{"id":1614,"date":"2011-11-29T14:57:10","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T22:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2011-11-29T14:57:10","modified_gmt":"2011-11-29T22:57:10","slug":"wow-v4-3-patch-day-and-a-look-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/?p=1614","title":{"rendered":"WoW v4.3: Patch Day and a Look Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

TODAY IS AN UNOFFICIAL HOLIDAY for <\/span>WoW <\/em><\/span>players: the release of the v4.3 “Deathwing” patch. There’s a fair amount of cool stuff in this patch: the new “Dragon Soul” raid; three new 5-man dungeons, a “Transmogrification” feature that lets you customize the look of your armor; a “Void Storage” system that offers 80 extra bank slots for random junk; a Raid Finder system that will act much like LFD; and a Darkmoon Faire overhaul that should roll out next week. Good stuff, and I’m especially happy for the extra storage space, even if it costs 25g a slot (yes, really). <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, even now, as the patched servers have barely come back online, I find myself wondering: what’s next? Blizzard released the v3.3 Icecrown Citadel patch in early December 2009 and didn’t have another major content patch until a year later when Cataclysm<\/em> launched in December 2010. With v4.3 announced as the last major patch for Cataclysm<\/em>, can <\/span>WoW <\/em><\/span>afford to repeat that cycle and take a full year before <\/span>Mists of Pandaria<\/em><\/span>? Or will Blizzard get the next expansion out much sooner?\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This in turn got me thinking about <\/span>Cataclysm <\/em><\/span>in particular, which, let’s be fair, has been pretty meager in terms of patches. In comparison, here’s a look at previous releases and content patches: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Vanilla <\/span>WoW <\/em><\/span><\/strong>(Nov 2004) <\/span>
\n– launch: Molten Core and Onyxia (40m, 11 bosses)
\n– Jun 05: Blackwing Lair (40m, 8 bosses)
\n– Sep 05: Zul’Gurub (20m, 8 bosses)
\n– Jan 06: AQ40 (40m, 9 bosses), AQ20 (20m, 6 bosses)
\n– Jun 06: Naxx 40 (40m, 15 bosses)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Burning Crusade <\/em><\/span><\/strong>(Jan 2007)
\n– launch: Karazhan (10m, 11 bosses), Gruul (25m, 2 bosses), Magtheridon (25m, 1 boss), SSC (25m, 6 bosses), The Eye (25m, 4 bosses)
\n– May 07: Hyjal (25m, 5 bosses), Black Temple (25m, 9 bosses)
\n– Mar 08: Sunwell (25m, 6 bosses)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Wrath of the Lich King <\/em><\/span><\/strong>(Nov 2008)
\n– launch: Naxxrammas (15 bosses), Malygos, Sartharion
\n– Apr 09: Ulduar (14 bosses)
\n– Aug 09: Crusader’s Coliseum (5 bosses)
\n– Oct 09: Onyxia v2.0 (1 boss)
\n– Dec 09: Icecrown Citadel (12 bosses)
\n– Jun 10: Ruby Sanctum (1 boss)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cataclysm <\/em><\/span><\/strong>(Dec 2010)<\/span>
\n– launch: BWD, BoT, Tot4W (12 bosses)
\n– Jun 11: Firelands (7 bosses)
\n– Dec 11: Dragon Soul (8 bosses)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We can quibble about which bosses really “count” (do you count optional bosses, do you count Naxx 40, which few people did, etc?), but here’s a basic range of how many bosses you had in each cycle:\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

– Vanilla: at least 42 bosses, as many as 60 if you count 20-mans and world bosses.
\n– BC: 45 bosses.
\n– WotLK: 40-50 bosses, depending on whether you count optional stuff.
\n– Cataclysm: 27 bosses. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So there’s really no comparison — every cycle of <\/span>WoW <\/em><\/span>to date has had at least 40-50 raid bosses, except for <\/span>Catalcysm<\/em><\/span>, which won’t even break 30 unless some surprise encounters are released down the line. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And you could argue, hey, patches aren’t just about raid bosses, but it’s not like <\/span>Cataclysm <\/em><\/span>has been chock full of other content \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you had the recycled ZA\/ZG dungeons and the Molten Front dailies, neither of which was that much beefier than what we’ve seen in previous expansions.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To some extent, maybe this explains why we saw the announcements Blizzard made regarding the new expansion at Blizzcon: a pet battling system that resembles <\/span>Pokemon<\/em><\/span>, timed challenge dungeons, a new \u00e2\u20ac\u0153scenarios\u00e2\u20ac\u009d feature, etc. It could be a sign that Blizzard is putting its top raid designers on its still-unannounced project and is looking to non-raid content to keep people involved in WoW. <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the future holds, at least we have Diablo 3<\/em> coming soon, right?\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TODAY IS AN UNOFFICIAL HOLIDAY for WoW players: the release of the v4.3 “Deathwing” patch. There’s a fair amount of cool stuff in this patch: the new “Dragon Soul” raid; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-commentary","category-world-of-warcraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1614"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}