World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Hello!

The WoW Engineering Team would like to celebrate a special milestone with you.

First, here’s some quick background. Whenever we want to make a change, implement a feature, or fix a bug in the World of Warcraft code, we author the change on our local computer, have it reviewed by our peers, then commit the change to the World of Warcraft code repository. Each commit is given a sequential and unique ID, which allows it to be referenced and tracked as it works its way into an expansion, patch, or hotfix. These IDs have been increasing, from the number 1, since the moment the very first lines of code were committed to the fledgling game project that would eventually become World of Warcraft.

We are excited to share that we recently committed the 1,000,000th change to the WoW codebase! In addition to being an awesome decimal landmark, this puts us within striking distance (only 48,576 commits away) of being able to report WoW’s total code changes in mega-commits *.
(* This is almost certainly a made-up measurement that no one uses for source code repositories.)

As we celebrate our millionth commit, we can’t help but reflect a bit. For all of us, being an engineer on World of Warcraft is the best job on Earth. It combines the challenges of a massive, highly complex, and ever evolving software project with the creativity, whimsy, and magic that is bringing a world to life.

It’s because of you that we’ve had the privilege of calling Azeroth home for over 473 billion milliseconds. We are honored and humbled by your support, your stories, and your feedback, and we can’t wait to see what the next million commits have in store for us.
For Azeroth!

The World of Warcraft Engineering Team

Leading into Shadowlands, the leveling experience will undertake a complete rehaul – the current max level 120 will be squished down to level 50, a new introductory excursion that will teach you the fundamentals of the new character that you created, and a new starting experience that will allow you to select an expansion to level through and experience its full story.

Heirlooms and other experience gained bonuses were originally introduced as a quick fix for alts to not have to spend over 100 hours leveling. With the revamped leveling experience, you can look forward to reaching the new max level more than twice as fast than before. With the quicker leveling experience, the fundamental problem to the long leveling process has been solved and we found that the experience bonuses that come from Heirlooms were no longer necessary and instead, made the new leveling experience feel very awkward with the extra leveling speed.

We want to ensure that players’ investment in these Heirlooms continues to offer unique benefits while leveling, so we’re planning to replace the experience bonus on Heirlooms with unique Heirloom set bonuses.

• (2) Set: Rested experience consumed is reduced by 30%.
• (3) Set: Increases your out-of-combat regeneration in the outdoors, normal dungeons and battlegrounds.
• (4) Set: Gaining a level triggers Burst of Knowledge, dealing Holy damage to nearby enemies and granting you 40% primary stat for 2 minutes. Defeating additional enemies extends this effect, up to 2 additional minutes.
• (6) Set: Rested experience consumed is reduced by an additional 30%.

The new set bonus can be obtained from all Heirloom pieces except weapons and trinkets. Please keep in mind that the new Heirloom set bonuses are a work in progress and may have additional changes during the course of development and testing.

There are a few other experience bonus items that will also see changes due to the new leveling experience. Monks Peak of Serenity Enlightenment buff will be changed to granting rested experience and Elixir of Ancient Knowledge, Elixir of the Rapid Mind, and Excess Potion of Accelerated Learning will become Poor quality and no longer usable. The Draught of Ten Lands will still retain the 10% experience bonus but will now be capped at level 50.

We hope that you look forward to the new leveling changes that introduces a faster and more flexible leveling experience than ever before.

On Thursday, August 6th and Friday, August 7th, we will be continuing our raid tests in Castle Nathria.

Thursday, August 6th

Artificer Xy’mox - Heroic Castle Nathria
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

Sire Denathrius - Heroic Castle Nathria
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

Friday, August 7th

Hungering Destroyer - Mythic Castle Nathria
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

Lady Inerva Darkvein - Mythic Castle Nathria
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

To facilitate testing, players who have not committed themselves to a Covenant can speak with Acquirer Ta’est inside Castle Nathria to temporarily bind themselves to one of the four factions.

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: In Oribos, Dalaran, Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade IV in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?
A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players’ effective level to 60 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.

Q: How long does testing last?
A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we’re satisfied that we’ve received that information for a given boss, we’ll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

We appreciate you taking the time to test our content and look forward to reading your feedback.

Congratulations to the first guilds to kill C’Thun in this region:

Guild - Realm - Time
Onslaught - Skeram - 20:08 PDT
Fusion - Incendius - 20:31 PDT
Rise - Netherwind - 20:43 PDT

Very impressive!

Player versus Player

• This week’s Comp Stomp Brawl has been replaced with Temple of Hotmogu.
  
  • Developers’ note: We’ve identified some issues with Comp Stomp and have removed it from the rotation. Comp Stomp will return to the rotation in Shadowlands.
    

WoW Classic

• The Blue Scepter Shard, Green Scepter Shard, and Red Scepter Shard quest items are now Epic quality.
  
  • Developers’ note: We're changing the item quality on the Scepter Shard quest items to Epic (purple) so that they'll be easier to distribute to the correct person in raids using Group Loot or Master Looter.
    
• Fixed an issue that caused C’Thun within Temple of Ahn’Qiraj to incorrectly delay casting Eye Beam when engaging in combat.