The next patch and content unlocks for WoW Classic are now available for testing in the WoW Classic Public Test Realm (PTR).

Ahn’Qiraj

• The 20-player raid zone, Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj is now open in the PTR and available for testing.
• The 40-player raid zone, Temple of “Ahn’Qiraj will not be available for public testing. This raid will only be available after it is opened on each realm.
• The “Sceptre” quest to open the gates is available for testing, however, when the gates are already open, it is not possible to trigger the gate-opening event on the PTR.

Content Updates

• The Tier 0.5 dungeon questline, items, and vendor are now available.
• This update makes Wizard Oil and Mana Oil available.
• Abyss Crystals can now be rewarded from disenchanting epic items.
• This update includes WoW patch 1.10 Dungeon loot table adjustments, increasing the drop chance of epic items, and many new caster DPS items.
• Several Relics are now available.
• Reputation rewards from Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, Thorium ...

Hello!

In this build of the Shadowlands Alpha, we’ve made some changes to Affliction Warlocks, based on your feedback. We want to address concerns with pet summoning, Curse of Doom, and Affliction’s single target rotation, among other things.

Thank you for all your posts!

Warlock

• Fel Domination is now a baseline ability, learned at level 34, with a 3 minute cooldown. Fel Domination reduces summoning cast time by 5.5 seconds.
  • Summoning your pet shouldn’t be always easy, but sometimes you need a new pet in a pinch.
• Curse of Doom removed for Affliction and Destruction.
• Curse of Exhaustion is learned at level 58 for all three specializations.
• Curse of Exhaustion slows the target by 50% for 8 seconds.
  • Developers’ notes: We love Curse of Doom, but it wasn’t working out well at a 60-second period. Also, we feel that Curse of Exhaustion will provide interesting choices when deciding which Curse to use.

Affliction

• Shadow Embrace is now baseline as a part of Shadow Bolt (Rank 2), learne...

Hello!

Death Knight will see a couple of abilities tweaked in this Alpha update, based on feedback received. We think these should help their usability going forward. Thank you very much for your continued feedback.

Blood

• Rune Tap global cooldown removed.
  • Developers’ notes: Rune Tap was made baseline in Shadowlands, but also had a GCD added, which was not present in Battle for Azeroth. We’re reverting this change to bring it back to its current functionality.

Unholy

• Outbreak duration of Virulent Plague increased to 28 seconds (was 21 seconds).
• Outbreak AoE range increased to 10 (was 8).
  • Developers’ notes: We changed how Virulent Plague functions in Shadowlands. To compensate for the loss of uptime of Virulent Plague, we’ve increased its duration and increased the initial AoE application, so it doesn’t require such tight grouping to maximize the targets hit.

Hello!

Thank you for all of your continued feedback on Mage changes in Shadowlands. Below, you’ll find the latest changes in the Alpha, which includes reverting Shimmer to 2 charges, further talent tuning, and the removal of the short lived Frost and Fire Ward.

There has a been a lot of great discussion in this thread and we hope to see it continue!

Mage

• Shimmer charge count increased to 2.
• Shimmer cooldown Increased to 25 seconds (was 20 seconds).
  • Developers’ notes: After listening to feedback and more playtesting, we are returning both charges of Shimmer at a slightly higher cooldown cost. Our goal with the change was to bring more it inline with the other talents on the row, but in doing so, Shimmer lost a lot of its identity. If the other talents on the tier continue to underperform, we’ll look at ways we can enhance them to be more attractive options while up against Shimmer.
• Focus Magic now also grants the caster 1% Intellect, stacking up to 8 times when their Focus Magic tar...

In related news, we currently have a bug that is causing Gladiator’s Spite to stack faster than intended. We’re working on a fix for it right now.

I’ve added an adjustment to the OP. We’re also now testing and planning this change:

Azerite Essences

• Conflict and Strife now increases the defensive benefit of your Versatility by 50% while stunned (was 100%).

We’re working on a set of PvP tuning changes that will go live with scheduled weekly maintenance (early on June 9 in this region). This is what we’re currently testing:

Items

• Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite can once again stack more quickly when multiple Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite trinkets are used against a target.
• Void Portal summoned by Corrupted Gladiator’s Breach is now slightly larger and easier to interact with when there are nearby units.

Corruption Effects

• Versatile’s effectiveness has been reduced by 33% when engaged in combat with enemy players.

