designer Dylan Barker, Game Designer Jake Shillan, and Senior Game Designer Kim Flack sat down with us to talk about everything they are excited for players to see when Midnight releases on March 2, 2026.

World Of Warcraft’s Midnight Expansion Brings Novelty To Azeroth

Prey, Silvermoon’s Murder Row, Zul’Aman, Even The Loa Of Abundance, Dundun

There’s a lot happening with WoW: Midnight‘s release, with player housing being added to the game, changes to how add-ons are handled, the new Prey mode spicing things up, and more. With so much to talk about, it’s always interesting to hear what the people who worked on it all are most excited about.

Of course, as Paul Kubit said, “some of it’s behind spoiler territory for sure! Some of the things that I’m most excited about are still things that have yet to be uncovered on beta or yet to be shared anywhere, really.” Yet, even dodging some of these spoilers, there are many things coming that are exciting.

Dylan Barker shared, “I’m somewhat strange in that I love to jump between different classes a bunch during expansions. So, I’ve got two things I’m really looking forward to. First off, there’s a whole slate of new delves and activities based on was going well in delves in The War Within, and now improves on that. There’s just a bunch of fresh delve stuff, so when I’m playing a class where I’m not necessarily familiar with their buttons yet and how I want to play, I can just jump in and do a delve and sort of feel that out.

Dovetailing with that, I kind of want to try and tank this expansion. I think it will be fun, and we’ve put in Mythic+ a new affix called Lindormi’s Guidance. I think the easiest way to understand it is it’s like a highlight on a creature in a pack to indicate the series of packs that you’d pull in a Mythic+ run for what is a reasonable line. It’s not necessarily the fastest, it may not be optimal for your group.

But when you’re getting your feet wet in Mythic+ as a tank, it can be very stressful, and it’s nice for the game and the designers of the dungeons to say, ‘yeah, actually, if you just do this, you’ll be doing a reasonable job’ and then all you have to worry about is how the mobs interact with you, how you survive, and whatnot rather than what route do I need to be going.”

Kim Flack had a fun answer focusing on a specific area of Silvermoon, “If you remember old Silvermoon’s Murder Row, that one little alleyway that was a darker, sort of nastier alley that had the Warlocks and Rogues, it was very cool. It’s been expanded into this massive area in the new Silvermoon. It’s actually pretty huge. I just love Murder Row. I love walking around there listening to the ambiance. I just love that dark blood elf vibe.“

Meanwhile, as someone who worked primarily on Zul’Aman, Jake Shillan said that “if I was being very, very biased, which I will right now, all my favorite things are in Zul’Aman.“

Shillan went on, “There’s a feature that we created called Abundance. It’s in Zul’Aman, or it’s rooted in Zul’Aman, you can find it in each of the zones. There’s one area in each zone that you can sort of go in. It’s an end game feature, a repeatable thing. Basically there’s this Loa of Abundance, Dundun. This just like floating, glowing green rat who is part Pope and part game show host.

He wants you to collect Abundance, to harvest Abundance from the land for him, in return for rewards. Basically, this event is like a very fun, very fast-paced arcade sort of thing. It’s professions themed, and you’ll get certain professions rewards out of it. Ultimately, a very fast-paced, time-constrained romp where you’re just killing, clicking, collecting orbs, like triggering jackpots, and I love that it was made.”

Changes To WoW Add-Ons Made Raid Design A Little Different For Devs

Players Have To Coordinate A Little More

In an effort to level the playing field, Midnight brings a big change to how World of Warcraft handles add-ons to the game, specifically combat add-ons. With these changes in mind, developers had to adjust some of their game mechanics for dungeon and raid design.

Barker states, “It was pretty foundational. I think the exciting prospect of it is that there are some mechanics that we will have tried in the past that asked raid groups to, in real time, match a game state to players and a set of actions and basically say, ‘hey, all of you arrange yourself in this way’ and we didn’t tell you ahead of time, but you knew something was going to happen, you just didn’t know in what order or necessarily what players were going to get picked.

In the past, that was automated. And the way that we had to challenge players at higher difficulties was by shooting a bunch of bullets at them to get them to stress while they were doing something that was otherwise automated.

We have encounters across the whole spectrum of the raid that will ask players to coordinate in a way that is not automated, and it will be very neat to see how this plays out. We’re able to just change the difficulty of a coordination test using elements of the test itself, instead of having to layer multiple pieces over it.

From a strict design perspective, that’s, as a team, very exciting. It’s also just called us out to be more clear and intentional about what mechanics we’re showing players. It’s not just about being simpler, it’s about being cleaner, easier to read, condensed into a number of mechanics that when they’re happening, they are the most serious thing you need to worry about, and we’ve had space to do that throughout Midnight.”

For players who aren’t big on raiding but want to see the story, Kubit shared that once again, the Story Mode raid mechanic is returning, where you can play through the final encounters on your own, at your own speed, with followers. Unfortunately, doing the raids in this way awards none of the fantastic loot, but it is a perfect way to make sure everyone has a chance to see the story.

The Challenge Of Midnight Being A Middle Chapter

Second Of The Worldsoul Saga Trilogy

Kubit said that “this is the first time we’ve built and intentionally framed multiple expansions as a trilogy. That is, this is the first time that we’re taking multiple expansions and really putting together an intentional story for them.“

“This is really the World Soul Saga, we’re talking about these same characters. The Haranir, who were set up in The War Within, now wer’re really exploring their story and seeing why they were set up and what that means for the rest of the story. The entire saga between Xal’atath and Alleria and the dark heart has led to where we’re at right now.

