World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Dungeons and Raids

• Azshara’s Eternal Palace
  
  • The Queen’s Court
    
    • Fixed an issue with Repeat Performance where Ignore Pain triggered from Warriors’ Bastion of Might (Azerite Trait) was counted as a cast, causing them to be silenced if they used Ignore Pain after casting Avatar.
      
  • Queen Azshara
    
    • Overzealous Hulks should no longer be affected by snaring abilities or gain the Infuriated buff from such abilities.
      
      • Developers’ note: Since Overzealous Hulks become immune upon the first expiration of a crowd-control ability, using a movement speed reduction effect on them was generally a trap, and sometimes unavoidable for players with uncontrollable snares tied to their rotational abilities.
        
• Temple of Sethrallis
  
  • Removed a Void Emissary near the pack of enemies by Galvazzt.
    

Quests

• Tauren players who completed their Heritage Armor quest line can now turn in “Remembrance” to Baine in Thunder Bluff.
  
• "Show Me What You've Got" is no longer required for the The Norwington Estate quest line in Tiragarde Sound.

WoW Classic

• Fixed an issue where turning in the Head of Rend Blackhand for the quest “For the Horde!” was not granting the Warchief's Blessing buff to players in Orgrimmar.

New Character Models: Worgen and Goblins
First introduced in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, worgen and goblins are getting some long-anticipated improvements to their character models. These updates touch on every aspect of how the worgen and goblins look—from their faces to their animations.

WoW 15th Anniversary Event
This November is the 15th anniversary of World of Warcraft, and we have some special things planned to commemorate the occasion.

Anniversary Gift
Players who log in during the event period will receive an Anniversary Gift in the mail, which includes a Lil’ Nefarian battle pet, a Celebration Package that increases experience and reputation gains throughout the event, a reusable firework that can be used for the duration of the event, an item that teleports you to the Caverns of Time (usable only during the event), and other in-game goodies.

New Raids: Memories of Azeroth
Chromie has separated the strands of time, allowing you to go back and relive epic raid encounters from Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. Each of these limited-time raids will feature three iconic bosses, and they’ll be available as their own wings through the Raid Finder.

To enter the raid, you need a minimum item level of 380. Players who complete all three wings will receive the achievement Memories of Fel, Frost and Fire which grants the Obsidian Worldbreaker, a Black Dragonflight mount inspired by Deathwing.

Return to Alterac Valley of Olde
Run down your enemies, raze their fortifications, and exchange the tokens you loot from their corpses to summon mighty reinforcements in Korrak’s Revenge, a throwback Battleground inspired by the earliest days of Alterac Valley.

Players who participate in Korrak’s Revenge and complete the Alterac Valley of Olde achievement can earn two new mounts: the Stormpike Battle Ram (Alliance) and the Frostwolf Snarler (Horde).

New Quests
Many new stories and adventures are now available across Azeroth.

The War Campaign Concludes
Tensions continue to rise between Saurfang, Anduin, and the Banshee Queen Sylvanas. Discover the fate of the Horde and Alliance in the final chapter of the War Campaign.

Magni Bronzebeard
With N'Zoth's imminent emergence, you must seek help from an unlikely ally: the Black Prince, Wrathion. Level 120 players should seek out Magni in the Chamber of Heart to continue the story and discover the Black Dragonflight’s whereabouts.

Making it Easier to Party Up with Friends

Introducing Party Sync
Party Sync is a new feature that makes it easier than ever for friends to party up and quest together. When players activate Party Sync, everyone in the party becomes aligned to the same quest state and phase. By mousing over a quest in your tracker, you can see who’s on a given quest, what their progress is, and who’s ready to turn it in. You’ll also have access to a “replay quest” feature that allows players who have already completed certain quests to replay those quests with their friends for rewards that are appropriate to their current level, regardless of the original level of the quest. Quests can be replayed for rewards once a day.

Relaxing Level Restrictions
We’ve also relaxed level restrictions, so lower-level players can queue for instanced content (such as Battlegrounds and dungeons) in their level range, and higher-level players can choose to join them by having their level scaled down. Please note that unlike Timewalking, when your level is scaled, you will temporarily lose access to abilities and powers (such as Azerite Traits and over-level spell, abilities, talents, and trinkets’ effects) with requirements that exceed your reduced level.

