The Midnight 12.0 Review
As we enter the lull before 12.0.5, I finally had time to write out my review of 12.0’s story. We’ll cover the level up and the max level campaign. I’ll cover brief summaries of the storylines, my thoughts, what I liked/didn’t like, and what I’m looking forward to next. We will, as always, get out the tinfoil hat.
Without further ado, the Midnight review!
Ily, was it good?
Yep! Vast majority excellent, other parts solid, some parts not good. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I remain both optimistic for what’s next and happy with much of what’s being told.
Quel’danas Intro: Siege of the Sunwell
We have had instanced intro experiences to new expansions on and off since Warlords of Draenor. Here’s a quick recap of which expansions had one and where it was set.
Warlords of Draenor: Tanaan intro at the Dark Portal
Legion: Battle of Broken Shore
BFA: Teldrassil burning, Battle for Lordaeron, escape from Tol Dagor, and Stormwind Infiltration
Shadowlands: Escape from the Maw
Dragonflight: no intro instance
The War Within: Fall of Dalaran
Midnight: Siege of the Sunwell at Quel’danas
I have enjoyed most of these. I notably did not enjoy the BFA intro because Teldrassil literally makes the Horde player commit a war crime with no choice not to, Lordaeron is fine but a bit wet noodly, and then the other intro experiences in Stormwind and Tol Dagor fell super flat for me. The rest of these have all ranged from solid to excellent, with the Tanaan intro being by far my favorite until now. Midnight has dethroned it after 12 years at the top.
This intro experience does everything an introduction needs to do, successfully, while also leaving room for establishing themes, character motivations and dynamics, stakes, and stunning set pieces. Everyone is at their best here: we have the phenomenal Arator CGI cinematic, Liadrin in defender mode, Turalyon in command, and all of our Light-wielding allies popping up. This intro does what many intros have failed at: establishing a serious, actual threatening invasion force. This Void army is big. When you kill one set of guys, two more pop down like the Thanos ships from Infinity War, 20 portals pop out jellyfish, and 2 behemoths spawn where one was.
The final cutscene where the Sunwell channelers summon the Light laser was well-acted, voiced, and Liadrin is on fire.
I loved it. 10/10.
Eversong Woods
Eversong is framed as a three-pronged introduction to the other plots being explored before the Voidstorm. You immediately find Orweyna from TWW and investigate the Lightbloom with her before moving on to Umbric and the Twilight’s Blade infiltration. Lastly, you clash with the Amani at the border where we have the fabulous cinematic of Zul’jan telling Turalyon to fuck off and Turalyon maiming his son on accident.
This is a great approach to prepping an expansion story. I definitely get why folks were let down after expecting some more Sin’dorei specific story in Eversong. My entire approach to Midnight was less expecting Blood Elf specific plot and more “updated old zone is where an invasion will be set.” That’s not to say anyone was right or wrong, that’s just what my expectations for the expansion were based off of the announcement. Much like how for The Last Titan, I’m not expecting a revamped Storm Peaks to have all the follow-up stories to what we last saw on that continent. I was frankly happy with the limited Blood Elf story we did get due to not expecting it.
This “here are your options” story in Eversong worked for laying the groundwork of what’s next, showed enough of a rejuvenated Quel’thalas, and had a climactic dramatic finish. 8/10.
Zul’aman
This is an immediate contender for the new best-written zone in the game. We’ve done “let’s go around a Troll zone and check in on all the regional Loa” like five times before, but this is the best it’s been done. Can I just say how refreshing it was to not find that one of the Loa was either dead, betrayed us, or in the process of being killed in prison? Oh my god.
Zul’jarra and Zul’jan are both basically perfect. Zul’jarra is probably the funniest character in the expansion while also maintaining a solid, traditionally heroic moral compass, while Zul’jan is completely justified in feeling the way he does. Watching them clash through the main campaign and their stay awhiles was a genuine treat.
Then there’s Liadrin, who, as we saw in her animated short, used this invasion as an opportunity to confront her own inner prejudice. She started with the Undead, realizing she needed to relax her attitude towards Alonsus Faol, and brought that attitude to the Amani, deciding to take a diplomatic approach. One of my favorite lines from her: “I didn’t realize how bad things were for the Amani.” Fantastic. Immediate recognition of a position of privilege, dominance, and a decision to not make their situation any worse. I was absolutely flabbergasted with how well-written Lady Liadrin was in this expansion and she is leaving 12.0 as my favorite Blood Elf. She’s on a guest visit to Zul’aman and seizes the opportunity to better herself, create a better situation for the Amani, and fight off the void.
