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Get the Shadowlands Collector’s Edition Shadowlands Alpha - Build 35078Shadowlands Developer Update Livestream - July 8th
World of Warcraft Executive Producer John Hight and Game Director Ion Hazzikostas sit down at home to share details about Shadowlands and provide a look at some of the latest content now in development. This post will update with the stream.
- Shadowlands will definitely be releasing this fall.
- The Shadowlands Physical Collector's Edition will have a reflective surface.
- There will be a full-color art book, covenant pin set, soundtrack, and mousepad in the physical collector's edition.
- Shadowlands will enter beta NEXT WEEK with the release of the Maw to test as well.
- The Alpha has been a true Alpha. It is an evolution of feedback and sometimes new builds are only 5 days old.
- Torghast will be completely ungated and have no currency system to run it.
- The character artists are listening to feedback and wish lists for further customization.
- Beta will be feature complete, but work still remains.
- You will be able to level to 60 in beta and test endgame.
- Beta will send out a lot more invites! More will come out over the summer as well.
- Endgame in Shadowlands
- You will choose your covenant at max level which will unlock a lot of new endgame systems.
- Form Soulbinds - Bind your soul to a member of your covenant and unlock new abilities with a new talent tree that you can customize.
- Empty slots in the tree will be for conduits. These are similar to relics in Legion. They are spec specific and will drop from all content. There are types that are utility, defensive, and throughput.
- Conduits are customizable and you can switch them out for a small cost.
- You will gain renown with your covenant to unlock new features, rewards, and cosmetics, and such. This is done by collecting anima. This is not an open-ended grind. There is also robust catch up systems for it.
- Each covenant has a sanctum which functions like the class halls in Legion. Each one also has upgrades that can be earned through gaining anima and rescuing souls from the Maw.
- Every covenant has a unique transportation network for their respective zones.
- Every covenant will also have wards you can activate to restore the flow on anima in the zone. Restoring these will activate quests and other activities for the area. Eventually you can unlock these permanently. It will also physically change the area.
- Each covenant has a scouting map called Adventures which is the new iteration of the mission table. It no longer has a central importance, but it's an outlet for storytelling and offline progression. It is turn based and you will level up your soulbinds, create parties, and send them out on missions for loot.
- The mobile app will support Adventures.
- Each covenant also has a unique feature:
- Venthyr - Ember Court. You will have a self-contained mini game to seek out guests and set up a party, play through it in real time, and maximize the happiness of your guests for rewards.
- Kyrian - Path of Ascension. You inhabit the consciousness of one of your soulbinds and take on trials to recruit powerful allies. It is focused on combat.
- Necrolords - Abomination Factory. You can build fleshwork creatures to be the perfect housing for a soul in need of a physical form. You can adventure with each of these unique souls out in the world.
- Night Fae - Queen's Conservatory. You will tend to a soul garden, similar to the farm in Pandaria. You will nurture souls back to life.
- The Theater of Pain Dungeon will be available soon. It takes place during an important battle royale event. It is a non-linear dungeon with different choices to progress.
- Early on in our adventures in the Maw will will find Vinari, one of the only souls in the Maw that doesn't want to kill us. She will improve our experience in the Maw and help us with Torghast.
- There will be a lot of discover-able gameplay in the Maw. You won't just be able to bring up the map and see world quests. Everything you do is under the eyes of the Jailer and you are not welcome here. Eventually you will have to retreat after gaining too much ire of the Jailer.
- Castle Nathria raid testing will begin later this month.
- Shadowlands Mythic+ testing will also start later this month. They want early feedback so they can make sure they can improve the experience before launch.
- The new seasonal affix will be revealed later this month as well.
- Legendary Runecrafting will be testable soon as well. They are similar to Legion legendaries but the way they are obtained is controlled by the player instead of RNG.
- You will find a runesmith jailed in the bowels of Torghast. This smith wields the power to forge items similar in power to the Helm of Domination or Frostmourne. They will make the legendary slot of your choice with enough currency earned through Torghast.
- A lot of the legendary abilities are influenced by old set bonuses or legendaries that were popular.
- Covenant Campaign testing will be available soon as well. These are unique story campaigns linked to your covenant that will unlock rewards and cosmetics.
- There will be focused PvP testing soon as well. They want to have the pacing of PvP fleshed out better going into the expansion.
- They also want to test the pacing of character progression. Characters will probably be wiped at the end of the month and character copies enabled.
- The months ahead are focused on polish, iteration, feedback response, and tuning.
- Tuning is the last thing that the team does during beta. They look for outliers that are out-of-whack right away, but make sure the conceptualizations are there before they dial them in.
- Stuff that looks over or underpowered on the Alpha right not have not been tuned accordingly yet.
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