UPADATED 4:15 p.m. PDT

We’ve enabled the Free Character Move service for three realms in this region that have recently been experiencing long queues: Incendius, Faerlina, and Whitemane.

Free Character Moves are now available:

We strongly encourage players who wish to use a Free Character Move to do so as soon as possible. Free Character Moves will be closed without warning for any destination realm that becomes full.

Thank you!

We’re pleased to announce that our next WoW Classic content unlock will occur at the same time on all realms: 3:00 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, April 15.

Zul’Gurub
Hidden in the jungles of Stranglethorn, an ancient Troll city full of peril has been uncovered. Do you have what it takes to delve into its mysteries with a band of hardy explorers? There’s only one way to find out! Zul’Gurub is a high-level, 20-man raid instance with 120 new rare and epic items to uncover. Adventure awaits!

Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza
The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza is a grand new event set along the coasts of Stranglethorn Vale. Early on the appointed day, friendly neighborhood goblins will visit Ironforge and Orgrimmar to inform aspiring anglers of the grand tournament and give instructions. At the appropriate time, the shout will ring out across Stranglethorn to bait your hooks and cast your lines!

The Dragons of Nightmare
Something is amiss in the Emerald Dream. Immense dragons with the shimmeri...

World of Warcraft Patch 8.8.8 Build 88888 WORK IN PROGRESS

1520×540

April 1, 2020

Tech writer note – looking for edits from all producers and team leads here. Please get back to us by EOD tomorrow, and please don’t leak this doc like one of you leaked all the new professions. Oof.

NEW FEATURES

TERRIFIC VISIONS

Now that N’Zoth is vanquished and all of Azeroth’s problems are solved forever, players will delve into future-looking scenarios that offer a new way of helping Azeroth’s champions see past the old god. With LACEC (Light Assisted Corruption Eradication Conversion), you’ll use Titan technology to step into a look at what the future might hold after everyone stops fighting.

In Terrific Visions, you’ll keep an eye on your Vanity meter while enjoying all that life has to offer. If your Vanity runs out, you’ll be forced to read Torn Pages from N’Zoth’s Diary. For example:

I am an Old God in this lonely city.
I think about sad things; no one calls me pretty.
“My name is N’Zoth” I...

With scheduled weekly maintenance the week of March 31, we’re enabling Legacy loot rules in Legion raids and dungeons.

We’re reached that point in an expansion where the content from the previous expansion no longer requires a full group, and the rewards are primarily sought by transmog collectors. With this change, Legion raid and dungeon encounters will drop a fixed quantity of class-agnostic loot. Today, if you and one other player enter Emerald Nightmare on Mythic difficulty and kill Nythendra, it’s unlikely that you’ll receive any loot, since drop rates normally scale to the number of players. After this change, Nythendra will always drop 5 items from her loot table, regardless of your group size.

Dungeons and many of the lower-difficulty raid bosses in Legion are already soloable by well-equipped Battle for Azeroth characters, though some bosses, especially on Mythic difficulty, may still require you to bring a few friends. Nonetheless, this should amount to a great increase in t...

We’ve just made a significant update to the new Echoes of Ny’alotha system, with the goal of making Essences much more available to your characters whose specializations put them in different roles (tanking, healing, damage).

With this change, we’ve lifted the restrictions on acquiring role-specific Azerite Essences from MOTHER. Now, the various ways that you obtain Rank 3 tanking, healing, or damage-specific Essences are now grouped together. If you’ve earned any of the three Essences in these groups, all three of the Essences will be unlocked for purchase from MOTHER with Echoes of Ny’alotha:

• Spark of Inspiration, Unwavering Ward, Strength of the Warden (obtained from Horrific Visions)
• Touch of the Everlasting, Spirit of Preservation, Breath of the Dying (obtained from reputation with Rajani)
• Blood of the Enemy, Artifice of Time, Sphere of Suppression (obtained from Battlegrounds)
• Condensed Life Force, Vitality Conduit, Azeroth’s Undying Gift (obtained from raiding in The Eternal Pa...

