World of Warcraft: Legion Patch 7.3.5 Preview

World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion will be getting its last major update when the 7.3.5 patch goes live. According to this PCGamesN patch preview article, this should happen around early February, 2018 and bring some new content, along with a wide range of improvements and tweaks to the MMORPG.

If you’re still playing Warcraft for the story, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be getting a new quest line in this patch that will set up the events of Battle for Azeroth, WoW’s next expansion. If you’re looking for some meditative grinding while leveling a character manually, you’ll get a chance to test out the Azeroth-wide zone level scaling that worked out pretty well in Legion’s leveling zones. And if fighting other players is your thing, then a new Battle for Azeroth-themed Battleground should shake things up for you. Oh, and if you’re using Blizzard’s account authenticator, you’ll get four extra slots for your basic backpack.

Some additional details:

WoW Patch 7.3.5 release date

Well first things first, this isn’t hitting until a little while after the Christmas break. In fact, there’s only been one round of testing so far, and has only been on test servers for a month or so. Usually things take a bit longer than that.

At a guess, we’d go for somewhere around early February at the earliest, March as a safer bet. Remember that as soon as 7.3.5 comes down we’ll be on a very short clock heading into the Battle for Azeroth beta.

However, some backend updates have been made to the Call of the Scarab yearly event, which happens January 21-23. Unless they’re going to be implemented in a different patch, that would mean 7.3.5 has to come out during the Jan 16-17 reset at the latest.

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WoW Patch 7.3.5 Silithus

The other major part of this patch is the new content available in Silithus. This looks to just be a single redesigned zone – it’s got a big sword in it now, if you hadn’t heard – with a couple of quest lines, but it’s the epilogue to Legion and begins to explain why everyone ends up at each other’s throats in Battle for Azeroth.

There’s a questline for each faction, beginning in their capital cities[…]

Clearly, neither of these questlines are complete. Cinematics won’t be added until it goes live, and they’re both supposed to end with (spoilers) Khadgar deciding to leave us to our own devices rather than take up arms on either side. He’s been the main character for a couple of expansions, so it’s probably time for a new one.

As is the theme of World of Warcraft currently, there’s also at least one major secret that hints at the plotline of Battle for Azeroth. As found by a member of the WoW subreddit a journal can drop from one of the new mobs in Silithus, which not so subtly hints at the rising of the Old Gods as part of the next expansion.

Datamining has also indicated that a follow up quest line will have us retire our Artifact Weapons at some point in the patch, with a cinematic called 7.3.5 Artifact Weapon Retirement having not yet been implemented. While this could happen at any point post-Argus lore-wise, gameplay wise this isn’t something we can really handle until 8.0 as classes are entirely balanced around the power of their artifact weapons. Expect that to be quite a while after the launch of 7.3.5, but you can read a little more about it here.

Patch 7.3.5 Seething Shore battleground

As part of these rising tensions in Silithus, the new Seething Shore battleground will also be added in 7.3.5. It’s a 10 vs 10 fight over the Azerite that’s now leaking out of the planet and is the central theme of Battle for Azeroth. Gameplay wise it’s a little like Arathi Basin, with control points to grab and earn points for, but with those control points disappearing and reappearing randomly around the map at intervals.

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Blizzard have described this as a “preview” in patch 7.3.5. Exactly what that means hasn’t been explored, though it’s assumed that the battleground will simply be live from when 7.3.5 is available, and playable through until 8.0 and beyond. It could be time limited, or only available towards the end of the patch.