World of Warcraft: Midnight
About the Game
World of Warcraft: Midnight is the second chapter of the Worldsoul Saga, a three-expansion arc that marks a new era for the iconic MMORPG. Capitalizing on the commercial and critical success of The War Within, Midnight invites players back to Azeroth to defend it from a doomsday invasion, reigniting the sense of nostalgia and epic adventure that has defined WoW for over two decades.
Table of Contents
BEAT 1: HAUS OF WARCRAFT
Briefing
Goal: Build excitement and awareness around the launch of Housing, WoW's all-new in-game feature, by delivering a stunty, community-centered launch moment with organic digital amplification, targeting both core and lapsed players in Germany.
Territory: Germany
Platform: Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok
Campaign Approach
Blizzard challenged us to make Housing feel like a cultural moment, not just a feature drop. We teamed up with INSTINCT3 to create a large-scale gaming OOH activation: the Haus of Warcraft - an 8-day Blood Elf-style house built in the heart of Berlin at Potsdamer Platz's The Playce.
The house featured handcrafted items from skilled artisans, including a full-scale replica of Thunderfury and a hand-carved Blood Elf wood bench, alongside community cosplays and artworks submitted by fans, each displayed with an Instagram QR code so visitors could discover the artists. Blood Elf promoters welcomed guests daily and distributed exclusive postcards with a code to bring back home with them a digital pet, the Moonkin Hatchling.
Every afternoon from 3 to 4pm, a Raid Hour brought the gaming spirit IRL: visitors rolled two D20 dice and won prizes based on their total: from limited artwork postcards and WoW-branded Pringles and Brammibal's Donuts to, if they rolled two 20s, a WoW: Midnight Collector's Edition.
On weekends, Meet & Greets with creators and developers brought fans face-to-face with their favorites in an unforgettable setting. The campaign was rounded out by creators streaming the new Housing feature live, and a signature content piece: a World of Warcribs video in the style of MTV Cribs, starring Germany's biggest WoW creator, Metashi.
Content Strategy
With such a visually striking physical space at its center, content naturally orbited the theme of coming home - an invitation both to visit the Haus of Warcraft in Berlin and to discover Housing in-game. Messaging felt warm and nostalgic across all touchpoints.
We activated across all four key platforms for the German market: Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube, optimizing content per creator based on where their audiences were strongest. Stories drove real-time FOMO and BTS coverage during the event, while Reels and TikToks extended reach and recapped highlights afterwards.
Results
The Housing activation generated over 5.7M total views on the paid channels.
The Haus of Warcraft drew 170,000 visitors through its doors over 8 days at Potsdamer Platz - a testament to the pull of the activation beyond the gaming community. On the paid creator campaign side, our work across TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch drove strong results well above KPI across every platform.
TikTok: 3,300,000 views (+134% above est.)
Instagram: 1,800,000 views (+153% above est.)
Twitch: 21,000 avg. CCV, 52,000 hrs watched (+212% above est.)
YouTube: 405,000 views (100% organic)
Visitors at The Playce: 170,000
YouTube results were entirely organic - no paid deliverables were booked for this beat, making those 400k+ views a pure earned bonus from creators like Jonas Winkler and Kamui who shared their experience independently.
Content Highlights
Conclusions & Learnings
The Haus of Warcraft marked Black Soup's first large-scale OOH activation and it delivered. 170,000 visitors witnessed a real-life Blood Elf house in Berlin, and nearly 20 million total views extended the moment far beyond Potsdamer Platz.
The creator mix proved its worth. We invited core, lapsed and new creators that represented exactly what the campaign was designed to achieve: proving that after 20+ years, WoW still has room for new memories and new fans.
When icy weather caused transport chaos across Germany on event days, our team acted fast, combining Meet & Greets where it made creative sense (Honey Puu and Rumathra, who are already close friends and frequent collaborators) to ensure every fan who showed up still got a great experience. Some giveaway items needed on-the-fly solutions too, like sourcing WoW-branded Pringles directly from local supermarkets when the delivery was delayed by the weather.
BEAT 2: HOME IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR
Briefing
Goal: Establish WoW: Midnight as the must-have gaming purchase of 2026, reigniting core and lapsed players' sense of nostalgia and adventure ahead of the expansion's release — through a must-watch live event that would dominate German Twitch and live on as an evergreen content piece.
Territory: Germany
Platform: Twitch (live), YouTube (VOD), Instagram, TikTok
Campaign Approach
For the Midnight launch, we asked ourselves: what's the most compelling live format in Germany right now? The answer was Pen & Paper and specifically, a live-action TTRPG event that would combine immersive costumes, a cinematic studio set, a real narrative penned for WoW, and a Twitch widget giving the audience direct influence over the story.
We partnered with German author and Game Master Liza Grimm to craft an original adventure set in Azeroth, and assembled a cast that mixed WoW veterans with fresh faces — creating a range that would appeal across audiences. The result was "Home is Worth Fighting For": a live Pen & Paper event broadcast on Twitch, with the full VOD landing on the Rocket Beans YouTube channel as an evergreen piece tied to the expansion launch.
