World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has recently released Patch 9.1.5 of Chains of Domination, which added several quality-of-life updates. One of these new features adds an icon on the character select screen next to any characters who have unread mail in their in-game mailbox.
This new World of Warcraft feature is as simple as it is informative–by hovering over the new mail icon next to a character’s name, players can see who has sent the letters waiting for them on that character. While players will still have to log in with those characters and go to a mailbox to read letters and retrieve any items or gold in them, the new alert icon on the character select screen now lets players know which characters need to do so in the first place.
In World of Warcraft, mail is only kept in the mailbox for 30 days. After that, it is returned to the sender if there is one. If there is no sender, or if the mail then sits in the sender’s box for 30 days, the letter is deleted, and any items or gold attached to it are lost forever. Considering purchases and sales through the in-game Auction House are delivered via mailbox letters, one can only imagine how much World of Warcraft gold has been lost over the years via mail expiration.
This WoW feature is technically not an entirely new concept. The Blizzard team had promised to work on such a feature in the past, and World of Warcraft players have made countless addons that perform the same function in the meantime. When World of Warcraft's last expansion pack, Shadowlands, was nearing launch last year, this feature was added during the pre-patch event, though it was taken down days later because of bugs and glitches. Now, nearly a year later, it seems Blizzard has finally ironed out the errors and re-added it to the game.
Generally speaking, response to this new feature is overwhelmingly positive. Players can have up to 50 characters on a single WoW account, and while only the most dedicated of World of Warcraft players have that many characters, most have between a few and a few dozen. Tracking pending mail across that many characters is virtually impossible, especially considering players constantly send gear and gold between their own characters. This new feature will help players ensure they aren’t losing any of these items, no matter how many characters they play.
While no one would particularly dislike this new feature in World of Warcraft, some people are annoyed it took so long to implement it, especially considering it almost went live last year. However, the past year has been tumultuous for World of Warcraft, between the COVID-19 pandemic delays, mass loss of ranking leadership, and several lawsuits and allegations filed against Blizzard.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is available on PC.
Source: Wowhead