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World of Warcraft Midnight has taken a different direction in patch 12.1, Curse of Ula’tek. It’s given us somewhat of a breather from the ongoing antics of Xal’atath, while still leaving some room to carry us towards the next steps of the Worldsoul Saga in WoW’s upcoming expansion, The Last Titan. With the Race to World First in the books, all eyes are on Blizzcon to find out what’s next for the MMORPG. Before that, I caught up with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Associate Game Director Paul Kubit to discuss how patch 12.1 is going.
“I’ve been really happy with the way folks have been enjoying Curse of Ula’tek,” Kubit tells me. Hazzikostas says he’s been pleased with the change in tone: “Midnight so far has been very focused on the cosmic forces of the void and our battle against our arch-nemesis Xal’atath.” By comparison, he notes that patch 12.1 hearkens back to a more “old school” World of Warcraft vibe with its tales of Troll society, ancestry, and the Loa, and he’s enjoyed seeing how players reacted to that more traditional breakaway.
“We’re still going to pivot back to fully focusing on Xal’atath soon – there’s an imminent, huge threat looming just next door, effectively,” Hazzikostas continues. With the Worldsoul Saga branching across three separate expansions for the first time in WoW’s history, it’s important that things don’t get too one-note. “Variety is the name of the game,” Kubit comments. Whether it’s locations, cultures, or even the colors of the zones, variety is “super important in making sure that the game feels fresh and evolving.”
The Midnight patch rollout hasn’t been smooth. 12.0.5 in particular was a particular low point, but Hazzikostas says the team has “learned a lot” from what went wrong. “We changed and hardened a few of our processes, and frankly, this time around we made different mistakes – and that’s to some extent inevitable, and almost a little bit our goal. Of course we aim for perfection, of course we aim for a flawless release, but as we’re rolling out a massive amount of data and content there are going to be some obscure bugs.”
Hazzikostas adds that Blizzard is “rearchitecting or rebuilding systems that are a bit too fragile in how they were constructed. If something is set up in a way that someone has to manually enter 1,000 pieces of data, and if one of those is missed or mistaken the whole thing is going to collapse – well, we should probably find a better way to build that system, or to have better checks in our tools.” He’s thankful to the community for being engaged in the test process and PTR; “We’re always looking for needles in the haystack, but sometimes a couple will slip through.”
Kubit notes that we’re “close to the halfway point of Midnight in terms of the story.” If you extend that out, that puts us roughly halfway through the Worldsoul saga writ large. “There’s one way of thinking about that,” he muses, “which is, ‘Oh, we’ve crested the hill, and it’s all downhill from there.’ The way I think about it is that we’ve done so much already, and we have that much more to still do.” He admits it’s “daunting for me and Ion as developers,” but that there are “exciting, unpredictable things coming in Midnight’s future as we lead into The Last Titan.”
Midnight’s future is more than just stories, of course; Kubit says the feature rollout is also about at the halfway mark, with the likes of the Delves-inspired Labyrinths, and another standalone game mode in a similar vein to Plunderstorm, currently marked on the calendar. “We’re always looking, when it comes to every new season in particular, for how we can improve,” Hazzikostas says. “What problems we’re hearing about from our players, and what new systems or changes to existing systems might help address them.”
Labyrinths are set for 12.1.5, and the first of these ‘mega-dungeon-like’ activities will see us joined by Valeera. “It takes some cues from Delves and uses a lot of Delve-themed systems,” Kubit explains, “you’re going to be using Coffer Keys in this space and whatnot. But it’s also not Delves.” He explains that the designers wanted a “giant underground cavern” where players could “explore and get lost for a couple of hours, and feel like they’re making choices along the way.”
Alongside its raid, which I’ll be covering the pair’s thoughts on in a later article, Curse of Ula’tek introduced Lairs, which have functioned as a new take on World Bosses. Kubit is mostly happy with these, although he thinks the first of them “started a little hard – the expectation was something a little easier than at least Nymrissa started as at first, but I think we got her there.” The continued rollout of features such as Lairs and 12.0.7’s Mythic Flex raiding have given fresh opportunities to “people who feel like they can push further, but don’t have the logistical flexibility to do so,” he remarks.
On the open-world side, 12.1 combines the three-part tableau of Curse Surges, Venom Fishing, and the Vaults of Atal’Utek. “We wanted to build something which had some teeth to it, had a little bit of a challenge,” Kubit says of the latter of these. “We didn’t want it to feel too face-rolly. We wanted you to feel a little scared to walk around the corner. You have to plan your pulls carefully, to assemble a group, and that’s fun.” It’s another way for Curse of Ula’tek to “hearken back to old-school World of Warcraft gameplay.”
The rise of Hardcore WoW has been a reminder of the value of a threatening overworld, even if you aren’t up for the single-life format. Hazzikostas agrees: “Making the world feel meaningful for those who want it to is something we definitely discuss a lot and are chasing. It’s definitely part of the vibes of Vaults of Atal’Utek, but also things like Heroic World Tier that Remix has experimented with.”
Obviously not every zone needs to be constantly pushing back against you hard, especially given the number of players who enjoy the more laid-back aspects of World of Warcraft. “But opt-in experiences and spaces in the world where there is challenge, there is danger, and hopefully there is reward – that is something that we want to do more of.” Hazzikostas hopes this can cater to “players who, as much as they might love Delves or Dungeons, miss having more engaging experiences in the outdoor world itself.”
WoW’s player housing has continued to evolve in 12.1 as well, but Blizzard is definitely “not done,” and Kubit says you can expect more announcements at Blizzcon in this regard. “The thing we discovered really quickly – suspected and then discovered – is that as soon as we rolled out baseline housing functionality, you get 150 different requests in different directions. ‘Please add this, please add this.’ So we’ve been focusing on a lot of that.”
I mention FF14 director Naoki Yoshida’s recent praise for the WoW housing system, and his suggestion that it was now Square Enix’s turn to keep up. Kubit says it was “great to hear,” while Hazzikostas adds, “We have tremendous respect for the Final Fantasy 14 team and what they’ve accomplished with their community.” Both teams are fans of the MMO genre first, he remarks, and so “anything out there in the space we’re playing, we’re checking out, we’re looking for inspiration from – that’s part of the fun of this ecosystem, the back and forth that I think benefits players everywhere.”
Coincidentally, FF14 and WoW both recently took steps to consolidate their overloaded dye systems in an attempt to save players some inventory space. Kubit notes this was a problem spotted by designers working on player housing, who suggested a solution. He acknowledges that, after so many years and expansions, the sheer size of WoW can become “overwhelming to look at in its entirety,” but he believes that having a team of passionate developers can help that to be “a self-correcting problem.”
As we talk, both men repeatedly touch on one topic – Blizzcon. “It weighs heavily on both of our heads,” Kubit admits. “We spend a lot of time thinking about Blizzcon because we have a lot of stuff to share – and coming at you from multiple angles as well. I can’t wait for you to hear some of the surprises Ion is going to be sharing, and some of us working on the team have others to share as well.” Nothing that either of them is willing to give up ahead of time, naturally, so we’ll just have to wait until next weekend for the full reveal.
