Greetings folks,

Since we officially announced the release date of Kronos III, we’ve been inundated with questions from the community. We’re here to answer two of the most frequently asked questions. What is going to be the Kronos III timeline? Is it going to have itemization? So let’s get to it!

From the launch of Kronos III to the release of Naxxramas, we’re looking at roughly 17 months (possibly quicker, depending on community effort for the Ahn’Qiraj War Effort). Veterans of Kronos will notice the much more streamlined timeline by and large due to all raid content being already scripted. We’re also happy to announce that Kronos III will start with only 8 debuff slots, unlike Kronos which started off with the 16 debuff slot that was eventually added in later patches. We’ll move to the 16 slots configuration at the launch of Zul’Gurub.

We’ve kept an eye on patch releases to a greater extent than before. We will work under the principle of “item-gating”, and not the direct “item-version-by-patch”-route. Meaning on Kronos III, items will be “unlocked” at the patch it was meant to be introduced to the game, but once it is introduced to the game it will appear in the version it was during patch 1.12. For example, some items in Molten Core will be unavailable until the Elemental Invasion patch, Azuregos and Kazzak will have new items introduced to their loot-tables with the release of Alterac Valley, many pre-raid best-in-slot items won’t be introduced to the game before much much later. Players on Kronos III will experience this step-by-step release of content to a much higher degree than was previously the case on Kronos I and II.

World buffs (i.e Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, DMF and all other world buffs currently not available in Naxxramas on Kronos) will not be available in any raid content for the first month after its release. After the first month, world buffs will then be enabled for use inside.

With these changes and the streamlined timeline, we expect raid content on Kronos III to be significantly harder.

We know you probably have hundreds of questions, rest assured we’ll be happy to answer them as we get closer to the release of the server. We hope you enjoyed this update and that it helps provide more light on how we’re trying to improve Kronos III.

Until next time, stay safe friends.