Patch 3.3 was released last week and the collective power of the Internet was able to make Blizzard take down the login servers for once. Can you imagine that? There were so many players that Blizzard flipped off their switch to keep players from logging. Of course, that didn’t help the massive load because everyone was getting instance not found as they tried to jam their way into every instance out there. The raids, this time around, were free of lag. That’s awesome, right?
Things are ice cold now, but it’s still dominating the news. There isn’t a story on the Internet about WoW right now that doesn’t have 3.3 tacked along to it. WoW 3.3 is everything at the moment and I ask, has it always been this way? Not really.
In the days of old patches cheap dvds came hard and fast. Since we don’t have a lot to talk about that any WoW fan wouldn’t already know, let’s take a quick history lesson.
In original WoW there were a total of twelve patches. It all started with the first patch, the launch patch which was 1.1 and introduced well, WoW to the world. That was November.
Patch 1.2 came in December of that year and introduced us to a new instance, Maraudon, which was supposed to help us level faster. Maraudon is pretty much huge and is a shining example of why the three new 5-mans are really just one 5-man split up three times. Instances like BRD, LBRS, and Maraudon are too large to do in one sitting unless you’re really set to doing it. Moving on, the next patch was 3 months later in March.
Patch 1.3 gave us Meeting Stones and Dire Maul. Learning from current complaints that instances took too long to complete they took Dire Maul and split it into three wings like they did with Scarlet Monastery. This had the problem that some wings were naturally better than others making it not nearly as worthwhile to do all of them. Another lesson learned.
Patch 1.4 came in June and gave us the honor system. That was just three months later. Honor was so hard to farm that 1.5 gave us Battlegrounds to help keep PvP out of Tarren Mill and Southshore. Blizzard, keeping us our toes, gave us the massive patch which included Blackwing Lair, Battlemasters, and the led lights Darkmoon Faire in patch 1.6 which came one month later in July. Two months later Blizzard responded to how hard raiding was by introducing 1.7 with Zul&rsquo,cheap ugg boots;Gurub,cosplay, adding Arathi Basin,floding bike, and doing some itemization changes. ZG helped introduce people into raiding with smaller group sizes, easier accessibility, and a much lower gear requirement.
Patch 1.8 didn’t stop anything. In October we got the Emerald Dream dragons, Silithus, and later on the launcher. Patch 1.9 gave us AQ20/AQ40 WHICH ARE MASSIVE instances just at the start of the New Year!
Within a year we got nine patches. NINE! All of them massive in their own right and completely changed the game each time around. That announced the end of the massive wave of patches. 1.10 added weather and tier .5 in March, 1.11 was Naxxramas which no one got to raid, and 1.12 just added cross-faction BGs in August.
Most guilds collapsed and it was a dark time in WoW history, until January of 2007 when TBC launched. Patches started becoming more… like they are now. There were only four patches, introducing Black Temple in 2.1, voice chat in 2.2, Zul’aman in 2.3, and the Sunwell in 2.4. Sunwell came in March and it wasn’t until November of 2008 that WotLK came. The same formula works now, except we’ve only gotten three patches since it launched over a year ago.
We crave patches now more than ever. Before patches were common and we were rewarded with major innovation every other month. Now we wait 3-5 months to get the next “big” batch of changes at once and go crazy once we get them. The month before the new patch is boring. It’s like a roller coaster of feelings. How many of you hit your ceiling long before 3.3 came out? You know, that spot you can’t push forward content wise anymore *cough* heroic PvP champs *cough*.
Well, none of it matters, since my anecdotal evidence that there is still a ton of WoW players means that WoW is going really well doing what it is doing now. I still miss the days we get patch after patch after patch of new goodies.
Anyway, back to the news. Uh, well, servers lagged. The login servers were down. Everything is fixed and people are too led lights busy to do anything newsworthy. Oh, and it’s a month until the next wing opens up because of the holidays.
Seriously, a month! Hey, gives everyone time to farm up the insane gear beforehand so they can chew through all of the new content as soon as it launches.
