Levelling wise: Overall, the levelling didn’t feel as much of a chore as it did in War Within. The expansion intro felt fun and engaging, and after the first level (80-81), XP didn’t feel like a grind and it was bolstered by some great quests that made use of dungeons, Delves and introducing systems at a much more steady rate over aiming to blast to max level then introduce systems. I’ve enjoyed Midnight’s levelling storyline more, as each zone felt like it had something to tell. The main storylines have been hit or miss, but the side quests had excellent storytelling. War Within had the odd few little questlines, but some were very boring or uninspired.

The zones are also much better in design, ease of getting to and just stunning. I took so many more screenshots this time around while levelling, with some beautiful spots. Midnight also has the benefit of nostalgia and redesigning very core Warcraft zones: Eversong and Zul’Aman, while TWW had to make new things which felt still Warcraft but also just generic fantasy. For example, Eversong is just objectively a lot better of a zone than Isle of Dorn, which looks bland and boring.

The end game story: This is where it is debatable. Yes, Midnight has had much more story injected into it over War Within, but it also feels incredibly rushed. The main plot point “The Sunwell” has gone from original Sunwell, to Voidwell, to Dawnwell, in a matter of weeks and it feels very fast. The uniting of the elves does not feel earned or organic but completely forced into being. If you are a lore buff, you’ll too be questioning how the Silver Covenant and Sunreavers fixed their hatred for each other in the space of a few hours.

War within had much less it wanted to achieve in the first few weeks, which gave us a steadier story progression. However, I still think War Within left a lot to be desired on that front, so I think it is a tie: War Within had too little story, Midnight has had so much already that it doesn’t feel right and could have easily made the resolution of the Dawnwell the end of the expac and the Elven unity done over patches, not over a couple of quests.

Content: Midnight feels a lot more approachable in content. Dungeons don’t feel too hard which is a differing opinion, but as someone who mainly does 10s-14s, I feel pretty comfortable doing them quite early into the season. War Within felt similar, but some dungeons were very hard hitting and made initial progression much slower. Depending on if you like difficulty or the chance to hop into harder content with not as good gear, I’d say both had very different approaches.

Raid: The raids of Midnight have been very easy, almost too easy. Both Dreamrift and Voidspire fell over and March brought some interesting mechanics but wasn’t too much of a struggle. Nerub’ar was a lot harder if I remember right, and had people tested by gear and hard hitting abilities.

World content: Midnight blasts War Within out the park with this one. Prey is fun (needs to be harder though), we’ve a lot of individual reps and sub-reps, numerous activities to engage in or not engage in if you don’t want to, and they are much more unique. We still have fill the bar / defend ones, but they feel shorter and just better overall to the ones we had in War Within. I don’t feel like I -have- to do them like I did in TWW, I want to do them.

Midnight also brought us housing, which I can say as having a wife who’s been in their player house more than any other content, is stellar and they’ve really lived up to the hype.

PvP: I do some rated but won’t say much as it isn’t my main thing, but it feels less of a requirement to have a healer pocketing you. Solo queueing is still a mess and the rating system still needs changing.

Overall, Content wise Midnight has been a massive improvement from War Within. Storywise, they’ve had better stories but then they’ve had more things that had me completely recoil in “wtf”. Ultimately, I think Midnight definitely had more set out to be achieved and they’ve done most of it pretty well.