Posts with tag wow-patches

We may not see another patch before Warlords of Draenor, which means the content in the game right now could be all the content we'll have for a while. And though plenty of players are still working through Siege of Orgrimmar raid content or collecting endless numbers of Timeless Coins, some of us are already starting to get bored of the Warlords waiting game.

But sometimes, not having any new content on the horizon can give you a chance to stretch your virtual wings and work on in-game goals you haven't gotten around to yet. Maybe now is the perfect time to try your hand at PvP, the Brawler's Guild, or finishing up your Loremaster (or the Insane) achievement. So tell us, readers -- how are you killing time before Warlords arrives?

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We've gone through 24 patch cycles and four expansions since World of Warcraft launched. But while that sounds like a lot of patches, in the past Blizzard has only done 3 or 4 patches per expansion -- 11 of those 24 patches were between vanilla WoW and the game's Burning Crusade expansion. But the recent breakneck pace of patches -- one every couple of months -- doesn't quite mesh with the fact that Blizzard doesn't tend to do more than 4 patches per expansion and the fact that they recently confirmed that patch 5.4 will be the final raid patch of Mists of Pandaria.

While final raid patch doesn't necessarily mean final patch, it certainly doesn't get our hopes high for exciting new WoW content. So what's a gamer to do with a potentially tremendous content drought on the horizon? We really don't expect to see an expansion announcement before BlizzCon this November, which would mean an actual expansion launch date even later than that.

So, readers, I put the question to you: how many more patches do you expect Blizzard to roll out to keep us engaged and interested before the next expansion launches?

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Looking back on the days of vanilla WoW, we had a lot of patches -- and I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Original WoW went to patch 1.12 before Burning Crusade hit the scene. Since then, we've seen fewer patches between expansions -- 4 patches during BC, 3 patches during Wrath, 3 patches during Cataclysm, and, to date, 3 patches during Mists. But with the speed at which Blizzard is rolling out new content lately, I think it's safe to say that we can expect Mists to beat the average number of patches before we get another expansion... but is that too many patches?

More frequent patches could mean we're hard-pressed to keep up with all the new shiny toys presented to us... or they could mean plenty of content to keep us busy and interested. But what do you think? Are patches coming too quickly these days? Or are they just frequent enough to keep you interested? Or are patches still arriving too slowly for your tastes?

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.

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.

With patch 3.3 on the PTR, the information is flowing out fast and furiously. We've had our first glimpse at the new raid, and have gotten our hands on some of the 5-man action. Lots of fun for everyone involved.

Everything that we've been publishing is listed in the handy WoW.com Guide to Patch 3.3. We've organized the information for you in a few ways. First, you can look at it week by week to see exactly what you might have missed. Second, the information is sorted into individual class sections so you can quickly and easily find out what's happening with your class. And finally, the information is sorted into a patch notes like structure so you can find out about all the details to the changes.

Check out the guide, and enjoy the patch on the PTR!

Patch 3.2 is looking more and more solid. There are still some bugs with the bosses in the Argent Coliseum, but those are being worked out and appear to be more of a technical thing than a design flaw. This leads us to think that patch 3.2 will be dropping relatively soon.

So with that said, I've been wondering lately about my alts. In particular the four left between 60 and 70 who are sitting in Outland not doing anything in particular. I know that if I drop the gold on them and let them fly around I'll have much more incentive to play them through to 80, and perhaps even find a new class that I love (truth be told, I'm finding my 63 rogue quite a bit of fun to play lately).

As I'm thinking of finishing my army of level 80 alts, I have to plan a little bit. Why should I level right now if within the next couple weeks I'm going to be able to fly around and do it all much faster? Wouldn't my time be better spent playing Fallout 3 working on WoW.com projects?

World of Warcraft has been around for a while now, and the game has changed significantly. Back in the day, way back in the day, things were so different you probably wouldn't recognize it. A couple times a week WoW.com will look back at old patches, lamenting on what once was.

Welcome to the first post in our Patches of Yesteryear series. We're going to take a look at old patch notes (listed after the break) and point out some of the ridiculous, and not so ridiculous changes that have gone through the game the past five years.

To start off with, let's look at Patch 0.6. This patch was released on April 13th, 2004. That's about seven months before WoW hit the retail shelves and became a hit. This beta version of WoW had a few important parts of the game that began their life in this patch:

• Scarlet Monastery, the level 30 dungeons near the Undercity
• Blackfathom Deeps, the cave maze dungeon out in Kalimdor
• Druids became available for play
• You had five states of rested that affected the gain of your experience gains: well rested, rested, normal, fatigued, and exhausted

We love in-game fixes, right?

