Pantoufle

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About Pantoufle

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Firestorm User

  • Name Zadkielle
  • Guild Equipe Firestorm
  • Class Monk
  • Level 120
  • Realm Sethraliss
  • Race Blood elf

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  1. Spookings everyone! We have something planned for you to celebrate Halloween: we'll keep you busy as a bee ghost! On Garrosh (MOP), Sylvanas (Legion), Sethraliss (BFA), and Oribos (Shadowlands), malefic pumpkins are hiding across Azeroth, threatening to jumpscare anyone daring to approach: if you have the guts to initiate a conversation with them, they might reward you for your courage! The event will take place From Friday Oct 28th 12:00PM until Nov 7th 12:00PM. Here is how the pumpkin hunt works: Around 200 pumpkins are hidden in each realm in every part of the world, and you can participate in every one of them! Whenever you talk to one, it will reward you with loyalty points, and you won't be able to talk to it anymore on this account. On Sylvanas, Sethraliss, and Oribos you will also receive some experience points if your character isn't level max yet, and a tiny bit of currencies: Artifact Power on Legion Titan Residuum on BFA Soul Ash on SL If you are lucky, you might get some exclusive rewards including pets, toys, and mounts. On each realm those exclusive rewards are different! As you can see you should play the hunt on as many expansions as possible to make sure you get the most value out of the event! Pretty neat right? Let the hunt begin!
  2. Greetings everyone! We promised you news regarding the 9.2 update, and this post is here to do it! Most of our developers have been working on 'Eternity's End' for a while now, while others stayed on our current patch to make sure everything's running smoothly and that the remaining content - like Sanctum Mythic Mode - isn't delayed much. It's always something we have to balance when reaching the end of a patch, and we keep on assessing the global state of things to make sure we're splitting forces in the best way possible. As such, while Sylvanas got released quite recently you can rest assured: the state of 9.2 is quite advanced; we expect the update to be shipped in a few months. An important thing to note is that this patch will require a client update considering we're currently running a 9.1.5 client. Not to worry this only means a small .exe to replace (done automatically if you're using our launcher!), and a quick additional waiting time on your first new client launch. With the foreword now covered, we can get into detail regarding the new content shipped with this update, as well as its current state of advancement: Zereth Mortis: The forbidden land of the first ones, and the brand new zone of the patch. It includes: 7 story chapters of which 4 are scripted, which is enough to grant flying in the zone. First 3 will be released day 1, and then an additional one every week or so. World and daily quests: currently 17 out of 25 are scripted. Mini side-questlines needed to unlock flying: 2 of them are done, only one remaining! Rares & treasures are being worked on right now. Most of them will be available on release, the missing ones will join them shortly after. Cypher of the First Ones, a special talent tree requiring to farm a new currency has seen its development begin recently. It will allow you to gain different perks in-game, as well as a few collectibles. Torghast receives a new wing: Jailer's Gauntlet, a mini boss-rush type of run. It has been tested already, and works like a charm! Sepulcher of the First Ones: This new raid contains 11 bosses from which 2 are already scripted, alongside all the trashes from the raid. Those 2 are currently being tested and 2 developers are working on the remaining 9, with a third joining shortly. Tazavesh, the Veiled Market split: The megadungeon will be split into 2 normal sized ones, each part available in every difficulty including Mythic+. Everything's been done, and tests are ongoing. Class Tier Sets: After 2 expansions, they're making their return! Their effects are being scripted, and the new Creation Catalyst system which allows you to craft them will be worked on soon. Encrypted Affix: The new seasonal affix for the 3rd season has been fully scripted and implemented on every dungeon. Tests are being run to make sure it works properly. Cosmic Gladiator PVP Season: We're testing rewards and item upgrades to ensure everything is ready for the new season. The new 'Solo Shuffle' mode is also working! Class Balancing: alongside the new class tier sets, we have dedicated developers actively working on it, which will continue to do so once the update is shipped. Regarding the missing content from before the 9.2, players have been asking for information, and we are here to deliver it! Chains of Domination chapters: 3 chapters are missing, and one is almost done! You can expect chapter 7 to be released in 1 to 2 weeks, while chapters 8 and 9 will take a few more weeks. Do not worry, as the 3 missing chapters will be released before 9.2 arrives! Covenants chapters: Although we would like to have these ready before 9.2, the truth is that some of these chapters will take a lot of time to fully finish. Each covenant has big scenarios that need to be scripted, which would take too much time. To not delay the release of the new patch, we are putting the development of these on hold. We apologize. Mage Tower: Something similar here happens with the covenant chapters. While this content is very interesting, it would take too much time to have it fully ready before the 9.2 comes. However, we believe we can actually start working on this after the 9.2 is released, while we develop the content of the patch. No promises, though! Some exciting new content for sure! As you can see most of them are close to a releasable state but as usual, we want to make sure we maintain the quality you're being used to - and deserve. Once we're getting closer to the release you can expect a more detailed post of all those new features, our present goal being to keep you updated on the state of advancement rather than the content itself. You'll also then find a guide on how to update your client and everything you'll need to know! Until then, thank you for your time and fidelity. The Firestorm Team
  3. Greetings everyone, Before closing this wall of insults and accusations not backed up by anything tangible, I thought I'd write a few lines on behalf of the whole "corrupted staff". Our goal as "the staff" is to ensure every player can enjoy the game without encountering any troublesome behavior, or unfairness. It has never been to punish, which we try to resort to last. Unfortunately, a few players like being at the center of attention, even if that means being so for the wrong reasons: repeated rule breaks of various kinds, taunts to players / the staff, abuse or abuse attempts among worse ones like private information leaks or real-life threats. When you are a victim or witness to any kind of harassment we do encourage not to reply to it, take untainted evidence and send them to us so we can then act appropriately, with the final goal being to protect players and make sure this doesn't happen again. It is and has never been to simply punish for the sake of punishing. There's no point trying to answer every one of your accusations made in bad faith, as you're excluding the parts that don't support your version. You can think not providing proof is the equivalent of an absence of them, which would simply be another delusion. At this point, one more or less doesn't really matter anyway. However, we can assure you and everyone else reading this that the Firestorm Staff only executes punishments on players when the evidence shows the guilt of the player beyond any doubt. We do not disclose any player information, and evidence provided to us is handled discretely. We respect the privacy of all of our players, and to ensure this, we have rules in place to prevent any sharing of player information, including evidence provided against other players. All of that information is purely used inside of the staff team to assess the situation and document the violation. We do not, and will not, extend any favoritism to any members of our staff. This includes QAs, GMs, Developers or Admins. If one of the members of our staff breaks the rules, he is treated similar to a player, additionally to any possible repercussions in regards to his position. You can pretend to be innocent, part of a vast conspiracy in which admins defend their "friends", claiming they're the reason the server is becoming "dry": no one forces you to play here. If you truly believe us to be corrupted you're free to leave us. But years and years of drama, being "known" on Firestorm must give you a sense of pride that forces you to stay it seems. No doubt this won't be the end of the story and that we'll hear from you again: we won't chase you as long as you uphold the rules. But we're watching, making sure our whole player base can enjoy our realms without being annoyed - or worse - by people who do not have an ounce of respect. Pantoufle
  4. Greetings everyone! Six months after the release of Oribos, we are now ready to announce the next content update: patch 9.1 Chains of Domination! The update will be released on our server on Monday, July 4th, and won't require you to do anything: since our client is already in 9.1.5, you already have everything that's needed. Cool, right? On top of that, Boris will also come back on that same date for a full week in all of our realms! Get a free boost that includes some gear to jump straight into the action with some friends! This update includes a lot of new content as every new patch does, so you better be ready! 2 New zones: Korthia and Desmotaeron with their questline, rares, treasures, reputations, weeklies, dailies & more! A new 10-boss raid: Sanctum of Domination An 8-boss Megadungeon: Tazavesh, the Veiled Market A new World Boss: Mor'geth, Tormentor of the Damned Additional Torghast content & rewards A new season for Mythic+ with upgraded rewards and a new seasonal affix: Tormented A new season for PVP with adaptable gear & new rewards 40 additional Renown levels, Covenant campaign continuation Flying in the Shadowlands Many new collectibles and secrets This looks pretty complete: regardless of what you enjoy best rest assured we got you covered! But we've only scratched the surface, let's dive into each of those to give you a better idea of what awaits you in a few days! NB: Since the release of Oribos we already have every class balance change of patch 9.1.5 applied. Therefore no changes are to expect in that area (which includes PVP talents, class buffs / nerfs, etc). On top of that, we will also reset all currencies: conquest, honor, and valor. Last but not least: the Great Vault will not be available the week of the release, but will come back the next Monday. KORTHIA & DESMOTAERON In the Chains of Domination patch Korthia - a subzone south of the Maw - will be your new hub. As such, a lot of things will happen here and it's easy to get sidetracked: so follow the (long) guide! You will first access Korthia during the second chapter of the patch's main questline: The Chains of Domination Campaign. As you progress through this chapter, you will unlock every content this new zone has to offer, including a portal that joins it to Oribos and daily quests. This questline is the direct follow-up to your 9.0 Covenant campaign and is now unique (not related to your Covenant choice). On the day of the release, the first 3 chapters will be available, and an additional one will be released every 2 weeks including 4 new Renown levels. NB: To unlock this questline, you will have to complete the 2nd chapter of your Covenant campaign first. A formerly closed zone of the Maw: Desmotaeron will now be available as well! Tied to Korthia, you will alternate back and forth between the two. Now that you know how to access Korthia, let's see what you can actually do there. By the way, were you tired of walking? You will finally be able to ride all mounts inside the Maw and Korthia! Keeper's Respite is the main hub inside Korthia, where the majority of the NPCs are, preparing their stand against the Jailer. You will find here an obelisk that leads to Oribos and a flight path to the Maw, as well as an innkeeper, a mailbox, a repair NPC and a stable master for your convenience. This place is also home to the 2 new factions of the patch: Death's Advance & The Archivists' Codex. Death's Advance is the main faction of Chains of Domination, unlocked after completing the 2nd chapter of the campaign. Completing Korthia's dailies and weekly quest will count towards this reputation, but so will many activities in the Maw: Covenant assaults, Tormentors of Torghast events, and the Desmotaeron weekly World Quest to name a few! By earning reputation and gathering Stygia you will then be able to purchase 220 ilvl gear, armor tints, flying mounts as well as Season 2 sockets! For a more detailed explanation of this new faction, you can head here. The Archivists' Codex is the secondary faction, unlocked by completing its dedicated questline which starts by looting Researching Korthian Relics in Korthia. Mainly concerned about knowledge preservation, the best way to farm this reputation is by obtaining Korthian relics, most notably from rare mobs and treasures across the zone but also through 20 quests scattered all around Korthia. In doing so you will advance in ranks which will, in turn, unlock various rewards at the vendor: Season 2 sockets, conduits, and ilvl upgraders to name a few, a great way to catch up your alts! For a complete overview of this faction, you can read this guide. Shaping Fate, a Weekly Quest asking you to do various activities: daily quests, looting Treasures and Rares in Korthia and the Maw, or complete any of the new Maw events from the patch for many rewards, including a Korthite Crystal... 