Gain the Winds of Wisdom 100% Experience Buff Through April 20 - WoW

If you’re staying indoors and find yourself back in Azeroth, we’ve made it easier to level a new character as the Winds of Wisdom buff blows through the world.

Since we added Echoes of Ny’alotha as a reward from Emissary Quests, we’ve had a bug that needed to be quickly squashed. Today, we’ve deployed a hotfix that solve it without removing Echoes of Ny’alotha from Emissary Quests.

Instead, we’ve removed the bonus reputation reward that Contracts provide from Emissary Quest turn-ins. No other Quest rewards are affected.

You’ll see a side effect to this: Echoes of Ny’alotha are hidden in the Emissary and Quest panes of the UI. Nonetheless, you should see the Echoes in your chat log when you turn-in Emissary Quests (on characters that are eligible for Echoes).

Thank you for your patience.

I hope we can discard concerns about “alts” and “mains”.

Before the game will begin awarding any character Echoes of Ny’alotha, you want to first log into a character (or characters) who have Rank 3 Essences. That’s it.

Once you’ve logged into a character who has a Rank 3 Essence, all of your other characters (that are eligible) will begin seeing Echoes as rewards.

Thus, if you have two characters who have different Rank 3 Essences, you’ll want to log into both of them first, each unlocking the Echoes for the other.

OP updated!

I’ve updated the OP here with this note:

We suggest you log into any characters who have Rank 3 Essences before you complete activities that can be expected to drop Echoes of Ny’alotha.

UPDATE MARCH 17

To enable your characters to receive Echoes of Ny’alotha, you must first log into your other characters who have Rank 3 Essences. This will also unlock your Rank 3 Essences for purchase from MOTHER on eligible alts.

–

As we announced last Thursday, with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, a new system will allow players who have Rank 3 Azerite essences on at least one character to more directly acquire those Essences on other characters. This will use a new currency called Echoes of Ny’alotha. Here are more details about the system.

If a Rank 3 Essence has been earned by another character on your account, MOTHER will offer that Rank 3 Essence for 500 Echoes of Ny’alotha. Any player who is eligible to purchase at least one Essence from MOTHER will now receive Echoes of Ny’alotha from a wide range of activities in current content. These are the values we’re planning per activity:

• Black Empire Assault – 125 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Aqir/Amathet/Mantid/Mogu Assault –...

Building on a great deal of feedback and discussion, we’re working on an update to the game. With the next regularly-scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, players who have earned a given Rank 3 Essence on one character will be able to directly obtain that Essence from MOTHER on any subsequent characters.

When playing an alt character that is missing Essences that have already been earned on a different character, most ordinary Visions of N’Zoth activities, such as Horrific Visions, Assaults, raid bosses, Mythic Keystone Dungeons, or BFA Season 4 PvP, will award a new soulbound currency – Echoes of Ny’alotha. These Echoes can be brought to MOTHER in the Heart Chamber, and exchanged directly for eligible Rank 3 Essences. While ordinarily each specific Essence must be learned in order to unlock it for other characters via MOTHER, all Essences associated with Nazjatar and Mechagon reputations will be available if any other different character has earned any of the Essences available...

What if I told you I have a %t in there?

The aforementioned fix was completed with restarts at 6:00 a.m. AEDT, and the Battleground Holiday has been operating as expected on Oceanic realms since then.

This sort of outreach works wonders. I have something similar macro’d.

The first Battleground Holiday should have gotten underway on Oceanic realms at 12:01 a.m. AEDT (about 4.5 hours ago). That has not yet happened, due to a bug.

We’re working on a fix, and the fix may require realm restarts of Oceanic Realms, which we would undertake very soon if necessary.

We apologize for the delay.

Beginning with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region the week of March 17, all gear rewards from Horrific Visions will be Corrupted.

We’ve heard from many players that Corrupted items were not obtainable enough, limiting their ability to play with the system and its inherent tradeoffs. This change will substantially increase the number of Corrupted items reliably earned each week, allowing players to choose from among a greater selection of Corrupted pieces and enjoy using those that work best in a given situation.

There’s so much fighting on the road already.

This was hotfixed late yesterday afternoon. We’ll make sure it’s listed in our next hotfixes update, coming today.