By: David "Xerin" Piner

One of the spectacular features of most any online game is that they are regularly updated for as long as the game is still popular. New content and features are delivered directly to the existing game like a new coat of paint on a fence. Pesky bugs are also squashed on a regular basis and balance changes make the games more enjoyable, removing unneeded frustration. Though these updates aren’t always as sweet as sugarplums, they are sometimes slightly bitter. While World of Warcraft (WoW) never fails to deliver a sweet taste, not everything is sweet as others.

Game updates in WoW come at a semi-frequent basis, generally between two to three months apart from each other. There have been currently eleven major patches, which deliver new features, content, and major game changes, during WoW’s almost two year span of service. This equals to about a new update every two to three months. The first two game updates were simple updates that fixed the latency problems with the large amount of expected players and happened shortly after launch. This means that in total there are nine major game updates.

The history of WoW updates is quite simple, if you take out the massive amounts of small feature changes.

  • Patch 1.1 (Launch): The first official game update added racial traits along with a large amount of class skill changes. This was included on the first official CD ans was the transition patch from beta to live.
  • Patch 1.2 (December 18th, 2004): Added in the Maraudon instance along with the first major event, the Feast of the Great-Winter. Many of the bugs and problems that existed at launch were cleared up in this patch.
  • Patch 1.3 (March 7th, 2005): Dire Maul and meeting stones were added.
  • Patch 1.4 (April 8th, 2005): PvP honor was introduced.
  • Patch 1.5 (June 7th, 2005):  The battlegrounds Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley were introduced to centralize PvP.
  • Patch 1.6 (July 12th, 2005): The instance known as Blackwing Lair was opened for those who have bypassed the trials of the Molten Core.
  • Patch 1.7 (September 13th, 2005): The 20-man instance of Zul’Gurub was added along with a new battleground called Arathi Basin.
  • Patch 1.8 (October 10th, 2005): Silithus was populated and a Druid talent review.
  • Patch 1.9 (Janurary 3rd, 2006): The Ruins of Anh’Quiraj (20-man) and The Temple of Anh’Quiraj (40-man) instances were added. Players referred to these dungeons as AQ. Paladin talent review.
  • Patch 1.10 (March 28th, 2006): Priest talent review along with a new pre-Molten Core armor set added based off of the “big 3” instances.
  • Patch 1.11 (June 20th, 2006): Naxxaramas was added along with Mage and Shaman talent reviews.

As you can see, most patches provide a wealth of new content and things to do. This brief summary doesn’t include the thousands of smaller changes that fix annoying bugs or add small features. Those kind of things aren’t not looked at as much as major milestones in the history of WoW. Though, all of the patches do carry the theme of being focused towards those at level sixty. That’s because there is plenty of pre-level sixty content but there never can be enough level sixty (or the upcoming level seventy) content.

Alterac Valley, added in patch 1.5.

There really is no “biggest” patch, although one does stand out in WoW’s history more then the others. That’s patch 1.4 which added PvP honor and patch 1.5 which added the battlegrounds. During patch 1.4, the already congested zones of Stranglethorn Vale and Hillsbrad Foothills were full of PvP combat. This provided a ton of untapped entertainment for anyone who was level sixty and looking for something to do. On the flip side, this created a large hassle for those leveling up in these zones on the PvP servers. Patch 1.5 came with the battlegrounds, which ended a lot of the players in these zones, once again allowing those on PvP servers to have a more leveled playing field. Normal servers rejoiced as PvP finally was catching on with the arrival of the battlegrounds.

Outside of the highly anticipated excitement of the battlegrounds and PvP honor were the various instances that were added. Blackwing Lair, AQ, and Naxxaramas are all big deals among those who enjoy raiding. Players scrambled before the patches to ready themselves to become the first to complete content in these instances. Not only that, but each added instance (including Dire Maul and ZG) provided a wealth of new items and skills that greatly helped those who enjoy making their characters more and more powerful.

Those who are more casual really enjoyed patch 1.10 which added the .5 armor set. This armor set was designed for those who only want to play for a few hours every other day. Attainable by most anyone, these armor sets also greatly helped guilds who were attempting to complete the first major raid instance, Molten Core.

Not every major update focused on content. A lot of the later patches have focused on reviewing various classes talents and making them more efficient for the current game landscape. Most of these changes are welcomed by the community, although some changes have come as controversial. Enemies of those classes cheer as a very annoying skill or talent has been balanced while those of the class disagree saying the skill or talent are needed. Overall, most of the balance changes were truly needed (and to the contrary contained very few “nerfs”).

One can never truly speak purely of the positive in game updates. Though, there comes a problem that there just really has never been anything overly negative then the problems during launch. At launch, the game was unavailable for extended periods of time do the sheer amount of unexpected players. Past that, there has never been a major incident that has “ruined” gameplay for anyone or made classes unviable or any of the other horrible things that have befallen other MMORPGs.

The most negative patch I can think of was the patch where they disabled U.I. mods from cancelling spells. This change made raiding slightly more difficult since you had to manually conserve mana while healing (instead of a U.I. stoping you when you were going to heal someone for too much). This of course, came when Priests became much better healers, so it wasn’t too bad.

One must ask though, what does the future look like for World of Warcraft. The next upcoming game update will provide a Rogue talent overview along with more incentive to PvP outside of the battlegrounds. Past that, no one really knows. We do know that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is coming soon. That should mean that upcoming patches will probably begin preparing players for it while adapting the game world for when it’s launched.

Overall, every WoW update has been overly positive bringing both new content along with various game fixes and balance changes. Updates which contain new dungeons or content are always excellent updates providing players with plenty of new and exciting things to do. Sometimes though, the patches don’t provide enough for everyone. That’s when the age old adage “Can’t please everyone!” comes in.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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