With the recent announcement that the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch will drop on Tuesday, July 17th 2018, we need to let you know about some possible / probable downtime for the wowchallenges site and some things you can do to get your challenger ready.

Downtime
While many people get entry into BFA through Beta or, most recently, the 8.0 PTR, the data that most websites use, including ours, is the API, which does NOT have Beta or PTR access of any kind. This means that we won’t know about any changes to the API until they are actually live.

Overall, we are expecting some form of downtime or reduction of functionality on the 17th while we review the API changes and adjust our own code accordingly. It’s our goal to make the downtime as short as possible, but you never know what the future holds. During this period, the site will be “online”, however, you will be unable to update or add characters to any of the challenge lists.

Pre-Patch Preparation
We highly recommend you log onto all of your challenge characters BEFORE the pre-patch drops and remove all of your gear in case any of the items are converted to uncommon or higher. Red flags due to gear restrictions are not going to be reversed once we are live with 8.0. Typically items that could be flagged are seasonal gear or Darkmoon Faire items, however, everything has the potential to be changed: again, we are not reversing flags due to gear. Better to strip off all your gear and log out at a major town’s inn (not capital).

Even characters that are allowed to wear uncommon (green) gear should probably remove their gear in case some of their gear gets changed to rare (blue).

Servers Back Online
As with most patch days, we recommend you log in on a non-challenge character to test the waters. While Blizzard has lately been REALLY GOOD at keeping servers stable on major patch or release days, they cannot control things like DDOS attacks. Odd things like getting DC’d on zeppelins MID-FLIGHT or in the middle of combat will likely result in your death when you log back in. These deaths cannot be reversed, so proceed with caution.

We recommend taking a good 1-2 days off from your challengers, just in case. This is a great time to log back in on a scout and test the waters. Or, you know, you could log in with a normal character and enjoy the 8.0 goodness, too!

What’s Changed in 8.0?
Many, MANY things have changed:

• Stat Squish 2.0: All mob, NPC and player numbers have been squished (like back in Warlords).
• First Aid is gone: The First Aid secondary profession has been removed. You can purchase your bandages on the auction house. The Tailoring profession is not allowed currently.
• War Mode: You have the option to enable PvP and gain an extra 10% bonus experience while you quest in the world. This is allowed. It is up to you as to whether the benefit outweighs the risk. Deaths due to PvP are still deaths.
• A full list of what’s being changed can be found in this wowhead guide: http://www.wowhead.com/pre-patch-feature-preview
• There is also a list of undocumented changes found in the wowpedia article: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Patch_8.0.1_(undocumented_changes)