WoW Patch 2.0.3 Available

[GunnyMo]

The last patch before the sexy goodness of The Burning Crusade hits the WoW servers today (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/) (and should be up as of this post).

Some of the highlights:

The Burning Crusade
Several years have passed since the Burning Legion's defeat at the Battle of Mount Hyjal - and the races of Azeroth have continued to rebuild their once shattered kingdoms. With renewed strength, the heroes of the Horde and Alliance have begun to explore the broken lands beyond the Dark Portal. What dangers or rewards await mortal champions in Draenor? And what will the Alliance and Horde do when they discover that the demons they thought vanquished have returned to renew their terrible Burning Crusade?

A stirring of events has begun throughout Azeroth and rumor points to the Dark Portal as its source.

Due to various talent changes, all Druids will have all their talent points refunded.

Due to various talent changes, Rogues will have all talent points refunded.

Blacksmithing/Leatherworking specialization has changed with specialization providing recipes to make powerful items that only you can wear. You can now unlearn a blacksmithing or leatherworking specialization and learn a different one by finding the appropriate NPC, paying the fee to unlearn your old specialization, and then find the new specialist to learn a new one. Also, all of the old blacksmithing/leatherworking recipes that required specialization no longer require it and can be learned by any blacksmith/leatherworker.

Mirrors:

File Shack (http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/10040/World+of+Warcraft+Manual+Patch+2.0.x+to+2.0.3+-+US/AUS)
Worth Playing (http://www.worthdownloading.com/game.php?gid=151)

Update: Mirrors are slowly showing up. Feel free to post any you find in a reply to this and I'll add it to the front page.

[Telefrog]

Damn you, Blizzard! I feel myself getting sucked in again!

[roboninja]

Started DLing before I left for work this morning, so everything should be done once I get home. Bring on the Burning Crusade.

[Camel]

I resubscribed yesterday to play with a few friends. I had a lot of fun just seeing all the new stuff my first time through WoW, so I'll probably see what there is to see in Outland and then bow out again.

Thanks for the mirror, I can never get the stupid Blizzard Downloader to work right.

[digitalErich]

I resubscribed yesterday to play with a few friends. I had a lot of fun just seeing all the new stuff my first time through WoW, so I'll probably see what there is to see in Outland and then bow out again.

same for me...I always enjoyed the exploration aspect. I rejoined a few weeks ago to get ready for the BC. I'm sure after a month or so at 70 I'll stop playing again. Then again, back when I left the game orginally, there wasn't a third of the endgame content there is now. But either way, I get sick of running the same instances after a dozen or so runs.

Also, I left before the first round of talent revamps, back when playing as a druid meant you were a preist who could turn into a bear for a laugh now and again.

[ProfPuppet]

Unofficial news from the PTR's a short while back has a few other undocumented changes, like:

Bug Fixes.
-Enchants Are now Green Again.
-Felguard no longer makes the Succubus Noise When summoned.
-Duel Core Processing Bug Fixed
-Map Errors Mentioned in 2.0.1 Patch notes Fixed.
-Zandalarian Hero Charm now properly uses its charges.

Professions
-Plays can now change Blacksmithing Speclzations In IrofnFore/Org. for a Fee of 50g
-Greater Arcane Elixir Trainable From Trainers.
-Flask of Supreme Power is now purchaseable at Exalted in the Caverns of Time.

Happy about the Dual Core fix and the Greater Arcane potion being trainable, since the former was a pain and the latter was so rare it cost more than Flask recipes on the AH.

[miah]

Cool, I've been wanting to pickup the expansion and will when I get back. I need to fix the fan in my Radeon though. It died and I was having random lockups, after looking I realized that my fan was dead and my video card was almost melting :(. I think I had the patch at around 90% download before I left (the background downloader kept downloading a patch)..

[Exodus]

Shadowstep is now in the game...

all the people crying about hunters... prepare for waves of instant death from behind over and over

[Spigot]

I just hit level 59 with my main (after 2 years of on and off playing) so I have about a week to hit 60 before BC hits.

Sigh.

[GunnyMo]

Worth Playing Mirror (http://www.worthdownloading.com/game.php?gid=151)

[Roc Ingersol]

in the wow/logs folder is a patch file with a direct link to Blizzard's .torrent file. You can use your bittorrent client of choice. (and download far, far faster than with blizzard's POS)

[Grimgrock]

Can someone illuminate the issue with dual core? I have a Core 2 Duo in my MBP that sometimes runs WoW. Not that it matters anymore but I'm just curious.

[PathMaster]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors

Manually change your toc #'s(a no-no) or "load out of date addons"!

[Roc Ingersol]

Shadowstep is now in the game...

all the people crying about hunters... prepare for waves of instant death from behind over and over
and then at 66 CoS comes back - for every single rogue, at half the cooldown. /sigh

oh, and did anyone else notice the level 70 hwl leather gloves that add a spell interrupt and 3s school silence to deadly throw?

grats rogues. you get a half-evis dmg + hamstring + imp shield bash finisher with a 30yd range.

[Crenor]

Epic mount training price drop as well :)
About 40% cheaper now

[BlackScarab]

I'm a rogue who likes Mutilate better. Combo generator, here I come.

[Mason]

and then at 66 CoS comes back - for every single rogue, at half the cooldown. /sigh

oh, and did anyone else notice the level 70 hwl leather gloves that add a spell interrupt and 3s school silence to deadly throw?

grats rogues. you get a half-evis dmg + hamstring + imp shield bash finisher with a 30yd range.
I've never been happier to be WoW-free. Blizzard's ability to balance their game keeps edging closer and closer to Mythic-level incompetence.

