The World of Warcraft: Midnight beta is having some pretty severe latency issues right now, and it seems like the improved NPC behavioral patterns of fish might be responsible. The large number of aquatic creatures along the coasts of Quel’Thalas and Zul’Aman have likely been causing some unexpected issues for World of Warcraft.
On November 11, World of Warcraft officially started the Midnight beta. This marks the next major milestone towards the release of the next expansion, which is expected to arrive in early 2026. The beta includes most of Midnight, including all four new zones: Eversong Woods, Zul’Aman, Harandar, and the Voidstorm.
New Fish NPC Behaviors Contribute to WoW: Midnight Beta Lag
Players on the Midnight beta have been encountering some pretty bad lag, and it seems like the source is pretty fishy. According to a post on the forums by World of Warcraft game producer Zorbrix, the developers have been trying to hunt down the cause of the performance problems in the Midnight beta since it went live, and after much investigation, it seems like fish are one of the major contributing factors. Issues with NPC behavioral improvements in World of Warcraft combined with the large number of coastlines and fish in the zones of Midnight created the perfect storm to throttle game performance across the entire realm.
Of course, the fish are almost certainly not the only issue. Zorbrix admitted it was “a collection of things causing degraded server [performance] and increased memory usage on the world servers.” Every squashed bug would produce two more, leading to a cascading issue. The developers are hard at work trying to fix it, but it still may be a little while before performance on the beta stabilizes. Hopefully, these issues will be resolved before World of Warcraft‘s Midnight Pre-Patch event test on November 17.
All of that being said, the improvements to NPC behavior that contributed to these issues have caught the attention of many fans. Unlike many MMOs, in which monsters and NPCs simply sit around in a field until engaged in combat, the NPCs in World of Warcraft patrol, hunt, nap, forage, and even fight one another. It will be interesting to see how these improvements enhance the immersion of the new zones in Midnight and beyond.
This is far from the only glitch that has appeared during Midnight testing. From A-posing World of Warcraft Night Elves to falling through the floor of the Silvermoon Barber Shop, Midnight still has a few kinks to work out. Gamers who want to help squash these beta bugs can opt in on the WoW website, or guarantee their spot by pre-purchasing the Epic Edition of Midnight.
