World of Warcraft has been through a lot in the last year. We could almost count the launch of Cataclysm (December 7th, 2010) as part of the events that happened this year and we were able to witness three patches (4.1, 4.2, 4.3) along with drama, intrigue, and announcements. Weve passed the year mark for Cataclysm a few weeks ago, so lets take a look at the last year since Cataclysm launched.
Cataclysms Launch - December 7th, 2010
While not particularly within this year, the launch of Cataclysm was a rather uneventful experience. Past launches had a little something wrong with them but this launch only had one single issue: the arena season was exploitable. With the exploit, the first arena season of the expansion was reset and weapons were locked into early 2011.
The new expansion included the revamped old world, five new levels (much different than the ten we were accustomed to), new raid lockout system, and much more. The expansion was met with general enthusiasm, but Blizzard messed around with the healing / tanking dynamic which made a lot of the content much harder than WoTLK (where you walked from the start to finish AoEing everything down) which started a general trend of dissatisfaction for a portion of the playerbase.
Patch 4.1 - April 26th, 2011
It was nearly five months after the expansions launch before patch 4.1 went live. It was to the dismay of many that it did not include a new raid instance, which wouldnt arrive until patch 4.2, as the patch focused on two new heroic dungeons ZulGurub and ZulAman. This was a great boon to new players and casuals as it gave a great way to move from heroics to raiding, but it wasnt exactly enough content to ease everyones hunger for raiding.
One of the saddest parts about Patch 4.1 is that it brought about a lot of improvements to the quality of life for many players. A lot of tough achievements were nerfed, interrupts couldnt miss, and a dungeon finder change that did, over time, help with the queues. At least it gave players a reason to queue as a tank.
Patch 4.2 June 28th, 2011
It was but two months later that the raid content we craved came in the form of Ragnaros and the Firelands. First up was the full-fledged raid which gave players something a bit more interesting to do than run heroics and the original raids like they had been doing for six months. The next thing on the list was the new daily quest hub that provided more casual players a month long quest to unlock some pretty awesome gear and make a good chunk of cash in doing so.
A new legendary, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosas Rest was added into the game for offensive casters and a quest chain to assist Thrall provided a bit of momentary entertainment. Of course, a lot of quality of life improvements came such as the ability to finally crowd control enemies without them attacking whenever the crowd control wore off which upped the margin of error in the crowd control department dramatically.
Patch 4.2 was a welcome relief, but would sit with players for five months before Patch 4.3 rolled around.
BlizzCon 2011 October 21-22nd, 2011
As many expected, BlizzCon 2011 was not a giant treasure trove of WoW information instead focusing more on Starcraft II and Diablo III. We did find out the next expansion, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria which is slated for release sometime next year. We also became privy to the new race coming: --the Pandarens. Not only that, but some neat new features like pet battles and an entirely new continent to explore (versus the random zones that came with Cataclysm) were thrown into the mix.
BlizzCon also introduced us to the yearly contract, where if you promise to pay for WoW for a year you get Diablo III for free along with a mount and some other assorted goodies. The interesting thing about this deal is that D3 will be probably be $59.99, meaning that a year of WoW ($179.88) is only $119.89 or $9.99 a month assuming you were going to buy D3 at launch.
Uneventful Blizzcons arent new and the announcement of MoP wasnt met with instant glee by the community, but it was still a fun time for fans of Blizzards games and was more attuned to their other games, which is fine, many players cant wait to get their hands on D3 to play while waiting for the next expansion.
Patch 4.3 December 7th, 2011
Finally, after almost a full year of waiting, players were finally able to take on Deathwing himself. The most curious part of this patch was not the new raid itself, but the raid finder which has finally allowed players to raid without having to submit themselves to a guild and struggle to make time to meet the raids. Other features, in this content filled patch, were three new heroic dungeons in addition to the dragon soul raid the final confrontation with Deathwing himself.
Moving into the next year were not sure what to expect other than the launch of D3, hopefully the next expansion, and a pre-expansion content patch that will bring with it the new talent system. Until then well have to sit and wait. You can join us here at Ten Ton Hammer as we share our predictions for the next year along with looking back at what the previous year has brought us.
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