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World of Warcraft’s latest patch is now live, and while it doesn’t add any new content, it does bring about some significant changes to the various systems of the game’s current expansion.
The list of changes is long. Chief among them is the ability to freely swap Covenants for players who have reached Renown rank 80 with their Covenant of choice. At the beginning of the Shadowlands expansion, players had to choose one of four Covenants to ally with, and while players could technically change to another Covenant later, it was a painful and costly process. That restriction is now gone, allowing players to more freely experiment.
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Patch 9.1.5 also sees the removal of the widely-disliked Conduit Energy system, which served as a talent tree of sorts but felt overly punishing to players who enjoyed participating in different types of content. Players can now swap their Conduits freely without restriction. The area-of-effect ability cap introduced in Shadowlands, which caused many of the game’s AOE abilities to only hit a certain number of enemies, has also been removed. The majority of the game’s AOE abilities now deal reduced damage to targets beyond the first five or eight.
The patch may not add new content, but it does repurpose some older fan-favorites. Dungeons from the game’s Legion expansion will now be featured in the game’s rotating Timewalking event and will be playable on Mythic+ difficulty. The Mage Tower, a popular piece of content from Legion which offered unique challenges and unique rewards, is also returning for the duration of the Legion Timewalking event.
And while many of the changes introduced in patch 9.1.5 focus on adjusting the various systems of Shadowlands, there have been tweaks and adjustments across Azeroth too. New character creation options have come to many of the game’s allied races, and there are improvements to the in-game reporting and group finding tools as well.
In the wake of multiple sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits, the WoW team has made it a point to update older parts of the game that may not have aged particularly well as part of patch 9.1.5, whether it’s potentially problematic NPC dialogue from past expansions or suggestive achievement names. WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas recently said in an interview that those changes are part of a ground-up effort by the development team to ensure Azeroth is a welcoming and inclusive place in 2021 and beyond.
You can read the full patch 9.1.5 patch notes here.
