Kaivax

Due to unforseen technical issues, we have to reschedule today’s connections. We will do that as soon as possible.

I’ve added the Head of Rend Blackhand to the note. It was a subject of this fix.

July 22, 2020
WoW Classic

• On a realm that is currently layered, turning in Head of Onyxia, Head of Nefarian, or Heart of Hakkar will now start the event dialogue for each layer in which the NPC is currently alive.

Yes. The Honor talent category that contained only Gladiator’s Medallion, Adaptation, and Relentless will be going away. Players will be able to choose three Honor talents going forward.

Hello pet battlers!

In Shadowlands, there are some core changes to Pet Battles, and while there are many pet battle updates now available for testing, we have quite a bit more coming.

First, we have no plans to make a new pet charm currency this expansion. Polished Pet Charms will remain the standard currency to buy new pets, toys, consumables, and all of the other normally-available vendor purchases.

There are several items that are coming along for testing in this week’s build (and the next few builds) of the Shadowlands Beta:

• New content! There will be plenty of new battle pets to capture, trainers to battle, achievements, and pets that will be rewarded from various activities.
• New Abilities! With Shadowlands and all of the strong covenant themes, we have some plans for new abilities and mechanics to add to some of the new pets. Some may be small changes to numbers, and other changes may be big and open up new strategies or synergies.
...

In an upcoming build, most non-periodic abilities on all classes will have a small amount of variance on the damage or healing of each individual use.

This was standard behavior in WoW for many years (and has its roots in familiar mechanics from many RPGs), but recently was lost as a side effect of some under-the-hood mechanical changes. We’re restoring this behavior now to bring back the small bit of texture, and avoid the result where using the same spell repeatedly results in exactly the same 3- or 4-digit number every time.

We’re keeping the amount of variance small (5% currently), so that the impact on total performance, over the course of a combat with many events, is negligible.

Before the Legion expansion, the PvP medallion line of trinkets (often called the “CC break trinket”) removed all movement impairing and loss of control effects from the player, with a 2 minute cooldown. These trinkets were considered uniquely powerful PvP rewards, and they were considered mandatory in high level competitive content.

In Legion, the PvP template system deactivated all effects from gear. This meant that functionality like this had to be included in the honor talent system, along with alternatives.

For Shadowlands, we plan to restore this CC break functionality to a trinket, and make it a powerful PvP trinket option that comes exclusively from PvP. Players will be able to purchase this trinket for Honor or Conquest from one of the new PvP vendors returning in Shadowlands.

Today, we’re applying a small update to World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft Version 8.3.7
Update Notes

• This update contains non-player-facing changes that are required for Shadowlands.
• The WoW Companion App has been updated with bug fixes and stability improvements.

Hello.

We take reports like this very seriously.

Early this morning, we opened an internal investigation into the matter. While investigating, we overturned the suspension and reached out to the suspended player.

To everyone who brought it to our attention: thank you very much!

With the latest build of the Shadowlands Beta, addons are now enabled for use.

Beta testers who have been in-game will need to exit the game and update their client to the latest version (build 35213) in order to test addons.

Neither can we.

Sorry for the confusion.

I’ve amended the original post. These connections will take place during a special maintenance on Thursday, July 23.

UPDATED
Due to unforseen technical issues, we have to reschedule today’s connections. We will do that as soon as possible.

During a scheduled maintenance period (currently planned for 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PDT on Thursday, July 23), the following realm connections will be made:

• The Drak’thul and Skywall realms will join the Silvermoon and Mok’Nathal realms.
• The Cairne and Perenolde realms will join the Cenarius realm.

We are planning more realm connections for low-population realms, and we will post further notifications like this one in the coming weeks.

Thank you!

With this update, scaling has been adjusted for Torghast. Now, the floor you start on will be easier at higher levels when taking a shortcut. Floor by floor difficulty now increases more than before. We expect this may require further tuning.

Additionally:

• Many new Maw Powers have been added for players to encounter when defeating rare elites.
• Achievements are being added for Torghast activities, and more will be added in future builds.
• The Jailer’s interior decorators have have gone to work in Torghast, and many floors are now more intricately decorated.

Greetings Gladiators!

Gladiator mounts have long served as one of the most prestigious rewards in all of World of Warcraft. This is due to the considerable time, effort, and skill required to earn one. In the past, we felt that prestige should be reserved to the character that earned a Gladiator mount, as this best demonstrated your expertise with that particular class.

Shadowlands Season 1 will be the 30th PvP season in World of Warcraft, and a lot has changed over that time. Not only has the game evolved with the introduction of new classes or changes to existing ones, but players’ preferences have often evolved with regard to the class they like to play most.

So, beginning in Shadowlands, all Gladiator mounts, including those from previous seasons, can be used by all characters across the account the mount was earned on.

Thank you for playing and we’ll see you in the Arena!

The Shadowlands Alpha is now the Shadowlands Beta.

As in previous expansion tests, Blizzard is not currently granting test access to the Shadowlands Beta via any sort of exchangeable key or code. At this time, do not trust any offer of Shadowlands Beta access that comes from any source other than Blizzard.

If you’d like to join us in testing Shadowlands, all you need to do is opt in to become a tester. Players who have opted-in can be selected to be a tester, and invitations will go out regularly throughout the test.

In the previous version of the Shadowlands test, we had a character template called “Venthyr Endgame” that allowed testers to create a level 60 character after choosing a Covenant. That template is no longer available, and has been replaced by a new one.

It is still possible to log into the Beta on a character that you put this template on, however, please do not do further testing with a character templated by Venthyr Endgame. If that was your only test character, please make a new character in this build.

We intend to do a complete wipe of all test characters in a forthcoming Beta update.

Thank you.

UPDATED July 15

In this thread, we’re discussing all aspects of the Night Fae Covenant systems coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Read more about the Night Fae Covenant in our July 10 blog update.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this Covenant as they are made.

Thank you for your testing and feedback!

UPDATED July 15

In this thread, we’re discussing all aspects of the Necrolord Covenant systems coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Read more about the Necrolord Covenant in our July 10 blog update.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information abou...