Recruit A Friend Returns
Ready to bring your friends to Azeroth and show them the ropes? Doing so is easier than ever with our revamped Recruit A Friend system! If you have active game time, you’ll be able to recruit up to 10 friends—both veterans who haven’t been subscribed for over two years and newcomers—to share in your adventures. Enjoy 50% bonus experience for faster leveling when you and your recruit are partied together and summon each other once every 30 minutes.

The new Recruit A Friend lets you generate a custom link that you can send to your friends. This link will help you connect with each other, and you’ll be able to see if they have purchased game time, which will lead to rewards for you! For each month your recruits have active game time, you’ll earn a new reward, such as unique pets, mounts, game time, and more. These rewards unlock each month and scale with the amount of time your recruits have subscribed for. And, of course, with Party Sync you’ll be able to journey with your friends on any of your characters.

New Mount: Honeyback Harvester
Stormsong’s Beekeepers have discovered a new hive in town. Alliance players can work with Barry to locate the hive and court the favor of the Hivemother in order to earn the Honeyback Harvester mount—and both factions can earn several other bee-themed toys and items.

New Timewalking Raid: Firelands
While Cataclysm Timewalking is active, max-level players will be able to form a raid group and enter the Sulfuron Spire raid. As with previous Timewalking raids (Black Temple and Ulduar), your gear and power are scaled to the challenge, and all the bosses and rewards you expect lie in wait.

Note that mounts do not benefit from mount equipment in battlegrounds or Arenas and that some do not benefit from mount equipment at all such as the Sky Golem.

Holiday Updates
Lunar Festival
Embark on an adventure around Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms to complete the Rite of the Moon and help an old druid bless her Staff of Moonflowers. In return, she will enchant your flower crowns so they never die, and you can transmogrify them year-round!

Characters

• Goblins
  
  • Goblins now wave at Gobber after casting Pack Hobgoblin (Racial).
    
  • Gobber now waves back at the player and makes a sound when summoned.
    
  • Rocket Barrage (Racial) now makes sound and the rockets launch from the belt instead of the caster’s feet.
    

Classes

• Increased the size of the visual indicating where a player will resurrect after accepting a resurrection during combat.
  
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Beast Master
    
    • Animal Companion (Talent) now reduces extra pet damage by 35% (was 40%).
      
• Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Holy
    
    • Glimmer of Light (Azerite Trait) can now be dispelled by abilities that remove Magic effects.
      
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Blind’s debuff is now displayed on enemy nameplates.
    
• Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • A player that can Reincarnate from Ancestral Protection Totem (Talent) now sees a glowing screen edge and visual effect.
    
    • Restoration
      
      • Deluge (Talent) now increases the healing of Healing Wave and Healing Surge, in addition to Chain Heal.
        

Black Market Auction House

• New enchantment, transmogrifiable gear, and mount listings have been added.
  
• Unclaimed Black Market Auction House Containers will now fully create the item when open or viewed in any way. No peeking!
  
• Removed Grimoire of the Four Winds

Items and Rewards

• Added Glyph of Lavish Servings which allows Mages to change the appearance of their Mage Table.
  
• Players who collected Upgraded Dungeon Set pieces can now replace sold or destroyed pieces for 75 Darkmoon Prize Tickets from Barum while Darkmoon Faire is active.
  
• Raddon’s Cascading Eyes can now only reduce the cooldown of Eye Beam by up to a maximum of 20 seconds per cast of Eye Beam.
  
• Timewalking vendors now restrict their wares to those who can participate in their respective Timewalking events.

Player versus Player

• Battlegrounds
  
  • Epic Ashran
    
    • New Ancient Artifact: Solar Sphere
      
      • A new artifact of power has been discovered in Ashran’s underground mines—the Solar Sphere. The faction who captures its power will gain 20% haste while controlled.
        
    • Many of the NPCs within the Road of Glory have been removed to improve performance.
      
