WoW Battle for Azeroth Patch Notes: What Kind of Shocking Changes Can We Expect?
The latest World of Warcraft expansion is literally at our doorstep and with only a few days left until it gets officially released, the WoW community is literally buzzing with excitement. And the latest Battle for Azeroth Patch Notes, namely the BfA pre-patch 8.0.1 already created a major hype.
This pre-patch comes with a plethora of impactful changes and innovations that I’m sure most of you will totally fall in love with. From changes to different classes, a new War Mode, and advanced social features, there are quite a few new intriguing game mechanics that deserve our attention.
So, let’s dive right into the action by first taking a look at what this new patch brings to the table.
Table of Contents
What’s new in the 8.0.1 Pre-Patch?
The brand new BfA pre-patch brings a number of modifications to the game, such as these:
1. Lordaeron and Teldrassil World Events
The new patch adds two major places of conflict in Azeroth, Lordaeron, and Teldrassil (including the Burning of Teldrassil – War of the Thorns event).
There’s an all-out war in these two regions until the official launch of BfA and that’s Blizzard way of encouraging players to take action in some massive world PvP events leading up to the new expansion.
2. New PvP System
Both the Prestige and Honor systems have been revamped in this pre-patch. Your Player versus Player progress during Legion will be morphed into new Honor levels that you’ll accumulate by PvPing and these are all account-wide.
Also, the PvP talent specs have been revisited and by pressing H you can take a look at the brand new PvP system.
3. Pre-Battle for Azeroth Stat Squish
In similar fashion to the stat squish in late Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard has decided to make a hefty stat squish that’s meant to make the big numbers that we’re all used to more perceptible for everyone (mostly newer players I’d imagine).
Thus, the health, damage, item level, armor values and the overall stats across the board for pretty much everything in WoW, be it players or NPCs, has been reduced.
4. Fresh Character Customization Options
It’s quite cool that Blizzard wants to provide us with more methods for customizing our characters by making them more stylish.
Subsequently, all barber shops in Azeroth now offer fresh customization options for your character, including golden eyes for Blood Elves and an upright posture for Orcs.
5. Brand New Legacy Loot Mechanism
This new system means that if you go into a dungeon that’s 11 levels (or higher) above the max lvl. of the current content, the game enables the Legacy Loot system automatically.
This loot system ensures that there’s a drop chance for all the items that would normally drop when you’re in a full group (or a raid) at that dungeon’s level.
6. War Mode
This is an innovative PvP feature that when enabled, makes you eligible for attacking and being attacked by other players in the open world. You need to be at least level 20 to trigger the War Mode on and you can do that by going to either Stormwind or Orgrimmar (depending on your faction) and opening your talent panel to set your preference.
When using the War Mode, all zones in the game become contested for you, with the only exception of Sanctuary areas. New features will be added in the two new zones of BfA – Bounty Hunter and Air Drops, while Ashran and Strand of the Ancients are now unavailable.
7. Various Class Modifications
Your Artifact power has now been depleted (until BfA) and your character can no longer be able to earn Artifact power to unlock traits and your existing traits are inactive. However, most of these traits are not part of your class or spec (by default).
Various talents and spells have been revamped to now trigger a global CD when activated, while all the in-game talents have been restored for all class specializations and they’ve also been updated for the upcoming expansion.
8. Brand New Social Features
The social aspect of WoW will become even more apparent in Battle for Azeroth and patch 8.0.1 comes with a few innovative social features. First, we have the cross-realm social groups that you can join, as this option lets you hook up with like-minded individuals and you can access the new Communities feature by pressing J.
And on top of that, Blizzard is also adding a Voice Chat functionality for guilds, groups, and Communities. There’s now a headset icon that you can click on in-game and by doing so, you’ll be able to speak with fellow players.
When is Battle for Azeroth going to officially release?
That depends entirely on your location, although the most cited release date remains the 14th of August 2018. Regardless, the official global release times posted by Blizzard themselves are:
Monday – 08.13.2018
- Los Angeles – 3 PM (PDT)
- New York – 6 PM (EDT)
- Sao Paolo – 7 PM (BRT)
- London – 11 PM (BST)
- Paris- 12 AM (CEST)
Tuesday – 08.14.2018
- Moscow – 1 AM (MSK)
- Taipei – 6 AM (CST)
- Seoul – 7 AM (KST)
- Sydney – 8 AM (AEST)
Obviously, if you live in Paris you’ll be kind of in the middle of the two release dates, although I’d imagine that there wouldn’t be too many people trying to get their hands on a physical copy of BfA at midnight (although there are plenty of die-hard WoW fans so who knows…).
But my personal advice would be to pre-order your Battle for Azeroth copy if you want to avoid waiting in lines or even better, you can just go for the digital copy of the new expansion.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that the brilliant Battle for Azeroth Patch Notes courtesy of patch 8.0.1 are quite fascinating and we can already get a taste of what’s in store for us in the massive upcoming WoW expansion.
What’s your favorite aspect of the BfA pre-patch 8.0.1 though? Let us know by dropping your comment below!
Oh, and make sure to head over to our thematic World of Warcraft marketplace, to adequately prepare yourself for the coming expansion and dominate the war-torn continent of Azeroth!
For more WoW, check this out: What Can We Expect of WoW Battle for Azeroth New Races?
