World of Warcraft 3.1 Patch Brings Dual-Specs, New Raid

On Tuesday Blizzard rolled out the first major content patch for World of Warcraft since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King last November. The 3.1 patch includes the long-awaited dual-specialization feature, which allows players to quickly and easily switch from one set of talent choices to another. Action bars and glyph choices change as well. The patch also includes a new end-game raid dungeon, Ulduar, which expands upon the variable difficulty modes Blizzard has recently experimented with. The instance contains 14 bosses, 10 of which have an optional "hard mode" that players can attempt for better rewards. In addition, the patch contains a host of class balance changes, bug fixes, and UI improvements. You can see the full patch notes at Blizzard's website, and a brief trailer is also available.

Ulduar

[RogueyWon]

I suspect there's quite a lot riding for Blizzard on the quality (and challenge level) of this new raid instance. A lot of people are starting to notice that Blizzard seems to have stripped WoW of development resource to focus on other projects. While the Wrath of the Lich King expansion got a lot of positive press for the "oooh, pretty" factor, the simple fact is that it is desperately short on level 80 content (and with WoW levelling being as fast as it is, most players are level 80).

When the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out, it contained quite a few raid instances. These were, Karazhan (11 bosses), Gruul's Lair (2 bosses), Magtheridon's Lair (1 boss), Serpentshrine Cavern (6 bosses), The Eye (4 bosses) and Mount Hyjal (5 bosses). A few months after release, Black Temple (9 bosses) was added. All of these were brand new encounters. By contrast, with WotLK, we got a recylced instance from before the first expansion and just 3 new bosses in other mini instances. Only now, months after release, are we actually getting a sizeable new instance with a reasonable number of bosses. Instead of developing significant amounts of new content, Blizzard have just had the office temps think up some new Achievements - basically requirements to kill bosses in really silly ways - to act as timesinks.

If these new bosses in Ulduar are the kind of thing that can be breezed through in a week or two, even on easy mode, then I suspect that a lot of players, like me, will be leaving the game. The thought of spending the next 5 months farming Ulduar, as we've just spent 5 months farming the pitiful content that was in the game at release and redoing it in an attempt to get some dumb achievements is not pleasant.

Re:nerf

[Anonymous Coward]

millions

I do not think that word means what you think it means. Ghostcrawler understands human nature fine. You're just asking him for the impossible. What's more, because he understands human nature, he knows that it is in the nature of humans to ask for the impossible. So rather than killing himself trying to pull a miracle out of his ass, he merely provides the possible, knowing that people will be content with it. And make no mistake, people will be content with it. Every single patch there has been someone making absolutely absurdly overblown proclamations of the death of the game, and it's all (Ghostcrawler|Tigole|Kalgan)'s fault, and he's sooo gonna get fired, and everyone's gonna quit the game. Well guess what? Every single one of those doomsayers was wrong.

Seriously, what did you think they were going to do? Rebalance every single class at this new inflated level of power? And then rebalance every single boss encounter to take that into account? Even assuming they ignored all non-raid content, I don't even know how long that would take them. And then of course of course you'd have to test these changes and fine tune the numbers, and that alone would take months. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together will have already seen the necessity of an occasional nerf here and there. But yeah, you go run off to your Warhammers, or whatever. I look forward to the day you realise that WoW is king of MMOs for a good reason.

Re:Exams

[Opportunist]

I don't know how to put this without almost certainly burning Karma.... but IMO someone who needs this patch, who respecs often enough that 1000 gold for the "right" to have two specs is actually valuable, not to mention having 1000 gold lying around, ... do you think his exam scores will be affected in any way? Can you spend less than zero time learning?

Re:Exams

[thriemus]

I have spent over well over 3000 gold on each of my two lvl 80 chars respeccing from PvE to PvP and vice versa. 1000 gold is nothing in game now. The reason dual spec is nice is this:

PvE - 2 different specs in raid without having to hearth and get summoned back (Sunwell anyone?)

PvE & PvP - People who play both do not need to respec every day now.

This current patch not only addresses the need for new content but is also providing some much needed class balance in abilities.

The reason that we are only getting one new instance is because of the sheer amount of development that Blizzard are now putting into new content. They have to design encounters for 10 & 25 man raids, then within each of those they have to design and balance easy and sometimes multiple levels of difficulty. Think of OS 10 / 25 with 0,1,2,3 drakes alive. There are 8 different ways to killing one boss. I would rather see 1 well designed instance than 3 instances with no real thought put in. With the new hard modes all raiders can see new content, lower guilds can kill bosses but it takes very capable guilds to kill bosses on the hardest mode, giving the best loot.

Sorry, I play WoW, quite a bit, however I play in one of the top 100 guilds in Europe so at least I am a capable no lifer ;P

Re:One puff was enough for me

[StoatBringer]

It's a shame that in the ten hours you were waiting for it to patch you didn't spend two minutes discovering that there's a lot more to combat than "click once and wait", which is the almost useless whack-it-with-your-crappy-weapon autoattack.

Re:Exams

[Schadrach]

The issue I see coming is that the classes who can only act as a damage dealer are also generally the ones with the least powerful buffs/debuffs. When you have to choose between dealing X damage with Y buffs on a character or dealing 0.95*X damage, with Y++ buffs, and the ability to also act as a healer or tank by standing out of combat for 5 seconds, how do you make the classes that lack the flexibility of having the option to tank or heal worthwhile as a choice? WoW had already seen some of that, when looking at census values and doing the math, something like 15% (beyond what would be assumed as an even split of players going to DK) of those playing damage-only classes switched *BEFORE* making switching roles as simple as being out of combat for 5 seconds.

Re:Free time

[Whorhay]

I still love video games, just hit 30. My problem now is finding time and money to afford playing them. Between church commitments, honey do lists, hobby activities with the wife, soon time with children, and of course the ever present job that pays for everything I can get in maybe an average of two hours a day.