World of Warcraft: Midnight is about to get a lot bigger. Patch 12.1, called Curse of Ula’tek, is bringing a new outdoor zone, a new raid, a new dungeon, a fresh lair system, and a pile of housing updates. To get a better sense of what’s coming, we sat down separately with two sets of developers who worked closely on the patch. Associate Game Director Paul Kubit and Lead Quest Director Rachel Vought talked us through the bigger picture of the patch, the story, and how the team balances content for so many different types of players. Then Lead Encounter Designers Taylor Sanders and Andrew De Sousa walked us through the nuts and bolts of the fights themselves, from the new Altar of Fangs dungeon to the Venomous Abyss raid. Here’s everything they had to say.

A New Way to Fight World Bosses

One of the bigger structural changes in 12.1 is the new lair system, which changes how world bosses work. Paul Kubit said the team is always looking for new ways to present fights, and lairs are a good example of that. “This particular expansion or patch, a couple of examples jump out to me as opportunities where things felt different,” he said.

“The first is just the addition of the lair system, where we have added lairs, which are a new way that players can experience what historically referred to as world bosses.”

Instead of the old open world model, these fights now happen in an instanced space that still keeps the spirit of a world boss. Paul explained how it works in practice. “You just walk in the front door and other players will filter in until you have enough to pull,” he said, adding that the fights will support Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulty, with the Mythic version flexing to fit different group sizes. He also teased the fight itself.

“That fight is going to be a banger as well, it’s this really cool Naga and it’s got some Murloc related effects on it, like going to be really cool,” he said.

Paul noted that world bosses used to feel much more chaotic and dangerous back in the earlier days of the game, but over time they had become closer to a simple weekly world quest. “It’s sort of just something that you are able to have not too much difficulty with,” he said. He hopes lairs can bring some of that feeling back, especially at higher difficulties.

Rachel Vought pointed out that the system also fixes one of the more annoying parts of world bosses, which is standing around waiting for enough people to show up. “You can just walk up to the entrance and it’ll help form the group for you,” she said.

“So you’re not standing there waiting with, you know, like five people looking up at this giant boss kind of going, when will there be enough folks?”

Exploring the Coiled Isle

The new zone, the Coiled Isle, is described as a corrupted, poisoned environment full of danger. Asked how the team keeps a zone like that feeling dangerous without wearing players out, Rachel had a short answer first. “Can we just say spicy water and leave it at that?” she joked.

She then explained the design in more detail. The island has a large interior space, so players can’t just fly over the danger and skip it. That is where the Vaults of Atal’Utek come in, offering repeatable group content inside the mountain. As players progress and gain power from the vaults, the island becomes less hostile. “As you’re gaining some of the powers from the vaults, then it will make the island a little less spicy, the water in particular, and open up some more stuff to you,” she said.

Paul praised the art team’s work on the zone. “The artists on the team really outdid themselves in terms of taking this Coiled Isle concept and building it into a space which has deadly sort of foreboding spaces for sure,” he said. He described the surface as a beautiful island archipelago, but with a darker edge. “There’s a lot of shipwrecks off of the coast. So there’s a story of loss and death surrounding it, but it’s got sort of a hauntingly beautiful vibe to it,” he said.

The Amani Story and the World Soul Saga

Compared to the earlier, more global threats in Midnight, patch 12.1 tells a story that feels more grounded and focused on a specific community, the Amani trolls. Rachel explained that this fits into the larger structure of the expansion. “We are in the middle of a three part story with the World Soul Saga. We are kind of in the middle of the middle of it, if you’d like,” she said. She added that Midnight is not only about Xal’atath and the void. “It is about the world’s soul, it’s much bigger,” she said.

The patch brings players back to Zul’Aman and Eversong, areas tied to a long running conflict. “That conflict, by the way, is still very alive and well between the blood elves and the Amani,” she said. Players will continue questing with Zul’jarra and Liadrin, and will also meet Orweyna, a character connected to the world’s soul. Rachel said that storyline “is going to lead us to some hidden truths.” She also mentioned that after the start of season 2, there will be an additional chapter involving Arator, continuing the hunt for Xal’atath after the losses at the Void Spire.