Back to the Amani, this story was just excellent. Zero notes. I cannot believe how good this Zul’aman zone was. Myself and many others were immediately nervous the Amani would be villain batted again. Nope! The various minor tribes all had unique characterization, the sojourner stories added a layer of depth, and Zul’jan is just. So good.
I think my favorite tension in this zone was that the writers refused to budge on Zul’jan feeling like the Loa abandoned the Amani. We go through and completely understand why the Loa dipped: Zul’jin and Malacrass were genuinely awful towards them and violated many ancient agreements. Zul’jarra represents an opportunity to resolve those violations and start anew, revealing one of Midnight’s major themes: younger generations fixing the errors of those who came before them (read: millennials fixing boomers’ mistakes). This is “fuck off, boomer” the expansion, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
That said, even though there are some ethical questions with Zul’jin’s resistance to the Sin’dorei, I do want to highlight that the narrative is neoliberal and doesn’t approve of violent resistance towards colonization. I understand why folks have written it this way, and there is definitely something to be said for Zul’jarra deciding that Zul’jin was wrong, but at the end of the day, she is making peace with colonizers and decrying her grandfather’s attempted resistance towards them using violence. I’m not saying she’s right or wrong, but this is definitely a fact of the WoW narrative: the person in power gets to decide when violence is ok, just like our real world.
Zul’aman was excellent. I am extremely excited for the inevitable Troll patch at the island across from the zone. The stay awhiles here are some of the best individual dialogue ever written in this game, especially the two featuring Zul’jan at the end of the story. 10/10, if I could give it a 12/10 I would.
Arator’s Journey
The way they took Arator from a generic Paladin NPC and made him genuinely great, with some assistance from Yuri Lowenthal, is so impressive. It’s definitely a decision to pick him as a lead character: this guy hasn’t done much other than be Alleria and Turalyon’s son. They took on a challenge and succeeded. Alonsus Faol really shines in this questline from the start, with instant classic lines such as: “such a troubled boy. That’ll happen when your father leaves a gaping wound in your chest.”
This questline, like Zul’aman, is again Warcraft writing at its peak. This is very different from the Zul’aman zone: instead of a long-awaited location and heroic turn, this revisits older zones, adding updated interactions, character moments, and decisions. This questline is our second look at the central themes of Midnight: “ok boomer” and “is the Light capable of being bad?” Yes!
For folks who were mad about the Light being framed as potentially harmful, or who said “this is a new idea just to be woke,” may I point you toward the Scarlet Crusade? These guys have been around since 2004 if not earlier. The concept of Light-allied folks being capable of evil is not new to WoW. You’re just reading it wrong. We see Arator have a crisis of faith caused by his father literally maiming him and it works on so many levels.
Starting at a macro level, Arator learns that Paladins of the Silver Hand were more than just heroes. Some of them were poets, healers, and friends. He continues to Hammerfall, where one of my all-time favorite zone characters returns: Sunwalker Dezco. Here, we show Arator a different option for what his life can look like, one that he hasn’t considered. Lastly, we end with a visit to his familial past, encountering the sustained remnants of the Dark Horde. For folks who thought this was implausible, I point you toward our world, where we have people clinging to ideologies that lost wars as far back as the 1800’s. Just because the head of the snake is cut off doesn’t mean people stop believing in the ideas.
The final cutscene is a reframe of Turalyon’s first major loss of control. I don’t have a problem with this: we always knew he went berserk after Lothar died, and I have no issue with choosing to frame it as his convictions overtaking him. This questline ends brilliantly: where a prior expansion would have us hug it out and say Turalyon is all better, Midnight disagrees and allows Turalyon to view himself as beyond fixing. This was a fantastic choice-one of my favorite of the entire experience. Arator picks up his father’s reforged shield and we go have a drink with the Sons of Lothar at the Arcantina. 10/10, no notes.
Harandar
Here’s our first snag. I’ll just get this out of the way: the only problem with Harandar is the continuity concerns. We do need clarification on the origins of the Haranir, as the game, art book, and developer interviews have now given three different origins for them. I think the criticism aimed at this zone around continuity is totally valid and I agree that I would like it better established.
