Nebulous Voidcore

Before this week, the only source for bonus rolls was the Great Vault, but now you can obtain an extra bonus roll every week with the weekly Voidforge turn-ins.

How to Unlock Additional Bonus Rolls in Midnight Season 2

To unlock the additional bonus rolls, you must complete the quests In the Catalyst’s Shadow (provided by Decimus in the Voidstorm) and Prismatic Potential (provided by Orin Straylight, by the Catalyst in Silvermoon).

The Elementary Voidcore Shards from the Prismatic Potential quest can be looted from content such as Venomous Abyss bosses in any difficulty, Mythic+ dungeons, Bountiful Delves, and Nightmare Prey Hunts. Note that both quests have been available since the beginning of Season 2, so you may have already completed them.

Once both initial quests are completed, you can receive one additional Nebulous Voidcore per week by paying one of the following to Orin Straylight in Silvermoon:

• 5,000 Gold (Nebulous Voidcores: Gold)
• 80 Veteran Dawncrest (Nebulous Voidcores: Veteran Dawncrest)
• 2,000 Voidlight Marl (Nebulous Voidcores: Voidlight Marl)

Although you can now obtain up to two bonus coins per week, remember that you are still limited to bonus rolling a boss once per week per difficulty. Good luck with the remainder of your loot!

The Data

The data used in this article comes from Raider.IO‘s excellent analytics tools, taking into account all Mythic+ runs across all levels of play. The data is focused on this reset and not on the season as a whole.

The Most Popular Specs in Mythic+

The biggest change of the week is the precipitous drop of Blood DK, losing three spots, but still retaining the No.1 tank position down in 6th. At the top we see Arcane drop a whole percent, while the rest of the top 3 remain exactly the same, and Demonology and Holy Pala drop 0.2% each. Elemental got the better of Arms, while we see Restoration Shaman drop two spots, outside the top 10. As you’d expect, the two newcomers to the top 10 are both tanks, as Blood’s lost playerbase seems to have moved to Guardian and Protection Pala. The bottom three remain the same, with Augmentation in last place gaining 0.1%, literally doubling its player count!

Runs by Key Level

We’re up to +23 this week with 13 specs managing to finish the highest key completed in Season 2 so far.

And here are the full numbers, including the amount of runs.

Group Composition Popularity

Note: The below chart shows the percentage of group popularity in relation to the top 30 compositions. This means that, for example, the top group says it’s 30% of the compositions, but that’s just 30% of the top 30. In reality, it’s just 2% of all groups played. You can see the smaller 2% number if you hover over the group line in the chart on the Raider.IO page.

The top group starts losing ground here in week 7, as it’s down 2.2%, to 11.9% of the top 30 groups (and 0.9% of the overall group comp population). A brand new setup arrives at No.2, claiming 5.2%, and sporting an unexpected Assassination Rogue in place of the Arcane Mage. The third comp is pretty close to the 2nd, only 0.6% behind, and it’s the old No.2 with Demonology instead of the top group’s Elemental.

Group Composition Success Rate

We’re taking a look at a new stat this week, with the overall success rate of groups. Everyone is pretty close on the 0-100 scale, and the chart takes all key levels and dungeons into account, so you’ll be seeing some very different compositions than the ones above. The top group sports a 92.6% success rate and only features two specs (Blood and Arcane) from the most popular group above. The second group only drops to a 91.7% success rate, and the dropoff only gets smaller from there as you can see below.

Mythic+ DPS Logs

The below logs are based on POINTS, and not actual damage or healing. This means that they log the timed completion for the specs, with higher keys getting more points, obviously. The time in which the dungeon is completed is also a factor. It is a much, much smaller factor, however. It grants only a few points for significantly faster completions compared to just any in-time finish. We’re also using the Normalized Aggregate Scores numbers, for clarity. This means that the top spec is marked as 100 and then the rest are ranked in relation to that peak point.

95th percentile DPS

The logs remain stable in the top 4, but we see the approach of a bugged Unholy, which has already taken over the raid. The bug is fixed in today’s class tuning pass, and Unholy also got a fix for grabbing some of Augmentation’s damage for itself in the logs, so we probably won’t be seeing as much of it from this week on. Devourer and Subtlety are on the rise, pushing Outlaw down to 8th, with the DH getting some additional buffs in today’s tuning. Windwalker finds itself two spots down, just ahead of Frost DK, which is one spot down in No.10.

All Percentiles

Unholy moves even higher up in the generalist bracket, managing to go up all the way into 2nd place! Devourer moves two spots up into 7th, and Windwalker actually goes up one in 9th here. Outlaw drops even more, three spots into 11th. Fire drops down into the bottom 3, which now has both non-Arcane specs joining Destruction at the very bottom.

Very High Key Raw DPS Numbers

Note: We’re also taking a look at the raw damage numbers from Mythicstats. They take the top runs for extremely high keys (+15-23) from WarcraftLogs and list the overall DPS for the dungeon, which includes non-combat time as well. They’re ranked by the average DPS numbers, with the very top of the top shown next to it.

The top keys are very much dominated by the bugged Death Knight, so we’ll have to see how much it falls. Elemental has moved up a spot into 2nd without any noticeable bugs, however, leaving Demonology in the dust! Arcane is having a bad week as it moves over for all three specs mentioned above. Assassination gets past Arms and Devourer moves into the top 10, with Shadow dropping into the bottom 3.

For more stats and spec information, you can also head on over to our class guides and tier lists, as well as the full Raider.IO, WarcraftLogs, and Mythicstats data.

Following last month’s promotion, which allowed Australian customers to exchange MyMacca’s points for access to the Forever beta, McDonald’s is now offering three different WoW rewards through its loyalty program.

Players can redeem 2,000 MyMacca’s points for their choice of game time, the Lil’ Ragnaros pet, or a cosmetic back piece. That gives Australian players another way to pick up some collectable extras! The promotion is exclusive to McDonald’s Australia, so players elsewhere won’t be able to exchange their own loyalty points for the rewards.

Players outside Australia may not be completely out of luck. Codes obtained through the promotion may be redeemable by other players, though this isn’t confirmed just yet. It did seem to work for the last campaign, which means anyone with an Aussie friend, guildmate or particularly generous McDonald’s customer in their life might want to ask if they have a spare code.

The promotion is expected to remain available until January 22th 2027, so Australian players have a fair amount of time to build up those points and decide which reward they want. If you would like to know more information regarding the partnership, you can click the link here.

In this past week’s hotfixes we only got two spec changes, with a fix for Feral and a buff for Survival. Ula’tek got more attention as well, with two fixes making the fight easier. And finally, Brewfest got a change where the items from Coren Direbrew have a required item level based on the player that gets th drop.

( Source URL )

---

Classes

• Druid
  • Feral
    • Fixed an issue that could cause Rampant Ferocity to trigger incorrectly against a single target.
• Hunter
  • Survival
    • Wildfire Bomb’s periodic damage increased by 20%.
      • Developers’ notes: The tuning hotfix from the week of September 22 did not properly increase the periodic damage of an untalented variant of Wildfire Bomb. This hotfix corrects that issue.

Dungeons and Raids

• The Venomous Abyss
  • Ula’tek
    • Fixed an issue where the Venomous Heart would sometimes melee a player.
    • Fixed an issue with Ula’tek’s Mother’s Wrath where it can be cast at a target that isn’t the current target if a non-target has higher threat but hasn’t passed the threat threshold to force a target change.

Events

• Brewfest
  • Items that drop from Coren Direbrew should now have the required level set to the player who receives the item. They could still trade it but players at lower levels will have to reach the required level to equip it.

Community Coupons

Tortollan Endeavor: Vacation Season

The Tortollan Endeavor is giving players the opportunity to earn 6000 House XP, and Community Coupons through finding hidden Secret Souvenirs! To participate in this Endeavor activity, your house must be in a Neighborhood with the Tortollan Endeavor active. 

During this Endeavor, players will be able to find Secret Souvenirs, with 60 hidden in Razorwind Shores and 60 in Founder’s Point. Finding each souvenir will reward 50 House XP and 10 Community Coupons.

We recommend downloading the addon, Tortollan Tracker 2000, to make finding these souvenirs easier! However, we’ve included a list of locations below.

Founder’s Point Locations

Razorwind Shores Locations

Once you’ve found all of the Souvenirs in either Neighborhood, a hidden decor item, Beguiling Memories of the Sea, will become available for purchase!

Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons

With such a small change of +0.09% compared to week 5 on a global scale, the regional changes were also just landing above and below the line. The EU (-2.54%) and US (-1.24%) servers fell behind the Asian servers, as expected. TW (+5.70%), KR (+5.09%), and CN (+1.57%) all remained positive. 

Compared to the previous seasons, the MN S2 is still behind in absolute and relative numbers. This might continue for a while, since farming for your vault isn’t really rewarding in M+. A viable alternative by now is farming heroic Venomous Abyss to use your bonus roll on the final two bosses for some 334 loot. And while you are doing so, you fill the slots for next week’s vault; done in less than two hours. M+ is still somewhat useful to get the remaining Myth Crests each week, if you aren’t raiding mythic by now. But with the current gear progression, mythic raiding is gaining relevance. 

The New Keystone Myth Cut-Off

There is a scenario where players who used to focus heavily on M+ have gotten most of their desired heroic raid loot. They farm the upgrades to 340 in M+. So while the upcoming weeks might see a stronger decline, the second half of the season might be more stable. Especially since the Keystone Myth achievement for the mount or mount token has been raised to a 3,600 rating. This might be an overcorrection, though. 3,600 rating was above the top 5% for EU and US in MN S1. Right now, the top keys are slightly ahead of MN S1, but the group performances are boosted by a comparatively higher ilvl from mythic raiding and the vault changes. At +23, we see Chinese groups timing keys with an average of 336.5, with members that are close to BIS, and an EU group with 327.5 just above the timer. 

Total Runs Across All Dungeons

The split across all dungeons barely moved. Their order once again only swapped from rank 3 to 5. Murder Row and Altar still seem to be quite established for fast and easy crests, as well as a few BIS items. The Blinding Vale might remain the least popular dungeon for the rest of the season. 

The affix change to Voidbound brought the success rate back up by 1.27 points. Murder Row (94.10%) kept a comfortable lead. Kings’ Rest (93.05%) and Temple (92.49%) did not benefit as much from the affix change. With their rather linear and lengthy design, badly timed Voidbound add spawns can really drag out the run time. Voidscar Arena (92.02%) also has this issue between the first and second boss. Den of Nalorakk (90.40%), Blinding Vale (89.89%), Altar of Fangs (89.64%), and Ruby Life Pools (89.44%) saw above-average improvements, which narrowed the gap between the easiest and hardest dungeon.

Split Across All Key Levels

85.27% of all keys were completed at key level 10 or higher. An improvement over the last week, but already falling behind MN S1 in week 6. From last week, +12 gained in total numbers (+6.35%) and relative share (+4.39%); +10 lost in both cases (-6.07% and -4.31%). Compared to MN S1 week 6, these values are even more extreme. Key level 10 lost 47.42% in total runs and 24.16% in relative share. Totals for +12 fell by just 4.19%, and the relative share grew by 38.19%. As mentioned above, more and more players use M+ to fill the crest cap, but not the vault. From +14 upward, growth remained but slowed down. The potential peak of +16 started building, but with the shift towards 3,600 for Keystone Myth, +18 is the new goalpost.

The overall success rate bounced back to 91.48%. Only key levels 18, 19, and 21 saw slight decreases compared to week 5. The biggest improvements, as always, showed in the affix key range. Especially levels 7 to 9 gained between 4.08 and 4.59 percentage points. With 96.03%, key level 10 looked quite good, but in MN S1’s week 6, that value was already higher at 96.28%. But this might also be tied to the shift away from +10 and towards +12. Here we saw a clear improvement to 92.82%, while in MN S1, that value sat at just 89.17%. The efficient farmers were missing at +10 and busy at +12. And in week 7, so far, the shift towards +12 is even more prominent. On the Chinese servers, it is already the most popular key level.

Conclusion and Week 7 Forecast

M+ in MN S2 is not doing well in comparison. The upcoming patch might mend it a bit, since all players can access ilvl 340 weapons, trinkets, and necklaces over time. But M+ loot is also missing some of the insane cantrip effects. Vault loot from farming heroic or bonus rolls during those runs might still do the trick. In MN S3, the devs have to find a better balance. Maybe remove the bonus roll as an option from the vault and make it permanent from week 1. Hand out higher-quality myth track items for finishing +12 or higher in the vault, which they did during DF seasons. Or add some interesting 2-set items and bonuses to the M+ loot. 

As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions are all falling behind at a similar rate. -13.47% for the US, -13.73% for the EU, and -12.92% for CN. The latter might drop a bit more towards the end of the ID. It started ahead of week 5 and has continuously dropped off day by day. 

Only 6 specs get changes in PvE, with many more in PvP, 16, with even more changes to tanks and classes. Unholy gets nerfs to some unintended damage sources, while Devourer, Subtlety, Brewmaster, Misweaver, and Enhancement get buffs on the PvE side. In PvP there’s big changes to tanks’ Focused Assault-related talents, in addition to the many class and spec tuning adjustments.

( Source URL )

---

The following class adjustments will arrive with scheduled weekly maintenance (October 6 in this region).

CLASS CHANGES

• Death Knight
  • Unholy
    • Developers’ notes: A recent bug fix resulted in Blightfall dealing significantly more damage than we expected. Alongside this tuning change, we’re also making sure the damage is represented accurately when an Augmentation Evoker is present in the group.
    • Blightfall now deals 100% of the remaining plague damage (was 200%).
    • Resolved an issue causing Augmentation Evoker Reattribution damage from plague erupt effects to be attributed to the Death Knight.
• Demon Hunter
  • Devourer
    • Developers’ notes: Many of Devourer’s single target damage sources are receiving buffs that will match their output more closely with our expectations.
    • Consume/Devour damage increased by 8%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • Reap/Cull damage increased by 8%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • Eradicate primary target damage increased by 8%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • Collapsing Star primary target damage increased by 8%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • The Hunt initial damage increased by 10%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • Voidblade damage increased by 10%. Does not affect PvP combat.
• Monk
  • Brewmaster
    • Developers’ notes: We’re finding Brewmasters’ death rates in dungeons is higher than we’d like, so we’re adjusting some rotational sources of damage reduction to help improve baseline durability.
    • Quick Sip now purifies 8% of current Stagger amount each time you gain 3 seconds of Stagger duration (was 5%).
    • Pretense of Instability grants 10% dodge for 8 seconds after drinking a Brew (was 5 seconds).
  • Mistweaver
    • Developers’ notes: We’re making a few raid focused adjustments to Mistweaver with the aim of increasing their overall performance in that content.
    • Invigorating Mists healing increased by 15%.
    • Enveloping Mist healing increased by 15%. Does not apply in PvP combat.
• Rogue
  • Subtlety
    • Trickster
      • Developers’ notes: We’re buffing Trickster for Subtlety to reduce the performance gap between it and Deathstalker. We want Trickster to be a more viable alternative for players who prefer its gameplay and thematic identity.
      • Fazed now causes enemies to take 7% more damage (was 5%). Does not affect PvP combat.
      • Unseen Blade damage increased by 15%. Does not affect PvP combat.
      • Coup de Grace damage increased by 10%. Does not affect PvP combat.
• Shaman
  • Enhancement
    • Developers’ notes: We’re aiming to increase Enhancement Shaman’s throughput all around as they have been underperforming this season, while additionally increasing Lava Lash’s contribution to its overall breakdown.
    • All ability and auto-attack damage increased by 4%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • Lava Lash damage increased by 35%. Does not affect PvP combat.

PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

Developers’ notes: With this pass, we’re buffing several underperforming PvP Talents to increase your breadth of options as you play.

• Tank Specializations
  • Increased the effectiveness of Tank specialization PvP talents that apply Focused Assault: Death Knight’s Murderous Intent, Demon Hunter’s Tormentor, Druid’s Alpha Challenge, Monk’s Admonishment, Paladin’s Inquisition, and Warrior’s Oppressor.
    • Focused Assault now stacks to 6 times (was 5).
    • Duration increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds).
    • Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
    • Range increased to 15 yards (was 10 yards).
• Death Knight
  • Dark Simulacrum (PvP Talent) cooldown reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
  • Blood
    • Death Chain (PvP Talent) now affects 4 targets (was 3).
    • Death Chain (PvP Talent) initial damage increased by 500%.
    • Price of Progress (PvP Talent) now causes the Death Knight to be unable to be slowed under 100% of normal speed (was 90%).
    • Price of Progress (PvP Talent) now sacrifices 1% health every 1.5 seconds (was 1 second).
  • Frost
    • Death’s Cold Embrace (PvP Talent) now increases the damage of Remorseless Winter by 450% (was 400%).
• Demon Hunter
  • Cover of Darkness now increases Darkness duration by 4 seconds (was 2 seconds).
  • Havoc
    • Illidan’s Grasp damage increased by 50%.
  • Vengeance
    • Illidan’s Grasp damage increased by 50%.
• Druid
  • Balance
    • Moon and Stars radius increased by 60%.
    • Moon and Stars now displays as important on player nameplates.
    • Tireless Pursuit duration increased to 6 seconds (was 3 seconds).
  • Restoration
    • Ancient of Lore: Mass Blooming is now affected by Wild Growth talents like Improved Wild Growth and Early Spring.
    • Ancient of Lore: Mass Blooming healing increased by 30%.
• Evoker
  • Dreamwalker’s Embrace damage increased by 140%.
  • Augmentation
    • All spell and ability damage increased by 8% in PvP combat.
    • Seismic Slam stuns enemies for 5 seconds (was 4 seconds).
• Hunter
  • Hunting Pack (PvP Talent) radius increased to 40 yards (was 30 yards).
  • Beast Mastery
    • Dire Beast: Hawk (PvP Talent) damage increased by 200%.
• Mage
  • Fire
    • World in Flames now empowers Flamestrike to deal up to 75% more damage (was 50%).
    • Glass Cannon now increases the damage of Fireball, Scorch, and Ignite by 25% (was 20%).
  • Frost
    • Frost Bomb damage increased by 25%.
    • Icy Feet now grants snare immunity for 4 seconds (was 3 seconds).
• Monk
  • Mighty Ox Kick (PvP Talent) cooldown reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
  • Mistweaver
    • Healing Sphere (PvP Talent) now allows maximum of 5 Healing Spheres to be active at a time (was 3).
    • Healing Sphere (PvP Talent) healing increased by 100%.
  • Windwalker
    • Perpetual Paralysis (PvP Talent) now spreads to 3 targets (was 2).
    • Perpetual Paralysis (PvP Talent) now prefers player targets.
    • Perpetual Paralysis (PvP Talent) spread range increased to 15 yards (was 10 yards).
• Paladin
  • Spellbreaker damage increased by 50%.
  • Retribution
    • Ultimate Retribution’s duration increased to 20 seconds (was 12 seconds).
• Priest
  • Absolute Faith absorption increased by 113%.
  • Improved Mass Dispel reduces the cooldown of Mass Dispel by 75 seconds (was 60 seconds).
• Rogue
  • Thick as Thieves duration increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds).
  • Death from Above now increases damage by 30% (was 15%).
  • Outlaw
    • All damage increased by 5% in PvP combat.
• Shaman
  • Electrocute damage increased by 50% and is now a rolling periodic.
  • Restoration
    • Developers’ notes: We’re increasing the effectiveness of Earth Shield as its importance has felt lackluster and we would like its placement and management to influence gameplay to a higher degree for both Restoration Shamans and their opposition.
    • Call of Al’Akir now increases the cooldown of Nature’s Swiftness by 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
    • Earth Shield healing increased by 15% in PvP combat.
    • Earthen Harmony now causes Earth Shield to reduce damage taken by 8% in PvP combat (was 5%).
    • Earthen Harmony now increases Earth Shield healing received by 200% based on its target’s missing health (was 150%).
• Warlock
  • Bonds of Fel damage increased by 100%.
  • Bloodstone duration increased to 18 seconds (was 12 seconds).
  • Bloodstone now has a unique visual and updated sound effect.
  • Demonology
    • Call Fel Lord’s Fel Cleave damage increased by 150%.
• Warrior
  • Dragon Charge damage increased by 300%.

WoW Forever took the spotlight again, this time with some in-depth class change overviews detailing all the new talents, abilities, and tuning. There was also episode two of the podcast, also delving into class changes. And finally, there’s the upcoming PAX Aus Keynote by Holly Longdale and Clay Stone, on October 9th!

Over in retail we had the full patch notes for 12.1.5. They cover everything from the class tuning pass to all the new content and other changes. The patch launches on October 13th.

( Source URL )

---

A new week brings even more to discover across World of Warcraft. Explore the latest WoW: Forever class spotlights featuring the Hunter, Druid, Priest, and Warrior, and tune in for episode 2 of the WoW: Forever Podcast. Then, see what’s on the horizon for Midnight with the 12.1.5 content update. Discover it all in this week’s WoW Weekly.

---

Watch Now! WoW: Forever Podcast Ep.2

Curious about Classes in WoW Forever?

Host Countdown To Classic sits down with Senior Game Designers Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield and Aidan Moon, Principal Game Designer Kris Zierhut, and special guest and content creator Sodapoppin to explore the strategies, challenges, and choices around Class design philosophy in WoW: Forever.

---

World of Warcraft: Forever Class Deep Dives

Every class in World of Warcraft: Forever is being revisited with an approach rooted in the original World of Warcraft, keeping the foundation players remember while making thoughtful updates that open up more choice, identity, and room to experiment.

---

Midnight’s 12.1.5 Content Update Arrives October 13

 

Midnight’s next content update raises the stakes with new challenges and richer rewards. Face Kith’ix in a flexible single-boss raid, brave the nine-chamber Labyrinth of Kindo’jan, and push further with the Season 2 refresh and Keystone Myth. A new story campaign, The Promise of Tomorrow, and the Aqir Invasion outdoor event round out the adventure with powerful gear, cosmetics, titles, and more.

Click to Learn More

---

Watch Holly Longdale and Clay Stone’s Keynote Presentations Live from PAX Aus 9-11 October

World of Warcraft executive producer Holly Longdale will open PAX Aus 2026 as the Storytime keynote speaker. Drawing on her two decades of experience across the video game industry, Holly will share adventures and lessons learned throughout her career; discuss the continued evolution of the Warcraft universe; and the important role that online player communities hold for MMOs.

Click to Learn More

---

Let us journey alongside you, regale you with tales of adventure in faraway places, map out roads less traveled, and direct your gaze toward the legendary challenges that await. Return each week to the World of Warcraft news site, where we’ll uncover your destiny together.

There’s plenty of new content like the raid, labyrinth, Aqir invasion events, and story campaign. But there’s also a big class tuning pass. Devourer and Void Scarred DH get a whole lot of changes, with Hunters and Rogues getting a bit less. There’s also plenty of fixes in there, and even some new talents! The item level cap is being increased via the new Ascendant Venomstones. Mythic+ gets new achievements to hunt for, with some high rating requirements. Housing and Prey also get updates, with catch-up and blueprint improvements.

And, of course, Legion and Battle for Azeroth reputations go Warbound!

( Source URL )

---

Midnight’s 12.1.5 content update brings the Labyrinth of Kindo’jan—a massive nine-chamber Delve-like challenge, a new single-boss raid, Season 2’s mid-season refresh, the continuation of the Midnight saga in Quel’Thalas and Zul’Aman, Aqir Invasions, and more.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STORY CAMPAIGN: “THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW”	NEW SINGLE-BOSS RAID: THE UNBINDING OF KITH’IX
LABYRINTHS: CONQUER THE DEPTHS TO CLAIM THE REWARDS	AQIR INVASIONS
MID-SEASON REFRESH: UNLOCK NEW POWER	ACHIEVEMENTS
CLASSES	HOUSING
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER	PREY
USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY	WARBAND REPUTATION

---

STORY CAMPAIGN: “THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW”

Ula’tek’s defeat has awoken a long-slumbering terror. Temper an uneasy peace between Quel’Thalas and Zul‘Aman, descend to the deepest depths of the Coiled Isle, and make a final stand against the Amani’s ancient foe—the C’Thraxxi general, Kith’ix.

---

NEW SINGLE-BOSS RAID: THE UNBINDING OF KITH’IX

Hidden beneath the Venomous Abyss, Kith’ix was bound in his subterranean lair. With Ula’tek’s defeat, the restraints keeping Kith’ix at bay have weakened, unleashing the monstrosity the Amani locked away so long ago.

Confront Kith’ix with Lady Liadrin at your side in a focused single-boss raid that brings the campaign’s escalating threat to a decisive confrontation, with Story Mode, Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties. On Mythic difficulty, face Kith’ix with a flexible group of 15–25 players.

Gather your allies and prepare for a battle that brings the story of Quel’Thalas and Zul’Aman to a close.

---

LABYRINTHS: CONQUER THE DEPTHS TO CLAIM THE REWARDS

This ancient Amani funeral complex has been sealed for centuries. Now reopened, looters and Vilebranch comb the complex for relics while the interred spirits defend it with deadly force.

Love Delves but want a massive adventure with greater reward? Then the Labyrinth of Kindo’jan is for you.