28 Rares populate Korthia and the Desmotaeron area in the Maw, each looting Reservoir Anima (for your Covenant), Cataloged Research (for The Archivists' Codex), and a chance for gear and conduit! Many Treasures can also be found all around those 2 zones, containing gear tokens, conduits, Cataloged Research, and more! If you want to know every location and details about rares and treasures you can follow this guide. The Maw also gets additional events in this patch: Twice a week a Covenant will strike a specific area of the Maw, starting an assault. Once you've completed its 4 related quests asking for various tasks in the area you will receive a cache full of rewards! For more details on assaults, head here. Kel'Thuzad will sometimes send his lieutenants from Torghast to attack certain areas, which will be announced in-game. This will fill that part of the map with mobs specific to the lieutenant's original wing. By killing them a Tormentor of Torghast will finally spawn which loots various things when slain. Also worth noting: after completing the 3rd chapter of the storyline, the eye of the Jailer mechanic will be removed which means your strolls will no longer be time-gated. Convenient! Mor'geth, Tormentor of the Damned, a new World Boss in the Desmotaeron looting 233 ilvl gear! Flying is now easy to obtain: no need for grinding! You will unlock it account-wide once you've completed the 4th chapter of the Campaign, released 2 weeks after the patch. This will allow you to fly in all four Covenant zones of Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and Revendreth but not in Oribos or the Maw! Legendaries now have 2 additional ranks! To upgrade or create a rank 5 or 6 legendary base you will need a Vestige of Origins, crafted with Korthite Crystals! You'll get them by doing dailies and the weekly quest, and in some treasures! As you can see, you will have a lot on your plate! Many achievements have been added related to activities in Korthia and the Maw, to keep you busy for a while. Don't think about skipping the rest though: many other additions in the patch want you to read about them so keep scrolling! TORGHAST UPDATE Our favorite tower has also received many changes and new features in Chains of Domination, to keep it entertaining and attractive! Four Additional Layers have been added, which means 12 in total! From the 9th layer onward you will unlock the new Soul Cinders currency, used to craft Legendary-quality gear A Floor has been removed from each run, with the boss now located in the 5th one. You will still find as many - if not more - anima powers despite the loss of a floor, so don't worry! Bosses no longer regenerate if you wipe on them. This will make it more likely for you to get your currencies even if it requires a bit more attempts! A new Scoring System has been added which replaces the old Death Counter: no more lose condition, no more Tarragrue (this is because he found a new job actually) ! Instead your progression will be measured using a Score system that will tell you - once the run is completed - how you performed and if you unlocked the next layer. Many factors are taken into account under this system which is detailed here. Torments - the negative buffs - are no longer themed around the wing you're doing (increased health for Coldheart Interstitia, etc): they are now selected from a pool of around 20 different buffs and will change daily. The number of active torments will now scale on the Layer you're running: no torments up until layer 5, and up to 5 on layer 12! For more details, check this guide. The Box of Many Things is a new talent system specific to Torghast that will grant you different perks, in order to counter the impact of Torments! To unlock those perks you will need to obtain Tower Knowledge in your runs: the higher the layer, and the better your score the more you will get! This currency has a season cap that increases weekly, allowing for an easy catch-up on alts. If you're looking for a guide, we suggest this one. Renown can now be obtained in Torghast to give your characters another means to catch up! Soul Ash is now a lot easier to obtain, as all drop values have been increased. A new currency, Soul Cinders, has been added for layer 8 and above runs, which is needed to upgrade to Rank 5 (249ilvl) and Rank 6 (262ilvl) Legendaries! Adamant Vaults are 2 additional floors you can access when completing a layer 9+ run with a "flawless" score. In there you will find new enemies, tricks, and traps waiting for you, alongside unique bosses on the 7th floor! Defeating him will grant additional Tower Knowledge but the main perk comes from that floor's Broker which sells unique transmogs! For more information regarding Adamant Vaults, please head here. Quite a lot of changes and additions were made to Toghast in this patch, to keep it challenging: those of you who will flawlessly clear all 12 layers will get an achievement and its corresponding - definitely badass - mount, good luck to you! RAID: SANCTUM OF DOMINATION Sylvanas Windrunner has been an antagonist for a while now, and if the prospect of defeating her personally puts a smile on your face then Sanctum of Domination is the raid for you! It features new unique features, which you can read about below the generic coverage. Located in Desmotaeron (the Maw), this is a 10-boss encounter, subdivided into 4 wings (Sylvanas the final boss being in her own wing). The first one will be available right away in LFR (213 ilvl), NM (226 ilvl) and HM (239 ilvl) difficulties, comprised of 3 fights: Tarragrue Eye of the Jailer The Nine And 7 more waiting in the next wings: Soulrender Dormazain Remnant of Ner'Zhul Painsmith Raznal Guardian of the First Ones Fatescribe Roh-Kalo Kel'Thuzad Sylvanas Windrunner You get the idea, just like we did with Castle Nathria we're gonna release this raid wing by wing at an accelerated schedule: every 2 to 3 weeks tops. This ensures we have enough time to fix any issues while keeping a good pace of release from a player's perspective: an efficient compromise! You can therefore expect the 2nd one to be released before the end of July. Once all wings are released we'll wait a couple more weeks and release the full Mythic difficulty on all bosses. Now to the biggest addition of the patch raid-wise: Shards of Domination. These can randomly drop from all bosses of the raid on your first kill of the week regardless of difficulty, and can then be socketed into Domination Sockets, a brand new type of socket that will appear on all Helms, Shoulders and Chests loots from Sanctum, + 2 additional slots depending on your armor type. Shards can be of 3 different types: Blood, Frost, and Unholy. While you can only wear 5 shards socketed at the same time, having 3 of them from the same type triggers a Rune Word that further increases your gear's effectiveness - this time only in the raid, Torghast, and The Maw. The third and final new loot you can get on bosses is Stygian Embers, which are used to upgrade your shards from rank 1 to rank 5, improving their effectiveness. This may seem a bit confusing, but everything related to that is thoroughly explained in this guide, don't hesitate to read it! One last thing to mention is the Great Vault, whose "Raid" Category is now gonna be filled by Sanctum Bosses defeats, and not Castle Nathria ones anymore! As you can see a lot of power-ups are linked to the raid, now more than ever with those new Domination Shards & Sockets! So get your guild together and get ready by reading the full guild here! MEGADUNGEON: TAZAVESH After Karazhan in Legion and Mechagon in BFA, welcome the new Megadungeon of the Shadowlands: Tazavesh, the Veiled Market! An 8-boss instance only available in Mythic difficulty (and NOT in Mythic+, which will be released alongside Heroic difficulty in patch 9.2) split into 2 phases: an exploration of the Market for the first half followed by a chase through Stormheim and Boralus before finally returning to Tazavesh. Here are the 8 encounters: Zo'phex the Sentinel The Grand Menagerie Mailroom Mayhem Au'myza's Oasis So'azmi Hylbrande Timecap'n Hooktail So'leah This dungeon features a Hard Mode but unlike Mechagon, you will need to activate it at the start. The method to do so is quite complex, everything you need to know is explained in this guide. This will cause every boss to have additional mechanics, and better loots qualified as Priceless Mythic 233ilvl, an achievement, and even a special mount: this might not be Mythic+ but it's still really worth it! NEW MYTHIC+ SEASON Speaking of Mythic+: new major patch, new season! You know the drill, dungeons have seen their difficulty increase as every mob and boss received health and damage buffs to accommodate for the higher ilvl obtainable. Rewards for Season 2 will follow this chart, which also displays Season 1 values so you can compare them: A new seasonal affix takes over Prideful for every key of level 10 or above: Tormented. If you played on BFA you most likely remember 'Awakened' which Tormented took inspiration on: 4 Lieutenants will be present in each dungeon. Whenever one is defeated, you get an Anima Power just like in Torghast! You can choose not to kill them, but for each lieutenant still alive the final boss of the dungeon will receive an aura making the fight harder! This makes it clear that killing those lieutenants is better: but it also takes more time so the call will be yours depending on the key level, your composition, and how well it can handle additional buffs on that dungeon's final boss. Some Quality of Life changes have also been added related to Keystones: Upon completing a Mythic+ in time, anyone from the group with a keystone at or below its level will be able to reroll it once by talking to the dealer Ta'hsup by the chest. Very useful if you don't like your key's dungeon! Ta'hsup will also be located near the Great Vault in Oribos and will offer you a keystone if you don't have one, provided you did at least one SL Mythic+ dungeon on that character. Great for Alts, or even your main character if it didn't play one week! Finally, Ta'hsup can lower the level of your Mythic Keystone on demand. No need to mass reset dungeons to lower it yourself! Last but not least, Dungeon teleports for everyone! Well, for everyone but not right away: to unlock the portal you will first need to complete its corresponding dungeon on a +20 key (or higher) in time. But once you do, every 8 hours - resetting after