Sunwell Launches May 12 - BC Classic, Additional Dragonflight Professions Feedback

[Stoy]

Burning Crusade Classic: Face the Fury of the Sunwell on May 12

Get ready to join the Shattered Sun Offensive and face Kil'jaeden in Sunwell Plateau in the next content phase of Burning Crusade Classic, arriving May 12.

The next content update for Burning Crusade Classic, Fury of the Sunwell, will be available on the week of May 10. The Sunwell Plateau raid will unlock on May 12 at 3:00 p.m. PDT. Read on for more information on what is coming,

Join the Shattered Sun Offensive and more on May 10:
Fresh from his defeat in Outland, Kael'thas Sunstrider returned to the blood elf city of Silvermoon. Rather than lead his people to glory as he had promised, the disgraced prince betrayed them. Kael'thas plots to use the legendary Sunwell, source of the blood elves' magical power, to summon the demon lord Kil'jaeden into Azeroth. It is up to you to stop him.

The combined forces of Shattrath have launched an attack on the Isle of Quel'Danas, to confront Kael'thas and the Legion at the Sunwell and surrounding areas. You're now able to gain reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and participate in a new set of daily quests.

At first, the Shattered Sun’s forces will be limited as you help them resist the Legion’s unrelenting assault. The Isle of Quel’Danas effort advancement depends on your whole realm completing quests and aiding the efforts—so be sure to do your part! As your realm continues to assist the Shattered Sun Offensive, fresh reinforcements will arrive, offering goods and services, in addition to new daily quests.

Once the staging area is fully reinforced, you’ll gain access to many helpful allies. Recruit the services of blacksmiths for repairs, innkeepers, alchemists, vendors for profession patterns, and gain access to new Badge of Justice vendors—whose goods include epic gear and epic gems.

Conquer the Arena in Burning Crusade Classic Season 4
After the regional weekly maintenance starting on May 10, a new Arena Season will begin. Defeat your enemies in glorious combat to earn fabulous rewards. At the end of Season 4, qualifying players will receive a unique title (Brutal Gladiator) as well as a unique mount (the fearsome Brutal Nether Drake). As with the original release of The Burning Crusade, some items in Season 4 will have a personal rating requirement you must attain before you can purchase them. These are:

• Brutal Gladiator Shoulders (requires 2000 personal rating)
  
• Brutal Gladiator Weapons (require 1850 personal rating)
  
• Guardian’s Boots (requires 1700 personal rating)
  
• Guardian’s Rings (requires 1650 personal rating)
  
• Guardian’s” Bracers (requires 1575 personal rating)

Note that there’s no continued rating requirement to equip these items, only to purchase them. Also note that items from previous Seasons (Vengeful Gladiator, Merciless Gladiator, Gladiator, and Vindicator’s Honor gear) do not have any rating requirements and can be purchased as soon as you accrue enough currency to obtain them.

Enter the Sunwell Plateau on May 12:
The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knight Arthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael'thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell prey to a crippling magical withdrawal.

Now, promising salvation for his people, Kael'thas has returned. Soon the Sunwell will shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remains to be seen.

New 25-player raid: Sunwell Plateau
Kil’jaden, one of the leader of the demonic Burning Legion, has been summoned to Azeroth by the returned blood elf prince Kael’thas. Gather your allies to stop Kael’thas mad scheme and restore the Sunwell to its former glory.

Raid bosses: 6 (Kalecgos, Brutallus, Felmyst, The Eredar Twins, M'uru, Kil'jaeden)
Level: 70
Location: Isle of Quel’Danas, Eastern Kingdoms

There is no attunement required to enter the instance. Unlike its original release, Sunwell Plateau will have all bosses available from the start.

The Burning Legion is poised to strike upon Azeroth itself, aided by the disgraced former leader of the blood elves. Only you can restore the Sunwell, hero. We’ll see you in Azeroth!

Additional Dragonflight Professions Feedback

We definitely have world PvP in mind with our crafting plans, both with interesting recipes, and with regards to gathering reagents, but nothing we are ready to talk about in detail yet!

One thing I want to talk about that we haven’t mentioned yet is the concept of recrafting. It’s still in the works so is likely to change some, but the basic idea is as follows:

Recrafting will allow you to take any piece of Dragonflight crafted gear and bring it back into the crafting screen as a crafter. You can then spend a special reagent, plus a small subset of the original reagents from the recipe to “recraft the item”.

During this process, you can completely change out optional reagents if you want. The new quality of the item will be determined based on the new setup of reagents, plus your current skill. This means you can have an item crafted at a low quality, then later recraft it when you are higher skill to a higher quality.

For non-crafters, we are planning to support recrafting orders as well. In this case, you can send you item to get recrafted to have its optional reagents changed out, or to potentially have its quality increased.

All of this should help players feel comfortable having a high end item crafted early, when it might not be at max quality, secure in the knowledge that they can always have it recrafted to be better later.

[Relapses]

Recrafting sounds dope as fuck. Looks like they heard the feedback on base Legendary items from this expansion. (Kind of wish they'd implement a similar system while we're still in SL but I'll take what I can get.)

[Kralljin]

Oh boy, they're so fucking desperate to get Wotlk out in Q3.

P3 / P4 has been such an extremely short phase, despite the fact that it literally had a catchup raid released in between.
Right now, i don't even have T6 4pc on my Alt that i only missed a single Lockout, nevermind that across three raids, i saw only a single glaive set completed.

Feels like Blizzard wants to blast through TBC now at Private Server pace but refuses to increase the droprates unlike Private servers with shortened phases.

[Relapses]

Oh boy, they're so fucking desperate to get Wotlk out in Q3.

