Highlights
- World of Warcraft will likely undergo its fourth stat squish during the expansion after The War Within, known as "Midnight," to prevent numbers from becoming too inflated.
- The previous three stat squishes in World of Warcraft have successfully flattened the power curve and improved the player experience, with each squish becoming more refined and smoother than the last.
- Players should not worry too much about the effects of a stat squish, as both player characters and enemies will likely be adjusted accordingly, ensuring that the gameplay remains balanced and that players can still defeat monsters at a similar rate.
World of Warcraft recently confirmed another stat squish will likely happen during Midnight, the expansion after The War Within. Though still a way off, fans shouldn’t be surprised if the fourth stat squish in World of Warcraft history happens in a few years.
A squish in World of Warcraft is 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 as Final Fantasy 14, must consider squishes, World of Warcraft has already done three over the course of its nearly two decades of live service.
World of Warcraft Game Director Confirms How Many Patches are Coming Before The War Within
World of Warcraft may have just revealed The War Within, but game director Ion Hazzikostas says there is plenty of Dragonflight to enjoy before then.
During the BlizzCon Q&A video World of Warcraft released 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 said World of Warcraft wasn’t planning a stat squish for The War Within. “We’re going to have some pretty large numbers [in The War Within],” Hazzikostas said, “but they are comparable to numbers that we saw in Legion.” 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 make sure 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?
- Likely during World of Warcraft: Midnight, the expansion after The War Within, expected in 2026.
The first stat squish occurred in Warlords of Draenor back 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 in Battle for Azeroth four years later, and a third squish–which was also the first character level squish in World of Warcraft–happened in Shadowlands two years after that. If it follows this previous pattern after the Midnight squish, World of Warcraft probably won’t have another one until at least 2030 or later.
Players who haven’t experienced a squish in World of Warcraft shouldn’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 Warcraft has 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 likely expect the World of Warcraft: Midnight squish to be its cleanest yet.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight
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.
- Franchise
- Warcraft
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Released
- November 28, 2022
- Developer(s)
- Blizzard , Activision
- Publisher(s)
- Blizzard , Activision
