World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

With the timing of the unlock of the Dragon Isles (Monday, November 28 at 3:00 p.m. PST / 5:00 p.m. CST / 6:00 p.m. EST in this region), players will find themselves leveling up with less than a day to go before the weekly reset.

We’ve configured Dragonflight to prevent most weekly rewards from appearing prior to that first weekly reset. As a result, the following content will be unavailable until the new week starts:

• Mythic Dungeons
• Dragonbane Strongbox from Siege of Dragonbane Keep (Epic quality)
• Grand Hunt Spoils (Uncommon, Rare, and Epic quality)
• The weekly quest “Community Feast”
• The “Aiding the Accord” weekly quests
• The “Show Yer Mettle” weekly quest
• Weekly Valdrakken professions quests of any kind
• Weekly PvP quests rewarding honor

We want players to level at their own pace without feeling like they’re missing out on a week of rewards if they fail to reach level 70 within a few hours after the expansion launch.

Soar through the history of the dragon Aspects to a time before the Dragon Isles awaken.

Imbued with titan-bestowed powers and charged with protecting Azeroth, the dragon Aspects have worked tirelessly to fulfill their ancient destiny. Theirs is a history of betrayal, corruption, and a fight for the very survival of their legacy.

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The Rise of the Aspects

When the titans were ordering Azeroth, they needed a more delicate hand to combat the agents of the Old Gods. Due to their colossal forms, Aggramar feared the Pantheon would irreparably damage or even kill the world-soul. He proposed creating powerful constructs to act as the Pantheon's hands and prosecute their will against the Black Empire.

Old Gods: Physical manifestations of the Void, these parasitic horrors grow like cancers and are administrators of corruption. Notable Old Gods are C'Thun and Yogg-Saron.

The Pantheon members imbued their servants with their specific likenesses and powers to lead the rest of the titan-forged. They called these empowered beings "keepers." One titan, Aggramar, imparted his strength and courage to Keeper Tyr, who would become the greatest warrior of the titan-forged. In time, the keepers led the titan-forged against the armies of the Black Empire.

Titans: The titans are a race of majestic planet-sized cosmic beings made up of Order magic and the primordial matter from which the universe was born. Notable titans are Aman'Thul and Sargeras.

In the far north of ancient Kalimdor, the proto-dragon Galakrond had been the largest and most effective predator. Eventually, he would succumb to corruption and began to devour his own kind.

Tyr knew that if Galakrond remained unchecked, he would devour all nature, spreading his affliction to the far corners of Azeroth. He warned his fellow keepers of what he had seen, but they wouldn't act. So he searched for a means to destroy the giant proto-dragon and his fetid minions.

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Dragon Aspect Leaders

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The answer lay with five of the greatest and most intelligent proto-dragons: Alexstrasza, Malygos, Neltharion, Nozdormu, and Ysera. Impressed with how they worked together to survive Galakrond's attacks, Tyr reached out to Malygos. Under Tyr's guidance, the proto-dragons warred with Galakrond.

"I have watched you. I have watched the others. I see much potential in you, in these friends of yours...and I say that as someone who has watched many of your kind since the first of you began to stir toward self-consciousness." - Tyr

Primal Dragons: Also known as proto-drakes or proto-dragons, these creatures were the ancestors of dragonkind. After the dragon Aspects were elevated by the titans, some primal dragons also embraced the gifts of the titans to form the five dragonflights. Others shunned this ordering and roamed the wilds of Northrend and the Dragon Isles.

Tyr requested that these five proto-dragons be imbued with powers to guard Azeroth's lands. Keeper Odyn challenged the idea. Despite their heroism, Odyn only saw the dragons as primitive life forms. He felt that only the mighty titan-forged could be trusted to protect the world. The other keepers were not easily swayed by Odyn, and the proto-dragons were transformed into the Aspects—leaders of the dragonflights and guardians of Azeroth. Odyn, believing the dragons would fail, left to build his own group of warriors, the Valarjar.

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Alexstrasza, The Life-Binder

Also known as the Dragon Queen and Aspect of the red dragonflight. Alexstrasza was empowered by Eonar to act as guardian of all life. As Dragon Queen, Alexstrasza served as the leader of the Aspects, bringing them together in times of great need. In order to defeat Deathwing, Alexstrasza and the rest of the Aspects sacrificed much of their power.


