Sorry, Nathanos Blightcaller, you were just a bit too early.
Blizzard’s been hard at work keeping World of Warcraft up and running with their prepatch fixes. Plenty of their attention has had to go to the servers for their World of Warcraft: Shadowlands beta as well, so there’s a good number of pots on the stove for the developers.
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The development team had a few things they needed to adjust today with some fixes to both the live servers and the beta servers. Beginning with the live servers of the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands prepatch, there was an unexpected visitor making an early appearance.
By the end of Battle for Azeroth, Sylvanas Windrunner – and by association her compatriot Nathanos Blightcaller – are both wanted dead by the general populace of Azeroth, both in-game and out of game. This has led to Nathanos being a boss for the upcoming prepatch event.
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However, it seems that Blizzard accidentally added the Blightcaller a bit early. Players were able to find him as a killable mob in the Eastern Plaguelands, where he once sat as a boss-mob for Alliance toons to take down in the Vanilla servers.
Though he dropped no loot and gave no rewards, players were eager to kill him for fun anyway. Regardless, Blizzard learned of the mistake and removed him immediately, with him no longer standing guard where he was expected.
A hotfix was also applied specifically for Enhancement Shaman, which affects the Primal Primer azerite trait. This now will correctly activate when Flametongue Weapon is used, correcting an unintended behavior.
The developers also saw fit to alter the experience gained from dungeons, standardizing it for players rather than being based on the size of a player’s party. You can read more about the supposed loophole here.
On the up-and-coming side of things, the beta servers saw a few changes to the Paladin class. Blizzard did a bit of reworking that affects the legendaries and a Protection ability.
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First off is the legendary Shadowbreaker, Dawn of the Sun, which has been redesigned for the upcoming build. This new design is intended to work with both Light of Dawn and Word of Glory, working to undo the developers accidentally having two Holy-specific legendaries focus on only buffing Light of Dawn, which would have rendered Word of Glory undesirable.
Blizzard also extended the duration of the Shining Light ability for Protection paladins. To quote, “in general, ‘your next [ability]’ buffs should be long enough that the time pressure to consume the buff isn’t too stressful.”