Eternity's End (patch 9.2)

Moon Guard
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The next World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Content Update is just around the corner. Watch an exclusive developer preview of the latest chapter in the WoW saga.

Get Ready for Eternity’s End

Zovaal, the eluse Jailer and ruler of the Maw in the Shadowlands, has made his next move—and with it, he threatens to rewrite the rules of reality. In Eternity’s End, you’ll face him, and perhaps save Azeroth and the Shadowlands from a fate worse than death. Eternity’s End features include:

New Zone: Zereth Mortis

Zereth Mortis was created by the First Ones, and it’s intended to create afterlives. Its denizens—the automa—have created all that exists in the Shadowlands, Azeroth, and realms beyond. It is a strange, alien location that defies all concepts of reality or physics. The Jailer intends to use Zereth Mortis’ power to reshape everything according to his design.

Meet The Enlightened

The Enlightened are brokers that arrived on Zereth Mortis a long time ago. They no longer see their world in a transactional manner, but instead they treat their dwelling as a sacred place, and hope to answer to a higher calling—the pursuit of knowledge. Find common ground with The Enlightened to succeed and defend Zereth Mortis.

Decode the Cypher of the First Ones

The automa of Zereth Mortis speak in a musical language that is incomprehensible to mortal races. Team up with a curious automa sidekick in this new progression system to learn the lost language of the Progenitors and delve deeper into the secrets of Zereth Mortis, unlocking an array of new zone activities, daily quests, events, and rewards.

New Raid: Sepulcher of the First Ones

Deep in the Sepulcher of the First Ones lies the key to unlock the Jailer’s plans. Gather the power of the First Ones as you pursue Zovaal into the Sepulcher and fight through his forces—but first, you must face Anduin, and discover a way to resist the Jailer’s terrifying Domination magic.

Class Tier Sets Return

Harness the power of the First Ones by collecting distinctive class armor sets via raids, PvP, or Mythic+ dungeons. Each set comes with powerful 2- and 4-piece set bonuses that complement your unique abilities.

Other features in Eternity’s End

  • Mythic+ and PvP Season 3

  • Tazavesh added to the Mythic Keystone Dungeon rotation

    • Note: Tazavesh will be split into two separate dungeons for Seasonal content.

  • New Mounts and Pets

  • Updates to Professions, Soulbinds, Conduits

  • New dancing mini-game at the Darkmoon Faire

  • And much more!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look at Eternity’s End. There’s much more to come, and we’ll release in-depth previews of the features above and others as we get closer to the PTR and release.

Keep an eye on https://worldofwarcraft.com/news to stay up-to-date on all things Warcraft. See you in Azeroth, champion!

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Looks like fun. Hmmm seems like their going to go the WoD route and wrap everything up in the 2nd patch. Even tho I did enjoyed this expansion its for the best.

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so new raid is going have 11 bosses but only 8 are available for 1st week of raid release. While last 3 bosses will unlock in follow week.

Developer Interviews - Patch 9.2 Final Major Patch of Shadowlands

Game Rant spoke) with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead game designer Morgan Day about Patch 9.2.

  • Dealing with Anduin is the only way players will be able to confront the Jailer.
  • Uther may be able to guide Sylvanas through those treacherous waters of having a soul returned to the body after death
  • Tyrande and Sylvanas are on a collision course and there will be heavy interaction between those characters, and that is pivotal to the final conclusion of Shadowlands.
  • The Shadowlands story arc was planned to have three acts, so Patch 9.2 will be the finale of Shadowlands. There could be a Patch 9.3, but it’s unlikely.
  • There is room for sweeping, cosmic narratives and small, personal stories alike.
  • The team recognizes that players want to see the small things that flesh out the world as well as a cosmic story.

inven spoke with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead game designer Morgan Day about Patch 9.2.

  • The new raid has 11 bosses, with Anduin being the 8th boss.
  • The first week of the new raid will take us up to Anduin, allowing us to take a closer look at his story.
  • The Jailer will be the final boss of the new raid.

NGA spoke with John Hight, the executive producer of World of Warcraft, and the chief designer Jeremy Feasel.

  • This patch will explain all of the Shadowlands story lines and this is actually the ending of a series of story lines starting from Warcraft 3.
  • There will be more catch up mechanisms added.
  • This new zone will be very large.
  • The Jailer fight will be in a very dynamic room, with pillars and fog, and may be the craziest boss the team has done.
  • Players will need to unlock the capability to equip two legendary items.

GamerBraves spoke with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead game designer Morgan Day about Patch 9.2.