Nozdormu

Also known as the Timeless One, Guardian of Time, Murozond. Aspect of the bronze dragonflight, Nozdormu was empowered by Aman'Thul to safeguard time itself and police the ever-spinning pathways of fate and destiny. When Deathwing was defeated, Nozdormu lost much of his power along with the rest of the Aspects. Nozdormu foresaw his eventual fall to corruption, becoming the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight. As Murozond, this future self ultimately fell to adventurers in the End Time.

Neltharion, the Earth-Warder (Former)

Created by Neltharion the Earth-Warder, the essence of dragons was combined with the adaptability of the mortal races to create an elite soldier capable of switching from a draconic form to humanoid form. Long in a magical stasis, they are now awakening to a new threat within the Dragon Isles.

Malygos, Aspect of Magic (Former)

Aspect of the blue dragonflight. He was empowered with the essence of Norgannon to serve as the guardian of magic and hidden arcanum. Malygos and his mate Sindragosa ruled the blue dragonflight until the War of the Ancients, when the crazed Deathwing used the Dragon Soul to wipe out most of the flight, leaving only Malygos and precious few eggs left. Malygos was killed after declaring war on all mortal spellcasters in the Nexus War, leaving Kalecgos to lead the blue dragonlfight in his wake.

Ysera, The Dreamer (Former)

Also known as The Awakened and Aspect of the green dragonflight. Alexstrasza's younger sister, Ysera, was chosen by Eonar to watch over the growing wilds of the world from the Emerald Dream. Ysera fell to the Nightmare in Legion and was put to rest by Tyrande Whisperwind. Her soul arrived in the afterlife called Ardenweald, where she was restored by the intervention of the Winter Queen. Ysera's essence remains bound to the Shadowlands, leaving her daughter Merithra to guide the green dragonflight.

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Tyr's Sacrifice

Loken, a keeper falling to an Old God's influence, began working toward the downfall of the other keepers. Tyr suspected darkness was growing within the fallen keeper, so he and his companions stole the discs of Norgannon to preserve the vital knowledge they contained. When Loken discovered the discs were missing, he turned to the only creatures he knew were powerful enough to stop the mighty Tyr—ancient C'Thraxxi monstrosities. He ordered the colossal abominations to kill Tyr and all who followed him.

Far to the south, the C'Thraxxi overtook the fleeing keepers and their followers in a tranquil and temperate glade. Fearing for his allies' lives, Tyr ordered Archaedas and Ironaya to lead the rest of the titan-forged farther south. Meanwhile, he would hold off the C'Thraxxi for as long as possible.

The violent struggle between the lone keeper and the C'Thraxxi raged for six days and nights. As fatigue set in, Tyr resolved to sacrifice himself to protect his friends. He unleashed his remaining power on the C'Thraxxi, expending his life force in a blinding explosion of arcane energy that shook the world to the core.

Archaedas and Ironaya watched as the eruption of magic flared across the horizon. After the volatile energies subsided, the two titan-forged returned to the site of the battle. Within a giant crater crackling with arcane magic, there lay Tyr's lifeless body.

In honor of her fallen comrade, Ironaya named the glade surrounding the crater "Tyr's Fall," which in the vrykul tongue translated to "Tirisfal." She and her followers buried Tyr where he lay and placed Tyr's massive silver hand atop his final resting place to memorialize his valiant sacrifice.

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The Sting of Betrayal

With the fall of Tyr, the Aspects were blinded to the darkness slowly growing within their midst. The tendrils of Old Gods corruption had tightened the hold on Neltharion the Earth-Warder.

With the guidance of the Old Gods, Neltharion would devise a way to enslave the other dragonflights to usher forth the Hour of Twilight and the unmaking of all creation. The moment when the Old Gods could finally be free from their imprisonment, but he needed help.

When the armies of the Burning Legion began an invasion of Azeroth, Neltharion suggested creating a magical artifact to aid in destroying the demons. He asked the other Aspects to help craft it; each Aspect would contribute a portion of their essence to the artifact.

Neltharion brought the Dragon Soul to bear against the Legion, devastating the demonic swarm. But in his corruption, Neltharion, once the Earth-Warder and protector of Azeroth, became Deathwing the Destroyer. He would shock his fellow Aspects as he turned the Dragon Soul against them. His betrayal cut deep as he turned on his own kind. The shocked dragons were helpless to resist the power of the deadly artifact, for it contained a fraction of each of their essences. All the dragonflights, save the black dragonflight, were paralyzed.

But Deathwing's doom would eventually come.

