Several visuals associated with spells, objects, and items have been updated to use Warlords of Draenor visual effects.
Resurrection abilities can only be cast once on a dead player. Any other consecutive casts will result in an error message. The debuff is cleared once the player comes back to life.
Classes[]
Death knight[]
Now automatically changes to the Presence appropriate to that specialization when switching between specializations. (Previously, switching specs meant the death knight had to remember to activate a Presence.)
Druid[]
Druids will now automatically shapeshift into the appropriate form when switching specs.
[Misdirection]'s cooldown no longer resets if the buff ends before the hunter has attacked a target.
The related buffs have been consolidated, with the total duration being 8 seconds regardless of any action taken (unless the spell is modified by Glyph of Misdirection).
Hunter pets[]
If a pet is of a species or form that has a dance animation, an effect such as a thrown [Party G.R.E.N.A.D.E.] will cause them to dance. They will keep doing so until despawned (by distance, dismissed or flying away on your mount).
Pets automatically apply aura buffs when they spawn, which has their own sound effects.
[Maelstrom Weapon] now shows a growing visual effect to the player for every charge gained. Previously it was only visible upon reaching five charges. The five-charge visual effect is unchanged from the old visual.
The difference between mobs with green (easy) difficulty and your own character level has been increased from 3 to 5. For example, if you are level 10, level 6 and 7 mobs are no longer green but yellow.
Khadgar had his model updated, most obvious before the release of Warlords of Draenor in his appearance in Shattrath City.
Seat of Knowledge[]
Three new Lorewalkers have been added: Lorewalker Fu <Scenario Storyteller>, Lorewalker Shin <Heroic Scenario Storyteller> and Lorewalker Han <Raid Finder Storyteller> allow players over level 90 to queue for the content they represent.
[Magic Sword] - 100% hit chance, up from 75%. Description changed.[3]
[Punish] - Renamed from Lash. 100% hit chance, up from 90%. Description changed.[3]
[Shadow Shock] and [Shadow Slash] are now 100% hit chance, but the damage dealt is variable within a much wider range.
Pets don't receive full health when they level up.
PvP[]
Battlegrounds and Arenas[]
Players can no longer queue for roles that are not appropriate to at least one of their current specializations. If the player joins the battleground while in a specialization that is not appropriate to their designated role, they will be switched to their alternate specialization.
The battleground Call to Arms feature has been removed. Players can still use the Random Battleground feature to gain extra rewards.
Players can now accept summons to queued battlegrounds and arenas while in combat or dead.
Random Battlegrounds no longer award bonus Honor and Conquest Points. They instead provide rewards in the form of Strongboxes.
Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will have the same base Conquest cap.
A bonus Conquest cap for Ashran has been added.
Level requirements for existing battlegrounds have been adjusted to provide a wider variety of battlegrounds at lower levels.
Random Battlegrounds are now available at level 20.
Dampening now starts instantly in 2s when both sides have at least one healer.[4]
The duration of Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks has been reduced to 15 minutes (from 20 minutes), and the resource goal of most if not all resource race battlegrounds has been been reduced to 1500 (from 1600 or 2000), in order to better fit the new three-tier Strongbox reward structure.
Fully looted mob corpses that are harvestable by a gathering profession are now highlighted with an outline for players with the appropriate profession.
Outline Mode disabled
Fully looted mob corpses that are harvestable by a gathering profession now display the sparkle effect for players with the appropriate profession.
Alchemy[]
All recipes from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor are categorized under a new parent category, "Ancient Alchemical Recipes".
Blacksmithing[]
All recipes from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor are categorized under a new parent category, "Antique Plans".
Cooking[]
[Cooking Fire] now uses a reticule and it cannot be placed farther than 3 yards.
Enchanting[]
All recipes from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor are categorized under a new parent category, "Enchants of Old".
Engineering[]
All recipes from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor are categorized under a new parent category, "Classic Engineering".
First Aid[]
All recipes from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor are categorized under a new parent category, "Old Remedies".
Fishing[]
In Outline Mode, [Find Fish] now highlights the objects of fishing pools (i.e. the fish swimming, crates).
Experience points needed to level up have been normalized. For instance, Level 89 requires 562,000 experience to reach Level 90 instead of 18,370,000.
As an example, experience required up till 59 increase by approximately 4%, and is unchanged by the normalization. Upon reaching 60, the increase was 68.6%, and is instead 47.6%.
Experience gained from quests and monsters has been normalized.
Items[]
Lower level items have different sell prices. Higher level items are not affected.
Cloud serpent mounts are now for all characters on an account like any other mount. You now only have to do the dailies to get them in the first place.
