World of Warcraft Midnight’s new Prey system adds a proper challenge to make zones less boring

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Midnight expansion was properly revealed last night at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live. The expansion, which adds a host of new content and player housing, also brings a brand-new feature to the game’s open world: Prey.

In a bid to inject some excitement into WoW’s open world for long-time players, the Prey system aims to make the game more interesting when grinding out dailies or grinding. While still completely optional, the new system acts similarly to invasions in Dark Souls, making sure that players are never completely safe.

World of Warcraft’s new Prey system

Described as a “new hunting system for players who love exploring the open world”, the Prey system allows players to pick a target to fight. After picking them, that target may then attack from anywhere at anytime.

Whether you’re in the middle of a difficult quest, enjoying a bout of fishing or simply exploring, your target will appear. You’ll also be able to pick how challenging your target will be with normal, hard, or nightmare targets available to pick from.

On nightmare and hard targets, you’ll end up being forced into a 1v1 arena with your chosen target, allowing you to give them a real fight. However, before your 1-on-1, you’ll be treated to multiple ambushes from smaller foes to keep you on your toes.

Defeating your target will result in cosmetic rewards, mounts, titles and items to use in the new player housing system. Obviously, the more difficult the target, the more delicious the reward.

World of Warcraft Midnight already looks like a fantastic expansion, but this new Prey system sounds like a really exciting daily addition that should spice up the open world for the first time in ages.