    • Fangraal and Kronus now cost 3,000 Artifact Fragments (was 300).
      
    • Fangraal and Kronus now deal increased damage and have a new a melee cleave ability.
      
    • The Reinforcement count has been reduced to 150 (was 300).
      
    • Front Line Fortitude now increases health to all melee players and NPCs within the Road of Glory by 100% (was 30%).
      
    • The Ancient Artifact now spawns after a player kills the Ancient Inferno rather than randomly spawning on the map.
      
  • Epic Wintergrasp
    
    • Vehicles are no longer affected by movement slowing effects or roots.
      
    • Damage done by Catapults has been slightly increased.
      
    • The Siege Engine now has increased health.
      
  • Mercenaries no longer benefit from the effects of Enlistment Bonus.
    

Professions

• Several items created with Kul Tiran Engineering now have a minimum level requirement.
  
  • Electroshock Mount Motivator, F.R.I.E.D, Organic Discombobulation Grenade, Thermo-Accelerated Plague Spreader, Unstable Temporal Time Shifter, can now only be used by level 110 or higher characters.
    

Quests and World Quests

• World Quests and Missions now offer gold or war resources instead of Artifact Power to players who can no longer progress their Heart of Azeroth (level 70).
  
  • War Campaign Updates
    
    • All reputation requirements have been removed from the following War Campaign quests:
      
      • Horde:“A Stroll Through a Cemetery,” “Tracking Tidesages,” “Journey to the Middle of Nowhere,” “When a Plan Comes Together,” “A Mech for a Goblin,” “Breaking Out Ashvane,” and “War Is Here.”
        
      • Alliance:“Crippling the Horde,” “Our Next Target,” “Intercepted Orders” “Bringing Down the Fleet,” “Sensitive Intel,” “The Abyssal Scepter,” and “The Fall of Zuldazar.”
        
    • Players are no longer required to level a Nazjatar companion to level 3 to access the War Campaign quest “Stay of Execution.”
      

User Interface

• Auction House purchases over 50,000 gold now require players to confirm the purchase in a dialogue box.
  
• Player characters can now be displayed in the Mount Journal preview. This can be toggled on or off with the “Show Character” option in the viewport window.
  
• Class color and faction icon now displays in the Character Select screen.
  
• The System Menu button now always appears in the Character Select screen.
  
• Players can now toggle between the map of a quest’s final destination and its initial start point by clicking on the arrow icon next to it in the Map & Quest log

Companion App

• Community chat improvements.
  
• Fixed a bug that required users to log in twice before accessing the app.

Bug Fixes

• Battle Pets
  
  • Necrofin Tadpole now correctly grants a rare quality pet.
    
• Classes
  
  • Abilities or passives that allow players to survive fatal blows (e.g. Rogues’ Cheat Death) no longer trigger prematurely if the target has Blessing of Sacrifice.
    
  • Blood Death Knights’ Dancing Rune Weapon should now always mirror the caster’s melee attacks.
    
  • Discipline and Holy Priests’ Divine Star (Talent) should no longer hit targets through walls.
    
  • Enhancement Shaman are now refunded 80% of the Maelstrom resource cost when Storm Strike misses or parries.
    
  • Frost Mages’ Frozen Orb’s trajectory now slows down when it deals damage rather than when it collides into an enemy or destructible unit.
    
    • Developers’ note: This quality of life change should make this spell more reliably deal damage against large raid bosses, such as Blackwater Behemoth or Radiance of Azshara.
      
  • Affliction Warlocks’ Phantom Singularity (Talent) can now critically strike the primary target.
    
  • Warlocks who are interrupted while casting a Fire school spell or Chaos Bolt with an imp pet active can again use Command Demon to force their imp to use Singe Magic while locked out from spell casting.
    
• Dungeons and Raids
  
  • Abyssal Commander Sivara
    
    • Frost and Toxic Javelins have been renamed to Frost Bolt and Toxic Bolt as intended.
      
  
  
• Followers and NPCs
  
  • The prices for consumables crafted from Pascal-K1N6 have been reduced.
    