completing a Mythic+ run - you will be able to instantly get to a dungeon's entrance; pretty cool right? NB: You will no longer be able to upgrade dungeon items from season 1 using Valor, as their ilvl values are now different. NEW PVP SEASON: UNCHAINED GLADIATOR Adepts of PVP rest at ease, a new season also begins for you: the Unchained Gladiator one! Aside from the obvious ilvl reward increase that comes with this 2nd season, there is one notable change introduced in this patch: Every PVP item will see its ilvl scale up when engaged in PVP combat (World, Arena, Battlegrounds), unrated gear scaling more (between 17 and 36 ilvl increase) than rated gear (13 ilvl increase). This was designed to give an edge to players who invest time in PVP to gear themselves up, compared to someone fully geared from Raid / Mythic+. That being said, the new Shards of Domination effects from the raid will work in PVP! Conquest and Honor gear received no functional change, the first kind still requiring rated rating; and the second renown levels: Honor gear starts at 177 ilvl (scaling to 213 ilvl in PVP) Rank 1 which can then be further upgraded up until rank 7 (216 ilvl - 233 ilvl in PVP) Conquest gear starts at 220 ilvl (scaling to 233 in PVP) Rank 1 which can then be further upgraded up until rank 5 (246 ilvl - 259 ilvl in PVP) For a more detailed overview - including upgrade costs/requirements - of this new season, we advise you to check this guide which has everything you might need! We're pretty excited to release this new patch 6 months only after Oribos was unveiled on Firestorm: it comes with a lot of new content and changes to existing systems designed to make your journey in the Shadowlands more interesting, rewarding, and satisfying! Our developers and staff members will be there to make sure appearing issues get fixed in a heartbeat: keeping you entertained is what we thrive in! Mark your calendars, and we'll see each other on July 4th, ready to roll! In the meantime study the guides, but don't hesitate to ask the community or staff members for help and guidance. And remember that your favorite cow Boris will also be returning, a great opportunity to introduce some friends to Firestorm! See you in a few days on Oribos for the release of the 9.1: Chains of Domination patch! The Firestorm Team
  5. Greetings everyone! As we've been telling you in our latest announcements regarding Oribos, our focus has been for the past months on the 9.1 Patch: Chains of Domination. We've currently exhausted most of the 9.0 and 9.0.5 content, therefore 9.1 is our next main stop: while it's still a tad too early to disclose an official release date, know that it's going to be very soon! Our developers have been working hard and our testers spent the past weeks verifying every new feature and change. You'll be happy to know it's now in really good shape, and we wanted to take a moment to share with you the state of advancement, just like we did prior to Oribos's release. We won't get too much in-depth (this will come in the next post !) so don't worry: no boring details here! One last thing before we jump in: since our client is already in 9.1.5, you won't have to download - or do - anything when this update ships Korthia and Desmotaeron: The 2 new zones of the patch, where you will spend most of your time. The main questline is scripted up to the 3rd chapter (4th is under dev), but daily quests aren't there yet. A good portion of rares and treasures are already there, and the 2 new factions are fully scripted! The World Boss will be worked on this week. Most of the remaining work is gonna be put on adding what's missing, as well as scripting the rest of the story's chapters. Torghast: The Tower of the Damned received a loooot of changes and new additions, which have all been scripted already as our dev began working on it early. Our Quality Assurance team is currently testing and giving feedback to make sure everything works fine for the release. Sanctum of Domination: The new raid of 9.1 has 8 bosses out of 10 scripted in LFR, NM, and HM difficulties. The first wing has already been fully tested, and the testers are now focussing on later ones. Achievements are done, and Mythic Mode development will being once the remaining 2 bosses are done. Real-condition tests will be done before the release to ensure no issue hinders the progress Tazavesh, the Veiled Market: A new megadungeon with 8 bosses. All of them have been tested several times, including the hard mode which still requires additional verifications. First boss is still missing the intro, which is mandatory to test its hardmode. Tormented Affix: The new seasonal affix for the Mythic+ 2nd season has been fully scripted and implemented on every dungeon. Tests are next to complete. Unchained Gladiator PVP Season: We're testing rewards and item upgrades to make sure everything is ready for the new season. The ilvl increase for pvp gear in pvp context is already scripted and working! Renown rewards: They have all been worked on by our developers and are still being tested. Class Balancing: Since we're already working with the 9.1.5 class state from the moment Oribos was released, no changes are to be expected in that regard. Obviously, class balancing is an everlasting process and some of our developers are still working on it every day! This pretty much does it! As you can see, most of the new contents and changes are at least close to being done, with only additional testings to be done, to make sure this gets to you as fast as possible - but also in the best state possible! Stay close, as our release post will follow shortly, this time with more detailed information and guides so when the update hits live you'll be fully prepared! Thank you for your time and fidelity, The Firestorm Team
  6. Greetings Firestorm ! It's been 3 months since the release of our Shadowlands realm: Oribos and we wanted to take this opportunity to gather all of its related information: what you can already experience on the realm as well as what we have in store for you. If you missed our previous posts, this one will make it up by summarizing everything so make sure you read it thoroughly ! So let's start with the features you're all familiar with: Our leveling experience is at an all time high: from Exile's Reach to BFA's and SL's storyline you can fully level up smoothly without any major issues while Thread of Fate allows for an easier journey for your alts. All 4 covenants as well as their respective zones are available on top of The Maw, home of the infamous Jailer ! We know how painful swapping covenants was on retail and we thus added something to allow you to freely and effortlessly change ! All 8 dungeons are scripted in all difficulties including MM+ All PvP activities are available and the battle to secure gladiator spots in rated rages on ! The raid Castle Nathria is fully available in all difficulties: 10 bosses await ! Valor, a new currency allows you to upgrade dungeon equipment: gearing yourself has never been as easy and pleasing ! We enabled interfaction to ease everyone's experience: this feature was only added later on retail but we chose to release it as soon as possible to remove some barriers. Horde or Alliance can talk, venture and fight together ! All in all we're pretty happy with how things went since the release: we've continuously made improvements to available content while at the same time releasing new one steadily. That being said aside from the remaining Covenant Campaign chapters yet to be released (more on that below) we're pretty much done with 9.0 & 9.0.5 content, the next step being 9.1 update. As you can imagine this will require a fair amount of dev time and we didn't want to let you guys wait months without any major changes. So without further ado, let's jump right in ! ORIBOS CONTINUOUS & WEEKEND EVENTS Those of you who played on Sethraliss last summer will probably feel familiar with this one ! It's fairly simple: starting right now you will be able to experience 2 types of events on Oribos: Continuous and Weekend ones. The former will be active at all times until 9.1 starts while the latter will activate on Fridays 4:00PM and will remain until Mondays 4:00AM server time. That way you will always benefit from special features, and get even more during the weekend ! Full-time events: All experience gains are doubled. This is already in place since last week: fairly straightforward event ! Gear loot chances are doubled everywhere, including bosses (dungeon, raid, world) ! From 30% chance to 60%. Conduit loot chances increased from all sources from 40 to 60% You can now send Soul Ash to your alts by purchasing Packaged Soul Ash from Au'Dara located in Oribos (Ring of Transference, near the flight master) Valor gains are now uncapped: you can obtain as much as you need without restrictions ! Conduits can now be obtained in various World Quests: it will always be one you do not have or an upgrade to one you own ! We made it so you will get on average one conduit a day by this mean. Renown Catchup has been improved: all activities have double the chances to grant renown, and will now grant 2 at once ! Soulbind trees are now Account bound: you won't need to wait for the corresponding covenant chapter to be done in order to chose the tree you want if you already did it on your main character. This is still covenant specific and the renown restrictions for their corresponding conduits still apply. NB: You will need to connect your main character once to "save" his soulbinds unlocks before being able to benefit from them on your alts. Week-end events: A custom World Boss is now available in Northrend (Coldarra - Borean Tundra), rewarding a lootbox to any champion strong enough to defeat him ! You can loot it once per week at the moment. All Mythic+ dungeon runs will include one additional loot for the whole group ! You can re-run already completed Torghast wings as many times as you want to obtain 20% of the initial value in Soul Ash each time. All of those events take effect right now: stay tuned as we might add some additional ones along the way ! On top of that, we've got stuff cookin' ! Let's see what the future holds ! UPCOMING ON ORIBOS On top of those events, and before the 9.1 update is ready we have features in store - at various stages of advancement - to keep you entertained: First of all, the Covenant Campaign's 6th chapter should be ready for Monday April 4th. While this is not as huge as the rest, it's still worth noting ! We will be improving the VIP perks to include different teleport locations on top of your capital: Oribos, all 8 dungeons entrances, Nathria's entrance as well as your covenant's sanctum will be added so you won't have to waste time moving to those places anymore ! As a reminder you can become a VIP by purchasing points on our store (everything is detailed here) but this soon won't be the only way... Refer-a-friend will make its return, in a simpler way: once per month you will be able to refer a character, boosting it to level 50 with some basic gear. If that characters gets to level 60, manages to gear himself up to a set ilvl and completes various activities with you, you will both get VIP for a month as well as a free mount from our store ! A comprehensive guide will be made when this feature is released, which is very soon ! Back on BFA we had our very first Firestorm MDI. Well it's time to have another one ! We're rebranding it to FDT which stands for Firestorm Dungeon Tournament and will make some organization changes to it so it feels better for you to participate, while also expanding the range of rewards ! We're still working on it, but you can expect an announcement for it in the following weeks. For our PVP enjoyers here we wanted to help re-ignite the spark of challenge by reseting the season: basically hand over rewards as a regular season end (with extended range meaning more people will get something) and then restart it over, like a Season 1 bis. While we do not have a set date yet, it's gonna happen in early April so do not waste time and climb as high as you can as soon as possible ! We know you guys would like a tournament to be held as well and we'd like to deliver. Still at the early thinking stages, we'll keep you upated ! Finally maybe our biggest surprise to date: BFA dungeon Timewalking ! While it has been done on retail at a later patch (and for Legion dungeons) we believe we can make it work by next month on Oribos as our Quality Assurance team is currently testing it and giving feedback. Some things are still left to be decided (rewards, exact functionning) but we plan on making it interesting for all types of players so stay on the lookout for it ! We're also looking into Raid timewaling but this looks more challenging to implement: once dungeons are out we'll try to work things out on that part ! As you can see between our events and the upcoming features we won't let you rest ! It's important for us to keep you entertained: retail has been taking inspiration from private server features so we need to get to the next level. And we believe we have what it takes ! We hope you'll enjoy the continuous and weekend events for now and that you're thrilled for our upcoming releases ! Have a nice weekend, The Firestorm Team
