Kaivax

It is now possible for you to obtain access to the Shadowlands Beta via limited-use “keys”.

We are providing some WoW community content creators with the ability to reward access to the Shadowlands Beta.

These Beta access rewards are not for sale or resale. Offers of Shadowlands Beta access for sale or auction are false, and should be reported as such to the entity where they’re listed.

Thank you!

After processing feedback here, we took another look at Hyjal.

One of our goals with this project was to define “lower population” and then connect every realm that fit that definition (within reason and accounting for a few idiosyncrasies) to another realm or cluster of realms. While Hyjal does indeed fall into our list of lower population realms, we don’t think it’s so low that it will be detrimental to leave it unconnected at this time.

The Hyjal to Proudmoore connection has been struck from this week’s maintenance, and we’ll look at Hyjal again in a few months to see how it’s doing.

Updated 15:35 PDT August 18
Hyjal will not be connected to any other realms at this time.

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PDT on Thursday, August 20, the following realm connections will be made:

• The Eldre’Thalas and Korialstrasz realms will join the Akama, Dragonmaw, and Mug’thol realms.
• The Korgath realm will join the Cenarius, Perenolde, and Cairne realms.
• The Blood Furnace, Mannoroth, and Nazjatar realms will join the Azgalor, Azshara, and Destromath realms.
• The Ursin, Andorhal, Scilla, and Zuluhed realms will join the Eonar and Velen realms.
• The Madoran, and Dawnbringer realms will join the Azuremyst and Staghelm realms.
• The Garona realm will join the Icecrown and Malygos realms.
• Hyjal will join Proudmoore.

We are planning more realm connections for low-population realms, and we will post further notifi...

On Monday, August 17, the World of Warcraft forums will be taken offline for maintenance and updates, starting at 6:00 a.m. PDT (9:00 a.m. EDT).

For about two hours, the WoW forums will be in read-only mode. During this time, you may be logged out, and you may have to log back into your forum account thereafter.

Thank you very much.

On Monday, August 17, the World of Warcraft forums will be taken offline for maintenance and updates, starting at 6:00 a.m. PDT (9:00 a.m. EDT).

For about two hours, the WoW forums will be in read-only mode. During this time, you may be logged out, and you may have to log back into your forum account thereafter.

Thank you very much.

Due to a previously unforseen issue, we have decided to hold off on connecting Garona to Icecrown+Malygos until a later date, to be determined. The other listed realm connections will go ahead as planned tomorrow.

Hello Mages. In this week’s build, we’ve made many changes to Arcane as well as a few updates to the other specs to address recent concerns about talents and GCD usage.

General Mage Changes

• Mirror Images damage greatly reduced, Frostbolt added to all Mirror Images, and while your images are active, damage taken is reduced by 20%. Taking direct damage will cause one of your images to dissipate.
  • Developers’ notes: The goal is to push Mirror Images away from a DPS cooldown and give it a defensive component. Now, only taking direct damage will cause an image to dissipate and there is an ICD of 2 seconds to ensure at least a 6 second uptime when taking damage.
• Rune of Power has been reworked to cast at your location when you use one of either Combustion, Arcane Power, or Icy Veins, depending on your spec.
  • Developers’ notes: This change is aimed to help with the cast time and GCD utilization at the be...

Welcome to the Shadowlands Pre-Patch PTR. In this public test realm, we’re testing the version of World of Warcraft which will be released several weeks before Shadowlands. Content specific to this test environment includes:

• Core Class Updates
• In-Game Navigation Improvements
• The New Player Experience
• Character Creation and Character Customization
• The limited-time Scourge Invasion

We’ve launched the PTR today (August 11) with “Week 1” of the events already underway. We’ll move forward to “Week 2” in a couple of days, on August 13.

To test Week 1 with us:

1. Log in to the PTR.
2. Accept the quest “An Urgent Request”.
3. Play through until the completion of Week 1 events, ending with “Advancing the Effort”.

If you’re still not testing the PTR (Public Test Realm) with us, and you want to, we’ve made it easy to get started. Just follow these steps:

CREATE A PTR ACCOUNT:

• Log in to Blizzard Account Management.
• Select Games and Subscriptions.
• In the Starter Editions & Public Test Regions section, select Create PTR Account.
• Click the Create Account button.

JOIN THE PTR:

• Open the Blizzard Battle.net App and select World of Warcraft from your Games list.
• In the selector above the Play button, change your Region / Account to Public Test Realm.
• Click Install to install the PTR client. This becomes a Play...

Welcome to the Shadowlands Test Forums! This forum is here to provide you with a friendly environment where you can discuss the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands test with other players.

Community forums work best when participants treat their fellow posters with respect and courtesy, so we ask that you take the time to read through the forum Code of Conduct and guidelines before posting.

Code of Conduct: https://battle.net/support/article/000256989

Terms of Use: ...

Greetings Priests! In the latest build we have made some significant changes to Fae Blessings. We heard feedback that it wasn’t quite hitting the mark for a covenant ability, and we agree. In reworking this ability, we want to address Power Word: Shield, add a personal benefit to the spell, and make the spell more usable for Shadow Priests, while still keeping its identity as a powerful group support spell.

