Development Update: A Message to the WoW Community

To the WoW Community,

Over the past few weeks since we shared an update, the WoW team has been focused on the immediate future—both for our people and workplace, and what’s next for players too. As a part of that, the entire team came together to ask: What are the biggest things we’re hearing are getting in the way of your fun, and what are the most impactful changes we could make to WoW today to fix that?

Shadowlands Update 9.1.5 will be going on the PTR next week, and a lot of what you’ll find in it is the direct result of your collective feedback. It includes long-asked-for changes to make it easier to swap covenants and conduits, updates to make it so you don’t need to repeat covenant campaigns on alts, new character customization options for some races that were lacking them, and many more changes to help you play the way you want.

It also has updates to improve the game environment for our community, including additional changes to some content to better reflect our shared values, better visibility into the impact of your in-game reports of harassment, and more serious penalties for people engaged in disruptive behavior.

We hope you’ll see something from your own 9.1.5 wish list when we post the patch notes next week, and we’ll keep listening, refining, and building on that as we continue PTR testing and development of what’s next.

For our Burning Crusade Classic players, we’re excited to let you know that the first major content update, Overlords of Outland, will be going live soon. Starting September 15, you’ll be able to take on Prince Kael’thas and Lady Vashj in a pair of iconic raids, engage in a new season of Arena combat, and more. We’re also working on something for WoW Classic players who’ve told us they’d like a chance at a fresh start, and will be sharing more on our plans soon.

Creating World of Warcraft is truly a collaborative effort between the people on our team, across Blizzard, and all of you—and as we build, iterate on, and talk about what’s next, we hope we can demonstrate our commitment to making Azeroth the best place it can be for everyone.

— World of Warcraft Development Team