[2022] World of Warcraft Patch 9.4

World of Warcraft Patch 9.4
Build 202241

Producer’s note: this is HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL! Please keep it together on this one. DO NOT FORWARD.

Beyond the End of Infinity: The Final Everything Beginning Forever

Overcoming the challenges of the Shadowlands has opened an infinite number of pathways to an infinite number of worlds like Azeroth, and it’s up to you to figure out which exact world has the most rapidly spawning herbs and start deforesting it! Maybe you’re into Mythic+ dungeons. One of these worlds is going to have a dungeon that can be completed a few seconds faster than all the other dungeons in the metaverse, and that’s where everyone’s going to want to be!

New raid: The Basilica of the Perdurable Vaingloriousness

Producer’s note: Great name! I honestly didn’t think we could top the last one! We’ll get some details in this section soon.

New dungeon: The Recursive Perpetuity

In the wake of the Jailer’s defeat, all of the unexplored parts of Torghast have become open for plundering, and it’s now a mega-mega-MEGA-dungeon with actually infinite floors. Only realm maintenance or a shaky internet connection can stop you from finally reaching the not-really-final boss in what turned out to be the penultimate room and taking all their sweet loot.

New Class: Tinker Leaker

The most popular real-life class has finally come to the fantasy world of Azeroth! Available to all races, the Tinker Leaker provides an exciting connection to the history of the definite future of the game itself. Tinker Leakers are a pure support class that can choose between two ranged specializations: Near-Term Guarantee and Distant Assurance.

As a Tinker Leaker, you’ll follow the other players in your group and buff their spirits with tales of a well-known and interesting activity that is almost certainly on the horizon. You’ll heal your allies with promises, and when each encounter ends, your name and appearance will change so that the next round of authentic predictions you cast will increase in persuasiveness.

New Professions: Micro-professions

At last, we’re going to prove the old adage that less is more with this big new little slate of professions that focus on the small.

Gastronomy – It’s like cooking, only you make miniscule portions and they’re mostly foam.

Microscopy – Get a closer look at the tiniest denizens of whichever world you’re on, and catalogue them all until you realize that no matter where you go, they basically all look like the same little circles and squiggles.

Disc Jockeying – You don’t get to move for the rest of the evening. This micro-profession has you standing in one spot all night, while everyone ignores you until you brutally tease them by not dropping the beat and then when you finally do LET’S GO!

Personal Water Sommelier – Analyze the aqueous provisions on every mage’s table for surprisingly interesting facts about total dissolved solids and alkalinity while wearing goggles that would make anyone else look bad but somehow you pull it off.

Beekeeping – Only available in that one small part of Stormsong Valley, this is really more of a daily chore than anything, but you didn’t learn your lesson with the backyard chickens so …

Miniature Painting – Learn how it feels to be an artist by putting some tiny droplets of paint onto scaled-down versions of Azeroth’s greatest heroes, then stand back and enjoy! Maybe stand a little farther away than you were just now. Yes, that’s better.

Microbrewing – Why should Monks have all the fun at home? Convert that one room in your Garrison into a yeasty-smelling funk closet, wait a few months, and then invite your friends over and watch them struggle to find the right words to say about your creation.

Changes

• Jewelcrafting trainers no longer refer to their profession’s starting materials as “uncut JAMS”.
• The Red Panda companion pet now hides from her mother a lot.
• All characters’ shoulders have been made smaller so that all shoulder-slot gear can be made bigger.
• A single, accidental reference to a tomato has been removed from the game. We apologize profusely for this error.
• The new Arbiter’s first judgments have declared that all portals created by players count as “doors”, and therefore doors outnumber wheels in World of Warcraft.
• Flask of the Vast Horizon now correctly forbids players from entering Westfall.
• The Mists of Pandaria Innkeeper music now plays whenever a Pandaren enters the party.
• All “trash” mobs in the latest raid are now permanently moved out of aggro range, beginning on the 25th week after the raid first opened.
• Now when you fail to solve Cypher puzzles, Pocopoc turns into Pinchapinch.
• Bag squish: As 144 slots of personal inventory have proved to be too much for most players, all bags have been reduced in size by 80%.
• Fixed a bug that prevented someone from saying “Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker” whenever someone said “Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker”.
• All toys that squeak now cause the player to gain full threat from any Druids or Worgen that are within earshot.
• The NPC horse Bruno in Boralus is now 20% more tired of the fact that we don’t talk about him.

Classes

Death Knight

• Now that Death Knights have spent a meaningful amount of time in the realms of death and found they don’t really belong there, this class is renamed ‘Knight’.
• Play through an all-new transformative questline, “A Knight’s Tale”, in which you’ll learn that your real family heritage was the friends you made along the way.
• Night Fae Knights’ potency Conduit Unnatural Malice is now named Night Knight.
• All Knight riding abilities are now Knight Rider themed.

Demon Hunter

• As their ranks have recently decreased, the Illidari have begun to look to other races for candidates who might want to suffer torture and permanent disfigurement for fun and profit.
• Tauren, Highmountain Tauren, Worgen, and Draenei can now be Demon Hunters. Lightforged Draenei didn’t make the cut, for obvious reasons.
• Blade Dance now looks 15% more embarrassing when your mom catches you doing it.
• Fiery Brand now contributes significantly to your future career as a social media manager.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Metamorphosis from turning the Demon Hunter into a butterfly, which is itself a bug, so this was sort of a bug exchange. There was a bug with the bug working properly. Okay thank you.