Azerite Essences

• Reaping Flames (Major – Rank 3) no longer activates on player-controlled targets such as pets, totems, or guardians.
• Resolved an issue that prevented Conflict and Strife (Major – Rank 2) effect from providing additional defensive benefit from versatility under the effects of certain class stuns.
• Conflict and Strife now increases the defensive benefit of your Versatility by 50% while stunned (was 100%).

Monk

• Mistw...

At this time, we’re enabling a second layer for the Arugal and Faerlina realms, in order to alleviate recent, unexpected queues.

With a hotfix that just went live, we’ve made the following update:

• When using Advanced Combat Logging, the presence of various world buffs (e.g. Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer) will now be consistently recorded when starting a raid encounter.

• When using Advanced Combat Logging, the presence of various world buffs (e.g. Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer) will now be consistently recorded when starting a raid encounter.

• All classes now have Anima Powers and can venture into Torghast.

• Many classes have received new Anima Powers that affect their Covenant Class abilities.

• Torment Update!

  • Torments no longer scale with time.

  • Torments are now additional challenges based on the floor types you have encountered on this run.

    • Developers’ notes: We’ve heard your feedback that Torments were adding too much time pressure. The Jailer may still torment you on higher levels of Torghast, but Torments will not scale with time.

  • Breath of Coldheart now increases the health of enemy monsters by a flat percentage based on the number of Coldheart Interstitia floors climbed.

  • Mort’regar’s Echoes now increase the Magic damage enemy monsters inflict by a flat percentage based on the number of Mort’regar floors climbed.

  • Might of the Upper Reaches now increases the Physical damage enemy monsters inflict by a flat percentage based on the number of Upper Reaches floors climbed.

    • Developers’ notes: The changes ab...

We’ve reviewed the various interactions at play in this situation and decided against making a change at this time. Thank you for your feedback.

2:00 p.m. PDT June 5

At this time, we’re enabling a second layer for the Arugal and Faerlina realms, in order to alleviate recent, unexpected queues.

1:00 p.m. PDT May 28

Over the next few minutes, we’re enabling a second layer for the Herod and Whitemane realms. This is a step we’re taking very carefully to make it so that players can enjoy playing on those realms during peak hours.

It has been a very high priority for us to understand why, after we de-layered ten realms on May 14, these two realms reversed course and experienced this, while the others did not. We will continue to pay very close attention to this situation and make adjustments to the game service as necessary.

As before, Herod and Whitemane remain restricted from the Character Transfer service.

The Black Lotus and Warsong Gulch hotfixes are live in all regions.

Updated August 21

All standard realm-to-realm character transfers are now available. There are currently no realms restricted for character transfers.

Updated 6:00 p.m. PDT May 28 – The Black Lotus and Warsong Gulch hotfixes are live in all regions.

Via hotfixes, we’re working on several quality-of-life improvements that should go live in the next few days.

Black Lotus scarcity has been consistently among the top issues we’ve seen player feedback about, so we’ve decided to update how we handle Black Lotus spawns. Since the launch of WoW Classic, the game has used the spawn times and locations from original World of Warcraft, but population and social factors have led to Black Lotus being much more scarce than it was in original WoW. While these issues affect all mining and herb nodes to some degree, Black Lotus is especially affected because it has the special property of only having one spawn up at a time in each of the zones it spawns in.

In original WoW, designers planned Black Lotus around a technical limitation – only 10 spawn locations per node type could be active at the same time in the same zone. We no longer have that limit...

Updated 5:40 p.m. PDT – June 1
We’ve reviewed the various interactions at play in this situation and decided against making a change at this time. Thank you for your feedback.

We think we’ve found a way to fix a bug, and we’re planning to deploy the fix in the next day or two.

The bug is with the Corruption Effect Ineffable Truth and its interaction with abilities like Fist of Justice causing more than the intended amounts of cooldown reduction.

The hotfix will make it so the flat cooldown reduction provided by Fist of Justice (and similar abilities) will not be unintentionally increased by effects that increase your cooldown rate (such as Ineffable Truth).

We’ll confirm that the fix is live in our hotfixes update posts.

We encountered issues making the previously-announced adjustment to the Gushing Wound Corruption Effect. While we believe we have it sorted now, this week’s competitive PvP is underway and it’s unfair to make changes like this in the middle of events.

Our plan is to now reduce the damage done by Gushing Wound with weekly maintenance next week, on June 2 in this region.

We’re rolling out a hotfix over the next few hours that will make it so that you can apply Preserved Contaminants to corruptible items that were cleansed before maintenance this week.

We’ll see you in the Chamber of Heart!