The official launch of the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion may have been postponed, but the beta version will receive an update over the “next few weeks,” Blizzard announced today. There are three major changes coming based on players’ feedback involving the Maw, Conduits, and Class and Covenant balance.
The Maw is a max-level zone that should feel like a “desolated and brutal domain of the Jailer” but apparently the realm is “currently falling short of that mark.” The development team will increase visual distinction and combat gameplay variety across the different areas of the Maw.
Blizzard will also experiment with adding new localized events and world interactions, as well as making the goals clearer for players to find, but no specific updates were shared.
The Conduit system, which allows an additional level of customization to your Soulbind with bonuses that are specific to your class and/or spec, received a lot of negative feedback concerning its cooldown. Beta testers felt too limited with the weekly cooldown. A single weekly reset “fails to draw any distinction between someone who only wants to adjust a single conduit, and someone who wants to clear and rebuild their entire soulbind tree,” community manager Kaivax said in the update post.
The update will change the Conduit system so when a player unlocks the Forge of Bonds, it’ll be charged with 10 Conduit Energy. Placing a conduit into a socket will consume a single charge. Conduit Energy will recharge once per day, with a maximum of 10, and adding a new conduit to your collection immediately restores one Conduit Energy as well.
Many players would prefer if there simply was no cooldown time, but this guarantees that players acquire new conduits and that they only have access to a small number of soulbinds and conduit slots.
The developers are also looking to balance the Covenant class abilities and the soulbinds that complement them. This means that the team is looking at “a mix of offsetting strengths and weaknesses rather than identical capabilities” so every combination is unique.
The extra time gained by postponing the expansion will be used to polish various end-game rewards, fix bugs, and add the finishing touches. Blizzard didn’t give a specific date of release for this update but said it’ll come “over the next few weeks.”
Shadowlands is the eighth World of Warcraft expansion and was scheduled to launch on Oct. 27. It will contain new covenants, high-end raids, a level squish, and more.