While keeping the spirit of exploration, discovery, and overcoming challenges alongside a companion, a Labyrinth is a sprawling, mega-dungeon-like experience designed to be conquered on your terms, with dedicated progression systems, powerful unlocks, and rewards that match the scale of the challenge, including Mythic gear.

Like Delves, the Labyrinth of Kindo’jan will send you into danger with a trusted companion, Valeera Sanguinar, to guide you deeper into the unknown.

Venture through a Labyrinth in a single epic session or tackle it one wing at a time. You can explore a single wing and still earn rewards, but each additional room completed brings more opportunities to claim treasure—and more risks to overcome.

---

AQIR INVASIONS

Charge into Aqir Invasions—new zone-wide public events taking place in Eversong or Zul’Aman. For ten minutes each hour, champions will tackle a series of public events across the zone, one after another, before confronting an intense boss fight.

Whether you’re fending off aerial assaults or rallying defenders on the ground, the Aqir forces won’t stand a chance against the champions of Azeroth.

Each invasion features six scenario types: three combat-focused and three non-combat-focused. Combat scenarios can have one of eight possible affixes. Champions who band together will be rewarded for completing as many objectives as possible before the ten-minute window closes.

Affixes

• Void Protection: Chance for an Aqir Voidweaver to appear, creating a protective barrier around all other aqir.
• Aqir Burrower: Several aqir aggressively burrow through the area. They will knock anyone into the sky if they get close.
• Void Sphere: Void Spheres move around the area to try to trap anyone within them.
• Astalor’s Anguish: Astalor’s experiments continue. He has sent his Anguish Crystals to help, which will cause damage to the aqir and any adventurers caught in their blast.
• Swarms!: All aqir enemies are replaced with swarms of smaller aqir.
• Aqir Elites: All aqir enemies are replaced with fewer but more powerful aqir.
• Void Infestation: Some aqir are infested with the void and will explode after a few seconds in combat, dealing damage to players and infecting other aqir.
• Web Weavers: Chance for an Aqir Webweaver to spawn in. If their channel is not interrupted, they will cover a player in webs.

---

MID-SEASON REFRESH: UNLOCK NEW POWER

During realm maintenance the week of October 6, Orin Straylight will begin to offer one additional Nebulous Voidcore a week to bonus roll for additional loot.

Prepare to unlock these additional Nebulous Voidcores before Midnight’s 12.1.5 content update goes live. First, accept the “In the Catalyst’s Shadow” quest from Decimus in Voidstorm, then travel to Silvermoon City and pick up the “Prismatic Potential” quest from Orin Straylight. To get an early start on the Nebulous Voidcore quest chain, we encourage Azeroth’s brave champions to complete both quests before weekly maintenance during the week of October 6.

Once “Prismatic Potential” is turned in, Orin can begin his research, and a progress timer will appear above his head. After completing his research during the week of October 6, he will offer the quest “Umbral Blessings of the Catalyst”. Completing this quest will unlock the ability to trade in gold, Voidlight Marl, or Veteran Mistcrests to Orin for one additional Nebulous Voidcore a week.

During realm maintenance the week of October 13, Orin will offer the quest, “Ancient Depths, Ancient Venom”. Once this quest is complete, Orin will begin his next research of Ascendant Venomstones. Orin will complete his research during realm maintenance the week of October 20 and offer players “Ascending with Venomstones”, letting players take their power to new heights. Completing this quest will empower defenders of the realm to acquire Ascendant Venomstones, which drop from every Heroic or Mythic raid boss, Mythic+ Keystone dungeons at +10 and above, Tier 11 Bountiful Delves, and Nightmare Prey Hunt Champion gear chests.

After collecting 10 Ascendant Venomstones, use them near the Catalyst in Silvermoon City to raise the item level of a fully upgraded Season 2 Hero, Myth, or maximum-quality Tidal Crafted weapon, trinket, or necklace.

Along with Ascendant Venomstones, the week of October 20, the crest cap will be lifted.

---

ACHIEVEMENTS

• New Mythic+ dungeon achievement: Midnight Keystone Myth: Season 2 – Attain a Mythic+ rating of at least 3600 during Midnight Season 2. Rewards: “the Venomous Contender” title and Timelost Saddle.
• The achievements Snake Eyes, Snake Eater, and Good Night, Sweet Prince are no longer required to complete the achievement Glory of the Wartorn Hero.

---

CLASSES

• DEMON HUNTER
  • Devourer
    • Developers’ notes: Cancelled casts of Collapsing Star have been a noted pain point since Devourer’s introduction, and the changes in this update are aimed at alleviating some of that frustration.

      Until now there has been a cooldown enforced on Collapsing Star after it was interrupted or cancelled; this was in place to discourage gameplay that would capitalize on the slowed Fury drain during its cast to extend Void Metamorphosis and land a Collapsing Star at the ‘right’ time. While it was effective at that primary goal, the cooldown was also jarring for players when a cast was interrupted or manually cancelled for very normal gameplay reasons. We hope the changes to Collapsing Star in this update will be able to find a middle ground where normal gameplay will not be punished and rarely notice the new underlying restriction, while still minimizing the opportunity and incentive to manipulate its slowed Fury drain mechanic.

      Second, because of Collapsing Star’s long cast time combined with its medium range, the circumstances where Collapsing Star would be cancelled by its target moving out of range were too common. We’re giving Collapsing Star more wiggle room to finish its cast by giving it extra range after its cast begins.

    • Collapsing Star now has increased range after it starts casting, reducing the circumstances where it will fail from the target moving out of range.
    • Collapsing Star no longer goes on cooldown for 5 seconds when its cast is cancelled.
    • Collapsing Star will now only slow Fury drain during its cast for a limited time.
      • If Collapsing Star’s cast is cancelled then cast again, it will only be able to slow Fury drain for a total time of approximately 1.5 full casts.
      • After that time limit has been reached, Fury drain will resume in full regardless of whether or not a cast is interrupted or starts again.
    • Soulforged Blades now increases the critical strike chance of Hungering Slash and Voidblade by 18% (was 15%).
    • Voidpurge now reduces the cooldown of Void Ray during Void Metamorphosis by 2.5 seconds (was 2 seconds).
    • Many talents have changed positions.
      • Developers’ notes: We are shuffling some talents around to make it a little easier for builds to access core functional effects. The final gate was very dense and two of its talents are moving to the middle gate. The final gate’s capstone talents also notably included effects that are core building blocks: The Hunt is featured for Void-Scarred builds, and Eradicate is a key component of any build’s AoE damage. Those two talents are moving to more accessible locations in the middle gate of the tree, with other talents moving into their capstone positions.
    • Void-Scarred
      • Developers’ notes: The Void-Scarred talent tree had multiple powerful bonuses that all centered around entering Void Metamorphosis, which was discouraging players from casting Collapsing Star because doing so would delay how long it would be until entering Void Metamorphosis and benefiting from those bonuses again. Collapsing Star is intended to be a feature ability of Devourer’s rotation regardless of which Hero Talents are selected, so some of Void-Scarred’s bonuses will now be granted by casting Collapsing Star instead of only being granted by entering Void Metamorphosis.
      • Demonic Intensity now causes Collapsing Star to reset the cooldown of The Hunt.
      • Demonic Intensity’s empower effect for The Hunt now increases its damage by 30%.
      • Violent Transformation now resets the cooldown of Soul Immolation.
      • Violent Transformation no longer resets the cooldown of The Hunt.
      • Violent Transformation no longer increases the damage of The Hunt (was 25%) or causes it to reset the cooldown of Soul Immolation.
      • Monster Rising now increases Intellect by 10% while not in demon form (was 15%).
      • Monster Rising now increases Collapsing Star damage by 20% (was 15%).
• DRUID
  • Restoration
    • Developers’ notes: The current design of Nature’s Bounty causes some rotational friction. We’re redesigning it to work more synergistically with the rest of the healing kit.
    • Nature’s Bounty has been redesigned – Regrowth heals up to 3 allies with Rejuvenation active for 15% of its healing, prioritizing allies with the lowest health.
• EVOKER
  • Augmentation
    • Chronowarden
      • Temporality duration is now increased by Mastery: Timewalker.
      • Temporal Burst duration is now increased by Mastery: Timewalker.
    • Scalecommander
      • Melt Armor damage increased by 100%.
  • Preservation
    • Merithra’s Blessing duration reduced to 30 seconds (was 1 minute).
    • Consume Flame no longer double dips from healing increases on the target.
    • Chronowarden
      • Fixed an issue where extending Fire Breath with Doubletime could cause Life-Giver’s Flame to stop healing.
      • Fixed an issue where Afterimage was causing Deep Breath to sometimes cast Living Flame on the Evoker.
• HUNTER
  • Marksmanship
    • Developers’ notes: We’re replacing Unload with a talent focused more around Aimed Shot, giving a window of opportunity when you get an Aimed Shot critical strike. 
    • New Talent: Blood Fletching – Aimed Shot critical strikes now cause the Master Marksman bleed effect at 20% of the damage dealt. For 4 seconds after a critical Aimed Shot, the target will take additional bleed damage any time your abilities damage that target.
    • Fixed an issue where Explosive Shot would automatically select and fire at a nearby target if pressed without a target currently selected.
    • Unload has been removed.
    • Dark Ranger
      • Fixed an issue where Umbral Reach was not generating Trick Shots when Bleak Powder hit exactly 2 targets.
  • Survival
    • Fixed an issue where Strike as One bonus damage from Raptor Swipe (Rank 3) did not properly work while Aspect of the Eagle was active.
    • Fixed an issue where Raptor Swipe had a longer range than intended while Aspect of the Eagle was active.
• MAGE
  • Arcane
    • Several Arcane spells have been added to the Spell Density system for additional visibility options for non-Mage players.
  • Frost
    • Fixed an issue where Splitting Ice’s damage modifier would not apply to Frostbolt, causing both Frostbolts to hit for full damage.
    • Fixed an issue where casting a Frostfire Bolt and then switching to Spellslinger Hero Specialization would cause Frostbolt to have the Splitting Ice damage multiplier apply to the main target in addition to the secondary target.
    • Fixed an issue where a Splitting Ice Frostbolt had a smaller search radius for its second target than other spells.
    • Fixed an issue with Shatter where if two Ice Lances were in the air at the same time, with the first benefitting from Fingers of Frost and the second not, neither would benefit from Fingers of Frost. This could also occur with Thermal Void, which is also fixed.
    • Fixed an issue with Crystalline Refraction where interrupting Ray of Frost by casting Ray of Frost could cause it to not generate Fingers of Frost.
    • Frostfire
      • Fixed an issue preventing Frostfire Empowerment’s effects from applying to the second target when Frostfire Bolt hit a second target due to Splitting Ice.
      • Frostfire Infusion’s tooltip has been updated, functionality unchanged.
    • Spellslinger
      • Splinterstorm is now trackable in the Cooldown Manager as a Buff.
      • Splinterstorm is no longer removed on start of a raid encounter or Mythic+.
• MONK
  • Fixed an issue where Transcendence: Transfer could be used while silenced if talented into Transcendence: Linked Spirits.
• PRIEST
  • Discipline
    • Master the Darkness duration reduced to 30 seconds (was 1 minute).
  • Holy
    • Holy Celerity and Ultimate Serenity have swapped positions on the specialization tree.
      • Developers’ notes: Ultimate Serenity is a powerful tool for Holy priests, specifically in M+. We are moving it up in the talent tree to reduce the amount of investment required for Holy priests to take it so that it enables more choice amongst talents beyond the second gate.
• ROGUE
  • Shiv no longer incorrectly plays an impact visual on the Rogue.
  • Assassination
    • Mutilate has an updated weapon trail.
    • Crimson Tempest animation has been updated and now has a weapon trail.
  • Outlaw
    • Deft Maneuvers has been updated – No longer increases Blade Flurry’s Energy cost by 30. Instead, it increases Blade Flurry’s Energy cost by 5 per target hit, up to 30.
      • Developers’ notes: This change is intended to make it a little less expensive to maintain Blade Flurry when fighting small numbers of additional targets.
  • Subtlety
    • All modifiers to Shadow damage and many Shadow damage abilities have been updated to resolve circumstances where damage bonuses could be applied incorrectly.
      • Developers’ notes: Shadow damage bonuses should now consistently apply to any individual Shadow damage abilities (e.g. Secret Technique’s secondary hits, Shadowed Finishers attacks, and Shadow Cloned attacks). Effects that deal Shadow damage based on how much damage attacks dealt (e.g. Shadow Blades’ effect, Goremaw’s Bite mirror damage effect, and Lingering Shadow) should now benefit correctly when the input attacks are physical and no longer double dip when the input attacks are Shadow. The impact these changes will have on overall damage output remains under review.
    • Shadow Blades has an updated cast visual and weapon visual.
• SHAMAN
  • Enhancement
    • Fixed an issue where Static Accumulation could cause Maelstrom Weapon stacks to stop automatically generating if activated during certain points of Ascendance or Doom Winds being active.
  • Restoration
    • Extending Riptide through Swelling Tides now causes Riptide’s timer to extend rather than reset.
    • Fixed an issue where Nature’s Swiftness and Ancestral Swiftness did not properly make Healing Rain instant cast.
• WARRIOR
  • Protection
    • Execute damage increased by 30%.
    • Colossus
      • Developers’ notes: Colossus is intended to reflect a Warrior’s innate prowess and skill, and this represents itself for Protection by being more efficient with Rage. We feel that Colossus will benefit from having more efficient access to Revenge and Execute for a more unique rotation and better threat management tools.
      • Practiced Strikes now has an additional effect – Execute and Revenge Rage cost reduced by 10.

---

HOUSING

• UI UPDATES
  • There are now keybinds for going up and down floors in floorplan edit mode (default page up/page down).
  • There’s now a shortcut to get to your blueprint collection from the Housing Controls blueprint button.
• ENDEAVORS
  • It was previously possible for Public Neighborhoods to receive the same Endeavor as the one they had previously been given. We’ve since fixed this so that Public Neighborhoods won’t get repeat Endeavors back-to-back.
• BLUEPRINTS
  • Stairwells will not export all stairwell rooms that are vertically connected to it. If you have a stairwell that is four units tall they will all be included. Importing this blueprint will connect it to an existing room from your choice of the bottom or top floor of the blueprint, if it does not collide with other rooms in your house.
  • The Blueprint Contents List UI will no longer include dyes that will come from decor that already has the matching dyes, and instead only lists dyes that will be applied via consuming dye items.
  • Dye tooltips in Customization Mode now clarify which Dye Item is used to apply that dye.
  • You can now get to your Blueprints Collection directly from the Blueprint control button at the top of the screen in your house or plot.
  • More clarifying text and tooltips have been added to the Blueprints collection UIs.

---

PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

• EVOKER
  • Preservation
    • Merithra’s Blessing is now considered an Arcane spell, and can be cast when locked out of Nature.

---

PREY

• Added catch-up mechanics to increase renown gains. Players below rank 4 will receive 4000 Journey progress (a full rank) per hunt which takes precedence over and does not trigger the Journey progress earned from your first four hunts a week. Players between ranks 4 and 9 will receive 2000 Journey progress from each of their first four hunts a week.
  • Developers’ notes: We want to make it easier with the 12.1.5 update for new players, returning players, or those who simply didn’t invest heavily into running Prey so far during Season 2 to engage with the content without feeling like they wouldn’t be able to catch up. These changes make it substantially easier for a player to complete their Prey Journey and receive the associated rewards, including decor and Hero track equipment in conjunction with Delves.
• Afflicted and Tormented Souls can no longer be used while a hunt is active and must be used between hunts.

---

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• Added player coordinates below the minimap, an option to disable it, and an option for displaying map coordinates as integers or decimals.
• Adding an option to display “ants” (an animated dash border) around raid frames when there’s something the player can dispel on the unit.
• Added an option to make the raid frame dispel overlay animate with a pulsing alpha effect.
• Pinging a macro now shows information from #showtooltip in the ping alert.
• Added a new setting called “Pulse Your Health” under the Combat Audio Alerts section of the Audio Assist settings. This setting allows the player to specify a health percentage below which a looping sound will be played. The sound gets progressively more aggressive as their health gets lower.
• Preview settings on the Trading Post UI, such as “Combat Animation”, will now remember the player’s choice when swapping between items.

---

WARBAND REPUTATION

• Legion and Battle for Azeroth reputations are now shared across the warband.

---

To view all content update notes, click here.

For World of Warcraft customer support, please visit our Support Site or our Customer Support discussion forum. If you’ve found a bug, please let us know about it in our Bug Report Forum.

Back to Top

The Venomous Abyss gets a Ula’tek rare threat issue fixed, while Brewfest gets an item level fix for Coren Direbrews drops. Let’s take a look.

( Source URL )

---

Dungeons and Raids

• The Venomous Abyss
  • Ula’tek
    • Fixed an issue with Ula’tek’s Mother’s Wrath where it can be cast at a target that isn’t the current target if a non-target has higher threat but hasn’t passed the threat threshold to force a target change.

Events

• Brewfest
  • Items that drop from Coren Direbrew should now have the required level set to the player who receives the item. They could still trade it but players at lower levels will have to reach the required level to equip it.

Note: We are using normalized scores instead of raw DPS for the Warcraft Logs rankings. Normalized scores take into account the outlier boss fights where certain specs could stack massive DPS (due to the nature of the fight, whether it’s AoE spam or something else), which would then affect their overall score for the whole raid.

Note 2: Warcraft Logs bundled the Lair boss, Nymrissa Wavecaller, from the Tidebound Grotto into the Venomous Abyss rankings, which means the logs from here affect the overall rankings you can see below.

Mythic Venomous Abyss

Mythic is still growing its population, and still doing so slowly. This week, we see another 10-ish% bump. When it comes to actual movement for the specs, we have to go all the way to the bottom of the top 10! Here we see Unholy pushing in, leaping 6 spots up and brushing Shadow to the side. Considering its performance in the logs below post-tuning, it’s very likely to go a lot higher still! The lower part of the chart is also unmoved so far, with Fire, Survival, and Fury languishing in the bottom 3.

Overall Damage 95th Percentile

Unholy has seemingly secured its place at the top in the top percentiles, as it has a significant lead ahead of Demonology. Retribution is also doing very well, but spots 3 to 6 are very much neck-and-neck and might change at any time. We have both Evokers in the top 10, with Devastation doing better in 6th, and Augmentation sitting in 9th. Interestingly, it’s the only class to have more than one representative in the top 10, and there’s no Rogues in it at all. Enhancement finds itself at the very bottom, joined by Beast Mastery and Fury.

Overall Damage, All Percentiles

We can see Unholy’s giant climb better in the generalist bracket, as we’ve been tracking this one for a while now. The Death Knight gains a HUGE 10 spots to move into first place, and also has a very big lead, also ahead of Demonology, which toppled Balance in 2nd place this week. Shadow is the other big post-tuning climber, gaining three spots in 4th. Frost Mage is also gaining some traction, two spots up. Affliction wasn’t as lucky, dropping four spots into 7th, same as Retribution, down in 9th. Heroic’s darling, Arcane, is also down this week, two spots and into the final top 10 slot. Fury has the dubious honor of being in the bottom three of all the charts we’ve poked into so far.

Damage to Bosses

We can see where Unholy gains its power. as it’s FAR ahead of everyone else in the direct damage chart. We do see some Rogues pop up here, including Subtlety in 2nd, and Frost DK is also doing well.

Individual Bosses

The final two bosses still don’t have that many guilds at them, so we’ll take a look at those down in the Heroic charts.

Sszorak

Unholy is ahead by a lot here as well, with this particular fight really favoring Rogues, as all three are in the top 10, and two are in the top 3.

Twin Fangs

The big cleave fight still has the cleavers on top.

Heroic Venomous Abyss

While we’re seeing a dropoff for the top spec, the rest of the Heroic population is about the same, maybe slightly bigger. Arcane is still on top, but down around 10K players, while Retribution is ever closer, gaining 15K. We see Unholy rise quite a bit here as well, gaining four spots in 7th place. As you’d expect, Frost dropped off as the Death Knights switched.

Overall Damage All Percentiles

Arms comes out on top of the 3rd place brawl, besting Demonology this week. But right after that we see a spec that will be moving past both of them shortly, as Unholy is on the move, gaining an insane 15 spots since the previous week! The two Rogues stay together, now one spot down. Frost DKs actually also move up, but just one spot, ahead of Retribution which sits in 10th place.

Individual Bosses

The Coiled Altar

Marksmanship moves to the top here as well, eclipsing Arms in the process.

Ula’tek

Havoc has its day in the sun on the final boss, but nothing can quite beat out Assassination’s single-target heart burn.

And, as always, you can check out our tier lists, our raid guides, and our class guides, updated with the latest changes! And for even more stats, head on over to Warcraft Logs.

We have another single-boss raid, but this time with some significantly increased difficulty with The Unbinding of Kith’ix. There’s also new power coming to players, with an additional Voidcore, as well as a way to increase item levels beyond the current Season 2 max! The Labyrinth brings new challenges for Delve enthusiasts, as it’s a much bigger version of the system.

Then there’s the new Keystone Myth achievement for Mythic+ players to hunt for, with some serious score requirements. There’s also a new outdoor event with the Aqir invasions, and of course, the continuation of the story.

( Source URL )

---

The next Midnight content update tests your mettle with new trials, more power, and greater rewards.

When: October 13 (with weekly maintenance)

Gather your allies for a single-boss raid against Kith’ix, with flexible Mythic difficulty. Venture into the Labyrinth of Kindo’jan, a massive, Delve-like gauntlet with nine chambers, a Tier 11 solo challenge, Mythic gear, cosmetics, titles, and more. Push your power to new heights in Season 2 with the mid-season refresh and Keystone Mythic. Begin a new story campaign that returns you to the heart of Quel’Thalas and Zul’Aman for the continuation of the Midnight saga.

Explore What’s Ahead

• Season 2 Mid-Season Refresh: Get Started with Orin in Silvermoon City
• New Single-Boss Raid: The Unbinding of Kith’ix
• Labyrinth of Kindo’jan
• Season 2 Keystone Myth
• New Story Campaign: The Promise of Tomorrow
• Outdoor Event: Aqir Invasion

---

Mid-Season Refresh: Unlock New Power

During realm maintenance the week of October 6, Orin Straylight will begin to offer one additional Nebulous Voidcore a week to bonus roll for additional loot.

Prepare to unlock these additional Nebulous Voidcores before Midnight’s 12.1.5 content update goes live. First, accept the “In the Catalyst’s Shadow” quest from Decimus in Voidstorm, then travel to Silvermoon City and pick up the “Prismatic Potential” quest from Orin Straylight. To get an early start on the Nebulous Voidcore quest chain, we encourage Azeroth’s brave champions to complete both quests before weekly maintenance during the week of October 6.

Once “Prismatic Potential” is turned in, Orin can begin his research, and a progress timer will appear above his head. After completing his research during the week of October 6, he will offer the quest “Umbral Blessings of the Catalyst”. Completing this quest will unlock the ability to trade in gold, Voidlight Marl, or Veteran Mistcrests to Orin for one additional Nebulous Voidcore a week.

During realm maintenance the week of October 13, Orin will offer the quest, “Ancient Depths, Ancient Venom”. Once this quest is complete, Orin will begin his next research of Ascendant Venomstones. Orin will complete his research during realm maintenance the week of October 20 and offer players “Ascending with Venomstones”, letting players take their power to new heights. Completing this quest will empower defenders of the realm to acquire Ascendant Venomstones, which drop from every Heroic or Mythic raid boss, Mythic+ Keystone dungeons at +10 and above, Tier 11 Bountiful Delves, and Nightmare Prey Hunt Champion gear chests.

After collecting 10 Ascendant Venomstones, use them near the Catalyst in Silvermoon City to raise the item level of a fully upgraded Season 2 Hero, Myth, or maximum-quality Tidal Crafted weapon, trinket, or necklace.

Along with Ascendant Venomstones, the week of October 20, the crest cap will be lifted.

---

New Single-Boss Raid: The Unbinding of Kith’ix

Hidden beneath the Venomous Abyss, Kith’ix was bound in his subterranean lair. With Ula’tek’s defeat, the restraints keeping Kith’ix at bay have weakened, unleashing the monstrosity the Amani locked away so long ago.

Confront Kith’ix with Lady Liadrin at your side in a focused single-boss raid that brings the campaign’s escalating threat to a decisive confrontation, with Story Mode, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties. On Mythic difficulty, face Kith’ix with a flexible group of 15–25 players.

Gather your allies and prepare for a battle that brings the story of Quel’Thalas and Zul’Aman to a close.

---

Labyrinth of Kindo’jan: Conquer the Depths to Claim the Rewards

This ancient Amani funeral complex has been sealed for centuries. Now reopened, looters and Vilebranch comb the complex for relics while the interred spirits defend it with deadly force.

Love Delves but want a massive adventure with greater reward? Then the Labyrinth of Kindo’jan is for you.

While keeping the spirit of exploration, discovery, and overcoming challenges alongside a companion, a Labyrinth is a sprawling, mega-dungeon-like experience designed to be conquered on your terms, with dedicated progression systems, powerful unlocks, and rewards that match the scale of the challenge, including Mythic gear.