  • Nazjatar followers can again respawn if a player is in stealth when they are killed.
    
  • Crazed Trogg should now always attack players covered in the correct paint color.
    
  • All interrupts should stop Seashelf Reefwalker from completing a Coral Growth cast.
    
  • Rolly Gulper no longer can fly to attack airborne players.
    
  • Enemies and their corpses no longer prevent players from gathering the Energy Cells or Spare Parts underneath them.
    
  • The chicken critters loitering in front of Ironforge can again be slaughtered.
    
  
  
• Items
  
  • Blueprint: Re-Procedurally Generated Punchcard now correctly indicates it only creates Yellow Punchcards.
    
  • Characters now announce if they’ve placed down a Cauldron of Battle, Big Cauldron of Battle, Spirit Cauldron, Mystical Cauldron, or a Greater Mystical Cauldron.
    
  • Meera’s Jukebox no longer generates threat.
    
  • Nazjatar follower reputation items now grant reputation above Rank 8 when used.
    
  • Players can link mount equipment that they have equipped.
    
  
  
• Mounts
  
  • Kua’fon can again fly inside Garrisons.
    
  
  
• Player versus Player
  
  • Items
    
    • Fixed an issue that caused Mirror Charm’s effects to carry over into PvP combat.
      
    • Lady Waycrest’s Music Box should no longer damage stealthed enemy players.
      
  
  
• Quests
  
  • Players can again receive credit for “A Shattered Path Through Time” after completing a Timewalking dungeon.
    
  • Rewards from the Reclamation Rig can again be opened through in-game mail.
    
  • A warning now displays that activating the device in “The Laboratory of Mardivas” will initiate a weekly lockout.
    
  • Players can again interact with the Soul Harvester in “Holding the Ramparts.”
    
  • NPCs no longer phase during “Breaking the Food Chain.”
    
  • The requirements for “Becoming a Friend” are now clearer.
    
  • Players can again collect all the Sandclaw Crab and Muck creepers necessary for “Gather Friends.”
    
  • Players no longer become stuck in combat when using Bot Re-Energizer during “Right Bot for the Job.”
    
  • Players can again “Gather Friends” with The Friendship Net without causing them to despawn.
    
  • Enemies defeated during “Off-the-Books-Brawlin’” again drop loot.
    
  • Prince Erazmin now properly awards credit to players who complete “Welcome to the Resistance.”
    
  • “Our Direct Line” no longer offers an indestructible Encrypted Black Market Radio.
    
  • “Abduction Reduction” now correctly grants credit only to the player that catches a mechagnome.
    
  • Advisor Ko’jan should now always be present during “Silence the Advisor.”
    
  • Corroded Sentries now correctly grant credit toward “Battle Tested.”
    
  • Sharing “First Charge is Free!” no longer sometimes causes players to be unable to complete the quest.
    
  • The Cooking Pot required for “Revenge is Tasty” now correctly requires 1 Outland Cooking to use.
    
  • All Sandclaw Crabs are again valid targets for the Friendship Net during “Gather Friends.”
    
  • Players can again complete “Flush Them Out” while on “Twist the Knife.”
    
• World Quests
  
  • Players who leave “Make Loh Go” before completing it are no longer swarmed by enemies.
    
  • The quest item Talanji’s Mojo is now correctly removed from a character’s inventory when leaving the active area during “Don’t Stalk Me, Troll.”
    
• World
  
  • Certain Prismatic Crystals in Nazjatar are now easier to interact with.
    
  • Fixed an issue that prevented players from seeing the Banshee’s Wail in Port of Zandalar.
    
  • A hole in the Imperial Gardens has been covered up.
    
  • Players should no longer get stuck while exploring Chitterspine Caverns.
    
  • Fixed an issue that caused chunks of terrain to disappear in Northrend.
    

To view all content update notes, click here.

For World of Warcraft customer support, please visit our Support Site or our Customer Support discussion forum. If you’ve found a bug, please let us know about it in our Bug Report Forum. There, you’ll find our updated 8.2 Known Issues List (coming soon), as well as other resources.

An extra weekly quest and rewards are here.

