As a part of our ongoing series of articles featuring many of the collectible’s in World of Warcraft, we’ve set our sights on Mists of Pandaria. The many riches of this expansion are just waiting for you to claim them.

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World of Warcraft is best when you have a community of other players around you, and while numerous ways to participate in cross-realm play have been added to the game over the years, there are still many aspects of the experience that are realm-based. From your history with your guild to your interactions with the economy around you, a realm with a healthy population provides more opportunities, and it’s been several years since we last connected some realms.

We’ve now completed a comprehensive study of realm populations for every realm in the world. Over the next 2-3 months, we’re going to connect the low-population realms to other existing realms. This process will take place during scheduled maintenance, connecting a few realms each week, until we’ve connected every low-population realm in every region to a substantially larger population of players.

As this project unfolds, we will post notices in advance of each week’s connections in the appropriate regions and languages. During each maintenance period, everything will be automatically combined for the affected realms. When maintenance is complete, players on affected realms will log into Battle for Azeroth and find that they’re now part of a larger connected-realm community. At the same time, we’ll merge the appropriate realm discussion forums.

Please keep an eye out for notifications here as we proceed through this project. Again, we’ll let you know here in advance when realms in this region are about to be connected.

Thank you very much!

We wanted to take a moment to clarify that the extra elemental damage from weapons such as Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, Iceblade Hacker, and Warblade of Caer Darrow are behaving as expected in WoW Classic and do not actually cause additional non-physical damage to the target. They do however still inflict extra damage in the amount specified in the tooltips. This is not noted in the combat log separately and is simply calculated as additional physical damage added to the weapon’s attack.

That being said, it has been noticed by players that when using an elemental barrier such as a nature/frost/fire protection potion or a shield that absorbs a specific element, you will see an “absorbed (X)” message in the combat log. This is also correct and working as expected, and such effects will reduce the damage of attacks by such weapons by the amount of extra elemental damage specified in the weapon tooltip.

Ultimately the way these weapons function is a very old quirk/bug with how original World of Warcraft was built. While definitely strange and unintuitive, these weapons are behaving exactly as they did in the original game and we have no intention of changing them to behave differently in WoW Classic.

I hope this helps provide some clarity around this very odd quirk inherent to these types of weapons!

Rest in peace, Byron "Reckful" Bernstein. https://t.co/B3i4CGISx0

With the upcoming Ahn’Qiraj event in WoW Classic, we’ve seen players discussing transferring to a different server to become the Scarab Lord. We’d like to clarify that there is a 90-day period following a character transfer, during which a player is prevented from opening the gates and obtaining the mount.

If you transfer to another realm, you will still be able to complete the quest within 90 days of the transfer, however, you will not receive the rewards associated with being the first to turn it in. We want to allow players to transfer, but that should be so they can play with their friends, not disrupt another realm’s Scepter race.

We hope this clears up the concern.

@RichardParson This is great!

@WhittleIts 💖

@Marvin527 Congrats! Enjoy the journey \o/

@ajbrake Congrats!! The sky is the limit! \o/

@wonderwezgaming Awkward, or awesome?

@FFPMMarc There's many secrets hidden around Azeroth - exploitation grants rewards!

@WhittleIts If you want to try them out beforehand it's worth taking advantage of the class trial! https://t.co/lp6ecohK5V

@Umbradomo Seeing the story from the other side is always fun. Hope you enjoy!

RT @WoWEsports: The Mythic Dungeon International returns on July 10 with the Global Finals. The best teams from NA & EU battle to become W…

In this thread, we’re discussing all aspects of the new dungeon the Spires of Ascension, coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this dungeon as they are made.

Thank you for your testing and feedback!

In this next build of the Shadowlands alpha, combat potions, such as primary stat potions and mana potions, now have a 5 minute cooldown. Additionally, they are no longer limited to one use per encounter. This is intended to make potion use less of a hassle, less expensive, and more decision-oriented in various situations throughout the game.

In raid encounters, players will still have the option of using a potion at the start of an encounter, but using a potion just prior to and as close to the pull as possible will no longer be required. Longer encounters will now offer up more than one moment to use a potion for maximum tactical advantage. Ending a raid boss encounter with a wipe or a win will reset the potion cooldown.

In dungeons, spacing out potion use will place more emphasis on deciding the most important times to use them.

In PvP situations where combat potions are allowed, such as War Mode, Battlegrounds, and Epic Battlegrounds, the rate at which you drop combat can vary greatly. This change will bring a consistent expected cooldown to combat potions when you see enemies consume them.

Please feel free to share your feedback on this change in this thread. Thank you.

Fair tidings Illidari. The next build of the Shadowlands Alpha will have a number of changes based on your feedback. We’re generally happy with the core kit of both Demon Hunter specializations, but want to improve talent diversity.

Havoc

• Demonic Appetite - Consuming a soul fragment no longer reduces the cooldown of Eye Beam.

• Cycle of Hatred - When Chaos Strike refunds Fury, it will reduce the cooldown of Eye Beam (was Metamorphosis) .

