World of Warcraft fans have been eagerly waiting for some news about WoW Shadowlands launch. That time might be coming soon, since last week Blizzard has updated their Public Testing Realm with a Shadowlands pre-patch, bringing all the class changes, level squish, intro quests, and pre-patch events for players to try out. This means that we can expect the live game to be updated in the coming month.
Class changes
One of the most anticipated changes coming with World of Warcraft Shadowlands pre-patch are class changes. Back in BlizzCon, Blizzard shared their intentions to make World of Warcraft classes get back to their roots and de-prune some of the stuff WoW players lost over the years – Shamans are getting back their totems, Warriors getting baseline Execute, Hamstring and so on. Essentially, all the classes in the game are getting back a bunch of old spells, since, with Shadowlands, Blizzard decided to focus more on the class rather than specialization. We wrote in detail about all WoW Shadowlands class changes, so if you’re interested – be sure to check these out.
Level squish
One of the most complicated changes coming with World of Warcraft Shadowlands and its pre-patch will be level squish. All 120 characters will become level 50 meaning that Blizzard will have to make a lot of tweaks in order to balance player power and tons of previous content. There are a lot of items that might need some tweaks in order to avoid certain effects being too overpowered, but that’s why we have a Public Test Realm.
New player experience
Prior WoW Shadowlands launch and with the new PTR build, Blizzard also introduced a fresh new player experience called Exiles Reach. Essentially, it’s a new system that replaces the old way of how players are being introduced to the game. From now on, all new players will start their journey in a new Exiles Reach zone where they’ll learn the ropes and hit level 10 of their new character. For many years now WoW had an issue regarding this since every new player was greeted by a 15-year old content. As you can imagine, this was not ideal, so Blizzard decided to change that.
Upon dinging level 10 on your new character you’ll be able to start your journey in the big world leveling through Battle for Azeroth expansion’s zones, which should streamline the experience and clear up some of the confusion going forward. We should also mention that only new players will be sent to Battle for Azeroth’s leveling zones. If you’re not new to the game, you will be able to choose another expansion to level through. Blizzard stated that it scaled down the questing experience and made the whole leveling process much shorter, so you should reach level 50 by playing through any of the previous World of Warcraft expansions.
Scourge invasions are back
As with every new pre-patch, Blizzard is setting up the scene before WoW Shadowlands launch. This time we’ll see what happens when there is no Lich King. Scourge is invading once again, so expect some mayhem in capital cities. Basically, the new event is a recreation of the old scourge invasions where some of the players are infected with a plague and for a limited time can infect and attack other players spreading the disease across WoW. It’s a fun event that will surely keep players on their toes during the whole pre-patch thing.
Setting up the story
World of Warcraft Shadowlands pre-patch also brings a new quest line which will tell how both factions are dealing with the betrayal of Sylvanas Windrunner and how we ended up with a giant hole in the sky. While we don’t want to spoil any major reveals, we can tease that one of the major lore characters will die during this pre-patch questing. There’s also a couple of datamined bits revealing that we’ll get at least 2 new cinematics pushing game’s lore forward and setting up for WoW Shadowlands launch.
Get ready!
If any previous World of Warcraft expansions are any indication, we have about a month until this new patch brings a ton of changes to our beloved MMORPG. Almost all previous pre-patch events kicked off their PTR testing a month prior to their release, giving the public access to play with all the new stuff prior to the event goes live. However, this time there are a lot of changes, so don’t take our speculations for granted, there are dozens of things that can go wrong and might delay the official WoW Shadowlands launch.
In any case, Blizzard reassured players that World of Warcraft Shadowlands will launch this fall. We hope everything goes according to their plan and the new expansion will once again revitalize the game. Grab your friends and start preparing for the next WoW chapter.