The ability is now named “Fae Guardians,” to better represent the new design, and to differentiate it from Blessing of the Seasons.

• Fae Guardians (1.5 minute cooldown) – Call forth three faerie guardians to attend your targets for 20 seconds.
  • Wrathful Faerie: Your direct attacks against the target restore 1% Mana or 6 Insanity. Follows your Shadow Word: Pain.
  • Guardian Faerie: Reduces damage taken by 10%. Follows your Power Word: Shield.
  • Benevolent Faerie: Increases the cooldown recovery rate of a major ability by 100%. Follows your S...

This week’s Beta and PTR builds include some updates for Marksmanship Hunters, notably their generation and spending of Focus, and updates to some of the more problematic talents.

In Battle for Azeroth, Rapid Fire’s focus generation and the Master Marksman talent increase the amount of available Focus you have a by a decent amount, which almost pushes Steady Shot’s Focus generation away from being necessary at all. Now:

• Aimed Shot Focus Cost increased to 35 (was 30).
• Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot Focus cost increased to 20 (was 15).
• Rapid Fire duration lowered to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds). Total damage dealt by Rapid Fire should be unchanged.

The above changes should cause you to spend a bit more Focus, and passively generate less from Rapid Fire.

Several talent changes are also coming to both prop up some underused talents, and replace others:

Level 15 Row:

• Redesigned: Master Marksman (Passive) – Your criti...

We have some significant updates in this week’s builds of the Beta and the PTR.

Elemental Shaman

The current version of Fulmination and Seismic Thunder in Shadowlands has a lot of different abilities generating a lot of different buffs, making things feel disjointed. In this Beta build, we’re removing Seismic Thunder entirely, and pushing more of the core abilities to interact with the Fulmination mechanic.

• Chain Lightning (and overloads) that strike two or more targets now generate one stack of Fulmination.
• Lava Burst (and overloads) now generate one stack of Fulmination.
• Earthquake’s cast time is reduced by 20% per stack of Fulmination, up to a cap of 100% reduction (instant cast), and Earthquake’s damage is increased by 20% per stack of Fulmination, up to 160%. Earthquake now also consumes all stacks of Fulmination when cast.

The recent Totem Mastery redesign hasn’t turned out as well as we hoped, so we’v...

Updated 8:25 p.m. PDT August 12

Due to a previously unforseen issue, we have decided to hold off on connecting Garona to Icecrown+Malygos until a later date, to be determined. The other listed realm connections will go ahead as planned tomorrow.

During a special maintenance period (currently planned for 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PDT (10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, August 13), the following realm connections will be made:

• The Frostwolf and Vashj realms will join Drak’Tharon, Firetree, Malorne, Rivendare, Spirestone, and Stormscale .
• The Blackrock realm will join the Azjol-Nerub and Khaz Modan realms.
• The Garona realm will join the Icecrown and Malygos realms.
• The Bloodscalp, Boulderfist, Dunemaul, Maiev, and Stonemaul realms will join the Quel’dorei and Sen’jin realms.
• Garrosh will join Aegwynn, Bonechewer, Daggerspine, Gurubashi, and Hakkar.

We are planning more realm co...

The character wipe is complete, the Beta has been updated to the latest build, and testers can now resume.

Known Issues

• On first logging in, testers will not be able to make a Death Knight, Demon Hunter, or Allied Races character.
  • Until this is fixed, you can make a level 50 template, log in to that character, and then log out. You should then have full access to create any classes or race.
• After doing a character copy, you should begin with the quest “A Chilling Summons” to avoid potential difficulties.
• Some Demon Hunter player-characters may have missing facial features.
  • This may be fixable by going to a barber shop and changing your tattoos.
• ...

Hello!

The WoW Engineering Team would like to celebrate a special milestone with you.

First, here’s some quick background. Whenever we want to make a change, implement a feature, or fix a bug in the World of Warcraft code, we author the change on our local computer, have it reviewed by our peers, then commit the change to the World of Warcraft code repository. Each commit is given a sequential and unique ID, which allows it to be referenced and tracked as it works its way into an expansion, patch, or hotfix. These IDs have been increasing, from the number 1, since the moment the very first lines of code were committed to the fledgling game project that would eventually become World of Warcraft.

We are excited to share that we recently committed the 1,000,000th change to the WoW codebase! In addition to being an awesome decimal landmark, this puts us within striking distance (only 48,576 commits away) of being able to report WoW’s total code changes in mega-c...

Good morning!

There are competing theories about what happened. One is that Saurfang overslept. Another has to do with the gates on Pagle having particularly stuck hinges.

Nonetheless, we think it’s now fixed and the 13 Hour War is over on Pagle.

Never forget.

Congratulations to the first guilds to kill C’Thun in this region:

Very impressive!

Correct!

We caught this bug as soon as we saw it on the first realm in China last night.

We deployed a ...

I can confirm that the planned connections were completed about an hour ago:

• The Drak’thul and Skywall realms have joined the Silvermoon and Mok’Nathal realms.
• The Cairne and Perenolde realms have joined the Cenarius realm.
• The Grizzly Hills and Lothar realms have joined the Malfurion and Trollbane realms.
• The Ravenholdt and Twisting Nether realms have joined Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, and The Venture Company.