World of Warcraft Midnight will boost profession knowledge gains to counter any early access advantage

World of Warcraft Midnight early access has begun, and the split between players who stumped up to get in a few days faster and those who didn’t will always prove a little contentious. To help counteract this, Blizzard has confirmed plans to afford a double stack of knowledge gains during the first week of WoW Midnight’s full launch. Of course, you can’t please everyone, and the change has frustrated some who are already playing.

In its first round of World of Warcraft Midnight hotfixes, community manager Randy ‘Kaivax’ Jordan notes, “To account for the acquisition of knowledge in early access, two weeks’ worth of knowledge will be granted to players from activities (crafting orders, treasure drops, patron orders, gathering) during the first full week of Midnight.” That runs from the full Midnight launch date on Tuesday March 3, and lasts until Tuesday March 10.

Knowledge points are the main way to fill out your professions’ specializations, so getting a bit more of a headstart on them is certainly welcome. But Blizzard’s wording has left a fair amount of ambiguity as to how that will actually work. Players in early access report that the activities mentioned, such as crafting orders and knowledge drops, aren’t available in the MMO’s current build, and are concerned they might be missing out.

Based on the wording from Kaivax, it sounds as though everyone will benefit from these doubled-up knowledge rewards, so early starters aren’t losing anything by working through their profession checklists. There are no bonuses mentioned for first-time crafts, suggesting this is aimed to simply close the gap between the two groups, but not to the detriment of those who have already been grinding.

Still, some aren’t pleased. The one-time knowledge bonuses early access players have been earning are, naturally, only available once, so there won’t be an opportunity to keep farming for them, and other players will quickly catch up as they earn those bonuses for themselves. User ‘Tickle’ writes, “We should be getting a refund because the whole point of early access was [spending] more money to start earlier and get ahead by launch.”

Blizzard’s new WoW Midnight hotfix also tackles a few nasty bugs, including one that was causing bind-on-equip items to have a minimum level requirement ten below the intended amount. Some shop items that listed at 750 Voidlight Marl were “unintentionally” overpriced, and have been dropped to just 25. There’s no indication as to whether players who paid the full amount will get the difference refunded.