Like Delves, the Labyrinth of Kindo’jan will send you into danger with a trusted companion, Valeera Sanguinar, to guide you deeper into the unknown.

Venture through a Labyrinth in a single epic session or tackle it one wing at a time. You can explore a single wing and still earn rewards, but each additional room completed brings more opportunities to claim treasure—and more risks to overcome.

---

Demonstrate Your Mastery with Season 2’s Keystone Myth

Test your Mythic+ skills when Keystone Myth returns in the Midnight 12.1.5 content update. In Season 2, the Unbinding of Kith’ix raid and Labyrinth of Kindo’jan offer new ways to strengthen your character, take on higher Keystones, and earn the “Midnight Keystone Myth: Season 2” achievement by reaching a Mythic+ rating of 3600.
The goal with Keystone Myth is to offer a meaningful challenge during the second half of each season, with a rating requirement that reflects dungeon difficulty and gear progression. For Season 2, we’ve considered both current rating data and the rewards still to come. When Keystone Myth returns in 12.1.5, we’ll also make targeted dungeon tuning adjustments to address difficulty outliers.

---

Story Campaign: “The Promise of Tomorrow”

Ula’tek’s defeat has awoken a long-slumbering terror. Temper an uneasy peace between Quel’Thalas and Zul ‘Aman, descend to the deepest depths of the Coiled Isle, and make a final stand against the Amani’s ancient foe—the C’Thraxxi general, Kith’ix.

---

Outdoor Event: Aqir Invasion

Charge into Aqir Invasions—new zone-wide public events taking place in Eversong or Zul’Aman. For ten minutes each hour, champions will tackle a series of public events across the zone, one after another, before confronting an intense boss fight.

Whether you’re fending off aerial assaults or rallying defenders on the ground, the Aqir forces won’t stand a chance against the champions of Azeroth.

Each invasion features six scenario types: three combat-focused and three non-combat-focused. Combat scenarios can have one of eight possible affixes. Champions who band together will be rewarded for completing as many objectives as possible before the ten-minute window closes.

Affixes

• Void Protection: Chance for an Aqir Voidweaver to appear, creating a protective barrier around all other Aqir.
• Aqir Burrower: Several Aqir aggressively burrow through the area. They will knock anyone into the sky if they get close.
• Void Sphere: Void Spheres move around the area to try to trap anyone within them.
• Astalor’s Anguish: Astalor’s experiments continue. He has sent his Anguish Crystals to help, which will cause damage to the aqir and any adventurers caught in their blast.
• Swarms!: All aqir enemies are replaced with swarms of smaller aqir.
• Aqir Elites: All aqir enemies are replaced with fewer but more powerful aqir.
• Void Infestation: Some aqir are infested with the void and will explode after a few seconds in combat, dealing damage to players and infecting other aqir.
• Web Weavers: Chance for an Aqir Webweaver to spawn in. If their channel is not interrupted, they will cover a player in webs.

---

Gather your allies and step into the next chapter of Midnight on October 13.

Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons

Compared to previous seasons, the drop-off in week 5 is a bit larger than average. But it also follows the trend of TWW S2, which also had a dungeon event in week 4. So far in week 6, the hourly numbers have barely changed. A combination of new characters from last week’s Timewalking stepping into M+ and no other event to draw attention away from it.

The global decline of 23.99% was a combination of a widespread trend across all regions. The US, which also has a much stronger presence in Classic and Hardcore WoW metrics, dropped by 29.55%. Some of those players might have already cancelled plans for week 5 after the BlizzCon announcement. On EU servers, the decline was a bit smaller, at 26.51%. Asian metrics were less drastic. KR dropped by 23.53%, TW by 21.17%, and CN by 19.49%. 

When looking at synchronized snapshots throughout weeks 4 and 5, there is an early drop-off for EU and CN after launch. This was always directly tied to early attempts to finish 4 dungeon runs for the event quest (week 4), boosting those M+ metrics. Meanwhile, in week 5, we had a Timewalking week that would reward the Ragnaros kill in Firelands Timewalking and up to 5 dungeon runs with a champion and hero track item. Another factor that would decrease the early metrics. Throughout the rest of the week, there was a small upward trend with slight fluctuation for all three major regions. But specifically during the launch of WoW Forever Beta, 51 hours after the US reset, there didn’t seem to be a big impact. 

Weekly Raid Boss Kill Numbers In Comparison

The changes in M+ metrics still seem quite rough, with a drop larger than 20%. Thankfully, RaiderIO also provides raid stats (for Patreon members). So let’s take a look at the weekly metrics for all bosses on normal and heroic, a field where the average player is participating. Early on, normal mode starts with high participation and slightly fewer kills deeper into the raid. In comparison, heroic mode activity has only been increasing until week 5 for most bosses. We can even spot the unlock of the skip towards the final two bosses in week 3. When combining metrics from both modes, we can see a slight overall decrease. But in the individual modes, as well as in their combination, there ain’t a massive change in trend from week 4 to week 5. 

Looking at the relative changes for each boss and mode, as well as their combination, week by week, we see quite a stable development for normal mode past week 1. Here, the numbers decline in a regular manner after week 2. And on heroic, the overall trend is also quite stable within the last 2 weeks (4 & 5), while growth (> 100%) remains for most encounters. The combination of both modes is even more solid from week 3 to week 5.

Total Runs Across All Dungeons

Returning back to M+ metrics, we see a slightly larger spread from most to least popular dungeon. Murder Row and Altar of Fangs kept quite a distance from the rest. Ranks 3 to 5 swapped positions, given how close their metrics usually are. And the Blinding Vale dropped below Ruby Life Pools. It is not the most visually pleasing place, and the loot is also rather irrelevant for most specs.

The overall success rate dropped by 0.88 percentage points, mostly tied to the change in affixes. Ascendant remains the worst one in the rotation. Murder Row (92.91%), Kings’ Rest (92.33%), Temple (91.55%), and Voidscar Arena (91.00%) showed the lowest decline. Meanwhile, the lower half got hit even harder by the affix. Den of Nalorakk (89.00%) is already 2 points behind rank 4. Altar (88.28%) and the Blinding Vale (87.99%) both dropped by more than 1 point. And Ruby Life Pools (87.52%) slipped to dead last. The timing of the Ascendant orb spawns can be quite bad in a dungeon with such narrow paths and that much movement. 

Split Across All Key Levels

85.25% of all keys were completed at key level 10 and higher. This value is ahead of MN S1, which showed 84.96% for its fifth week. The shift away from key level 10 towards 12 is much more drastic. In MN S2, we had 28.54% (+10) and 21.23% (+12); in MN S1, the split looked quite different, with 35.99% (+10) and 15.39% (+12). Overall total runs declined up to key level 16. The largest drops were happening for the first few levels, up to -52.03% for +2. Most runs for the event quest happened at the low end. But key level +10 also lost 35.92% in terms of total runs. The major shift in relative share happened from +12 upwards. Every key level gained.

The ceiling remained at +22, but activity increased from just 6 keys in week 4 to 69 in week 5. In week 6, we also saw the first +23 key by now. The success rate declined by 0.88 percentage points to 90.21%. It was mostly tied to the affix change. From key levels 5 to 11, all changes were negative compared to week 4. Up to -2.95 points at key level 7. A combination of harder trash that requires more cc and interrupts, and an affix that demands the same is not good. Key levels 12 and 13, on the other hand, improved by 2.92 and 2.34 points. A clear impact of gear progression and the absence of the affix. 

Conclusion and Week 6 Forecast

Retail in general wasn’t really affected that much by the WoW Forever Beta start, as we’ve seen in the stability in raid activity. Trends in M+ numbers reflect other trends, like the disparity between M+ and raid loot. Negative feedback for this season mostly includes the forced bonus rolls option from the vault explicitly used in the raid, making M+ pointless besides filling enough slots. Bonus rolls also existed in MN S1, but only after week 4, and players had two rolls for M+ dungeons; clearly a deterioration. 

As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions have remained rather stable. New characters leveled in the previous week, and there is no extra weekly event for PvE gearing. The US (-0.46%) and EU (+0.10%) servers are hovering around the same values, while Chinese players are a bit more active (+5.36%). We’ll examine this some more in next week’s breakdown. 

We got plenty of introductory posts for Forever’s new features, from the Rulesets to character names, the Legacy System and more. The week’s news was capped with the inaugural edition of the Forever podcast, where devs went over everything revealed so far.

Over in retail we got a tease for October’s Trading Post, with a reveal for the month’s bonus reward. On the event side of things there’s Brewfest and the escape room live event coming later this month. And finally, we get an overview of what’s been going on over at the WoW Portal Room Discord! Let’s dive in.

( Source URL )

---

There’s more to discover in World of Warcraft: Forever. This week, dig into our latest articles covering your first choices in a reimagined original Azeroth—from choosing your ruleset and naming your character to exploring class and race combinations, the new Skyborne race, and the Legacy System—then watch episode 1 of the World of Warcraft: Forever Podcast. You can also look ahead to October’s Trading Post and catch up on the Brewfest in-game holiday, what’s happening in the WoW Portal Room, and more in WoW Weekly.

---

Watch the World of Warcraft: Forever Podcast, Ep. 1

Join Senior Game Designer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield, Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones, and content creators Countdown To Classic and Xaryu in the first episode of the World of Warcraft: Forever Podcast.

---

Get to Know World of Warcraft: Forever

Catch up on the latest from World of Warcraft: Forever, including choosing your ruleset, naming your character, class and race combinations, the Skyborne, and the Legacy System as you prepare to carve your path through Azeroth.

Choose Your Ruleset

Every journey through Azeroth begins with a choice about the kind of world you want to step into. In World of Warcraft: Forever, rulesets help you choose the kind of experience you want first as you begin carving your path through Azeroth. All you need to know is in our overview.

Create a Name of Your Own

A name is one of the first choices you make when creating a character. In World of Warcraft: Forever, character names gain more room to breathe through a new two-name structure designed for a larger, realmless Azeroth. More details can be found here.

Create the Hero You Want to Be

Race and class shape the hero you become, from the fantasy you embody to the role you take on in the world. You can return to a familiar favorite, explore a newly available combination, or begin your journey as a Skyborne character, with each choice offering a different way to step into Azeroth’s next chapter. Your hero awaits—learn more about it in our article.

Meet the New Skyborne

A new adventure rises above Azeroth. The Skyborne invite you into a story of wind and ancestry—one that begins on Zephras Isle and continues as you decide whether your Skyborne will join the Horde or the Alliance. Learn more about the Skyborne here.

Get to Know the Legacy System

Take a peek at an account-wide horizontal progression system—the Legacy System. It’s a way to progress by exploring more of what the game has to offer, while every character you love contributes to your journey. Learn more about this feature here.

---

Raise Your Stein! Brewfest Returns with Battle-Brewed Rewards

Eat delicious food, drink bountiful beverages, and ride rams around barrels of apples! Brewfest has arrived, and you can enjoy all that and more!

When: September 20–October 6
Where: Silvermoon City, Valdrakken, Dornogal, Valdrakken, Ironforge, and Orgrimmar
Currency: Brewfest Prize Tokens—used to purchase most items at the Brewfest vendor.

Strike up a conversation with the Holiday Enthusiast in Silvermoon City to begin the brewfestivities. In addition to the usual fun in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, you can complete new Brewfest quests throughout Quel’Thalas, and the Brewfest Banquet Outdoor Scenario will keep you hopping.

What’s Brewfest without some stout rewards? Head over to our article to see what’s freshly tapped for Midnight.

Click to Learn More

---

Dress to Distress with Costumed Calamity in October’s Trading Post

October’s Trading Post is cloaked in calamity, with fiendish finds ready to add chaos to your collection. Complete activities to earn Trader’s Tender, fill your Traveler’s Log, and slink into the shadows with the Ensemble: Thornshadow Assassin’s Attire.

Visit T&W (Tawney and Wilder) just outside the Mage District in Stormwind, or the Zen’shiri Trading Post next to Grommash Hold in Orgrimmar, to check out the latest items they have available. Players can also visit the Trading Post in the capital cities of Dornogal (The Foregrounds) on the Isle of Dorn and in the renewed Silvermoon City, where representatives of both Tawney and Wilder and the Zen’shiri Trading Post are open for business.

Champions new to or returning to World of Warcraft and Midnight can tour the Trading Post to learn everything you need to know, from where to find it to how you can earn additional Trader’s Tender through the Traveler’s Log.

The September Trading Post Outlet closes soon! Get in your last purchases before the vendors change over to their October inventory.

---

World of Warcraft®: Forever Escape Together Comes to Toronto

Heroes of Azeroth, the Horde and the Alliance are putting their rivalry to the ultimate test—and you’re invited to tune in and join the excitement.

Watch the action unfold live as real-world champions of the Horde and the Alliance battle it out in a series of head-to-head challenges before facing their final test together—an Escape Room inspired by the iconic Scarlet Monastery.

Or, if you’re in the Toronto area, bring friends and assemble your dungeon party to see if you can outwit the Scarlet Monastery-inspired escape room before time runs out.

Don’t miss the chance to relive the adventure. Whether you’re enjoying it from home or escaping into it in person, it’s time to answer the call.

Click to Learn More

---

Latest News from the WoW Portal Room

WoW Portal Room welcomes the World of Warcraft: Forever community!

New channels and roles have been added to support Forever players, and our Forever Collection code giveaway starts today. There’s so much more to come, so join us and stay tuned.

Find Your People

A team of WoW Ambassadors representing partnered community Discord servers is ready to meet you and help you with finding a space that fits your needs. Participating Discords enjoy special recognition, access to exclusive events, and direct support from Blizzard—making every server a more vibrant place to connect.

WoW Ambassadors Events

WoW Ambassador-partnered community Discord servers host and sponsor events that bring the community together to celebrate connection, creativity, and shared passion.

WoW Secret Finding & Collections Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary

Congratulations to the WoW Secret Finding & Collections Discord on its 10th anniversary!

WoW Secret Finding & Collections is the largest Discord community dedicated to solving in-game secrets, collecting mounts, pets, toys, and more. To celebrate their 10-year anniversary, they’re hosting an event focused on helping others and exploring Azeroth with some juicy rewards up for grabs!

Join to Learn More

Architects of Azeroth Celebrates a Membership Milestone

Architects of Azeroth is celebrating a huge membership milestone—4,000 members! Join them for some fun Housing giveaways to help celebrate this amazing milestone!

Architects of Azeroth is one of the oldest and largest WoW Housing communities where decorators gather to plot questionable furniture decisions. Share your builds, ask questions, get help when your layout refuses to cooperate, and browse our growing collection of resources. Whether you’re placing your first chair or building a palace, you’ll fit right in.

Join to Learn More

---

Let us journey alongside you, regale you with tales of adventure in faraway places, map out roads less traveled, and direct your gaze toward the legendary challenges that await. Return each week to the World of Warcraft news site, where we’ll uncover your destiny together.

This isn’t a new rule. Blizzard’s UI Add-On Development Policy already requires addons to be free in all regions, but it’s loosely enforced in the US and EU. Players in the Western regions have likely already seen some Patreon-exclusive UI packs or Twitch-sub locked WeakAuras or profiles. While against Blizzard’s ToS or at least in a gray area, enforcement rarely happens by Blizzard, leading to the proliferation of the practice.

In the note, NetEase explicitly states that voluntary tips and donations are fine, but they should never be tied to access. The wording here is specific to point out that any content locked behind Patreon or Twitch subscriptions would be frowned upon. Any access tied to donations will be treated as a paid service.

WoW China Operations team says they may disable the functionality of noncompliant addons and pursue legal action, where applicable, against authors.

Below, you can see the official translation of the WoW China bluepost:

( Source URL )

---

Notice of Enforcement Action Against Paid Addons and Unauthorized Commercialization

Dear adventurers, To preserve the integrity of World of Warcraft, maintain a healthy user interface addon ecosystem, protect players’ personal information and legitimate rights, and provide a fair, safe, and healthy gaming experience, the WoW China Operations Team will take targeted enforcement action against noncompliant addons and unauthorized monetization of addons, in accordance with the User Interface Add-On Development Policy, the Blizzard End User License Agreement, and applicable operating rules. Under these policies and rules, World of Warcraft user interface addons must meet the following basic requirements:

• Addons must be provided free of charge. They must not offer “premium,” “VIP,” or other features that require payment to unlock. Nor may purchases, subscriptions, per-use charges, or other payment methods be used to charge for addons themselves or services related to addon access or usage rights. Paid addon offerings include, but are not limited to, paid addons, paid WeakAuras, and paid sharing of configurations.
• Addons must not contain advertisements, and must not solicit or direct users toward donations within the game.
• Addons must not improperly obtain, use, store, or share players’ personal information or private data, or infringe upon the legitimate rights of players or other parties.
• The development, distribution, and use of addons must comply with the User Interface Add-On Development Policy, the Blizzard End User License Agreement, and applicable operating rules.

Over the years, addon developers in the WoW community have created many useful and convenient addons out of their love and enthusiasm for the game, allowing players to enjoy a more personalized experience. The WoW China Operations Team respects addon developers’ work and contributions, and supports the sharing of addons in a free, open, and compliant manner to build a healthy and sustainable addon ecosystem together. We have observed that some addons improperly obtain, use, or share players’ personal information and private data. Some addon authors or platforms also offer paid “premium” versions, VIP memberships, subscriptions, or per-use services, tying addon functionality or access to payment for profit. These practices violate the relevant addon development policies and operating rules, and harm players’ legitimate rights and normal gameplay experience.

1. In response, the WoW China Operations Team will undertake targeted enforcement action and formally reiterates the following:

   1. We support free addons and encourage a healthy addon ecosystem based on sharing and free access.

   2. We firmly oppose all forms of paid addons, including, but not limited to, paid purchases, VIP versions, and per-use paid services.

   3. We support platforms providing reasonable compensation to authors through voluntary tips or donations. Such contributions must be purely voluntary gifts, with no connection to addon access or usage rights. Otherwise, they will be treated as a paid service model.

   4. Following the publication of this notice, any platform or individual that continues to provide paid addon offerings will be subject to legal enforcement.

   All addon platforms and developers are asked to immediately review and rectify their practices in accordance with the policies and rules above, cease the development, distribution, and operation of noncompliant addons, and remove the relevant paid addons from their platforms. Under these policies and rules, the WoW China Operations Team reserves the right to disable relevant addon functionality to protect the integrity of World of Warcraft and the gameplay experience. For noncompliant or paid addons, the WoW China Operations Team reserves the right to pursue legal accountability against their authors and other responsible parties, including, but not limited to, civil claims for damages, reports to administrative authorities, and criminal complaints. We will use all lawful means to protect players’ interests. Thank you to all players and addon developers for your understanding and support. Let us work together to maintain a healthy and positive gaming environment!

The NA Finals will now take place today, Friday, 25th September at 7pm CST, with casters DragonsAfterDark, Abbadon, and Gerissar.

The EU Finals will follow on Sunday, 27th September at 1pm CST, with casters Lex Rants, DragonsAfterDark, Abbadon, and Gerissar.

Once both regional finals are complete, the winners will face off in the World Finals on Sunday, 4th October! You can catch all three events live on the Guild Valor Twitch channel!

The Pet Masters’ League

The Pet Masters’ League is a fully player-founded and funded swiss tournament for high-level pet battles. The tournament uses its own rulesets, pick-and-ban drafting system, and seasonal ban lists. Season 4 also introduced affixes, adding another layer of chaos to the matches.

If you want to watch these events live, you can catch all three finals on the Guild Valor Twitch channel, with proceeds from these streams going to charity!

Pet Masters’ League Discord: https://discord.gg/g6Y2D7Gtew

This week’s major class tuning pass has had a couple of days to take effect so we may be seeing the beginnings of that in Mythic. Let’s dive in.

Note: We are using normalized scores instead of raw DPS for the Warcraft Logs rankings. Normalized scores take into account the outlier boss fights where certain specs could stack massive DPS (due to the nature of the fight, whether it’s AoE spam or something else), which would then affect their overall score for the whole raid.

Note 2: Warcraft Logs bundled the Lair boss, Nymrissa Wavecaller, from the Tidebound Grotto into the Venomous Abyss rankings, which means the logs from here affect the overall rankings you can see below.

Heroic Venomous Abyss

Heroic growth has almost stopped, as we see a very similar amount of players here as last week. We also see Arcane actually drop below last week’s numbers, but it’s almost the only spec to do so. Retribution continues its conquest, gaining around 25K logs and moving past Arms into 2nd, with only one spec left above it. It won’t be reaching it any time soon, however, as the Mage is still 75K above it. The next climber is down in 8th, with Frost DK making really good use of the last round of buffs to move another two spots up. The other DPS DK wasn’t as luck, as Unholy drops three spaces and out of the top 10, with Assassination grabbing he final spot.

Overall Damage 95th Percentile

Arcane is on the way out in the top percentiles, it seems, as it drops two spots into 4th! Marksmanship is dominating the field and pulling away even more. Demo and Arms move up, but are both almost identical to the Mage. Devastation had a good week, rising two spots into 5th and pushing Subtlety out. It’s actually been a good one for Evokers in general, as Augmentation is also rising, also two spots up, in 8th. Frost DK is doing better in the damage department as well, closing out the top 10 two spots up. Down at the bottom, we see Feral briefly making it out and beating out Beast Mastery, which joins Fury and Fire in the bottom 3.

Overall Damage All Percentiles

The generalist bracket is slow to move as usual, with the top 6 remaining the same. We then see Devastation’s rise beginning, just one spot for now, as well as Retribution grabbing a spot, as both move past Balance. While the chart is slower to move, we tend to see larger leaps in it, as exemplified by Frost DK, which moves a whole six spots up into 10th! Augmentation is moving up here as well, but is still very low, despite gaining six spots.

Damage to Bosses

Arms is doing a little better in the direct damage department, breaking up the Rogue duo, and Frost DK is pushing up even further.

Individual Bosses

Nymrissa Wavecaller (Tidebound Grotto Lair)

Nymrissa is listed as belonging to the Venomous Abyss on WCLogs.

The Twin Fangs

The last bastion of Frost Mage remains intact, as it keeps 2nd place, and Devastation moves up significantly here in particular.

The Coiled Altar

Demonology loses ground as it drops two to Arms and Marksmanship.

Ula’tek

Another solid rise from Devastation here, landing in 4th.

A Look at Mythic

Mythic is still growing at a slightly slower pace, as the top spec gains over 10k logs, 2nd 3rd around 8k. Marksmanship is actually dropping here, as both Beast Mastery and Retribution move past it into 6th and 7th. Frost DK is on the rise, but just missed the top 10. Fire, Survival, and Fury are still stuck in the bottom 3, with only the Warrior managing to break 1K logs.

Overall Damage, All Percentiles

Arcane is having a really bad time here, dropping a huge five spots down into 8th! We’ll be doing the Mythic switch next week and focusing more on the hardest mode, so we’ll have a better view of what’s going on then, especially after the tuning pass takes full effect. Warlocks are having a good time instead, sandwiching Balance in 2nd, with even Destruction being relatively close to the top 10. Devastation is doing a lot better here as well, moving three spots up into 5th. Shadow is also on the rise, two up in 7th, as Arms drops three spots into 9th. Down at the bottom we still see Devourer, with Havoc not too fat off, so Mythic really isn’t a good place for Demon Hunters right now.

Mythic players do tend to react to changes faster, so these big movements might already be due to this week’s class tuning pass taking effect, despite the fact it’s only been live a couple of days.

And, as always, you can check out our tier lists, our raid guides, and our class guides, updated with the latest changes! And for even more stats, head on over to Warcraft Logs.

For anyone unaware, Rextroy is a well -known WoW player/content creator who finds crazy exploits, often pushing the game’s mechanics to their absolute limits. And his latest video is no exception:

Rextroy’s Twin Fangs Solo Kill

The Twin Fangs encounter has a berserk mechanic, in which the bosses spawn damaging orbs to increase pressure. Rextroy initially looked for ways to survive this phase using defensive abilities, however, due to being undergeared, he quickly abandoned this idea.

Turns out that the Twin Fangs encounter has a surprisingly large number of abilities that can be avoided by breaking the bosses’ line of sight! There was one notable exception however: the tank debuff. However, this eventually fell off by itself, leaving Rextroy with a way more manageable problem.

Rextroy discovered that the Twin Fangs’ berserk sequence isn’t permanent, with the channel lasting for a limited time. Once it ends, the encounter doesn’t quite behave as you might expect. Instead of returning to a normal rotation, the bosses become stuck repeatedly using their basic attacks.

Building his Warrior around Mastery (to boost Critical Block chance to 72%) and Haste (for infinite uptime on Shield Block), he could slowly burn them down. And after less than an hour of attacking, the Twin Fangs were finally dead!

It’s another excellent example of Rextroy finding an impossible challenge and making it possible!

Based on previous patch cadence, @DarkLeafCoven on X has created a predicted patch schedule. 

It’s important to note that this is not an official Blizzard roadmap. Blizzard has said they are aiming for an eight week cadence between updates—a target Midnight has so far stuck to!