As for the rest of the story? Totally fine. This is once again “ok boomer”: the zone. Orweyna is trying to help her society break its isolationist tendencies. We have multiple depictions of the various degrees of isolationism here: the elders who want to maintain their old ways, Elder Hagar, who wants to adapt, and Lightwarden Ruia, who actively wants to veer further to the political right. I also wanna shoutout my man Xavius: the Rift of Aln being present in this zone means that he was the closest villain to the Worldsoul in his plans. Well done Xavius, you gave it a solid try.
This zone sets up an obvious but necessary question: who took the goddess from her cradle? It does make sense that, if Azeroth has been contaminated by the Titans for quite some time, they would have found her in a habitat before encasing her in the Worldcore. This zone continues what TWW started with the Earthen and the Haranir and is where you can see the throughline of the “trilogy” story. It was here that I realized the original pitch for 20th anniversary was Khaz Algar->12.2->13.0. Thankfully, we live in a timeline where the team decided that story was too big and is giving it more time to exist (which also means I got patches like Undermine and K’aresh, two of my all-time favorites).
The zone begins with a visit to a painting and an image of Keeper Freya, our first tip that the Titans found Harandar and yoinked the Worldsoul from her cradle. It does make logical sense that there would be an “untouched” species that lived here, unordered and primordial as fuck. I think the presentation could’ve been done differently, but I don’t have issues with it. I start to have concerns when the roots of the various world trees come up, as they did truly just sit there while the roots burned. Then I remembered our current world, where people watched livestreamed catastrophes and did nothing. Yup, this is actually totally plausible.
The story ends with us coming back up to Eversong as Ruia reveals he’s insane and wants to point the Lightbloom back at Eversong to get it out of Harandar. For a minor villain, he actually makes some sense. His motivation does remain for Harandar to be safe, instead of some Lightbound allegiance. Not bad!
The Haranir certainly have a hand to play in getting to the bottom of the conspiracy around the Worldsoul, and with them as allies, we will get closer to the truth in patch questing. 8/10. I enjoyed myself, deducting points for the continuity questions, and overall not quite as high a high as the other zones. Did I think it was bad? Nope!
Silvermoon Interludes
I wanted to touch on something very small that was essential to how strong the level up was. At various level breaks, you’d have a one-off quest to go quiet growing unrest in Silvermoon. These quests were absolutely fantastic and contributed to how much of a pressure cooker we were in during the base game. I particularly enjoyed the quest where the Vanguard is about to execute Umbric and Anduin steps in, briefly asserting his authority as a representative of the Alliance to vouch for a Void Elf, one of his own.
These quests? More. Now. This was exactly what I’m talking about. The Midnight level up is tied for my favorite section of WoW story and these were a huge reason why. Excellent. Do this more.
Voidstorm
What a fantastic surprise the Voidstorm was. Holy fuck this was good. First of all, as a friend of mine said, they cooked massively with the updated Magister’s Terrace. Also Rommath and Umbric are gay. Great intro.
We take a gigantic risk pulling into the Voidstorm with just the Ren’dorei and Lothraxion. Lothraxion has been displaying symptoms of zealotry since Legion, here he is allowed to fully come undone, no longer being supervised by either Turalyon or Lor’themar. Lothraxion worked as an allegory for a born-again Jehovah’s Witness type of religious fanatic: he not only acknowledges he started as one of Zovaal’s pawns, he is actively proud of “saving himself” from fighting for Death. This guy drank all the Kool-aid and is super fucking cooked.
Alleria is back on screen thank god I love her. This zone is a suicide mission into enemy territory, working with a similar energy as the Tanaan Intro for the entire zone. We’re working to establish any kind of foothold, weaken the storm, and find an entry point. Enter Decimus, the GOAT. This character is a messy bitch who lives for drama. They feign helplessness the entire time just to analyze our dynamics and don’t want to fight for Xal’atath, an unprecedented complication to the Void. As it turns out, one of the themes of the Warcraft cosmology story is balance (yay!) and that folks from the various forces may not actually be evil all of the time always! Some of our staunchest allies are from the realms of Death and Shadow-are they all evil?
This zone goes crazy. You get to watch Lothraxion ramp up from a 5 to a 10 in real time, Alleria learns something from K’aresh, Arator continues to assert his place in the world, and Decimus is petty. This zone takes K’aresh and spins it: instead of all of us keeping it together until Dimensius was locked up, Lothraxion loses it. I was absolutely thrilled with the stakes that nuking a nexus-point improperly would blow up Silvermoon-good. Give me a compelling reason to work with the Void creature, just like Xal’atath in K’aresh being the only one who knew how to transmute us into the Manaforge.
