Hello. I thought to take a bit of time and put together a list of comprehensive changes that are being made to the game, or are being planned in order to have them all in one place.
Game Balance
The game is launching in it’s final patch 3.3.5 state. This means that all class changes throughout the expansion are present from day 1. This includes the shaman totem bar, ret paladin/dk balance changes and spell changes.
PVP
Wintergrasp will no longer be fought on a per realm basis. When it is time for the wintergrasp battle, players will be able to queue and enter an instanced version of the battle ground. As long as ONE person on your faction participates in the battle and wins, your faction will have access to wintergrasp fortress and the Vault of Archavon raid. The fortress will be PHASES per faction, so you will not be able to see the opposing faction inside of the fortress.
Arena teams have been removed. Instead you will use a personal mmr rating to determine eligibility for arena gear and end of season rewards.
Random Dungeon Finder
Originally added into the game with Icecrown citadel, the dev team has stated that they will NOT be adding RDF to the game this time around. A new LFG tool has been developed, a similar but expanded version of the one found in TBC.
Fresh Realms
Blizzard is releasing two new realms with the launch of prepatch. These realms will be fresh start realms and incoming transfers will be restricted for a minimum of 90 days. If the servers stay healthy in terms of population and balance, the no transfer restriction will be extended indefinitely.
No word currently on if the fresh realms will allow transfers between themselves or transfers away from them and into the current realms.
Raid Cooldowns
Spell cooldowns and sated will be reset when wiping or killing raid bosses. This means bloodlust and battleres and dps cooldowns will be available for every boss pull. The following abilities are excluded from being reset.
- Army of the Dead
- Lay on Hands
- Fire Elemental Totem
- Earth Elemental Totem
- Astral Recall
- Reincarnation
- Ritual of Doom
Naxxramas
The health and damage of monsters and bosses in the Naxx 10 and Naxx 25 raids have been increased by 30%. The difficulty of Naxxramas was stated to be too easy and this has been adjusted to make things a bit harder.
Trial of the Crusader
Originally you could run all 4 versions of this raid and more than likely would be required to. In classic, the lockouts are being changed so that both normal and heroic versions of the same group makeup share lockouts. For example, you can run 10 man heroic, but not 10 man normal. and vice versa.
Barber Shop
The barber shop will allow you to change your sex/body type.
Turn XP Off
You will still be able to turn xp off, however players with xp on and xp off will NOT have separate pvp bg queues. They will play together.
Death Knight Creation
Originally, to create a death knight you needed a level 55 on the realm before it would let you make one. This time around, that restriction is still in place with one exception… the first death knight you create on your account will bypass the restriction. This is to allow new players to jump right in. You are still limited to one DK per realm. Please note: Death knights will not bypass this restriction on Fresh Realms.
Anti-Boosting Mechanics
Measures have been put into place to hamper high level players ability to solo farm and boost low level characters. XP received when there is a large level difference in the raid is severely reduced, and enemy mobs will become immune to control abilities/slows such as the slow effect from a mage’s blizzard. Hostile enemies will also get an unavoidable knockdown effect that hurts a tank class unless they kill the enemies fast enough.
10 Man Raids
10 man raids will drop the same badges as their 25 man counterpart.
Beginning with Phase 2, all phase 1 10 man raids will begin to drop 25 man loot instead.
Dungeons
Some enemies will stop rogues from being able to pickpocket them after a certain number of nearby enemies pockets have been picked.
Chests inside dungeons have had the amounts and quality of loot they hold reduced.
Loot boxes being added for tanks and healers, with a chance to contain materials/gold and a very rare chance to contain random dungeon mount drops.
Heroic Dungeons
The badges from heroic dungeons will be upgraded throughout the expansion. The daily quest will always give the current raid tier of badges and the heroic bosses will drop the previous tier.
Beginning with Phase 2, heroics will get an added difficulty boost and will now also drop 10 man loot from 10 man raids in the previous phase.
Paid Level Boost
Blizzard is offering a paid level boost to level 70 from the in game shop.
Season 4 Gear
With prepatch, season 4 gear is heavily discounted and will be available for honor. Additionally, the season 4 death knight set has been added to the game.
Cold Weather Flying
The bind on account book is available on launch. Once you have a level 80 character you can buy this book for your alts and it will allow them to fly in Northrend at level 68.
Jewelcrafting
Currently (it may be changed) jewelcrafting dragon’s eye gems are giving stats in their buffed state. During wrath, these gems were buffed from +27 of a stat to +34 in order to keep them strong when epic gems were released.
Layering
As with both wow classic and tbc classic before it. WOTLK Classic will have layering. The game creates another instance of the same area in the game and divides the players up between them. This is a side effect of the current “mega server” mentality in order to keep overpopulation from ruining the game.
Faction Restrictions Lifted for PVP Servers
You are able to create characters for both factions on any server.
Minor Changes
Some npc names and voice lines have been changed to address issues with the people these NPC’s are associated with, or if they have been deemed offensive.
Spit Emote - You cannot /spit on other players.
Gender for Character Creation/Barber shop. Gender icons have been removed and replaced with Body Type.
Potential Changes
Ulduar Gear Item Level adjustment. Some Ulduar gear may be buffed in item level to keep Ulduar relevant during Phase 3 TOGC.
I probably forgot a few things but will keep an eye on the post and keep it updated. Thank you!