Posts with tag patch

If World of Warcraft had but one holiday, it would be Patch Day: the glorious Tuesday (or Wednesday) in which the WoW servers go down for maintenance but come back online brimming with new, unexplored content. If you're new to World of Warcraft, or MMOs in general, you may not entirely understand all the fuss the community makes over patches. So just what is a patch? Why are they so important? And how can you get your hands on one? We'll do our best to explain.

What is a WoW patch?
Did you know we're playing version 5 of World of Warcraft right now? It's true: Version 1.1 was World of Warcraft's launch client and every expansion since has bumped the version number up a full number, while each patch release is a decimal place. The original game went up to patch 1.12 (the 1.1 launch client and 11 patches after), Burning Crusade (2.0) had a scant 4 patches, Wrath of the Lich King (3.0) had 3, Cataclysm (4.0) had 3, and Mists of Pandaria (5.0) is about to see the release of its 3rd patch, patch 5.3. These days, patches are coming more quickly than ever and we have no idea how many patches to expect before the next expansion arrives.

The latest Mists of Pandaria beta build has revealed over 100 new achievements, including about 60 (yes, 60!) related to Pet Battles. If you like your points, I hope you like your pets. There's also mention of a platinum level for challenge modes.

Some of the more interesting achievements:

• Realm First! Pandaren Ambassador This is the first guild realm-first achievement that involves reputation (non-guild), I believe.
• Guild Hardware - Platinum This one's new to me. Looks like Blizzard's adding a new tier for challenge modes above the gold tier that was previously announced. It's unknown if the rewards previously mentioned for gold will move to platinum or there are new shinies we haven't seen yet.
• Grand Master Pet Battler / Grand Master Pet Brawler If you were planning on cheesing -- erm, helping your friends with every Pet Battle achievement, might want to think again.
• Master Pet Hunter Collect all the things!
• Raise 75 pets to level 25 Once you've collected all the things, fill all the bars!

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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The latest beta patch includes quite a few changes, including five new companion pets.

• Fishy The spell says it will summon Bubbles, but the actual pet says Fishy. I hope Bubbles is the name that makes it into live.
• Gilnean Raven Sounds sinister.
• Red Cricket Seems like this would make good Snake food.
• Shore Crab Will this pet differ much from the Strand Crawler?
• Terrible Turnip Do want, just on the name alone. It probably comes from the Tillers faction.

No information is available yet as to how most of these pets are obtained or what they look like. I'm dying to know how the Terrible Turnip looks and behaves in battle. When it is injured, does it bleed? And how will Fishy fight? Perhaps it will be in a fishbowl and blow poisonous bubbles at its foe. I can't wait to find out!

Note: Pet Battles are not in the beta yet, unfortunately.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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A minor patch for World of Warcraft was deployed this morning. There are no gameplay changes, and this isn't the patch with the world events leading into Mists of Pandaria. The changes introduced in this patch are designed to streamline the ticket submission UI.

Patch 4.3.4 notes

• A new Submit Bug button has been added. Clicking this option will open a report dialog box, along with basic instructions on what to include in your bug report.
• A new Submit Suggestion button has been added. Clicking this option will open a text dialog box, along with a description of what to include in your suggestion.
• The Report Lag button has been removed.
• The Report Abuse button is now called Report Player.
  • The Report Player function offers four categories: Spamming, Language, Name, and Cheating.
  • Reporting a player for Cheating now opens a text window in which a description of the occurrence can be written.
  • Reporting a Name opens a window with three categories: Player Name, Guild Name, and Arena Team Name. There is also a text field for optional information.
  • Report Player now includes text and visual instructions for how to submit a report.
• Right-clicking a character's portrait now offers additional reporting options.

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If you're having problems patching your client to 4.3.4 and you're using the 64-bit client, you'll need to follow some additional instructions, which we've included past the cut below.

The new transmogrification system announced this week will allow players to change the appearance of their gear without losing the stats associated with them. This new system will be launching with patch 4.3. For everything you need to know about transmogrification, check out our Queue FAQ on the system, as well as Blizzard's official preview.

Many players had questions, however, about the minutiae of the system. Will players be able to convert weapons to legendary skins that they have completed or found? Will there be alternative ways to find cool set items without having to go back to the old content and farm for it? What about some of the gear that isn't available anymore or hard to get? Can we use silly items with the transmogrification system? Blizzard's Kaivax and Zarhym took to the forums to issue some clarifications on these questions and more.

Players will need to have both items, the item to be worn and the item to be used as the model, for transmogrification to work. There will not be free presets of gear to choose from, so you will need the pieces you want to wear in the transmogrification process. Also, Blizzard is exploring new, alternative ways to distribute older gear like the death knight starter armor and the old dungeon tier sets. Blizzard also wants to respect the hard work of the artists, so we may not be able to use silly items, such as fish that are daggers and what-not. Hit the jump for lots of blue posts.

It's been exactly one week since the launch of patch 4.2. As we've all come to expect from the high-end raiding community, raiders have already ground Ragnaros into the dust time and time again on normal mode. As of today, we'll start to see legitimate hard mode kills, and it should be interesting to see which guild comes out on top this time around.

Most of us are content with much more humble progression, though. My guild finished the week at 3/7, having taken our usual Monday evening raid night off to celebrate some wacky thing called "the 4th of July." I think it's a holiday commemorating Gilneas' shrugging off the hegemony of the Alliance of Lordaeron and striking out on their own? I'm not really sure, honestly.