Lothraxion believes he’s correct. “Who cares? That’s just one mortal city, they can build others. Hitting the nexus-point now will get us closer to winning the war.”
The level-up finale is the first time a level-up has ended so dramatically in a dungeon and with a cutscene. This was the good shit. Nexus-Point Xenas was extremely tense, well-done, and well-acted. I also want to add how refreshing it was that Lothraxion wasn’t “corrupted.” There’s a difference in this expansion between “he’s been corrupted” and “this guy gave in to the Light.” The Light isn’t corrupting people: as we learned, it responds to convictions. If you are too stubborn, too headstrong, and too ignorant, your convictions will grow insurmountable. Lothraxion’s voice actor receives a mildly distorted filter in the dungeon to demonstrate that he is at that point of no return. We’ll see it again, for both Light characters and Void characters.
10/10, my 2nd favorite after Zul’aman.
Level-up score: 56/60. Fantastic work, tied with 3.0, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 7.3, 11.0, and 11.2 for my favorite story campaigns in WoW.
Max-Level Campaign 1
By now, you’ve seen a bunch of discourse online about Midnight max-level campaign. Good news, we’re still at the not controversial part! The first 2 chapters are pretty self-explanatory: Voidstorm ends with the Vanguard able to teleport up and begin a counterattack. The first chapter establishes our foothold, the 2nd is the battle of the Voidstorm. A juicy moment happens at the end of the first campaign where Arator decides to tell Alleria that Her Boyfriend Sliced Their Son. She understandably whacks Turalyon for it, yelling at him about whether he wields the Light or if the Light wields him. Thankfully, as Turalyon is a heroic character, he wields the Light! He does not succumb to Lightmadness at any point during the Voidspire (the rest can’t be sad for his allies…)
This is fine, standard war stuff. 7/10.
Voidspire
Oh hell yeah. Here comes the good shit. 12.0 peaks at the Voidspire. Xal’atath gets her first raid instance to really shine as a villain, taunting us in both yells and dm’s throughout, having more specific dialogue for the Shadow Priest, appearing in boss fights, casting mechanics, and of course, doing her big one and flipping Alleria to berserk.
Let’s also mention the Lightblinded Vanguard. Throughout the instance, you may not have noticed that these 3 guys are channeling an aura of searing light. This is some high octane Light magic, intended to weaken Void enemies. It actually does: fun fact, various bosses have lower HP if the Vanguard is present with them, from bosses 2-4. It turns out leaving a max power Light aura on for that long has consequences!
The commanders of the Vanguard begin turning on us, as we continue to fight with Alleria, a Void-aligned being, which they do not like (see: Xe’ra imprisoning Alleria for using the Void). We get a fantastic, character-defining moment from Turalyon, where when his own subordinates tell him “choose: your army or your family.” He says: “no, I will not allow you to harm my family,” definitively deciding that his allegiance to Alleria and Arator is his number one priority. I thought this moment was brilliant for him and an excellent destination for his 12.0 journey. This culminates with them attacking us as a boss fight. They all go “huh? What about the Light?” when they die. It’s great.
Enter Crown of the Cosmos. 12.0 continues the Dimensius trend of giving us extremely dramatic final bosses with unique themes. Crown of the Cosmos is everything I’ve wanted from the Alleria boss fight since I first started picturing it back in 7.3. The track is an amazing rendition of her character theme, the visuals are spectacular, the conceit of it is fabulous. Xal’atath does what she does best, tugging on a single thread of insecurity until it bursts. Alleria is devastated that Turalyon hurt Arator and Xal talks about it for the entire instance. Alleria jumps through the portal to shoot her and BAM Void jail! Crown of the Cosmos heroic is not only one of my favorite heroic bosses ever, but was a gigantic lore win.
We end with the Voidspire finale, where Xal’atath once again asserts her status as the GOAT: she’s had the knife the entire time. There are a bunch of options for how she got it back, I am of course betting that she hung out in Ny’alotha while we were fighting N’zoth and took the Blade of the Black Empire after Wrathion cut the Old God with it. Watching her use her own knife to stab Alleria was. Peak. We lose bad in this cutscene as L’ura comes out and Xal activates her death laser.