Housing Gets Bigger: Blueprints and Pets

Housing continues to expand in 12.1, with new pet decor options and the ability to import and export blueprints. Paul explained that a lot of these decisions come from watching how players actually use the feature. “A huge part of this is conversation with players and just looking at how players are playing the game now and identifying what’s the next most fun thing we can do,” he said.

He was especially excited about blueprints. “Blueprints are going to make it so much easier for you to share your creativity with others or to have other people share their creativity with you,” he said. “Being able to get your hands on that blueprint and operate with that in your own home is going to transform how a lot of people spend time with this feature.” He also talked about the new pet decor, letting players bring their battle pet collections into their homes. “Having them chill in your yard, having them chill in your dining room or bedroom or wherever you have them inside your house, and wandering around getting in trouble and things like that, it’s going to be a huge opportunity,” he said.

Asked directly about an undead house exterior, Paul acknowledged the demand but had no announcement. “There’s nothing specific to announce for those exteriors for this upcoming patch, Curse of Ula’tek,” he said, noting that fans have made similar requests.

“We’re always looking for cool ways we can make housing better, so we’ll keep that feedback in mind,” he said.

Feedback, Rewards, and Keeping the Patch Balanced

Asked what changed for 12.1 based on player reactions to the first season of Midnight, Paul pointed to the popularity of Mythic Plus. “We saw more people than before being able to say things like, hey, I like dungeon gameplay,” he said, crediting more accessible rewards and changes to the group finder tool that made it easier for players to find groups matching their preferred style.

For 12.1, the team wanted to bring some of that same feeling to raiding. Paul explained that the Great Vault rewards were not generous enough compared to Mythic Plus. “It felt like in a lot of cases, if you ran both raids and Mythic Plus, Mythic Plus was just clearly a lot more generous in rewards,” he said.

“So we’re taking steps to correct that.”

He described exactly how the change works. “In the Curse of Ula’tek patch, when you complete cards in your raid row, you will get gear that is a tier higher than the level you completed before,” he said. “So if you completed a couple of normal bosses, you’ll get heroic gear. If you complete a couple of heroic bosses, you’ll get myth gear.” Rachel added that the Vaults of Atal’Utek also saw direct changes from feedback. “We got some really great early player feedback from folks on PTR about just how the talent tree felt, how the space felt, navigation, all that kind of stuff,” she said.

“Our team has worked really, really hard to address that feedback and have made a number of changes.”

Paul was also asked how the team avoids overwhelming players with so much going on in one patch, and he said the feedback on that is genuinely split. “We have pretty much as many people telling us that there is too much to do as there is folks telling us that there’s not enough to do, and a Goldilocks group of people who say that it’s just right,” he said. Because of that split, the team tries not to force players into every system. He pointed to the new Cursed Fishing feature as an example, where players work with Tokka’s crew to earn reputation and rewards. “A lot of the rewards that you get are self reinforcing. They’re things like you get a really cool fishing pole at the end that makes you much better at Midnight fishing,” he said.

“If you are the type of player who enjoys fishing, this is something that’ll be for you. And if you’re not, that’s fine. You don’t have to focus on that.”

What to Check Out First

When asked what players might overlook in the patch, Paul highlighted the expansion of Training Grounds into 3v3 arenas against AI controlled opponents. He was impressed by how the bots played even as a more casual PvP player. “The bots are going to be really smart. It’s really fun,” he said. He also explained a fix for queue times: if there aren’t enough healers queued, the system can fill the gap with a bot. “You’ll have a game controlled healer on your team and you’ll be able to just run these things a couple in a row and have a good time,” he said.

He also pointed to a set of smaller storytelling updates to Silver Moon City, describing new ambient interactions where NPCs react to players in subtle ways. “NPCs might well periodically stop and side-eye, you know, their eyes linger on your void energies for a little bit,” he said of how the city reacts to void themed classes. He also described ongoing tension between the Horde and Alliance who share the city. “I noticed the Alliance are still there. Interesting. I wonder how long they’re going to be there,” he said, describing the kind of dialogue players might overhear.

Rachel pointed to the local stories on the Coiled Isle as worth checking out too. “It’s about a couple, or I think they’re siblings, some Amani trolls go there to find out some of the secrets,” she said. “They’ve waited this long to find out the truth of things and they get in over their head and stuff happens. So yeah, don’t sleep on the local stories too.” She also mentioned some of the patch’s smaller side quests, including shipwrecks around the isle. “There are definitely some ships that have some, so I would say lingering spirits around them,” she said.

