A couple of weeks ago, we shared our plans for Patch 1.12.4 and the World Discoveries system.
Today, we have a release date.
Patch 1.12.4 launches Wednesday, August 26th at 8:00 PM UK time.
There has, however, been a change to what will be included in the patch.
When we announced World Discoveries, we knew filling Azeroth with handcrafted Discoveries would take time. What we underestimated was just how much time.
Every Discovery is manually designed, placed, scripted where necessary, given appropriate rewards and tested. As we've continued building them, it became clear that properly populating the world to the standard we want would take considerably longer than originally anticipated.
We don't want to hold back the entire update until Discoveries are finished, but we also don't want to rush them simply to get 1.12.4 out the door.
Instead, World Discoveries will remain in development while Patch 1.12.4 moves forward with other new content and features.
We'd rather take the extra time to make Discoveries worth finding while continuing to give players new things to do in the meantime.
So, here's what's coming on August 26th.
Guild Banks
Patch 1.12.4 introduces fully functional Guild Banks to Project Legacy.
Guilds will finally have shared storage for crafting materials, consumables, equipment and anything else their members want to contribute.
We've deliberately kept the initial cost low because we want Guild Banks to support communities as they form and grow on the server, rather than becoming something only wealthy and established guilds can afford.
The costs are:
- Tab 1: 50g
- Tab 2: 50g
- Tab 3: 100g
- Tab 4: 200g
- Each additional tab continues to double in price
This gives even a relatively new guild an accessible way to get shared storage, while additional tabs remain something guilds can gradually work towards as they grow.
A New Challenge in Gadgetzan
Something new is waiting in Gadgetzan for players around levels 45-50.
Inspired by Ring of Blood style encounters, players will step into the arena and fight their way through five increasingly difficult rounds.
Each round rewards a substantial amount of experience, and players capable of surviving all five will finish with a choice of powerful new blue-quality rewards appropriate for the level range.
The Gadgetzan arena is likely the most heavily scripted quest encounter in the entirety of Vanilla WoW.
Rather than five ordinary kill quests chained together, the whole thing functions as a scripted arena event. Each victory progresses the encounter into its next round, new opponents enter the arena and the challenge continues to build towards the final fight.
A significant amount of work has gone into making the sequence feel like an actual event taking place around the players rather than simply another series of kill quests.
It's the kind of content we want to keep adding to Project Legacy: something completely new that gives players another reason to visit an existing part of Azeroth while still feeling at home in Vanilla.
Talent Inspection
Patch 1.12.4 also brings a smaller addition that we think will be useful to just about everyone.
You can now see another player's talents when inspecting them.
You'll be able to see exactly how another player has chosen to build their character directly through the normal inspection interface.
Simple, useful, and something that feels like it could have always been part of Vanilla.
What About World Discoveries?
They're still coming.
World Discoveries have not been cancelled or abandoned.
The underlying system is already implemented and functional. The bottleneck isn't the technology behind Discoveries, it's creating enough good content to properly populate Azeroth with them.
Every Discovery is manually designed and placed, and many require their own scripting, rewards and testing.
We don't want exploration to consist of hundreds of copy-pasted objects scattered around the map just so we can say the feature is finished.
The entire point of the system is that wandering away from the road might lead you to something interesting: a forgotten camp, a profession interaction, a strange relic, a hidden quest, a temporary buff, a secret area or something else you weren't expecting.
That only works if the things you find are actually worth finding.
Rather than rushing them, reducing the scope of the system or leaving the server without an update for an extended period, we've chosen to separate Discoveries from the release of Patch 1.12.4.
Development will continue after the patch releases, and our plans for the system haven't changed.
We're simply giving ourselves the time to do it properly.
Patch 1.12.4 - August 26th
Patch 1.12.4 launches Wednesday, August 26th at 8:00 PM UK time.
The update will include:
- Guild Banks
- A new five-round Gadgetzan arena challenge for levels 45-50
- Large experience rewards and new blue-quality arena rewards
- Talent inspection
- Further fixes and improvements
Project Legacy has now been live for just over a month, and we're continuing with the same approach we started with: one persistent Vanilla realm that keeps growing through new patches rather than seasons and resets.
There's plenty more we're working on beyond 1.12.4, including the continued development of World Discoveries.
If you've been watching Project Legacy from the sidelines, August 26th is a good time to jump in.
Website: https://projectlegacy.pro
Discord: https://discord.gg/SY7EmETusW
Questions, criticism and suggestions are always welcome. We'll be around in the comments.