Get out your best map and plan your route across every part of Kul Tiras and Zandalar, as this is a great time to immerse yourself in World Quests.

This Week
All week, open your map (default hotkey: m) and then select any of the six main Battle for Azeroth zones to consider the World Quests available to you. Hover your mouse over a World Quest on the map to see what tasks are needed complete it, the rewards you’ll receive, and the time remaining that the quest is available to you.

Look for the following all week long:

• Your Adventure Guide has a quest for you.
  
  • Quest requirement: Complete 20 World Quests
    
  • Reward: 1,000 War Resources
    
• Passive buff: +50% to Reputation gains from World Quests

If you’ve been looking to impress some emissaries, this is the week to do it!

Every Week
The Bonus Events system consists of a rotating schedule of different activities, currently scheduled to run each week beginning on Tuesdays. Each Bonus Event grants a passive bonus to a particular game activity and offers a once-per-event quest with a noteworthy reward for accomplishing a related goal. The in-game calendar can serve as your one-stop reference for the event schedule. The Adventure Guide also offers a direct link to active Bonus Events, allowing you to easily accept any associated quests.

Every other week a new PvP Brawl will be available to players looking for something just a little different. Each Brawl will offer a variety of modes, rules, and scenic changes to the usual Battleground gameplay, and you’ll find them in the Group Finder tool (hotkey “I”) in the Player vs. Player tab. Just like Random Battlegrounds, you’ll receive a reward for achieving victory.

Warsong Scramble – Capture the Flag
Do you have a flag? Warsong Gulch has always been the scene of an epic Capture the Flag battle, but what happens when you can capture your enemy’s flag without your own at base? Find out when you step into this PvP Brawl! We’ve also added a few more power-ups to the field of battle to stir things up a bit. To win, your team will need to be the first to capture 5 flags.

We’ve recently become aware of a bug that could be exploited to allow instanced encounters to be completed repeatedly. We have developed a fix for the issue, and we are in the process of deploying it worldwide.

Realm restarts are scheduled for 3:00 a.m. PDT (6:00 a.m. EDT) in order to apply this fix.

As soon as possible, we will identify those who knowingly abused this bug in exploitative manner. We will then take appropriate punitive measures.

As a reminder, Blizzard’s End User License Agreement defines cheats as “methods not expressly authorized by Blizzard, influencing and/or facilitating the gameplay, including exploits of any in-game bugs, and thereby granting you and/or any other user an advantage over other players not using such methods.”

As always, thank you for your feedback on this matter.

Soooooo since I’m seeing a lot of confusion (here and elsewhere), here’s some insight into how we draw the line between what makes something a punishable exploit versus a “happy little accident.”

The key factor here is intent. Did the player do something with the specific intention of causing a glitch to occur, and did they do it order to exploit said glitch for their own benefit?

This recent glitch makes a pretty clean example. The players who were abusing it had to do some Very Weird Stuff to cause it to occur, and then did so repeatedly. No reasonable person would expect that this behavior was intended, and the players involved had to go out of their way to cause it. It’s obviously unintended, it’s obviously a glitch, and the people who abused it were obviously exploiting said glitch for their own benefit. That’s pretty open and shut.

Someone mentioned Esfand’s random MC reset in this thread, which is a pretty clean example of the other end of the spectrum. In that case, they just turned up to raid and the instance had been reset. They didn’t do anything intentional to cause it or go looking for reproduction steps so they could abuse it - in fact, they reported it to us and didn’t continue until they got confirmation that it was out of their control (and that we wouldn’t consider it an exploit if they cleared).

Side note for the curious: that was a completely separate bug that has existed since 2004, and actually happened several times back then, it just wasn’t being broadcast to thousands of viewers at the time.

Obviously, neither situation is ideal - we try our best to provide a fair playing field for everyone - but there’s a pretty massive difference between “the instance is reset and we don’t know why” and “if we do this One Weird Trick we can infinitely farm this dungeon boss.” That’s the key factor that turns something from an accident into an exploit.