It’s been a challenge, partially because we want to make sure that players feel like they are ready to catch up. It takes a long time to tell the story of an expansion and there’s a lot of story that has already happened. So, some of the ways we’re sort of worked to make sure that players still feel comfortable is making sure that if you want to just play Midnight, you can hop in.

Even though this is the second chapter of a trilogy, it stands on its own. You’ll be able to understand where you are. You’ll understand who the good guys and bad guys are.” – Kubit

When asked if it would end on a cliffhanger, Kubit was a little less forthcoming. “The story doesn’t end here. So, call that a cliffhanger, or call it to be continued, but we’re going to have some more strings to pull on by the time we’re done with Midnight.“

WoW Midnight’s Prey System Will Change The Game

Now You Are Being Hunted Rather Than Just Doing The Hunting

The new Prey system is a fun way to add a little extra excitement to WoW, where you can opt in to having your quest target hunt you as well.

Speaking about Prey, Kubit shared, “One of the things that I’m most excited about is the Prey system. I have been just like daily playing prey on beta. I had an experience yesterday where I was playing on Nightmare mode. I’m playing a survival hunter, and as a reminder, Prey is an outdoor system where it’s an opt-in system where you can go on a hunt against a dangerous enemy, but that enemy is hunting you as well, and it can ambush you while you’re fighting anything.

As you escalate difficulty from Normal mode to Hard mode to Nightmare mode, there are additional torments that happen along the way. Rules of damage, ghostly followers chase after you, and whatnot. Anyway, I had this experience where I had one of the torments is to kill something where you have a limited amount of time like 15 or 20 seconds or take a big dot.

There were no enemies nearby, I looked over into the water off the coast of Zul’Aman and there was an eel in there. So I jumped off of the cliff, did my harpoon pull to kill the eel in time, and while I was underwater then I was ambushed by my target.”

Flack gave a little insight into where the idea for Prey came from, “I think one of the places that we started from was looking at delves and saying, what do people like about delves? Who is this serving? What types of people are playing these, who is enjoying this? And then also specifically looking at each season’s Nemesis bosses, who will sometimes pop out when you’re in a delve and just jump you. It happens at times you don’t expect. We saw players really enjoying that unpredictability.“

Flack added, “Prey has three different difficulties. Normal mode is for those more chill players who just want to add a little bit of an extra layer to what they’re already doing in their routine. Then Hard and Nightmare for those players looking for a lot of extra challenge. Nightmare mode kind of lives up to its name. If you AFK in Nightmare mode, you’re coming back to a dead character, which is spicy and not something we really see in the outdoor world very often, unless you AFK in a scary place to begin with.”

I asked Flack what would happen if you’re out in the world and have Prey mode on, but other players are nearby who maybe don’t want to be hunted. If a giant mob ambushes you, how would it affect others nearby?

“Yeah, this was actually one of my favorite things to problem solve with Prey, actually figuring out how to make this all very personal was really, really fun. It’s a fun challenge that we don’t get to think about very often.

I’ll talk about Nightmare, where it’s kind of the spiciest with ambushes. That’s going to be the thing that’s most public, and people around you are going to see most. It does fixate on you when it spawns, so it’s not like someone could be doing Prey and stand on top of you when you’re on your Paladin and, all of a sudden, you’ve got aggro on their ambush. It fixates on them, so all those abilities are going to be attacking that person.

But also, you can help them out. If you see someone fighting an ambush, like, ‘oh I know that person is doing Prey, I’m not on Prey, but I’m gonna go help them really quickly because I see they’re fighting something’ and that’s kind of a fun moment of spontaneous cooperation in the outdoor world.

As Flack said, “One of the main goals of the Prey system is to kind of inject a bit more thrill into the open world and make it a bit more exciting.“

Zul’Aman Gave Devs A Fun Challenge While Creating This Stunning Area

The Amani Trolls Are Much More Than Just The Legacy Of Zul’jin

Zul’Aman has received a significant glow-up with the release of Midnight, going from a raid and dungeon to now becoming a fully fleshed-out zone. As Shillan said, “We had to bust down the walls behind it and show you what Zul’Aman, not just the raid, but Zul’Aman the zone, the territory is, and what it looks like.”

He went on to say that it should definitely look familiar, but they had to take what little bits the raid showed people and the existing lore history about the Amani trolls and Zul’jin, and fill in the blanks. “We tried to create depth for the entire group, the entire culture, in order to sort of put it on a plate and let players enjoy.“

Shillan adds, “We have this culture that we’re familiar with, but definitely doesn’t have the amount of content that say the Darkspear Zandalari at this point do. So, we’ve got this great foundation and how we went about it, we were like, how do we extrapolate an entire zone, an entire culture out of this? We basically just said ‘why did Zul’jin do the things he did?’ and we started to dive into the history of the Amani specifically.

A lot of the Amani history is through the perspective of other cultures, and they see them as antagonists. So, you have to extrapolate the real story, right? Fill in the blanks, and then we have context for our zone.

It was challenging, of course, but it was so rewarding because we got to add puzzle pieces to a landscape that we had started 25 years ago [with Warcraft RTS].”

World of Warcraft: Midnight is launching on March 2, 2026, as the second part of The Worldsoul Saga, and we can’t wait to see you in Azeroth.

Systems

Released

2026

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op

Engine

Proprietary