She described a magical affliction that affects some of the Amani. “They find that it’s difficult or impossible to cure, and it takes them over. And so they kind of take matters into their own hands,” she said. Beyond those, she pointed to the main campaign’s look at ancient Amani history. “We explore the ancient history of the Amani and kind of like before they were the empire, and they had this huge existential threat that was Kith’ix and the creature that they raised from the Rift of Aln to defeat it,” she said.

Asked what to prioritize with limited time, Rachel pointed straight to the main story. “I’m gonna say the main story and getting to see Zul’jan and Zul’jarra’s story continue from Zul’Aman,” she said, admitting she has a personal connection to it. “I’m biassed because I helped work on Zul’Aman for Midnight, so these characters are near and dear to my heart,” she said. Paul agreed the campaign should come first, since it unlocks the rest of the island’s content. After that, he pointed to the return of Prey for season 2, featuring Astalor Bloodsworn. “He is as devious as ever, and his VO is as uncomfortably sensual as ever, and he is going to have some new torments,” Paul said. He also mentioned new sub features like the Terror of the Isles, and noted that progressing through the Prey storyline unlocks faster travel between Silver Moon City and the Coiled Isle.

For players focused on catching up alts, Paul confirmed that Void Assaults will still work as a system, though the rewards will be a step down from season one. “They are going to offer season 2 gear. It won’t be at the levels that it was offering before,” he said, adding that the achievements and cosmetics tied to the system will remain earnable. Still, he pointed players toward the new content for the fastest gearing path. “If you want to be maximally efficient, go take out some snakeoids,” he said. Rachel laughed at the nickname. “That’s what we called them internally for a while,” she said.

Designing the Fights

For a closer look at how the encounters themselves came together, we spoke with Lead Encounter Designers Taylor Sanders and Andrew De Sousa.

Given the venomous theme of the patch, we asked how much poison players should expect in boss mechanics. Andrew De Sousa said the team leans on creature logic first. “Doing what a creature, what you expect a creature to do, right? If you come up like a snakeoid or one of the children, will attack or just a serpent, you expect that to happen,” he said. At the same time, he said the team is careful about counterplay. “If you’re going through the zone and you have no form of poison dispel, we might look at different avenues,” he said, explaining that poison effects are often built as snares or healing absorbs that can be handled in more than one way. “There will be no shortage of poisons on the coil in the Curse of Ula’tek update,” he said. “But it’s something we look at very, very closely when it comes to the more competitive instance, dungeon and raid.”

Bringing Story and a Bit of Levity to the Fights

The Altar of Fangs dungeon includes a fight against the story character Zul’jan. Andrew explained that when a named character becomes a boss, the team wants the fight itself to help tell the story. “We want to make sure that we’re not only telling the story through quest text, we’re not telling the story through their actions, but in the encounter itself,” he said. He described the concept behind the fight. “Zul’jan’s ultimate goal in the dungeon is to reach an altar and empower a weapon through a ritual,” Andrew said. “We wanted the whole encounter to sort of revolve around that aspect of participating in ritual, and like participating in the ritual itself, and then like hindering it at the same time.” He said Amani combat styles, like throwing axes, were also central to shaping the fight.

Elsewhere in the raid, the Venomous Abyss includes an encounter with three Tortollans known as the Lost Explorers. Taylor Sanders said the fight is not directly connected to the Lost Vikings encounter from Blizzard’s past, but it serves a similar purpose. “Amidst all of the super serious and heavy themes that are present in the Curse of Ula’tek update and in the Venomous Abyss, this was our time to have a bit of a moment of levity and whimsy inside of the raid,” she said. She described how the Tortollans end up in the fight. “They’re after old relics or artifacts or scrolls, and they have run afoul of an evil troll spirit,” Taylor said. “We wanted to make sure that we had, since Tortollans are here on the Coiled Isle, that we brought them into the story and that we’re doing well by that race.”

