World of Warcraft Dev Tracker

May 10, 2024

WoW Classic Era and Hardcore

• Corrected Seal of Righteousness so that it cannot crit.

Specifically, this will happen with the first raid release.

In original Cataclysm, level 85 heirlooms were tied to guild perks. To obtain those heirlooms, players were required to join a guild and boost it to guild level 10, which was meant to be a significant barrier to obtaining them.

In Cataclysm Classic, we chose to make heirloom rewards much more available to players, and since our intention is not to have level 85 heirlooms available during the initial 80-85 leveling, we’ve capped heirlooms at level 80.

When the first raids open, heirlooms that are intended to max at level 85 will be increased to level 85.

Last weekend’s PvP play looked pretty good, so we’re going again starting today, with one adjustment.

This weekend we’re increasing the healing reduction to 30%, which means it will stack with Mortal Strike to a 65% healing protection for 10 seconds after taking damage.

We’ll turn the adjusted PvP aura on at 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EDT).

The Tol Barad Brawl with the Blues playtest gets underway later today.

Don’t forget

We’ll see you back on the Cataclysm Beta Pv...

Later today, we’re testing the instanced Tol Barad in the Cataclysm Classic Beta. Please join us!

• WHEN: 1:00 p.m. PDT May 10
• WHERE: Cataclysm Classic Beta PvP Realm

Before then, feel free to hop into the Beta PvP realm and create a Template Character at level 85 on the Character Selection screen. Log into the Beta and speak with all of the enormous vendors nearby to prepare for battle.

At 1:00 p.m. PDT, open the PvP window (default hotkey: H) and select Battle for Tol Barad and join us.

See you there!

Greetings Rogues,

This week’s Alpha build includes many changes to Class and Spec talent trees, including a handful of positional swaps, tuning changes, and a few new and redesigned talents.

Feedback about these changes is welcome, so please post here with any notable experiences or opinions from your play in the Alpha test.

More change will be coming over the next few weeks, focused primarily on hero talents. Deathstalker is still lurking in the shadows and will be revealed when it’s ready (sometime in the next few weeks).

For Fatebound, more completed talents will be rolling in over time, and we have also been following gameplay and written feedback which will be cause for iterations to existing talents.

For Trickster, we’...

Please note that the updates described above will be coming in future Alpha builds.

We’ve recently experienced a technical issue causing game crashes.

We’ve temporarily disabled the Earthen Allied Race in the War Within Alpha, so that we can find and fix the issue.

The Earthen will return in a future test build.

Today’s Alpha update focuses primarily on Destruction.

The Path Ahead

Before we dive in, we want to acknowledge that our work with each specialization tree is not complete. We’ve seen the recent discussions regarding how bloated the Demonology and Destruction tree are in terms of available talents and ranks, as well as thoughts on the pathing of the Affliction tree.

In the near future, you will see that the Demonology tree is being restructured and condensed. Both the Destruction tree and the Affliction tree will also undergo a restructuring in the near future. In this context, a restructuring means that: the amount of 2-rank talent nodes will be reduced, talents may be removed, talents may be added, new pathing will be...

Greetings, Death Knights.

This week’s alpha build has our first round of changes to both the core class tree and the Unholy spec tree. As stated in our initial messaging our goals for the core tree updates were to shift some of the damage throughput at the end of the talent tree to earlier in the tree. For Unholy our goal was to address some of the flood of resources, reduce the number of things that need to be tracked to play optimally, increase pathing as well as choice, and reduce the number of nodes you need to pick up to play the spec fluidly. We will go into a little more detail below for both the core and Unholy changes.

Core

The core tree has undergone a decent reshuffling of talent placement, node pathing, ability’s becoming basel...

We’ve been playtesting, and iterating, and reading your feedback about Feral.

We hear that you’re sad to lose the combo of getting AOE value out of Ferocious Bites cast with Apex Predator, and we do want Apex Predator to be an appealing AOE talent. Since we also want to bring significance back to maximizing Tiger’s Fury windows, we’re also not happy with compelling you to overwrite Rips benefitting from Tiger’s Fury with Primal Wrath in AOE to deal damage with Tear Open Wounds. So we’re trying a different version of AOE gameplay by restoring Rampant Ferocity and removing Tear Open Wounds.

This retains the rotational clarity that’s a priority for us - in AOE you’ll maintain Rips with Primal Fury and spend additional combo points and Apex Predator procs on Ferocious Bite. The bonus to Rip and Rake damage from Predator will remain single target, as we don’t want this to feel like a maintenance buff in AOE and would prefer to keep its role funneling damage into your priori...

The Stormbringer Hero Talent tree has been implemented in today’s Alpha build.

The Stormbringer is all about the celebration of being the only lightning caster across all classes. Our goal is to to push that fantasy forward with enhancements to your existing lightning spells as well as access to a new spell, Tempest, that occasionally replaces your Lightning Bolt.

Known issues:

• Tuning, sound, and visuals are not final.
• The Conductive Energy talent is currently marked NYI and is not functional
• The final talent, Awakening Storms, has issues with Lightning Bolt overloads while playing Elemental Shaman.

We’re excited for you to try this out and send feedback our way. Thanks!

Here is this week’s update to The War Within Alpha:

NEW ZONES AND DELVES

• Azj-Kahet

NEW DUNGEONS

• City of Threads
• Ara-Kara, City of Echoes

NEW BATTLEGROUND: DEEPHAUL RAVINE

• Deephaul Ravine is themed in The Ringing Deeps where the Foreman Uzjax and Architect Ruffious are tasked with collecting as much valuable ore, gems, and crystals for their respective priorities. Ruffious the Unbound Earthen has big plans for the ore and gems found in the Deephaul Ravine, but the Machine Speakers of the Earthenworks are quite possessive of such precious materials. Uzjax and his team plan to secure these materials before Ruffious and his band of misfits get their hands on it.
  • Mechanics
    • 8v8 and 10v10 Battleground that will be available in all battleground modes.
    • Hybrid map in which teams earn points by contr...

Added an additional hotfix to today’s update:

• Addressed issues with Dwarven and Night Elf archaeology projects. The following projects are now available during the Cataclysm Classic Pre-patch:
  • Dwarf
    • Silver Kris of Korl
    • Warmaul of Burningeye
    • Word of Empress Zoe
    • Pipe of Franclorn Forgewright
    • Spiked Gauntlets of Anvilrage
    • Scepter of Bronzebeard
    • The Innkeeper’s Daughter
  • Night Elf
    • Wisp Amulet
    • Carcanet of the Hundred Magi
    • Umbra Crescent
    • Bones of Transformation
    • Silver Scroll Case

May 8, 2024

Cataclysm Classic

• Professor Thaddeus Paleo has returned to Stormwind and Orgrimmar to continue collecting Darkmoon decks and he will continue to do so until the opening of Darkmoon Faire Island.

May 8, 2024

Season of Discovery

• Fixed an issue with Efflorescence generating frequent immune messages on totems.