Blizzard Drops Patch 5.04 Pre Mists Of Pandaria To Counter Guild Wars 2 Release

Written by: Gary Gannon (@garygannon) | August 29, 2012 10:57 am

29 Comments

Time to snap on the adult diapers and pre-pay Pizza Hut to supply your home with 20-days-worth of pie, because Blizzard rolled out a hefty update to World of Warcraft.

Patch 5.0.4 will add a handful of major features to the successful massively multiplayer role-playing game. The dev upgraded the talent system, the character classes, the glyphs, and the looting mechanic. Additionally, Blizzard added account-wide mounts, pets, and achievements, so players can access that content regardless of the character they are running.

The new Theramore’s Fall Scenario is also available as part of this patch. It features two events, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde. It should lead right into the events of the coming Mists of Pandaria expansion. On the technology side, the dev added cross-realm zones and BattleTag support.

Cross-realm zones will attempt to solve the problem of desolate-feeling level-up zones. It will allow players who would normally be relegated to the high-level areas to team up with players who are still in the thick of the grind.

BattleTag support implements the same pseudonym solution that developer employed in Diablo III. A BattleTag is a player’s permanent Battle.net account name. It’s the account name that users provide when they don’t want to give out their real name.

Blizzard released World of Warcraft in 2004. Since then, the game has led the MMO pack with an astronomical number of subscribers. Other popular franchises, including Star Wars, Star Trek, and DC Comics, have tried and failed to match WOW’s vast appeal and dedicated base of paying customers.

Also launching today is NCSoft’s Guild Wars 2. This is another fantasy MMORPG that distinguishes itself by not charging a monthly subscription fee. Read some of our coverage of GW2′s launch here. Anticipation for this game has been building among restless MMO fans for months.

WOW once had over 12 million subscribers, but that number has dropped to just over 10 million. That’s still more than twice as much as the next closest in the genre, but it’s likely not a coincidence that Activision Blizzard scheduled this content drop on the release day of GW2.

Activision will release the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, on September 25. Aside from introducing the monk character class and the Pandarian race, this add-on raises the level cap from 85 to 90. Mists of Pandaria retails for $39.99.

Originally appeared on Venturebeat - Jeffrey Grubb

Blizzard Drops Patch 5.04 Pre Mists Of Pandaria To Counter Guild Wars 2 Release

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matraque

WoW is KING.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/SMGRLFM4UASOO7QO26HTHBLIOI Shawn
  
  King of Losing Subs…Sure.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Todd-Maw/516123166 Todd Maw
    
    Have to have subs in the first place to lose them. Percentage wise it still hasn’t dropped anywhere near as much as SWTOR in the last year.
Eric Hathaway

After having played Guild Wars 2, it’s so hard to get into WoW.
Playing WoW now feels clunky, sluggish and very ‘Guild Wars 2 “wannabe”‘.
Activision/Blizzard is trying to hard to keep up with GW2 now, that it unfortunately affects WoW’s feel and causes it to seem very lack-luster and second-rate, at least to me.

I played Guild Wars 1 for about four years, overall. Have been playing WoW for over two years now, as well. I wanted to give WoW an honest, thorough ‘go’ to be able to develop a full-fledged opinion for myself, and I have to say that the feel of Guild Wars 2 is so much more strongly rooted in ArenaNet’s fanbase. The GW2 community is the most important thing to ANet, where as BNet’s focus seems to be focused on holding onto their subscribers as long as possible, and it reflects on the game and its gameplay, unfortunately.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  I hope that WoW doesn’t try to be like GW2. I like that WoW:
  
  - Auction House works.
  - You can invite players to your guild.
  - You can group with other players and enjoy content.
  - You can see the entire questline and not just bits and pieces.
  - The in game mail system works.
  - You can add some additional security to your account.
  - The customer support forums work.
  - The questing system works.
  - You don’t have to “game” the system to stay at the appropriate level for the content.
  - You don’t have to wonder if there is really an end game.
  
  With that, I’m enjoying the game and figure I will play it for several months.
  It just seem like you are playing game mechanics and not following a story.
  - Joseph Gabrielli
    
    Thats kind of a cheap shot don’t you think, yeah there are a lot of features not working in gw2 but it just launched. Also a few of those things on that list don’t even make sense, 4 and 8 that is.
  - http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
    
    I hate to say it but if you’re having trouble leveling you must be doing something wrong. I get that you are annoyed but so far, from what I’ve seen and my own experiance, for every person that says they are running into gaps in the leveling content there are ten who say they haven’t had any problems and are either always at the right level, or are at a higher level.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JD5RIAPTFFZFIF3DCNYVVG7NIQ Kyle Bohannon
    
    lol i dont even know where to start with this post.
    
    ill give you the auction house point, but the rest of them? seriously? have you played gw2 at all, in the 5 days its been released?
    
    inviting players to my guild is fairly simple, grouping up with other players and enjoying the content is relatively easy, havent had a problem with the in game mail and the quests are quite fantastic.
    
    heres what i like about GW2 thats WoW cant even match.
    