Inside the Venomous Abyss

Asked whether the raid would call back to previous troll themed content, Taylor said players will see familiar elements. “You’re gonna see a lot of the same types of themes, right, where we’ve seen in past troll centric content. There’s totems, there’s ancient spirits, there’s the types of things and power that trolls go to when they’re looking narratively, mechanically to get a leg up,” she said. But she also pointed to something new. “One thing that’s very new to this patch that the raid is gonna focus on very specifically, which isn’t necessarily troll related but is troll adjacent narratively, is the Children of Ula’tek,” she said. “That’s an entirely new ecology to World of Warcraft that involves all kinds of new creatures that players are going to see that are all the spawn of this horrific creature that sits at the bottom of the Venomous Abyss raid.”

On loot, Taylor said the weekly vault rewards for raiding are going up across the board. “In the Curse of Ula’tek update, when you complete a raid boss, your weekly vault reward at the end of the week is actually going to be higher than it was during season one,” she said. “So for example, in heroic raiding, if you complete a full pass of the Venomous Abyss, your three vault slots are actually going to be up one level on the mythic track.” She said the goal is to make raiding feel competitive with other endgame systems. “We’re very excited about having the players’ rewards feel a little bit more commensurate to the time, the effort, and sort of like the social groups that they bring together to do raiding in the new update,” she said.

Without giving away specifics, Taylor offered a small hint about the final boss. “It’s in the name. There’s a lot of venom, right? So Ula’tek is a huge, monstrous, five headed, horrific creature that really lives and breathes inside its own Venomous Abyss,” she said. “Be ready to traverse through a difficult environment as you go up against that creature when the patch releases.”

Making a New Dungeon Feel Balanced

With Altar of Fangs joining the Mythic Plus rotation alongside dungeons players already know well, Andrew explained that the team accounts for the knowledge gap new dungeons create. “There’s immediately like a knowledge gap in penalty. This comes out August 11th, you get to run it once on mythic zero, and then Mythic Plus is available on August 18th and we’re off to the races,” he said. “That does inform some of our design decisions, like if there’s places where we might have fallen one way versus the other in terms of complexity or challenge, we might pull back a little bit.”

He said the bigger priority is consistency across the whole pool. “What’s really important to Mythic Plus overall is that all eight dungeons in a season feel approachable and feel like they’re in an even hand,” he said. “It’s not that same sort of escalation in a raid where each boss needs to be harder than the next one. We want parity across the entire dungeon pool.”

Keeping Things Fresh

Designing so many enemies without repeating the same ideas was a real challenge for the team. Taylor said encounters like the Lost Explorers help with that. “We need to make sure that we have what we call breakup, something that can sort of break up the experience of that central ecology,” she said. She added that the wider Children of Ula’tek creature type still allowed for plenty of variety on its own. “The Children of Ula’tek ecology in itself has evolved in all of these different ways and produced tons of different types of creatures, flying smaller snakes, giant hydras,” she said. The team also built a second raid, the Tidebound Grotto, specifically to change the pace. “We wanted to specifically pursue something that wasn’t snake related here to try to give a little bit of breakup in the tier overall,” she said, describing it as a Naga themed encounter with a different look and feel from the Venomous Abyss.

Andrew pointed to a broader visual update across the new dungeon pool as something players should watch for. “A feature that I think is worth talking about that’s been long requested by players is we’ve standardized and updated all of our visual language for like line attacks and cones,” he said. “Those have been something players have called out as fuzzy around the edges, and we went out of our way to build an evergreen suite this season.” Taylor highlighted the Tidebound Grotto’s flex mythic difficulty as a good entry point for groups that are not running a full twenty person mythic roster. “If you’ve never raided mythic difficulty before and maybe you’re an AOTC raider, we’d love to see you give that a shot and see what type of feedback you have for us,” she said. She also encouraged lapsed raiders to come back given the improved rewards. “We think the items and your time are more rewarding than ever, really since maybe the induction of the upgrade system all the way back during Dragonflight,” she said.

Closing Thoughts

Curse of Ula’tek is shaping up to be one of the more content packed patches for Midnight, combining a new zone, two raids, a new dungeon, housing updates, and continued story development around the Amani and the wider World Soul Saga. The developers made clear that accessibility and player choice were major considerations throughout, whether that means easier catch up gearing, a more approachable one boss raid, or simply making sure players aren’t forced to engage with every system at once. Patch 12.1 goes live with its main raid content on August 18th

For more of our developer interviews, check them out here.