Official patch 4.1 notes updated for May 2
by Daniel Whitcomb 
May 2nd 2011 at 8:30PM
Read on after the break for all the new changes.
General
- Portals to each of the capital cities have returned to Dalaran and Shattrath City.
Paladins
- Divine Protection can no longer be dispelled
Shamans
Talent Specializations
Elemental Combat
- Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2.5-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.
Dungeons & Raids
Dungeon Finder
- The Dungeon Finder will attempt to place players from the same realm in a party together.
Quests & Creatures
- An updated quest chain has been added for the Alliance in Winterspring. Players seeking out the Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber should speak with Rivern Frostwind at Frostaber Rock.
WoW Patch 4.1 is live, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from guides of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Kurash May 2nd 2011 8:46PM
Excellent. I may need to park a character or two in Shattrath and Dalaran now that they're no longer completely off the beaten path. I like those towns.
Drakkenfyre May 2nd 2011 8:48PM
"Portals to each of the capital cities have returned to Dalaran and Shattrath City."
See, this is the kind of thing that they need to fix.
It goes in as an unannounced change. Then when someone asks, they say they put in ONE portal each for returning players.
Then they stick this on the patch notes.
The note is wrong. Sometimes patch notes will go thru several revisions, and it will still list a wrong change. Then you get people coming to the forums asking "Why do the notes say one thing, but it isn't true?"
Then they have to make an announcement that the notes were wrong.
It just seems like someone would have caught that note, or other incorrect notes, when they get posted several times.
Spider May 2nd 2011 8:56PM
each of the CAPITAL cities
Orgrimmar and Stormwind are the capital cities. I can see how some people might be confused, but it's nonetheless correct.
Vaeku May 2nd 2011 9:13PM
@Spider
The problem is that ALL of the cities have been known as the capital cities up until Cata. So I can see the confusion there.
Drakkenfyre May 2nd 2011 9:15PM
Every race has a capital city. They have been called capital cities since the game came out.
You can say FACTION capital cities, but that note doesn't.
SamLowry May 2nd 2011 11:22PM
And, why was the word "each" used unless several were intended?
If they just meant SW & Org then "Portals to the capital cities" would have worked fine.
Al May 3rd 2011 2:17AM
@Spider, my Tauren bows not to an Orc, least of all Punchy McDouche.
Zaber Guard May 2nd 2011 8:54PM
A reason to be back in Dalaran! Damned be if I admit to it, but I loved Wrath. I'll finally be able to wander around Northrend as I used to waiting for LFG queues!
DarkWalker May 2nd 2011 9:52PM
Besides, now Shatt and Dal have no lag, and every trainer and service you might want :)
They now will be nice cities to park characters.
I would still miss the portal from Dal to Shatt, though.
AutumnBringer May 2nd 2011 9:58PM
I've always liked the layout of Dalaran. Instead of going all over the place in town to access various vendors/profession trainers, almost all the stuff is there on the one street easy to get to. That's a huge plus for that city in my opinion - and now that it's not Lagaran, even better.
Donhorn May 2nd 2011 11:18PM
My Goblin is happy now, she can finally go right to Org again from Dal as she lvls! I was kinda sad about no SHat port, but I figure if I want to go there bad enough I can use the Org port then hit the Dark Portal port and fly over. A little round about but it works!
Zoisite May 3rd 2011 11:16AM
Sightseeing in Northrend was how I spent probably half the expansion. Took me 3 months to hit 80 because I was so busy looking at teh Pretties, reading quest text, and exploring places that a lone 72 clothie has absolutely no business being. =D
dannyflorida May 2nd 2011 9:35PM
"The Dungeon Finder will attempt to place players from the same realm in a party together."
Along with much praise for this change, it's funny seeing on the official forums the people complaining about it. It seems that some players really hate grouping with players from their own realm and vehemently oppose this change.
Just goes to show that you can't please everyone.
DarkWalker May 2nd 2011 9:58PM
I would prefer if WoW went the way GW2 is promising to go - free and instant server transfers.
This would keep the diversity, but make everyone you meet in a random a potential recruit for your guild (or allow you to apply to the same guild as any nice group you meet on the LFD), without different realms getting in the way.
But unfortunately I don't think Blizzard is ready to relinquish the character transfer revenue stream any time soon.
blancester May 2nd 2011 10:13PM
GW2 is really showing alot for one payment (with small cash shop)
Though they might be asking for people to abuse it.
Blizz has the price on it as a wall. If they let it down, imagine the amount of people wanting a transfer. It could end up like our GM tickets / phone. And those transfering all their alts not once but couple of times to get the right server with no research when transfering.
Artificial May 3rd 2011 5:37AM
@blancester: I suspect you're completely misunderstanding what that means in the context of Guild Wars. The current GW also has "free and instant server transfers" -- if you're on one particular server, say Ascalon City District 1, and your friend happens to have landed in District 3, you just go up to the pull down menu in the corner, select "District 3", and boom, you're on the new server instantly. What's to research? And what's wrong with this? Note that "transferring all your alts" doesn't even make sense in this context -- you're only online with one character at a time, so only one character is going to be bouncing between servers at a time because only one character is ever on any server at any time.
Any two characters that play Guild Wars can play with one another. It's actually one united game, unlike WoW which is essentially a few hundred completely seperate MMOs that happen to run the same software. GW2 will be the same way. Server transfers will be instant because all it means is that your character is now hopping to a different server. It's not like a WoW server transfers, it's more like what happens in WoW when you "transfer servers" from the Azeroth to the Outlands server by stepping through the Dark Portal. Again, nothing to really "research" here, you want to be on the part of the world running on that server, so you go there. It's "instant" (relatively speaking) and no real muss.
Angus May 3rd 2011 7:52AM
I think I know who is mad about this.
I also think I put some of them on ignore in BC, as did most tanks.
Darn, they can't get to ninja/troll/wipe groups in server only groups as anonymously as they did before.
Eirik May 3rd 2011 4:11PM
@blancester: To add to what Artificial said, WoW has an entirely different system architecture than Guild Wars. Moving between servers in WoW is for historical reasons an entirely different matter than in most other games.
Everquest had servers along the WoW model, back when I played. City of Heroes has both a server model (like WoW) and an "instanced zone" model like Guild Wars. Champions Online has only the Instanced zone model.
EVE Online doesn't even do the instanced zone thing. Instead, they dedicate hardware to serve particular sections of their universe as demand dictates. There is probably some level of granularity involved (IE they can only devote so much to a given space), but I am not familiar enough with the game to know what those are.
I really, really doubt that WoW's server model can be changed at this point. Pretty much everything in the game is designed around the assumptions of that model. As well, the sheer number of WoW players dwarfs the numbers those other games support by just about any metric you can name.
There is no guarantee that the instancing Champions Online, for instance, would scale up usefully with millions of players rather than merely tens of thousands. Not so much "does the game itself break" as "is this UI choice still workable". When switching between instances, you choose from a displayed list. I've seen up to 50 entries on the list. I wonder if it would work as well with 1,000 entries in that list.
WaterRouge May 2nd 2011 9:58PM
Not to be "that guy" but why do Pallies get their bubbles to be undispellable yet when a mage freezes himself he is still vulnerable to a mass dispell? Unless that was changed a while ago and I missed it.
Magma May 2nd 2011 10:05PM
Divine Protection is not the same as Divine Shield.