World of Warcraft’s upcoming Midnight is the second instalment in the MMO’s ongoing Worldsoul Saga, a multi-year story set to conclude with next year’s The Last Titan. Unfortunately, for anyone too attached to some of the MMO’s current characters, these next two expansions will feature “a lot of death”.

Alongside redesigns of multiple beloved areas—Silvermoon in Midnight and Northrend in Titan—Blizzard’s expansions aren’t holding back on the tragedy with plans to kill multiple “important characters” across the new stories.

Speaking to PCGamer, design director Maria Hamilton confirmed, “there will be important characters that do not survive the trilogy. It’ll be a lot of death, I’m afraid.”

Hamilton explained that killing characters is not an easy decision for the MMO developers. After all, players spend hundreds of hours in World of Warcraft (usually at a minimum) and fans have become attached to its characters.

“Those are hard decisions,” Hamilton said. “We have arguments about, ‘is this the right time? What will we do with that person gone?’” Presumably, these deaths won’t be more fake outs, but actual real deaths that will leave a permenant scar on the MMO’s world.

It’s been a long time since World of Warcraft has seen a death that has truly felt like a blow to fans with the last few expansions playing it very safe. While The War Within did have a major character death—no spoilers for those who still haven’t played it—it was far from the dramatic scene Blizzard wanted it to be.

When it comes to the longevity of an MMO, it’s important to have characters that do die, even if killing someone off is a hard decision. After all, there’s always going to be someone out there who complains that a character didn’t deserve to die.

For more World of Warcraft coverage, read about how Blizzard has plans to redesign Stormwind and Orgrimmar in future expansions. Of course, this all depends on the reception of the game’s upcoming Silvermoon and Northrend redesigns.