During the modern era of World of Warcraft, Blizzard’s approach to the MMO’s patch content has felt cyclical. Particularly with its minor X.5 and X.7 patches. Dragonflight specifically introduced the new expectation set for it and the Worldsoul Saga.
Every X.5/7 patch we, the player base, have come to expect several things to be added: a new persistent open world event, new catch-up gear mechanics, the occasional new mini zone, and a short questline to continue the expansion’s story. In an attempt to fix WoW’s biggest issue of the past, they have instead over-corrected, probably for the worse.
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It’s worth pointing out that before Dragonflight, WoW has had basically the exact opposite problem. Patches, particularly the minor patches, were sparse. They were also more tied to bigger balancing updates than actually introducing new content. Only the major patches really added anything new of substance for players to enjoy. Even worse, there was no real set schedule.
More regularly released content is absolutely a good thing and better overall for the health of World of Warcraft.
The period between the release of the final major content update of an expansion and the release of the next expansion was also obscenely long at times, with an average of almost two-thirds of a year without much new besides smaller balance tweaks.
All that’s to say, having more regularly released content is absolutely a good thing and better overall for the health of World of Warcraft. Yet like many course corrections, Blizzard and the WoW team have gone a little too far past the sweet spot.
Even just recently during The War Within, Ion Hozikostas, Game Director of WoW, had to make a statement on the incessant levels of timegating. Ion came out and agreed that the sheer amount of timegating, from questlines to patch content events to even simple features related to new borrowed power items, became too much. All the advertised patch content features wouldn’t be available at launch; rather, over the course of the 8-10 week patch lifespan, players would log on every Tuesday to find something new to do.
At first glance, this could be seen as a good thing. More content every week would help with player retention. Yet the way Blizzard has gone about it is demotivating. There’s overall less content in the first week as the remaining questlines, events, etc. are all going to begin later. And anyone can log on later and just do it all at once. Like, say, the week before the next major update is released. All this is even further noted by loading bars above NPCs saying, “X is preparing for Y. Return in Z days.”
Yet a downside to all the timegating is overwhelming players who may not have kept up or joined late to the fun. The map’s growing more and more, and so many questlines are marked as important all over the expansion’s capital city. It’s hard to fault those players for being confused or lost about where to start. Blizzard has updated some quest markers to denote which ones add new features or borrowed power growth. But we know that in 12.1, Curse of Ula’Tek, a second borrowed power feature is being added just after one was added in 12.0.1.
Back in The War Within, the X.5 or X.7 patch added some new equippable item that added some immediate power growth to help. But again, newer players may not know what to look for to know which item is most critical. That has changed in Midnight, with borrowed power not being tied to an item and persisting throughout the expansion. So we have some improvement there, with every power-related questline being important to player growth.
12.0.7 introduces two new zones as an offshoot of the Voidstorm.
But the overwhelming map presence has returned in a new way. With 12.0.5 and 12.0.7, new Void Strikes and Void Assaults, infinitely repeatable world events are now on the map, taking place in two of the four questing zones. When one zone has this event active, the other zone has a Ritual Site, a greater difficulty, and a modifiable delve-like experience.
This is on top of the launch world events, where some couldn’t even be completed in full before the launch of 12.0.5. Now, there is a soft limit on how many you can do with weekly quests for completing five Void Strikes for a quick reward. Or doing high-ranking Ritual Sites for easier access to the Voidforge upgrade items.
12.0.7 took it all a step further by introducing two new zones as an offshoot of the Voidstorm. One of these zones is active each week, and a new questline is added as well. The cool thing about these zones is the heroic world tier, which makes all world content in that zone harder while also rewarding much higher item-level items. This, along with the new Omnium Folio, a weekly feature that, after completing a quick task, increases your power level marginally, has led to patch content also feeling unimportant for those who play more Mythic + or do high-end raiding.
The launch cadence is off.
Granted, not all content made is to be enticing to everyone. If a piece of content is made for every player, it would be quite boring. Particularly with how expansive the player base is. Yet the two new zones add to the worldbuilding of an ever-growing void threat that we need to put a stop to, but the zone-specific storylines really don’t have much going for them.
The real story update for 12.0.7, one which involves all Troll, Elven, and Harandar factions, wasn’t available at launch. It was released weeks later and, for the first time, is the first part of the major patch questline. Usually in the past, new story quests added in the X.5 and X.7 patches were independently listed in the quest journal. They did add some guidance as to where we would be going next, but this time it is directly tied to 12.1.
This may lead to an unforced change in perception to minor patch content updates. Players may just be more excited for the release of the X.5 and X.7 patches more so now than ever because that means we’ll learn shortly after their release what’s coming next. Less than a week after 12.0.7 launched, Blizzard revealed all that was coming in 12.1.
The smaller patches and world changes aren’t given enough time to breathe and become their own updates to Azeroth and the story at large. But there’s no apparent fix to this. Announcing the next patch after the last one is commonplace. Keeps players looking forward to playing more WoW. But its current frequency leads to the smaller patches being easily overshadowed.
Midnight has taken the whole idea of adding catch-up mechanics and made them more exhilarating.
However, patch 12.0.7 is still a good patch. Much better than 12.0.5, which was released in such a poor state that it prompted a comment from Blizzard about improving their development efforts. The two new zones are a nice thing to try every week, each different enough from the other with more to do and a great way to gear alts. The omnium folio has helped greatly as well in pushing new content and improving mains with a little boost in damage or healing. Then there’s the new raid.
12.0.7 has brought with it a new one-boss raid. Something that Blizzard hasn’t done since Battle for Azeroth. The new raid is fine. Rotmire isn’t meant to be as challenging as an endboss of a raid. And the new gear is also a nice incentive to do it. What will be most interesting is how the mythic flex difficulty will evolve and be implemented moving forward. Will it unlock in future raids after the Hall of Fame closes? Or will it just not appear again until the next mid-patch raid is released?
This expansion overall has taken the whole idea of adding catch-up mechanics and made them more exhilarating. Just at times, the sheer amount of things to do is already overwhelming. And that’s coming from someone who still plays every week. The new events are nice additions to the world, growing the void threat. And at times, the game has felt like it regressed on things Ion has stated he and the team will work on to fix. Specifically timegating.
Midnight has pitched its patch content as being an evolution of all that’s come before. Even with fun and unique content, Midnight’s map is staying full of things to do. For better or worse. Blizzard should be very cognizant of this if they want to continue pushing World of Warcraft to be approachable at any point in an expansion’s life.
