July 8th World of Warcraft Shadowlands Livestream

John Hight and Ion Hazzikostas just finished up their developer’s livestream on World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and we’re here to give you a roundup of the points they discussed!

Right off the bat they made clear that Shadowlands will still launch this fall. Of course, the ongoing Covid-19 issue has been a challenge, but they insist they can still get the expansion out this year.

John Hight quickly went through the Collector’s Edition for Shadowland, and what the physical CE will have in addition to the digital rewards already in-game. The CE box will contain an artbook, a soundtrack of Shadowlands music, a mousepad, and collectible pins for each of the four covenants coming in Shadowlands. 

Possibly the biggest piece of news is that the Shadowlands beta will begin next week, with a big wave of invites and more invites coming as the beta progresses through the summer. The level cap will increase to the new maximum of 60. With beta, the features will be complete, but not fully fleshed out, and endgame systems will need to be tested.

Ion Hazzikostas then went on to talk about how important the alpha process has been, and that playtesters have given over 64,000 bug reports, resulting in Blizzard having a bug list of over 1600 bugs to fix. A recurring theme of this livestream, and Blizzard’s Shadowlands development in general, has been to focus more on listening to feedback than in Battle for Azeroth, with the hopes some of the pitfalls of the past can be avoided moving forward.

Hazzikostas then moved on to discuss how the covenant system will work in the endgame, after the leveling has finished. Endgame content in Shadowlands will revolve around your covenant, so who you pick will have a huge impact on your endgame activities. 

Each covenant will have soulbinds; souls you meet who will agree to help you and go through the binding process with you, giving you access to their traits and powers. Souldbinds essentially operate as a talent tree, allowing you to easily switch traits and the like without punitive costs or cooldowns. There will be open slots for conduits in each souldbind tree. Conduits are gained from various types of content. Whereas the regular soulbind abilities are class-agnostic, conduits will be specific to your class, offering another layer of customization to the soulbind system. Conduits will come in three varieties, damage-enhancing, utility, or survival/defensive. This will allow you a high degree of flexibility in fleshing out your tool kit for Shadowlands. 

As you play for your covenant at max level, you will gain Renown. Renown is how you’ll progress with your covenant. It will be metered each week, rather than the endless grind BfA’s Heart of Azeroth was. Renown is gained by either collecting anima for your covenant or venturing into the Maw and rescuing souls that were bound for your covenant.

Each covenant has a sanctum, similar to the class halls of Legion. Sanctums will have some buildings in common, such as transportation networks and the anima conductor. The anima conductor allows you to channel anima to a specific region of the covenant, activating quests,  events, treasures, and the like. As you progress with your covenant, you will eventually permanently activate these subzones, rather than choosing one at a time.

Each covenant will also offer a unique building, available only to its followers. Venthyr have the Ember Court, where you will help organize and safeguard the galas the venthyr love to hold. If all goes well, and your guests are satisfied with the party, you can gain rewards and loot.

The Kyrians have the Path of Ascension. This allows you to play as one of your soulbinds and fight in an arena to prove your bravery and help the soul move up the ranks of the Kyrian hierarchy. This will also entail you captured powerful enemies to be sent to the arena to fight in the Path of Ascension.

The Necrolords have the Abomination Factory. You will encounter souls as you fight for Maldraxxus, these souls will want to help you but be without form. In the abomination factory you can design a form for these souls, matching it to their personalities or traits. This soul will then be available as a follower to come with you as you battle for Maldraxxus.

Finally, the Night Fae will have the Queen’s Conservatory. Souls go to the Night Fae to be rejuvenated and eventually reincarnated. The Queen’s Conservatory is a private garden with very powerful souls rejuvenating in seed pods. You can tend to these souls similarly to the farms of Mists of Pandaria.

The final dungeon to be added to testing will come with the beta, the Theater of Pain. This dungeon’s non-linear, and takes place during a battle royale held between the houses of the Necrolords. You can choose which houses to defeat first, culminating in a confrontation leading to you becoming the champion of the theater of pain. This is all in keeping with the Necrolords being very metal.

The Maw will also be available for testing. The Maw will be an inhospitable place. There are no nice towns, innkeepers, and friendly shopkeepers and flight paths around the Maw. In fact, there is only one friendly face there, a Broker we will meet who resides in a cave, hidden in the Maw. The Maw will have a sandbox feel, similar to Mechagon or the Timeless Isle, having a loose structure and encouraging exploration to find rares, events, and treasures. However, if you make too many waves, kill too many Maw denizens, you may catch the baleful eye of the Jailor, forcing you to flee the zone.

Hazzikostas also talked about the road ahead, and what we can expect as the beta progresses.

Later this month, the first raid of Shadowlands, Castle Nathria, will be available for testing. Castle Nathria has a very gothic fantasy element to it, and should be a lot of fun to play. Mythic dungeons will also be available later this month, to test out the affixes with the mechanics of the new dungeons. 

Legendary runeforging will also come later to test. While fighting in Torghast, the tower in the Maw, we will free the Runesmith. The Runesmith is a powerful entity capable of crafting items of great power, such as Frostmourne and the Helm of Damnation. As we gather materials for him through our Torghast runs, he will be able to imbue crafted profession gear, making them into legendaries with new procs and abilities.

Covenant campaigns will be available to test as well. These campaigns function similarly to the war campaigns of Battle for Azeroth, one for each covenant, giving you cosmetic rewards and new soulbinds.

PVP testing will come later as well, as well as tuning. Ion mentioned that tuning comes later in the process once everything’s been fleshed out, as getting fun, thematic abilities in place is more important, and the numbers can be adjusted accordingly near the end.

So, there you have it. What do you think? Are you looking forward to Shadowlands? Do you think Blizzard will correct some of the mistakes made with Battle for Azeroth? And have you chosen your covenant yet? We'll also put up the video of the livestream if you want to watch through it yourself. Tell us what you think and we’ll hopefully see you in the Shadowlands next week!