In the upcoming World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion, players will be able to change the gender of their characters for free, Blizzard has announced.
Currently, the gender change is a paid service, but this will change in Shadowlands, according to executive producer John Hight. In an interview with Eurogamer earlier this month, Hight talked about the feature and how the team will allow players to change gender in the Barber shop.
“A long time ago, we had the ability for players to go in – it was actually a paid service – and change their character”, the producer said. “Much of that is now in the barber shop in the game. And as we were adding things up in Shadowlands, we realized, ‘Gosh the only way you can change your gender in World of Warcraft is to go through this paid service.’ And we felt like that’s not the right message.
Hight explained that, while a relatively simple change, it takes some work at the back-end of World of Warcraft to implement.
“Unfortunately we can’t fix that right now but it is our intent with Shadowlands to take that out of being a paid service thing and [put it] in the barber shop. But that’s not something we can easily hotfix – unfortunately, we can’t do that right now. It is something that we’re going to have in Shadowlands itself.”
The feature is already live on the Shadowlands Beta, and at the time of writing, the gender change costs 100g in the Barber Shop.
World of Warcraft’s upcoming eighth expansion launches later this year globally, and for the very first time in WoW history, is features a level-squish – players will start at level 50 and will be able to level up to level 60.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will smooth out the leveling experience and better prepare new adventurers for what’s to come. Players will level up to 50 before heading to the Shadowlands (new level cap: 60).
We’ve adjusted the experience curve to make it faster than ever to prepare for the newest challenges, and each level along the way will provide more meaningful increases in progress and power. All expansion zones are getting more flexible, too; they’ll be able* to scale to you and your friends while you level to 50, so it’s easy to try a zone you’ve never played