[digitalErich]

I've never been happier to be WoW-free. Blizzard's ability to balance their game keeps edging closer and closer to Mythic-level incompetence.
Yeah, because you just know people on a forum and who also play the classes getting the nerf always give you a balanced, game-wide perspective:rolleyes:

Oh wait...my pal common sense came over and told me they sometimes don't, go figure.

Edit: Ok, that was a little too snarky, but if you are going to judge game balance based on forum posts, no game in history ever was, or ever will be even close to balanced. It's an MMO, people are going to complain. It's part of the natural order.

[Sloth]

Isn't anyone gonna say it? And you know what I mean.

[Citizen Philip]

I just hit level 59 with my main (after 2 years of on and off playing) so I have about a week to hit 60 before BC hits.

Sigh.

You spent $360 Canadian, assuming $15 a month for 24 months. That's... $6 a level.

Ouch.

[cp#]

I am thinking about trying out the 10 day trial, are there stable/low populated servers

[DeadlyDonkey]

Isn't anyone gonna say it? And you know what I mean.

No, because the patch that made it good was 2.0

[Camel]

I am thinking about trying out the 10 day trial, are there stable/low populated servers
In the last week or so, 6 new PVE servers came out (I don't know the number of PVP servers).

They'll probably be swamped with new players though, especially with the expansion coming out. I plan on making some new characters on servers with medium populations...I figure the only glut of players will be from people reactivating their accounts, and that shouldn't be TOO bad.

Also, the server my main character is on (Sen'jin) used to be TERRIBLE in terms of stability. I don't know if all the issues were fixed or not on other servers, but from everyone I asked it seems the problems are gone.

[Spigot]

You spent $360 Canadian, assuming $15 a month for 24 months. That's... $6 a level.

Ouch.
Well, I pay in 6 month installments, so it's only about $12/month.

That said, yeah. I have a bunch of other characters that I've been working on instead of my main because I was getting sick of grinding in the Plaguelands with my Mage, but for the last 3-4 months I was only logging on about one or two days a month and not playing terribly long. I felt bad, but it's not like I didn't want to play... I just had a lot of other games that had come out over the fall rush that I wanted to work on and WoW kept getting the short shrift.

That said, I really got back into it over Christmas/New Years and am eagerly awaiting some new areas to explore. I've basically soloed my way to 59 and can't wait to have more areas to visit and die in... all alone.

[Lon Lon Rabbit]

This patch has given me a fair few bugs.

I've had 3 random crashes since the patch which I haven't had for years (I'm mod free), and a lot of armor/character models just aren't loading sometimes. It's worse if it's in a high populated area, but I never had the problem before. I was just at the dark portal participating in the opening event and almost everyone is naked to me because gear isn't loading and a few people are invisible, which makes killing them (or staying away from them as a priest) kinda hard.

I'm not gonna complain too much though, nothing game wrecking and teething problems are to be expected as they ease the servers into BC mode. What IS a shame though is that they nerfed felguards, two days after I got mine 8(

And on balance, I think blizzard does an amazing job of balancing the game. Yes, I complain when my talent trees get screwed around to be less effective than how I would like, or when my felguard is nerfed, or when one of my clothies gets completely destroyed by a rogue but really the game as a whole is quite amazing. There is no one terrible class that is useless, and no one amazing class that kills all others. The card game is the same, I've found, they've done a really good job of making all the different heroes play differently without making one godly deck.

The people who yell and scream bloody murder at Blizz for balances issues are just annoyed they can't dominate as much as they used to, but the game as a whole is very well balanced. If all that new rogue stuff ends up as ridiculous as people are worried it will be, I'm sure we can expect a nerf before too long, they sure squashed my precious felguard pretty quick.

[Twigz'N'Berries]

I pay 12 bucks a month too...and I think the game is worth $240 per year to play it. I also have Live and have really started to see a use for it with the Arcade, movies, previews and demos. It is well worth the cost of a meal at McDonalds to have as much free stuff as I get.

BC should be pretty interesting when it rolls out and I fully expect to have to wait a few minutes before I can even get into my realm when I get home from work.

[digitalErich]

Ah FINALLY....ore stacks in units of 20 now. As a person stockpiling mats to hit 300 Jewelcrafting on the first day, this is great.

[Roc Ingersol]

This event is a total pile of shit.

And what I don't understand, is that blizzard already did the Undead Invasion. That was better balanced, better implemented and had few of the big problems that the AQ event had. This is... the worst of both worlds.

It's like they specifically want everyone to come to the Dark Portal, but then get disgusted and leave so the joint doesn't crash.

[roboninja]

This event is a total pile of shit.

And what I don't understand, is that blizzard already did the Undead Invasion. That was better balanced, better implemented and had few of the big problems that the AQ event had. This is... the worst of both worlds.

It's like they specifically want everyone to come to the Dark Portal, but then get disgusted and leave so the joint doesn't crash.
To ease this they should have made portals appear in like 4 different places, and all have to be attended to in order for them to open. Soemthing like that, I don't know, I am mostly a soloer that does not get involved too heavily in the "big events". Looking for that to change come expansion.

[BigJonno]

I'm loving the new patch. The changes to blacksmithing and leatherworking are awesome. Previously, those professions had specialisations (axe, mace, sword and armoursmithing and dragonscale, tribal and elemental leatherworking) which would restrict the high-level recipes that you could learn. Now all of the existing recipes can be used by everyone and the specialisations are only used for some new recipes that can only be used by the crafter. Basically, it gives you a nice armour set/weapon that you can strut around in and everyone will know you're a master craftsman.