According to the prediction, here are some of the release dates in the near future:

• Patch 12.1.5 – 6th October 2026
• 12.1.7 – 1st December 2026
• 12.2 – 9th February 2027 

The chart even predicts the launch of The Last Titan on 27th July 2027! But before we get too excited, the further we look into the future, the less reliable these dates become. Of course, Blizzard could shift any of these dates considerably. Blizzard’s roadmap below gives us a rough but official view as to when we can expect to see new content: 

Still, it’s a fun glimpse into the future. Just don’t book your annual leave for The Last Titan yet! 

The Data

The data used in this article comes from Raider.IO‘s excellent analytics tools, taking into account all Mythic+ runs across all levels of play. The data is focused on this reset and not on the season as a whole.

The Most Popular Specs in Mythic+

Beast Mastery is moving on up, as it eclipses Blood to move into 2nd place! It gained 0.6% of the population over the past two weeks, while Arcane and Blood dropped the same amount. The Mage still has a massive lead, however, a whole 2.4% ahead of the Hunter. Both Retribution and Demonology moved past Holy Paladin, but it’s still the top healer by 1%, ahead of Resto Shaman, which also got passed by its class’s DPS variant, Elemental. Augmentation, Fire and Survival remain at the bottom, still sporting 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3%.

Runs by Key Level

We’ve moved on to 22s as the top key, with a somewhat smaller variety than we saw with 21s two weeks ago, but the non-top-group specs that are in there had a much larger slice of the pie.

And here are the full numbers, including the amount of runs.

Group Composition Popularity

Note: The below chart shows the percentage of group popularity in relation to the top 30 compositions. This means that, for example, the top group says it’s 30% of the compositions, but that’s just 30% of the top 30. In reality, it’s just 2% of all groups played. You can see the smaller 2% number if you hover over the group line in the chart on the Raider.IO page.

The top group gains a solid amount of ground, growing 0.9% and now claiming 14.1% of the top 30 comps (which is 0.9% of all the comps being played). The 2nd group, replacing Elemental with Demonology, dropped a little, but we have a brand new third composition. This time it’s Beast Mastery joining the DPS team, replacing Elemental from the top group.

Mythic+ DPS Logs

The below logs are based on POINTS, and not actual damage or healing. This means that they log the timed completion for the specs, with higher keys getting more points, obviously. The time in which the dungeon is completed is also a factor. It is a much, much smaller factor, however. It grants only a few points for significantly faster completions compared to just any in-time finish. We’re also using the Normalized Aggregate Scores numbers, for clarity. This means that the top spec is marked as 100 and then the rest are ranked in relation to that peak point.

95th percentile DPS

Assassination is gaining ground and blasts past Arcane into 3rd. Rogues are doing great in general, as Outlaw is also on the rise, moving one up into 5th. Windwalker also bumps up a little, and both do it off the back of Feral’s significant drop into 7th. Frost DK is the biggest mover, gaining five spots in 8th. Subtlety may have dropped a spot, but it’s still in the top 10, making it all three Rogues in there!

All Percentiles

The top 4 is slower to move here, but we do see one spec doing a lot better than in the top percentiles, and that’s Retribution! The Paladin makes a giant 5-spot move into 5th. Both Devourer and Windwalker drop off quite a bit, while Unholy and Demonology rise.

Very High Key Raw DPS Numbers

Note: We’re also taking a look at the raw damage numbers from Mythicstats. They take the top runs for extremely high keys (+14-22) from WarcraftLogs and list the overall DPS for the dungeon, which includes non-combat time as well. They’re ranked by the average DPS numbers, with the very top of the top shown next to it.

Arcane finally pushed Demonology out of the top spot in the top keys. The next movement we see is down in 7th, where Windwalker pushes past BM. Frost DK makes a giant leap, 8 spots into 10th, bringing both DKs into the top 10.

For more stats and spec information, you can also head on over to our class guides and tier lists, as well as the full Raider.IO, WarcraftLogs, and Mythicstats data.

But how will Modern and Forever be able to run side by side without one game feeling favoured by Blizzard? 

Speaking to Windows Central at BlizzCon 2026, Game Director, Ion Hazzikostas discussed how Modern can learn a lot from Forever, particularly when it comes to world exploration and levelling.

During the interview, Ion said “A world where the outer world is devoid of threats or excitement is missing something. We would never say ‘Go play Classic if you want that.’ All versions of WoW should have that.” 

That philosophy could have a major impact on The Last Titan, especially with Blizzard already experimenting with Heroic World Tier in multiple formats. Ion said that Blizzard “would like to offer something like [Heroic World Tier] in The Last Titan, for people who want a more challenging, rewarding outdoor experience … as well as more friction, and more purpose.”

It seems Blizzard doesn’t want Forever to be the only place where players can get that feeling. Instead, they’re bringing some of those elements into Modern WoW whilst still allowing both versions to offer their own distinct experiences. 

Perhaps The Last Titan could be our first look at how the lessons from Forever could shape the future of Modern WoW. 

You can check out the full class tuning pass with a whopping 23 specs covered in PvE alone here.

( Source URL )

---

Made the following changes to the original post:

DEATH KNIGHT

• Blood
  • Death Strike damage increased by 15%.
    • Developers’ notes: We are making a small adjustment to the Death Strike damage increase. We are reducing the damage increase to 15%, down from 25% which will still be a buff in single target but will be closer to neutral in cleave priority damage which was the original intent of the changes.

DEMON HUNTER

• Vengeance
  • Aldrachi Reaver
    • Reaver’s Glaive damage increased by 25%.

WARRIOR

• Fury
  • Mountain Thane
    • Lightning Strike damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
    • Ground Current damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Protection
  • Mountain Thane
    • Lightning Strike damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
    • Ground Current damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.

Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons

The regional decline once again was quite different from the global average of -4.57%. With quite sustained numbers in the previous week, the US dropped the most with -10.40%. The EU was close to the global average with -5.17%. And the Asian servers saw almost no decline (CN -1.55%) or even a positive trend (TW +1.74%, KR +2.34%). Usually, dungeon weeks showed a smaller uptick in the past. But in periods of major decline, they could drop into the negatives. 

Compared to the previous seasons, MN S2 is following the general trend. When looking at hourly numbers for the entire week, there was a small lead for the first few days. Players tend to farm four quick M+ runs for their weekly and have less reason to run keys in the final days. The overlap with BlizzCon did not really impact activity that much. And even the current numbers for week 5 don’t seem to be that affected by the WoW Forever Beta start. The official launch, though, might lead to a major drop in week 12. But at that point, general activity is already petering out towards the end of the season.  

Total Runs Across All Dungeons

The overall spread across all dungeons has shrunk compared to week 3. There was less interest in farming Murder Row and Altar of Fangs for BIS hero track drops. The order of dungeons also did not change. It will be interesting to see if Altar of Fangs can keep its position once players have gotten their desired items. 

Murder Row (93.61%) kept its leading position while increasing the gap from King’s Rest (92.86%) and Temple (92.23%). Voidscar Arena (91.50%) remained almost unchanged, while the distance to the lower half shrank. Den of Nalorakk (89.94%) surpassed Altar of Fangs (89.37%). Ruby Life Pools (89.21%) and Blinding Vale (89.09%) also saw massive improvements. This could be attributed to more experienced PUGs. The distance between best and worst dungeon dropped from 5.06 percentage points in week 3 down to 4.52. 

Split Across All Key Levels

81.03% of all keys were completed at key level 10 and higher. A slight decrease from last week due to many quest-related runs in lower keys. The overall share for level 10 keys also fell slightly from 34.67% to 33.90%. But the biggest total losses happened at key levels 9, 11, 13, and 14, up to -20.02%. Levels 2 to 5 saw an increase in total runs by 6.19% to 33.66%. Key levels 12 and upward from 16 were also positive, with 19 to 21 more than doubling their numbers. The first +22s were also timed in week 4, exclusively on Chinese realms. In week 5, all three major regions have seen +22s timed by now.

The overall success rate grew by 0.63 percentage points to 91.09%. This was mostly due to lower keys up to key level 12. Especially levels 7 and 8 stood out with an improvement of more than 2 points. This is quite surprising since Tyrannical first weeks were much more punishing in past seasons. Either boss tuning is a bit easier this time around, or players have yet to get used to major trash pulls in Fortified keys. Higher key levels from 13 to 19 saw a slightly negative trend. Maybe gearing can’t quite keep up with the overall ambitions for higher rating. 

Conclusion and Week 5 Forecast

MN S2 is still quite ahead of the previous season. Although this is an easier M+ season, gearing feels worse due to the massive boost for raid loot and raid vault entries. Another solo raid boss in a few weeks might tip the scales even more towards raiding. We’ll have to see if M+ trinkets get more buffs or if Season 3 will find a better balance for gear rewards. 

As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions have dropped massively. -30.59% for the US, -28.30% for the EU, and -24.16% for CN. Looking at snapshots throughout week 5, there is no clear impact of the Forever Beta launch. This just seems to be the regular drop after a dungeon event week. But we’ll examine the details in the next breakdown.

2026 sees a small, but noteworthy addition to the holiday: DeMeza is selling a new helm transmog, the Pirate’s Eyepatch, for 1,000g. This new eyepatch transmog lets you show your pirate self!

( Source URL )

---

Avast ye landlubbers! Hoist sail and make way for Booty Bay because Pirate’s Day begins September 19, filled with treasures and finery galore! Pirate’s Day will also be available in WoW Classic for hardy heroes wishing to embrace a pirate’s life.

What’s New

Spend yer hard-won gold on proper pirate goods from Dread Captain DeMeza’s collection. Like the new Pirate’s Eyepatch transmog piece for a mere 1000g. Donning it will give you a proper scallywag look that shows friend and foe alike that it’s a pirate’s life for you.

Bring Your Sea Shanty to Booty Bay

Pirates have taken over the goblin town of Booty Bay, and Captain DeMeza is recruiting any scurvy dog she can into her buccaneer ranks. Visit her or her henchmen in the capital cities if the pirate’s life is for you!

Feeling out of place in Booty Bay without a proper costume? Don’t worry. /Dance one little jig with the Dread Captain DeMeza, and she’ll be impressed enough to press you into her crew and outfit you properly. If you get attached to your new look, you can do the quest “You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!” Succeed, and you’ll get an Emergency Pirate Outfit (or five) for when Pirate’s Day is but a distant memory, and your inner pirate is clawing to get out.

What good is a pirate without an avian companion on their shoulder? Captain DeMeza (for the exchange of a few shiny coins) can help you call forth a temporary companion named Petey to take with you wherever you sail.

From time to time, the captain will shout for a brave party to take on a terror of the deeps–an elite shark known as Ol’Eary. Make sure you have a hearty crew with you, or you could become just so much chum in the waters of the bay.

Join the Beach Party

Once you and your crew have helped the captain handle Ol’Eary, you can celebrate with the crew at a little beach party just south of Booty Bay. Those with the Feat of Strength “Advast Ye, Admiral” can also purchase a toy from Edward Techt–the Jolly Roger to show off their dedication to the cause.

If you’re really feeling generous, you can also purchase a Big Bag of Booty from Captain DeMeza and spread the wealth around to all your pirate pals in a burst of glittery glory.

Swashbuckling Skyriding Style

Avast ye! Go from a swabbing scallywag to old salt when you deck out your Highland Drake in a coffer-carrying saddle with the Pirate’s Day Armor. Grab your loot from Dread Captain DeMeza in Booty Bay, then use it at any Rostrum of Transformation. Ye savvy?

---

WoW Classic

Capital city commoners will be donning the latest swashbuckling fashion. Speak to any of them, and they’ll set you up with pirate garb for one hour and give you the newest scuttlebutt. Apparently, Dread Captain DeMeza is riling up the crowd with talk of Pirate’s Day.

When: September 19 (24 hours)
Where: Darnassus, Exodar, Ironforge, Orgrimmar, Silvermoon City, Stormwind, Thunderbluff, and Undercity

Once in Booty Bay, look for Dread Captain DeMeza and her crew on the bank rooftop, and you can speak to her to raise a toast and become a pirate for the day. Doing so will grant you a 12-hour pirate costume buff, and you’ll complete the achievement, The Captain’s Booty.

---

Get out there, ye scurvy barnacles, and earn yer sea legs, aaargh!

For the latest information and updates, keep checking WorldofWarcraft.com/news and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Here are some highlights. Unholy and Frost Death Knights get straight buffs, while Blood gets a mix, reducing its AoE and buffing single-target. Augmentation and Devastation get buffs, the latter to its AoE. Fire and Frost Mages are getting some Mythic+-targeted buffs. Mistweavers and Windwalkers are getting buffs. Discipline is getting some Mythic+ buffs to Atonement, and Shadow is getting single-target buffs.

( Source URL )

---

Our tuning pass this week is mostly targeted at low performers across Mythic+, Raid, and PvP. In addition to helping low performers, we are looking at some hero talent disparity to see if we can create a little more competitive balance between the options to better facilitate more gameplay options.

---

CLASS CHANGES

DEATH KNIGHT

• Blood
  • Developers’ notes: San’layn is dealing quite a bit more damage in AoE than our intended target for tanks. We will be reducing their overall damage to reduce the disparity. However, we will be increasing Death Strike’s damage and reducing its cleave effectiveness to buff Blood’s single target which is a little on the lower end of tanks. In addition, we are making some Deathbringer specific targeted buffs to counter the overall aura nerf and be a small net positive buff to both their AoE and single target damage.
  • All ability damage reduced by 6%.
  • Death Strike damage increased by 25%.
  • Deadly Reach now causes Death Strike now to deal 60% of its damage to 2 nearby enemies (was 75%).
  • Deathbringer
    • Exterminate damage increased by 25%.
    • Reaper’s Mark damage increased by 20%.
    • Wave of Souls damage increased by 20%.
    • Bind in Darkness now increases Blood Boil damage by 50% (was 30%).
    • Deathly Blows now increases Death Strike damage by 20% (was 12%).
    • Swift and Painful now increases Strength by 15% (was 10%).
• Frost
  • Developers’ notes: Frost Death has been lacking in single target and two target cleave scenarios.
  • Frostreaper damage increased by 100%. Does not affect PvP combat.
  • Obliterate damage increased by 10%. Does not affect PvP combat.
• Unholy
  • Developers’ notes: We’re looking to increase Unholy Death Knight’s damage output in raid. In parallel, we’re aiming to bring Blightfall build back to where it was prior to the bug fixes that made it no longer viable.
  • Scourging now causes your plagues to erupt at 65%/100% (was 50%/70%). Does not affect PvP combat.
  • Blightfall deals 200% of the plague damage remaining (was 100%). Does not affect PvP combat
  • San’layn
    • Infliction of Sorrow causes Vampiric Strike to erupt plagues with 75% increased effectiveness (was 30%).
    • Thrill of Blood increases Dread Plague damage by 20% (was 10%).
    • Frenzied Bloodthirst now increases Death Coil and Death Strike damage by 5% per stack.

DEMON HUNTER

• Devourer
  • Developers’ notes: These changes are intended to primarily benefit the raid and single target performance of Annihilator hero talent builds and improve Annihilator’s viability in more content.
  • Collapsing Star damage to primary target increased by 25%. Does not affect PvP combat.
  • Consume/Devour damage increased by 8%. Does not affect PvP combat.
• Havoc
  • Aldrachi Reaver
    • Developers’ notes: Aldrachi Reaver has fallen well behind the alternative hero talent options for both specs it is available to. We are improving some of its core effects for both specs, and for Havoc specifically the soul fragment generation from Broken Spirit is increasing to give a small boost to Fury generation and hasten the cycle of Reaver’s Glaive and its bonuses.
    • Art of the Glaive now increases the damage of enhanced strikes by 15% (was 10%) and 30% (was 20%).
    • Reaver’s Glaive damage increased by 25%.
    • Reaver’s Mark now increases your damage to the target by 7% (was 6%).
    • Broken Spirit chance to shatter a Soul Fragment increased to 20% (was 15%).
• Vengeance
  • Aldrachi Reaver
    • Developers’ notes: Aldrachi Reaver has fallen well behind the alternative hero talent options for both specs it is available to. We are improving some of its core effects for both specs.
    • Art of the Glaive now increases the damage of enhanced strikes by 15% (was 10%) and 30% (was 20%).
    • Reaver’s Glaive damage increased by 30%.
    • Reaver’s Mark now increases your damage to the target by 8% (was 7%).

DRUID

• Hero Talents
  • Wildstalker
    • Bursting Growth damage increased by 15%. Not applied to PvP combat.
• Feral
  • Wildstalker
    • Patient Custodian increases bleed damage by 10% (was 8%). Not applied to PvP combat.
• Restoration
  • All healing increased by 4%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Fixed an issue where Photosynthesis could trigger from other players’ heal over time effects.

EVOKER

• Augmentation
  • Developers’ notes: We’re making some targeted adjustments to parts of Augmentation’s kit that have lower representation in their breakdown than they should be relative to their intended strength or time spent performing them.
  • Eruption damage increased by 15%.
  • Fire Breath damage increased by 60%.
  • Upheaval damage increased by 40%.
  • Blistering Scales damage increased by 100%.
• Devastation
  • Developers’ notes: Devastation’s overall damage in M+ is slightly lower than we’d like, so we’re broadly targeting AoE abilities for buffs. We’re increasing Unbound Flame’s damage to maintain its appeal as the focus of the Apex talents. And finally, we’re increasing Shattering Star’s damage so that players talenting for their tier set can feel confident they are making a competitive character building decision. We anticipate this package giving a larger buff to Flameshaper than to Scalecommander, as we’re seeing Scalecommander outperform it in most content.
  • Pyre damage increased by 10%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Unbound Flame damage increased by 25%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Fire Breath damage increased by 5%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Azure Strike damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Azure Sweep damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Shattering Star damage increased by 10%. Does not apply to PvP combat.

HUNTER

• Marksmanship
  • Developers’ notes: We’re looking to increase the area damage capabilities of Marksmanship Hunters with these changes.
  • Trick Shots now causes Aimed Shot or Rapid Fire ricochets to hit for 75% of damage (was 60%).
  • Volley damage increased by 10%.
• Survival
  • Developers’ notes: We’re increasing the damage that Wildfire Bomb deals to all targets, but reducing the bonus damage to the primary target. This should be a neutral change against a single target, but an increase to area damage when fighting more than one enemy.
  • Wildfire Bomb damage increased by 20%.
  • Wildfire Bomb now only hits the primary target for 50% additional damage (was 80% additional).

MAGE

• Developers’ notes: For both Fire and Frost, these changes are intended to primarily improve performance in M+, with a smaller impact in raids.
• Fire
  • Meteor’s damage over time increased by 100%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Frostfire
    • Dualcasting Adept now increases Flamestrike damage by 15% (was 10%).
  • Sunfury
    • Burden of Power now increases Flamestrike damage by 6% (was 3%).
• Frost
  • Frozen Orb damage increased by 15%.
  • Comet Storm damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Frostbite’s Shatter damage to nearby enemies increased by 10%.
  • Glacial Assault icy comet damage increased by 50%.

MONK

• Mistweaver
  • All healing increased by 5%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Vivify healing increased by 15%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Sheilun’s Gift healing increased by 15%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Windwalker
  • Melee auto-attack damage increased by 25%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Dual Threat damage increased by 20%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 8%. Does not apply to PvP combat.

PALADIN

• Protection
  • All ability damage increased by 6%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
• Retribution
  • Templar
    • Developers’ notes: Templar has been underperforming compared to Herald of the Sun this season. We’re increasing its throughput to make it a more viable option against Herald of the Sun, for those who enjoy Templar’s playstyle.
    • Hammer of Light damage increased by 50%. Does not apply to PvP combat.
    • Empyrean Hammer damage increased by 12%.

PRIEST

• Discipline
  • Developers’ notes: Discipline isn’t able to dish out proper healing in dungeon environments due to how strong Atonement is in raids. We’re reintroducing an Atonement healing bonus outside of raid environments and significantly increasing Atonement healing outside raid to help Discipline shine in dungeons.
  • Atonement healing is increased by 40% when not in a raid or battleground instance.
  • Atonement healing is no longer increased by 40% in PvP combat.
  • Penance mana cost reduced by 20%.
• Shadow
  • Developers’ notes: We feel Shadow is lacking in single target damage, so these changes are intended to improve Shadow’s damage against singular targets while remaining neutral in multi-target situations.
  • Mind Blast damage increased by 15%.
  • Void Blast damage increased by 15%.
  • Shadow Word: Death damage increased by 15%.
  • Shadow Word: Madness damage increased by 15%. Not applied to PvP combat.
  • Mind Flay damage increased by 15%. Not applied to PvP combat.
  • Mind Flay: Insanity damage increased by 15%. Not applied to PvP combat.
  • Psychic Link now causes direct damage spells to inflict 20% of their damage to all other targets afflicted by Vampiric Touch (was 25%). Not applied to PvP combat.
  • Shadeburst damage reduced by 5%. Not applied to PvP combat.

ROGUE

• Subtlety
  • Trickster
    • Developers’ notes: Trickster has performed well below Deathstalker for Subtlety this tier and is receiving damage boost to its core effects to make Trickster a more reasonable choice in a wider range of content.
    • Unseen Blade damage increased by 50%. Does not affect PvP combat.
    • Coup de Grace damage increased by 30%. Does not affect PvP combat.

WARRIOR

• Developers’ notes: Warriors are in a good state overall, but we feel that Mountain Thane is a bit behind their partner hero specs on both Fury and Prot, so we’re giving a small boost there to help Mountain Thane enjoyers.
• Fury
  • Mountain Thane
    • Lightning Strike damage increased by 50%.
    • Ground Current damage increased by 50%.
• Protection
  • Mountain Thane
    • Lightning Strike damage increased by 50%.
    • Ground Current damage increased by 50%.

PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

DEATH KNIGHT

• Unholy
  • San’layn
    • Developers’ notes: We would like to push for the San’layn hero talent tree to be a more viable option for Unholy Death Knights in PvP.
    • Inevitable now causes plagues to deal up to 60% increased damage based on the target’s missing health (was 30%).
    • Vampiric Strike damage increased by 100%.

DRUID

• Feral
  • Druid of the Claw
    • Ravage damage increased by 20% in PvP combat.
    • Dreadful Wound damage increased by 25% in PvP combat.
    • Exacerbating Wounds increases damage taken from your bleed effects by 10% in PvP combat (was 8%).
• Restoration
  • Developers’ notes: Restoration Druid’s burst healing and instant crowd-control capabilities have limited counterplay for other players, so we’re targeting these aspects to decrease their overall performance.
  • Call of Ohn’ahra increases the cooldown of Nature’s Swiftness by 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
  • Swiftmend healing reduced by 20% in PvP combat.

EVOKER

• Augmentation
  • Ebon Might grants 12% primary stat in PvP combat (was 10%).
• Preservation
  • Flameshaper
    • Consume Flame healing reduced by 30% in PvP combat.

HUNTER

• Beast Mastery
  • Dark Ranger
    • Developers’ notes: Dark Ranger has been underperforming for Beast Mastery, so we’re adjusting their Black Arrow damage to increase their performance.
    • Black Arrow damage increased by 30% in PvP combat.
• Survival
  • Developers’ notes: Survival Hunter’s burst window has been particularly powerful this season, so we are targeting reductions in that area to allow other players more time to react.
  • Takedown Hunter damage reduced by 10% in PvP combat.
  • Takedown Pet damage reduced by 15% in PvP combat.
  • Sentinel
    • Moonlight Chakram damage reduced by 15% in PvP combat.

MAGE

• Fire
  • Developers’ notes: We feel Fire Mage burst damage continues to be too high even outside of Combustion, so we’re further reducing the damage bonus from Pyroclasm to lessen its potential to lead to quick kills.
  • Pyroclasm now increases the damage of Pyroblast or Flamestrike by 160% in PvP combat (was 180%).

MONK

• Windwalker
  • Developers’ notes: We’re decreasing the performance gap between Windwalker’s hero talent trees as Shado-pan has been overperforming and Conduit of the Celestials has been underperforming.
  • Conduit of the Celestials
    • Celestial Conduit damage increased by 50%.
  • Shado-Pan
    • Flurry Strikes damage reduced by 15%.

PALADIN

• Retribution
  • Templar
    • Developers’ notes: We’re bringing Templar’s performance up also in PvP, but we believe the gap to Herald of the Sun is less drastic compared to PvE.
    • Hammer of Light damage increased by 20%.

PRIEST

• Developers’ notes: We’re increasing the effectiveness of Mindgames once more in this pass to solidify its usability. We’d like for it to be able to compete with other powerful PvP talent options in Priest’s kit.
• Mindgames direct damage and reversal increased by 50%.
• Holy
  • Developers’ notes: We feel Oracle Holy is in a good place, but Archon has difficulties keeping up, so we’re targeting buffs to its throughout and offensive potential.
  • Archon
    • Halo damage and healing increased by 30% in PvP combat.
    • Focused Outburst now reduces the cast time of Prayer of Healing by 40% in PvP combat (was 15%).
    • Realized Potential now increases Flash Heal healing by 20% in PvP combat (was 10%).
• Shadow
  • Developers’ notes: We’re increasing the damage of Shadow Word: Death significantly in addition to the Mind Blast changes above to allow for more opportunities to finish enemies off.
  • Shadow Word: Death damage increased by 30% in PvP combat.

