World of Warcraft: Midnight‘s first Season is in proper swing, and there’s been a lot of concerns about the difficulty—the first part of the world first race, split up between the Voidspire and the March on Quel’Danas, has come and gone so quickly it’s had hardcore raiders sitting on their thumbs.
That’s due to a lot of reasons. Thinned-out addons, class simplification, easier fights, and faster gearing methods—and, as WoWHead shares, some of the fastest Mythic+ grind completion times in recent history.
For those not in the know, Mythic+ is the other slice of the hardcore scene in WoW, and is often used by hardcore players as a supplementary gear diet in between raid lockouts. Players level up “keys” by beating timed dungeon runs stacked with extra modifiers. For some, it’s even the entire reason why they play in the first place.
There has, however, been a considered effort by Blizzard to make them more accessible—see the new modifier that, at lower difficulties, gives a path for tanks to follow rather than having them rely on addons. Self-described “Loa of statistics” Jordan shares on X that, looking at the Raider.io numbers, around 92% of players are beating them within the timer—compared to the numbers of 78.2%-79.4% in all three seasons of The War Within.
Furthermore, in a separate post last week, Jordan noted that there were “more [level 10 keys] timed in the last 18 hours than there [were] all of week one of [season 1 of The War Within].” As WoWHead notes, one of the modifiers, “Xal’atath’s Guile”, reduces the timer by fifteen seconds whenever someone dies—and was moved from level 7 keys in The War Within to level 10 keys in Midnight.
The new Prey system also contributes. The hardest difficulty of Prey, nightmare, isn’t actually too tough, and also rewards players with “Champion” gear. Combine that with similar gear being available from delves a full week before Mythic+? Players were rocking up to the race with some solid kit.
Either way, hitting level 10 keys in a matter of days is a bit of an issue, because anything higher than that and you’re not really getting much out of it. For those of whom Mythic+ is the entire draw of WoW in the first place, that’s a problem.
This has brought up some mixed results from the playerbase. YouTuber’s Talesin & Evitel remarked on X last week after nearly getting level 10 keys across the spate of dungeons in one night that “I agree the dungeons might be a bit undertuned”. Others, such as those in this thread on the r/WoW subreddit, are more enthused:
“For me, the feeling of being able to realistically achieve Cutting Edge and a 3000+ Mythic+ rating without completely no-lifing the game is a huge win,” writes one player. “This season being easier has made me feel less like I’m gonna burn out and more like I want to try out more classes once I’m done instead, really enjoying that not everything feels terribly stressful,” adds another.
On the other hand, user Strachmed writes: “I am almost there (3k) week one. My vault is already full of myth track gear … I’m probably going to be done with WoW three weeks into the season, when usually it lasts longer.”
It’s a toughie—you can absolutely make the argument that WoW’s higher difficulties have been pretty unassailable in the past, Mythic+ included. The assumed knowledge going into a key was always pretty high, as was the usage of AddOns, and that’s certainly something that put me off the last time I gave it a bash in Dragonflight.
On the other hand, not everything in an MMO has to be for me, and Midnight’s given me plenty of decently tough solo content with nightmare difficulty Prey and Delves. The question remains as to whether this difficulty’ll be a new normal in the seasons to come, or a one-off under-tuning that Blizzard will correct in the future.
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