How many people re-subbed and pre-bought the expansion for a September pre-patch?
Makes you wonder if they never intended (or were overly hopeful) for an October Release but needed another infusion of subscriptions for Q3 results.
I’m fine with it being pushed back in order to ensure what we receive is top notch.
Yea, me too. I’m in no hurry because I would much rather have a game that works smoothly instead of a cluster fire of bugs and irritations.
By releasing prepatch, they’re saying classes are essentially done. So the delay is more for systems. Given there are still significant changes that keep hitting beta for covenants and conduits, etc., I suspect it has something to do with that.
Edit:
Perculia on WowHead has a great article speculating on when SL will be released and considerations on how it might effect players:
Bliz is offering refunds for preorders.
As they said in the post, they need more time to work on endgame. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense, since they’re reducing leveling time to something like 6 hrs from 10-50. This means that people will be hitting endgame much faster. In other words, the game is becoming much more endgame focused than leveling focused. In order to make this enormous change to the game work, they need to make sure that endgame will be engaging enough to keep people subbed until the next expac. Otherwise, they might begin to slide into the free-to-pay market due to not being able to keep people subbed as long as they’re used to. The loss of so many players in the early parts of BfA must have hurt. I imagine that’s one of the reasons they’re making these changes in the first place.
I’m ok with them pushing back the release date. The prepatch will have most if not all of the changes I really care about and the content I enjoy the most. For me leveling is what is fun in MMO’s so they can take their sweet time with the release and get it right.
Really looking forward to leveling up a bunch of alts on both sides.
I can’t wait for the barber shop!!
What’s the barber shop? Or what’s gonna be new about it?
All of the new customizations are awesome!
The Barber Shop allows you to change your appearance in game. It has been in game for years, but with the release of Shadowlands there is a huge increase in customization options for your characters. People will be spending a lot of time playing around with their looks.
…and most likely spend a lot of gold getting the look just right.
Conduit cooldowns changed.
I’m pretty sure initially the limitation is there to make World First more challenging as those guilds min/max the heck out of every slot for every boss fight and will have to choose wisely on their 7 swaps.
After World First is over and say top 10 is logged, i am wondering if we don’t see it turn back into the rest zone/Tomes swap out that evolved with Essences.
Bliz released a prepatch survival guide:
Ton of useful information here. Highlights if you don’t want to clicky:
Black Market Auction House now requires a max level character to access the BMAH
Water now regenerates mana slower in the first seconds you begin drinking, increasing to a rapid return as you drink continuously.
Elixir of Ancient Knowledge, Elixir of the Rapid Mind, and Excess Potion of Accelerated Learning will become Poor quality and no longer usable.
You can no longer champion a Mists of Pandaria faction for bonus reputation.
Travel Form’s ground forms are no longer mountable but the Stag Form ability has been renamed Mount Form and ground forms are mountable.
Explosive Orb health has been reduced and no longer scales with keystone level.
When swapping weapons, the Off Balance debuff is applied and prevents the Death Knight from gaining the bonuses of Runeforge enchantments for 30 seconds.
Normally I’d link the blue post, but wowhead has a ton of great guides all in one place here.
What? Taking away druid cat form, bear form, etc?
If my druid’s forms become mounts I’ll be really pissed.
Here’s what it means: Currently, when you’re in a no fly zone with your friends and you press Travel Form, unless you have the Cheetah glyph applied to Travel Form, you turn into a mountable stag and every body wants to hop on and ride you like they are in a rodeo.
They are changing this where you can now press Travel Form and you can turn into a stag that no one can mount. If you want to turn into a stag that your friend can mount, then you press Mount Form.
What also isn’t clear is if you have the cheetah glyph on your travel form, does your cheetah become mountable when you press Mount Form? Poor little cheetah.
You are correct…poor cheeta 