World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

WoW Classic name reservations open today! Players with an active subscription or game time on their World of Warcraft account can create up to three characters per WoW account before WoW Classic releases worldwide on Monday, August 26 at 3:00 p.m. PDT.


When you reserve a name, you’ll also choose the realm you will play that character on. There are a few additional things to keep in mind as you make your choice:

• Players who choose to play on a PvP realm will only be able to create characters within the same faction. This means that if you create an Alliance character, all further characters on that realm must also be Alliance characters.
  
• After WoW Classic is live, you’ll be able to create up to 10 characters on any given realm and can create a maximum of 50 characters across all WoW Classic realms. This character count does not impact the number of characters you can create on the current World of Warcraft realms.
  
• Characters that were created for the WoW Classic beta or stress tests will not be available to use in WoW Classic.

To create a character and play WoW Classic, you will need to download and install the client first.

• Open the Battle.net desktop app and select World of Warcraft in the game selection menu.
  
• Under the Version menu, select World of Warcraft Classic. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second dropdown for Account. In that column, select the active account you want to play on.
  
• Click the Install button. You’ll see an installation progress bar that will show you when the installation is available to play.
  
• Once the installation is complete, click the Play button.

You’ll need to select the realm you want to play on then select Create New Character. You’ll be able to choose your faction, class, and race, as well as fully customize your new character and name them. If you change your mind about a character and have already created your three, you will need to choose a character to delete. Please note, the name associated with the character deleted will be immediately available again to be claimed.

Before you put your plans too firmly in place, we encourage you to gather your allies together to select your new home realm. If you’re looking to reconnect with your old friends and guildmates, be sure to check out our Classic Connections forum.

Available Realms for North America



Available Realms for Oceania



Available Realms for Europe


Once you’ve created your new character, all that will be left is to synchronize your chronometer with your friends and allies and prepare for your world (of Warcraft) domination! We’ll see you in Azeroth at 3:00 p.m. PDT on August 26!

Dungeons and Raids

• Azshara’s Eternal Palace
  
  • The Queen’s Court
    
    • Fixed a bug with Frenetic Charge which would cause Aspect of the Turtle to not correctly mitigate the damage and knockback effects.
      
  • Za’qul, Harbinger of Ny’alotha
    
    • Reverted a change that caused Mind Tether to deal excessive damage to the linked target.
      
    • Corrected an issue where Mind Tether would not attach two targets that were in separate phases.
      
• Operation: Mechagon
  
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players to become locked to the normal encounter if they killed King Mechagon on hard mode and died at the same time.
    

Island Expeditions

• The bonus amount of Azerite granted to players with the Azerite Residue buff has been increased based on Island Expedition difficulty.
  
  • Heroic Island Expeditions
    
    • 2 Azerite per stack of Azerite Residue, 500 Azerite total per player at full stack.
      
  • Mythic Island Expeditions
    
    • 3 Azerite per stack of Azerite Residue, 750 Azerite total per player at full stack.
      
  • PvP Island Expeditions
    
    • 4 Azerite per stack of Azerite Residue, 900 Azerite total per player at full stack.
      
• Azerite Residue increases in potency more quickly based on Island Expeditions difficulty.
  
  • Heroic Island Expeditions
    
    • Azerite Residue now increments every 1.5 seconds (6 minutes 15 seconds to reach full).
      
  • Mythic Island Expeditions
    
    • Azerite Residue now increments every 1.25 seconds (5 minutes 12 seconds to reach full).
      
  • PvP Island Expeditions
    
    • Azerite Residue now increments every 1 second (3 minutes 45 seconds to reach full).
      
• Developers’ note: As higher Island Expedition difficulties award larger total amounts of Azerite, we want to ensure that the reward for engaging and defeating the enemy team remains relevant, especially in PvP Islands.

Items

• Fixed an issue that allowed certain abilities to remove the "Recharging" debuff from Logic Loops.

Quests

• “Taking the Air Out” is now offered more often in Mechagon.

In this thread, please post if you played WoW on the (faction) of (Server Name) in 2004-2006.

For best results, post what you remember about yourself and your friends you used to play with:

• Your character’s name, race and class.
• The name of your original guild on this realm.
• The character names of other players you’re hoping to reconnect with.

Please stick with in-game info, and do not post IRL identifying information about yourself or others.