ROGUE

• Assassination
  • All damage reduced by 4% in PvP combat.
  • Deathmark now shows as a large aura on raid frames.
• Outlaw
  • All damage increased by 5% in PvP combat.

SHAMAN

• Elemental
  • Developers’ notes: We feel Elemental should shine more in their damage against their primary target and less in their cleave, so we’re making some improvement to core spell damage and reducing the effect of the Voltaic Blaze and Purging Flames combo.
  • Lightning Bolt damage increased by 25% in PvP combat.
  • Lava Burst damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
  • Voltaic Blaze instant damage reduced by 25% in PvP combat.
  • Purging Flames now causes Lava Bursts to fire at 25% effectiveness in PvP combat (was 40%).
• Enhancement
  • All damage increased by 3% in PvP combat.

WARLOCK

• Affliction
  • Agony damage increased by 40% in PvP combat.
  • Unstable Affliction damage increased by 10% in PvP combat.

WARRIOR

• Arms
  • Colossus
    • Developers’ notes: We’re increasing the effectiveness of Colossus for Arms in PvP to increase hero talent viability with a focus on improving the effectiveness of your post-Demolish window.
    • Practiced Strikes increases the damage of Slam and Mortal Strike by 40% in PvP combat (was 25%).
    • Arterial Bleed now increases Rend and Deep Wounds damage by 5% per stack in PvP combat (was 3%).
    • Cut to the Bone now increases Rend and Deep Wounds damage by 30% in PvP combat (was 15%).

Death Knight Tools for Everyone

The Death Knight Runeforging feature is spreading to every class! It seems the Hearthstone artwork of every class raised in the Scourge prompted the idea, and now it’s blossomed into a full-fledged system. That was about all we got in terms of details. But it’s easy to imagine the sorts of buffs and additions classes might get based on what DKs get. Blizzard will be sharing more information next year.

A Modern Take on Mounts

Also quickly mentioned was that WotLk mounts will be getting a “modern take”, with Invincible called out in particular! It seems the iconic mount is getting a makeover and will be one of the rewards for Remix activities! Considering the base Invincible is also presumably going to be much more gettable than it is now, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Other mounts will also see new versions, so let’s see what the new Mimiron’s Head looks like.

Wrath of the Lich King Remix is scheduled to start next summer. Are you excited?

Two Skyborne Entries, Two Placeholder IDs

When comparing entries between World of Warcraft’s ChrRaces database tables, two Skyborne “Race IDs” on WoW Forever 1.60.1 reference “TBD NPC Race IDs” on the Midnight 12.1.5 version of this table, which could indicate that Skyborne may have been planned as an NPC race.

Did This Happen With Other Races Before?

This would be the first question that comes to mind – and no, it didn’t, at least to our knowledge. Back in 2017, several allied races were datamined early as well, but with the massive difference that they had character-creation screen references.

Ultimately, this overlap doesn’t confirm that Skyborne will become playable in Modern WoW; however, it’s yet another hint that WoW’s Retail and Classic versions are closer than ever.

Previous expansion dungeons aren’t the only ones getting major changes. Midnight’s own Maisara Caverns and Magister’s Terrace are also being adjusted. In the caverns, the captive and buff locations in the opening section are getting some changes to give you new paths to explore. The Muro’jin and Nekraxx encounter is also getting some clarity for the core mechanic. In the terrace, the library event is also getting new paths, and the Degentrius encounter is getting adjusted as well.

We also get short updates on the intentions for five returning dungeons, with Uldaman dropping a whole boss. The Stonecore, Sanguine Depths, Iron Docks, and Underrot also get adjustments.

( Source URL )

---

With the announcement of the Midnight Season 3 dungeon pool during the Midnight: What’s Next panel at BlizzCon 2026, the development team wanted to provide an early look at some of the changes for these returning dungeons.

---

Revisiting Returning Dungeons

We’ve been reviewing community feedback alongside our own goals for each dungeon to address pain points from previous seasons, including updates to encounters, overall dungeon pacing, and abilities that were too difficult or unclear. We’re also looking for opportunities to refresh familiar spaces with new challenges and changes to how players move through them.

Across the pool, we’ll review non-boss enemies and their abilities for gameplay and quality-of-life improvements. We’ll also give ability visuals a fresh coat of paint and—where needed— update them to use the visual language we’ve introduced over the last few seasons.

The highlights below are just a starting point, and our plans may change as development and testing continue. As we get closer to the PTR for the update, we’ll share additional details on the changes and the goals behind them.

---

Evolving Maisara Caverns and Magisters’ Terrace

Maisara Caverns and Magisters’ Terrace capture some of the defining themes and fantasies of Midnight, and we’re excited for you to revisit them in Season 3. Both will receive a full review for improvements, with changes focused on evolving routes and strategies while keeping the core experience intact.

In Maisara Caverns, we’re exploring changes to captive and buff locations in the opening section to give you new paths to explore. We’re also revising the Muro’jin and Nekraxx encounter to improve clarity around its core mechanic.

In Magisters’ Terrace, we’re reexamining the library event to offer new paths through the space and new books to find. We’re also looking to update the Degentrius encounter.

Across both of these dungeons, we’ll review and update non-boss enemies, including Bound Defenders in Maisara Caverns and the Devouring Tyrant in Magisters’ Terrace. We’re also looking for opportunities to replace some existing enemies with entirely new creatures, giving players new challenges to learn.

Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr in Brief

We’ve heard your feedback regarding Uldaman’s length and the pacing of some encounters. Our main goal for its return is to reduce the overall run time through changes to boss encounters, story flow, and enemy placement.

To that end, we’re reducing the dungeon from five bosses to four in Heroic, Mythic, and Mythic+ by deactivating the Lost Dwarves encounter and adjusting the surrounding story flow to support this change. We’re also updating Emberon so that Purging Flames triggers at health thresholds rather than on a repeating energy cycle. This will prevent additional cycles from prolonging the encounter at higher keystone levels while preserving its core challenge.

New Challenges in the Iron Docks

For the Iron Docks dungeon, we’re planning a substantial refresh to bring the dungeon up to modern standards and reworking the experience when you return. We’ll revisit non-boss enemies throughout the dungeon, with attention to the number of creatures that stay in place and attack from range in the opening section. We also plan to update all four boss encounters to modernize their abilities, giving you new challenges to take on.

The Iron Stars are a unique part of Iron Docks that we want to preserve. We’re exploring an updated design that makes your run less dependent on them while keeping them powerful and satisfying. You’ll still get to bowl for orcs.

Modernizing The Stonecore

We are taking this opportunity to fully revamp The Stonecore dungeon. Our goal is to modernize the dungeon both visually and mechanically while preserving the memorable moments from Cataclysm. Alongside new designs for every enemy and boss encounter, we’re giving many familiar creatures a new look with updated models.

Players will still need to chase Millhouse Manastorm down The Winding Halls and break yourself upon Ozruk’s body.

Focusing in on the Sanguine Depths

When reviewing the Sanguine Depths dungeon, we saw an opportunity to streamline the creature selection and ability kits of non-boss enemies to make gameplay more readable and focused. As part of those adjustments, we’re looking to reduce the high density of caster packs and the number of abilities that use cast bars for their mechanics. For example, we’re looking to combine Dark Acolytes and Wicked Oppressors into a single creature type and reduce how often you encounter them.

For bosses, we’re looking to improve mechanical clarity where appropriate while keeping the core encounter designs intact. Across the dungeon as a whole, we’re also planning a few small changes to help you find your way through the dungeon.

Taking a New Path in The Underrot

For The Underrot’s return, we’re building on its existing gameplay with changes to revitalize the experience and offer new routing options. We’ll revisit Elder Leaxa to update the encounter and place less emphasis on interrupt gameplay. We’re also revisiting Cragmaw to encourage you to use more of the arena during the encounter.

Throughout the rest of the dungeon, we’re looking to refresh the non-boss enemies and update their placement, with particular attention to giving you new routes through the final section. As part of the overall review, we’ll also be looking at caster density in Cragmaw’s arena.

---

This is just the beginning and we look forward to your continued feedback as we continue to plan for the future of Midnight Season 3 and all of the new challenges it can bring.

We have two many-eyed mounts, one a slightly different shade of void: the Zothwing Darkseeker and the Zothwing Deepseeker. They come with two transmog sets, which have the same mildly different names, but their color differences are a lot bigger: Azshara’s Darkscale Raiment and Azshara’s Deepscale Raiment.

As usual, you can get the entire collection at a discount, or pick up the individual pieces. The collection is priced at $/€50, the individual mounts at 25, and the sets at 20.

( Source URL )

---

In lightless depths, beauty does not perish; it twists into physical manifestations of the Void. Listen closely, the deeper you descend, the louder corruption calls.

Cloak yourself in Azshara’s corrupted regalia and rise on a Zothwing mount touched by the Void with the Abyssal Crown Collection*, a trove of finery fit for those who dare to dabble in the dark influence of the Old Gods.

Get the complete collection in one bundle, or pick up your favorite cosmetic items individually:

Visit the Shop

---

Share the Zothwing mounts across all present and future modern World of Warcraft® characters. Mounts automatically scale to the fastest riding skill known by each character, but if a character’s level isn’t high enough to use a flying mount, the Zothwing mounts are also ground mounts.

---

*Requires World of Warcraft® Subscription or Game Time

Devourer gets the majority of the changes, with talents being moved around as well. Protection Warrior’s Execute buffs from last week were removed, with a smaller buff added. The spec will be getting more attention in 12.2 and 13.0, as the buff wasn’t enough to address the issues Blizzard has with it. Eight other specs and some Hero talents get adjustments as well. There’s also a new sound option to select at how much player health a looping warning will be played, as well as raid testing for the single-boss raid. Let’s dive in.

( Source URL )

---

Hello! The 12.1.5 PTR has been updated with the following changes:

NEW SINGLE-BOSS RAID: THE UNBINDING OF KITH’IX

Kith’ix raid testing starts September 16. Check out the raid testing schedule for more details: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-unbinding-of-kithix-raid-testing-schedule/2346119

CLASSES

• DEMON HUNTER
  • Devourer
    • Soulforged Blades now increases the critical strike chance of Hungering Slash and Voidblade by 18% (was 15%).
    • Voidpurge now reduces the cooldown of Void Ray during Void Metamorphosis by 2.5 seconds (was 2 seconds).
    • Developers’ notes: In addition to the Void-Scarred changes, we are shuffling some talents around to make it a little easier for builds to access core functional effects. The final gate was very dense and two of its talents are moving to the middle gate. The final gate’s capstone talents also notably included effects that are core building blocks: The Hunt is featured for Void-Scarred builds, and Eradicate is a key component of any build’s AoE damage. Those two talents are moving to more accessible locations in the middle gate of the tree, with other talents moving into their capstone positions.
    • Many talents have changed positions.
    • Demonic Instinct now connects to the talent one row down and one column to the left.
    • Devourer’s Edge now connects to the talent one row down and one column to the right.
• DRUID
  • Restoration
    • Developers’ notes: The current design of Nature’s Bounty causes some rotational friction. We’re redesigning it to work more synergistically with the rest of the healing kit.
    • Nature’s Bounty has been redesigned – Regrowth heals up to 3 allies with Rejuvenation active for 15% of its healing, prioritizing allies with the lowest health.
• EVOKER
  • Preservation
    • Merithra’s Blessing duration reduced to 30 seconds (was 1 minute).
• MAGE
  • Arcane
    • Several Arcane spells have been added to the Spell Density system for additional visibility options for non-Mage players.
  • Frost
    • Fixed an issue where Splitting Ice’s damage modifier would not apply to Frostbolt, causing both Frostbolts to hit for full damage.
    • Fixed an issue where casting a Frostfire Bolt and then switching to Spellslinger Hero Specialization would cause Frostbolt to have the Splitting Ice damage multiplier apply to the main target in addition to the secondary target.
    • Hero Talents
      • Frostfire
        • Fixed an issue preventing Frostfire Empowerment’s effects from applying to the second target when Frostfire Bolt hit a second target due to Splitting Ice.
        • Frostfire Infusion’s tooltip has been updated, functionality unchanged.
      • Spellslinger
        • Splinterstorm is now trackable in the Cooldown Manager as a Buff.
        • Splinterstorm is no longer removed on start of a raid encounter or Mythic+.
• PRIEST
  • Discipline
    • Master the Darkness duration reduced to 30 seconds (was 1 minute).
  • Holy
    • Developers’ notes: Ultimate Serenity is a powerful tool for Holy priests, specifically in M+. We are moving it up in the talent tree to reduce the amount of investment required for Holy priests to take it so that it enables more choice amongst talents beyond the second gate.
    • Holy Celerity and Ultimate Serenity have swapped positions on the specialization tree.
• ROGUE
  • Outlaw
    • Deft Maneuvers has been updated – No longer increases Blade Flurry’s Energy cost by 30. Instead, it increases Blade Flurry’s Energy cost by 5 per target hit, up to 30.
      • Developers’ notes: This change is intended to make it a little less expensive to maintain Blade Flurry when fighting small numbers of additional targets.
  • Subtlety
    • All modifiers to Shadow damage and many Shadow damage abilities have been updated to resolve circumstances where damage bonuses could be applied incorrectly.
      • Developers’ notes: Shadow damage bonuses should now consistently apply to any individual Shadow damage abilities (e.g. Secret Technique’s secondary hits, Shadowed Finishers attacks, and Shadow Cloned attacks). Effects that deal Shadow damage based on how much damage attacks dealt (e.g. Shadow Blades’ effect, Goremaw’s Bite mirror damage effect, and Lingering Shadow) should now benefit correctly when the input attacks are physical and no longer double dip when the input attacks are Shadow. The impact these changes will have on overall damage output remains under review.
• WARRIOR
  • Protection
    • Developers’ notes: Last week’s changes to Execute were not sufficient to accomplish our goals, and we believe that the scope of changes necessary for those goals are better suited to a major update, so we’re restoring Execute to it’s previous functionality with a damage boost in 12.1.5, and are refocusing on 12.2 and 13.0 for further Protection changes.
    • Execute no longer consumes additional Rage for additional damage.
    • Execute damage increased by 100%.
    • Execute damage increased by 30%.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• Added a new setting called “Pulse Your Health” under the Combat Audio Alerts section of the Audio Assist settings. This setting allows the player to specify a health percentage below which a looping sound will be played. The sound gets progressively more aggressive as their health gets lower.

Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons

The 5.48% global decline was almost matched by the development on the Chinese servers (-5.28%). The US (-2.64%) and KR (-2.41%) saw more sustained activity, while the EU (-7.71%) and TW (-8.71%) were the more negative outliers. The switch from focusing on Timewalking for two rewards in week 2 to just a single extra box from delves was less of a draw away from M+. On the other hand, week 4 so far is not showing an upward tick for the first dungeon event of the season.

Compared to the previous seasons, MN S2 is falling behind overall. The early weeks tend to spread quite far in activity, because dungeon weeks still have a major impact on the gear progression. There is no fixed spot for such a week. Given that patch 12.1.5 with its solo-boss raid will be followed up by the launch of WoW Forever, the surrounding weeks might look like a roller-coaster. 

Total Runs Across All Dungeons

The spread across all dungeons, as well as their order, didn’t really move compared to week 2. There is still a major focus on Murder Row and Altar of Fangs for the few BIS items in the current patch cycle. A combination of absurdly strong raid weapons and trinkets and synergizing meta specs like Arms Warrior is really throwing a curveball to gearing through M+ alone. The order of popularity is also starting to match the success rate.

Murder Row (92.95%) remained the perfect combination of easy and popular dungeon. Kings’ Rest (92.63%) and Temple of Sethraliss (91.84%) were doing well as returning dungeons. But their loot tables offer a bit too much Versatility and bland trinkets. Voidscar Arena (91.49%) has been improving and concluded the upper half with a gap to Altar of Fangs (88.98%). As a brand new dungeon, there is still room for gaining experience and overall PUG improvement. Den of Nalorakk (88.41%) was no longer the worst dungeon due to gaining 3.12 percentage points from last week. Blinding Vale (88.08%) and Ruby Life Pools (87.89%) were not far behind. But the gap between both clusters (2.51 points) was bigger than the range within them (1.46 and 1.09). 

Split Across All Key Levels

81.95% of all keys were completed at key level 10 or higher. This value was already on track one week ahead of MN S1’s pace. In the last season, we saw an 81.07% split for 10 and higher in week 4. The decrease in the +10 share is also moving more quickly. MN S1 undercut 34.67% in week 7. In absolute numbers, week-by-week, we saw growth for key level 12 and higher. Compared to MN S1, which had higher metrics in general, MN S2 in week 3 was still ahead for Key level 14 and upward. Key level 12, with the highest crest efficiency, was also more dominant this early on. The key ceiling was just as high as in MN S1, week 3. But in week 4, we already saw the first timed +22. Something that wouldn’t happen until week 5 last season.

The overall success rate also developed better than last season. With a week-by-week improvement of 1.88 percentage points to 90.46%, this is the earliest week with an above-90 % average since the key level squish. DF S4 also made it above 90% in week 3, but with just 90.05%. Any other season before also doesn’t match up to this. Farming for your vault was also never easier this early. 94.42% for all +10s was once again ahead of MN S1, which only went above 94% in week 4. The massive leap overall, especially for the harder-tuned dungeons, can be attributed to more and more characters with 4-set bonus. Add to that the BIS bonus rolls within the raid. Any impact of the affix rotation is currently outperformed by general gear improvements. 

Conclusion and Week 4 Forecast

This season continues to outperform the previous one in terms of gear and rating progression, but keeps falling behind in absolute numbers. Upcoming patch and game releases (WoW Forever) will continue to draw attention away. At BlizzCon, we got one major positive announcement. A new top 5% rating cut-off for each spec should allow dedicated players to reach their goals outside the meta. 

As of this writing, 144 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions are slightly behind. Usually, there is an overall upward trend during a dungeon week. The US is at -8.66%, the EU at -5.79%, and CN at just -1.26%. Maybe BlizzCon viewership put a dent in the weekend activity. We might examine this specifically in next week’s breakdown.

We also datamined the ratings cutoffs that determined the titles:

• US 3935 (was 3960)
• EU 3981 (was 4008)
• KR 4019 (was 4020)
• TW 4059 (unchanged)
• CN 4012 (was 4036)

( Source URL )

---

Season 1 Mythic+ 0.1% and 1% rewards will be distributed during this week’s maintenance in each region.

Congrats to those who earned the new title and mount!

It’s a little unclear from the post below, but presumably you can still pop your own questions in as well. Just head to this thread on the official forums.

( Source URL )

---

We’ve gathered your questions for members from across the World of Warcraft development team to answer. Watch for more insight into the BlizzCon 2026 reveals and a look at what’s ahead for modern and Classic WoW.

When: Thursday, September 17 at 10:00 a.m. PDT
Where: Official Warcraft Twitch and YouTube channels

Tune in live on Thursday or watch the VOD after the stream.

---

We look forward to answering your questions and exploring your next adventures in Azeroth together.

Note: We are using normalized scores instead of raw DPS for the Warcraft Logs rankings. Normalized scores take into account the outlier boss fights where certain specs could stack massive DPS (due to the nature of the fight, whether it’s AoE spam or something else), which would then affect their overall score for the whole raid.

Note 2: Warcraft Logs bundled the Lair boss, Nymrissa Wavecaller, from the Tidebound Grotto into the Venomous Abyss rankings, which means the logs from here affect the overall rankings you can see below.

Heroic Venomous Abyss

Heroic’s population keeps rising, but significantly slower than before, around 10%. Arcane has gained another 30k logs or so, but remains at the same distance from Arms in 2nd. Retribution is still in 3rd but gained a lot, around 50k to get within a few thousand of Arms. The top 10 is very stable, but we do see Frost DK getting some action after the buffs from a while ago, moving into 10th. Just above it we have a Demon Hunter switch-off, as Havoc takes Devourer’s place, and the new spec drops a huge 6 spots down to 15th. The bottom 3 remain the same, each only gaining around 1k logs this week.

Overall Damage 95th Percentile

We have bad news for Rogues, as two of them drop a spot. Balance pushes Subtlety out of 5th, and Devastation moves Assassination down to 8th. We then have a very surprising visitor at the end of the top 10, as Augmentation busts seven spots up! The triple F gang is still at the bottom, with Fire making it past Feral, but probably won’t be catching Beast Mastery any time soon.

Overall Damage All Percentiles

The generalist bracket really showcases how stable things have gotten without the weekly class tuning pass. All top 10 specs are in the same spot as last week! Marksmanship has pulled out ahead, and the Rogues are doing a little better, but that’s about it. Just outside the top 10, we see Havoc surging, gaining three spots in 11th and making good use of its increased playerbase. The bottom is also stable, still sporting triple F.

Damage to Bosses

The top 10 is almost identical to last week’s, but right at the end we have Augmentation jump in and push past the two Warlocks.

Individual Bosses

Nymrissa Wavecaller (Tidebound Grotto Lair)

Nymrissa is listed as belonging to the Venomous Abyss on WCLogs.

The Twin Fangs

Frost is doing even better than last week, pushing Demo out of the way!

The Coiled Altar

A wild Augmentation appears all the way up in 5th place, climbing six!

Ula’tek

Arms and Windwalker take a bit of a tumble this week.

A Look at Mythic

While Heroic’s rise in players is getting incremental, Mythic’s is still very much in full swing. We have almost double the logs here, and with the nerfs coming this reset, we’re probably going to see even more next week. Having said that, Mythic is still pretty much under 10% of Heroic’s population. We also see a lot more movement here. Demo is rising fast, gaining two spots in 3rd, while Marksmanship fell off quite a bit down in 6th. Beast Mastery is on the opposite end of that Hunter scale, moving four up into 7th.

Overall Damage, All Percentiles

Frost Mage’s excellent performance last week did not carry over, as the spec plummets eight spots and drops out of the top 10. Retribution is heading the opposite way, gaining two spots to land in 4th. While we don’t have two Mages in the top 10 anymore, we sure still have all three Warlocks, with Affliction rising one, and Destruction even gaining three spots in 7th! Devastation’s also on the rise, busting into the top 10 with its 4-spot leap, now sitting in 8th. Unholy digs its way out of the bottom 3, leaving Devourer to join Fury and Beast Mastery.

And, as always, you can check out our tier lists, our raid guides, and our class guides, updated with the latest changes! And for even more stats, head on over to Warcraft Logs.

Both loading screens are hand drawn versions of the landscapes, with some familiar landmarks scattered across the horizon. And if you know your Warcraft geography, there’s a lot to spot!

Eastern Kingdoms

The Eastern Kingdoms screen is particularly packed. Stormwind is immediately recognisable, with Blackrock Mountain, Karazhan, Gilneas, and Lordareon/Undercity. Further in the distance, Silvermoon appears to be visible as well—although exactly how Silvermoon fits into WoW Forever remains something we’ll have to wait and see. 

And perhaps most excitingly, we can see the silhouette of Dalaran, sitting firmly on the ground!

Kalimdor

Kalimdor has just as much going on. Thousand Needles can be seen in the foreground, with Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Theramore Isle, and Silithus standing out.

Mount Hyjal takes up plenty of space on the horizon, and yes, that’s Teldrassil—very much alive!

These loading screens may just be artwork, but they give us plenty to get excited about. Thanks to MrGM for the screenshots!

How to Get A WoW Forever Beta Key Through MyMacca’s

Here’s how to get a WoW Forever Beta key through McDonald’s Australia’s MyMacca’s app:

• Open the Australian MyMacca’s app and select Rewards & Deals -> Partner Rewards
• Redeem 1,000 points, copy the code, and activate it through your Battle.net account

No WoW Subscription Required – but Keys Are Limited!

Also, keep the following detals in mind when thinking about snagging a WoW Forever Beta key this way:

• A Battle.net account is required, but no active WoW subscription or game time is needed!
• As McDonald’s states, keys are “available while stocks last“, limited to one key per MyMacca’s account and WoW account.
• Claim and activate the code by October 20, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. AEDT. The beta ends October 22, and character progress will not carry over to launch. These restrictions also appear in McDonald’s official FAQ.

Less Kill XP, Bigger Dungeon Quest Rewards

The intended payoff behind this change, in Blizzard’s eyes, is clear: Repeated dungeon clearing should not be the optimal leveling route; instead, exploring new dungeons in WoW Forever should be rewarded accordingly. Here’s what Kris Zierhut, Principal Designer of WoW Forever, says about the change:

“Yes. Now, one place experience did change is we made a big change to our dungeons. In that the amount of XP you get from killing monsters in dungeons, we brought way down. But we made the amount of XP for completing dungeon quests much, much, much higher. So your first run through a dungeon is amazing. You get tons of XP. You get great rewards.”

A “Livelier” Azeroth – or Empty Dungeon Groups?

The community’s reaction to this sweeping change is mixed: A busier outdoor world is very much welcome, but players worry dungeon groups could be harder to fill. However, players should be happy to receive more incentives to visit WoW Forever’s nine new leveling dungeons instead of being forced into dungeon-spamming.

It remains to be seen, based on the actual number changes, whether dungeon-grinding might be a thing of the past in WoW Forever.