  • Zereth Mortis was an opportunity for the team to show a whole new level of Warcraft cosmology, about this mystical and ‘higher form of magic’ place that we hadn’t seen before.
  • There will be opportunities for you to get gear to get you to where you can feel successful playing through the Zereth Mortis story content.
  • Tier sets are a combination of class fantasy and the aesthetics from the zone, creatures, and ecology of Zereth Mortis.
  • Tier sets will be available through the raids and Great Vault.
  • After Patch 9.2 releases, you’ll unlock the Forge of Creation, and earn a new currency. This currency, along with an item from PVP or dungeons, can be transformed into a tier set piece.
  • The Forge of Creation is supposed to work like a bad luck protection, or for people wanting to make new characters, or as a catch-up method if you’ve started late.
  • Zereth Mortis and its creatures, the Automa, speak with a runic pattern called the Cyphers. Players will not know it all at once, but will learn it over time.
  • After defeating the first boss in the Sepulcher, you need to take a flight path to the next boss in the instance. As you travel, you get to see all the epic scenery, huge structures in the raid, and get the sense of scale and fantasy.
  • One wing of the raid is constantly creating new things and prototyping creatures, and one of the bosses in that wing is a prototype of the Pantheon of Death.
  • In previous raids, everything led up to a moment with the final boss. This time we have a big story moment with both Anduin and the Jailer.
  • There are many facets of the Warcraft universe still waiting for us to explore in both the cosmic sense of Eternity’s End, and the more grounded events in Azeroth featuring characters we know and love, with many areas yet in Azeroth to be discovered.
  • The new PvP brawl is the Solo Shuffle. It’ll take 6 players and have them fight in 3v3 arena matches in every possible combination you could form with those players. The one with the best rating at the end wins.

Millenium spoke with Ion Hazzikostas and Sara Wons.

  • Zereth Mortis exists for the sole purpose of creating “the Afterlife”, all of it. Shadowlands was fashioned there along with many things of the strength of Death that we have yet to discover.
  • Zereth Mortis is our first in-depth look at the Founders, the cosmos and cosmology, of that balance of power that governs the entire universe.
  • Zereth Mortis has no day / night cycle since it is neither a star nor a planet but an “area” located in the heart of the ether of the universe itself.
  • The PTR is coming in the next few weeks barring any technical challenges with the rollout.
  • In the end you will have the flight in Zereth Mortis thanks to the decryption system.
  • With Kel’thuzad in Mythic Mode, players came up with a strategy that the development team did not anticipate.
  • For Kel’Thuzad and the Scribe of Doom, the two underwent successive nerfs in order to allow the “middle guilds”, to defeat these bosses in the weeks and months that follow.
  • Anduin will be a very, very complex boss.
  • The team will not add new levels of Renown.
  • Players will have access to new level tiers for legendary items that require materials that come from Zereth Mortis directly.
  • You’ll be able to equip two legendary items at once, one regular legendary and one Covenant legendary.
  • The team wants to move to a world where players have new content to consume more frequently.

Nice PJ Sylvanas.

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Underwhelmed with the announcement, but then again, I knew I was going to be because we’re in the Shadowlands so that means we were just going to get more cosmic stuff.

I am worried about 10.0 already because it seems like they really want to stick with the cosmic stuff and just pay lip service to the fact the player base wants a more Azeroth centric story. The stuff Battle for Azeroth was supposed to deliver on until halfway through when it became a N’Zoth expansion, not to mention that the Fourth War was handled poorly and was evidently only a plot device to further their cosmic path for Shadowlands.

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I feel ya. Cosmic stuff is fun, I liked how they covered it in legion , like we were going out there but also doing stuff on azeroth and class halls etc.

Would be really refreshing to just go back to azeroth and help farmers with their pests or gather hooves for a hunter, find medicine for sick NPCs, explore a cavern to open a mysterious chest etc. Let’s see.

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Why is the raid not even releasing with it’s final three bosses available to fight.

Why does a raid have time-gating to complete it.

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har dee har har
But as others have no doubt pointed out - if that is Sylvie in her starter gear - she’s standing in the background with Uther and Jaina. Who’s missing from that party? Someone they all have history with who was kind of a big deal.
dun dun dun

I realize this is rhetorical because we are all too familiar with the speedbump method to ensure our continued loyalty through logins. So how about a nice musical interlude.

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To be fair, it appears the last three bosses of the raid will be available on the second week of the raid’s release. So time gated? Technically. But it ain’t much of one.

I’m more miffed that a feeling I had at the beginning of Shadowlands continues to grow. At the start, it felt like the Shadowlands had gone from this tangential thing that was parallel to the living world to a realm that was bigger, badder, and more important than anything we’ve ever seen or done. So much of it continues to destabilize what truths were established in the Chronicle books (and yeah yeah I know all about that "perspective of the Titans thing and hate that pivot).

I dunno. I see a lot of people in various places saying that Shadowlands feels so disconnected from the rest of what Warcraft has been. And I mean I get that it’s not truly, but it FEELS like it is. Like it’s where the truly important things have been happening all along. That life is just a waiting room for the real important stuff to begin in death. That the realm of Death itself is where the most powerful beings ever to exist come from and that such forces of Death were really the origin of everything all along. At least…that’s the impression I’m getting from what’s been revealed and all the blue posts.