  7. Greetings everyone ! Ever since Battle for Azeroth some of you have been voicing their concern about faction balancing, and the fact that as an Alliance player it was quite difficult to find progress guilds or people to group with. For 9.2.5 Blizzard announced that they would finally enable cross-faction despite the war between Horde and Alliance being a central element in WoW's lore: this is something we've done on all of our older expansions here at Firestorm for quite a while, and we thus figured we could anticipate a bit and enable it on Oribos on Monday February 21st. That way we get the best of 2 worlds: reducing the faction balancing problems and staying blizzlike ! Here is a list of the specifics: Guilds can now contain players from both factions. That doesn't mean you have to invite everyone, but at least now you can ! You can now group in raids and dungeons with people from both factions, meaning it will be easier and faster to gather the needed amount of characters ! This also applies to LFG filtering. PvP still remains Horde vs Alliance as the system doesn't easily allow for a change. You can still obviously chose to enter mercenary mode if needed ! World Channels will be fused so Horde and Alliance players can now talk together. Since they will be able to join hands in several activities now, it didn't make much sense to keep them separated. We'd understand if some of you felt like this isn't something needed, but try to see it that way: this doesn't revoke any rights (if you want to keep your guild all-horde you can), it only adds new opportunities ! A new player asking questions in world chat will have more people available to help him, and you will find groups faster for any non-PvP activity. We hope that this new addition will have the positive impact we want, and we'll keep an eye out to see if everything goes according to plan ! See you soon, The Firestorm Team
  8. Greetings everyone ! Two things most of you have been requesting have just been enabled on Oribos today Thursday January 27th: Threads of Fate & Covenant Swap ! Let's start by the later: as you now know, chosing your covenant is a pretty important decision in Shadowlands considering everything that it implies, and up until today this choice was set in stone. Of course, this isn't supposed to be the case and you can now freely change your mind without even needing to wait, as we removed the 1 week sentence that was here on retail. Simply head to the covenant's representative on Oribos and talk to him to instantly enter this new family. All of the progress you've made on past covenants will be kept, meaning that if you ever feel like rejoigning a past one, you will be able to resume where you left of (that includes Renown, Anima, Campaign chapters and followers). We're still in 9.0 behavior though, meaning progress isn't shared among covenants: if you join a new one, you will have to start as if it were your first covenant on this character. Though thanks to the Renown catchup mechanic we implemented recently you shouldn't find it tedious to get back on track. On top of that, we've also enabled the 3rd Covenant campaign chapter on all 4 covenants ! This one is pretty important as completing it will allow you to bind your soul to another NPC, granting you another soulbind tree with new perks ! On top of that each Covenant will have its load of additional rewards, which you can read about here: here (you can then read about each covenant specifically to see all chapter-related rewards) NB: To unlock this chapter you need to finish the first 2, and to be renown 5. It's important for us to keep the equity between covenants by enabling chapters accross all 4 of them at the same time. Our developpers are now working on the next chapters, and you can expect a release every few weeks. Keep in mind that some are longer than others, resulting in variations of release delay. Now onto Threads of Fate ! This new system implemented in Shadowlands goes in pair with the whole "leveling rework" that has happened, meant to make the leveling experience smoother and nicer overall. To unlock this, you will need to have one character on your account that has unlocked World Quests. Then, on any other character that reaches Oribos after the introduction questline in the Maw you will be offered the choice to either level up from 50 to 60 normally (run the questline in order, and at the end pick your covenant) or you can chose Threads of Fate: If you do so, you won't be able to "come back" on that decision, and will have to stick to it until you reach level 60, as it will automatically completes the storyline for you. On the other hand you can opt in Threads of fate at any point during your regular leveling. Just remember that once you're in, you cannot go out ! You will be able to select your covenant right away, meaning you'll have its abilities, and that you'll be able to start earning reputation, anima and renown earlier. Instead of a set questline, you will wander in the different zones in the order of your choice, and will have to complete a quest in each one by doing various activities: World Quests, dungeons, killing rares etc Once you get to level 60 you will be able to start your covenant campaign This system allows you to level up from 50 to 60 without having to replay the same storyline accross all of your characters: you can level up with friends, do dungeons, world quests and exploration all while starting to grind your reputation, and with your covenant abilities already unlocked ! With that addition, the whole leveling system on Oribos is now complete, and looking better than ever ! CASTLE NATHRIA SECOND WING We promised you one every 2 weeks, and we're keeping our word: On Monday January 31st the second Wing of Castle Nathria will be released in LFR, NM and HM difficulties ! In the 'Reliquary of Opulence' you will find 3 new bosses to fight. We've included some guides so you can already start preparing: Artificer Xy'Mox Sun King's Salvation The Council of Blood We plan on keeping the same release pace so you can expect a release of the 3rd wing 'Blood from Stone' for Valentine's Day: light up candles and offer Sludgefist a box of chocolates for the occasion !
  9. Greetings everyone ! Let's start by doing a little recap: Oribos, our Shadowlands realm has been released for 3 weeks now, and things have been looking great. We've continued to apply fixes and script things ever since the 20th of December, but nothing major has been hindering player's experience so far. This time has been valuable to us, as we didn't want to release the major content (Mythic+, rated PVP and the raid) without making sure it would be in the best possible state while at the same time not making wait too much. For the past weeks you've been able to experience the new leveling system, the Shadowlands questline, Torghast, dungeons and a lot of cool features. That being said we're aware of the limits those have, and we can now safely add new content for your to enjoy ! On Monday January 17th 10:00AM Server Time, we'll be starting the Season 1 of Shadowlands, which include the Mythic+ mode for dungeons, rated PVP, but also the release of the first wing of Castle Nathria in LFR, NM and HM difficulties alongside the weekly chest: The Great Vault. 2 New World Bosses will also be added in rotation (1 will be available each week) that loot 207 ilvl gear: Mortanis and Oranomonos the Everbranching. Finally, we have a full rework of the Battleground system, which you can read about below ! On top of that, at the same time Boris will also be returning to our servers for a full week to offer a free boost to the max lvl (50 on Oribos) to get you started or help you get a new alt ! Feeling excited ? Let's see a bit more in depth what this release includes ! THE GREAT VAULT Let's start by looking into the Great Vault, Shadowlands' new weekly chest system. Back on Battle for Azeroth you were used to 2 different chests: a weekly Mythic+ and a weekly PVP one. The gear contained in both was random, which means you could get an unnecessary piece several weeks in a row. On Shadowlands, this frustrating system got changed: there is now only 1 chest, that can contain up to 9 gear proposals unlocked through Mythic+, PVP and Raiding. When you open your vault located in Oribos, you will be able to select the piece of gear that you like best among the ones which are proposed to you, making it far more efficient: the more activities you complete the higher the chances of you getting that BIS item you're missing ! Here is how you unlock the different gear proposals: In Raid: You will have to kill a certain number of different raid bosses: 3 to get the first proposal, 6 for the second and 9 for the third. Killing the same boss in a different difficulty won't count, and the ilvl of the gear will depend on the highest difficulty in which you slained the required number of bosses. If you kill 4 bosses in HM and 2 in NM, all of them being different ones the first proposal will be HM ilvl, and the second one NM ilvl. At the time of the update, since only 3 bosses will be available you will only be able to unlock the first proposal for the Raid category. In Mythic+: You will have to complete a certain number of Mythic+ runs: 1 to get the first proposal, 4 to get the second and 10 to get the third. The ilvl of the gear will be determined by the lowest level of your top 1, 4 and 10 dungeons of the week. Let's take an example and consider you ran 10 dungeons successfuly at those key levels: 14-13-11-11-9-7-7-7-7-2: you therefore unlocked all 3 proposals, the first on being based on the 14 key, the second one on the 11 key and the third one on the 2 key. It's thus important to complete 10 dungeons each week at the highest key level possible to make sure you not only get the 3 proposals but that each one contains the highest ilvl possible ! In PVP: You will have to gain a certain amount of honor from rated PVP each week: 1250 to get the first proposal, 2500 to get the second and 6250 to get the third. The ilvl of the rewards will be determined by your highest rank achieved last week. In case no loot interests you, you can instead chose to get 3 Mystesriously Thrumming Orb which grant Stygia. Pretty straightforward ! Even if you only wish to play Mythic+ or PVP, doing so will still grant 3 proposals instead of 1 on BFA. But this new systems is also a good incentive for your to make sure you play a bit of each content ! MYTHIC+ SEASON 1 The endless trial you're already familiar with begins ! Tougher challenges, new affixes, but also better rewards: push your key to get the best possible gear at the end of the dungeon and in the weekly Great Vault. Loots ilvl will follow this table: The affix system is the same as you experienced on BFA starting at keystone level 2 with either Fortified or Tyrannical. At level 4 a second affix is added, and a third at level 7. If your key is level 10 or above, the season affix Prideful will always be present ! A few changes have occured for the affixes, we've compiled a brief summary for you here: Teeming and Skittish have been removed from the rotation. They might return in future seasons though ! Bursting is now a Magic effect that can be