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Forged by Deathwing during the War of the Ancients, the Dragon Soul harnessed the combined power of the dragonflights until it was ultimately destroyed. Through the Caverns of Time, Thrall and the remaining dragonflights recovered the powerful artifact before its destruction. Now they have rallied at Wyrmrest Temple in a desperate attempt to use the might of the Dragon Soul against Deathwing himself.

Wyrmrest Temple was the final hope for the forces allied against Deathwing the Destroyer. Here, the remaining aspects— Alexstrasza, Ysera, Nozdormu, and Kalecgos, along with their ally Thrall, would gather to empower the Dragon Soul—Azeroth's last chance to stop the great behemoth. But, as they began to charge the Dragon Soul with energy, Deathwing and his entire army assaulted Wyrmrest Temple.

Eventually, with the help of allies, the remaining Aspects would sunder Deathwing, and he would fall from the skies into the Maelstrom.

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The Aftermath

In the coming years, the pain of Neltharion's betrayal would cut deeper than any could imagine. His betrayal was so destructive that the five dragonflights never truly recovered. The flights were left listless and could no longer protect Azeroth, and the blue dragonflight was all but destroyed. Their sacrifice was apparent as they were now made mortal.

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The Birth of the Dracthyr

The dracthyr were created in the ancient past by Neltharion, the Earth-Warder, to serve as soldiers. He combined the essence of dragons with the adaptability of the mortal races. They would train off the coast of the Dragon Isles on an island known as the Forbidden Reach. After a terrible battle, the island would lie abandoned until an ancient enemy awakens the fiercest of warriors, unlike any Azeroth has seen.

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Eyes on the Horizon

After returning to the Dragon Isles, Queen Alexstrasza has learned of another disc locked away within Uldaman... one that holds the memories of Tyr himself. Believing this knowledge is needed to restore the power of the Aspects, Alexstrasza has asked her mortal allies to brave the perils of Uldaman and recover Tyr's memories to secure the future of dragonkind. However, there are others among dragonkind that do not want Alexstrasza's plans to succeed.

The story continues in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight and Azeroth's heroes must heed the call to aid Alexstrasza in rebuilding the kingdom and reclaiming the legacy of the dragons.

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To learn more about Dragonlfight, visit Dragonflight.blizzard.com and soar to WorldofWarcraft.com/news for updates.

See you on the Dragon Isles!

Greetings, adventurers! As we approach the launch of Dragonflight, we would like to highlight some of the recent accessibility improvements we’ve added to World of Warcraft. Since our last update in Shadowlands, we’ve been hard at work building new features and adding more options.

New accessibility features are available to everyone, and most options can be found in the Options panel of the Game Menu (default hotkey: Escape). Let’s look at some of the highlights.

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Updated UI and HUD

Sweeping changes have been made from the ground up to provide a clutter-free layout that allows players to customize their HUD to better fit their individual needs. Explore a fresh-looking Heads-Up Display (HUD) and User Interface (UI) designed to be adjustable, effective, attractive, and easily accessible for everyone. You can read all about it in our blog article.

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New Talent System

Dragonflight debuts the biggest change to the Talents system yet, giving you more freedom to experiment and more options to choose from than ever before. Get familiar with the changes so you can make the most of this update, including Loadouts, the Search Bar, and Importing and Sharing talent builds.

Import and Share Talent Loadouts in Dragonflight

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Advanced Tip: Here are some advanced chat command lines that can be used to access the Talent frame.

Loads loadout for the current specialization by name. This command will load the first one found in the case of duplicate names.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToLoadoutByName(loadoutName)
  
• /loadoutname loadoutname
  
• /lon loadoutname

Loads loadout for the current specialization by dropdown index. Indices start at 1.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToLoadoutByIndex(1)
  
• /loadoutindex 2
  
• /loi 3

Activates specialization for the current class by spec name.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToSpecializationByName(specName)
  
• /specname specname
  
• /spn specname

Activates specialization for the current class by index in the order within the Specializations tab. Indices start at 1.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToSpecializationByIndex(1)
  
• /specindex 2
  
• /spi 3

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New Options Menu

The previous “Interface” and “System” menus have been combined into the more intuitive “Options” menu. This update allows you to find various Accessibility options more easily.


New Option: Field of Vision (FOV) reduction

You can now adjust your camera FOV control in Options > System > Graphics to help with motion sickness.