All Tier 11 and Tier 12 normal set items are now purchased with gold, making the tier tokens useless. In addition, the heroic set items now only requires the set token.
Guns use new, quieter sounds when shooting. The old ones were often said to be too loud.
Dungeons now have objectives displayed automatically. Completion of all objectives will mark the dungeon as complete and award a gold and experience bonus. Some dungeons have optional objectives that give gold and experience bonuses upon completing each optional objective.
Madam Goya has moved her operation to Draenor for more lucrative markets.
Elwynn Forest[]
Falkhaan Isenstrider has moved from in front of the Northshire Valley gate fountain to by the fence right outside the gate.
Hillsbrad Foothills[]
Andy Murgole now patrols Western Strand, attempting to blend in with the local murlocs.
Isle of Giants[]
The waterfall top mistakenly placed at the top of the path to Oondasta has been removed.
Orgrimmar & Durotar[]
There is now a portal in the throne room of Grommash Hold. It is not usable and the two Orgrimmar Mages channeling the portal spell do not have any dialogue beyond default female orc greetings.
Gamon has returned to the Valley of Strength and has been appointed "Hero of Orgrimmar". He is friendly to players and can't be killed, over and over again.
A new portal to the Blasted Lands for the Iron Horde quests has displaced the Outland portal, now moved to the upper level of Cleft of Shadow.
Pristine artifact display auras are much more vibrant now.
Stair of Destiny[]
The Dark Portal no longer functions on the Outland side and can not connect with the Blasted Lands. The portal on that side now acts as a wall.
Another pair of Alliance and Horde mages have set up new, extra portals directly in front of the Dark Portal to Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
Stormwind[]
There is now a portal in the war room of Stormwind Keep. It is not usable and the two Stormwind Mages channeling the portal spell do not have any dialogue beyond default male and female human greetings.
A new area can be found in the hills, inaccessible by land-travel, south of the Mage Quarter. It is populated by mage-related tents and props, a high-definition gryphon nest, strange plants, and an inactive portal, but no NPCs or usable function at this time.
Archmage Nakada, a reference to the late Blizzard engineer, Ron Nakada, now teaches a class in outdoors Mage Quarter. "Volunteering" for his demonstration will grant a temporary transformation of your character and allow you to read additional dialogue options from him.
Sunsong Ranch[]
Unplanted soil at Sunsong Ranch are no longer all oriented in the same direction.
This change affects growing crops as well.
Timeless Isle[]
The boulders blocking the way into Mysterious Den have had their boundaries adjusted.
New players are greeted with a "What's New" screen highlighting some of Blizzard's latest features.[7]
This window can be accessed by going to the Game Menu as well.[8]
Auction House[]
There is now an option to the upper left called "exact match" which when selected looks for an exact match of the search terms.
Bags[]
Junk grey items now have a gold coin indicating they are vendor trash while at a vendor.[8]
Closing a vendor window now only closes all open bag windows if they were opened by interacting with the vendor.
Cursors[]
Added
- Architect
- Missions
- Quest interact
- SawBlade
- SmallOpenHand
- SmallOpenHandGlow
Removed/Replaced
- Reforge
- OpenHand
- OpenHandGlow
Display[]
Other alphabets such as Chinese characters and Cyrillic alphabet are supported now. Names that are spelled with those alphabets are displayed properly now (maybe only in this Beta and PTR version).
A new targeting option was added that uses a colored border instead of highlighting. This is enabled by default, but can be disabled.
For other players and NPCs, the color of the border depends on your reaction to the target.
Other interactable objects (e.g. quest objectives, mailboxes, gathering nodes, etc) will show a yellowish white border when moused over.
The Dungeon Journal now has a role tab, which explains the basics of the fight for tanks, healers, and damage-dealers. This is a bit more streamlined than the abilities section, which lists each spell in great detail and can be hard for newer players to scan for important parts of the fight.[8]
The second paragraph of the warning text ("Destroying this item will also abandon any related quests.") is now colored red in the dialogue box which opens when attempting to delete a quest item.
The Quest Log is now found on the right-hand side of the map when in windowed mode, with achievement progress shown at the top for completing all the major storylines in a zone.[8]
When you move with the map open, it remains open but turns transparent.[8]
Quest rewards have a small chance to be better-than-expected. Instead of getting an uncommon-quality reward, you have a chance for a rare or epic version. When this occurs, a special Toast message will appear in the center of your screen, similar to when you win gear via a bonus roll in a raid.[8]
The character creation screen now features a randomize button for player names. Clicking the button will generate a random name based on the character's race and gender.
^Brian Holinka on Twitter: "we actually added "Hallowed Ground" domes, which make you invincible, to res points in Isle of the Conquest to stop camping."