Eat for 10 Seconds, Get 15 Minutes of Bonus XP

Here are some examples of new food recipes coming with WoW Forever’s release on November 4:

As you can see, some food buffs still grant stat bonuses and the new experience bonus simply goes on top. The Tasty Raptor Bites example also shows that even low-skill recipes feature the amazing new kill XP bonus.

Cooking Is Part of a Big Profession Overhaul in Forever

Massive changes aren’t only tied to Cooking in WoW Forever. In fact, Blizzard stated over 600 completely new crafting recipes will be added across all professions and level ranges alongside revisions of existing recipes.

That is why Cooking and professions in general will make a massive difference in WoW Forever – so don’t adventure on an empty stomach when the game releases!

Although WoW Forever doesn’t officially launch until 4th November, if you’ve got your heart set on a specific name, now is the time to act! Early name reservation is one of the perks of purchasing the Skyborne Heroic Pack.

Early name reservations will become available on October 27 until November 3, and will work on a first-come first-serve basis. 

It’s a small addition, but a fun one for players wanting to give their characters a little more identity. But if having a full name floating about your character isn’t really your thing, you can also toggle on/off all secondary names for your character and others. 

From full names, to Classic visuals, and transmogs, WoW Forever gives us all of the choices!

During the event, both Holly Longdale and Ion Hazzikostas used some pretty loaded language when talking about the future of WoW. Holly described World of Warcraft: Forever as “your new permanent home”, while Ion said that Azeroth “needs us, one last time.”

Thankfully, before anyone could truly start planning Retail’s funeral, Blizzard has addressed this comment—and the answer is a little less ominous than some players might have expected.

Kubit Says Don’t Read Too Much Into it

Recently, we got the chance to sit down with Associate Game Director Paul Kubit, and Senior Game Designer Kim Flack. Knowing how notoriously careful Ion is with his wording, we asked how much we should read into the “one last time” comment.

The answer? “Not too too much.”

Paul explained that The Last Titan will resolve a huge number of stories with The Worldsoul Saga approaching its conclusion. TLT will bring players into “a new era of storytelling for World of Warcraft.” However, he was also very clear that this doesn’t mean Blizzard is running out of stories to tell. “I would not expect The Last Titan to be finishing up every single little bit of story we have to tell.”

So while Kubit’s comment might provide some reassurance, is it enough to stop the speculation?

With TLT set to conclude The Worldsoul Saga, alongside stories that have been unfolding in Azeroth for more than 20 years, it’s easy to see why players are concerned for Retail’s future. Add in WoW Forever being called a “permanent home”, and there’s definitely enough to get some of us worrying!

Whether we get a full reboot/reset after TLT, we’re curious to see exactly how WoW will look post-Worldsoul Saga.

You can check out the rest of the interview with Paul Kubit and Kim Flack here.

The New Auberdine-Stormwind Harbor Connection

With WoW Forever, several new boat routes will be added. For the Alliance, that results in the brand-new Stormwind Harbor, as pointed out by MrGM on X:

From there, boats will travel directly to Auberdine and back, giving all Alliance races easy access to low-level zones and capitals!

Southshore and Steamwheedle Get New Connections Too

In addition to the new two-stop Stormwind-Auberdine route and the longer three-stop Menethil Harbor-Southshore-Auberdine route, Blizzard stated that players can travel between continents from Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris to the new Riverglades zone.

Despite the welcome quality-of-life change, we’ll certainly miss the old Wetlands Death Run. Will you take the boat, or brave the Wetlands one more time for nostalgia’s sake?

We have another account-wide achievement added to the list as well as many class fixes and cooldown manager additions. Prey got some more catch-up mechanics for alts, and the Venomous Abyss raid got some fixes and some smaller nerfs. There’s also additional item, dungeon, and Delve improvements, so let’s dive in.

( Source URL )

---

Achievements

• Soft Underbelly is now an account-wide achievement.

Classes

• Death Knight
  • Blood
    • Resolved an issue causing Grip of the Dead from Death and Decay to permanently be active on targets.
  • Unholy
    • Resolved an issue causing Magus of the Dead to occasionally spawn at extreme vertical differences.
• Druid
  • Guardian
    • Fixed an issue where Wild Guardian was incorrectly increasing Thrash and Mangle damage regardless of whether Rank 3 was selected.
• Hunter
  • Survival
    • Corrected an issue where the initial damage of Wildfire Bomb would not happen if the Hunter was affected by crowd control effects while the bomb hit the target.
    • Corrected an issue where Strike As One would not deal damage with a Raptor Swipe that benefit from Tip of the Spear if Aspect of the Eagle is active.
• Mage
  • Hero Talents
    • Spellslinger
      • Fixed an issue causing Splinters from Augury Abounds to sometimes strike crowd-controlled targets when other non-crowd controlled targets are available.
• Paladin
  • Holy
    • Fixed an issue that caused Ringing of the Heavens to not function if cast as Lightsmith while targeting an enemy.
  • Protection
    • Fixed an issue where Glory of the Vanguard was not dealing full damage to its primary target.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Glory of the Vanguard to sometimes fail to deal damage to distant targets.
• Rogue
  • Both versions of Thistle Tea can now be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.
• Priest
  • Fixed an issue where Flash Heal could not be tracked on the Cooldown Manager for Discipline and Shadow specializations.
• Shaman
  • Enhancement
    • Fixed an issue where damage from Doom Winds could interrupt channeled effects, such as the Font of Venomous Rage trinket.
    • Stormbringer: Fixed an issue where Crash Lightning could cause unintended targets to be hit by Windfury Weapon.
  • Restoration
    • Fixed an issue where Soothing Rain did not properly reduce the cast time of Healing Rain by 0.5 seconds.
• Warrior
  • Arms
    • The Venomous Abyss 4-set Bonus – The Winding Up bonus Slam damage buff can now be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.
    • Rend is now able to be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.
  • Protection
    • The Venomous Abyss 2-set Bonus – The “Vengeful Shield” bonus Shield Slam damage buff can now be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.
    • Rend is now able to be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.

Delves

• Fixed an issue where Domanaar Enforcer’s could Devour an already dead corpse.
• Explorer’s League Supplies and the Abandoned Restoration Stone will now appear in the Twilight Crypts delve variant “Loosed Loa.”
• Fixed an issue that prevented Bountiful Coffers from rewarding Zul’jarra’s Forces reputation.

Dungeons and Raids

• Den of Nalorakk
  • Addressed an issue where Nalorakk’s Echoing Maul can sometimes trigger unintentionally.
  • Addressed an issue where player pets were unable to damage The Winter Squall.

 

• The Venomous Abyss
  • Entombed Sentinels
    • Toxic Droplets are no longer instantly stepped on if they land directly on top of a player.
    • Living Venom no longer pierces immunities.
  • The Lost Explorers
    • Mor’zahi’s damage escalation during Final Ascension will now reset if his cast is interrupted.
    • Fixed a visual effect issue that sometimes occurred when the tortollans were empowered.
    • Hoji will now teleport back to the main platform if he falls from the bridge.
  • Ula’tek
    • Added in health backstops to ensure the boss transitions out of Rage of the Shackled when reaching specific health thresholds.

Items

• Fixed an issue causing the Preternatural Antivenom trinket effect to only be applied to the trinket wearer.
• Void Elf and Blood Elf eyebrows are now visible when wearing either the Aquatic or Brick Gloomcap.
• Removed Bouncy Mushrooms collision.

Player versus Player

• Evoker
  • Fixed an issue where Unburdened Flight was causing Deep Breath to move the player forward during Hover.
  • Hero Talents
    • Chronowarden
      • Fixed an issue where Warp was still causing the player to become immune to snares while talented into Unburdened Flight.
  • Preservation
    • Fixed an issue where Stasis could be used in the starting room of arenas and battlegrounds to store spells for after the gates opened.

Prey

• The buff from Afflicted and Tormented Souls is no longer removed on death, by entering a battleground or arena, or by switching specializations, and cannot be accidentally removed by the player.
• Players may now receive 500 Corrosive Coin daily on each character that defeats Ral’kala after reaching Preyhunter’s Journey rank 6 (was only the first character).

We’re getting buffs across the board, with the exception of a few Season 1 trinkets that are getting nerfs, as they’re still being used by certain specs.

( Source URL )

---

Players can expect this to be the final round of raid and dungeon trinket adjustments for Season 2 when making loot-related decisions, barring any unexpected outliers that may arise. This pass is primarily intended to promote a more viable niche for single-target healing effect options with a few more miscellaneous minor buffs as well.

In addition, several trinkets from Season 1 remain more desirable than we would like due to a combination of aggressive initial tuning and lack of direct Season 2 trinket competition in a particular niche (in this case, Mastery on use).

Given the later-than-usual timing of this tuning, we are announcing these changes a full week ahead of their implementation to inform player decisions and allow for feedback.

The following changes will be applied with the September 22 weekly maintenance:

• Preternatural Antivenom – Healing increased by 75%.
• Seed of Radiant Hope – Cooldown reduced to 1 min (was 1.5 mins). Healing increased by 40%.
• Mycolic Medicine – Effect frequency increased by 33%. Healing increased by 58%.
• Unstable Felheart Crystal – Cooldown reduced to 1.5 mins (was 2 mins). Healing increased by 58%.
• Ruby Whelp Shell – Frequency of all effects increased by 100%. All damage reduced by 42%. Single target healing effect increased by 37%. Multi-target healing increased by 5%. Stat effects reduced by 50%.
• Gaze of the Alnseer – Primary stat reduced by 10%.
• Vaelgor’s Final Stare – Mastery reduced by 10%.
• Algeth’ar Puzzle Box – Mastery reduced by 25%.

Slasher Suggests BlizzCon Won’t Return Before 2028

Rod “Slasher” Breslau, game journalist and consultant with historically close ties to Blizzard Entertainment, mentioned in a tweet that BlizzCon probably won’t come back in 2027:

This is not an official cancellation, of course – but it supports an ongoing industry trend away from regular public conventions and toward digital events.

Big Announcements, Long Waits

Another possible piece of context is the release windows of Blizzard’s new game announcements: Spring 2029 for Diablo 5 and even 2030 for StarCraft Dominion. Game development consumes more and more time, and the same goes for event organization. Of course, a year without a BlizzCon wouldn’t result in a year without announcements, as we’ve been promised more info about several games, including WoW’s Last Titan expansion, early next year.

Would fans prefer an annual gathering or longer breaks between much bigger BlizzCons?

Interview Highlights

Here are the main highlights of the interview.

Exclusives

• All 3 new Paladin races will get a story questline.
• Astalor will not die. Kim rules out the “turns corrupt, we beat him back” theory.
• You infuse yourself with Azerite in Patch 12.2. It will affect how your character plays, no details given beyond that.
• Blizzard confirmed it’s Sargeras’s sword depicted in the image below. Midnight’s Patch 12.2 (Eclipse) will address it. Paul said it will become apparent during Eclipse that Blizzard hasn’t forgotten about the sword. Sargeras’s near-miss is framed as a potential testament to the Worldsoul’s own power.

Eclipse Raid

• The Eclipse raid will house 8 bosses with Xal’atath being the last.
• The encounter will be closer to the size of Dimensius rather than Hogger.
• There’s going to be a jellyfish boss encounter that’s “not just a big boy jellyfish.”

Transmog

• Armor-type unlock will go live in Patch 12.2.5, not 12.2.
• Class tier sets will stay locked to their class.
• Weapon proficiency restrictions remain, there will be no Warriors with wands.

Mythic+

• 1% and 5% will become spec-rated.
• The 0.1% cutoff remains overall rather than specialization-specific.
• 5% rewards exist, but they’re not detailed yet.
• Uldaman is dropping to four bosses in Mythic+.

Bonus Rolls

• Paul concedes the system creates uncomfortable tension, players feel pushed to the currency when they’d rather take gear.
• Floats delaying bonus rolls a few weeks into the season.

Other

• The new legendary is a caster dagger. Deliberately, not everyone will be able to use it.
• Don’t read too much into Ion’s “one-last-time” comment. The Last Titan won’t resolve every story.
• Talebound is a limited-time PvE-only roguelike event expected to last roughly as long as Plunderstorm.
• Deep Scar is going to host the Niffen, Drogbar, Troggs, and vermin, not the Loamm Niffen.
• Kit’hix lands mid-tier. No RWF and supports Mythic.
• Noctinax is an Azerite bat. Lair bosses are being targeted around the difficulty of bosses 1-3 of the new 12.2 raid.
• Wrath Remix is coming in Patch 12.2.7, it’s a Northrend send-off right before The Last Titan.
• The current plan is for Story Mode to remain one week behind in Season 3, though Blizzard says this isn’t set in stone.
• Upright Forsaken toggle is being raised with the art team by Paul.
• Kim teases that characters who followed Xal’atath down may return as allies.

Full Transcript

Please do keep in mind the interview transcript may contain some inaccuracies.

Sean: Ion, who’s typically very particular with what he says, mentioned in his opening remarks that “we will be helping Azeroth because they need us one last time.” How much should we read into that?

Paul: (Chuckle) Not too too much. And yes, Ion is always very cautious with his words. If I remember correctly, a lot of the stuff he said was we’re going to be going full gas from here on out. We’re sort of half-way through the middle chapter of the Worldsoul Saga. And so, we’ve set up a lot of pieces. We’re going to be knocking down dominoes. Now, it’s going to be like full action from here on out with Eclipse coming up to close out Midnight and then moving into Last Titan. And Last Titan’s going to resolve a bunch of Worldsoul Saga stories, but also it’s going to resolve just a bunch of World of Warcraft stories that we’ve been building up and telling for 20, 22 years, you know, by that point.

So there’s going to be a lot of stories coming to a close and then that brings us into sort of a new era of storytelling for World of Warcraft. So I would not expect The Last Titan to be finishing up every single little bit of story we have to tell. There’s still lots of really cool ideas, lots of really cool fantasy that’s going to take place in Azeroth well beyond the Worldsoul Saga.

Sean: Okay cool, cool.

Seli: Alrighty, then let’s jump straight into Talebound. Everybody seems really excited. A roguelike ARPG mode. We haven’t really had that in a while before. And obviously, it starts in 12.1.7 since you mention this is a temporary game mode. When do you expect it to end? And do you already have plans for how you would enhance the mode maybe in the future if you ever decide to bring it back?

Paul: Yeah, it’s a great question. We do plan this to be a sort of limited-time mode. Jury is still out on exactly when that ends. It won’t be around for forever. But if you think back to modes like Plunderstorm, this is a similar sort of duration for something like this, where it will be around for a while as long as it feels like appropriate and able for you to be able to reach all the goals that you have, get all the cool loot and collectibles for your War Band that you want, and then before it sunsets. Important distinction from Plunderstorm is that this is a PvE mode. This isn’t really any PvP aspects to this. You’re going to be fighting against monsters doing lots of double jumping and dodge rolling to make sure that you’re able to avoid the damage they do, because yeah, it is actually — from having played it myself — pretty intense. Some very difficult combat in there. So yeah, as far as that goes, we’re still going to sort of listen to the community and figure out when the right time is to move on from.

Seli: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Can we expect all of the different game modes, that you’ve now developed over the last couple of years, to return in more of like a seasonal fashion similar to maybe a Timewalking where the players know way ahead of time already when they will be coming back so they can plan around it?

Paul: Yeah, never say never for things like that. We always look at sort of how things land, how players play it, how we respond to it, and where the passions of the playerbase are, but also where the passions of the team are. If we see some really cool opportunities for something for Talebound to come back at some point in the future, add some new abilities, add some new monsters to fight against, and what have you. Then yeah, I think that would be something that would be really cool. I would personally play that. (Chuckles)

Seli: Same.

Squishei: Continuing on Talebound, what lessons did you learn from player behaviour in Plunderstorm with regards to rewards, and how did you apply this to Talebound?

Paul: It’s a great question as well. We’re just really happy to see people hop in and either engage fully and entirely with their account because they either enjoyed the mode or wanted to sort of clean out the shop. But also people who just sort of stopped in and was able to pick over things that were either for them or wanted to just, you know, check out the mode before they moved back to what they were passionate about. They were a Delver or PvPer or whatnot, and so moved back to that. We saw a broad range of folks kind of engaging with the reward system in a bunch of different ways. I wouldn’t expect it to change a whole lot more from that as we move to Talebound. You’re going to see people who are able to sort of dip their toe into Talebound and say like, “Okay cool. I need to be able to get this mount, this piece of decor, or what have you.” Versus others who are going to commit their life and soul into it, either because they love the game mode itself, or because they want to get all the cool stuff.

Squishei: Yeah, that’s awesome. You mentioned obviously, you’ve played it. What is your favourite part of Talebound?

Paul: For me, I like playing the Witch. I am sort of into that like Dark Fantasy and I feel like the witch embodies it the most. Also just like, throwing frogs at people is funny and like awesome. I sort of enjoy the levity side of things as well. As far as gameplay goes though, I’m a big sucker for roguelike choices. I love anytime that you have that moment where you sort of have the crossroads in front of you, where you’ve had an idea for how you’re going to start building this character and then you have two or three very different choices of: “if you take this,” then it’s taken my character in one way; “if you take this,” it’s taking you in the other. That moment, and the promise of that moment, sort of repeating from run to run is probably the biggest hallmark of this mode that I’m looking forward to.

Squishei: Have you played it, Kim?

Kim: I have. I have played it a little bit. I think my favourite part — this will sound weird — I liked dying, because you die a lot. So you might as well enjoy it. But the bosses are very difficult and I’m not personally great at this type of game. So every time I died, I’m like, “Okay, I understand a little bit more about how the mechanic works. Let’s go again, let’s run it back.”

And so, it just felt like a really addicting experience.

Sean: That sounds like there’s hope for me.

(Big Laughter from everyone)

Paul: Important to note: it’s roguelite, so there’s going to be progression even through death. Yeah, there’s hope for all of us.

Sean: That’s good, because I’m skill-lite.

(Laughter continues)

Awesome. So, opening ceremony yesterday, it was like announcement after announcement and then the deep dive that you did on stage… Amazing. We knew we were coming to talk to you guys today. Kim, I am a massive fan of your work, we spoke previously about Prey. You were the lead on Prey and obviously we got some big news affecting Prey. How do you feel as Astalor like your baby? How do you feel now with him shifting to our Delve nemesis? And, who’s replacing him as our Huntsmaster for Prey?

Kim: So, lots of things. Astalor is a communal baby. You know, he’s the baby of the entire Prey team. I’m just one contributor to the system. You know, massive props to the rest of the team on just really coming together to make one — what was the wording you used? I think it was uncomfortably sexual? Yes, absolutely.

So, as an Asta lover — that’s a phrase you can put on the ticket — I am just so excited for him being the nemesis of 12.2 because not only is he going to be the actual nemesis the way we’re used to from Nullaeus and Ky’veza and all these other great bosses that we fought recently. He’s going to be that.

He’s also going to be flavouring, you know, Delves throughout the season the same way that, you know, see currently in Curse of Ula’tek, we have little snakes everywhere, little anguish ghosts, you know, elementals everywhere. It’s going to be incredible. It’s going to be just very, very cool throughout.

In terms of who’s going to be replacing him, well. Safe to say, he is not actually going to die, but it’s not that simple. It’s also not as simple as, you know, he turns corrupt and we have to beat him back to his senses. It is a very cool, very surprising story. Like, I cannot be more excited for everyone to experience what that is. So, absolutely no spoilers about what it is that happens that leads us to fighting him as the nemesis. But I want everyone to go into this just excited as heck, because it is so cool. Don’t be worried, be so massively excited to figure out what’s going on with our boy Astalor. Because it could not be cooler.

Sean: Will we still be getting, like, him whispering to us? I’m asking for a friend. Like, just says we’re in the world.

Kim: (Chuckle) If you like those Astalor whispers, don’t worry. There will be plenty.

Sean: Excellent, excellent. I love it. Thank you so much. I’m very excited.

Seli: So in the 12.2 trailer, we saw Xal’atath accessing the world core and floating just a foot away from Azeroth’s worldsoul. This makes it seem like she already completed her goal in what we assume she tried to do. And so there must be something holding her back from finishing whatever she was planning to do. And how does that play into the champions of Azeroth ultimately being able to face her before she accomplishes those goals?

Paul: Yeah, without getting too much into spoilers, let’s look at the logo for Eclipse and the name Eclipse in general. You can sort of see what that looks like. It is a circle almost entirely covered in void with a glimmer of light poking out from the edge. And so, the worldsoul for sure is fighting back, despite being sort of held there in stasis with all this Titan machinery around her and Xal’atath going through the motions of attempting to eclipse this worldsoul. There is always a glimmer of hope. As far as what is stopping her, I would say, also us. We are part of that as well.

Fingers crossed we’re able to get all the way there. But yeah, there is for sure it’s not just a one and done, snap your fingers, and the worldsoul is claimed. That’s going to be a monumental task for Xal’atath, and we’re going to do our damned best to stop her.

Sean: I have a follow-up: you mentioned Eclipse, the logo. I love it. Trilogies typically have the second entry, like The Empire Strikes Back, where it’s a darker tone. Are we going to see Anduin in carbonite at the end of Eclipse?

Paul: (Chuckles) I will not confirm that specific question, whether Anduin will be locked in carbonite. But there are good story turns coming for sure. And not all of them are going to be that “we complete our mission.” You know, there are twists and turns along the way, so lots of things to look forward to, in Eclipse or beyond Eclipse. Maybe even in some of these chapters that land before Eclipse. You’re going to see a lot of moving pieces.

Seli: Throughout most of the Worldsoul Saga, we were always accompanied by famed heroes and champions who basically helped us along the way. Can you tell us, or maybe tease, who would be the people who will be joining us in our essentially final stand against Xal’atath?

Kim: Yeah, so we have lots and lots of people who are going to be helping us in our final stand against Xal’atath. Some of those are very spoiler-y. So I will not be getting into it. But to give you a little tease, so you can kind of maybe fill in some of the spoilers yourself… You know what we saw in that cinematic, during the opening ceremony, of Xal’atath entering the Mantle Vault — that big beam of Void Energy. You know a lot of people have been wondering what is that from? Last time we saw Xal’atath, she’s, you know, going down the dark hole with her army. Who else went down that dark hole? Who is missing?

You know, are those people that maybe we may have you know their fates answered. What happened to them? Are they dead? Are they alive? Are they okay? Are they going to help us out?

You know there are people who are unaccounted for who might be helping us out in the battle. Also, going down into the Mantle Vault: who is it who lives there? What is this place? Who made this? Is there anyone down there that we might actually meet along the way who can help us out, or who might try to stop us along the way as well?

You saw the awesome Deep Scar in the panel too… He had a Thraegar. Like, who are these guys? Are they going to help us out? Just lots of awesome stuff.

Sean: Exciting. That was the worst spoiler aversion ever.

Kim: I didn’t say anything.

Sean: (Chuckles) Yeah, you didn’t! That was great.

Squishei: Alright, so one of the biggest news I think, out of the deep dive panel, was the transmog changes. What led to the decision of unlocking transmog across all gear types?

Paul: Yeah, so this has been something that we were very excited to reveal for folks, despite it not actually landing right there in 12.2. This is going to come a little later in 12.2.5 afterwards. As we built transmog, we wanted to make sure that players maintain that sort of distinctive silhouettes, I think is how we’ve put it in the past. That you can identify someone who is a priest, mage, or warlock, because of the robes or the cloth that they wear. As we’ve gotten so many more transmog options in the game, in particular, there’s a lot of cosmetic sets which transcend, you know, plate, mail, cloth, and leather. And a number of those sets do have vibes which look very cloth-y, look fairly plate-y. There are already plenty of ways that players are sort of dodging those silhouette guidelines that they’ve been drawn inside of.

And so, in keeping with sort of philosophies that have driven the way that we’ve built Housing, which is just, “have fun, be creative, do the thing you want to do.” We’re going to give you all sorts of tools to be able to express yourself in the game. We wanted to bring that to transmog even further by saying like, “Hey, you know, if you think that it looks cool to throw some plate shoulders on your Warlock, because they match the colour, they just match your vibe, or you’re going for something frankly a little silly…” That’s great, have fun.

Squishei: Awesome, I look forward to it a lot.

So are there any transmogs that can’t go across classes, you know, tier sets or things that are class-based?

Paul: Yeah, that’s a good question. So for clarity: the restriction we’re removing is armor type restrictions. So cloth, leather, mail, plate. We do still expect class armor, like a Paladin tier set, would be worn by Paladins. A Priest tier set would be worn by Priests. There will also be restrictions around weapons, specifically like if you’re not able to wield a specific weapon type, then no Warriors with wands and things like that.

Squishei: (Chuckle) That would look funny though.

Paul: Funny, yeah. But for 12.2.5 specifically, the thing that we’re looking forward to the most is just being able to mix-and-match those armor types.

Squishei: Makes sense. One last question on that set: WoW Forever announced some interesting transmog changes, where, it would drop for everybody. Could we see something like that come to retail WoW?

Paul: Never say never for features like this. You know, when we look at WoW Forever, there’s an enormous number of things that we look at. It’s like, that’s interesting for World of Warcraft. So we always rely on feedback from players in order to know like, hey, what’s going to land well, what’s not going to land well, and that informs future questions. So we’re going to take a look at how people play through Forever, how people play through Classic, how people play through any mode. Even like, we look over at Diablo and StarCraft and all these other games, and use that to inform the way that, you know, we build a game in the future. So, who knows?

