World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

WoW Classic

• The Qiraji Hilt, Qiraji Drape, and Qiraji Ring quest items are now tradeable and will no longer stack.
  
  • Developers’ note: In order to enable the ability to trade to eligible looters within 2 hours of looting the Qiraji hilts, drapes, and rings, we've removed the ability to stack multiples of them. Additionally, only one of these items are needed for the non-repeatable quest so there’s no reason for them to stack.

The character wipe is complete, the Beta has been updated to the latest build, and testers can now resume.

Known Issues

• On first logging in, testers will not be able to make a Death Knight, Demon Hunter, or Allied Races character.
  
  • Until this is fixed, you can make a level 50 template, log in to that character, and then log out. You should have full access to create any classes or race.
• After doing a character copy, you should begin with the quest “A Chilling Summons” to avoid potential difficulties.
• Some Demon Hunter player-characters may have missing facial features.
  
  • This may be fixable by going to a barber shop and changing your tattoos.
• Forthcoming adjustments to heirloom bonuses are not yet implemented.

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.