Druid

• Berzerk is no longer activated when your behavior is challenged by someone who works at the grocery store.
• Given that no one seems to know the difference between Maul and Mangle, they’ve been combined into a single new spell:
  • Mall Gull – summons some seabirds that seem to only live in parking lots.
• New form: Capybara. While in Capybara form, you’re everyone’s buddy and for some reason other players around you feel like napping. Also, you only poop in water.
• New form: Duck. When a Druid casts Aspect of the Duck, they vanish entirely. What’s a duck?
• With each passing year, Rejuvenation and Tranquility aren’t working as well for you as they previously seemed to. I don’t know, man. We’re trying but … I don’t know.

Hunter

• Hunters must now manually activate all pet abilities.
• To compensate for the above, Hunters are now able to tame Halondrus.
• To compensate for that, we’ll be nerfing basically everything else about Hunters in next week’s hotfixes.
• Fixed a bug that inadvertently allowed Halondrus to tame Hunter players.

Mage

• Tinder (Fire PvP Talent) no longer works if you didn’t put something interesting in your bio.
• Meteor no longer exists if your target convincingly chants “don’t look up!”
• Frozen Orb now afflicts you with Insomnia if you stay up late pondering it.
• Selfie mode has been temporary disabled for Mages, as too many of their ‘then and now’ posts started with a shot of their old Warlock main.

Monk

• Celestial Fortune has been reduced by about 10% thanks to inflation.
• Life Cocoon now makes your target appear to be on a comfortable couch, with a blanket and pillows and snacks within arm’s reach. Duration increased to the time it takes to binge a season of something.
• Provoke is now a max-level spell and it can only be trained if you practiced Amateur Voke while leveling up.
• Dampen Harm has been renamed Moisten Harm. This is now an offensive spell.

Paladin

• Your Divine Steed’s droppings now despawn quickly enough to prevent your neighbors from getting a chance to furiously post about it on Nextdoor and Facebook.
• Using Hammer of the Righteous while wearing suspenders now gets you onto your guildmates’ “for you page” 50% faster.
• In order to prevent accidental forest fires, Consecration no longer makes flames on the ground. Instead of holy fire, Consecration now appears as a circle of delicious kale.
• Casting Judgment all the time no longer results in you losing all your friends, so long as you try to keep it to yourself. Maybe share your thoughts with your pets? Just spit balling here.

Priest

No changes needed.

Rogue

• Now when Rogues come out of stealth, they emote at their target with finger guns. zoop!
• Roll the Bones reworked. Roll the Bones is now Rogudle:
  • You have six guesses to figure out the correct combo that will kill your enemy, with correct combo steps appearing in green, unless they’re in the wrong sequence, in which case they appear in yellow.
  • Rogudle provides a handy share-to-social-media button that gives your followers a cryptic mystery they’re going to love interacting with.
  • Enjoy Rogudle as much as possible as soon as you can, since it’s almost certainly going to incorporate ads soon.

Shaman

• The Earthen Ring has discovered a path to the lands between Azeroth and the Elemental planes. While the process of moving to these Realms Betwixt will put the Shaman into a Blemished state, it does provide some new perks:
  • Feral Spirit now summons a single Spirit Jellyfish, which basically does all the work for you.
  • Entering Spirit Wolf form will now helpfully label the Shaman as “dog,” even if they’re using a glyph to change their Spirit Wolf form into something else.
  • Please note that dying as a Blemished will cause the Shaman to drop all of their glyphs, which must be recovered before dying again.
• Everything else about the Realms Betwixt remains a mystery for you to discover! Look for helpful messages from other Shamans, who would never mislead or deceive you in any way.

Warlock

• Drain Soul is no longer the life essence of the pipe leading down from your kitchen sink.
• When summoned, your Incubus now assures you that whatever tomorrow brings, he’ll be there with open arms and open eyes, yeah.
• Your Dreadstalkers are now 10% more likely to hurry up and do their business if you plead with them that you’re late for work.
• Ritual of Summoning now buffs your mouth so that when you’re standing there chanting with your friends, your breath is minty fresh.

Warrior

• Warriors have grown tired of being so focused on warring all the time, so in this patch the class is getting a major redesign:
  • Intimidating Shout has been reworked and is now named Shout Shout: The warrior lets it all out, declaring all of the things they can do without. Come on, I’m talking to you.
  • Furious Slash is now Slash: The warrior transforms into a famous guitar player with long curly hair and a top hat.
  • Casting Slam now puts your name on the list at the coffee shop so you can get up on their little stage this evening and present your poetry.
  • Charge now debits other players’ accounts and provides them with tickets to come see you perform.
• Producers’ note: Ummm I think we’ve invented the BARD here?

New WoW Classic Season Coming Soon: Season of Intermittent Fasting

The next version of WoW Classic sounds easier to you than how you used to play. In fact, there’s only one #change to overcome: food buffs are now only available to you in the afternoon.

All trainers in the game have been removed.

Now that you’ve tried everything else, you may as well give this a shot!