World of Warcraft Midnight - Xal'atath void armies, gameplay and the campaign.
World of Warcraft's newest expansion, Midnight, has been out for more than a week now. I have finished running through the entire leveling campaign with my trusted Warlock and, while preparing for the upcoming M+ Season 1, I wanted to take a look back at the story so far.
Back in The War Within, we left off with Xal'atath stealing the power of Dimensius after using the hero and their allies as pawns to defeat him. This has made her so powerful that she is now confident enough to invade Silvermoon to try and seize the power of the Sunwell. While that power was originally Arcane, it is possible it has now become Holy.
The expansion begins with a cataclysmic battle to defend Silvermoon from hordes of invading Void monsters. This is reminiscent of the introduction to The War Within, when Dalaran was attacked and destroyed. This time around, however, we manage to bring things to a standstill by using the Sunwell as a power source to temporarily control the Void invasion.
As usual they know how to make Xal'atath both scary and alluring. She's a temptress after all, taking people with half-lies.The hero then starts a journey to gather allies and prepare for a counterstrike against Xal'atath, while naturally completing various chores and small quests along the way. We gather allies from across the globe, including the Amani Trolls and the Haranir. Thanks to the support of the Blood Elves, we eventually open a rift toward the Voidstorm.
There, we find an unlikely new ally in the Void creature Decimus and face a betrayal from one of our own, Lothraxion. Everything works out in the end, and the stage is set for the heroes to raid the enemy base and put a stop to the invasion once and for all. After that, it will be time to face Xal'atath.
Honestly, this is the first expansion in ages that I have experienced during its launch week. I left WoW long ago after playing Vanilla, The Burning Crusade, and Cataclysm, only returning for The War Within. It has been an exciting experience that brought me back to my high school days.
The world gameplay seems very similar to what we saw in The War Within. It features the usual world quests that provide Adventurer-rank items, weekly quests with slightly more advanced mechanics, and the standard crest farm. Since crests are capped every week, you are forced to explore other activities once you hit the limit.
Of course, as a Blizzard game, it is rife with bugs during the first few weeks. For example, I tried to do the Abundance weekly quest yesterday, but I was unable to accumulate any materials to complete it. I assume they will eventually fix it, but it is painful to see the game shipped with such glaring bugs.
I plan to try and play every class in the upcoming M+ season, so the pressure is on to level up as many characters as possible during this lull before the season begins. You gain roughly one level every three dungeons, so it should not be too difficult overall, as it only takes about 30 dungeons per character to reach the cap.
The M+ Season lineup is composed of eight dungeons. There are four from the current expansion (Magister's Terrace, Maisara Caverns, Nexus-Point Xenas, and Windrunner Spire) and four from previous expansions (Algeth'ar Academy, Seat of the Triumvirate, Skyreach, and Pit of Saron). Since I have never played the four older dungeons either, it will be a completely novel experience for me regardless.
I am going to make more posts like this once more content is available. In the meantime, you may see random updates from time to time on the World of Warcraft Stream page of this website. There, you will find shorter updates with images detailing my journey within Midnight.