Quick point about why Xal is so great: to achieve her objective of claiming the Worldsoul, she had two victory conditions and two plans to meet those goals. Plan 1: get enough power to invade Azeroth. Plan 2: get to the Worldsoul once she invaded Azeroth. Ironically, she had Plan 2 way more ironed out and it needed way less iteration LMFAO.
TWW was us watching her be set back, twice, on Plan 1 and have to improvise. 12.0 was her successfully executing Plan 2, no setbacks, all gas, no brakes. She gets a rare moment of pure unadulterated “I WON FUCK YOU” as L’ura pops out of Alleria and activates the space nuke. Alleria and Turalyon fall into the space laser, as Umbric’s tether from level-up pays off and helps us live to fight another day.
10/10. One of my favorite story weeks in the game’s history. Living through this in real time was a staunch “man I love World of Warcraft” moment.
Max-Level Campaign 2
Aaaaand here come the writing continuity issues. Before I offer constructive feedback, I want to reiterate that I love WoW, Midnight, and am excited for what’s to come. That said, the chapters of max-level from “gathering of the elves” onward had some major issues.
The initial quest where we gather the wounded defenders from Quel’Danas is good-you can actually see L’ura spawned in the open world at the Darkwell which is pretty cool.
Then Arator says we need to get all the other Elves of Azeroth.
Problem #1: the various other elves are from much farther away then the Horde armies. Where is the Horde? It is confusing that the Forsaken have not sent troops to defend the city that they brought into the Horde. If the Night Elves can portal over/boat over from the Dragon Isles, it makes no sense that closer Horde race allies aren’t here. They even say that Silvermoon’s magical wards are too strong to teleport forces in…then have Nightborne literally portal in later. Again, I love Midnight, this did not make sense and was not well-presented. I completely understand that the story they wanted to tell was around elven unity, but authorial intent does not immediately make something make sense. This did not make sense and was a major stickling factor for max level.
Problem #2: fundamental misunderstanding/disregard of prior writing around elves. Things get a little worse. As we gather the elves, there’s some weird glazing of King Anasterian going on. For folks who are unfamiliar, the isolationism of Quel’thalas started with him. He believed the kingdom was too good to involve itself in the broader affairs of the world, leading some High Elves to depart and seek other interests. One of those elves was literally Alleria! The High Elves who wanted to remain loyal to the Alliance began splitting off when Anasterian seceded from the Alliance! They did not all leave because of Kael’thas! I was really sad at this part of the questline, as this was a fundamental misunderstanding of the Quel’dorei and disregarded lots of previous text. I absolutely do not support Vereesa’s actions during the Purge of Dalaran (as I’ve said before, the reason the Purge is good narratively is because nobody is correct), but this was a fundamental misunderstanding of why the Silver Covenant exists, as well as a misunderstanding of who the heroes of Quel’thalas are. Anasterian was not a hero, he was a king who promoted isolationist doctrines, destabilized his own region, and caused the first fracture of the Quel’dorei. He was not the guy to choose for this section. Dath’remar? Totally fine.
Problem #3: why are we going to the Night Elves, on the Dragon Isles, but not the Forsaken, when it’s the Blood Elves who need help (a Horde race)? This Elven Unity idea is fine. If someone really wants it to happen, that’s fine, I understand that all Warcraft Elves are distantly related, cool, they don’t need to all be friends. This is where what I dub “Dragonflight Writing” came in. Dragonflight was perhaps the best gameplay expansion ever, and 10.0’s story was fine enough. The problems came in 10.1 and 10.2, where power of friendship, avengers assemble, and “yay all good” were what the story wanted to convey. This chapter went back to that value system, where conflict is solved too fast, tension is removed, and prior writing is compromised in the name of….not really any payoff.
The dialogue Shandris has around the Sunwell is fine. I actually am totally down for her to be like “dudes, this is the third time Quel’Danas almost blew up the planet. We gave up our immortality, your turn.” It was a nice rare moment of the Night Elves recognizing how they’ve contributed to Azeroth’s instability and encouraging others to do the same. Shandris also acted as she would, being a bit stuck up and acting morally superior, and Maiev was pissed the entire time. Fine for the Kaldorei. Every other elf tribe suffered.
Again, I am writing this because I love WoW, love Midnight, and am supportive of the Worldsoul Saga. This is not the type of writing we need, want, or deserve. This chapter needed work. 5/10.
March on Quel’Danas
MOTHER ALERT!!!! MOTHERQUAKE!!! MOTHER SIGNAL!!!!
SYLVANAS!
