World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

The next patch and content unlocks for WoW Classic are now available for testing in the WoW Classic Public Test Realm (PTR).

Ahn’Qiraj

• The 20-player raid zone, Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj is now open in the PTR and available for testing.
• The 40-player raid zone, Temple of “Ahn’Qiraj will not be available for public testing. This raid will only be available after it is opened on each realm.
• The “Sceptre” quest to open the gates is available for testing, however, when the gates are already open, it is not possible to trigger the gate-opening event on the PTR.

Alterac Valley Updates

This patch includes many bugfixes for issues found in the 1.12 version of World of Warcraft. These were issues that were clearly unintended by the design of the time, and are now fixed:

• Terrain exploits
  
  • You can no longer climb the waterfall and enter the Frostwolf base near the Relief Hut.
  • You can no longer climb the cliff and enter Dun Baldar near the Aid Station.
  • You can no longer bypass Icewing Bunker.
• Reputation inconsistencies between Alliance and Horde
  
  • Alliance now always receive Reputation and Honor for defeating Captain Galvangar, regardless of whether Captain Balinda Stonehearth is alive.
  • Developers’ notes: This now correctly mirrors the Horde behavior, which grants them Reputation and Honor for defeating Captain Balinda Stonehearth, regardless of Galvangar’s status.
  • Alliance Druids can no longer have their actions disrupted by talking to them.
  • Developers’ notes: This now correctly mirrors the behavior of the Horde Elementalists, who were already just as steadfast in executing their intended actions.
• Exploits for defeating the enemy general.
  
  • The Horde War Masters can no longer be kited far enough to allow General Drek’thar to be engaged and defeated alone.
  • The Alliance Prospector can no longer be tricked into pulling General Vandar Stormpike out of the bunker so that he can be defeated alone.
  • Developers’ notes: As always, our intention is to accurately represent the 1.12 design intent of the game, and these bugs are clear examples of behaviors that were never intended.

Addon APIs

Recently, we’ve seen an increase in the chat traffic generated by addons that synchronize data between their users. While the vast majority of addons do this responsibly, some can be problematic to the point of degrading the game service for all players. We’ve previously hotfixed the server-side of the game to incorporate chat throttles that work to alleviate some of this, but during our investigations, we found common use cases that we can improve for addon authors.

• Threat
  The community has largely solved threat calculations, and has created robust tools for displaying this in-game. We’d like to improve the addon APIs so they can display this data in an addon without needing to transmit a great deal of chat traffic.
• Larger combat log range
  We originally restricted the combat log range in the open world to prevent a larger radius of stealth detection than existed in original WoW, but this isn’t an issue in Dungeons and Raids. As a result, addon authors send a great deal of chat to synchronize combat events across the raid. In this patch, we’re increasing the combat log range in dungeons and raids so that damage meter addons can get accurate data without the chat traffic.

Authenticator Bag Slots

Since before WoW Classic was first launched, we’ve been very concerned with replicating the original experience while eliminating as many ways that accounts could be compromised as possible. We can’t eliminate them all, and unfortunately, many WoW Classic players have not yet taken steps to protect their account with an authenticator. That leads to difficulty for players when their account is compromised, and they need to contact Blizzard Customer Service to resolve the issue.

In this patch, we’re activating an additional 4 bag slots for any player who has an authenticator attached to their WoW Classic account. In order to help preserve the new-player experience for players who are new to Classic, this won’t be advertised in-game until you’ve reached level 20. Any player with an authenticator already attached to their WoW account will see the additional 4 slots on their backpack when they log into version 1.13.5, and any player who doesn’t will see an in-game “+” on their bag to remind them to secure their account for this reward.

We recognize this is a notable change from original WoW. Account security is very important to us, and we want the reward for securing your account to apply to WoW Classic, as it has applied to World of Warcraft for many years.

These patch notes are a work-in-progress, and are subject to change before the patch goes live. The PTR may be taken down at any time for maintenance, and some content may be disabled or unavailable. We will publish dates for the patch and content unlocks as soon as they are finalized.

Please report bugs using the in-game bug report function. Thank you!

In Shadowlands, Druids can travel to their local Barber Shop and now choose their Bear and Cat Form appearances separately from their character’s hair or fur color. This addition to the Barber Shop services will also include the option to select Bear and Cat Form Artifact appearances so all Druid specs can have the choice to shapeshift into their unlocked Artifact appearances and allow Guardian and Feral Druids to have more choices with weapon transmogs when choosing their Artifact forms.

The Barber Shop will also allow Druids to select their favorite Aquatic, Flight and Travel Forms so that they will no longer require switching glyphs to change the animal forms. These glyphs will now become a one-time use to unlock the appearance and switch the forms easily at the Barber Shop.

What colors and forms do you plan to have for your Druid?