dispelled. Damage is now a flat amount that scales with keystone level, rather than a percentage of players' maximum health. Volcanic damage is now a flat amount that scales with keystone level, rather than a percentage of players' maximum health. Additionally, players hit are now knocked high into the air. Sanguine's pool duration has been reduced to 20 seconds (from 60). Grievous: Damage is now a flat amount that scales with keystone level, rather than a percentage of players' maximum health. Non-periodic heals remove 1 application of Grievous Wound. Explosive: Now appear slightly farther away from enemies that summon them. NEW: Inspiring - This new level 4 Keystone affix will cause some non-boss ennemies to have an inspiring presence that strenghthens their allies. It works like the Tide emissary from BFA's Beguiling affix. NEW: Spiteful - This new level 4 Keystone affix will cause corpses of non-boss ennemies to spawn Spiteful Shades that pursue random players and inflict heavy melee damage NEW: Storming - This new level 7 Keystone affix will cause ennemies in combat to periodically summon whirlwinds that inflict damage and knock back players. The season 1 affix is Prideful, and works similarly to Reaping from BFA: At every 20% Enemy forces killed, a Manifestation of Pride will spawn near player's location. Killing it will grant them Prideful for 60 seconds, increasing their damage, healing, movement speed and mana regeneration by a significant amount. If the group drops combat with the Manifestation (by death or other means) its health won't reset and it will simply return to its spawn location. On top of auto attacking the highest threat target, the Manifestation has 2 spells: Bursting With Pride - every 2 seconds - dealing AOE damage and gaining a stack, increasing subsequent cast damage by 40%. The damage will therefore increase with every cast, meaning you need to kill it before it gets overwhelming. If you wipe, the stacks will reset to 0. Belligerent Boast - every 7 seconds - targetting a random player and placing a 4 second debuff onto them: once it expires, 4 missiles will be fired from the player, dealing high damage and stunning any ally it passes through. VALOR By doing Mythic+ dungeons, you will also earn Valor, a new currency. As you may have noticed, gear pieces you obtained by doing dungeons in MM0 difficulty had a 1/12 rank: those you will obtain in MM+ will have a rank depending on the keystone level, but you can also spend valor to upgrade them ! The amount of Valor you can get each week is gated by a season cap, meaning if you missed some weeks you will be able to catch up. The cost of an upgrade depends on the gear type, and some ranks are gated by achievements: To upgrade past rank 5 you will need the Keystone Explorer To upgrade past rank 7 you will need the Keystone Conqueror To upgrade past rank 9 you will need the Keystone Master Guide on how to earn valor:here For the past weeks you discovered the new dungeons and got acquainted to them, now it's time to up the stakes ! With tweaked and new affixes, we wish you all good luck, and will display your achievements on our ranking page ! PVP SEASON 1: SINFUL GLADIATOR For those of you that thrive in the heat of PvP fights, start climbing the ladder in 2vs2 and 3vs3: face your opponents in the arena and prove your worth as a champion of Azeroth - and the Shadowlands ! This will be the first PvP season and will last until the second raid, Sanctum of Domination is released (expected duration is 6 months). Since Oribos' release, you can already earn honor by participating in PVP activities which you can then spend at the vendors to get honor gear starting at rank 1 (ilvl 158) which you can then upgrade up to rank 7 (ilvl 197) with this currency, gated by your renown level. By playing in rated PVP, you will earn a new currency: Conquest. With this you will be able to buy conquest gear. Starting at ilvl 200, you will then be able to upgrade it using honor, gated by your pvp rank: Unranked (from vendor): Item level 200 Combatant (1400-1599): Item Level 207 Challenger (1600-1799) :Item Level 213 Rival (1800-2099): Item Level 220 Duelist (2100+): Item level 226 Elite (2400+): Item level 233 *Weapon, Shield, Offhand ONLY If you fall below the minimum cutoffs (1400, 1600, 1800, 2100, and 2400 respectively) you have a 30 point leniency period where you remain in the same bracket. Conquest gains are gated by a season cap, meaning if you missed some weeks you will be able to catch up. Upgrades cost in honor are pretty high on top of needing you to climb the ladder, but this new system will be a lot less stressful and much more rewarding to gear yourself up doing pvp activities ! Also remember that getting honor from rated PVP every week will unlock gear proposals for the weekly Great Vault ! We wish you good fortune in the battles to come, and may you become a Sinful Gladiator ! RAID: CASTLE NATHRIA The first wing of Castle Nathria; 'The Leeching Vaults' will be released in LFR, NM and HM difficulties ! It contains the following 3 bosses (including guides to help you): Huntsman Altimor Hungering Destroyer Lady Inerva Darkvein Although in NM and HM you should have to go through Shriekwing first, it will be disabled so you can go straight to Huntsman Altimor. As explained in our previous post, we prefered to release wing by wing to ensure the good state and follow-up of the raid. With that being said, the release schedule will be speeded up to every 2 weeks: This means you can expect the second wing: 'Reliquary of Opulence' to be released on Monday January 31st. Remember to kill all 3 bosses every week to unlock an additional proposal in your great vault, and in the highest difficulty possible to increase its reward's ilvl ! BATTLEGROUND SYSTEM REWORK One of our developers has been hard at work on the Battleground system for the past months, and after a round of testings it's ready to be finally applied on Oribos ! Basically the whole code has been rewritten, but here is a list of the notable changes: You can now rejoin a Battleground if you disconnected in it (from Internet issue, or if you close the game manually). You can now queue for multiple Battlegrounds at the same time (max 3). Same goes for LFG. Quick joining has been added: if you join a group of people in queue, you will automatically be added to the queue. Cross-faction has been removed in BG: if there is any imbalance between horde and alliance in queue, you will be offered to toggle mercenary to fight for the other faction and fasten queue time. Matchmaking has been rewritten to more accurately find players of the same rank Deserter system has been fixed to now work as it does on retail. Battlegrounds that already started will now be prioritised to add new players who just entered the queue. In addition, they can now start as soon as enough players are available (this will fasten queue time) All battlegrounds are now pre-loaded, which reduces stress caused to both server (delay) and client (FPS) On top of that, we have a few news: A new arena has been implemented: Empyrean Domain Wintergrasp is updated to 9.0.5 version (some bugs were fixed) Isle of Conquest has been updated and bugs were fixed There are now new buffs on all Battlegrounds Various fixes for all battlegrounds (mostly visual effects) We hope you'll enjoy those changes, and we'll keep a close eye in case anything weird happens ! Ready ? Fight ! With all of those new contents added on Oribos, and more to come in the following weeks you should be busy enough ! We're continuing to keep a close eye on the reports you guys are making, and are applying fixes daily to improve the server: make sure to check them on our website here: https://firestorm-servers.com/changelog/sl Thank you so much for your patience and your help in this new adventure into the Shadowlands, we'll see you next Monday ! The Firestorm Team
  10. Greetings ! The second phase of our Sethraliss Dungeon tournament is now over, and we have our 6 qualified teams for the final phase ! Congratulations to everyone who participated, let's meet our 6 finalists: Depletes High MS 12 IQ Rabbits STOMP Manbatman Three Two One The final phase, which is a double elimination bracket tournament will happen on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th December at 6:00PM Server time (CET) and will be streamed on our official Youtube channel ! The tournament will be hosted by Masoscrivere and Hothead, who will comment it for you in english ! Each round will be played in Best Of 3 on 3 different dungeons disclosed in advance (see below) except the grand final which will be Best Of 5. The affixes will be the same as phase 2, and keys will be +21: you can therefore already start preparing your strats for them and practice on the dedicated realm ! TOURNAMENT BRACKET The order of matches will be as follow: Upper bracket Round 1 Upper bracket Round 2 Lower bracket Round 1 Lower bracket Round 2 Upper Final Lower Final Grand Final The teams will at the end be ranked and rewarded as follow: 1st - Grand Final Winner - 5000€ 2nd - Grand Final Loser - 1500€ + 15000 Firestorm Points 3rd - Lower Final Loser - 1000€ + 10000 Firestorm Points 4th - Lower Bracket Round 2 Loser - 15000 Firestorm Points 5th / 6th - Lower Bracket Round 1 Losers - 10000 Firestorm Points The rewards will be for the team. The split inside the team will be made in proportion with the number of matches played, to make up for the potential subs that could join in (as a reminder, you are allowed to sign a 6th man, in case someone cannot play at a certain point). A quick reminder of the rules: - If your team fails to present 5 members when it is required, they will be automatically disqualified and ranked last. - If you are caught cheating / bug abusing, your team will be automatically disqualified and no rewards will be issued. Congratulations again to everyone involved ! This final phase is the culminating point of this first edition of dungeon tournament, and we're really excited to see it going live ! Special thanks to Masoscrivere and Hothead for being our commentators, please cheer for them as well ! Good luck to our 6 finalists, and see you on Saturday 18th on our Youtube channel for the stream at 6:00PM Server Time (CET) ! The Firestorm Team
  11. Greetings everyone ! This is it, Firestorm's next expansion: Shadowlands will be released on Monday, December 20th 10:00AM server time on its realm Oribos ! After a month of Beta realm (OBTR) where you could discover in advance the new features of this 8th World of Warcraft Expansion and give us feedback, it is now time to get the real thing started ! We really wanted to have it ready before Christmas, as a 'gift' to you all: you've been really patient, now it's time for you to get rewarded for it ! Our OBTR will remain opened until Sunday, December 19th when it'll then be shut down. As we mentioned in our previous announcement, any progress made on it won't carry over onto Oribos (the "real" realm): this was a bound-to-disappear realm only meant for testing purposes. In the meantime you can obviously keep on playing it as much as you'd like ! To be able to play right on the 20th, you will need to have your Firestorm Shadowlands client downloaded in advance: many other players will want to join in at the same time, therefore we strongly advise you to prepare yourself right now ! It's easy, all you need to do is either access our regular download page or visit our dedicated guide here: http://fstorm.cc/EN-SL-Download. Please note that our Launcher is now updated to include Shadowlands, yet we advise you to download the full client via torrent if possible. Two days prior to Oribos' opening, we will be copying every character from Sethraliss so you can resume your progression where you left it. A few things of importance to note: Each character's gold will be capped to 10000 Every item in inventories will be bound to your character meaning you won't be able to sell in the AH nor trade them anymore Guild banks are gonna be wiped (items deleted + gold set to 0) on Oribos (your guild bank won't be affected on Sethraliss, don't worry) Finally, character's level and their gear's ilvl will be scaled down to Shadowlands (120 characters will become level 50, with