[Saka]

Lately, I've been posting about bad news regarding Activision Blizzard, and thus indirectly World of Warcraft, too. It's not all doom and gloom, however, at least not yet.

The game is getting some nice updates; last being the release of a new zone, Zaralek Cavern, inhabited by Loamm Niffen. These mole-like creatures like to sniff loudly and look for stinky treasures. But worry not, if you hate the sniffing sounds, you can always get a toy for free from one of the local vendors that blocks the sniffing noise. Handy!

But this is not what I wanted to write about. There are ongoing and upcoming updates involving timelines, that grant access to items that have been removed from the game previously. For example, Zul'Gurub used to be a vanilla (Classic WoW) raid and it was repurposed as a heroic-only dungeon in early Cataclysm, during the Rise of Zandalari patch. The change made the original instance inaccessible and its associated loot was lost forever. Until now.

At level 70 you are able to explore the Cataclysm dungeon of Zul'Gurub and unlock a secret within it, that grants you access to a vendor selling appearances and patterns for the original items/their replicas. The formerly unobtainable materials can be acquired within the instance now. WoWhead has a mini guide here.

So, Zul'Gurub is already live. However, it was datamined that coming up next is Naxxramas! Naxxramas used to be the last raid of the World of Warcraft classic. It was so challenging for the players at the time, that very few people actually got to see the last bosses. For that reason Blizzard decided to re-release it as the entry raid in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. As a result, the original instance was lost. During Mist of Pandaria expansion the raid tier items were re-introduced as rare items in Black Market Auction House, but other items were unobtainable. Until now at least. There will be a brand new mount available, too! But other than that, an exciting item that is resurfacing, is the Corrupted Ashbringer! Here's an article on the datamined stuff.

That's not all of it! Due to a very popular demand, Evokers are getting a third spec! Blizzard has just announced the Augmentation specialization. It seems like a support-based damage dealer.

Aand... the last big news is that Dragonriding is coming to the Old World! Yes, you read that right! A lot of older mounts will also obtain dragonriding. A long list can be found in this tweet.