New Option: Press and Hold Casting

When enabled, this option allows you to press and hold a keyboard hotkey to continually cast a spell on an Action Bar without having to repeatedly press the button. Keep in mind that this feature currently works only with spells and keyboard hotkeys (or gamepad buttons). Macros, mouse clicks and on-use items are not currently supported. You can enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Combat > Press and Hold Casting.

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New Option: Dracthyr Empowered Casting

Dracthyr Evokers have special Empowered abilities that they can use to change the strength of the spell or ability they are casting. By holding down a button on your keyboard or mouse, you will power up a spell. The longer you charge the spell, the more damage it could do or the more targets the spell could hit. You have the option to toggle between two modes for Empowered abilities: Hold and Release (this is the default option) or Press and Tap. Read more about the Dracthyr Evoker in our preview.

Hold and Release and Press and Tap control schemes for Empowered Casting.

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New Feature: Interact Key

Press the Interact Key to interact with NPCs and objects with a key press (default hotkey: F) instead of your mouse. Interactive NPCs and objects will highlight as you enter interact range and face them. A helpful icon will appear above NPCs as needed. This also functions for quest item interactions, and we've added an option to enable a sound when an interaction becomes available. Enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Controls > Enable Interact Key.

New Action Targeting System

You can use Action Targeting to automatically target enemies as you approach them, allowing you to start casting abilities immediately. Action Targeting dynamically switches targets based on where you’re looking. This option doesn’t stop you from using the default Tab Target system to loc on a target. Enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Combat > Enable Action Targeting.

Soft Targetiing, Action Targeting, and Interact Key features.

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Advanced Tip: While not available in the game settings directly, there are several changes that you can make to how this works in-game using command variants (CVars). To use a Cvar, enter the following into your chat window: /console [command] [value] (no brackets). For example: /console SoftTargetIconEnemy 1

A few below that you might find useful:

• The CVar SoftTargetInteractRange can be changed to increase the reporting range for an interaction. The default range is set to 10.
  
• By default, not everything displays an interact icon overhead, to reduce visual clutter in the game world. The following CVars are set to “0” by default, but can be set to “1” to enable interact icons in additional cases: SoftTargetIconEnemy, SoftTargetIconFriend, SoftTargetIconInteract, SoftTargetIconGameObject, SoftTargetLowPriorityIcons.
  
• You can force on the Name Plate for the interact target (including GameObjects) by setting the following CVars to “1”: SoftTargetNameplateEnemy, SoftTargetNameplateFriend, SoftTargetNameplateInteract.
  
• While not enabled by default, you can set SoftTargetFriend to enable soft targeting for friendly (healable) targets. It functions identically to enemy soft targeting, with a matching set of CVars to control/tune it.
  
• One additional CVar that can be particularly useful for visually impaired players is SoftTargetInteractArc. It normally defaults to “0”, which means interact requires direct facing to the target. Setting it to “1” or “2” gives it additional arc leeway.

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New Option: Display Name Size Adjustment

You can now adjust a minimum on-screen text size to keep it legible. The text will also fade to indicate distance rather than shrinking in size. Enable this option under Options > Accessibility > General > Minimum Character Name Size.

Gamepad API Support Improvements

We've made additional API updates to these control schemes improving support for controllers, touchpads, and gyros so addon creators can leverage them, including added support for gamepad button icons to improve their legibility on the action bar, and the ability to combine gamepad and mouse input in a single control scheme.

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Dragonriding: Ride Along

Enabling this setting allows you to make your Dragon Isles drake interactible. Any other players that interact with you will become whelps that move alongside your Dragon Isles Drake. Find Lithragosa near any Rostrum of Transformation, including the one at Skytop Observatory during the Dragonriding Tutorial or in Valdrakken, and select the "I heard something about helping my fellow adventurers?" dialog followed by "Please enable passengers for me." Whelps are able to earn Dragon Glyphs, but do not count as participants during Dragonriding Racing.

Enable Ride Along your friends can tag along as you master your Dragonriding skills.

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Dragonriding: FOV Effects

Dragonriding FOV changes do not occur if you have selected "Reduce Camera Motion" in the Accessibility > General menu.

Dragonriding: Full Screen Effects

Dragonriding top-speed full screen effects do not display if you have checked "Alternate Full Screen Effects" in the Options > Accessibility > General menu.

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Improving accessibility In World of Warcraft for all players is an ongoing effort. We'll continue to work on making Azeroth a welcoming world of adventure for everyone and share more updates as they become available. Thanks for playing!

