Kaivax

In the next build, we’ve made a few Destruction Warlock talent adjustments to address concerns with how the new talents are fitting into the rotation. While we’re not yet focused on making broad class tuning adjustments, we want to make sure these new talents are in a reasonable place for Beta.

Destruction

Talents

• Soul Fire cooldown is now 45 seconds (was 1 minute) and now applies Immolate (was an instant Incinerate).
• Internal Combustion reverted to consuming 5 seconds of Immolate (was 7 seconds).
• Shadowburn reverted to 2 charges (was 1) and its cooldown is now also reduced by Haste.
• Shadowburn Spell Power coefficient increased to 141% (was 130%).
• Roaring Blaze lasts 8 seconds (was 6 seconds).
• Rain of Chaos Infernals now always spawn where your first Infernal landed.

PvP Talents

• Focused Chaos damage increase is now 40% (down from 65%)....

With the weekly reset in each region, we’re going to do some difficulty tuning in Horrific Visions. We agree with player feedback that a couple of the challenging effects can be a bit too punishing. Going forward:

• The Leaden Foot slow effect is now capped at 50% of movement speed (was 90%).
• Split Personality clones are now spawned for 5 seconds (was 6 seconds), and its disorient effect now lasts 2 seconds (was 4 seconds).

We’ll have these listed in our next hotfixes update.

In the Shadowlands, players will meet the Runecarver, a mysterious figure locked away in the very depths of Torghast. To find the Runecarver, players will need to go through the initial Torghast experience and defeat Warden Skoldus in Skoldus Halls, receiving a mysterious key which starts the questline that unlocks the beginning of the Runecarver’s story. Once unlocked, players will be able to call on the power of the Runecarver to carve ancient runes on their armor and imbue them with Legendary power.

For testing, we plan to add a teleport NPC inside Torghast that will take testers directly to the Runecarver, so they can begin crafting their own Legendary armor almost immediately.

Memories and Legendary Powers

To craft Legendary armor, you’ll first need to retrieve specific memories that contain Legendary powers. These memories can be found all over Shadowlands – from questing, running dungeons with friends, fighting against the enemy faction, ...

That is not the case here. This update will make spec-restricted transmog looks class-wide.

Hotfixes

July 8, 2020

WoW Classic

• Time-based instance limits are now enforced per-character.
  • Developers’ notes: The newer limit of 30 instances in a 24-hour period is an extension of the 5 instances per hour limit, which was tracked per-realm since it was first implemented in 2005. The intention behind both of these restrictions is to reduce the profits for new bots when they first come online and haven’t been removed yet. We’ve concluded that a per-character limit will be just as effective, while being less restrictive to legitimate players who have multiple characters on the same realm.

In the next Alpha build, we’ve made this change to Unbound Chaos:

• Activating Immolation Aura will cause your inner demon to slam into nearby enemies at the end of your next Fel Rush, dealing Chaos damage.
  • Developers’ notes: We like the feeling of Immolation Aura empowering your Fel Rush, but requiring Fel Rush to be cast while Immolation Aura was active placed too much pressure on that particular window. We want this talent to be for occasionally weaving Fel Rush into your rotation for a big payoff, so we’ve changed the talent to Immolation Aura buffing your next Fel Rush, which means you can find the right time to fit it in.

Thanks for all of the detailed feedback! While there are still some planned changes coming for Warlock, we’ve made a few recently that you should be seeing in the Alpha:

Affliction

• Agony base damage increased by 12%.
• Inevitable Demise increases Drain Life’s damage by 12% per stack (was 5%).

Demonology

• Axe Toss now interrupts stun immune targets, such as dungeon or raid bosses. This does not affect PvP combat.

Destruction

• Soulfire damage increased by 40%.
• Infernals summoned from Rain of Chaos no longer trigger Infernal Awakening.
• Rain of Chaos Infernals now have some bad luck protection built in. Chance also increased to 20% (was 15%).

I’ve updated the original post for clarity.

The additional 4 bag slots are activated by having both an authenticator and Blizzard Phone Notifications enabled on your Battle.net account.

We have seen accurate reports of the new bag slots not appearing in-game, due to out of date addons.

It looks like disabling addons reveals the new bag slots in that case.

World of Warcraft Classic Patch Notes
Version 1.13.5 – July 7, 2020

Ahn’Qiraj
Behind the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj are two large, unique raids – the Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj, a 20-person raid, and the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, a 40-person raid. As players delve deeper into the mysteries of Ahn’Qiraj, they will discover revelations of the Silithid infestation and their shadowy masters, the Qiraji. Players will have to complete a world event of massive proportions before they can open the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj on their realm.

• The Ahn’Qiraj event will unlock with the weekly raid reset in each region the week of July 28. At that time, players can begin the quest chain to craft a Scepter of the Shifting Sands, and players can turn in gathered resources to advance the Ahn’Qiraj war effort.
• Once both of those activities are completed on a given realm, the gates of Ahn’Qiraj will be available to be opened.

...

World of Warcraft is best when you have a community of other players around you, and while numerous ways to participate in cross-realm play have been added to the game over the years, there are still many aspects of the experience that are realm-based. From your history with your guild to your interactions with the economy around you, a realm with a healthy population provides more opportunities, and it’s been several years since we last connected some realms.