    -amazing graphics and beautiful scenery
    -allowing me to downlevel to play with friends without rolfstomping the content
    -server stability (lol nice patch launch day blizzard)
    -truly diverse skill/trait system
    - gathering professions that arent gibbed by bots
    -not concering myself about an “end game” because theyve stated from the get go its not about “end game”
    
    seriously we could argue semantice all night long but it wont make a difference
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      People are having trouble with grouping and guilds. ANet has admitted taking the mail down for periods.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  I guess you are talking about the GW2 betas, because GW2 live is full of clunk.
Cyclops07

Wow sucks
Eric Hathaway

I don’t think WoW sucks; it really is a good game. I enjoyed it for the most part while playing it the past couple of years.
I believe it’s a fading ‘fad’, however. It’s lost its allure, which happens to every game.
Eventually something will come along and offer more, possess fewer issues, and be generally better designed. Games learn from each other’s mistakes, so it’s just the way things go with gaming.
- http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.hornsby.7 Jonathan Hornsby
  
  I can’t speak from the perspective of a WoW veteran, but as someone who never really got into WoW I can say it isn’t the game itself that is turning people off.
  
  I gave WoW more than a single honest chance to impress me; the first being back around the release of Burning Crusade. There my first toon, a shaman of whatever that minotaur race was named, was griefed in such a way as to make completing an early quest very difficult, and my efforts to seek aid from another player of the same class but slightly higher level were met with ridicule. Years later, due to the interest of my fiancée, she and I opted to give WoW another chance before getting spoiled by GW2, before the betas started. Within ten minutes our toons were being spammed with duel requests from players clearly two or three times our level and we were being harassed by these players when we refused.
  
  I’ll give the WoW community the benefit of doubt and assume these players were simply a minority; but that doesn’t matter. First impressions count for a hell of a lot and to most outsiders WoW is extremely unwelcoming and at times openly hostile. No mere expansion is going to change that.
  
  MoP may bomb horribly, or it may be the greatest expansion in the history of expanding games; either way it doesn’t matter. In the end all it will do is bring back a few old players, not bring in new ones. WoW is on the decline and it is going to stay on the decline, and that has little to do with the actual game. The real problems are the way Blizzard is managing the game (old player’s concerns), and the community (new player’s concerns).
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Nice theory, but we are not seeing it happen.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Hamad-Ali-Al-Jalahma/512893526 Hamad Ali Al-Jalahma

Respect for the guy who is talking in the video.
http://www.facebook.com/vashv17 Vash NewYoda Wilson

That guy’s voice made that video sooo un-watchable for me.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

GamebreakerTV uses to rewrite articles and post original video. Now they are posting articles from other web sites. (I did read the article on the original site, so they could get credit for the ad views. ) Also, posting a Blizzard customer service video was an interesting choice.
http://twitter.com/RavingRendal Matthew Ulmen

Why do I feel like I am 10 years old after watching that
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Hatcher/100000111448255 David Hatcher

MoP is definitely the Kung Fu Panda killer.

Might be the Pokemon killer, but they didnt cover capturing pets for pet battles.

Anyone still think they arent making a massive shift toward a younger audience?
- Andrew Cohen
  
  younger audience, while still retaining their older one.. its becoming more broad for more players, that includes a cleaned interface and a more refined character class.. I dont see updating the game as a bad thing thats for sure!
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Younger and dumber.
http://twitter.com/ron6405 mouse

i used to like wow until they made my off tank Warlock a wussy then i rage quiet -.-
- http://twitter.com/ShawnaRM Shawna R. M.
  
  Im a hunter.
  
  Go to hell.
http://twitter.com/sithbear73 Trevor Martinson

Can I have those 5mins back plz…thanks!
Andrew Cohen

this is beautiful btw, every new wow player should be FORCED to watch this XD ahah
Josh Rosenvelt

Damn The burning crusade must be turning it’s grave looking at how dumbed down wow has become.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  SO TRUE. It makes me sick to remember WoW when it was actually good.
http://twitter.com/crocodilius ryan phillips

i don’t know whether to say “wtf” or “that was soothing”.
bahl isvet

cant believe anyone still playz this

Patch 5.3 Release Date Confirmed

Patch 5.3: Purely Pandaria Profession Leveling!

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