Blizzard blue poster Bornakk has announced a couple new in-game fixes. The updates are as follows:

First, the nerf to the Paladin's Vindication talent that set the Pally community on fire yesterday is now live. The nerf removed stamina and intellect from the 20% reduction that Vindication gave. All other primary statistics are still affected by Vindication.

Secondly, Maim, Bash, and Hammer of Justice will no longer cause a player's spell to be interrupted when they're immune to stun. They will still interrupt the NPC's spells however.

There have been a handful of other hot fixes that we've covered the past few days, and those are recapped after the break.

Mirror, mirror on the wall... who has the bestist mirrors of them all?

Big Download has mirrored patch 3.0.9 for everyone. We've got localizations up for the EU WoW as well (English, German, Spanish, French, and Russian). Remember that you need to have WoW updated to patch 3.0.8a in order to install patch 3.0.9. Big Download also has those files available.

Patch 3.0.9 contains a few changes, and is a postscript to patch 3.0.8 and patch 3.0.8a.

We're expecting the patch 3.1 PTR to drop anytime.

Updated 2:24 p.m. EST: You can also now get the Mac client (enUS only).

As usual, please do not post links to other mirror sites in the comments. We cannot verify their integrity. We do this for your safety!

Ancilorn, a new blue community team member over on the EU forums, just posted that despite the recent announcement, patch 3.1 will not remove consumable ammunition.

According to Ancilorn, they "still fully intend to move forward with this change when the additional functionality becomes available." To me that means Blizzard needs to do some serious recoding to make the change work, and it's cool that they're letting us know they're still going to do it.

Ancilorn also lets us know the following points:

• Patch 3.1 will remove the need for pouches/quivers
• Arrows and Bullets will have their stack size greatly increased.
• Haste bonuses from pouches/quivers will be preserved in another fashion.

We have no additional information other than what's been said above, but we're anxiously on the lookout now for the patch 3.1 PTR.

Angry baby called. He wants his change back!

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

Unless you're living under a rock (in which case we'd suggest you put up some buttresses to secure your ceiling), you've no doubt noticed that Blizzard has released a bunch of patch 3.1 information.

Today the releases have mainly focused on changes to classes and ways that the classes will interact with each other. Mana replenishment has been a big thing today in this regard.

For the past couple patches we've been putting together patch guides. Our 3.0.2 and 3.0.8 guides have been a big hit around the net, and we thought we'd get the patch 3.1 guide out early. As more information for patch 3.1 comes around, we'll update the guide with the latest.

Of course, you'll find all the breaking news and everything else on our front page – but head to the guide for all of it rounded up in a nice little place.

So what are you waiting for?

Continue on to read WoW Insider's Guide to Patch 3.1!

As expected, tonight we're getting a sampling of the class changes for Mages, Hunters, Death Knights, and Paladins. This comes after a day of more 3.1 class changes.

Big changes from this release include:

• Consumable ammunition removed from the game!
• Hunter's will get additional trap talents via the Survival tree
  
• Mages will now have a mana replenishment spell
  
• Paladin's Blessing of Kings is now a base ability
• Paladin's Exorcism will now damage all enemy types
• Death Knight's Pestilence will now only spread diseases

The headline for tomorrow will be the line "Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game." In fact, that'll be the the headline for the next few days.

After the break are all the changes released thus far.

So back in another life, when I was a Druid, there was always something that got me a little hot and bothered: Seeing another class with a feral weapon. Sometimes it was a Night Elf Hunter running around Hellfire peninsula with an Ursol's Claw, sometimes it was a Gnome Warrior hanging in Shattrath with a Terestian's Stranglestaff.

Whatever it was, it always bothered me a bit. I wondered if they had just taken it because there was no Druid in the group, or if there was some poor feral scrub out there wandering lost and lonely without a feral weapon because some guy who couldn't even use all that delicious feral attack power wanted it for the agility or whatever. I have to admit, though, many feral staves are some of the coolest looking items in game, so I wouldn't necessarily blame them for taking one.

After Patch 3.0.8, they'll have even more reason to take them.

To play Wrath tonight you'll need to update the game. The game installs version 3.0.1 when you upgrade to Wrath, and you'll need to update it version to 3.0.3. That means installing the following two patches:

• Version 3.0.1 - > Version 3.0.2
• Version 3.0.2 -> Version 3.0.3

You are in luck though and don't have to wait around to download them all. We have the files hosted over at our sister site Big Download. Take a look after the break for a complete list of the files you'll need to get.

Note: If you saved the files from previous patches, you're all set. But be sure they work and are fully saved before you go out and get Wrath tonight – no need to waste time downloading stuff again.