We’ve now completed a comprehensive study of realm populations for every realm in the world. Over the next 2-3 months, we’re going to connect the low-population realms to other existing realms. This process will take place during scheduled maintenance, connecting a few realms each week, until we’ve connected every low-population realm in every region to a substantially larger population of players.

As this project unfolds, we will post notices in advance of each week’s connections in the appropriate regions and l...

With the upcoming Ahn’Qiraj event in WoW Classic, we’ve seen players discussing transferring to a different server to become the Scarab Lord. We’d like to clarify that there is a 90-day period following a character transfer, during which a player is prevented from opening the gates and obtaining the mount.

If you transfer to another realm, you will still be able to complete the quest within 90 days of the transfer, however, you will not receive the rewards associated with being the first to turn it in. We want to allow players to transfer, but that should be so they can play with their friends, not disrupt another realm’s Scepter race.

We hope this clears up the concern.

In this next build of the Shadowlands alpha, combat potions, such as primary stat potions and mana potions, now have a 5 minute cooldown. Additionally, they are no longer limited to one use per encounter. This is intended to make potion use less of a hassle, less expensive, and more decision-oriented in various situations throughout the game.

In raid encounters, players will still have the option of using a potion at the start of an encounter, but using a potion just prior to and as close to the pull as possible will no longer be required. Longer encounters will now offer up more than one moment to use a potion for maximum tactical advantage. Ending a raid boss encounter with a wipe or a win will reset the potion cooldown.

In dungeons, spacing out potion use will place more emphasis on deciding the most important times to use them.

In PvP situations where combat potions are allowed, such as War Mode, Battlegrounds, and Epic Battlegrounds, the rate at which you d...

Fair tidings Illidari. The next build of the Shadowlands Alpha will have a number of changes based on your feedback. We’re generally happy with the core kit of both Demon Hunter specializations, but want to improve talent diversity.

Havoc

• Demonic Appetite - Consuming a soul fragment no longer reduces the cooldown of Eye Beam.

• Cycle of Hatred - When Chaos Strike refunds Fury, it will reduce the cooldown of Eye Beam (was Metamorphosis) .

  • Developers’ notes: We’ve reconsidered the addition of Eye Beam cooldown reduction to Demonic Appetite, believing it will make that talent a dominant choice in the row. Instead, we’re placing that benefit on Cycle of Hatred, which is competing against other options for AOE damage.

• Insatiable Hunger: Demon’s Bite deals 20% more damage and generates 5 to 10 additional Fury.

  • Developers’ notes: Since this ability only increased the max...

In an upcoming build for the Shadowlands alpha, we are updating some dialog and quest text referring to a key character to the Bastion storyline: Pelagos. While normally we wouldn’t share these changes in advance, we recognize there is a higher than usual possibility of this being misunderstood if (and when) it is discovered out of context through datamining, and wanted to make sure that our intentions are clear.

A key part of the Bastion storyline is that Aspirants are able to choose a physical form that represents their true self. Pelagos, who presented as a woman in his mortal life, chose to be a man in the Shadowlands. The team had originally written him to use they/them pronouns, but received feedback that he/him would be more respectful of the character’s wishes to be identified as a man. This change is simply the result of us listening and responding to that feedback.

Since the launch of WoW Classic, we’ve taken action daily against accounts that were botting, hacking, and selling in-game services for real money. This continual effort has resulted in the average daily number of accounts actioned consistently increasing in the Americas, EU, Korea, and Taiwan. In May of this year, we witnessed a surge in the number of botters, and our intensification of efforts to eliminate them brought our average of actioned accounts upwards into the thousands per day.

Since our last post about this issue on June 17, we’ve continued to remove exploiters at a high pace, typically 2,000-3,000 per day, with over 4,000 accounts actioned on some days. This daily effort has resulted in actions taken against over 40,000 accounts since June 17 in the Americas, EU, Korea, and Taiwan.

We’re dedicated to driving the the exploiters away wherever we can, as we continue to make our response to this one of our highest priorities. This is a long-term effort that be...

Happy birthday!!

Overall, the nature-resist gear that was released in original WoW in patch 1.11 was catch-up gear. It was released along with Naxx to help close the gap for guilds who were still dealing with trying to get certain pieces from Green Dragons and Maraudon because they were stuck on Huhuran.

To be specific, here’s a list of pieces that are not in WoW Classic 1.13.5:

We’re putting the finishing touches on the next patch for WoW Classic. Version 1.13.5 will go live in July. With that patch, we’ll be ready to unlock the content we’ve been testing on the PTR.

The Ahn’Qiraj content will unlock with the weekly raid reset on July 28 for all realms in this region.

At that time, players can begin the quest chain to craft a Scepter of the Shifting Sands, and players can turn in gathered resources to advance the Ahn’Qiraj war effort.

Once both of those activities are completed on a given realm, the gates of Ahn’Qiraj will be available to be opened.

We’ll see you there!

Huge thanks to everyone who came out for the stress test today!

Before we caused everything to go haywire for fun, we got some great testing done on all of our newer optimizations.

We couldn’t have done it without you!