Blizzard has revealed its upcoming roadmap for World of Warcraft: Midnight, which includes a month of planned updates for tweaks and balancing. This plan is due to how it's feared the expansion will shake up the almost 20-year-old MMO.
Midnight is launching on March 2, but things won't really get going until March 24, when the first raid goes live. Blizzard is taking the slow-and-steady approach when it comes to this expansion, and as such has released a blog post, which includes a roadmap for tweaks and balances that lasts more than a month.
The expansion includes "access to the new Apex Talents and their additional talent points" as players try to level up to the new cap of 90. Blizzard also claims that "many specializations have undergone large changes," which naturally means there will be plenty of things that require balancing.
On March 17, roughly two weeks after the expansion launches, there'll be the first pass of balances and adjustments alongside Midnight's season 1 launch. The changes will be decided by "internal metrics" and "player sentiment" so feel free to speak out about anything you're not vibing with.
Mythic and Mythic+ difficulty won't be available until March 24, which is when the final major difficulty adjustments for Heroic difficulty will be made. This naturally allows for all of the difficulties to hopefully be adjusted correctly for when the first raid, March on Quel'Danas, goes live on March 31.
However, throughout this process Blizzard says it is being cautious in order to "avoid being overly disruptive to progression." Naturally, this won't be the end of the balancing updates, and the team intends to keep an eye on player progression, and make further balancing adjustments as needed. The final major tuning pass is scheduled for April 7.
This is all with the caveat that games can be very unpredictable, and these dates could change without warning. Blizzard will also be putting out hot fixes for bugs and tuning as and when needed.
