World of Warcraft Patch to revamp old dungeons

Blizzard's first major content patch for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is set to update some older areas for public testing. The developer blog...

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Blizzard's first major content patch for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is set to update some older areas for public testing. The developer blog outlines some of the changes we can expect in the 4.1 patch.

Both Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman will become a level-85 five-player Heroic difficulty dungeons, featuring level 353 loot along with new encounters and achievements. Zul'Aman is said to be "more of a throwback to the original dungeon," but with some new gameplay tweaks. The dungeons will also introduce new versions of the rare raptor, tiger, and bear mounts. The old mounts will still be available for players who obtained them originally.

The update will also make some tweaks to class balance. Inner Rage will move to level 56, replaced by Rallying Cry at 83. Colossus Smash only ignores 70 per cent of an opponent's armor, but Fury and Arms warriors will get boosts in other attacks. Finally, Word of Glory will be tweaked to encourage paladins to use more Holy Power on damage-dealing abilities.

The full (and sizable) patch list can be found on the blog, so go check it out if you want all the details.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    February 24, 2011 3:15 PM

    Comment on World of Warcraft Patch to revamp old dungeons, by Steve Watts.

    • reply
      February 24, 2011 3:20 PM

      I don't play WoW anymore, but my still serious friends are pretty excited about this.

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      February 24, 2011 3:21 PM

      [Votekick Shacknews for spamming]

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        February 24, 2011 4:32 PM

        The Shacknews Chatty account is above your democratic ways.

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          February 24, 2011 4:41 PM

          It should take some ques from the Afghani king to avoid being overthrown!

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          February 25, 2011 8:47 AM

          If it hits the post rate limiter will the site implode on itself?

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      February 24, 2011 3:26 PM

      I really want them to do this to BWL.

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        February 24, 2011 3:51 PM

        I agree, BWL was a really fun instance. I don't play WoW any more, but it still makes me sad to know that lots of people are missing out on BWL

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        February 24, 2011 4:42 PM

        That's what BWD is. And it's great.

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          February 24, 2011 6:12 PM

          Yeah BWD is pretty cool, but i'd still like to see more 5-man heroics in that style. Blackrock Caverns is pretty cool too, but I want MORE!!! Sorry I just really love Blackrock instances.

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      February 24, 2011 3:26 PM

      lol so they finally gave the casuals their free epics from 5 mans, hahaha, glad I quit when I did.

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        February 24, 2011 3:52 PM

        That was northrend. I'm working my sac off in cata normals now, then cata heroics, all for blues. Also, heroic badge hear is blue.

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          February 24, 2011 3:58 PM

          I quit like 2 weeks ago after my guild started doing Heroic 25m Raids and I was just fed up.

          I'm familiar with Cata =\

          By the time i quit I had 3 85's 1 in full raid gear, 1 in like 50% raid gear, the other in just heroic stuff with like 2 epics. I also had all my prof's maxed including 2 lvl 80 alts that pretty much were just profession toons.

          I was raiding on my main and doing 10m on one of my alts.

          Trust me, it was time to quit, but it was also relatively easy to get epics but not 5 man easy. Baddies complained and now ... 5 man epics.

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            February 24, 2011 4:03 PM

            [deleted]

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            February 24, 2011 4:06 PM

            By the time the next expansion comes out I may have ONE character that is somewhere near half decked in epics. I'm 100% cool with them making that shit easier.

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              February 24, 2011 4:19 PM

              As you should be. I mean, I have no issue with anyone taking advantage of it since it's there.

              The only issue I took was with people saying it was "too hard" before. It wasn't. Just crafting / reputation you could easily get 50% epic'd out. That isn't including boe stuff, darkmoon cards, boe Valor Boots, or even using Valor points from daily heroics.

              I dunno. I tend to just immediately go full on asshole when the topic comes up because I truly find it depressing that people think anything in the game is "too" hard, especially the 5 man stuff. There are fault for sure. I think the 10m / 25m change was a terrible idea and has made it harder for many players to transition from 5m's in to raids. I think the lack of a "starter" raid was an enormous oversite. This expansion needs a Naxx or a Kara.

              But at the end of the day reading stuff here and elsewhere combined with my experience in game ... it's just that players immediately jump towards accusing the game of having issues (too hard, too much of a time sinc, etc etc) without ever taking a step back and looking at their own ability.

              I played with some guys like that. They were constantly talking about how bad their random groups were, how they had to keep kicking people, how they were tired of wiping, and all the same things I tend to hear on the shack as well. Well, here's the thing, it wasn't their groups. It was them.

