Beta · Confirmed · reported · rumour

The week to 9 October

Dalaran is open, dungeons give more experience, every tester has 16 Legacy points, and the warrior rework has finally reached the client. Add four class deep dives, the rules for honor and ranks - and a handful of rumours, which stand here as rumours.

Type
News

How this page labels things

Every item carries one of three labels, and the label says where it comes from - not how likely we think it is.

  • Confirmed means Blizzard said it itself - in development notes, its own article, a blue post or its own podcast. What we read from the client is listed here too and marked as read.
  • Reported means it comes from Blizzard staff but through a third party
    • an interview, a social media post we have only seen quoted - or many testers have observed the same thing.
  • Rumour means read from files or seen by individual testers, not announced by Blizzard. It may be true and gone again tomorrow.

Confirmed: the build of 8 October

Blizzard deployed a new build on Thursday (1.60.1.70291) and published detailed notes with it. The main points:

  • The City of Dalaran is open. "Now available for testing: the new City of Dalaran dungeon." Levels 28 to 33, so at a cap of 30 all but the last stretch is in reach. More on the dungeon page.
  • Dungeons give more experience. Creatures in dungeons give about 20% more. And a bug is fixed that penalised groups with one higher-level member: the reduction for low-level enemies now follows each player's own level, as in Classic Era, not that of the highest group member. Blizzard expects the two together to "dramatically" increase experience in dungeons for most players.
  • 16 Legacy points for every tester. All beta players have been granted completion of the Legacy Challenge. A re-spec costs 1 silver at the cheapest step and gets cheaper every hour - in the beta only. That keeps the promise of 1 October, see the schedule.
  • Rage recalculated. Several bugs in rage from damage taken are fixed, and the values are rebalanced: until now a warrior with 50% armour mitigation was the baseline, in other words a tank; now it is 20 to 40% depending on level. Warriors and druids should gain noticeably more rage.
  • Classes. Among other things: Bear Form generates 50% instead of 30% extra threat; Thorns and Retribution Aura return to their Vanilla values; Penance costs more and does less; Deep Wounds is once again required for Impale; the first ranks of Frostbolt, Fireball, Shadow Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Wrath and Smite are adjusted so that every new rank is an upgrade. The druid talent Predatory Instincts is now called Natural Instinct and adds spell healing.
  • PvP. Critical strikes are no longer reduced in PvP.
  • Items. Wolfshead Helm grants 5 extra energy when shifting; several dungeon quest rewards drop from rare to uncommon; the new rewards of the Gelkis and Magram quests in Desolace move up to level 35.
  • Interface. Discord voice chat can be chosen under Audio settings and then applies to the whole party; the Cooldown Manager now supports all classes, racial abilities and trinkets.

New known issues: the reworked textures for the Skyborne cat form and some creatures on Zephras Isle only arrive with a later build, and some icons in the Professions window are broken.

Confirmed: articles and podcast of 7 and 8 October

Darkspear Islands. Blizzard presented the battleground: off Dustwallow Marsh, 15 versus 15, levels 30 to 60, four capture points and a flag in the middle, victory at 2000 points, a reputation per faction with a tabard at Exalted. Everything else is on the battleground page.

Honor and ranks. Honor is a currency, rank points lead through the original ranks to High Warlord and Grand Marshal, with a weekly cap. The epic set is made from the blue one plus a seal with a rank requirement; epic weapons come at rank 14. Three tasks per PvP season grant a Legacy point.

Skyborne in SD. The Skyborne launch with HD models only. Blizzard is reworking their druid forms - less soft, more detailed fur, less saturation - and announces SD models for the Skyborne, druid forms included, for early 2027.

Four more class deep dives. Mage and Shaman, and Rogue and Warlock, both on 7 October. That leaves only the Paladin. Our page on the class deep dives lays what is already in the client next to the talent trees.

Podcast, episode 3. On 8 October, with Josh Greenfield, Jay Hartman and Rowan Ryder, all about dungeons: experience from dungeons versus quests, Ruins of Lordaeron, Hall of Thanes, the Excavation Site, Dalaran, Blackmaw Hold, plus raid attunements and consumables. We take individual statements from it only once they can be cited with a timestamp.

Downranking weakened, since 1 October. Until 11 October this page listed it under rumours and said Blizzard had not announced it as a general rule. That was wrong: the notes of 1 October say so explicitly. Spells cast with ranks vastly below your level get less benefit from Spell Damage and Spell Healing and have a reduced chance to activate class abilities and talents; the character sheet explains it in its tooltip. Blizzard's example: a rank 1 Frostbolt at level 60 has a 0% chance to trigger Frostbite. The choice is meant to be between a quick, cheap slow and a spell that can trigger Frostbite.

Read from the client: the same build, 1.60.1.70291

The client for these notes was on Blizzard's servers at 20:25 UTC on 8 October, a good hour before the notes went up. Its predecessor 1.60.1.70245 of 7 October changed nothing in the game's tables. 70291, by contrast, changes the tables the game reads talents and spells from - for the first time since 70170, the level 30 build of 1 October. In the talent data (TraitNode, TraitEdge) nodes are added and removed; 125 spells are new. Among them are the new warrior talents: the warrior rework that Blizzard's notes placed "in today's build" on 1 October is now in the client. Fury gains Lingering Rage, Furious Precision and Gore Drinker and loses Improved Cleave, Boundless Rage and Precision; Iron Will moves to Protection, which gives up Toughness in return. Not announced, but read: the removal of Precision, changed requirements for Bloodthirst and Last Stand, and Bastion and Focused Rage have swapped rows. The talent calculator shows the new state; shared links with an old build carry over, points on removed talents are dropped.

Also new in the files, but not announced: a spell named Totemic Recall and 21 new items. Both sit under rumours below until Blizzard says something about them.

Reported

  • GDKP ban only in North America and Europe. According to Wowhead, Holly Longdale and Clay Stone said so in an interview with 4Gamers Taiwan; other regions are not affected. We have not found the original.
  • Dungeon experience shifted. Clay Stone told Inven Global that experience from dungeon quests goes down slightly and experience from dungeon creatures up slightly. The notes of 8 October confirm the second half with their 20%. In the same interview: the beta is the largest Blizzard has ever measured, and new classes are being considered in surveys, with no decision.
  • Horde in Dalaran. According to Wowhead, Josh Greenfield wrote on X that full Horde access to Dalaran "isn't really intended" and will be looked at. We have not seen the post itself.
  • Darkspear Islands open since 6 October. That is when the first tester feedback appears in the forums. Blizzard has not given a date.

Rumours

  • Three new armour sets in the files: Defias Enforcer's Garb, Violet Sorcerer's Vestments and Krol'dok Battlegear. The names tie them to the Deadmines, Dalaran and Krol'dok Stronghold. That the Deadmines are being reworked does not follow from it - none of it is announced.
  • Horde access to Dalaran after the dungeon. Testers report that after the dungeon and a follow-up questline the city guards turn neutral for the Horde. See above: according to Greenfield, not intended.
  • Totemic Recall. A shaman spell of this name has been in the files since 70291. What it does in Forever is not known.

What comes next

One date is confirmed: Holly Longdale and Clay Stone open PAX Aus from 9 to 11 October, and Clay Stone means to show one of the new dungeons in depth there - Blizzard has not said which. The beta runs to 21 October according to Blizzard; the Server Slam still has no date.

Last checked October 11, 2026.