  • Developers’ notes: We’ve reconsidered the addition of Eye Beam cooldown reduction to Demonic Appetite, believing it will make that talent a dominant choice in the row. Instead, we’re placing that benefit on Cycle of Hatred, which is competing against other options for AOE damage.

• Insatiable Hunger: Demon’s Bite deals 20% more damage and generates 5 to 10 additional Fury.

  • Developers’ notes: Since this ability only increased the maximum additional Fury that Demon’s Bite could generate, it was possible to frequently see no noticeable benefit. The talent will now always result in at least 5 extra Fury generated.

• Immolation Aura now generates 20 Fury when cast.

• Burning Hatred: Immolation now generates an additional 60 Fury over 12 seconds.

  • Developers’ notes: We added Immolation Aura back to Havoc baseline because it was a nice mid-tier AOE damage ability that could be shared across the specs. Player feedback made it clear that Fury generation was an important part of the ability, so we moved the initial burst of Fury to the main ability. The Fury generation over time will remain in the talent.

• Fel Mastery has been replaced with a new talent, Unbound Chaos.

• Unbound Chaos: While Immolation Aura is active, your inner demon slams into nearby enemies at the end of your Fel Rush, dealing Chaos damage.

  • Developers’ notes: Fel Mastery was a simple buff to Fel Rush damage that required frequent reorientation to your target and as a result primarily saw play alongside Momentum. By binding the damage bonus to Immolation Aura, we feel like the talent can be taken on its own or alongside Momentum.

Vengeance

• Immolation Aura and Fiery Brand tooltips were changed to show the total amount of damage done over the duration of the spell.

• Soul Cleave damage increased 20%.

  • Developers’ notes: We often see feedback that Soul Cleave is a low priority button because the passive consumption of soul fragments means no healing is lost if it isn’t pressed, and Spirit Bomb offers more damage and healing per soul fragment. We made a change already that adds additional healing to Soul Cleave for each orb consumed, but also we’re increasing the damage of Soul Cleave as well. We’d like to see Spirit Bomb used intermittently to apply Frailty, but Soul Cleave to be the spec’s primary source of healing and damage.

• Agonizing Flame no longer increases the damage of Immolation Aura. It now increases its duration by 50%.

  • Developers’ notes: Increasing the duration of Immolation Aura increases the value of the talent’s movement speed buff and creates synergy with other talents like Infernal Armor and the re-design of Charred Flesh mentioned below.

• Feast of Souls healing increased by 25%.

  • Developers’ notes: This talent is intentionally straightforward, offering an option that makes Vengeance’s primary consumer Soul Cleave better. It’s a fine option, but may need additional tuning to close the gap with the more active options in the row.

• Charred Flesh has been redesigned: Immolation Aura damage now increases the duration of your Fiery Brand by 0.5 seconds.

  • Developers’ notes: Fire damage alone was not an attractive option when compared to the other options in the row. This interaction with Immolation Aura can significantly increase the uptime of a key defensive ability while also increasing its overall damage. This creates interesting synergies with anything that modifies Fiery Brand or Immolation Aura such as the talents Agonizing Flames and Burning Alive.

Please continue to reply with your thoughts on Demon Hunters in Shadowlands!

In an upcoming build for the Shadowlands alpha, we are updating some dialog and quest text referring to a key character to the Bastion storyline: Pelagos. While normally we wouldn’t share these changes in advance, we recognize there is a higher than usual possibility of this being misunderstood if (and when) it is discovered out of context through datamining, and wanted to make sure that our intentions are clear.

A key part of the Bastion storyline is that Aspirants are able to choose a physical form that represents their true self. Pelagos, who presented as a woman in his mortal life, chose to be a man in the Shadowlands. The team had originally written him to use they/them pronouns, but received feedback that he/him would be more respectful of the character’s wishes to be identified as a man. This change is simply the result of us listening and responding to that feedback.

Since the launch of WoW Classic, we’ve taken action daily against accounts that were botting, hacking, and selling in-game services for real money. This continual effort has resulted in the average daily number of accounts actioned consistently increasing in the Americas, EU, Korea, and Taiwan. In May of this year, we witnessed a surge in the number of botters, and our intensification of efforts to eliminate them brought our average of actioned accounts upwards into the thousands per day.

Since our last post about this issue on June 17, we’ve continued to remove exploiters at a high pace, typically 2,000-3,000 per day, with over 4,000 accounts actioned on some days. This daily effort has resulted in actions taken against over 40,000 accounts since June 17 in the Americas, EU, Korea, and Taiwan.

We’re dedicated to driving the the exploiters away wherever we can, as we continue to make our response to this one of our highest priorities. This is a long-term effort that becomes continuously more difficult, as exploits and those who use them are driven by real money profit motives. We take action constantly, 24/7, to enforce the Blizzard End-User License Agreement. Any account that violates or assists others in violating license limitations on hacking, cheating, and other unauthorized use of the game is subject to suspension and removal.

As always, we greatly appreciate your reports. Player reports have been and will remain highly valuable to us, as we must evolve our detection and response methods to stay ahead of the organizations who would otherwise degrade the game for legitimate players.

Thank you very much.

@Nezhira Awww, you get to enjoy the whole month! :D