WoW Midnight's Prey system is a "don't AFK mode" on its nastiest difficulty, says Blizzard dev who was "surprised" to learn "players really liked being ambushed"

The early findings of World of Warcraft's new Prey system – coming in the Midnight expansion due to launch next month – are in, and Blizzard is happy to report that a lot of you "really liked being ambushed." Hooray.

If you've played Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, then the idea behind the Prey mechanic is pretty easy to understand. You opt in, and the race is on between you and a big bad to see who can knock the other over first. Eventually, the two of you will square off in a one-on-one bout, at which point you'll hopefully win. It'd be embarrassing if you didn't.

Digging into why Blizzard wanted to bring such a thing to Azeroth, senior game designer Kim Flak shares that it's equal parts open-world difficulty and changing up the routine you've likely honed for years.

"It's not like just clicking on a hard mode," Flak tells our pals at PC Gamer. "It's more increasing moment-to-moment gameplay challenges, and giving players opportunities for skill expression in the outdoor world.

"It's easy to get into a flow state when you're just doing your routine, you know, you're doing your world quests, your rares, your treasures, you slouch down in your chair…"

So what would happen if you had something to challenge your long-honed habits and routines? Flak shares that Blizzard's thinking is that the specter of a nemesis – if you will – will force you to sit upright in your chair by giving you more to think about – "'Do I have crowd control? Do I have the right talents? Do I have enough health before I go into this?"

Of course, Blizzard wants to keep things fair. On lower difficulties, you'll only be jumped when you're actually in combat, so if you "AFK to go get your pizza," your rival won't see that as a prime opportunity to get the jump on you.

On harder difficulties, though, they won't be so merciful. "Nightmare mode kind of is the 'don't AFK' mode," Flak says. "If you need to AFK, you're going to want to go to a rested area. You might even want to log out. You might want to hearthstone back home, because on Nightmare mode, going AFK might get you killed. But hey, it's in the name, you signed up for it."

Plan your meals accordingly.

Naturally, we'll have to wait and see how people feel about the Prey system when Midnight launches next month. As with plenty of other expansions, though, Blizzard has plenty of sources of feedback – pre-patch events, betas, and the like. So far, so good, it would appear.

"One thing that I was surprised by was that players really liked being ambushed," Flak says. "I was a little afraid, like you mentioned a little bit earlier, that players might see these as moments of friction that felt a little unfair. Like 'I pulled that mob, and I would've lived if that guy hadn't ambushed me!' But players overall were like, 'I like being jumped. I like that experience. It's fun, it's surprising, and it's a moment for me to, all of a sudden, shift how I'm thinking about what I'm doing.'

"It really delighted me, because I was hoping players were going to like the surprise of ambushes, and overall, a lot of them did."

Blizzard pleads with World of Warcraft fans not to judge the removal of combat mods too early, because Midnight was designed with it in mind: "We changed some of how we build encounters."