World of Warcraft is set to undergo a few massive changes tomorrow with the release of the prepatch. Preparing the game for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, this prepatch is bringing a myriad of changes.
We spoke earlier today on some of the many things being added in – new abilities, new customization, and plenty of class changes. There’s a wealth of new changes coming in to add more content before the expansion itself.
Just as much, we spoke on the high amount of content being removed. Prepatch is taking a huge amount of content out of the game as well, such as seasonal or expansion-specific achievements and mounts, as well as the Brawler’s Guild closing doors.
One of the most notable things being removed is the corruption mechanic. At prepatch launch tomorrow, the corruption mechanic that defined the close of Battle for Azeroth will be completely removed.
There’s quite a few consequences from this. Players are going to be considerably weaker – almost powerless by comparison, in many cases – by the removal of the corruption mechanic.
Most endgame builds are completely corruption-driven, and the removal of the mechanic entirely is as good as removing those builds. With so much based on them, stripping corruption out is going to garrot endgame for the time being.
Much gear is going to become obsolete at the drop of a hat with the removal of the corruption mechanic. Some items, like the endgame Ny’alotha bow that carries a hunter-specific corruption, will no longer be worth having.
Many players likely won’t mind at all, with so much new content being added in. If nothing else, the corruption mechanic was always a bit of a point of contention amongst much of the fanbase.
Corruption was the leading point behind gear, with endgame mythic drops being inferior to much lower-leveled gear simply due to the corruption it carried. Players often found themselves switching out at a drastic decrease in gear quality for the right corruption.
The hunter-specific bow mentioned above, for example, carried a corruption that was a massive benefit for the class, reducing ability cooldowns at random. Even the weakest version of this weapon was better than anything else possible due to the corruption it carried.
Overall, though, it was an interesting system that provided a tradeoff of consequences and boons. While no one is exactly heartbroken to see it leaving, many will miss getting to call down giant devastating beams across swathes of enemies at random.