this expansion's max level being 60) Now that we have covered all the preliminary explanations, let's dive in to see what awaits you on Oribos, our Shadowlands realm ! NB: Even though our client is a 9.1.5 one, we will release at 9.0 patch first ! Every system will be scripted in 9.0 fashion, except the class balancing which will be 9.1.5. SPECIAL LAUNCH REWARDS As a token of appreciation (and because you guys waited a long time while we were working hard on that new expansion !) we wanted to give a little something to those of you who join the adventure the very first week following the release ! Those who will log on Oribos before Monday December 27th will receive on their account: The Ensorcelled Everwyrm mount The Anima Wyrmling pet The Wraithchill cosmetic weapon effect The Eternal Traveler's Hearthstone toy The Vestments of the Eternal Traveler That's kind of a nice timing, with Christmas right in the middle don't you think ? Thank you for your support ! NEW LEVELING EXPERIENCE For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft, a heavy rework was made in regards to leveling, and learning the game. Before Shadowlands, every new expansion meant a higher max level and therefore a longer grind to get there, starting with a fairly unfriendly first step into the world of Azeroth: it all changes here ! On Shadowlands, the maximum level has been scaled down from 120 to 60: From levels 1-10, you will be learning the ropes of the game in a beautiful new zone called Exile's Reach. This place will be common to all races (when before each one had its own starting zone), and will feature a whole new questline designed to help new players learn the mecanisms of WoW much better, and faster. Even if you already have all of your characters above level 10, this new experience is gonna be refreshing, and could also help some friends of yours who never picked the game get into it much more easily. From levels 10-50, you will be leveling doing the Battle for Azeroth main storyline, which is fully scripted (its first quest will automatically be given to you). No more changing zones every 10 levels, battling to find working quests or killing monsters endlessly ! It's possible that in the future we will allow for different storylines (like the one from Legion for instance), but our main goal was that everyone doesn't feel bad creating a new character because they are dreading the leveling: it will now be a smooth and nice experience for newcomers and die-hard players alike ! Finally from levels 50-60, you will be making your way into the Shadowlands for the first time ever in World of Warcraft, to experience the wonder and horrors of the afterlife accross five new zones: the gleaming fields of Bastion, the scarred battlefields of Maldraxxus, the eternal twilight of Ardenweald, the opulent keeps of Revendreth, and the horrific Maw. NB: The "Thread of Fate" mecanism allowing you to skip the main storyline to level from 50-60 by other means is not yet implemented (we plan to add it further down the line), so for each character you will have to run the questline for now ! Back on BFA's expansion, its main storyline made you progress from level 110 to 120, while now it will be from level 10 to 50: this shows how much faster your leveling will be on this new expansion, greatly lightening the burden you could feel when when wanting to try out a new class. In 2 simple words: faster & easier ! On top of that, we will add a 50% increase to all exp gains: it used to be higher on older expansions, but with the whole content now fully scripted this will be enough to allow you to reach the necessary level thresholds easily. On top of that, Allied races will start level 10, meaning they can skip the first part. Death Knights and Demon Hunters will still pursue their starting questline (since it's specific to the class and not the race, by the way DKs got a brand new one !) before rapidly reaching level 10 and starting BFA's storyline. As a reminder, your characters from Sethraliss will be copied onto Oribos, so you won't have to start again. But we're pretty hyped with the idea of having a smooth leveling experience to propose, because this has always been one of Firestorm's weaknesses, as we focus on the end game: not anymore ! THE SHADOWLANDS Who thought dying was the end ? Welcome to the Shadowlands ! Once you reach level 48, a quest will automatically be given to you, asking you to head to your capital to begin the storyline. Beginning in Icecrown Citadel, it will then bring you to the afterlife's realm ! After a quick stop at the Maw, you will then arrive at your new capital, where Horde and Alliance gather: Oribos, the Eternal City ! (Yes, we took inspiration from it for our realm's name...) From there on, you will follow the main storyline which will make you travel accross all 5 zones: Bastion, (level 50-52) which is ruled by the Kyrian Covenant. Ordered and purposeful, souls sent here seek virtue. Maldraxxus, (level 52-54) which is ruled by the Necrolord Covenant. Heart of the Shadowlands' military might, souls sent here survive by the rule of the fittest. Ardenweald, (level 54-57) which is ruled by the Night Fae Covenant. Emerald Dreams's dark mirror, it's a place of rest and rebirth. Revendreth, (level 57-60) which is ruled by the Venthyr Covenant. Land of dark secrets, prideful souls are atoning there. The Maw, (level 60+) which is ruled by The Jailer and where Torghast, Tower of the Damned is located By visiting all zones, you will learn of the troubles reigning in the Shadowlands and the schemes orchestrated by the Jailer. Each zone will have its own world quests, rares, dungeons and World Bosses ! This will be your central play area, learning the specifics of all 5 (especially the Maw, a tormented land not easy to survive in !) will be key in your adventure. You can find more information around those 5 zones and their questline here. TORGHAST The Tower of the Damned is located at the heart of the Maw, and is the place where the Jailer hoards his most precious souls. This feature offers a brand new type of gameplay: instanced dynamic content featuring new challenges every time you visit it, with changing floor layouts and enemy mob types for 1 to 5 players. Each visit in Thorgast will be a new experience ! This content is central to your Shadowlands experience as it will be your way to gather Soul Ash, a currency needed to create customizable Legendary Armor (yes they are back !) thanks to an important character held in the tower: the Runecarver. An introduction questline will detail the functionning of Torghast: this has many specific mecanisms, but you will get to know them all rapidly so do not worry ! Here is how things broadly work there: Each run you do contains different floors, and you will have a set number of deaths allowed (for the whole group if you're playing with friends). If the "Death counter" reaches zero, The Tarrague will be spawned, meaning your run will probably be over... On the other hand, if you manage to finish it, you will unlock the next "layer" (basically the next difficulty). To help you in your run, you will find Anima Orbs and Powers: the orbs which you will get after killing certain NPCs allow you to chose between 3 powers that last until the end. Some of them are available to all characters while others are class specific. Some vendors can also sell you upgrades or perks for Phantasma (a currency gathered during your run), helping you get further. These vendors are present in floor 3 and 6. Whenever you die in Torghast, you will respawn at the beginning of the floor you are currently on, and will lose any temporary buffs you may have. There are different wings in Torghast, with only 2 of them available each week and rotating. On floor 6 of each layer an end boss awaits you: kill him to complete your run ! With a total of 12 different layers, you will have quite a lot to do in Torghast. But do not dread, as you have up to 4 friends to help you ! For more details on Torghast, you can visit this link. COVENANTS Briefly named above, there are 4 different covenants that rule the afterlife in the Shadowlands: Kyrian, Necrolords, Night Fae and Venthyr. During your questing you will learn their traits and particularities before having to chose one at level 60. Each of them has its own storyline, divided into chapters. As you're playing you will advance in Renown, a way to show your standing among your chosen family. This is a weekly caped system, unlocking various things such as storyline chapters. Chosing your covenant is the most character-defining thing in Shadowlands, and changing your mind won't be forgiving ! So you will need to chose carefuly as going back will be time costly. By alligning yourself with a Covenant, you will unlock various things: A signature Ability common to all members of the covenant A class ability, common to all members of your class within the covenant Soulbinds and conduits, a new system of progression unique to each covenant unlocking various powers through an artifact-like talent tree. A sanctum, the base of operation of your covenant, from which you can run missions, quests, world quests and more in order to raise your covenant's power back to its former level Several unique rewards ! Each covenant's caimpaign contains 8 chapters. At the release, only the first one will be available (because of the Renown progress cap) but so far the first 2 are scripted, while the others will be released whenever they are ready (Expected ETA is around 2 weeks / chapter) accross all covenants. You can check a more detailed guide about Covenants here. DUNGEONS The Shadowlands contain 8 different dungeons: 4 of them are accessible during your leveling, while the remaining others will be unlocked once you reach level 60. At the release, 7 out of those 8 will be available in Normal, Heroic and Mythic Difficulty. A few weeks later we will start the Mythic+ season, to give us some time to make sure everything is working properly. Here is the list of the dungeons: The Necrotic Wake - Bastion - Accessible while leveling Plaguefall - Maldraxxus - Accessible while leveling Mists of Tirna Scithe - Ardenweald - Accessible while leveling Halls of Atonement - Revendreth - Accessible while leveling Theater of Pain - Maldraxxus - Accessible level 60 De Other Side - Ardenweald - Accessible level 60 Spires of Ascension - Bastion - Accessible level 60 → This one is missing 2 bosses at the moment, but should be ready soon after the release Sanguine Depths - Revendreth - Accessible level 60 For more information related to the dungeons, you can read this guide. RAID: CASTLE NATHRIA The first raid of Shadowlands, Castle Nathria will be released wing by wing, but unlike our previous raids we will speed up that process, with one wing every 2 weeks (instead of every 4-5 weeks). The first one will open in LFR, Normal, and Heroic difficulties a few weeks after the release alongside the Mythic+ difficulty for dungeons. Once the 4th and final wing has been released, the full Mythic mode will follow ! Located in Revendreth, here is a list of its bosses with their corresponding wing: The Leeching Vaults (1st wing) Huntsman Altimor Hungering Destroyer Lady Inerva Darkvein Reliquary of Opulence (2nd wing) Artificer Xy'Mox Sun King's Salvation Council of Blood Blood from Stone (3rd wing) Shriekwing Sludgefist Stone Legion Generals An Audience with Arrogance (4th wing) Sire Denathrius You can read more about the whole raid here. PLAYER VS PLAYER With Shadowlands, a highly requested features makes its return in PVP: the vendors ! It has been fairly hard on Legion & BFA to gear up your characters by doing PVP, and vendors are here to fix this: by engaging in PVP activities, you will earn Honor and Conquest, both used to purchase pieces of gear and upgrades for them (caped by Renown for honor gear, and caped by PVP rank for Conquest gear). Just like the Mythic+ season, the rated PVP season will start a few weeks after the opening. This time will be crucial for us to make sure everything begins in the smoothest state possible ! In the meantime you can still train in skirmishes and battlegrounds, try out builds and talents ! For more information related to the new PVP System, you can head there. A new expansion release is something really special, and we can't wait to see you log on Oribos, after months of hard work and a pretty successful beta realm ! We detailed the main features, but you can expect many more new things for Shadowlands ! As with every new release, you can expect us to be on the deck to fix every issues hindering your gameplay, your enjoyment being our priority ! If you haven't done it yet, scroll back up and check our guide to download the client, so on the 20th you can be among the first to log, and get our special thank-you rewards ! In the meantime remember that our beta realm is opened to everyone, so you can log there to try the expansion, and give us feedback on our bugtracker which will help us ! Only 10 days to wait for, which we'll spend polishing everything ! See you then The Firestorm Team
