Whitemane: 2024 Roadmap, Deathwing, and Frostmourne
2024-04-04 @ 11:00 PM (ST)
2024-04-04 @ 11:00 PM (ST)
Hey, everybody!
Tonight we want to share some info with you, recap what we learned and tell you what to expect of Whitemane later in 2024!
For more detailed timeline, please refer to the specific realms.
Deathwing launches on 12th April!
Deathwing launches in just a week! To those who don't know what Deathwing is: a fresh Cataclysm realm with rapid progression of just 11 weeks.
It's something that hasn't been done before, a realm with such a short lifespan is not just very hard on our devs but also rough for players to keep up with, but we have made a promise to offer a fresh Cataclysm realm in 2024 and are finetuning it to the smallest bits to make it suitable, even for the casuals among you who might just be looking to dip their feet into the waters of Cataclysm right before Cataclysm Classic hits. It will offer increased loot drop rates, 10 and 25 raid lockouts split from day one, increased experience, reputations and profession rates.
For anyone interested in how exactly we fine tuned things, here's a little more in-depth dive: Professions, Experience, Reputation and Experience will all be 5x, with the exception of experience being 10x increased for the first 12 days until Tier 11 launches.
All cooldowns of professions such as Truegold or Dreamcloth will be entirely removed. Chaos Orbs will not be soulbound from day one. Progressive Content like Molten Front or Tol Barad or even the Legendary Quest lines will be advanced as well, more detail on that when time's due.
We're thrilled to introduce exclusive rewards for achieving lifetime Conquest Points milestones on Deathwing! Upon hitting specific Conquest Points thresholds, a select number of players will receive prestigious rewards:
"But I like Maelstrom, what happens to my Maelstrom characters?", you ask. Deathwing will be merged with Maelstrom about 3 weeks after Dragon Soul Heroic launches. Maelstrom characters stay as is and you will be able to play all your characters on the same realm again after that.
"Why should I play it then?" is also a good question. Deathwing is great way not just to taste the Cataclysm, but also to start playing on Maelstrom, thanks to transfers!
Of course Deathwing will feature things like full crossfaction, Racial Shift, Path of War, AoE Looting, Auto-Learned Spells, Uncapped Conquest, MoP-Style Arena Teams.
We've closed over 5200 issues on our current BugTracker, with hundreds more on our previous ones. Current state of our Cataclysm doesn't even slightly remind of our humble, and buggy, beginnings. It's been a wild ride for sure and we still push hundreds of fixes each month.
Name reservation will take place on 10th April, 20:00 Paris time. Maelstrom names are not transferred, however when Deathwing closes and merges with Maelstrom, our legacy Cataclysm realm, Maelstrom names will be prioritized and characters from Deathwing with names already taken will be given a free rename.
Read more about Deathwing here.Frostmourne launches on 31st May!
Frostmourne is a seasonal Wrath of the Lich King realm that launches on 31st May 2024, but most importantly: It comes with a twist. Apart of our flagship features, like Racial Shift or full Crossfaction, players can immerse themselves in Azeroth even more thanks to two new race and class combinations.
We can't wait to see the transmogs you're going to run on these new combos, but of course, that's not everything we have in store for you.
Timewalking has been weaved into the progression, and the first legacy raid you're going to run for Wrath-quality items is Sunwell Plateau (25). Then players will delve into depths of the Molten Core (25) during Tier 9, but there's also something for fans of smaller raids: Zul'Gurub (10) will also be available.
And if that's not legendary enough for you, hear us out.
Legendaries
To shake up the meta, we're introducing new legendary items.
First, there's Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian, in its full four version glory, for Balance Druids, Shadow Priests, Mages, and Warlocks. It will grant them even more firepower, but no fear, they will not be completely overpowered as our legendaries are very well finetuned.
Of course, it would be a missed shot to give you Timewalking: Sunwell Plateau without Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury, it will return once more as rare drop from Kil'Jaeden.
Another spicy weapon up for grabs will be Gorehowl, as a drop from a world boss (summoned by a quest item that drops in Sunwell Plateau) should give a major boost for struggling Warriors and Paladins during Tier 7.
But hold up, there's more! Spellhance, rejoice, as Doomhammer will be up for grabs during the Secrets of Ulduar phase!
And last but not least - did someone say... Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker for one-handed tanks, and Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros for two-handed tanks. Sulfuras with Agility? No? They will be available during the Call of the Crusade anyway!
As legendaries for Tier 7 content are finalized, we will be looking for more feedback regarding oranges further down the line.
What's else in stock for Frostmourne?
Our new raid difficulty Ascended that will slightly bridge the gap between 10-man and 25-man raiding. It will be available only on 10-man setup and it will boost the raid's difficulty, giving you a mix of 10 and 25-man loot. We want to make 10-man raiding more attractive and competitive, while still keeping 25-man as the meta meta... and we've made sure that 25-man raids are difficult. Read more about raiding on Frostmourne here.
We are also introducing the commonly welcomed Hardcore Mode, where your character will only have one single life. To make things fair, there are limitations. Non-Hardcore characters cannot interfere with Hardcore characters, to the point they can't even kill mobs tagged by Hardcore characters. Hardcore characters have their own separate Auction House, and can group only with other characters that have chosen this gameplay style. It's opt-in at level 1. Read more about Hardcore mode here.
Our well known Ancestral Wisdom feature will also be included - it's a small thing, but lovely for altoholics. Each maximum level character you have, increases your Experience by 15%.
But of course, we did not forget about PvP players. Path of War is coming, just not quite directly on launch. We don't want to gimp PvP leveling by enabling it too early, but we will allow already existing level 80 players to opt-in (one way ticket) for Path of War when it becomes available. Read more about Path of War here. MoP-styled Arena Teams are also making a comeback here, so you won't need to form arena team - just queue with your party member!
Read more about Frostmourne here.
...and this is it!
Make sure to join us on our Discord server.
Peace!