Sean: I think I can speak for the entirety of the fan base and say that we love that idea of the transmog — everybody, unanimously, across the board. I’m confident with that statement.

You also mentioned StarCraft — how good was that StarCraft trailer?

Paul: Fantastic. I mean, I watched it for the first time, alongside all of you guys, and I was like… my wife was like (AUDIBLE GASP)… especially when she saw the twist at the end. The cinematic team continues to dominate. Really, really cool.

Sean: Chef’s kiss. Sorry, back on track.

I want to talk a little bit more about some of the additions we have coming. This one, paralleled in Warcraft III: Reforged, and we saw it in WoW Forever, we’re getting undead Paladins. Can you speak to a little bit about the decision to add undead Paladins and include the Darkspear and the Night Elves?

Paul: Yeah, for sure. I think I said this yesterday, this has always been the plan, right? We’ve been thinking about Forsaken Paladins for a while. Actually, when we talked about Void Elf Demon Hunters, there were questions saying like “Hey, why are Alliance getting a new race class combination, but the Horde aren’t?” And it’s like, “Well. Midnight’s going to take a little while, and there’s still more story to tell; we’ve got some stuff coming.”

And so, Forsaken Paladins specifically were something that we were thinking about, even as far as back then. And 12.2 was a time that made a lot of sense to do it as we’re heading into this battle of light versus void in the Mantle Vault.

As we looked at that, we sort of said, well, there’s a couple of other races which have felt like they’ve wanted Paladins as well. And so, we specifically heard a lot of feedback from people about Night Elves… Night Elf Paladins being something since back in Legion when they saw Delas Moonfang. Being able to be an NPC who is capable of wielding the light as a Paladin and a Night Elf. The players wanted to be able to do that. So we’re really happy to bring that.

We also had some really cool storytelling opportunities for the Darkspear to bring that as well. So we do get to round out Midnight with that balance of Horde versus Alliance in terms of new additions at the very least.

And each of these classes are also going to get, of course, their own charger mount, so there’ll be new chargers associated with them. You may have gotten to see some sneak peeks of those, the pillars off to the side, and stories that are going to tell how they become Paladins.

Kim: Yeah, all three of the races are going to have a little, you know, a questline that’s going to show you… Not to unlock it, but show you like, “This is a story of one particular member of this race, who has decided that they are going to pursue the path of a Paladin. What does that look like for them?” Obviously, you know, no race is going to be homogeneous. So this is the story of one specific person, and how did they come to it? Maybe if you’re a roleplayer, this might get the juices flowing a little bit. You might get some ideas or maybe you’re going to go in a totally different direction. But it’s kind of just showing you how it is. If you’re a person like, “Why would an undead ever do this?” This is going to give you a little bit more context on how it’s going to be.

Sean: I love it. You just broke news. That’s crazy.

Kim: (Chuckles) A very cool questline. I think you’re going to like them.

Sean: Alright, one more question about Forsaken Paladins. I don’t know if anybody else has it except for me, but the Forsaken guards in Zandalar at Zuldazar stand upright. They have excellent posture. Now that we’re getting Forsaken, who are infused with the light and able to wield the light as a weapon for the defense of their people and to fight the void, is there any chance that you could sneak in a little upright toggle on the character design?

Paul: (Chuckles) Never say never again to things like. Nothing to announce at this point, but yeah, I’ve heard requests for that as well. So it’s something we can bring back to the art team for sure.

Sean: So you also mentioned in the deep dive, the Calibration Chamber is coming, which I think is very cool. The design of which I love. Very Titan-y, very like, “you’re coming here to focus.” What kind of options can we expect to see in there? And will there be anything specific to Tanks for us to like, limit test, or Healers?

Paul: Yeah, so still a feature that’s under development. Contents may shift in flight. You should expect to be able to reset your cooldowns, which I think is one of the most important thing that we’ve heard from folks is like, “I just want to test my character. I’m not looking to abuse mechanics. I’m not looking to break the game. I just want to be able to reset a cooldown.” And frankly, there are a lot of ways you can reset cooldowns. How many times have you pulled a boss to the front of its room to reset the cooldown?

So like, we can do that fairly safely. Also raid buffs looking at ways that you can just give yourself all the raid buffs that you need, or even consumables, to test yourself in as close of simulation to what you might want for testing your throughput at any given time.

Beyond that, still a lot of moving pieces. We want to be able to support lots of different, sort of variations of different dummies. So different levels, different layouts, spread cleave versus clustered versus single-target, and things like that.

But the combat design team is sort of working through the details there, to make sure we have everything we want. I’ve heard the request for healers as well. And so, we’re still talking a lot about what exact options we might have available. At the end of the day, this is going to be built differently from Proving Grounds, the feature we saw in the past where there was… sort of, this is a progression of things and you have to get this far in order to be able to get into other types of content challenge modes. This isn’t that — this is just a tool. This is for testing alongside damage meters and other tools that you have available, like “Hey, I got this new trinket, I’ve got this new loadout I want to try, let’s do testing in a nice controlled environment.”

Sean: So with the introduction of the Lindormi affix, the Calibration Chambers, it feels like because there’s this sort of perception that there’s a lack of Tanks in this space… With the Calibration Chambers, where tanks can go in and have a chance to work through their tool kit, they have Lindormi’s affix to help them through. Is it like a concerted effort of the team to try to bolster the ranks of the tanks? And also by giving us another option with Forsaken Paladins?

Paul: I would say yes, but not just tanks specifically. I think a big effort of ours over the last several years has been trying to find places where there’s a lot of friction in terms of learning a new thing. Mythic+ is a great example, where there are plenty of folks who still see Mythic+ as like an inaccessible corner of the game because it feels competitive and difficult. Particularly tanking those is a huge challenge, right? As a tank, you need to not only know your rotation and be able to play up to the level of whatever plus you’re playing, but also like guide the whole group and not mess up with your percentage of completion. And so, Lindormi’s affix is a way of fighting against that.

But if you look at something like Training Grounds or Arenas as well, these are also ways where we’ve identified another portion of the game. PvP is something which feels inhospitable to new players because a lot of people who are in there have been playing for years, and are very happy to see you because they can farm you.

Sean: That’s me, I’m the farmer.

Paul: Training Grounds: it gives players who are experiencing that unpleasant friction a way to unwrap themselves if they want to. Or just stick around in the Training Grounds if they want.

Seli: Okay, so let’s move on to the new zones. You mentioned that one of the factions in the Mantle Vault is led by the Niffen, who we were obviously previously allied with. So a lot of people might be happy that we finally get to dispatch the people who used to spam our mailboxes in the past. Obviously, they’re also wondering why we are suddenly at odds with them.

Kim: Yeah, I am so excited to talk about the Deep Scar, because they are just a strange little group down in the Mantle Vault. Without going super into detail about who they are, kind of the broad strokes of the Deep Scar is that they’re this group of like, motley crew of underground burrowing races who are kind of scavenging out this space. It’s got all these cool crystals and Titan stuff like “Ooh, shiny, gimme.” It’s not only Niffen, it’s also Drogbar, it’s Troggs, it’s vermin, it’s like all these nice classic underground races. And the Niffen are the smartest, so they’re the leaders even though they’re the littlest, which is just a great contrast.

These are not the Niffen that we met back in Loamm in Zaralek Cavern. This is a different group, like ones from a different region. So it won’t be like… you’re not fighting Elder Honeypelt. This is going to be a different group of Niffen who are leading a different group of these other underground races. So there are some great fights with the Niffen and the other members of the Deep Scar coming up, and it’s really exciting to just… Fight these little guys. I don’t believe we previously had any fightable.

Seli: I don’t think so either, but I’m looking forward to it for sure. Especially like you mentioned, they’re such a motley crew of different groups that ultimately come together for a mysterious goal.

So the Vaults of Ula’tek offer an ever-evolving, always-on world scenario. Could we see something like that again in the future, or maybe is something like this planned already for the Mantle Vault?

Kim: Yeah, that’s a good question. We’re always thinking about like, what is a good overlaying activity that you can do when you come to the zone. You log in, and you’re like, “Man, I really want to go to the Coiled Isle today. What is there for me to do there?” You should always have like an idea in your mind about what goal could be there for the day, for the week, or for the month for you, in that area. Just adds a little bit of flavour, something to do.

So definitely we do have an idea like that coming up in the Mantle Vault. Not specifically the same as the Vaults, you know, we always try to keep it a little fresh. You might have heard Paul talking a bit about the Radiant Screams, in the What’s New panel. Radiant Screams is kind of the feature of our zone. There’s other stuff you can do, of course, but this is the marquee piece.

The name might sound a little familiar: it’s kind of calling back to the Radiant Song of Azeroth. What does it mean for it to be a scream rather than a song? It’s metal now. She is very much fighting back against these dark machinations that Xal’atath is imposing upon her. And what does that mean in the zone?

What do we see actually being represented, as we’re seeing the zone change, respond, and react to that ongoing struggle?

Yes, it is very metal. There is going to be a lot of fighting and it’s just going to be a really fun, little activity. The details of it is still ongoing, but it should be very fun to test out when we hit PTR later this year.

Paul: I just wanted to add in: for outdoor features, the name of the game is variety. It would be great if, in the future, we have something which is always-on scenario. But if you know, patch after patch, we continue having always-on scenarios, then that starts to wear thin. And that’s not true of always-on scenarios; it can be true of something like Community Feast. It could be true of something which feels like an invasion event. We want to make sure you always have different variety. So mixing in different topologies of outdoor content is really important in making sure we feel fresh.

Squishei: So with the Mantle Vault, there’s something that we can usually expect in pretty much every new zone. You know, new treasures, Skyriding glyphs, maybe a world event… those kind of things. So what, in your opinion, separates the new zone in 12.2 with previous zones?

Kim: First off, you’ve seen the screenshots in the presentations earlier, on the Mantle Vault. They do not do the zone justice. When you see it for the first time, it looks nothing like any of these underground zones that we’ve had so far. We had, you know, Zaralek — almost the entirety of The War Within. It’s so different, very glowy with the Azerite everywhere. There’s void there… it’s just incredible. So just aesthetically, it already is going to feel different than any other zone that you’ve been in. It’s just this vast, amazing, ancient space.

In terms of other stuff we’re doing, we do have the sorts of things that players expect and want to see, like out of a zone. So we’re going to have, you know, quests, an incredible campaign, local stories, rares and treasures, all sorts of great routine activities that we all enjoy seeing and digging through. Also we do have a lot of little secrets that we’re putting in. Like little activities that we’re hoping will add some texture or variety to the things that you’re doing. So, you know, maybe you’ve done all the rares, you finished that achievement because you’re an achievement hunter. So what is something else that you could be doing?

Definitely, we have that all around. So I think the zone is going to feel and look just very different from what we’re doing. But at the same time, not so different that it doesn’t feel like Warcraft anymore.

Squishei: Awesome. Here’s a slightly different question: the community has been focusing on a certain image that looks like Sargeras’s sword just missed the Worldsoul. Can you confirm if this is what happened? And can we actually see this in-game?

Paul: (Chuckles) Yeah, I see the arrows… Yeah, I mean, that’s what that is. That’s a sword.

Squishei: Wow, it finally came back after last BlizzCon.

Paul: Yeah, eagle-eyed viewers have identified that. We have been thinking about the sword. It should become very apparent to people as you play through Eclipse that we have not forgotten about the sword. This is not something which is going away. Also, how you know, tragically close it came to the Worldsoul is, for sure, a testament to not only how close he came, but also maybe the power of the Worldsoul herself.

Squishei: Yeah, after so long, BfA, I think the ending of it, we finally get to see this wrapped up possibly. So I look forward to it.

Sean: Was he aiming for the heart? Or was he aiming for the prison?

Anyway, let’s focus on Eclipse. Eclipse is taking us to Azeroth’s prison resting place for the first time. What kind of inspirations did the team draw from when designing this space?

Kim: Yeah, I mean. I don’t want to speak for the incredible work that the world-building team, the world art teams did. Definitely when you see it, it’s going to look like kind of these Titan spaces that we’ve seen before. You know, we’ve seen Titan spaces in Uldir; we’ve seen Ulduar. We kind of have that aesthetic that we’re used to. This kind of big, larger than life, classical-looking architecture. There’s going to be lots of that in the walls and the floors.

So that’s something that got drawn upon. When you enter the raid, you can actually see the Worldsoul in front of you as you saw in the screenshot… The incredible one with the arrows (laugh). They weren’t pointing directly to the Worldsoul, but you get the idea. Just the way the light is hitting everything — you can even notice it when you’re out in the zone. For example, some of the Azerite formations are all aligned towards that light, almost the same way as Hallowfall, where the flowers were aimed towards Beledar. This incredible symmetry of the Azerite and the void; this clash that feels like it’s thematic, of course, in the logo for Eclipse, the void and the light. Seeing it out in the zone, you know, the Azerite light and the void light, just always this clashing and mixing of those two elements I think really kind of thematically drove the zone and the raid all together.

Sean: I love it. When the team was designing the local stories for the zone, how much did that play like the presence of the Worldsoul? How much of an impact does that have on how you’re designing those stories?

Kim: I mean, no spoilers of course. I want everyone to play those little stories and see them all. Also because the way that we enter and are introduced to the zone… I think as soon as you get down there, you’ll get kind of this sense of like, I can see what types of stories this zone is going to tell.

That’s very ominous for now, and it’s on purpose. It actually is this really unique storytelling space that, I think I said multiple times throughout development, “we haven’t really had a zone like this before.” You’ll see what I mean in no time at all.

So local stories in this zone are going to feel a little different than ones that you’ve done in other zones, where you’re entering the Coiled Isle and meeting the Tuskarr who have some quests teaching you about themselves and the zone. The Mantle Vault is going to be different in terms of how we learn about it and how we interact with it.

The presence of the Worldsoul, and you know, of course, being there and the Azerite, it’s inevitable. That’s going to factor into the storyline, both local stories and the main campaign. But how exactly we interact with it, I’m so excited for people to see the angles we’ve taken.

Sean: Ominous interviews are ominous. Definitely leaves you nervous.

Midnight was full of fun Easter eggs for Void Elves, for Forsaken, Warlocks, and stuff as they walked through Silvermoon. Can we expect something similar for Earthen as they engage with the Thraegar?

Kim: I am an Earthen lover. I worked on the Isle of Dorn, so I definitely have a soft spot for Earthen. Anywhere that we’ve been able to see that makes sense, and feels flavourful and fun… You know, if someone’s playing an Earthen and they get a different line of dialogue, it’s like I see you. We see you. We acknowledge that you’re playing this, and that you’re going to have a different relationship to the zone around you, than you know, a human or Night Elf might.

So definitely looking for those opportunities, you know, where they are.

And really, not just for Earthen, just any time we are designing content in any zone, any city. We’re thinking about like, “Is there a time when a certain race or class might have a unique relationship to what’s going on here? Does it make sense, in this case, to maybe have a little bit of flavour for them?” And if so, we definitely try to support that when we can.

Sean: I can’t wait to see if the Thraegar and them are going to be friends, or if it’s a little more rocky. (Laughs)

Seli: So, last time we spoke to Paul, we asked about the Bonus Roll system and the expectations you and the team had by adding it to the Great Vault. And now that we’ve had a couple of weeks in Season 2, we’ve seen a lot of players have opted to pick a bonus roll week after week… instead of picking actual items from the Great Vault itself. Was that the expected outcome, or are there already adjustments you have in mind, or at least discussing within the team?

Paul: Yeah, looking at the actual percentage of players who are choosing Bonus Rolls versus actual gear or currency — you know, there are some people who, very early on, buy the currency to get the socket and things like that; vanishingly few, but people do it and continue later into the season — it’s been pretty close to what we’d expect. It’s pretty balanced, at least at the high-end. It’s more focused on gear for people who are on lower tiers of difficulty. But we’ve heard a lot of feedback from players that, in a lot of cases, there are players who felt like they would want to take something from the Vault, but they felt like the game was telling them, based on the way it works under the hood, that it’s better for them to take the Voidcore. And that’s sort of some uncomfortable tension.

Heard a lot of stories, myself included, we’re like… I sat on it for a day, because this is hard. I need to figure some stuff out before I decide if I need a future power or now power, whatnot.

And so, we’ve been looking at data, which changes as you go through a season, because early on, you really want to complete that 4-piece. That could push you more in a direction of wanting to take something directly from the Vault if it gets you closer to it.

Whereas later, it might not.

But I think the volume of that feedback, where you feel the tension at the beginning of the season, is for sure going to flavour our design as we move into the next season.

Maybe having bonus rolls so early in the Great Vault, you know, maybe we take a couple more weeks before we figure that out.

Nothing specific design yet. Still a lot of early design and discussion, but this is sort of where the head is at right now.

Seli: It’s always interesting to hear when like, the player feedback and telemetry data you’re getting kind of align and sometimes are at odds with one another. I think that’s always where the difficult decisions have to be made.

Paul: Yeah, for sure. I can confirm 99% of players are not taking their Bonus Rolls. There are still a lot of people taking loot from the Vault. It’s fun to take loot from the Vault, right?

Squishei: You mentioned the Season 3 dungeon rotation came out. You seemed to imply that Uldaman may not have 5 bosses. Are there any large changes that you can talk about the dungeons from a really wide scope right now?

Paul: I can’t off the dome. There should be a post out from yesterday that should have details on some of these. That post, I will confirm, does say there are four bosses, in that particular. So it’s going to be refreshed a little bit, so you won’t have the Lost Dwarves encounter, the Vikings. But that encounter, you won’t go through that as part of the Mythic+ rotation. You’ll have the other four.

Sean: (Whispers) That’s my favourite one. I’m sad.

Paul: (Chuckles) It is a fun one. But yeah, it made most sense for Mythic+. That’s something that you bypass.

Sean: What a rollercoaster of emotions this interview is.

Can you talk a bit about the decision to add a 5% reward and to make it and the 1% spec-specific?

Paul: Yeah, so continuing to extend cases where players can push their rating. We saw a lot of positive response to having the presence of a 1% reward. It might not feel like it, because it’s still the top 1%, but of accessibility right. That top 0.1% is very inaccessible by definition, majority of players, but still top 1%, it extends it by factor 10. We wanted to extend that a little bit more and get more people thinking about “how high can I push” or “how can I maximize my character,” especially once you get late in the season. This gives you a reason to want to keep playing or enjoy running dungeons with your friends or pick-up groups.

For the spec-specific decision, this comes down to making sure players feel that the game supports them in playing whatever class they want. Like when you get to the very high-end, players have sort of mapped things out and determined like “yeah, I might be able to get a certain amount of rating higher by choosing one DPS over another.” And for a lot of players, actually, that’s a satisfying way to play. I know of plenty of people who say “Ooh, I think I want to play Ele Shaman or Arcane Mage or Arms Warrior, whatever this season. Because I think I can do a little bit better.”

But for people who are more in that 1% or 5%, that can be a frustrating experience sometimes.

While you love playing your preferred Shadow Priest or whatnot, but if a meta has formed, that makes it hard for you to get into groups for that, then that might be a challenge.

So being rated against your own spec, encourages you to play what you want to play, play what you’re good at, as opposed to playing what you feel compelled to run, especially at that 1% or 5% run. So we’re really excited about it. There’s a lot of social dynamics that go into forming groups for Mythic+ as well. So it’s not as simple as just making these couple changes, but we’re really excited about the promise of these changes and we’re going to see how it goes.

Sean: I love it, I’m very excited. I think it’s a great change for exactly the reasons you mentioned, like people just feeling hard-stuck. They’re like “Oh, I can’t get invited because I love Shadow Priest” (we’ll pretend they’re not amazing). Are there any changes to the 0.1% spec or will that remain class-agnostic?

Paul: 0.1% will remain class-agnostic. It’s just the 1% and the 5% who are rated versus spec.

Sean: Okay. Is there any specific rewards or any broad rewards you can mention that we’re expecting from the 5% or is it just sort of like a “Hey, you did it. Here’s an achievement.”

Paul: You will get some rewards, but we’re not ready to talk about exactly what they are yet. But we’ll have more news once we get closer to PTR.

Squishei: So you mentioned a new legendary. We haven’t seen one for since Dragonflight. It’s been a long time. Are you able to share how this one is different than the Dragonflight ones in terms of addressing players concerns of acquisition and power?

Paul: We’re still working on through details of acquisition and power. So nothing specific to announce at this time. We listen to player feedback and whatnot. I can say in particular, we wanted to make sure that this felt like it was usable by a pretty broad group of folks, which is what led it to being, you know, a dagger versus a mace or a wand or something like that. You know, pretty much every caster, by the strictest definition of caster, will be able to wield this particular weapon. As far as fairness and acquisition goes, this is something that was important to us. But also, we think it’s really cool to have this be a weapon, which is not just like everybody has a specific one. It makes that you feel important as part of your raid group that you’re able to get this particular weapon and work towards it. So beyond that though.

Kim: Perceptive players may have noticed, you know, Devourer Demon Hunters can wield daggers as of Patch 12.1.

Seli: Awesome. So moving on to lairs. Having the Lair bosses be available on the Mythic difficulty, especially Mythic Flex difficulty, obviously makes it very easy for aspiring Mythic guilds or maybe AOTC guilds to kind of push themselves a little bit more without having to tackle like an 8-boss raid themselves. But sadly, both Sporefall and Nymrissa have kind of, I would say, missed the mark a little bit in terms of like the feeling like an early Mythic boss, which I think you mentioned in our last interview, like that was kind of like the goal.

So the question would ultimately be where do you intend the lair boss, or has it changed where you want the lair bosses to land going forward, especially with the one that we’re going to be seeing in the next patch.

Paul: Yeah, I would say the target for the next patch is to still shoot for something which is close to the beginning of the main raid. So a boss one, two, maybe a boss three or something like that. When you’re looking at Mythic Flex, one of the best things about Mythic Flex (and reason of I think a lot of people get excited about it) is because there are a lot of people out there who are pushing AOTC. There’s a lot of people there who have guilds who are able to get to that, you know, final boss on Heroic. And then, maybe have the wherewithal and the desire to push harder but just don’t have the makeup for it. That specific 20-player group makes it really hard for them. And so, just offering that little bit of flex from 15 to 25 can bring a lot more people in. But if I think as with the case particularly for the first week or two for Nymrissa Wavecaller, that feels too difficult to be able to jump into, then that can be a challenge.

Now, luckily, not a lot of people were challenging Nymrissa in the first week or two of this season, especially those AOTC guilds whose goal is AOTC. So they didn’t end up running into that. We did see some of the World First people running into that and there’s been some tuning passes to get her closer in line with where we’d expect her to be. But I’d say looking forward, that’s still sort of the idea is, when you’re looking at taking down Noctinax, this should be something which should feel like it’s in range for an AOTC guild, who wants to push themselves a little farther as opposed to being a huge leap ahead of it.

Seli: Yeah. Speaking of Noctinax, how does he tie into the overall world that he finds himself in ultimately?

Kim: Have you shown him the model of him?

This massive Stone Azerite bat. Like what else does he need to be introduced? Giant Azerite bat. So I mean, his story is not, you know, too fancy really. You know, he’s a giant Azerite bat who’s made a nest in this lair called the Gear Hold (?) and we’re going to make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble. So really, he’s made out of Azerite, so in some ways, players who remember Azerite from older expansions, BfA, Azerite quite literally is like the blood, the pain, the scar tissue of Azeroth in a lot of ways. And so, when Azerite is infusing an elemental, it’s not just pretty crystals that are on it. But it actually is, in some ways, kind of feeding her emotions through them. So if she’s in pain, if she’s enraged, you know, if you remember Magni calling out to us, you know, she is in pain, come seal the wounds. (I’m not going to say it in the accent.)

Sean: I’m going to need you to say it in the accent.

Kim: I’ll leave that to someone else, but maybe you can do it for me later.

Definitely when the Azerite is infusing this bat, it is infusing some of that pain, that rage. You know, she’s raging against the dying of the light. It’s infusing this bat, making it act out in ways that it might not necessarily know throughout however long it’s been down there. So that is part of what is tying it into the zone, you know, seeing how Azerite is affecting the creatures out here.

Sean: That’s cool. So Azerite being connected to Azeroth and we’re feeling, she’s feeling, is there any feedback? Is there any way for us through infusion of Azerite to like, the way we’re feeling, the way we are to give our energy to her to help her? Or is it just a one-way street?

Kim: That’s a good question. I don’t have anything specific to share right now, but definitely how we are going to be seeing it for the majority of the zone. Is it kind of representing the emotional state of Azeroth? And we are going to have some moments where we’re able to kind of intuit it how exactly she’s doing by kind of seeing how Azerite is acting or reacting around us.

Paul: I can say, without specifics, there’s going to be a really cool way in 12.2 that you infuse yourself with Azerite. Well, you’ll learn more about later, but yes. Azerite’s going to play into the way that your character plays.

Kim: (Chuckles) Very sneaky.

Squishei: So if I take my Heart of Azeroth from BfA, does that do anything?

Sean: Wait, you still have yours?

Squishei: Yeah, at least I think.