  12. With our Shadowlands realm opening, you will need a new client to connect ! Do not worry, we made it as simple as possible for you to do so, no headache guaranteed! Note: if you have played on the Open Beta, you do not need to do anything, as this is the same client ! Hooray ! If you want to be able to play as soon as you get access, we advise you to download your client in advance ! Many players will be downloading it, which may slow the process so the earlier you get ready the better ! NB: The full client downloads every game data right away: it takes longer to download and requires a soft like bittorent, but once it's done you will have the whole game ready. The minimal client is smaller, faster to download, but will then download missing datas as you're playing, slowing you down and extending your loading times FOR WINDOWS: You have Retail's Shadowlands Client in 9.1.5 version (which is the one we're using): Clone your Folder into a new one, called for example "FS Shadowlands" Download the Firestorm Shadowlands .exe here: http://fstorm.cc/SL-Minimal (it is compressed in a .rar) Open your FS Shadowlands client folder, place the .rar you just downloaded at the root (not in the '_retail_' subfolder), and extract it. Click on your new .exe and you're on! You are using the launcher: Just start it, and you will see the Shadowlands section on the bottom left: press download ! Launcher has been added ! You don't have the game yet: Here is the full torrent (if possible try to use this one rather than the minimal, but you will need a torrent software like bittorrent) Here is the minimal client link: http://fstorm.cc/SL-Minimal. Just extract it and start the .exe ! Please note: The first time you will open the FS Shadowlands client, if it wasn't downloaded from the full torrent, it will take a bit of time (depending on your connexion speed) to download the missing files, but in the meantime nothing will appear on your screen, that's normal ! Do not open it 43 times, just once and then wait a bit. Once it's done, you will be fully set up! FOR MAC (unavailable as of 15.03.2023 client 9.2.7): The Mac Intel / M1 client is now available ! Just follow this link that contains a readme.txt: http://fstorm.cc/SL-MAC-Download If you have troubles installing, you can contact our staffmembers on the support channel of our Discord, or you can create a forum post here
  13. Greetings everyone ! As we previously discussed in our Shadowlands Devblog, our Open Beta Test Realm (shortened OBTR) has opened its doors and we will be sending the first batch of invitations shortly ! We will begin by granting access to the most active accounts of the past few months. Then, we'll regularly increase the number of accesses by sending new "waves" of invitation. If your account is granted access, you will receive an email with all of the information so you can head in without wasting a single minute, and also invite a friend of your chosing there by sharing the extra access key ! We'll also offer keys in giveaways, or events in game that you can then use or send to friends. At some point, everyone will get access to the OBTR though, so you will be able to test it do not worry ! If you're a streamer, you can contact an admin to get access & keys to give during your streams ! How to use your access key to enter the open beta ? By accessing your account page here and entering it in the designated box ! Be careful, as a key can only be used to grant access to one single account ! On this OBTR, all of your characters from Sethraliss have already been copied, with the level squish applied (level 120 characters will be scaled down to level 50; 60 being Shadowland's max level). The copy was made on November 4th at around 5:00AM server time meaning everything you did afterwards has not be taken into account on the OBTR. There are several purposes served by having a OBTR, which is why we resort to it everytime before a new expansion or client update is released: Making sure that the copy of characters from Sethraliss happens without any issue: when the real realm gets released, a similar copy will be made therefore it's important to make sure nothing goes wrong there. Testing realm stability: while our Quality Assurance team is working on our Shadowlands test realm for month, having a few characters online at the same moment doesn't stress the realm as much as having several hundreds or thousands. This also explains why we're going to give access gradually, to give us time to fix any issue in that regard. Providing an opportunity for you to test, and report issues you encounter in game on our bugtracker since not everything can be easily spotted on test realms (nor can it always actually be so, since having more players doing things can affect certain behaviors) All in all, the final aim is to get a Firestorm Shadowlands release as clean as possible for everyone to enjoy: so when you get access (because you will at some point !) make sure to log in, and have fun while also taking a bit of time to forward issues you find Important Note: Unlike what was announced in our devblog, the client will actually be in version 9.1.5 and not 9.1. This is retail's current build, but as usual we'll release content in the normal order: 9.0 first then moving forward. We chose to go for that newest version because it didn't require that much more work on our end, but included several quality of life changes that you will be really glad to have right away ! Also, progress on this realm won't be carried over to the final SL realm. This is a test realm, and its progress will eventually be wiped. How to download the client ? Just follow this link, nice and easy ! http://fstorm.cc/EN-SL-Download Now that we have the basics covered, let's see what you will be able to discover on our OBTR ! EXILE'S REACH & LEVELING Before heading into shadowlands content itselft, let's talk a bit about the "early game". Even though you will be able to resume the experience where you left it on Sethraliss, Shadowlands includes a rework of the leveling experience for players, making it faster, simpler and less of a chore for newcomers as well as veterans wanting to create alts ! We worked on that system, and here is how it's gonna look like: When you create a character (allied races, DKs and DHs excluded), you will be forced into this new "common zone" where every other new characters are too: Exile's Reach. This zone includes a tutorial, and some easy quests that will help you get started in World of Warcraft. The fact that everyone is forced there allows us to maintain a 100% functionnal zone: everything will work properly, and will continue to do so for the entirety of the expansion ! Once you get to level 10 (allied races starting there, DKs and DHs too right after their small intro questline), you will have the opportunity to chose an expansion to "re-live" up until your level 50. Right now, you will be forced to chose BFA, as it was our best working one, and the easiest to maitain but in the future we plan to have others (starting with Legion). This means that you will do that expansion's main questline, which should give you more than enough to get to level 48, when you'll receive the intro quest to Shadowlands ! Just like Exile's Reach, it will now become a lot easier for us to ensure your full leveling doesn't encounter any issues: before we would have had to fix all expansions, while now only BFA (for now) is required. No more getting stuck ! As explained in the introduction, the max level on Shadowlands is 60 compared to BFA's 120. It will also be a lot faster to get to the max level compared to before: all of those changes were added to make the beginner's experience a lot better than it used to be. On top of that, interface has been edited a bit so you won't end up wondering where you should head or which quest to prioritize: coupled with the high quality content, getting to the starting point of Shadowland's questline should feel really smooth ! With that being said, if you encounter any issues there we'd be happy to hear about them on our bugtracker to make sure it gets the attention required. THE SHADOWLANDS Welcome to the Shadowlands, where all souls get judged and then dispatched for the remainder of their afterlives ! This world of composed of several places: Oribos is the capital, where the judgement is made by 'The Arbiter': this will be your main hub, horde and alliance alike. From there you can access the 5 zones of the expansion Bastion which is ruled by the Kyrian Covenant Maldraxxus which is ruled by the Necrolord Covenant Ardenweald which is ruled by the Night Fae Covenant Revendreth which is ruled by the Venthyr Covenant The Maw which is ruled by The Jailer and where Torghast, Tower of the Damned is located During your questing you will visit all 5 zones in that order (except a quick detour to the Maw at the beginning !), to finally reach level 60. Everything is scripted, so if you find an issue remember to report it on our bugtracker ! TORGHAST The Tower of the Damned is a new system that was never seen before: a scalable dungeon from 1 to 5 players generated randomly, which means every run will be different ! Unlike Mythic+, you won't have a set time to complete your run though, meaning your can explore at your own pace. An introduction questline will help you understand the mecanism of this mode, and you'll then be able to play on 3 different wings in total, with 2 being available each week and rotating. This mode is central to Shadowlands as it's the source of currencies needed for you to get your legendary items: but don't worry ! Even though it's a new feature you will quickly get the hang of it, and you can always have some friends to help you ! COVENANTS Briefly named above, there are 4 different covenants that rule the afterlife in the Shadowlands: Kyrian, Necrolords, Night Fae and Venthyr. At some point, you will need to align with one of them, providing your character with different spells, cosmetics, activities and followers to send in missions for various rewards ! Each of them has its own storyline, divided into chapters: the first 2 will be available at some point on the OBTR, while the 3rd ones should follow shortly after. As you're playing you will advance in Renown, a way to show your standing among your chosen family. This is a weekly caped system, unlocking various things such as storyline chapters. Chosing your covenant is the most character-defining thing in Shadowlands, and changing your mind won't be forgiving ! So you will need to chose carefuly as going back will be time costly. During your progression you will unlock soulbinds, a new artifact-like talent tree system giving various bonuses obtained by linking your soul to a member of your covenant. DUNGEONS The Shadowlands contain 8 different dungeons, 6 of them being available right away on our OBTR ! 