To quickly find if the friend or guild you’re looking for is listed here, use the Search function! Just select the magnifier icon on the top right – be sure to check “Search this topic” to limit your results to this thread.

Good luck finding your former mates!

We’re working on the following changes to several specs, which will go live with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region.

Please note that these adjustments are in testing, and we may add, edit, or strike them between now and maintenance. As always, we’ll let you know here if we make changes to the changes, and we’ll post the final numbers in our hotfixes update immediately after maintenance.

Classes

• Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Frost
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
  • Unholy
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Destruction
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
• Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Arms
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
• Developers’ notes: Arms Warrior, Destruction Warlock, Frost Death Knight and Unholy Death Knight are generally underperforming and could use a damage increase.
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Outlaw
    
    • Blade Flurry now strikes nearby enemies for 30% of normal damage (was 45%).
    • Keep Your Wits About You (Azerite Trait) now increases the chance for Sinister Strike to strike again by 3% (was 5%), and the maximum number of stacks has been increased to 33.
  • Developers’ notes: While multi-target cleave is an iconic strength for Outlaw Rogue, we feel that Blade Flurry is currently too strong, particularly in Mythic Keystone dungeons. Likewise, the Azerite Trait Keep Your Wits About You provides too much added value to their AOE rotation at only a single instance of the trait. These changes should keep Outlaw Rogues very strong at multi-target cleave, but no longer significantly ahead of other specs.
• Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Restoration
    
    • Healing Surge and Healing Wave healing increased by 10%, and mana cost reduced by 5%.
    • Healing Rain healing increased by 20%
    • Riptide heal-over-time increased by 15%.
    • Wellspring healing increased by 15%.
  • Developers’ notes: In general, Restoration Shamans are struggling with single target healing environments like Mythic Keystone Dungeons and Arenas, so we’re buffing some spells from their single target kit. At the same time, we also feel like they aren’t doing as well in a particular area where they should excel: healing a large number of targets in a small area, so we’re increasing the strength of Healing Rain. Finally, Wellspring is an underperforming talent we feel could benefit from an increase to be competitive.

Player versus Player

• Heart of Azeroth
  
  • All Tier 3 Azerite Traits (such as Resounding Protection and Impassive Visage) are now reduced to 20% effectiveness in PvP (was 50%).
    
    • Developers’ notes: We’d like to see sustained damage become a greater source of pressure in Arena and Battlegrounds, but the passive healing providing by these Azerite Traits offsets much of that damage. We think that by decreasing their impact, we’ll see greater pressure on health and mana pools going forward.
• Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Necrotic Strike’s Necrotic Wound now absorbs 5% of the target’s maximum health in healing received (was 7%).
  • The melee attack damage and attack speed of the Raise Abomination guardian has been decreased by 30%.
    
    • Developers’ notes: While Death Knight damage is underperforming in raid environments, they are very strong in PvP. To offset the increases to their base damage, we’re reducing the effectiveness of two very strong Honor Talents.
• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Temporal Shield now has a 4 second duration (was 6 seconds).
    
    • Developers’ notes: While we like the predictive gameplay of Temporal Shield in response to offensive pressure, we think the duration provides too much protection for a class that should be focused on control and mobility for defense.

Starting August 12th, 2019 at 3 pm PST, players with an active subscription or game time on their World of Warcraft account can reserve their character names by creating up to three WoW Classic characters. Please note that all of your characters on a PVP realm must be the same faction.

Before creating a character, you’ll choose the realm where you want to play that character. Realms in the Americas will be:


Relative realm population will be visible in-game to help in choosing a realm so you will see Low, Medium, or High in the realm selection screen. If there are high numbers of players congregating on individual realms during name reservation and character creation, we will post warnings about the potential for queues on those realms, giving you time to choose alternate realms.

WoW Classic releases worldwide on August 26th at 3:00pm PST.

Starting at 00:01 CEST on Tuesday 13th August, players with an active subscription or game time on their World of Warcraft account can reserve their character names by creating up to three Classic characters. Please note that all of your characters on a PvP realm must be the same faction.

Before creating a character, you’ll choose the realm where you want to play that character. The following realms will be available:


Relative realm population will be visible in-game to help in choosing a realm so you will see Low, Medium, or High in the realm selection screen. If there are high numbers of players congregating on individual realms during name reservation and character creation, we will post warnings about the potential for queues on those realms, giving you time to choose alternate realms.

WoW Classic releases worldwide on Tuesday 27th August at 00:01 CEST.