Classes

• Death Knight
  
  • Blood
    
    • Fixed an issue with Bonestorm not activating Icy Talons.
  • Unholy
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Epidemic now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] Bursting Sores damage is reduced by 10%.
    • Fixed an issue with the Coils of Devastation not applying to enemies within Battlegrounds and Arenas.
• Demon Hunter
  
  • [With weekly restarts] Immolation Aura now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
  • Havoc
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Fel Rush now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
• Druid
  
  • [With weekly restarts] Protector of the Pack talent now stores 5% of damage/healing (was 10%). The maximum stored amount increased to 160% of spell power (was 140%).
    
    • Developers’ note: Protector of the Pack was reaching its cap too quickly to be a satisfying build up. The slower build up and increased cap should result in a better pacing for this talent.
  • Feral
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Tear Open Wounds now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] Lunar Inspiration’s Moonfire damage cast in Cat Form reduced by 40%.
      
      • Developers’ note: We want to keep Lunar Inspiration’s value as a ranged DPS option and cheap combo point generator, but bring its output more in line with other talents at its location in the tree.
  • Guardian
    
    • After the Wildfire now heals a maximum of 5 nearby targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] After the Wildfire is now affected by the Astral Influence talent.
    • [With weekly restarts] Fixed several incorrect interactions between Berserk and Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc.
  • Restoration
    
    • Fixed an issue that caused Regrowth’s healing to not be increased properly by Soul of the Forest while using the Undergrowth and Rampant Growth talents.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Overgrowth to not consume Soul of the Forest.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Flash of Clarity to not increase the healing of Regrowth in all circumstances while using the Rampant Growth talent.
• Evoker
  
  • Fixed an issue where Soar would persist after being summoned.
• Hunter
  
  • Marksmanship
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All damage dealt increased by 10%.
  • Survival
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All damage dealt increased by 5%.
    • Fixed an issue where Wildfire Bomb would incorrectly generate Focus when talented into Coordinated Kill without Coordinated Assault being active.
• Mage
  
  • Fire
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Ignite damage reduced by 12%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Master of Flame now increases Ignite’s damage by 15% (was 18%).
  • Frost
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Frozen Orb damage reduced by 15%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Blizzard now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
• Monk
  
  • Brewmaster
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Stormstout’s Last Keg’s bonus damage reduced to 20% (was 30%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Charred Passions’ bonus damage reduced to 50% (was 100%).
  • Mistweaver
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Blackout Kick damage increased by 6%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 5%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 25%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Tiger Palm damage increased by 30%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Bonedust Brew now copies 50% of damage or healing for Mistweaver Monks (was 40%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Awakened Faeline now causes Spinning Crane Kick to heal 3 nearby allies (was 5) for 50% of the damage done (was 25%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Fixed an issue that caused copied Blackout Kicks from Teachings of the Monastery to deal 20% less damage than intended.
  • Windwalker
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Resonant Fists now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
• Paladin
  
  • Protection
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Bulwark of Righteous Fury damage bonus reduced to 20% (was 30%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Judgment damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Avenger’s Shield damage increased by 15%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Blessed Hammer damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Crusader Strike damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Hammer of the Righteous damage increased by 10%.
• Priest
  
  • Discipline
    
    • [With weekly restarts] The mana cost of Power Word: Radiance has been reduced by 15%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Flash Heal healing increased by 30%.
  • Shadow
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Sear now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] Psychic Link now causes Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and Mind Spike to deal 30%/60% of their damage to all other targets affected by your Vampiric Touch within 40 yards (was 15%/30%).
• Rogue
  
  • Assassination
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Indiscriminate Carnage cooldown reduced to 45 seconds (was 60 seconds).
  • Outlaw
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Fatal Flourish chance to restore Energy reduced to 60% (was 65%).
  • Subtlety
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Shuriken Storm damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Shadowstrike damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Black Powder damage increased by 5%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Secret Technique damage increased by 5%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Shadow Blades cooldown reduced to 2 minutes (was 3 minutes).
    • [With weekly restarts] Fixed an issue that prevented Secret Technique’s built-in cooldown reduction from benefitting from Echoing Reprimand’s Animacharged combo points.
• Shaman
  
  • Enhancement
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All damage dealt increased by 5%.
• Warlock
  