4 of them are accessible during your leveling, while the remaining others will be unlocked once you reach level 60. On our OBTR, you will be able to play them in all difficulities including Mythic+. Here is the list: The Necrotic Wake - Bastion - Accessible while leveling Plaguefall - Maldraxxus - Accessible while leveling Mists of Tirna Scithe - Ardenweald - Accessible while leveling Halls of Atonement - Revendreth - Accessible while leveling Theater of Pain - Maldraxxus - Accessible level 60 De Other Side - Ardenweald - Accessible level 60 - Currently still under development (ETA: 1 week) Spires of Ascension - Bastion - Accessible level 60 - Currently still under development (ETA: 3 weeks) Sanguine Depths - Revendreth - Accessible level 60 RAID: CASTLE NATHRIA The first raid of Shadowlands, Castle Nathria will be available on our OBTR in LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic difficulties ! Located in Revendreth, you will be able to fight your way towards its 10 bosses which are all scripted: Shriekwing Sun King's Salvation Artificer Xy'Mox Huntsman Altimor Council of Blood Hungering Destroyer Lady Inerva Darkvein Sludgefist Stone Legion Generals Sire Denathrius OTHER FEATURES On top of all that, you will be able to experience much more: The legendary gear system is returning, with some changes ! You can now craft them, and then infuse those items with legendary powers collected through your questing. PVP players can rejoice, as you will be able to do arenas and battlegrounds, earn honnor and conquest to then purchase your gear to vendors ! This was something wanted for a long time, and it's making its return on SL, and on our OBTR ! The warmode system from BFA still persists, so you can chose whether you want to be able to battle the other faction or not in open world ! The weekly chest has been revamped, and will be far less random now ! By battling raid bosses, doing Mythic+ keys and PVP activities you'll then be able to select through an increasing number of gear to get what you trully need ! World Quests will be available on all zones, and World Bosses will be added a bit later on the OBTR Classes have been adjusted, and you will be able to discover how your new favorite class looks like ! As a reminder, all balance changes will be those of 9.1.5 which includes a lot of optimization compared to the fairly chaotic 9.0 one. We are excited to bring all of those content to you guys, and hope you are eager to discover it as well! We cannot stress this enough, your feedback will be of great importance to make sure that our actual release goes as well as possible! So please take the time to write reports about the issues you encounter on the bugtracker. Thank you for reading, and see you on our Shadowlands OBTR ! The Firestorm Team
  14. Greetings ! On Monday November 8th at 4:00AM server time, the first round of qualifiers for our MDIs will be over: every player with a Fio ranking of at least 3000 will be accepted to participate in our second phase, happening on a dedicated realm ! To check your rating, you can access that page on our website: http://fstorm.cc/firestormio This 2nd phase will start 2 days after, on Wednesday November 10th at 4:00AM server time, and will last 4 weeks as well. We initially planned to have it shorter but we then made adjustements to our plans in order to make it more entertaining, fairer and more challenging for everyone involved. Here is how things will work out, please read this very carefuly: On Monday, November 8th every account that has at least one character who validated phase 1 will be granted access to the dedicated realm. You will be able to create there as many characters as you need, up to the client's limit. This is in order for you to have time to prepare yourself in advance, so that on Wednesday when phase 2 kicks off you won't have to waste time ! On this realm, you will remain in one dedicated zone: the Preparation Area and have at your disposal different vendors which sell max ilvl gear, all corruptions and all essences you might need alongside dummies & a reset-CD NPC (to test your damage / heal), a stable and all of the BFA NPCs needed to upgrade your cloak, heart of Azeroth, change traits, remove corruptions etc. That way, you can trully get your ideal build for every specialization of every classes you play ! Once Phase 2 starts, each week you will be able to get 3 different keystones from an NPC so everyone runs the same 3 dungeons in a set difficulty & affixes (you can read below what the schedule will look like). This means keys won't deplete nor upgrade: after you complete a dungeon you will need to get another keystone from that NPC. A special page will be available on the website here (link will be updated soon) showing the top teams on each dungeons, so you can track your own progress compared to your competitors. With that being said, we'll internally track each team based on their accounts (and not characters: you can therefore adapt your composition to the dungeon). At the end of those 4 weeks, all dungeons will have been covered. We'll then select using a specific formula available below the global top 8 teams to participate in the final phase: the streamed tournament, to fight for glory and the cashprize ! Important note: if one account is linked to more than 1 of those 8 teams, this will automatically disqualify one of them ! you thus need to make sure that your 4 teammates aren't actively playing with another team or you might end up being left out. How we will rank the teams internally (this won't be displayed anywhere on our website): for each dungeon, the best run will award points to its team based on the timer. A key completed in 21 minutes and 30 seconds will grant 21.50 points; we'll sum up all of your points and the 8 teams with the least amount of total points will advance. To be eligible you will need your team to have made at least one run on each dungeon ! DUNGEON SCHEDULE Below you can find the prepared schedule for the 4 weeks of Phase 2. As a reminder, each week you will only be able to run on those 3 dungeons: a ranking will be available on our website displaying the top teams for each dungeon. WEEK 1: WEEK 2: WEEK 3: WEEK 4: We wanted to congratulate everyone who managed to pass the first round of qualifiers, but also to thank everyone for your interest and patience towards this pretty big project we're doing ! This is a first but we're really trying our best to make it an interesting and entertaining experience for you ! With that being said, we wish good fortune to everyone fighting during this second phase, where the real test begins ! We'll see you on Monday, The Firestorm Team
  15. Greetings everyone ! Yes, Shadowlands is coming soon. We've been working on it for the past months, and things are improving day by day on almost every aspect of the game ! It's not ready yet, but we'll soon be able to open a PTR like we did for Battle for Azeroth: a closed-access realm with invites being granted at an increasing rate. This will happen in November, so we're close ! It's planned to have it going for around a month with some content being added, switched with others to make sure everything gets reviewed so that the actual release of our realm happens as smoothly as possible ! When the time comes, another announcement will be made with details on how to download the client, what content will be available to test etc. Important thing to note: we'll release the client in 9.1 directly (but starting with 9.0 content, as usual) to allow for smoother updates and get the 9.1 class balance. We still have a month to make sure we're ready for that PTR release (and we'll be working as hard as ever !) but we wanted to share the current state of affairs with you to give you a better idea of what you can expect ! We're gonna remain focused on the state of each feature rather than a thorough explanation of what they are, but we'll include links so you can read about them if you' want to know more about the Shadowlands specifics We're really excited for this as we're sure most of you also are, so without further ado: Exile's Reach: This is the new level 1-10 zone where every race will make their baby steps. Much more "casual friendly" than what we currently had up until BFA, everyone will have to go through there first. It's gonna be finished in a few days and then our QA will test it so it's been properly tested before it ends up on the PTR. If you want more info, you can check this guide Chromie Time: This feature allows every player reaching level 11 to chose on which expansion they want to level up, scaling every creature & quests up to level 50. At first, we'll force everyone to chose for BFA since this is our best-scripted expansion (which has already been fully retested on SL). This means that alongside Exile's Reach, all of the leveling should be smooth & without any bugs ! In the future, we'll script Legion, and then eventually other expansions choices. If you want more info, you can check this guide Shadowlands' Intro: Starting automatically once you reach level 50, you'll go to ICC to begin your new journey, then to The Maw for some quests which then leads to Oribos, the expansion's main city. Already tested, it's working really well. Shadowlands' new zones: Bastion (level 50-52) - Madraxxus (level 52-54) - Ardenweald (level 54-57) - Revendreth (level 57 - 60) are all fully scripted including the World Quests, excepted for Bastion which should be finished in the following weeks. All 4 of them will be available on the PTR. The Maw (level 60+) while you'll be getting in and out of it during your leveling, the zone itself at max level hasn't been worked on yet, but since it's not much (short questline + a few dailies / weeklys / rares) it might be available for the PTR, albeit not right away. It's supposed to be the prerequisite to access Thorgast, but we will remove that condition on PTR if needed ! If you want more info, you can check this guide Torghast: 3 Wings (out of 6) are currently working, and almost all anima powers are scripted. The intro questline will be worked on soon, which includes some scenarios inside of Thorgast so you can get a grasp of its functioning. If you want more info, you can check this guide Covenants: Those 4 families (linked to the first 4 zones of Shadowlands) will have enough chapters scripted so you can access their spells, conduits, soulbinds, followers, missions & callings. They aren't ready yet, but should be for the PTR (maybe not right away, but during its time). If you want more info, you can check this guide Dungeons: All 8 should be available for the release, most during the PTR. Some are in a more advanced state than others (3 of them aren't fully scripted yet but should be soon). Affixes have been scripted & updated, and the rewards as well (including the new weekly chest, which has been redesigned entirely !) If you want more info, you can check this guide Raid: Castle Nathria: Every bosses are scripted in all difficulties, and testings have started progressively (first wings having received more feedback than last ones). It will be fully available on the PTR so you can check it thoroughly ! If you want more info, you can check this guide Legendaries: The crafting system has been scripted for a while, and so were most of the spells but because of their complex nature some are still in need of a review. They should be available for the PTR. If you want more info, you can check this guide Classes: As mentioned it will be 9.1 balancing, and their scripting has begun recently. Everything will be fully ready for the actual release, with the finishing touches applied during PTR time. This pretty much does it ! As you can see, most of the new systems are at least almost finished for the dev part, and testings have started for a while now. We haven't gone in depth of their core functioning because this would be fairly long, but we advise you to read the linked guides, which contain every information you may need ! Shadowlands brings a lot of new things that you will (re)discover soon, so having a bit of information beforehand can't hurt ! When the PTR opening date is set, we will provide more detailed guides of the available systems, as well as how you can help improving their quality for the release: we'll first invite our most active players, while steadily expanding the filter. There isn't much more to wait, and with the new PVP season & the MDI on Sethraliss you should have plenty of things to do while increasing your chances to be selected first for the PTR ! While all this happens, our developers and Quality Assurance members are giving their best We'll see you in a few weeks for more information regarding Shadowlands, in the meantime we wish you a nice experience on Firestorm ! Thank you for your time and fidelity, The Firestorm Team