Launch is less than a week away, and the news hasn't slowed down. Name reservation opened late and with queues, racials got another pass, and hunters had Aspect of the Hawk cut with no patch notes at all. Meanwhile the devs gave IGN a long interview and recorded the sixth podcast episode. Patches will land about every 4 months, dual spec is there on day one, and layering won't move you around without asking anymore.
Racials: a pass on the pass
In our last digest we said the final October 26 pass left trolls and the Forsaken alone. On October 27 Blizzard updated the same post with changes that were supposed to be listed from the start.
All three changes buff active racials. Trolls come out best, since Berserking now lasts half again as long.
| Race | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Orc | Blood Fury: 3 min cooldown | 2 min cooldown |
| Troll | Berserking: 10 sec | 15 sec |
| Undead | Touch of the Grave: 25 sec internal cooldown | 15 sec internal cooldown |
- Blizzard also clarified the Skyborne buffs Charged and Attuned. They stay on through death but drop when you enter a raid.
- Everything else from the October 26 pass still stands. The before/after table is in our October 27 digest.
Hunters: a nerf with no patch notes
While everyone was busy reserving names, the numbers changed quietly on the servers. Wowhead spotted them in the game data. They're not in the development notes, so they could still change before launch.
Aspect of the Hawk and Trueshot Aura took the hit, the talent that gives attack power to the whole group. Hawk lost between a third and a half of its ranged attack power depending on rank, and the aura got cut nearly in half on most ranks.
| Rank | Aspect of the Hawk | Trueshot Aura |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 to 15 | 30 to 15 |
| 2 | 35 to 22 | 40 to 22 |
| 3 | 50 to 30 | 50 to 30 |
| 4 | 78 to 38 | 75 to 40 |
| 5 | 90 to 47 | none |
- You'll feel it while leveling. Hunters keep Hawk up for almost every fight, so they'll hit a bit softer than on the beta.
- Alchemists got hit too. Elixir of Wisdom now gives +3 Intellect for 30 minutes instead of +6 for an hour. It's a vendor recipe that needs Alchemy 90.
Name reservation: queues and disconnects
Name reservation opened on October 27 for owners of the Skyborne Heroic Pack, Skyborne Epic Pack, or Warcraft Forever Collection. It didn't go smoothly.
Europe was due at 18:00 CET, but the Battle.net launcher showed a notice about technical problems instead. European players got in almost three hours late, around 20:40 CET. The Americas opened nearly on time, but with queues that dropped people the moment they got through. Most of the disconnects were fixed by evening, though some players still found rulesets missing.
Then a bug turned up in the restricted name list. The list is there so nobody can take the name of a major Warcraft character, but it was also blocking anything with the letters "c-o-n" in it. The fix came with the next realm restarts. If the game told you a perfectly normal name was restricted, try it again.
Oceanic players on Australian servers had their own problem. You have to make your Roleplay or Roleplay PvP characters before any Normal or PvP ones, or the roleplay rulesets disappear. Blizzard says an urgent fix is on the way.
IGN interview: a patch every 4 months
IGN talked with Principal Game Designer Kris Zierhut and Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones. The most useful part is the update schedule.
Blizzard thinks the right pace is a big patch about every 4 months, three times a year. Going 6-8 weeks without new content feels bad, while the 8-10 week schedule of Season of Discovery turned out to be too fast. There should be smaller additions between the big patches, too.
The classic path isn't going anywhere. Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and Ahn'Qiraj are coming, just on a stretched-out timeline. Next to them you'll get new places like the Riverglades, and now and then something really different, like the Skyborne and Zephras Isle.
Other places they'd like to go include the Emerald Dream, Grim Batol as an explorable area like Blackrock Mountain, and more of the Caverns of Time. Gilneas is on the map but locked, and it'll get its own story before the Cataclysm. Silvermoon will wait, since modern WoW is focused on it right now. The Dark Portal, Northrend, and Pandaria could show up as short side trips, but you'll always come home to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. And not soon.
Dual spec is in at launch, and a third spec isn't off the table. You won't be able to swap talents on the fly before every boss, but they're talking about making spec changes easier. The interview didn't say what level you get dual spec at or what it costs.
There are no plans for player housing in Forever right now. On the other hand, Zierhut says the modern WoW team has been talking about the lighting and water from Forever. He also asked people to stop calling the WoW engine spaghetti code, since plenty of other devs would love to have it.
Podcast episode 6: layering calms down
For the sixth episode, host Aggrend brought in engineers Ana Resendez and Frank Williams, with WoW content creator Shobek as the guest. Most of the talk was about layering.
Layering in Forever tries to keep you close to your community. That means people you've already met, plus friendly and even enemy guilds. The idea is simple. You keep seeing the same faces while leveling, then invite them to a dungeon or a guild.
Early in the beta the algorithm tried too hard, and the layer-change pop-up kept showing up. They calmed it down over the first two weeks. At launch you won't be moved unless it's needed. Joining a group won't switch your layer instantly anymore either. You'll get a pop-up and some time to make the move when it suits you. Williams brought up Hardcore in particular, because getting moved into a cave right next to an elite isn't funny there.
Layer changes at zone borders are staying. Blizzard can tune which zones are linked together, and the links at launch won't be the same a month later. Aggrend's example is that Durotar will be packed in the first days while Orgrimmar sits nearly empty, and later it flips.
Big open-world PvP fights at launch will work the way they did at the end of the beta. Down the line they're looking at detecting these fights automatically and expanding the server around them. Williams says there's even a whiteboard on campus with the word "megaraid" on it.
There was also a question for Oceanic players. Australians can play with the Americas, but then their day could flip to night in a couple of seconds when they group with someone from NA. Aggrend asked players to say whether they'd be fine with that.
Launch checklist
Blizzard put out a launch overview, a new player guide, and a recap for returning players. Most of it isn't new, but a couple of things will greet you the first time you log in.
Before you even pick a ruleset, the game asks you to choose an Experience Preset. Classic gives you standard models and the old interface, with no quest objective areas on the map, no one-bag, and no transmog. Enhanced gives you HD models, quest objective areas, one-bag, transmog, and a centered interface. Not sure which one? Blizzard suggests Enhanced. These are just starting settings, and you can change any of them in the options later. HD or SD models are picked per character and can be swapped at a barbershop.
Next comes the ruleset: Normal, PvP, Roleplay, or Roleplay PvP. Hardcore opens sometime after launch.
Raids are still on schedule. On December 9, level 60 characters get Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit, and Onyxia's Lair. Controller support is there in beta form, and Blizzard suggests the official WoW Portal Room Discord for finding a guild and people to play with.
Launch is November 4 at 3 p.m. Pacific. For other time zones, see our guide When does WoW Forever launch.
Quick hits
- Planet Azeroth. Blizzard started a YouTube series styled after nature documentaries. British comedian Bill Bailey narrates, and the first episode covers wolves, boars, and of course Barrens chat.
Upcoming dates
- November 2: meet the developers in Irvine, California.
- November 3: name reservation closes.
- November 4, 3 p.m. Pacific: WoW Forever launches.
- December 9: the first raids, Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit, and Onyxia's Lair.
- After launch: Hardcore, no exact date yet.