Creator Strategy
Game Master Liza Grimm was the foundation, a passionate, experienced storyteller capable of wrangling a chaotic table of both P&P newcomers and veterans.
Our player cast was built for maximum range:
Metashi: Germany's biggest WoW creator, an anchor for the core community
Etienne (Rocket Beans): known for highly immersive P&P sessions, bringing credibility to the format
Gnu: strong personality and comedic energy, no P&P background but genuinely excited to play
Noway4u: a close friend of Metashi, bringing natural on-stream chemistry
Rewi: our mainstream wildcard, opening the activation up to audiences well beyond the gaming core
As special guests and cameos, we brought in Jan Hegenberg (famed for his WoW anthem "Die Horde rennt") as a bard within the story, Enie Van De Meiklokjes (TV presenter from Das Große Backen) as a baked goods seller, beloved TV host Elton as a hilariously corrupt merchant, and Coldmirror as a hidden voice cameo. Craft12354, a WoW lore creator, crafted the video intro that set the scene before the adventure began.
Content Strategy
The campaign was built across three phases:
Pre-event: Each player jumped into WoW's character builder on stream to create their Pen & Paper character and backstory, generating early buzz and giving audiences something to follow before the main event. Based on those characters, Atelier 51 built custom costumes for every player, which were announced and revealed on social media in the run-up to the event.
Event day: Heavy BTS content from set and costume preparation was shared across platforms to build day-of excitement. The TTRPG itself aired live on Twitch, with an interactive widget allowing the chat to directly influence the story in real time.
Post-event: The full VOD was uploaded to Rocket Beans' YouTube channel. Creators posted short-form highlight content across Instagram and TikTok, and gameplay streams, also commissioned as part of the campaign, gave creators a natural next chapter to the story their characters had lived through.
The Story: A Condensed Recap
The adventure unfolded across two sets, with a real-life interlude in between.
Set 1 - Morgenluft: Our heroes gathered in a small Blood Elven town to celebrate the birthday of the fictional character Vyleron, only for chaos to erupt as void monsters attacked. After rebuilding, they uncovered Vyleron’s betrayal and set off for Silvermoon - but not before a pitstop for snacks at a Berlin Späti (in full costume and with 3D-printed weapons in hand).
IRL Interlude: The cast stepped out of the studio and into the streets of Berlin, where they were promptly stopped by police responding to reports of "strange people with weapons." The moment escalated beautifully: Rewi's attempt to de-escalate led to a brief (and very gentle) apprehension, before the officer revealed he knew all about WoW: Midnight and delivered the campaign's CTA live on the street. The tension dissolved into laughter. The clip became one of the most-watched pieces of the entire campaign.
Set 2 - Silbermond: Back on a new set, the group navigated Elton's scammy merchant stand, countless side quests, and a chaotic final confrontation with Vyleron before the story ended with a direct narrative handoff to the official WoW: Midnight trailer.
Results
The TTRPG event delivered with 72,523 average concurrent viewers (peaking at 81,782) and 271,055 hours watched. The live event was globally the most watched WoW: Midnight beat.
On social media, Instagram led awareness, while TikTok delivered strong views - driven in no small part by the police encounter clip from Rewi. YouTube housed the long-form VOD on Rocket Beans' channel generating evergreen traffic post-campaign.
Twitch: 72,500 avg. CCV, 271k hours watched (+128% above est.)
Instagram: 4,350,000 views (+189% above est.)
TikTok: 2,690,000 (+159% above est.)
YouTube: 450,000 views (+330% above est.)
Content Highlights
Conclusions & Learnings
The TTRPG was our answer to Blizzard's brief for the German market and seeing it land the way it did was genuinely satisfying. The format, the cast, the costumes and the set all came together to create something that felt special, not just sponsored.
The biggest learning for Black Soup: our instincts about the German creator landscape are sharp, and the key ingredient is a strong on-set partner overseeing the physical production — something INSTINCT3 and Media Quest fulfilled brilliantly here, together with Atelier 51’s costume and set design.
It was also a reminder of how much atmosphere matters. Most of our players had little to no Pen & Paper experience, but Liza Grimm held the group together with remarkable skill, and the combination of immersive costumes, a cinematic set, and genuine surprise kept everyone in the story even when chaos erupted (which it did, frequently, and wonderfully).
Overarching Conclusion
Both beats of the WoW: Midnight campaign delivered well beyond their KPIs and together they told a coherent story: that WoW is a universe big enough to welcome everyone, from lifelong players to brand new fans who've never set foot in Azeroth.
A stroke of organic luck amplified everything: right around the Midnight release, the German creator scene spontaneously rallied around Sauercrowd, a massive organic WoW Hardcore event driven by some of Germany's biggest names. It swept Twitch, drove enormous free brand awareness, and created the perfect conditions for our influencer work to land even harder. It validated our approach of leaning into new and lapsed audiences, and gave new creators a natural context to enter the WoW universe without it feeling forced.