  • Fixed an issue where Demonic Circle: Summon and Teleport would continually get added to the action bar between Specialization swapping.
  • Affliction
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Malefic Affliction now causes your active Unstable Affliction to deal 8/13% additional damage (was 5/10%), up to 24/39% (was 15/30%), for the rest of its duration.
    • [With weekly restarts] Dread Touch now causes your target to take 30% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 6 seconds (was 20%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Doom Blossom damage increased by 15%.
  • Demonology
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Dreadbite now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
  • Destruction
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Rain of Fire damage increased by 15%.
• Warrior
  
  • Arms
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Executioner’s Precision now grants 35% increased damage per stack to Mortal Strike (was 30%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Bloodsurge now triggers 10% of the time (was 7%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Bladestorm damage increased to 60% (was 50%).
  • Fury
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Odyn’s Fury now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.

Dungeons and Raids

• Enemy difficulty has been adjusted to increase relative player power in all Legion raid encounters.

Items and Rewards

• Tome of the Tranquil Mind and other similar tomes are now gray items and are no longer usable.

Professions

• Fixed an issue where Shadowlands professions could not be trained before level 48 in Timewalking Campaigns.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to fish while seated if a fishing pole is equipped.

Quests

• Fixed an issue where using Intruder Alert! during “Brought to Light” would not reveal Horde saboteurs.

Reputation

• Fixed an issue where Evokers could not gain reputation with certain legacy factions.

First off, we wanted to thank you, Dirtypawz, for your continued feedback and suggestions. Your perspective in the Community Council represents an important part of our player community, and your vocalness on blind accessibility opportunities in WoW is much appreciated.

We wanted to give you some insight on how development goes in these areas. The first step is always trying to figure out what issues there are that we can try to improve. This can involve emails from players to our accessibility inbox, feedback from areas like forums and social media, surveys, playtests, and more. Right now, our team has a number of feature requests from players like you on where we can improve on accessibility, and we’ve been making our way through that list, all while finding new things to address.

For features that focus on accessibility or include options for more accessible play, we discuss what kinds of players this feature or setting is designed to help and what barriers we’re trying to break down so folks can successfully play the game. A large part of this process is collaborations between multiple sub-groups across the WoW Team. For many of our accessibility initiatives, the User Interface team plays a role, for example, our UI Revamp including new options for players to independently resize and move different aspects of the user interface. For others, the Sound team gets involved, for example, the recent update to Dragon Races to include positional audio on rings located around the course. Some initiatives require fundamental changes to how our current gameplay works, and require assistance from our Engineering teams, such as the recent hold to cast update. Generally, we also want to involve our User Research team to test these features with real players and make sure that needs are being addressed, and if not, that the feature can be iterated on before going live for the general public.

Some features can be pretty focused where a particular need is identified and one developer is able to work on potential solutions and even put together a very preliminary version of something as a “proof of concept” to demonstrate the new feature for leadership approval before more testing gets done. Other times new accessibility features can involve multiple teams which takes a longer time to get aligned on the different deliverables before it can be implemented in a content update. Because WoW is such a large game with a very diverse audience, there are a lot of opportunities for us to improve accessibility for a number of our players, and it’s been a major focus of ours as we go into Dragonflight. As an example, the Action Targeting option that is coming in Dragonflight took a lot of playtesting and feedback to feel smooth, natural, and polished before it even got to the point of being announced and introduced in the beta. We wanted to make sure it made sense what was being targeted and why, and it led to discussions about additional development, some of which you’ve seen some online since on the beta, for example the sound cue when a player is in range of something interactable.

As for these suggestions specifically - Having TTS read out other elements of the game, such as name plates, is something that has been on our team’s radar for a while, but comes with a number of technical complications that we are still working through. The z-axis inclusion is a bit more tricky due to other impacts it can have on the existing systems in the game, but as with all of the things you’ve mentioned, they will be discussed. We can’t make any promises, but want you to know that you continue to be heard and we look forward to sharing some of our upcoming projects with you soon.

Until then, we are excited to release a variety of new accessibility features in Dragonflight and look forward to seeing how they help the community experience the game.

Today, several Classic-focused members of the WoW Community Council met with Wrath Classic devs to talk about the next phase of Wrath Classic (Ulduar).

The discussion covered expectations for the PTR, which is now open, a new system coming in this phase called Titan Rune Dungeons, and changes to Ulduar that we’re going to test – specifically the details around “pre-nerf” Ulduar.


Please feel free to use this thread for any follow-up questions or discussion that you might have.

Thank you!