If you know me, you know Sylvanas is my day 1. We are all caught up on the alleged attempted character assassination of her from Afrasiabi, we all know Teldrassil, we all know Shadowlands. Got it. As I’ve tweeted before, my vision for a Sylvanas that isn’t awful after the character assassination is around her being an independent actor in the setting. She should not return to the Forsaken, or Azeroth, but should act as a Death-affiliated heroic figure, fighting for the greater good (as she always has/thought she has), but otherwise isolating herself and hanging with Nathanos. That said, let’s talk about March.
If we’re in a situation where “elven unity,” is a given, this was solid. We March on Quel’Danas and fight back the Void. I want to give a very special shoutout to the L’ura boss fight, Midnight Falls. This is absolutely unbelievable from a spectacle standpoint, she is phenomenally voice-acted, the fight conveys the Light/Dark theme expertly, and the stakes were super fucking real.
This cutscene was not executed perfectly and I genuinely didn’t care because I was grinning and cheering like a dumbass. Sylvanas lands our first hit on Xal herself, shooting void orb #2. I finally get my long-awaited payoff from the Three Sisters comic. In a panel of that comic, when Sylvanas arrives, the Void voices in Alleria’s head tell her to kill Sylvanas ASAP. They deem her the enemy of all, the true threat, etc. We see that payoff here at last, as Xal’atath, current head of the Void, sees Sylvanas and immediately nopes out of Quel’Danas. For folks who are not caught up, it’s a cheesy villain escape. For folks who have been paying attention, this is our next step along the Void logically fearing Death. One of my favorite lines of the entire expansion happens, where Xal says “I honestly didn’t factor for you.” A good villain admits when this wasn’t in their plan! Xal didn’t want the smoke: she immediately shrinks her space laser, regenerates her orb, and yoinks herself into the Darkwell.
Sylvanas gets her first hug in 40 years, as Vereesa gives her the hug she’s been holding in since 9.2. Exquisite. Sylvanas unfortunately pulls a Zovaal and gives an ominous warning, which I wish didn’t happen. Other than the last line being “before the end begins,” this cinematic was great. 8/10.
Max-Level Finale
The Dawnwell is cheesy, but fine. It’s probably ok for the font of power to go away. We don’t address how it’s tied to the Sin’dorei’s mana addiction, which is an unfortunate plot hole. I wanted to briefly address the concern that Midnight is what removed “edge” from the Blood Elves. I want to respectfully push back on that. I felt that Blood Elves lost their edge in 2.4 at the Sunwell. That story beat was clearly intended to frame their choices to mana tap and siphon a Naaru as “bad.” In other expansions, the Sin’dorei pursued power and other avenues, but they didn’t have that “edge” folks are discussing from TBC. 5.2 is great for them as they discover anima golems-that isn’t the same as fel crystals, mana tapping, and Blood Knights. I have felt that Blood Elves haven’t been “edgy” since 2008, but I am absolutely happy to hear opinions from my other mutuals-I could be off. But yeah, the Sunwell being reborn in literal Light magic is where Blood Elves began transforming to me.
The problems lie in, once again, the elven unity plot. The Silversun Compact is total nonsense unfortunately: the document is written like it’s to the audience, not from elves to each other, which is not good writing. The Silversun Compact should not have a space in Silvermoon-they get one anyway. It’s perfectly fine to have the people of Azeroth actually agree that they need to fight together when things like Xal’atath pop up, but this was executed poorly. There is not a logical reason for the Silver Covenant to be in Silvermoon a second past the Dawnwell christening.
Again, I write this because I care. This questline does not respect the 25 years of text that came before it. I don’t have a problem with change (im not a conservative lmfao), I have a problem with executing story choices poorly. Not only is the pace extremely rushed, it just doesn’t work. Vereesa and Aethas should not be forging a compact, they should be curtly thanking each other for fighting off Xal and spitting at each other out the door. That Purge is unforgivable from both of their perspectives. The Sunreavers’ betrayal is also unforgivable in the eyes of the Silver Covenant. This is not integrity-based for these elves. They deserved better.
The Night Elves are still here for some reason, which is kind of fine? But it highlights the Horde not arriving to defend Silvermoon. Again, it is a flaw that the Horde didn’t arrive to protect their own, but the various elves can boat or portal over. The Nightborne were already allies and hanging out here, so they’re mostly fine. The Ren’dorei getting an embassy back because Umbric was essential to saving Silvermoon is nice, but I do have to mention that they are currently Alliance-affiliated and it’s weird for an Alliance allied race to have an embassy in a Horde capital. I also do need to briefly insert that Rommath was just in Midnight to facilitate Umbric’s growth. It’s kind of fine because they had a really cute “now kiss” dynamic, but Rommath didn’t do much unrelated to Umbric.
