Breakfast Topic: What's your personal patch day history?
by Joseph Schattschneider 
May 27th 2011 at 8:00AM
There are a lot of firsts in World of Warcraft. Some firsts are great -- our first level, first mount, first dungeon, and first raid. Then we have our horrible, cry-ourselves-to-sleep-while-hugging-our-teddy-bear firsts -- our first death, first wipe, our first night of wipes ... We always remember these firsts. They're permanently set in our mind (much like Magni is permanently set in Old Ironfoge, may he rest in peace).
Finally, we remember our first patch day. This first could fit in either category.
My first patch day was catastrophic. All of a sudden, my talent tree was different, my DPS was garbage (well, worse than it was before), and everyone was "LFM for Ulduar." I was lost, confused, and scared -- yet it was the first day I knew I loved the ever-changing World of Warcraft. Patches provide an always-evolving universe, and I love it.
Do you remember your first patch day? What patch was it? Was your first patch a good or a bad memory?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
dannyleitner May 27th 2011 8:06AM
My first patch was the sunwell, i hadent been playing wow much and i was actually on a family members acount. He was a feral druid tank, so i figured i would try the new dungeon...well, yah it was horrible, i had no idea how to keep aggro, and the mobs in there were tough. They were all in very good gear and made me feel, unacomplished, and eventually removed me randomly fronm the group :/ Good experientce tgen again not the best haha
Shinae May 27th 2011 10:54AM
The first patch that I can remember was also the Sunwell. When I got home from work, I found that my guildies had been beating their heads against the wall that was Magister's Terrace. I joined them in the wipe fest. Even for our skilled team who had been masterfully running heroics and Kara, it was hard. So it wasn't just you who had trouble.
MusedMoose May 27th 2011 8:08AM
It wasn't my first patch day, but it's the one that sticks out in my mind the most, if only because Blizzard inadvertently served as the perfect instrument of karma.
I'd been having a really rough time at work, and one Monday was just horrible. That night I said to myself, screw it, I'm calling in sick tomorrow, I need a mental health day. I planned to spend the day off relaxing on WoW, blowing off steam by making pixels die. ^_^ So on Tuesday morning I called in to work, sat down in front of my computer, pulled up the game... only to be greeted with extended maintenance that lasted nearly all day because of the new patch.
The "rage guy" meme didn't exist back then, I don't think, but I really could have used it.
Lloren May 27th 2011 10:00AM
I did the same thing for 3.3. lol. Called in sick to work and then the servers never came up until the time I would have been getting home anyway. >.
Kurtis May 27th 2011 8:08AM
I installed the game on a Friday or Saturday. It took a couple of hours, because of all the patches that had to be installed in sequential order.
That Tuesday, another patch dropped. I was like, "Are you kidding me? I'm going to spend all my time just patching..." Fortunately, it only took a few minutes.
Kurtis May 27th 2011 8:10AM
(Insert "downloaded and" in front of "installed in sequential order".)
Rai May 27th 2011 8:15AM
My first patch update was 2.4. I was only level 40.
"Shattered Sun? Sounds painful, I'll just keep levelling lockpicking and poisons, thanks. The Shattered Sun is probably temporary, but lockpicking and poisons? They're for life."
I was wrong.
Amaxe May 27th 2011 9:30AM
I'd say you were **half** wrong. Sure, lockpick and poisons are gone, but nobody really does Shattered Sun unless they are grinding factions or trying for Ashes of Alar.
blancester May 27th 2011 10:09AM
@amaxe, you mean the white chicken?
Shinae May 27th 2011 11:00AM
@Amaxe: Or the Phoenix Hatchling?
Ashes of A'lar is the (really) rare drop in Tempest Keep. I'm so glad that we'll gettnig more firebird mount options in Firelands.
Thomas Higgins May 27th 2011 2:13PM
I did Shattered Sun Offensive purely to get the title. Dropped a fair few coin in the process, but my Rogue could afford it as he was a fairly successful pickpocket at the time.
Mind you, that grind wasn't as painful as the one to get Exalted with the Thorium Brotherhood. My gods and little fishes that one can make one bleed.