I hope whatever clarification and details we’ve yet to receive makes some of this feel better and even ties together the bits not jiving properly in my mind. But given the trajectory of this expansion and its story, even I’m running out of hope. I guess we’ll see. But at the same time…ugh.

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The escalation of -everything- we have done since WoD has been just higher, and higher, and higher stakes. We’re no longer some adventurer up against tangible threats established in lore. We’re going against the very cosmic threats and problems beyond ourselves. The greatest issue is how we escalated to Shadowlands with little to no premise prior.

The Black Empire of the Old Gods had far more prevalence in the past and to jump to the realms of undeath simply baffled nearly everyone. It is becoming so tiring and loathsome to the lore direction and setting. Where we STILL HAVE NO IDEA what the Jailer ever wanted, what Sylvanas truly wanted. We are still asking WHY any of this matters.

At this stage, Zerith Mortis or whatever its called will remain forgetful and undesirable.

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It’s rather like an inverse matryoshka doll that we’re exploring from the inside out. We break into a new shell, and suddenly this new thing is the biggest and baddest and behind-all-est.

And then two years or so later, it suddenly isn’t. The world itself seems to matter less than the grand metaphysical underpinnings, which…well, I don’t know about anyone else, but that seems to me rather a backward set of priorities for world building if you want to keep players engaged in a story.

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I’m hoping we find out what exactly the Jailer aims to accomplish by re-writing reality (beyond making everyone kneel or whatever). Same for Sylvanas. But whether or not we get satisfying answers on those things, I agree with you on the ever-escalating issue. It reminds me of when I watched shows like Power Rangers as a kid. Every new season, the new “biggest threat in the universe” would reveal itself, thereby invalidating all previous biggest threats in the universe. That concept frustrated me as a kid so much that I call it Power Ranger syndrome to this day lol!

Your example of the Old Gods and the Black Empire being suddenly eclipsed by the realm of Death and all these surprise progenitors is a profound one that perfectly aligns with how I’m feeling. Facing cosmic threats is fine and all. It just feels so cheap and jarring having the weights of everything suddenly and dramatically shift the way they have.

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Yes!

I find it super hard to empathize with the jailer. Ffs I have no idea what he wants or what has happened to him or what revelation he foresaw that drives his actions…

“Rewrite all rules of the universe” what does that even mean?!

Bad or good for Sargeras we had a cohesive reason, but for Jailer is only major confusion.

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I took it to mean
“the system of dying and using your soul juice to power some realm is dumb”

which i personally agree with, which my death knight would agree with. like gosh, let us DIE

especially since we started killing things immediately upon arriving. the shadowlands dont need to exist

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So do I. I mean, I have a beautiful bed of shoulder length hair I’m growing out for charity right now. I can’t relate to his bald problem.

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but guys no look

we’re gonna make it all make sense
:dark_sunglasses:

she’s not my fave but they gonna muck up Tyrande even further and pull Arthas back out one more time
SEE WE ARE LISTENING
WE KNOW YOU ARE WEARY OF THE COSMIC HANDWAVING
:roll_eyes:

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I think the thing that made me gag most was the repeated references to how this all is a story that has been in the telling since Warcraft 3.

No, this is a story that has been in the telling since Legion ended because your chief writers are lazy and couldn’t come up with something fresh to start on but instead went and retconned lore all the way back to Warcraft 3 to try and excuse the dumpster fire they have crafted.

I could handle Battle for Azeroth’s N’Zoth plotline because the Old Gods were a known quantity for a long time. Instead of making the faction war the entire plot of Battle for Azeroth and setting us up for a N’Zoth expansion (which, really, he deserved his own expansion), Blizzard crammed two expansion length stories into one to setup a horrible massive retcon expansion.

Just makes me sad. So instead of just starting a new “Book One” after Legion, or even Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard used Shadowland to ruin “Book One” before starting “Book Two.”

Doesn’t leave me with high hopes for this “Book Two”

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Warcraft’s story imo was okayish. The problem I see with WoW’s storytelling is the fact that we barely spent time with the major lore characters up until recently. A new player coming in who didn’t know a lot about the lore or read a lot about the books would not have the slightest clue what was going on. Imagine if you watched the movie jaws, but all you saw was brody blowing up the shark. You’d probably be wondering ‘Why did he just blow up that shark?’ it makes it so hard to follow

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Am i the only one that was fine with the story until SL. This expac just kinda messed everything up and we hope the game dies faster than our chars.

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Just hope the next expac is better with story and content. :purple_heart:

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I’m not planning on buying anything blizz. I’m not dealing with the bullcrap anymore