I want to address that this is a moment where other lore folks have been discussing the modern writing’s desire to remove all tension, conflict, faction identity, and “edge” from the story. I will agree with this sentiment. I don’t like faction war stories, but it’s definitely an essential divide of WoW for a lot of people that the factions have to not like each other and begrudgingly face threats of a higher caliber. Think Game of Thrones, where the lords of Westeros fight off the army of the dead so they can still fight for the Iron Throne later. Similar energies. It isn’t as essential to my WoW experience as it is for other people, so it doesn’t make me subtract points as much, but I wanted to acknowledge it as something I definitely see and feel. Tension, struggle, and conflict are not inherently bad for a setting. In fact, they’re often interesting!
Speaking of tension, the stay awhiles at the end were back to solid. Anduin reckons with the concept of abdicating his throne (yes, good do it), Liadrin remarks that the Sunwell summoning heroes was not the Light’s voice, but likely the Worldsoul herself, and Rommath and Umbric are the two folks who saw the entire Devouring Host yeeting themselves towards the Worldsoul in Quel’Danas. I once again wonder why the entire planet hasn’t gotten Magni’s ted talk on “here’s what a Worldsoul is” but that’s minor.
As we head toward an inevitable complete lore reset after The Last Titan, I want the writing team to remember that tension and conflict are welcome in WoW among player races. If we want to start over with a “Unifaction,” that decision is going to be met with heavy pushback from a lot of players, and I think it needs heavy survey-based feedback ahead of time. 6/10.
Ily, what’s the verdict?
Level-up total: 56/60
Max-level total: 36/50
Midnight total: 92/110 (83%)
I want to give it higher but that’s the math. To me, the level up was peak. The 2nd half of max level did not meet the bar set by the level up. I am hopeful that the rest of the expansion, Saga, and beyond can be at the level of 12.0 level up, because it was genuinely that good.
Let’s do my constructive feedback first: the absence of the Horde, the disregard of writing around Quel’dorei, Haranir continuity, pacing during post-Voidspire, and the fact that the summoning of the elf armies made it even weirder that the Horde wasn’t there are my major feedback points.
Things that were good? Literallly everything besides high elves, night elves, Blood Elf racial identity, and parts of Harandar. Like, seriously it was all 8/10 or above. It was that good.
Zul’aman, Voidstorm, and Xal were peak WoW. I thoroughly disagree with the notion that Xal is Zovaal/The Jailer again. I can’t be asked to type more about that here, as I’ve said it before. Ask if you have questions about why Xal is not Zovaal-they have rectified every issue with the Jailer’s presentation with her, combined with tons of snark, witty dialogue, and threat. If you’re not on board with her, you might just hate women.
I’m really confused by just a few of the decisions made narratively, especially given how excellent, bold, risky, and nuanced the level-up was. It just didn’t make any sense coming after that level up that the max level would unfold the way it did. I was very confused-themes that were given a full zone to breathe in the level-up were suddenly rushed through in dialogue at the start of a campaign chapter. I do really want to ask, constructively, that the folks in charge of max-level factor in our feedback. I want to reiterate that this chapter made everyone upset and did not succeed for anyone on the level of the level-up campaign. Multiple level-up zones/chapters are being cited by various lore folks, normies, and standard players as their new favorite zones in the game. That’s a HUGE achievement! I hope you will understand why max level didn’t work and think about what made things such as Zul’aman, Voidspire, Voidstorm, and the Quel’Danas intro so good.
But again, for me, the negatives are just a few at the end and are far outweighed by how good the rest was. I acknowledge that for some folks, the max-level is immersion breaking and you have my empathy for what’s happened to your RP character. I’m with you-that wasn’t the play.
This is my current favorite level up. I wanna draw a quick comparison: Last Airbender and Legend of Korra are two of my favorite shows. While Last Airbender was more tightly written, Korra went after some really bold themes and concepts in its final 2 seasons. Korra is my subjective favorite of the two, even though Airbender is the better show. Similarly, Midnight is my current favorite level up because of what it dared to tackle.
Looking Ahead:
Let’s do a quick rundown of the scoreboard for the Worldsoul Saga so far.
