The day of fools has arrived and Blizzard have delivered the contractually obligated jokes! This year’s WoW April Fools is patch notes for “Nine Minutes After Midnight” aka patch 12.0.9. There’s plenty of novel concepts here. We start with special features for role players specifically, like raids, dungeons and battlegrounds… except, you know, RP! There’s also two major new character customization options, with tails finally being added for all races! And not only that, you can also turn yourself into your housing decor!
There’s also Hardcore Housing where you have to keep paying your mortgage or lose your house, Mythic Plus Plus, Classic Housing, and no balance changes whatsoever, as it’s all perfectly balanced (and Hunters are being nerfed).
World of Warcraft Patch 12.0.9
“Nine Minutes After Midnight” (working title)
April 1, 2026
Production notes
This patch is going to be a real crowd-pleaser when we reveal it via a series of elaborate videos. Please do not forward this document to anyone, so that we can avoid leaks and everyone can continue doing great work. Remember what happened last time! It was horrible! Maybe not as horrible as when you get takeout and discover a missing item only after you get home, but it was bad. Maybe not as bad as when you drop your phone and it lands on your foot at what feels like terminal velocity, but it was awful. Okay thank you very much for not leaking these notes.
New Content for Roleplayers Only
In this patch, we’re introducing three brand-new activities that are exclusively for roleplayers.
Large Roleplay Instances
In Large Roleplay Instances, you’ll meticulously plan to roleplay together with up to two dozen other roleplayers as you join up to explore fantastic new areas filled with opportunities for expression. Non-player characters that we’re calling “bosses” (but you’re free to call them anything you like!) each offer you a new and carefully decorated stage area with dialogue and narrative intentions of their own. This patch includes over 50 Large Roleplay Instances for you to discover with big groups of your co-stars.
Roleplay Fighting
We’ve long noticed that roleplayers appear to be missing a key element of storytelling: fictional violence. In Roleplay Fighting, you finally have access to roleplay areas we’re calling “battlegrounds” and “arenas”, where you can incorporate low stakes, pretend combat into your narratives. Express yourselves in fictional altercations with other roleplayers, and when the story results in your character’s death, don’t worry! You won’t lose anything at all, and you’ll be restored so that you can return to your roleplay session with only a brief delay.
Smaller Roleplay Instances
Do you only have four co-stars that you regularly roleplay with? We have great news for you. Over 120 new areas for five-performer roleplaying have been added to WoW. Befitting their size and scope, Smaller Roleplay Instances include only about five stages, and each stage therein includes a default story for you to add your own narrative to.
New Character Customization: Tails!
Players have been asking for years, and we’re finally delivering. That’s right– dwarves can now have tails if they want to.
This is a purely optional customization. Please let us know what else you’d like to see added to the customization options for the noble dwarf race.
New Dungeon mode: Mythic Plus Plus Plus
Have you ever felt like you’re playing alongside someone who can’t see? In this new 2-person dungeon mode, you’ll team up with a complete stranger who is from a different faction that you’ve never met before, and you won’t even be able to talk to each other at first. Try tapping out a code or giving them thumbs up!
In Mythic Plus Plus Plus, you and your partner can’t share the same air, but you can share in a dungeon adventure together, once you trauma-bond over your individually devastating backstories. Words of encouragement. Hopefully, your new partner will be incredibly good at everything you’re hilariously bad at doing. Amaze amaze amaze!
New Dungeon: City Boy
Okay so this new dungeon hits different. It’s basically snatched, giving absolute chaos energy like, so delulu. Imagine pulling up with your aura farming besties and the brainrot is instantly out of pocket. The whole place is low-key haunted but also high-key chopped, with fire mobs that straight up do not pass the vibe check and bosses that are built different, no cap. Stack properly or get deleted in 4K and you’re cooked like, in your flop era wipemaxxing. Big yikes. Overall, this one’s looking pretty goated, but everyone in your squad will have to understand the assignment so that you can say you ate; no crumbs.
Hardcore Housing
Veteran World of Warcraft players all know – the game is at its best when you’re on the verge of being completely wiped out. Now, the time has come to put your entire house on the line with Hardcore Housing.
In Hardcore Housing, you’ll sign an irreversible contract that nobody fully reads anyway, committing to a mortgage, insurance, and maintenance costs that must be paid every month, or you’ll lose it all. Every month thereafter, you’ll experience the deep satisfaction that can only come from escaping utter ruin through something close to sheer luck. Head to The Undermine to get started on an adventure that you’ll be on for the rest of your life and earn these unique rewards:
- A one-time-only grace period on your monthly payment
- A voucher for changing your adjustable-rate mortgage to a fixed rate mortgage (for a fee)
- Fixed rate is nonnegotiable, nontransferable, and surprisingly nondeterministic
- Voucher can only be used in Undermine on the last day of the month
- A 20% buff to your house’s fire resistance
- A special item: the “Go Bag”, which holds a few of your most beloved small pieces of decor
Decor Yourself
Feedback from Housing enthusiasts has been pouring in, and players unanimously want to transform themselves into decor and see what the world is like from the perspective of a Elegant Almond Table or a Proudmoore Shipping Crate. Now you can, with Decor Yourself!
The Décor Yourself toy allows you to transform into any piece of décor in your collection, and it preserves your transmog. The effect lasts for nine minutes with a cooldown of only nine hours.
Classes
With the previous patch and some incredibly lucky late-night hotfixing, we’re proud to announce that we reached perfect balance across all classes in our internal testing analysis facility, which is a real thing that we will not talk about any further. Thus, this patch has no need for any class changes.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who provided the key points of feedback we always needed to reach this incredible milestone. You know who you are.
- Hunters
- All damage and pet damage decreased by 5%.
New from the WoW Classic Development Team
Remember how it felt when an immersive new kind of gameplay was first added to World of Warcraft so long ago? In those early days of the feature, before it was updated and expanded over the months that followed, players got to experience their first steps into something truly fresh.
We on the Classic development team are excited to announce that we’re developing Classic Housing, a return to the six weeks of Housing before it was forever changed by Endeavors and elven exteriors. In Classic Housing, you’ll return to a simpler time with a slower pace, and you’ll rediscover friends in the neighborhood that you probably haven’t seen making a change to their houses in what feels like forever.
Coming Summer 2039.
