Development Update: A Message to the WoW Community

[Lumy]

Development Update: A Message to the WoW Community

To the WoW Community,

Over the past few weeks since we shared an update, the WoW team has been focused on the immediate future—both for our people and workplace, and what’s next for players too. As a part of that, the entire team came together to ask: What are the biggest things we’re hearing are getting in the way of your fun, and what are the most impactful changes we could make to WoW today to fix that?

Shadowlands Update 9.1.5 will be going on the PTR next week, and a lot of what you’ll find in it is the direct result of your collective feedback. It includes long-asked-for changes to make it easier to swap covenants and conduits, updates to make it so you don’t need to repeat covenant campaigns on alts, new character customization options for some races that were lacking them, and many more changes to help you play the way you want.

It also has updates to improve the game environment for our community, including additional changes to some content to better reflect our shared values, better visibility into the impact of your in-game reports of harassment, and more serious penalties for people engaged in disruptive behavior.

We hope you’ll see something from your own 9.1.5 wish list when we post the patch notes next week, and we’ll keep listening, refining, and building on that as we continue PTR testing and development of what’s next.

For our Burning Crusade Classic players, we’re excited to let you know that the first major content update, Overlords of Outland, will be going live soon. Starting September 15, you’ll be able to take on Prince Kael’thas and Lady Vashj in a pair of iconic raids, engage in a new season of Arena combat, and more. We’re also working on something for WoW Classic players who’ve told us they’d like a chance at a fresh start, and will be sharing more on our plans soon.

Creating World of Warcraft is truly a collaborative effort between the people on our team, across Blizzard, and all of you—and as we build, iterate on, and talk about what’s next, we hope we can demonstrate our commitment to making Azeroth the best place it can be for everyone.

— World of Warcraft Development Team

[Hitei]

Welp, guess Classic is getting seasonal servers.

[ferseba18]

Hahahahaha. They are really desperate, are they?

[Thage]

Okay, promising start. Let's see how it shakes out, both on the company side and in the games.

[aceperson]

2nd update post in rather short succession... i'm still skeptical but maybe things are finally changing. that said, why didn't the post cover anything in detail? is it that hard to copy/paste a list of upcoming changes?

[Chriisto]

Implementing changes that we've been waiting for since Shadowlands dropped? I could get used to this new caring and communicative WoW team!

[Hyrja]

There we go

[Yooginava182]

2nd update post in rather short succession... i'm still skeptical but maybe things are finally changing. that said, why didn't the post cover anything in detail? is it that hard to copy/paste a list of upcoming changes?

They literally said they will be giving out a detailed patch note list next week?

[Raetary]

2nd update post in rather short succession... i'm still skeptical but maybe things are finally changing. that said, why didn't the post cover anything in detail? is it that hard to copy/paste a list of upcoming changes?

It's just a letter, not PTR patch notes.

[Zyrinx]

updates to make it so you don’t need to repeat covenant campaigns on alts

That's a big one.

[damonskye]

READ THE OTHER POST, "SHADOWLANDS DEVELOPER UPDATE".

I mean, holy crap... THEY ARE PULLING THE RIPCORD AFTER ALL! WHOA!

[Gaidax]

Took only a year.

[Acidbaron]

''and many more changes to help you play the way you want.'''

That kind of went out of the door after several borrowed power structures became the go to design choice for the last expansions paired with legitimizing Pay 2 win practices through the integration of the token system, what essentially made boosting so common place you might as well add an interface feature for it.

Other MMO's also did not need to go through a sort of identity crisis to respect their player base time and money more. What makes me wonder that things that have been pointed out for some time as annoyances, would they have been changed if this was not happening? Highly unlikely.

[SinR]

F R E S H ? ! ? ! ?

lol

[Ophenia]

Implementing changes that we've been waiting for since Shadowlands dropped? I could get used to this new caring and communicative WoW team!

It's important to note that most of the changes from the incoming PTR Patch were already well advanced before all that mess though.

So yeah, there is a good communication point here, but the "wishlist" was on the works already.

[Hitei]

Hahahahaha. They are really desperate, are they?

I've never understood these kinds of responses.
-Blizzard doesn't change something
"What the fuck Blizzard why aren't you listening?!"
-Blazzard changes something
"LMAO Why are you so desperate Blizzard?!"

[ForrestAnthony]

Will Arms Warriors finally be able to transmog their backpieces into shields? It's the most requested cosmetic feature I've had for a looooong time.

1. It's badass
2. They're the only class/spec that it's truly justifiable on too
3. it puts literal dozens of awesome looking shields that would be otherwise wasted to a new cosmetic second-life
4. some small justice for gladiator spec

[gaaara]

Christ...took then Beta-> 9.0 -> 9.0.5 -> 9.1 -> 9.1.5
To fix....something that was mentioned during Beta...

[Acidbaron]

Classic without QoL changes not sure how many people want that yet -again-, especially since the token integration looming over their heads ready to introduce the profitable system from retail into those servers.

[exsanguinate]

Boys and girls be careful who you trust. Please dont get cocky because of a few changes made out of pressure. They would not have done it if there was not an investigation. Important are future addons and big patches