World of Warcraft: Midnight’s major 12.0.5 update recently launched in a dire state, leading for many in the MMORPG’s community to actually agree on something for once–Blizzard’s process needs to change.
Patch 12.0.5 should have been a homerun. The game’s Midnight expansion has been well received by players and critics, and the 12.0.5 update looked like it would continue to build on that success with new solo activities, a fun prop hunt mode, bonus loot rolls with bad luck protection baked in, and more.
Unfortunately, after the update went live on April 21 following an extended server maintenance period, it quickly became clear all was not well. Blizzard swiftly notified players that they may experience lag or lose connection to the game’s servers due to “technical issues.” Housing, WoW’s biggest new feature introduced as part of Midnight, was disabled entirely due to a “critical bug” that would cause “unacceptable errors for some players.”
And that was everything wrong before players even began to dig into the patch’s new features. The prop hunt mode, called Decor Duels, has turned out to be a complete dud. The basic premise is the same as it is in numerous other multiplayer games that have featured the mode: become an object, try to blend in with the environment, and hope you don’t get found by other players.
Decor Duels, however, punish players who hide well by requiring them to move every so often lest they become flagged for failing to participate and lose out on rewards at the end of a match. Blizzard also completely overlooked that certain in-game abilities, like Hunter’s Track Humanoid or even a humble food buff, can still be used to reveal player locations, making the mode trivially easy for those on the seeking side. As many players have pointed out, it’s an oversight that even a casual player familiar with a Hunter’s toolkit could have easily flagged as an issue.
The Voidforge, a key new system added to give players more control over gearing and one that was supposed to prevent players from receiving unwanted duplicate items, didn’t fare much better. It was, in fact, rewarding duplicate items, the very thing it was intended to do. Because players can only claim a limited number of re-rolls per week, players who tried to use the system early and received duplicates were essentially screwed out of their chances. Blizzard has said it will be sharing details on how it will remedy the situation for affected players soon.
The list of issues don’t end there. Players quickly noticed critical bugs with a number of class specializations, ranging from Holy Paladins reportedly dealing 50% less damage, a key Unholy Death Knight talent not working correctly, multiple Demonology Warlock bugs, and more. The expansion’s current final boss, L’ura, looks to be bugged in a way that makes the fight near impossible. The new Mythic+ achievement being added to give players more goals since this season proved to be too easy is also bugged and temporarily disabled.
That’s just all the big stuff, but players have chimed in to report other bizarre bugs across the game, ranging from being unable to properly control their character to being able to cast and mount up while moving. While less game breaking, the text descriptions for challenges related to the game’s new Void Rituals are also comically bad, leading players to wonder if Blizzard used AI to write them or if they were auto-translated from another language into English.
While many of these issues were resolved within 48 hours of the patch going live, such as fixes for housing, certain class bugs, Decor Duel’s problems, and the Voidforge awarding repeats, the damage has already been done in the minds of the playerbase. The crappy cherry on top of a very bad cake was that following the patch’s disastrous launch, Blizzard announced it was raising the price of WoW’s subscription in places like the United Kingdom and Georgia.
Some went to Reddit to voice their complaints, pleading with Blizzard to change its quality assurance practices and take more time to polish updates before pushing them live. Patch 12.0.5 was available on the game’s public test realm prior to launch, where in theory much of this stuff should have been caught, but it’s clear something about the process is in serious need of an overhaul.
“The community’s goodwill is not infinite, but it is real,” user SgtFolley wrote in a widely upvoted post on the WoW subreddit that outlined the long list of issues with the patch. “We notice when Blizzard ships cleanly, and we notice when it does not. Patch 12.0.5 did not, and it is not failing quietly.”
Blizzard is releasing more content (and whole expansions) for WoW faster than ever before, having stuck to an eight-week-patch cadence since the release of Dragonflight back in 2022. Players seem to agree a steady stream of updates is, overall, a good thing for the game’s health, and a welcome change from how Blizzard handled them prior to Dragonflight, when six months could easily go by with no new content. However, players on Reddit have expressed how they would rather see Blizzard take extra time on updates to ensure they are properly tested and polished. If that means a few more weeks between updates to iron out the kinks, so be it.
“I don’t think anyone would be mad if patches were 10, maybe even 12, weeks instead of eight,” user FaroraSF wrote on Reddit. “I’m not asking for more content, just more polished content as well as more time to breathe.”
Game director Ion Hazzikostas told PC Gamer in an interview last year not long after a different buggy patch, 11.1.5, sparked debate, that Blizzard wouldn’t release a new content patch “just because” it needed to maintain its every eight-week-update schedule. He went as far to say Blizzard would “never consciously” compromise on quality, and that patch 11.1.5’s buggy launch was “not the experience our players are expecting or deserve.” That begs the question of what exactly happened then with patch 12.0.5 to make Blizzard so blind to its many issues, and whether or not it’s learned from past mistakes.
