What are your first impressions of Midnight’s Curse of Ula’tek update?

Now that we’ve all obtained plenty of experience sloshing through the glowing, venomous rivers of the Coiled Isle we’re ready to step back and evaluate our initial thoughts on Midnight’s patch 12.1, The Curse of Ula’tek. There’s new story pointing us in the direction of the expansion’s finale, a new raid, lots of world events and grinds to add to our ever-growing lists, and more snakes than you can shake St. Patrick’s shillelagh at. So what do you think of this chapter of World of Warcraft so far?

I really did enjoy the way the story advancement came together and tied Zul’jan’s rash play for power all the way around to the unresolved ending of the previous content cycle. Without giving any spoilers, the diversion into deep Troll history and subterranean labyrinths full of serpents seemed to be a bit of a narrative left turn but ended up dovetailing nicely with everything else that has happened in Midnight and where we appear to be headed next.

While there were a small number of things in the new content that weren’t brimming with snakes or dripping with vivid poison, they were few and far between. If you’re like Indiana Jones and you’ve got acute ophidiophobia, this has probably been a fairly rough patch to play through so far. If only we could get a version of Arachnophobia Mode that would convert serpents to some other tube-shaped animal. I’m thinking ferrets.

I think my favorite thing about the Curse of Ula’tek content so far is the little things. Sure there’s lots of Trolls, but who would have guessed that a boatload of lost Tortollans would end up playing bit roles as varied as “Fishing Buddy” and “Possessed Raid Boss.” The addition of Pet Beds means that my ridiculously under-utilized menagerie of furry little buddies can finally roam around my Player Housing pad. And the addition of one particular short-spined trash panda means that I’ll always look back on this time in my World of Warcraft career as the era of swimming through poison waterfalls with a stumpy raccoon.

So what do you think of the Coiled Isle and the rest of the Curse of Ula’tek update so far? Have you enjoyed collecting all the various venomous currencies, or are you counting the days until we sail away from these slithering shores for good?