Blizzard has been very clear about its plans for World of Warcraft recently. Alongside continued expansions, the studio is aiming to give the MMO broader appeal with features like player housing that allows the game to expand outside of its core, ageing audience.
As Blizzard preps for the release of World of Warcraft: Midnight—check out our handy Blizzard-assisted catch-up article right here—associate game director Paul Kubit and lead encounter designer Dylan Barker explain that the game’s new Labyrinths feature should fix the game’s older design flaw of designing dungeons almost exclusively for higher tier players.
Planned to release in 12.1.5, according to the official roadmap, Labyrinths are essentially larger-scale delves that allow players to explore huge sprawling dungeons either as a group or on your lonesome. In an interview with PC Gamer, the duo explained that Labyrinths are WoW’s solution to the high-end Mythic+ dungeons that have dominated the game for years.
“In the chasing of that specific mode of Mythic+, we don’t have that ‘weekend project’ where I’m just gonna get lost in this cavern with my friends.”
World of Warcraft associate game director Paul Kubit
Kubit explains that the prominence of Mythic+, WoW’s timer-based endlessly scaling dungeons, has changed how dungeons are made compared to the classic World of Warcraft players originaly fell in love with.
“If you remember, back in Classic, we had dungeons like Maraudon, Blackrock Spire and Depths, where we had like 20 bosses in a dungeon,” Kubit said. “And that’s not something that happens anymore—dungeons have three or four bosses … And maybe we lost something along the way.”
The whole point of dungeons in most RPGs is that they are a challenge, and they do take time to complete. Mythic+ dungeons, on the other hand, are the opposite of that, and Labyrinths are designed to be the complete opposite of Mythic+’s almost esports-like appeal.
“Maybe in the chasing of that specific mode of Mythic+, we don’t have that ‘weekend project’ where I’m just gonna get lost in this cavern with my friends and we’re gonna go clear the whole thing,” Kubit continued. “That RPG fantasy feeling of getting lost in a big dungeon doesn’t exist in the dungeon space anymore—but it could in our Delve space, if you look at something like Labyrinths. So that’s something that Labyrinths are trying to tap into from an emotional point of view.”
Baker explained that “Delves [bite-sized dungeons that were added in 2024] have shown us that there’s just a huge appetite, not just for something that’s bite-sized time-wise, but also something that I can go in solo, press my buttons, get a feel for my class, fight some real monsters and get some real loot”.
Really, these new changes coming to World of Warcraft, including social features like player housing and even the upcoming addition of better character customisation, feel like a fire has been lit under the MMO. World of Warcraft has never felt complacent, but it’s identity has often felt waning, whereas the addition of Delves and the promise of Labyrinths remind me of the WoW I loved back in the early 2000s, even if its massively expanded.
World of Warcraft: Midnight doesn’t include the aforementioned Labyrinths feature—that’s coming later this year—but it does release fairly soon on March 2, 2026.
