Blizzard fixed a major World of Warcraft: Midnight leveling exploit less than an hour before early access launched

*World of Warcraft: Midnight* early access is live, and players are already grinding their way to the new level 90 cap. The launch almost went sideways, though – a major exploit discovered before release looked set to completely break the leveling race, and Blizzard only confirmed it had been fixed less than an hour before servers opened.

The issue centered on Endeavors, a new system tied to player housing. In pre-release builds, players found it could be used to farm enormous amounts of XP in one go. The trick involved scaling a low-level zone and then having an unscaled character kill mobs while you collected the rewards – essentially printing experience points.

By some estimates, the exploit would have allowed players to go from level 80 to the new cap of 90 in under 60 minutes.

Community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan confirmed the fix in a post to the Blizzard forums:

"Endeavor XP is temporarily disabled in Midnight Early Access. Furthermore, scaling for the older zones when doing Endeavor activities is disabled for the entire first month, and will return with the Endeavor that begins in early April."

The community had been raising concerns about this exploit for a while before Blizzard said anything, and the last-minute timing of the announcement has understandably frustrated some players. What remains to be seen now is how useful Endeavors will actually feel with XP rewards cut off – and what happens to the balance once those restrictions are lifted.