The Recluse Report - March 2026 Part 1

From Endgame Viable

March 16, 2026

About this episode

The episode discusses the host's experiences and frustrations with the Midnight expansion of World of Warcraft.

Is spring finally here? The time changed rather unexpectedly, and winter felt like it was six years long. Gaming World of Warcraft I began playing the Midnight expansion on Monday evening March 2. I was immediately annoyed. First, a video auto-played unprovoked when you log in giving you a concise summary of The War Within. Neat. You only see it once and then never again; it’s gone forever, lost to the sands of time, never to be found on any menus. Useless. For me recording videos of my playthrough, it was absolutely infuriating. I logged into a different character specifically to see if there would be some kind of surprise like that, because WoW likes to surprise you, and there was the surprise, but it didn’t play again when I logged into my main character while video was rolling. Also, can we talk about how badly WoW movies are encoded? It’s like watching a blocky flip phone video from the early 2000s. Good god, people. It’s 2026. And I say this all the time in my videos but once again I have to mention how awful WoW is at media transitions. They haven’t figured out the absolute basics of how to play a movie without the first bits getting cut off…

Topics covered

  • Gaming
  • World of Warcraft

Keywords

  • Midnight expansion
  • The War Within
  • video playback
  • media transitions

Mentioned in this episode

Products: World of Warcraft, Midnight, Final Fantasy XIV, Endwalker, Eldis, Nioh 3, PS5, Nioh, Souls, Constitution

Books & works: The War Within, The War Within Recap, Midnight

More episodes of Endgame Viable

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Endgame Viable podcast page.