In the eleventh hour before the clock strikes World of Warcraft: Midnight, Blizzard has offered a glimpse of what’s to come through their State of Azeroth video. Midnight, the eleventh expansion and twelfth content release for the long-running MMO, is slated to hit in early March of 2026. Following their new, more open communications with the community about content timelines, Blizzard has released the 2026 roadmap through their State of Azeroth video.
An evolution of the roadmap to give us glimpses of what’s to come, and with more detail, thanks to Ion Hozikostas, Director of World of Warcraft, and Holly Longsdale, Head of Warcraft. While the video covered all of Warcraft, including Classic Mists of Pandaria and Classic Anniversary realms, the biggest news came from its section focusing on modern WoW.
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What’s most interesting is how they have not only introduced new, fresher ideas that revitalize their newer content modes. They’ve also brought back ideas from earlier expansions that fans have been clamoring to see return for a long time.
Delves gets a major update, and Labyrinths are coming in 12.1.5.
Delves, the new instanced solo/group content introduced in The War Within, is already getting a major update in Midnight. This isn’t just replacing Brann Bronzebeard with Valeeria Sanguinar and the new delves with the expansion. This is a new form of megadungeon.
As part of patch 12.1.5, we will be getting Labyrinths. From what Ion described, these will be much more involved than typical Delve content. Multiple bosses, larger zones to explore, and the ability to leave and come back to continue your progress if you need a break.
However, there is one key detail that we need to ensure that the length of Labyrinths is as much—if not more—rewarding than normal Delves. That’s in addition to how gearing and rewards themselves will work. Labyrinths should at minimum count as at least several Tier 8 delves for weekly vault rewards. Four Tier 8s seems like a good number. Enough to fill out two World content vault slots, yet not enough to completely negate running normal delves to complete all eight slots.
Similarly, the difficulty should be a good middle ground between harder than normal delves at Tier 11 (with same end-of-delve rewards, ala crests and chest drops), yet significantly easier than the Nemesis boss. Bosses should also be more complicated than normal Delve bosses, too. If this is to be a new form of megadungeon, it should serve content that’s expected at a comparable level for Delve content, too, with complexity and difficulty to make it stand out enough from everything else.
Two new one-boss raids are coming down the road.
Next, .5 and .7 patch raids are returning! Through at least 12.2, Ion revealed in the State of Azeroth that we’re not getting just one new one-boss raid. We’re getting two. One in patch 12.0.7 and one in patch 12.1.5. What is odd is how their releases aren’t parallel (both releasing in a .7 or a .5 patch).
This reads more as Blizzard is finally ready to give us newer ways to experience the expansion’s story. Whether it be new questlines, new dungeons, and now, new raids, as the story unfolds with each content update, big and small.
Blizzard cannot make the same mistake as they did during Battle for Azeroth and their one mid-patch raid. These solo boss raids should be more challenging, given that they are releasing a major patch. Players will have, at that point, maxed out the gear they’ve been hunting down.
Yet the difficulty shouldn’t be too extreme that even high-level players can barely eke their way to a kill. Uu’nat, the final boss of BFA’s Crucible of Storms mini raid, was notoriously hyper difficult, and was released in a time when player morale was low, and the current amount of active players had a much smaller number of groups forming to clear it.
The new mini rains still need to introduce something new.
The new mini raids need to introduce something new. Whether it’s fun cosmetic rewards, new and experimental types of boss mechanics, and gear that is at minimum better than what we could obtain up to that point. Let this be the way that Turbo Boosted items are initially unlocked before they make their way to the rest of the seasonal content.
Neither should they tie a new .7 artifact item to the raid in any way. Effects on gear is fine. A dedicated gear slot that will ultimately have required loadouts for each role hasn’t been nearly as exciting as Blizzard may have hoped.
A mid-patch raid is a stellar way for Blizzard to have more fun and be more creative in what they add to the game. The gear will be phased out once the next major patch hits. A poorly received boss mechanic won’t affect the overall impression of a raid.
And it lets them find new ways to use bosses that may have hit the cutting room floor because they didn’t fit the raid’s aesthetic. It can’t just be one more boss that’s an extension of the previous raid(s). It needs to be its own entity that pushes players to be more flexible.
There is one additional unknown that only time can answer. How will the new one-boss raids affect the overall quantity of raid bosses we’ll get in Midnight? Up to now, the number of raid bosses per expansion has steadily decreased. The quality of raids has arguably improved in that time as well.
12.0.5 will introduce Void Assaults, similar to Legion invasion events.
But from a value standpoint, there is just less for the same expansion and patch “price” (whether it be actual monetary value or what is delivered in each major patch release) when looking exclusively at raid-based content. Will Midight offer more raid content in total than its predecessor? Again, only time can really tell here in terms of the quality of the new raids (known and unknown) and what future patches and their raids will bring.
Finally, housing and mid-patch gear catch-up modes are already evolving. Since Dragonflight, each .5 and .7 patch has introduced new world content that gives players new ways to catch up on gear while adding more content to do. The War Within pared down the sheer amount of world content introduced, as the quantity became much greater than the incentives, along with quickly making just-introduced content obsolete. Midnight is seeing the next stage of this.
As part of 12.0.5, Void Assaults will be added. These appear to be similar to Legion invasion events. 12.0.7 won’t be phasing these out. It will escalate it. Hopefully, this means that these mid-patch world content drops will get tougher over time and continue to make Quel’Thalas’s outdoor world evolve more as the war against the Void escalates.
Legion Remix showed us again how much The Broken Isles changed over the course of that expansion. Blizzard didn’t just relegate new content to one specific zone. The entire continent remained involved in that war. What they’re doing here seems to be the modern form of just that.
Houses can now levitate, store more items, and hold mounts and pets.
Housing has also already seen many major updates since its release just back in December. Houses can now levitate without the need of fanagling a house on stacked items. The housing item limit has also been raised, allowing players to be even more creative than they already are. Now, we’ve gotten a glimpse of what’s next for housing. Increases to item limits, UI updates to better match player usage are just the tip of the iceberg.
Most significantly, we’ll be getting item groupings to manipulate, so that you can move your unique creations without having to move them one piece at a time, an inch to the left. We’ll also finally be able to place mounts and pets in and outside of our houses.
Lastly, the long-awaited import/export tool will be coming soon too. No release date just yet on when we can expect these features, but just knowing that they’re in the works and look like they are much closer than we thought is a nice reveal.
The State of Azeroth is a solid new presentation format for World of Warcraft’s annual roadmaps.
The State of Azeroth is a nice change of pace from the new normal roadmap release. It provides even more insight into what Blizzard is cooking, which is very much needed to ensure that expectations match what is being sold to us. It is even a great way to define what may be minimal but is on the horizon, like Prop Hunt in 12.0.5, and the new Plunderstorm-like mode later in 2026 (My best guess is a Werewolves/Mafia-like game mode in Duskwoods).
There’s less guesswork for the fans this way. Hopefully, with each update to the annual Roadmap, we get another video similar to this, with new updates, fun teases of what’s to come, and a clear definition of what new additions are, instead of only revealing names and vague timelines for when we’ll get content. Just having a new format to communicate with the community isn’t enough. Now they need to stick the landing and much more for player feedback to make the best Azeroth they can. Together.