This ended up being longer than I expected so I’ll wrap it up with one last caveat: there is a lot of context and nuance that goes into these situations, and they’re not usually as cut and dry as these two examples. We end up making a lot of judgement calls based on the specifics of each exploit as well as their overall impact on the game (the phrase “clever use of game mechanics” originally came from one such convoluted situation). These two cases just happen to be pretty obvious.

Playing with friends when your characters are different levels is now easier than ever with Party Sync.

If you’d like to play WoW with your friends without having to worry about whether your characters’ levels are too far apart, the new Party Sync feature is for you!

Relive Azeroth’s History Together
When players activate Party Sync, everyone in the party becomes aligned to the same quest state and phase. By mousing over a quest in your tracker, you can see who’s on a given quest, what their progress is, and who’s ready to turn it in. You’ll also have access to a “replay quest” feature that allows players who have already completed certain quests to replay them with friends who haven’t for rewards that are appropriate to their current actual level, regardless of the original level of the quest. Quests can be replayed for rewards once a day.

While most quests can be replayed, there are some exceptions. Repeatable quests, such as dailies and World Quests, can’t be replayed. We’ve also excluded some quests with story implications from being replayed. These are determined on a case-by-case basis, and may include quests like the Demon Hunter starting zone quests, or quests where you might choose to betray the Warchief (how could you!).

Sync to Their Level
With Party Sync, you can choose to have your level temporarily adjusted, making it so higher-level players can quest and experience outdoor content with lower-level friends as they level up.


Levels will be scaled down to the cap of the expansion content your lowest-level party member qualifies for. As an example, if your lowest-level player is level 83 your level will be scaled down to level 90. However if they’re level 21, your character will be scaled down to level 60.

• Original WoW - Level 60
• The Burning Crusade - Level 80
• Wrath of the Lich King - Level 80
• Cataclysm- Level 90
• Mists of Pandaria - Level 90
• Warlords of Draenor - Level 100
• Legion - Level 110

While Party Sync is active, party members’ stats are reduced and skills are limited to a set that reflects their temporary level, including disabling some items that are beyond the scope of the experience at that level. This keeps the focus on helping lower-level party members. Unlike in Timewalking, when your level is scaled through Party Sync, you will temporarily lose access to abilities and powers (such as Azerite Traits and spells, abilities, talents, and trinket effects) with requirements that exceed your reduced level.

Set Up Instructions


To begin Party Sync:

• Invite and accept players into a party.
  
• Open your Map & Quest Log (hotkey: M).
  
• Click Start Party Sync in the lower-right hand corner.
  
• Have all partied players click Accept on the Party Sync confirmation dialogue box.

Once all players have accepted, quest status will be synced and levels will become adjusted so you can play together!

While questing in Party Sync, you may see quests you’ve already done before—those are Replay Quests! Accept them as normal and quest together, but remember that Replay Quests are temporary and go away when the Party Sync ends. Additionally, some quests can become deactivated if your group no longer meets the requirements. Quests that can’t be replayed won’t display an icon, while a grayed-out icon indicates quests that your party sync group does not qualify for that are in your log. You can’t complete these quests until you leave Party Sync. To do so, click Stop Party Sync at the bottom of the Map & Quest Log.


Lead with Confidence
To help you help your friends, we’ve created a brand-new RAF panel in-game to help you know when to expect your next reward and given your access to Party Sync. The RAF panel also lists special activities available to players who participate in the program. Complete these in-game challenges with your recruits to earn even more rewards.

Go Forth with Friends
Party Sync will become available when the upcoming 8.2.5 content update goes live in the next few months.

Get ready to shapeshift your look with new worgen and goblin models and animations—coming in the 8.2.5 content update.

Goblins and worgen were first introduced as playable races in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Since their debut, we’ve made a number of improvements to the tools and technology behind the art and animation of Azeroth—and now it’s time to give these resolute races a visual upgrade.

Using the original models as inspiration, we’ve enhanced their appearances and animations while retaining the soul of the characters.

Sink your teeth into these gorgeous images!


The new models will be available as soon as the 8.2.5 content update goes live, so be sure to check them out in the wilds (or Auction Houses) then!