This week, Matt Rossi and Joe Perez explore how to engage a new player with the vast lore of WoW, how Tyrande and the Night Elves could play into the pre-expansion event, and the importance of Blizzard acknowledging a transgender NPC in the Shadowlands alpha.

Well, maybe not every spec -- the language being used by Lead Game Designer Morgan Day is a bit more ambiguous than that -- but it's a definite shift away from where we are now, with each Artifact appearance locked to the spec that the original Artifact was for.

Of the many, many pieces of news unveiled yesterday, one of them seemed to strike a nerve among the community more than others: Heirlooms will no longer provide XP bonuses in Shadowlands.

I know, I know: we left last month's D&D game on a pretty big cliffhanger, and I promise we'll get back to that.

During an inverview with content creator MrGM, Lead Game Designer for World of Warcraft Morgan Day revealed that, with the release of the next expansion, Shadowlands, heirlooms will no longer provide an XP bonus.

The Balance of Power quest line, beginning with The Power Within, required players to run multiple Mythic+ dungeons and several Legion raids to complete.

WoW Shadowlands will finally introduce the ability to swap your gender in an in-game barbershop versus spending real money on the Blizzard Shop, according to Executive Producer John Hight in an interview with Eurogamer.

In the swirling chaos of the WoW Shadowlands news cycle this week, Blizzard also dropped a hefty mount on us.

Music and Nintendo. That seems pretty “Mitch,” right?

Yeah.

Now, let’s Queue.

Yesterday, Blizzard had held its much-anticipated (and once-delayed) Shadowlands stream event.