We’ve reached the final hour of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands‘ build-up. Today, the prepatch will be coming, bringing an end to the previous Battle for Azeroth expansion and ushering in the newest expansion, Shadowlands.
In fact, such a thing is already done – after going down for maintenance at 7:00 AM (PDT) today, Battle for Azeroth came to an official end. When next the servers are available – 3:00 PM (PDT) today, barring any strange delays – it will officially be 9.0, with Battle for Azeroth done and dusted.
That means that we’re in the final stretch. The Shadowlands prepatch releases extremely soon, bringing with it a massive plethora of changes across all categories – leveling rehauls, new customization, gear changes, new abilities, new old abilities being added back in, and so much more.
And, of course, game-breaking bugs. Would it really be a World of Warcraft patch without one?
The prepatch has been live on the PTR (Public Test Realm) for quite some time, letting Blizzard see what does and doesn’t need changing. They also use the test realms to locate bugs, but it seems that they might have missed a thing or two.
The bug with the most attention being called to it at the moment is one posted in the tweet embedded above by @MrGMYT. Allegedly, players running a dungeon are able to trade gear in a way that essentially breaks gearing entirely.
With the level squish, levels are a bit wonky, with the current 120 (cap) being reduced down to 50 in preparation for the new 60 cap. Players running a dungeon with a level 50 toon are able to trade that gear with anyone, regardless of level.
That means that a max level toon can give their scaled-up gear to a lower level toon, more or less handing them a comparative weapon of mass destruction. With this, players are able to suit their characters up with gear that can render difficulty a thing of the past.
All in all, this is more than a bit game-breaking. Handing a level 20 warrior a great axe meant for a level 50 warrior and sending them back out into their level 20 zone is going to make them more or less unstoppable, to say nothing for PvP or world PvP.
There’s no telling if Blizzard will be able to push a fix out on time, as the prepatch is meant to release in literal hours from now while this bug is being discovered. With any luck, there aren’t many other bugs of this caliber to set the prepatch experience back.