The Dragonflight Pre-Expansion Patches Go Live Beginning October 25

[Lumy]

The Dragonflight Pre-Expansion Patches Go Live Beginning October 25

Every new adventure begins with a single step, and the journey to the Dragon Isles is nearly here when the first of two pre-expansion patches go live with the completion of regional realm maintenance beginning October 25.

Phase One: October 25

• Talent System Revamp: Dragonflight contains major updates to World of Warcraft classes, centering on the re-introduction of talent trees. The new talent system empowers players to make creative and meaningful talent choices without compromising their effectiveness—and most importantly, it gives them meaningful options at every level.
  
• Heads-up Display User Interface (HUD UI) Changes: Players will experience an updated User Interface (UI) and Heads-Up Display (HUD), allowing customization of the base UI and providing a modernized appearance to the layout and view while maintaining the original design’s charm and personality.
  
• Accessibility Features: A variety of new features that will include “press and hold” spellcasting, interact keys, gamepad support, and more.
  
• Rated Solo Shuffle: First introduced as a PvP Brawl, we up the stakes by adding the ability for players to earn (or lose!) rating with the introduction of Rated Solo Shuffle. Players will be able to earn seasonal rewards and achievements, credit toward Vicious Mounts, weekly great vault progress, and Conquest similar to Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas. Cross-faction play will also be enabled.
  
• New Class and Race Combinations: The rogue, priest, and mage classes will become available to all races to create and play.

Phase Two: November 15

• New Race/Class: Dracthyr Evoker Available: Players will menace their foes (or empower their allies) as the new dracthyr Evoker, World of Warcraft’s first-ever race and class combination. Able to switch between a humanoid visage and a fearsome draconic form, the dracthyr are highly mobile, and their unique Evoker class can specialize in ranged damage-dealing or in aiding their allies as a healer by harnessing the mystical gifts of dragonkind.
  
• New Zone: The Forbidden Reach: Play through the starting zone for WoW’s newest hero class, the Dracthyr Evoker
  
• New Dungeon: Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr: Located in the Badlands within the Eastern Kingdoms, players will venture into Uldaman to lay claim to a legacy of knowledge left behind by the titans. This ancient titan facility is where, long ago, allies of the heroic Keeper Tyr hid the Discs of Norgannon.
  
• In-Game Events: Primal Storms: Ward off attacks from the Primalists with new quests and world events, setting the stage for Dragonflight’s launch.

Stay up to date with all things Dragonflight on the official World of Warcraft website.

[Varanus]

Sad that we dont get Dracthyr until the 15th, but otherwise excited. \o/

[Christerpher]

Yeah basically the pre-patch is November 15, and we are all going to be beta testing the talent changes starting on the 25th...

[SinR]

Two weeks of Pre-Patch Event? Cool, I guess. Hope thats enough time to farm out the BOA Trinket.

Also, there will be Twitch Drops that start with Pre-Patch (11/15) Launch (11/28) and Raid Starting (12/13)

[Bane-Thunder-God]

Rated Solo Shuffle: First introduced as a PvP Brawl, we up the stakes by adding the ability for players to earn (or lose!) rating with the introduction of Rated Solo Shuffle. Players will be able to earn seasonal rewards and achievements, credit toward Vicious Mounts, weekly great vault progress, and Conquest similar to Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas. Cross-faction play will also be enabled.

so wait does that mean we can earn conquest and vicious mounts doing rated solo shuffle during prepatch??


Edit: Seen blue post confirmed we can earn all this except titles during prepatch WOOOT

[Sinaa]

Any prepatch fomo?

[Varanus]

Any prepatch fomo?

Transmog sets(color variant of DF quest gear), and an heirloom trinket, I believe.

[Fullmetal89]

Wow, I thought there would only be 1 week between phases. This is pretty dumb imo, especially since phase 2 is the real pre-patch. That is barely 2 weeks before the expansion launches.

[ScottPilgrim]

So Tauren Rogues?

[Proskill]

that sucks, and i still havent gotten into beta

[hulkgor]

Good stuff!

Three weeks to mess around with new talent trees, figure out specs, what to main, etc etc, and then 2 weeks for Dracthyr enjoyment and collecting the Primal Invasions stuff.

Happy about it.

[Squeezus]

So Tauren Rogues?

A real Beverly Hills Ninja situation.

[SinR]

that sucks, and i still havent gotten into beta

Don't worry, we're all getting into the Beta next week!

[thunderdragon2]

so we basically only get the talents for the 1st two weeks???

[Biglog]

so we basically only get the talents for the 1st two weeks???

3 weeks, but basically yep mainly just the new talent system and UI during that time. Surprised too, but the talent and UI changes are significant enough that they probably wanted some extra time on live to make sure all is well before 11/15.

On the positive side, this should mean the Winds of Wisdom +50% xp buff should remain live until 11/15, giving folks some extra time for alt leveling. It would have been nice for Blizzard to state that more clearly in today's announcement. But they said when it started that it would be live until Evokers are playable, so that should mean +50% xp until 11/15.

Also a bit disappointed in only 2 weeks for the pre-event, with a major holiday also in the middle of that. It must not be anything too special. But I we'll be in the Dragon Isles soon enough I guess.

[Alayea]

providing a modernized appearance to the layout and view while maintaining the original design’s charm and personality.

Sad thing is, I can believe they said that with a straight face.

[schwarzkopf]

Yeah basically the pre-patch is November 15

Nah - pre patch is 25th of October (it is in the title), the prepatch being defined as when the new patch systems are implemented.

[Ihavewaffles]

Winds of winter is gone on October 25?

[lordjust]

Transmog sets(color variant of DF quest gear), and an heirloom trinket, I believe.

And a toy you can buy. I hope that they do some changes for the pre-patch event and do a second round of testing it since they had to stop testing on PTR after like 3 hours. First part of the pre-patch chain did work, follow up quest didn't pop up, couldn't que for revamped uldaman dungeon.

Don't even know if it's supposed for all 4 zones to be active and only be able to farm essences when the boss spawn every 30 minutes. The small amount of stuff one could test was underwhelming. In the whole zone are elemental mobs and empowered mobs (like quillboar) that droped nothing. So the only thing to do was sit at the spawnpoint for the boss and try to tag as many mobs as possible to get some essences and a boss drop. Most people I spoke to on PTR got like maybe 20-30 essences per boss spawn (small mobs drop like 1-3 essences, the bigger ones 2-6 and the boss 8-12) and gear costs between 25 to 45 essences and the toy costs 100. That's like one piece of gear per hour on avarage (2 boss/add kills per hour) which is pretty bad. Each boss can drop a piece of the heirloom trinket (need one from each boss to combine into the trinket) and the gear you can buy for essences at a low dropchance (got a 2h weapon from the boss in the barrens). They should change it so we can farm essences all the time when an invasion is active with the boss event being a bonus with increased amounts of essences dropping. That way there's actually something to do until the boss spawns and you could farm a full set of gear in a reasonable amount of time.

[Saiboter]

Yeah basically the pre-patch is November 15, and we are all going to be beta testing the talent changes starting on the 25th...

Well, it's not only testing. They publish invalid talents / tooltips with this patch which already got reported on beta and ptr, but they don't even care.
"Words of the Pious" (Priest) still increases Smite damage for Shadow Priests, even though they don't even have Smite!
It would be enough to change only the tooltip. No one is talking about reworking the talent, but they didn't even manage to do that.