It’s been a long time coming, and between the delays and global pandemics, it was starting to seem like it might not come for quite a while. Tomorrow, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands officially begins!
That isn’t to say that the expansion is released, of course. It may be more accurate to say that Battle for Azeroth is ending, but either way, the bridge into the Shadowlands expansion will officially lower tomorrow, October 13th.
While the release of the expansion itself has been delayed until (hopefully) later this year rather than the original launch date at the end of October, the prepatch will still be releasing. This prepatch helps to prime the game for transition into the Shadowlands expansion.
Because of this, players should expect a pretty radical set of changes to be in place when they log in tomorrow. The 9.0 prepatch kicks off the main changes of the expansion, giving players time to adjust – as well as the developers – to the new system before Shadowlands releases.
A massive change coming tomorrow after the maintenance will be the level squish, for example. While the current level cap sits at 120, the prepatch tomorrow will be squishing everyone down to their new levels, with the cap resting at 60 instead.
There’s also going to be a huge number of class changes, drastically altering the way that each class plays. New abilities, the removal of current ones, talent changes, and so much more are going to make it so that players will need to spend a bit learning their new loadout.
Of course, the corruption mechanic is going to be sapped away as well. While corruption has been an integral mechanic to the end of Battle for Azeroth, it won’t be present in the Shadowlands at all, being fully removed tomorrow.
And perhaps most important of all – more fashion! Blizzard is adding an enormous number of customization changes into the game to help players make their characters what they want them to be. Nearly every race and gender available for play is being given more customization options.
Prepatch is going to be making a complete overhaul of the game in its current state, giving players a great bit of content to sink their teeth into after so long without fresh additions. More than anything, it’ll allow players to adjust to these changes instead of jumping into the expansion without an adjustment period.
Later on down the line, players will be able to experience the Scourge Invasion event of the prepatch as well, though this won’t be available tomorrow. As of now, we can’t say for certain when this event will begin.