So one last question about the lair then. What lessons did you learn from the Nymrissa lair? Could we see bigger changes to Mythic Flex difficulty as a testing ground? Such as a lower player count or changes to mechanics, or anything like that?

Paul: We learned plenty of lessons for sure. I think one of the bigger ones was that those early tuning challenges that we talked about earlier. If we want to make sure that we like hit the mark in terms of hitting that first three bosses of the main raid difficulty. Beyond that, a lot of it’s been working as expected. You know, we’ve been really happy to see people just be able to walk in the front door and just receive a raid group to fight this boss. Which is really not all that different from how we used to get groups for world bosses. You just click the green eye and then be auto-accepted usually to a group pretty quickly. But just fewer clicks, fewer messing around, just going front door, I’d say. Maybe we won’t make the next one underwater?

As another lesson. It’s cool to be underwater, but sometimes those 17 seconds of swimming is 15 too much.

Squishei: Yeah, or the drowning corpse outside.

Sean: There’s bubbles right there!

Kim: I might have AFK’d and drowned at this one.

Sean: But if you played as a Forsaken… No drowning.

Squishei: Alright. One question about Wrath Remix: so why did you pick Wrath for that? Many players have suggested Shadowlands as a top pick possibly for the rewards, but how do you balance taking into account, the rewards that people want versus what might be fun to play or somewhere that you want to tell the story of again?

Paul: Yeah, there’s just a lot of sort of thematic resonance with where the story’s going to be at in that 12.2.7 time frame. As we’re heading towards the Last Titan, we’re going to heading into Northrend. It’ll be really cool to have that sort of swan song of Northrend happen ahead of time of the Wrath of the Lich King as we play through it in Remix. So that factored in for sure. Also, we only really just teased Wrath Remix specifically. There’s a lot of really cool ideas coming for Wrath Remix that we haven’t shared yet, that we’ll have more details about as we get closer to that 12.2.7 time frame and PTR for that. You’ll be able to see like, why and how we think that’s cool.

Seli: Definitely looking forward to that.

Before we even get to Eclipse though, there is still this one pesky creature that we have to dispatch with Kit’hix obviously having slumbered underneath Ula’tek’s lair. So what do you aim for in terms of like raid difficulty there? Because we already had Sporefall as a little bit on the more accessible and easier side. Kit’hix obviously, as a story boss, there is a bit of expectation that he’s going to provide more of a challenge, but where do you envision that to land, roughly?

Paul: I would say, it shouldn’t be a pushover. For a lot of guilds, it will be a pushover. There’s not going to be a Race to World First for Kit’hix, right? I think it would be very difficult to do so, just because of 7 or 8 weeks of season so far ahead of time that like, you’re going to have a lot of gear disparity among people. So to be able to tune for a Race to World First, in that case, is probably not worth the effort. But somewhere in the middle of the raid tier in terms of difficulty is, I think, where you’ll land.

Won’t be harder than The Coiled Altar and Ula’tek. So if that gives you a rough idea.

Of course, this is going to be part of the story. So you’ll also be able to enjoy a story mode version of this as you play through it. If you’re not even interested in hopping into a LFR or normal Heroic, hopping in and being able to absorb the story, you can do that from a story mode perspective.

Squishei: Real quick, you mentioned story mode. Are you happy with story mode releasing one week after? Will that continue going forward in Season 3?

Paul: This is something we talk about a lot internally. For Season 3, that’s still the plan, but we still listen to player feedback and want to make sure that we’re balancing the desire to be able to hear story as soon as possible. Especially if you are someone who prefers to play story mode. With the incentive to, if you are someone who prefers to play in a normal or Heroic raid, there is a cool moment when you get to experience story together as a group and feel like you’ve accomplished it together. Having an incentive to hop in and do a quick story mode before you play it with your friends, can rob players from that so. But it’s still something we continue to discuss. Nothing is set in stone here.

Sean: You guys have both been doing interviews all week long. You’ve been talking all week long. Let’s start with you, Kim: is there anything that an interviewer hasn’t asked you, or that you really want to talk about that you haven’t had a chance to talk about?

Kim: Well, you asked me a lot about Astalor already… and I just wanted to talk about Astalor.

I guess something related to Astalor that I’ve wanted to bring up is, of course, Prey is continuing into Season 3. As you saw in the What’s Next panel, we’re going to be having that incredible Agony Mode, which is very aptly named. I just want to draw attention to the fact that is going to be so cool to do.

If you are looking for challenge, if you’re looking for punishment, Agony Mode is for you. It’s going to be so fun.

And then, Prey itself, as we saw going from Season 1 to Season 2, a refresh on the affixes, a refresh on some of the targets. We’re going to be seeing that continuing into Season 3 as well. So if you’re a person who enjoys Prey, you want to see more of that. There’s not only going to be additional refreshed content in Season 3 for Prey, but also that deeper level going into Agony Mode. And then, of course, more of those fun little story quests like we got for Astalor in Season 1 and 2, coming a bit more of those in Season 3 of course, culminating in that Nemesis boss.

Sean: I love it. Can you put to bed the rumours that he’s Sire Denathrius in disguise, please?

(Big laughter)

Kim: I think Astalor would like me to make no comment. (Laughs)

Sean: Alright. Paul, same to you. What are people not asking you that you wish you could talk about?

Paul: I haven’t got a lot of questions about the raid. There is a banger of a raid at the end of this season, at the end of the zone, at the end of this expansion. We’re taking on Xal’atath! Like Xal’atath is Boss 8! And there’s also so many just like, really cool thematic encounters along the way. Boss 7 is also going to be a really big story moment as well. Just the encounter team and the dungeon art team, who makes these spaces, have been like working on this with such painstaking accuracy for so long. Making sure that the Worldsoul herself, right in the center of that space, is always sort of commanding your attention. That, as you press through, you’re fighting through varied fights that there some really interesting encounters. We talked about the big boy jellyfish, but it’s not just a big boy jellyfish.

There’s a bunch of cool stuff too. And then that ultimate fight versus Xal’atath has some really cool things that happen in the middle of it that I think, I can’t wait for people to see it. I can’t wait for people to beat it. That raid, keep an eye out for that as well.

Sean: That makes sense. On a scale of Hogger to Dimensius, how big — no shame to Hogger — can we expect the Xal’atath fight to be?

Paul: Oh, closer to Dimensius than Hogger.

Sean: Good news! Bad news for the Race to World First people, but good news for the rest of us!

We’re just about out of time, but one last quick one: what are you most excited about coming up in WoW?

Kim: Wow, I mean. Can I just say Eclipse? Is that a cheating answer?

I’m just so excited for people to see the zone. I mean, the team has poured an incredible amount of love into this zone and into the campaign. There’s so many twists and turns at the end of the campaign. Even when you get into the start of it, you will not be ready for the end of it. Just so excited for people to experience that great story content.

Sean: Awesome. And Paul?

Paul: I love Delves. I’m going to love hopping into Delves for next season, but like. I’ve been working on Midnight for a long time. I know everything about Midnight. What I am particularly excited about are the implications of that big old robot thing hanging out behind Wyrmrest that had his sights aimed at us and being able to explore that as a player is something that I’m tremendously excited about.

Sean: Do you internally call it the Iron Giant? Or is that just me?

Paul: (Chuckles) We have our own names for it.

Sean: Perfect. On behalf of all of us, Raider.IO, Wowhead, Icy Veins, all of the fans, everybody at BlizzCon, everybody at home, thank you so much for all of the work that you do. Thank you for taking the time to sit down with us today and I can’t wait to see you in Azeroth soon.

Modern or Classic Visuals

One of the biggest visual customisation options is the SD/HD toggle. This lets players choose between the original Classic visuals and animations, and the updated HD presentation. Whether you want the Classic feel, or something a little cleaner and more modern, you will be able to choose between the two.

To Transmog, or Not to Transmog

Transmog is a controversial one. For Retail players trying out Forever, the option to style up your character may feel like a must. But for Classic players, seeing your enemy’s gear allows you to visually weigh them up before a fight, and that is essential. 

That’s why WoW Forever gives you the choice. Transmog will be an opt-in system. You can decide whether you want that extra layer of visual information that clown suits convey, or whether you prefer the freedom to dress your character however you like. 

WoW Forever seems to be aiming for a balance between nostalgia and modern quality of life features. But rather than forcing every player into the same experience, Blizzard is giving us a few options and letting us decide how we want our game to look. 

And honestly? More choices are rarely ever a bad thing!

Luckily for us, Blizzard is doing a live Q&A on 17th September at 10:00am PDT. This will be streamed on the official Twitch and YouTube channels.

Whether you want answers regarding Retail, or WoW Forever, you can submit your questions via the links below!

• Submit your questions – EU
• Submit your questions – NA

( Source URL )

---

Submit Your Questions for the World of Warcraft Live Q&A September 17

Have a question about what you learned at BlizzCon 2026 after the show reveals? Head over to the World of Warcraft forums to share it with us.

Then, during the week following BlizzCon 2026, we’re hosting a live Q&A with members from across the World of Warcraft development team as we take a closer look at the compiled questions players have been eager to ask.

When: Thursday, September 17 at 10:00 a.m. PDT
Where: Official Warcraft Twitch and YouTube channels

If you miss the live Q&A, a VOD will be available after the stream so you can catch up.

---

We look forward to answering your questions and exploring your next adventures in Azeroth together.

Housing Showcase

No more waiting for the Housewarming weekly quest to be able to show off your houses—the Housing Showcase will let players browse and submit houses for viewing straight from the Housing dashboard! Players will be able to visit featured builds, or share their creations via Visitor Codes. 

When making a submission, a snapshot of your home will be taken, meaning you can still continue decorating without altering your submission. Participating in selected Showcase events will also offer exclusive decor rewards!

Mannequins

Mannequins are finally coming to Housing—and they’re poseable! We will finally have a way to show off our hard earned transmog collections, or add a little more story to our creations. 

Housing UI Updates

This is where things get real comfortable. Ever wanted to move a whole section of a build, but moving every individual item feels like too much effort? No fear, multi-select is here (well, in Patch 12.2). Multi-select will allow you to click and drag to select multiple decor items at once, allowing you to move and rotate them to wherever you’d like. 

Copy-paste is also on the way, letting players replicate decor items with exactly the same size, rotation, and dye properties. Players will have to have the correct items in their storage though.

Perhaps the biggest quality of life upgrade coming in 12.2—decor home delivery! So long as you’ve obtained one copy of a decor item from a vendor before, you’ll be able to purchase more straight from your Housing dashboard. No more breaking your flow to make a quick trip half way across Azeroth!

Four New Endeavors

Patch 12.2 is adding another four new Neighborhood Endeavors to Player Housing! So far, the only one we know is coming is the Stormriders of the Isle of Dorn.

Don’t Forget to Claim Your BlizzCon Doormat!

In case you’ve not already claimed your free BlizzCon decor, logging in between 12th-27th September will reward you with the BlizzCon 2026 achievement, and a beautiful blue doormat to commemorate the weekend. 

It’s safe to say, the Housing team listens. We have so very much to look forward to in the near future of Player Housing. 

You can use the calculator to preview talent trees for every class, see how many points you have available to spend, and experiment with which different builds you could be using when the game launches on 4th November!

Every class has a different talent tree for each specialisation, each with seven rows. You’ll have 51 talent points to spend across these talent trees. In an interview, Principal Designer Kris Zierhut also confirmed that gold medal talents are also returning.

“We still have what we call them gold medal talents. 11, 21, 31 point, one point talents. Those are all still there. We did add a new one point talent at the 16 point mark. So now each tree has four special one point abilities.”

In other words, Blizzard isn’t reinventing the talent system here—its bringing back classic structure that many players remember. 

Until we can get our hands on the game in November (or the Beta on Thursday), our WoW Forever Talent Calculator is a great way to experience how Forever’s talent system is shaping up—and maybe start theorycrafting your first character!

The Leveling Journey Comes First

In the interview with YouTuber Destin, Associate Production Director Clay Stone explains their decision not to introduce the WoW Token or Character Boosts right now: The journey is what matters most in WoW Forever, and you simply “get better at the game by playing the game.”

Full YouTube Video by Destin

In the interview, Destin, Associate Production Director Clay Stone, and Lead Software Engineer Nora Mills talk about WoW Forever and how the new game mode came about. Stone mentions that the Beta will start at a Level 20 cap, with the cap being raised to Level 30 after a couple of weeks. As it is with all Beta tests, progress will not carry over to WoW Forever’s launch, of course.

Following the passion for detail regarding class mount fantasies in traditional WoW, the newly introduced Forsaken Paladins will also receive their own Paladin Mount quests and rewards in WoW Forever.

Details about the new mount quests remain unknown; however, Blizzard stated that the quest will feature a “retribution” type of theme!

Level 40 Forsaken Paladin Mount

Level 60 Forsaken Paladin Mount

Side-by-Side Comparisons Between Old and New Graphics

The panel offered a deep dive into the technical details of updating World of Warcraft to showcase fresh, vibrant graphics in 2026. What’s a lot more interesting, however, are the side-by-side comparisons the panel went over – you can check some of them out below!

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

One of the factors considered in this choice are racials, or what abilities your race has that the others don’t. Racials have long been a factor in the history of WoW, and Warcraft Forever is reworking them to make them all useful to players!

Racial Changes in Warcraft Forever

In the Warcraft Forever: What’s Next and Deep Dive panels, we learned more about how all racial abilities are going to work in the new game mode. Here’s a quick resume on the overall changes we’re seeing in Warcraft Forever:

• All races will have access to four Racial Abilities: two Active abilities and two Passive abilities. The active abilities generally cover one combat increase and one specialty active that fits your race.
• Racials that previously increased Weapon Skill have been reworked and now increase your Critical Strike chance while equipping the respective weapon type.

The Dwarf and Undead racials were showcased as examples in the Deep Dive panel, but we have access to all of them!

All New Racials in Warcraft Forever

Our team had access to the Warcraft Forever demos at BlizzCon 2026, and we saw all revamped racials! Here’s a complete list of them below.

Skyborne Racial Abilities

Human Racial Abilities

Dwarf Racial Abilities

Night Elf Racial Abilities

Gnome Racial Abilities

Orc Racial Abilities

Undead Racial Abilities

Tauren Racial Abilities

Troll Racial Abilities

Mount Hyjal

What happened after Archimonde’s defeat? Players obviously know how the battle went at the end of Warcraft 3, but Mount Hyjal specifically aims to tell the story around restoring the land and discovering the consequences of the Third War.

Shen’dralas

During Vanilla and Classic, Shen’dralas was a blind spot between Mulgore and Desolace. This changes with Warcraft Forever: The new zone will include stories about its inhabitants, the Shen’dralar, and their Highborne Prince Tortheldrin, but will also continue the tale of the Gelkis and Magram centaur tribes.

Riverglades

Somewhere between Redridge, the Burning Steppes, Badlands, and Swamp of Sorrows are the Riverglades, which will be all about Azeroth’s “forgotten frontier”, established by human and orc forces. Blizzard also mentioned a neutral goblin port and Krol’dok Stronghold, a massive outdoor Ogre dungeon.

Zephras Isle

Zephras Isle is where the Skyborne, Warcraft Forever’s new class, begin their journey. Inspired by Skywall, this floating space has something gone wrong, including failing structures and isolated communities, and the Skyborne need to find out why.

We hope these new zones offer new ways to play World of Warcraft in Warcraft Forever while keeping the spirit of the original zones so many players loved and enjoyed over the decades.

All Warcraft Forever Rulesets

A total of four “Gameplay Styles” will be available in Warcraft Forever:

• Normal: This ruleset allows you to focus on adventuring and fighting monsters while allowing you to fight other players at your own discretion.
• PvP: This ruleset allows you to focus on player versus player combat: you are almost always at risk of being attacked by opposing players.
• Roleplay: This ruleset has strict naming conventions and behavior rules for players interested in immersing themselves as a character in a fantasy-based world.
• Hardcore (arriving later): This challenging ruleset features permanent player character death. Dead characters may transfer to other rulesets to be resurrected.

Collections Legacy Points Move From Right to Left

One important note during the panel was that Legacy Points and Collections are being shared between the first three rulesets. For Hardcore, Legacy Points and Collections move to the ruleset of your choice after death.

Watch Controller Support in Action

( Source URL )

---

World of Warcraft: Forever What’s Next Panel Recap

Player choice also carries through opt-in Transmog, modern and Classic visual presets, High-Definition (HD) and Standard-Definition (SD) character-model options, restored Classic animations for HD character models, and official gamepad support for players who prefer to play with a controller. These options are designed to welcome more players into Azeroth while letting you choose the visual style and play setup that feels right for you.

On our official YouTube channel, you can get a first impression of the new controller support setup, including a Controller diagram and close-ups of the action bar layout:

What’s Actually New About Official WoW Controller Support

Controller support isn’t a completely new thing in World of Warcraft. Addons such as ConsolePort have helped players experience WoW on controllers and handhelds for years.

However, truly official tool support is always a good thing because, at best, it considers the rest of WoW’s official gameplay experience, such as the UI as a whole or accessibility options, without the need of addon developers combing through official API changes.

The only caveat, as far as we know, is that controller support has only been officially announced for Warcraft Forever – so we hope to have this excellent feature available across all WoW game modes!

An interesting detail popped up in one of the images shared in all the BlizzCon announcements. The Worldcore raid has a particularly spiky part in its main chamber, which players have spotted and are now thinking may be the tip of Sargeras’ sword!

Some REALLY Good Aim

As Freelancer0495 points out, the red pointy thing in the top left of the image below sure looks familiar!

If it really is the sword, Sargeras came incredibly close to destroying Azeroth! Or was that even his intent? There’s a few things to consider here. If he was going for the kill, as is the general feel of the cinematic, there’s no way he accidentally got THAT close considering the scale we’re talking about. It would have to be some defense mechanism, either from the Titan machinery or Azeroth herself, that stopped it or deflected it. Alternatively, perhaps the point wasn’t to stab/destroy the World Soul. Perhaps Sargeras was trying to free her from the Titan devices (which look suspiciously similar to the Primal dragons’ prisons from the Vault of the Incarnates) by destroying them. Or, that’s not even the sword.

Is That Even the Sword?

First off, despite what it initially looks like, I’d say whatever it is isn’t actually lined up with the World Soul sphere or its containment rings. It looks like it’s behind it, possibly even on the wall of the domed structure.

Also, the “tip” itself looks very strange and craggy. While it seems unlikely Sargeras went and stabbed Azeroth with an unsharpened sword, it would definitely pick up a lot of debris along its long, LONG trip to the Worldcore. Between the planet’s crust, mantle, and everything else, a lot could have melted onto it, making the tip look like it does above. Or that’s just how the colossal sword’s tip looks. Here are a few angles of it we’ve seen so far:

It doesn’t look any more pointy in-game either.

And here are a few images from the lore books (at least the ones that match its current look):

Again, doesn’t look extremely sharp, especially considering its size.

What Else Could it Be?

As I’ve mentioned before, whatever it is seems to be behind the sphere. It might also be a crack in the domed room, showing the rocks behind it. That also seems a little unlikely, as there’s no cracks in the walls and no other signs of displacement on the structure. What it looks like most is like a dimensional rift with some rocks inside it (but it’s definitely not that). Could it be linked to Xal’atath’s incursion?

Another reason not to think it’s the sword is the Eclipse cinematic itself, and basically the entirety of what we’ve seen from Xal’atath so far. If it is the sword and it did break the Titan’s chamber, why did she need all that power to get in when it was already breached? Then again, maybe she needs the power for something else and just decided to use the front door because she could.

Apropos of nothing, I’ll just leave this awesome and related fan cinematic here:

So, what’s your verdict? Is it the sword and did Blizzard just do the most subtle reveal ever, just tossing it in a promotional image? Or is it something else, not really that relevant to the plot and lore? Considering how close it is to the World Soul, whatever it is I’d say is definitely not irrelevant.

Are we finally going to see a proper addressing of Sargeras’ stabbing? We may have to wait until the very end of the raid in 12.2! You know what they say though…

What sword?

Barrow Deeps – 10-Player Raid

A massive underground network connecting the Night Elves’ barrow dens, holding dangerous prisoners, where even allies aren’t normally welcome: This is the setting of Warcraft Forever’s first new raid.

In their Warcraft Forever Deep Dive, the developers mentioned a corruption seething through the complex and an infamous demon hunter once imprisoned there. That strongly suggests Illidan Stormrage – however, it is not confirmed that we will be able to set sight on the Betrayer just yet.

Hyjal Summit – 20-Player Raid

The second raid brings us to the aftermath of Warcraft III: Archimonde has been defeated, and the Night Elves lost their immortality. According to Blizzard, players will investigate a thread draining power from the land around Hyjal Summit.

Most interestingly, the developer also teased a “legendary power” during the Hyjal presentation and later confirmed that Warcraft Forever will, in fact, include a new legendary. However, details like its identity and its exact connection to this raid remain unrevealed.

Both raids will open on December 9, about five weeks after Warcraft Forever releases on November 4.

Blizzard has launched a new website for BlizzCon: timewalking.blizzcon.com. The site gives players a personalised look at their history across Blizzard games, pulling statistics such as:

• Battle.net birthday
• Which games you were there for on Day 0
• Most-played Blizzard game over the last 10 years
• Total gameplay across Blizzard titles.

You also get to see your playtime percentiles, showing how your gaming habits compare to other players… gulp. 

Things get even more interesting when you dive into individual games. For World of Warcraft and WoW Classic, the site shows you:

• First login percentile
• Nemesis that has killed your characters the most
• Percentile for total amount of gold you’ve earned across both Retail and Classic.

According to the website, statistics are only available until 16th September 2026, so don’t hang around!

You can log in and check out your stats on the BlizzCon Timewalking website. 

Here is everything covered:

Autumn:

• 12.1.5 – Labyrinths, a new campaign and mini-raid, Aqir Invasions, and more.
• 12.1.7 – New story and quests, Thrall Lorewalking, Turbulent Timeways, and more.

Winter:

• 12.2 – Season 3, new story and quests, new zone, new dungeon, new raid, and more.

Spring:

• The Last Titan Expansion Reveal.
• 12.2.5 – New world event, new story and quests, and transmog updates.

Summer

• 12.2.7 – New story and quests, profession updates, and more.
• Wrath of the Lich King Remix.

Nine New Dungeons Across Azeroth

The panel covered nine dungeons in total across almost all level ranges:

• Hall of Thanes – Levels 13–18: Explore royal burial chambers beneath Ironforge, where intruders have disturbed the tombs and ghostly whispers fill the corridors.
  
• Ruins of Lordaeron – Levels 15–20: Help reclaim the devastated city from lingering Scourge forces and investigate a necromancer apparently preparing another attack.
  
• Wetlands Excavation Site – Levels 24–29: Investigate mysterious lights, drifting mist, and rogue Titan constructs above Whelgar’s Excavation.
  
• Dalaran – Levels 28–33: The protective barrier has fallen, exposing malfunctioning enchantments, uncontrolled constructs, and demonic activity. Blizzard also promises a wider city to explore.
  
• The Drowned City – Levels 35–40: Ancient troll ruins have risen off Stranglethorn Vale’s coast, bringing trolls, Naga, and stranded pirates into the picture.
  
• Krol’dok Stronghold – Levels 40–55: An enormous outdoor Ogre dungeon in Riverglades, with kidnappings, raids on nearby settlements, and suspicious nighttime chanting.
  
• Alcaz Island Prison – Levels 48–53: Enter the previously inaccessible prison associated with rumors about Varian Wrynn’s captivity, where the Defias and Naga are fighting.
  
• Blackmaw Hold – Levels 55–60: Discover a Furbolg city behind Azshara’s mysterious gate. Corruption threatens its inhabitants, while its tunnels lead toward the Barrow Deeps raid.
  
• Shaper’s Terrace – Levels 58–60: Investigate a Titan facility in the hills of Un’Goro Crater, filled with ancient machinery, power crystals, and uncontrolled wildlife

First Visual Dungeon Impressions

Below, you can check out some of the Press Kit images showcasing the new dungeons of Warcraft Forever:

There’s a new top 5% reward for Mythic+ rating, in addition to the current ones.

On top of that, the percentages will now be calculated against players of your spec, not all players. This is only for the 1% and 5% rewards. It adds a lot to the “play what you want to play” philosophy and Blizzard hope to see a lot of spec diversity in Season 3.

Here’s the official post explaining it all:

( Source URL )

---

Push your limits, climb the rankings, and earn new seasonal rewards based on your specialization.

Season 3 brings new goals for Mythic+ players, including an additional reward tier for the top 5% of players and updated eligibility for both the top 1% and top 5% seasonal rewards.

Players who finish Season 3 in the top 5% of Mythic+ ratings will earn a new seasonal reward. This new tier gives more high-performing dungeon runners a chance to show off their accomplishments each season.

Beginning with Season 3, top 1% and top 5% Mythic+ rewards will be awarded based on your ranking within your specialization instead of your overall ranking among all Mythic+ players.

For example, if you push Mythic+ as a Protection Warrior, your eligibility will be determined by how your rating compares to other Protection Warriors. The same applies to every specialization participating in Mythic+ during the season.

Gather your group, choose your specialization, and prepare to climb the Mythic+ rankings when Season 3 begins.