Yeah, you heard me. World of Warcraft is finally getting a Prop Hunt mode, or something like it, sometime later this year.
This is according to today’s World of Warcraft: State of Azeroth presentation, which included a breakdown of what we can expect across both World of Warcraft: Midnight and Classic in the next several months. While the presentation contained a lot of exciting details, one thing that really stuck out was a brief moment during the post-Midnight content update roadmap section, where WoW lead Ion Hazzikostas described the new “Decor Duel” mode coming in patch 12.05, which he openly said was basically just Prop Hunt.
In Decor Duel, teams of five compete against one another in locations such as the faction Neighborhoods, or Silvermoon City. One team disguises itself as props, aka random objects, while the other team tries to track them down within a time limit. It’s classic Prop Hunt.
For those who are unfamiliar, prop hunt began as a popular game mode in Garry’s Mod that worked basically like WoW’s version. Prop hunt has since made its way into a number of other popular games such as Call of Duty, Fornite, and Genshin Impact. It feels like an obvious pull for World of Warcraft, especially given the new freedom players have been given in Midnight to acquire and mess around with all sorts of object assets from throughout World of Warcraft via the Housing feature. It’s even called “Decor” Duel, seemingly referencing that it’s using Housing Decor!
Unfortunately, it does sound like this mode may end up being a temporary event similar to Plunderstorm rather than a permanent addition to the game.
Prop Hunt is far from the only thing announced today. Blizzard unveiled its World of Warcraft roadmap for the coming months, including Midnight pre-launch events, plans for housing updates including pet and mount integration, improved advanced tools, import/export builds, and more. And there was a patch roadmap too, with a standalone single-boss raid coming in 12.07, a new zone, new raid, and friends system overhaul in 12.1, and a new feature called Labyrinths alongside a new experimental event in 12.1.5.
Previously, we’ve spoken with Hazzikostas about the games changes to mods, or add-ons. We’ve also played around with the new Housing feature, and even previewed the new expansion. World of Warcraft: Midnight launches on March 2.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
