Summary
World of Warcraftrecently confirmed another stat squish will likely happen duringMidnight, the expansion afterThe War Within. Though still a way off, fans shouldn’t be surprised if the fourth stat squish inWorld of Warcrafthistory happens in a few years.
A squish inWorld of Warcraftis when some combination of player and NPC HP, damage, healing, item statistics, or levels are reduced by an equivalent percentage to keep numbers from getting absurdly high. While many long-term MMOs with vertical progression,such asFinal Fantasy 14, must consider squishes,World of Warcrafthas already done three over the course of its nearly two decades of live service.
During theBlizzCon Q&A videoWorld of Warcraftreleased on November 10, game director Ion Hazzikostas confirmed another stat squish is coming, but not quite yet. At the 22:10 mark during the video, he saidWorld of Warcraftwasn’t planning a stat squish forThe War Within. “We’re going to have some pretty large numbers [inThe War Within],” Hazzikostas said, “but they are comparable to numbers that we saw inLegion.” However, Midnight, the following expansion, will likely need to have a squish to prevent numerical bloat.
“We are almost certainly going to do a stat squish again in Midnight when we get there. We’ve gotten better at doing this over the years; it’s less of an ad hoc process, it’s something we have more structure around, so I am confident that we’ll be able to better address legacy scaling, and as always, when we roll it out, we’ll ensure to roll it from day one of the Midnight Alpha, so that we can have all the time needed to get any feedback or catch things we might have missed to make sure that it’s not disruptive when it comes to legacy content.”
When is the Next World of Warcraft Stat Squish?
The first stat squish occurred inWarlords of Draenorback in 2014. While its first foray into the squish has a few kinks to work out, it generally succeeded in flattening the power curve that occurs with each expansion. A second stat squish, paired with an item level squish, happened inBattle for Azerothfour years later, and a third squish–which was also thefirst character level squish inWorld of Warcraft–happened inShadowlandstwo years after that. If it follows this previous pattern after theMidnightsquish,World of Warcraftprobably won’t have another one until at least 2030 or later.
Players who haven’t experienced a squish inWorld of Warcraftshouldn’t fret too much. While it may seem like their hit points and stats have all suddenly diminished, enemies have all been weakened as well, meaning players should be able to defeat monsters at about the same rate as they did before. As Hazzikostas said,World of Warcrafthas a lot of experience with squishes already, with each going more smoothly than the last. Considering there are still two years to perfect the next one, players can likelyexpect theWorld of Warcraft: Midnightsquish to be its cleanest yet.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight
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World of Warcraft: Dragonflight was developed by Blizzard Entertainment and is the ninth expansion pack for the iconic massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft.Dragonflight features an overhauled user interface, raises the level cap to 70, and introduces a new race and class.