10.2.7: no victor. Prelude to the Saga. Xal makes her presence known, we get our cast.
11.0: heroes of Azeroth pyrrhic victory. Dalaran destroyed, Dark Heart damaged, Xal’atath on backfoot, Nerubian invasion stopped, already limited Alliance/Horde forces diminished further.
11.1: decisive heroes of Azeroth victory. Gallywix killed, Black Blood operations stopped, Ethereals steal the Dark Heart, Xal’atath on backfoot.
11.2: decisive Xal’atath strategic victory, heroes of Azeroth situational pyrrhic victory. Dimensius contained within the reforged Dark Heart. Shadowguard subdued for the moment. Xal’atath more powerful than ever, Locus-Walker killed, Alleria destabilized.
11.2.7: Xal’atath strategic reset. Voidstorm summoned, Alleria isolated, forces of Quel’Thalas heed Vereesa’s warning and assemble.
12.0 intro: stalemate. Forces of the Void repelled by another miracle at the Sunwell, but the Voidstorm remains. Losses for heroes of Azeroth on Quel’Danas. Destabilization of Silvermoon. Light’s Vanguard arrives.
12.0 level-up: heroes of Azeroth strategic victory. Foothold established on the Voidstorm. Forces rallied, allies gathered on Quel’Thalas.
12.0 Voidspire: catastrophic heroes of Azeroth loss. Alleria Windrunner significantly depowered. Vanguard of the Light and High Exarch Turalyon, along with Alleria, lost in the Darkwell, ported to Who Knows Where. L’ura released. Darkwell activated, Sunwell extinguished.
12.0 March: honestly? Even stalemate. Heroes of Azeroth destroy L’ura and stop the Darkwell. Xal’atath moves her entire army to the Worldcore at the center of the planet. Holy fuck. Like we stop the Darkwell but Xal is big chilling, she got all her dudes to her objective and noped out of there. She was obviously interested in getting personal kills on some Windrunners, because she hates them, but she’s doing just fine. We did not hinder her plans at all here, we just manage to create enough space to breathe before she comes out of the earth and kills us again.
So in general, she’s doing pretty well. I’ve said this before, but it was so fun to watch Xal’atath get frustrated and have to improvise in TWW. This helped a lot with depicting her as an opportunist, not a psychic, which was problem #2 with the Jailer. She did not master plan the situation on K’aresh that we faced in 11.2, she found herself in that situation and decided to throw her lot in where it looked like it had the best odds. I love this villain, I love this character.
I’d guess 12.1 is the troll patch. I have no idea what the tie-in to the main campaign will be. I’d guess it will be something similar to 11.1 where the goblins had to repair the Dark Heart for her, but I don’t honestly know what it is rn. 12.0.7 PTR will tell us this week.
The one boss raid in 12.1.5 has been mentioned as “plot relevant” so we’ll get back to the A plot there for sure. I wonder which individual character it will be: potential candidates include: Decimus, Iridikron, a Naga lieutenant, and a Void lieutenant. I’d be very interested in who this is.
Things should get pretty close to catastrophic by 12.2. That’s going to be Xal’atath basically at the Worldcore tearing down its defenses. That will nicely meet the bar Metzen mentioned for summoning the Pantheon in 13.0.
Did Midnight Fall?
Midnight fell for sure. So many career highs for WoW in this patch. I’ve now spent enough time on my constructive feedback to just be an excited nerd. Some of these boss fights were an absolutely insane amount of spectacle, mechanical heft, and great music. It’s a great time to play WoW.
The Saga as a Whole
I continue to approve of the Saga approach across multiple expansions. It’s not perfect, and WoW’s story never is, but it’s so much better. I have way less concern about getting certain questions answered because I can’t get mad until later on. I get to enjoy the current stuff while remaining excited about what’s next. I think we’ve done a good amount of teasing around the core mystery of WoW and the Titans’ conspiracy to govern the cosmos. I’d honestly like a little more! It’s a good amount right now though and I can clearly see which 11.0 and 12.0 plot lines are carrying us through to the end.
They can kill a few more people if they’d like.
I love WoW, I love our cast, I love fiction, I love video games, I love art. I’m so happy to be here and I hope my constructive feedback is received with the good intentions I offered it with.
See you in the next chapter! Please feel free to tweet or dm me any topics you’d like covered. I often give my guild first pick of topics-we’ll have lots of downtime before the next major story explosion to cover stuff.