Elmo May 27th 2011 8:15AM
It was 1.10 Storms over Azeroth,
I remember allmost all european servers were down except for some French ones so I made a gnome there.
The entire Gnome/Dwarf starting zone was filled with hundreds of people who have done the same, the lag and chat were unbearable and a lot of people were whining about that it didn't snow at that moment (the main feature of that patch were weather effects) and the French players were telling the English and German players to get out.
good times :D
Strawder May 27th 2011 8:15AM
I -think- I remember Patch 1.2.
But I definitely remember my home server being offline for 72 hours while they upgraded it. 3 days, man. And back then, Blizzard didn't give extra days for any extended maintainence issues. In fact, when I asked one time, I got a letter back saying it wasn't Blizzard's policy to credit days.
And these newbies today complain about server restarts and Tuesday maintenance time.
Bah. You know what me and the wife do on Tuesdays? We go spend time with our kids, take them to Chuck E. Cheese or something. Then around 9pm that night, after they go to bed, we log on and do damage control (addons, quests, whatever new bug Blizzard's managed to produce).
Belakor May 27th 2011 8:20AM
My first patch was 1.9 Ahn'qiraj and I already had an idea of what was going to happen.
I play a paladin and altought I knew that I was never going to be able to raid I was really exited about the tier 2 new models, that is still the best tier ever XD
chocolatebunny May 27th 2011 8:24AM
Mine was 1.10 too.I was around something level 30-40 :)
Hal May 27th 2011 8:36AM
Here's a concise summary of patch day for me:
-Server Queue: 12,348
-Yay, I'm logged in! *You have been disconnected from the server.*
-Yay, I'm logged in again! *You have been disconnected from the server.*
-Hm, new quests. Oh lookie, there's 40 people standing on top of the quest giver, and another 30 camping all the immediate quest objectives.
-Hey guys, let's raid! "Hang on, the healers keep getting disconnected."
-All right, we might down this boss finally . . . hey, is anyone else lagging? Guys? *You have been disconnected from the server.*
-Ugh, finally logged in again. Did we get the boss down? "Oh, yeah, we weren't sure if you were coming back or not, so we gave loot out already. You wanted that mace? Whoops, guess we shouldn't have disenchanted it."
-"Okay guys, the lag is too much, let's give it a shot next week, even though half of you will just not show up for inexplicable reasons. So, which raid do we want to . . ." *You have been disconnected from the server.*
themightysven May 27th 2011 8:38AM
My first patch day I came home from work and logged in to my little (lvl 21) ret paladin. As the loading screen dropped (btw I miss the characters rather than faction leaders) I came into Silvermoon and trade chat was full of people saying something about ret paladins. I didn't really pay attention so much as see what area of eversong I needed for the achieve (elendral falls) I got a tell from a friend to meet up in UC and headed back to town. As I crossed the gate again trade chat exploded with such nuggets as "just saw a ret solo H Labs", "LFM all ret BT" and "OMG ret won EotS for us" it was kinda neat to see so many people excited about my spec, even if the abbreviations meant nothing to me.
Shinae May 27th 2011 11:12AM
Hmm, I'm guessing that was 3.0 (pre-Wrath). Ret was buffed and the BC raids were nerfed. Haha, I imagine a Black Temple raid entirely made of ret pallies would have been fun.
Jaq May 27th 2011 8:41AM
My first patch day was 3.2, and actually, it was pretty fun. I think I had to do a talent respec because all DK talents were changed, but then after that my guildies hit TOC 5 and new gear started dropping out of the skies. I knew to expect a lot more than normal downtime, so I was actually happy that it came back up by 7:00PM eastern.
3.3 was memorable because of an instance server crash while everyone and their moms were running ICC or the ICC 5 mans. Suddenly there were 200 or so people outside the ICC 5s, and people kept yelling "FLAG AND START PVP!", while sensible people yelled back "THIS IS A SANCTUARY YOU MORONS!" Fun stuff.
Jari May 27th 2011 8:43AM
My first patch was 1.2 where they added Maraudon.
WoW is my first MMORPG, and I only had a level 18 paladin at that point, so I just didn't give it a single thought. I thought it was just bug fixes and I didn't know what exactly dungeons were yet.