Today's maintenance will be ongoing for a few hours more as of this posting, so if you're feeling particularly bored, don't worry! WoW Insider had some great content this past week that you can catch up on today.

Last week, Ahune busted our instance servers. This week, Ragnaros gets the chance to do the same as we fully expect patch 4.2 to go live as of this writing. Now mind you, I'm not saying servers will crash, but hey -- might as well be prepared, right? Yes, I know that's the wrong raid boss's catch phrase, but I used my only "by fire be purged" joke for the title.

As you might expect, downtime is currently scheduled for 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, so even if everything goes smoothly, you'll still have plenty of time to read up on patch 4.2 before the servers come up. I recommend starting with Mat's excellent patch 4.2 roundup. Then you can check after the break for a quick roundup of all the other good stuff from the past seven days. Don't stop once that's done with, though; we'll have plenty more piping hot patch 4.2 news and info for you in the coming days and weeks.

Blizzard has once again updated the patch notes for patch 4.2, which will introduce the Firelands raid and the Molten Front and the Regrowth questing areas. The most recent versions of the patch have been marked "release," and PVP Season 9 is ending soon, which means we should see patch 4.2 drop in the next couple of weeks. Get your shoes on, kids -- we're almost at Grandpa Ragnaros' house.

The most interesting change in these notes is the effective nerfing of raiding for valor points. The maximum number of valor points one can achieve weekly has been lowered to 980, down from 1,250. The number of valor points you could earn through heroic dungeons and the new Zandalari heroics were 490 and 980 respectively, and raiders could earn an extra 270 points on top of that. Now, it is possible to get the maximum amount of valor points from just doing Zandalari heroics.

We do not yet know why this change was made. Raiders will understandably be perplexed, as one of the raid game's main draws was faster valor point gear. In addition, the prices for valor point gear have not changed, so certain pieces of gear that used to require two weeks will now require more collecting. Hit the jump for all the new changes.

How do you like your patch content delivered? Do you like it better when Blizzard holds off on patches and delivers lots of content in one go (the development cycle of Wrath saw several large patches, delivering raids and new quests and class changes in large chunks)? Or would you rather see patches come more often, spreading out the content delivery more? This is the current plan for Cataclysm. We saw the Zandalari dungeons drop in patch 4.1, and 4.2 will bring the Firelands raid and Hyjal daily quest hubs.

As an old fogey, I see the pluses and minuses to both. When Ulduar dropped, I was very happy; it was a good patch with a good raid. But when the following patch basically not only wiped out Ulduar in terms of raid attendance but also delivered a less satisfying experience, the big downside of content bomb patches was exposed. Smaller patches may not always deliver as much content, but at least we're not forced to wait as long for the next thing.

So how about you? Do you eat your content one bar at a time, or do you wedge the whole thing in your mouth and chew?

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The patch 4.2 PTR was updated today with some pretty fun updates. Zul'Gurub is getting some quality-of-life convenience fixes, including turning off the tiki-fire gauntlet and poison gauntlet when their associated bosses are defeated. The 8 new hunter rare taming challenges got two extra new friends, bumping the taming challenges up to 10. We will have to see if these two new unique rares are going to be spiders, but I'm guessing they will be something different, as per player feedback.

Another interesting point of fact is that during the valor point conversion for the new tier of raiding, all existing justice points above the 4,000 point cap will be turned into 47 silver per point. Any valor points you had will be reset to zero and will either be added to your justice point totals or turned into silver, depending on how much overage you have. All in all, it will be nice to see how the first point reset works. I am a big fan of point resets and am glad Blizzard went this route with the new point system

Hit the jump for all of the changes.

Blizzard has updated the patch notes for the patch 4.2 PTR today, with some notable additions!

• The defensive pet stance will now only cause the player's pet to attack enemies that attack the pet or the master.
• Hunters can tame eight new rare beasts, each with a specific "taming challenge."
• Party/raid interface profiles can now be saved, letting you easily switch for different encounters and roles.
• Mages: Arcane Blast damage done has been reduced by 5%.
• Warlocks: Soul Fire is now available at level 20, down from level 54.

For the full update, follow along the cut below.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

I wasn't very happy with the first round of notes for patch 4.2, as they contained several holy paladin nerfs. I had originally thought that Blizzard's developers were just trying to keep holy paladin mana in line, but it looks like they actually had a few other changes up their collective sleeves. We've learned about several new mechanics that shift the balance of power between our healing spells and even offset much of the expected loss of power.

Our new set bonuses help us recover some of that lost mana and also boost the effectiveness of our expensive heals. While Blizzard states that class power is not designed around set bonuses, our potency is still affected by them. In addition, some key talent adjustments have the potential to completely change the roles of our heals, including letting Flash of Light be instant-cast (with a proc) and significantly bolstering the effectiveness of Holy Light when used in a Beacon of Light environment (which is always). These are the type of exciting patch notes that I can get behind, as they are aimed at adding diversity to our relatively stale lineup of direct heals.

Firelands is up on the PTR, and official raid encounter beta testing has begun! Beth'tilac, the Red Widow, was the first raid encounter to be tested, and Method has scored the first kill. Lord Rhyolith was the second encounter to be tested (and again, Method got the kill). So far, Firelands is looking like one of the most awesome raid zones yet, and we've got some pictures for you straight from the PTR. Check it out! Patch 4.2 can't come soon enough.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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