P3 / P4 has been such an extremely short phase, despite the fact that it literally had a catchup raid released in between.
Right now, i don't even have T6 4pc on my Alt that i only missed a single Lockout, nevermind that across three raids, i saw only a single glaive set completed.

Feels like Blizzard wants to blast through TBC now at Private Server pace but refuses to increase the droprates unlike Private servers with shortened phases.

I have a feeling there will be a SoM for TBC which will scratch that particular itch.

[shise]

What the fuck is the rush?

This is easily one of (if not the) best patch in WoW ever.

The gating of the raid was awesome, and it was 3 weeks anyway...

This means Wrath will be out right after the summer lol, that kinda sucks. We could easily be on the last patch a good couple of months more. Wrath should come in Winter...

[Cæli]

way too soon, god...

[Kralljin]

I have a feeling there will be a SoM for TBC which will scratch that particular itch.

While it's not unreasonable to increase the content pacing during the 2nd round (which SoM is for Classic), Blizzard however has now in their "first round" of TBC released the enterity of its content within less than a year, we're already going at SoM pace here.

Blizzard has initially dragged their feet with releasing new content in TBC, P1 was far too long, they even staggered that for two whole weeks with some intermediate phase between P1 and P2.
Now they suddenly throw out content phases with literally less than a week of heads up.

I don't know, it seems like the beancounters at Blizzard are desperate to salvage Q3 (neither Q1 nor Q2 were exactly pretty for Blizzard) with Classic Wotlk and, similiar to how they pushed TBCC out with a short two week pre patch last year to get it into Q2 and enough space to 9.1, now are willing to cut it short to make ends meet.

People initially speculated whether Classic Wotlk might come out in late 2022 or early 2023, now we're looking at a september launch with this pace.

[Relapses]

I don't know, it seems like the beancounters at Blizzard are desperate to salvage Q3 (neither Q1 nor Q2 were exactly pretty for Blizzard) with Classic Wotlk and, similiar to how they pushed TBCC out with a short two week pre patch last year to get it into Q2 and enough space to 9.1, now are willing to cut it short to make ends meet.

As sad as it is, I'm almost certain this is the case. It's less about the people currently playing TBCC and more about all the new players that WotLK Classic will bring with it.

[crusadernero]

Dang they really want WotLK before christmas 2022

[TJ]

way too soon, god...

Yep... ridiculous. Not sure why they suddenly keep giving us 1 week's notice also. Why can't it be 2 weeks plus? Zzzz

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Recrafting sounds dope as fuck. Looks like they heard the feedback on base Legendary items from this expansion. (Kind of wish they'd implement a similar system while we're still in SL but I'll take what I can get.)

I’m really hoping they will give us some cool proc items like we used to have from professions being able to craft a nice proc at low lvl and then keep it with you through the rafting would be dope.

[McNeil]

From what I've seen Sunwell remains quite difficult, even for such an old raid. The world first is prolly ending in like 1.5-2 hours though

[Relapses]

From what I've seen Sunwell remains quite difficult, even for such an old raid. The world first is prolly ending in like 1.5-2 hours though

This is expected; the WF guilds have been practicing the encounters for decades on private servers. It'll still be a nice challenge for the umpteen thousands of guilds with people who never experienced the content when it was relevant.

[RoKPaNda]

From what I've seen Sunwell remains quite difficult, even for such an old raid. The world first is prolly ending in like 1.5-2 hours though

There will be like 50 guilds on the mega servers that clear it in a couple hours after release if not more so. More difficult than P2 or P3 raids doesn't mean actually difficult, or "quite difficult" as you put it.

This is SUPER rushed though. Especially if a guild has had pretty mediocre luck with RNG so far (glaives, trinkets, etc)

[TJ]

There will be like 50 guilds on the mega servers that clear it in a couple hours after release if not more so. More difficult than P2 or P3 raids doesn't mean actually difficult, or "quite difficult" as you put it.

This is SUPER rushed though. Especially if a guild has had pretty mediocre luck with RNG so far (glaives, trinkets, etc)

I still don't have CVOS (5th in line) or DST (!!!). We also had only 1 bow drop off Archi and 1 MH Glaive... RNG is a bitch sometimes.

[ResentfulUK]

I still don't have CVOS (5th in line) or DST (!!!). We also had only 1 bow drop off Archi and 1 MH Glaive... RNG is a bitch sometimes.

Yeah, RNG can be a real pain in the ass. Until the last reset I was still using a Phase One healing mace as literally in all the runs, we never saw any healing weapon drop.

We're starved of healing gear, but got both glaives, a few DST and so many bows we're not even disenchanting them anymore but giving them to people who are salty they can't get them on their alts.

As for this coming about, a little more time be nice but isn't needed. If you're not prepared for SWP as a guild by now, another 5 days wasn't going to likely change a whole lot for you.

Additionally I refuse to believe - as the comments here and on wowhead and discards would have you believe - that people were seriously going to book time off for this like it was an expansion launch.

SWP is obviously a step up in difficulty and many guilds will struggle but I honestly don't see 99% of players taking or booking time off for this. Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems unreasonable for just some patch content.

[SinR]

so expect a surge in a few weeks.

Followed by a slow drop off until WotLK Pre-Patch hits

[Stormxraven]

Is it really a world first if it was killed near 15 years ago....

[inafume]

Am I missing something? They're releasing Sunwell, but no mention at all about Magister's Terrace?

[ablib]

Blizzard finally has the opportunity to spread content (phases out) in a manner that is even, without long droughts, and they fuck it up. Classic is pure joy. It's such a shame they want to rush us through it.