Blizzard has offered the first detailed look at new content and changes coming to World of Warcraft in the first major update of the Midnight expansion cycle. Patch 12.1, titled Curse of Ula’tek, is due later this summer, but development notes for the early version of the patch headed to WoW‘s Public Test Realm (PTR) give a thorough rundown of what to expect. And it’s a big one.
Curse of Ula’tek continues the Midnight campaign with new chapters that also pick up the Zul’jan questline from this week’s 12.0.7 patch. There’s a new island to explore off the coast of Zul’Aman, the Coiled Isle, a “corrupted ecosystem filled with poisonous waters and venomous foes.” While in the Coiled Isle, players have access to custom talent trees, there are lots of public events to join, and there’s the new Cursed Fishing activity to participate in.
As well as a new raid (The Venomous Abyss), dungeon (Altar of Fangs), and three new Delves, the patch introduces Lairs. These are a new variation on one-off world bosses located in instanced encounters like dungeons, so you can choose difficulty and summon allies.
Player housing is getting a huge overhaul that includes a way to save and share creations via Blueprints; pet beds so you can show off your favorite pets in your house; a streamlined dye crafting system with new colors; and a new level cap of 12 for housing, with increased limits and larger exteriors. Discord integration is coming; you’ll be able to link Discord and Battle.net accounts for seamless chat.
Perhaps the biggest news of these early patch notes, though, is a chance to look over Blizzard’s proposed class changes. These are subject to change ahead of the release version of the update, of course, but they show where the game is headed. The headline is an attempt to make high-level combat less spiky and more satisfying for healers by increasing both player health and enemy damage, and similarly smoothing out player damage by toning down some big DPS cooldowns and increasing regular damage.
There’s no release date for patch 12.1 yet, but August is looking likely.
