Every year the druids of Moonglade hold a celebration of their city’s great triumph over an ancient evil. During the Lunar Festival, citizens of Azeroth have the opportunity to honor their elders by celebrating their sage wisdom, sharing in magnificent feasts, and of course…shooting fireworks!

The Lunar Festival returns to Azeroth in a cascade of pyrotechnics on Sunday, January 22! With the start of a new year, elders of generations past manifest around the world to impart their wisdom upon all who would listen. Should you encounter these venerable spirits in your travels and take the time to heed their wisdom, they may even pass along tokens of their gratitude -- Coins of Ancestry, the lessons of a past age in physical form. Gather enough of these Coins of Ancestry and the Cenarion Circle will open to you their stores of celebratory fireworks, trinkets, garbs, and recipes!

The Cenarion Circle have even more cause to celebrate this year than any previous, for this year also marks the first Lunar Festival since the return of many Ancients that had fallen in battles past: Goldrinn, Malorne, Aviana, and Cenarius himself. But this celebration is muted by the eternal torment of one of their own -- Omen, blessed by the moon goddess Elune, has risen again from the depths of Moonglade’s lake. Driven mad by the Burning Legion’s tainted magics during the War of the Ancients, Elune’s blessing of immortality means that he will forever be cursed to return in his maddened state at the advent of a new year. Heroes are called to help ease this tormented Ancient’s suffering, in the hopes that perhaps next year will see him return with a clearer mind.

Lunar Festivities end Sunday, February 12.

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

We previously introduced the ability to form cross-realm parties with Real ID friends, and now with Patch 4.3.2, we're adding the ability for players to use that same functionality to form raids to run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds!

This will allow you to join up with your Real ID friends from other realms and:

• Form a cross-realm raid and use Raid Finder
• Jump in to any classic dungeon or raid and be automatically placed in the same instance
• Join forces and dominate the Battlegrounds

Please note, you will not yet be able to run normal or Heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm Real ID raids.

As we look forward to the BattleTag system, it’s a very exciting time for World of Warcraft. No matter what realm you and your friends are on you’ll be able to team up and take on group content throughout the game.

Classes
General

• Algaefin Rockfish no longer swim in schools, and schools of Deepsea Sagefish have taken their place along many coastlines.

Classes
Hunter

• Multi-Shot, modified by the talent Serpent Spread, should now properly spread Serpent Sting to other targets that are within range when a nearby player is affected by Serpent Sting.

Paladin

• Horde Paladins should find that Judgement of Truth now properly triggers item procs that it is intended to trigger.

Dungeons and Raids
Deadmines

• Helix Gearbreaker's Stickybomb should no longer break Stealth.
• Vanessa VanCleef's Vigorous VanCleef Vindicator achievement should no longer break Stealth.

Vortex Pinnacle

• Minister of Air
  • The knockback for Lightning Nova has been reduced from roughly 12 yards to 8 yards on normal difficulty, and from18 yards to 12 yards on Heroic difficulty.

Well of Eternity

• Mannoroth
  • Felhounds, Doomguard Devestators, and Felguards are no longer capable of dealing critical hits.

Zul'Aman

• Amani'shi Warbringer's damage has been reduced by 12%.
• Amani'shi Medicine Man's summoned Protective Ward health has been reduced by 60%.
• When an Amani'shi Scout is alerted, he now idles for 1 second before running to summon reinforcement.
• Amani'shi Reinforcement's damage has been reduced by 15%.
• Amani'shi Flame Casters' Fireball Volley now inflicts less damage.
• Jana'lai's Flame Breath ability now inflicts less persistent fire damage.
• In Dragonhawk form, Daakara's Flame Whirl spell increases fire damage taken by a lesser amount.
• Daakara's Creeping Paralysis now inflicts less damage.

Zul'Gurub

• Berserking Boulder Roller's Boulders now inflict less damage.
• Bloodlord Mandokir's Decapitate cooldown has been increased by 5 seconds.
• Gurubashi Shadow Hunters are now immune to Disarm.
• Gurubashi Shadow Hunter's Shadowed Shot ability now inflicts less damage.
• Gurubashi Blood Drinker's Blood Leech ability now inflicts less damage.
• Lesser Priest of Bethekk's Shadowflame ability now inflicts less periodic damage.
• High Priestess Kilnara's Wave of Agony now deals less damage.
• Jin'do's Twisted Spirit health has been reduced.
• Jin'do's Twisted Spirit damage has been reduced.
• Jin'do's Shadows of Hakkar now inflicts less damage.

Dragon Soul

• Morchok
  • Double Stomp damage should now only come down on the heads of the two players closest to the boss.
• Hagara
  • Ice Waves will not spawn until Hagara finishes casting Frozen Tempest.
  • Spell immunity mechanics such as Ice Block and Divine Shield should now temporarily block damage from Watery Entrenchment, but should not remove the debuff.
  • Ice Tomb can no longer be avoided by a raid of players all standing within a smokebomb.
• Yor'sahj the Unsleeping
  • Yor'sahj now deals triple melee damage to player-controlled pets and targets them with Void Bolt.
  • The Firebloom heal triggered by the Druid tier-12 should no longer cause Deep Corruption.
  • Yor'sahj's health and damage have been reduced by up to 10% on 25-player Heroic difficulty, bringing the difficulty of the encounter closer to that of 10-player Heroic difficulty.
• Spine of Deathwing
  • A Safe Fall aura has been added to the start of the encounter, preventing players from taking falling damage, should their parachutes end early.
  • Corrupted Bloods now use Burst regardless of crowd control conditions, including silence.
• Madness of Deathwing
  • Deathwing should no longer fire two Elementium Meteors when a limb tentacle is destroyed at the same time that Deathwing is casting Elementium Meteor.

Items

• Timepiece of the Bronze Flight has been given an additional red socket.

Quests

• Players on the quest Patricide can no longer receive the Fragment of Deathwing's Jaw while in a Raid Finder group.
• Graham Van Talen should no longer incorrectly offer Gnome Engineering and Goblin Engineering once the player has sufficient Engineering skill level.
• Pelturas Whitemoon should now be quite willing to complete the quest Orendil's Cure for multiple players.
• Players are now able to complete the quest Trial of the Naaru: Mercy by beating the 55-minute timer.