              When I would que for randoms (on any of my toons, for any role) solo I would very very rarely have any issues. I'd explain stuff that needed explaining, let people know when they messed up, and for the most part just quickly and easily cleared everything. Yet, when I'd run with those two guys ... wipe central. Yah, it was them. Not random groups, not dugeon difficulty, not gear, but their own inability to play the game well.

              I think that far too often this is the case and players who don't even realize that they have a lot of room for improvement in their own play default to blaming blizzard and other players while never thinking that the problem could be themselves.

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                February 24, 2011 4:25 PM

                I think probably it was good you quit. The solution to your issues, in my mind, is to lighten up. You'll never get anywhere, save for scoring a few points with the cheeto-dusted 23hour a day wow players, for calling out other players as lacking skill.

                Also, it's a game. Sounds like you took it pretty serious.

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                  February 24, 2011 4:29 PM

                  For the record, I would never call people out per-se. I would simply let them know "Hey man, you see that pokeball looking thing on the ground? Yah, if you run away from that, you generally won't get hit by the fire, and you will live longer!"

                  Also it was certainly time for me to quit, no arguments there. It's not so much that I take everything 'seriously' as it is that I don't do anything 'just for fun'. There is always an objective, and it is either to win, do the best I can, simply get better than I was yesterday, and usually some combination of the above.

                  No matter what game I'm playing (and I don't play many) or what I'm doing that isn't at all related to games that is how I approach things. There are pro's and con's just like everything else.

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                February 24, 2011 5:57 PM

                Nothing in WoW is hard, but it is time consuming. Most people don't have as much time as you seem to have to sink into decking out their character. I'm all for making mmo's less time consuming.

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                  February 24, 2011 9:08 PM

                  It doesn't take near as much time as most people think when you're efficient about it.

                  However that does take planning ahead and ditching the whole "play for fun" aspect, and I understand that many people aren't willing to do that.

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            February 24, 2011 4:11 PM

            How dare Blizzard implement something that infringes on your greatness.

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              February 24, 2011 4:13 PM

              Agreeing with you hurts.

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                February 24, 2011 4:16 PM

                I'd put money on an ICC-style buff for all current raid zones, too.

                359 epics being purchasable through regular old justice points. General nerfs to the current raid tier. Epics in 5-mans.

                He must be stewing in his own feces over this.

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            February 25, 2011 7:15 AM

            If you're so familiar with cata, then you'd know this is not nearly the first time 5man dungeons have given out epics.

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        February 24, 2011 3:55 PM

        If they are on par or harder than the current difficulty of heroic 5 mans, they are hardly free, especially for casuals.

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          February 24, 2011 4:02 PM

          lolol, dude, the current 5-man heroics are such a complete joke I honestly don't even understand how anyone who feels they are even remotely difficult doesn't realize that they, as players, are just bad at the game.

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            February 24, 2011 4:08 PM

            InfoBiter, should we all bow to your wowness?

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            February 24, 2011 4:11 PM

            [deleted]

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            February 24, 2011 6:14 PM

            With raid purples and a group you set up from your 25 man guild sure. I do that and I shit on heroics.

            I'm defining casuals as people who don't raid as a guild (they might pug one occasionally) and are using the dungeon queue tool to get a group. If you think that people in this situation are just roflrolling heroic 5 mans I don't know what to tell you.

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            February 24, 2011 6:16 PM

            lolololROFL. Overgearing content makes them easy. News at 11.

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            February 24, 2011 9:27 PM

            [deleted]

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            February 24, 2011 9:30 PM

            I heard doing dungeons for ilvl 353 gear while wearing ilvl 379 gear is a good use of time.

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            February 25, 2011 7:11 AM

            What is wrong with you? Of course they get easy once you get your uber epox loot from raids. Don't even try to tell me you breezed through your first heroic.

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            February 25, 2011 7:30 AM

            I could argue, but no.

            Ill just leave it at I hate you.

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            February 25, 2011 7:43 AM

            sup Douchey McDouche!

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            February 25, 2011 7:53 AM

            man I bet your penis is HUGE

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            February 25, 2011 8:43 AM

            I didn't know you were one of Those Guys. Disappointing.

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              February 25, 2011 12:41 PM

              I'm really not =\

              Isn't the 24h period on this thread up already? Everytime I sit down it gets bumped to the FP

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            February 25, 2011 12:28 PM

            [deleted]

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            February 25, 2011 12:46 PM

            They were tough zoning in the first couple times and learning how things worked. You couldn't just AOE entire packs down without fresh-geared tanks being gibbed in 2 globals.

            Now, it's fairly easy for sure, but not nearly the level of easy-ness that the WOTLK heroic dungeons were. Even if you're a god at WoW and can do no wrong, there's no denying that the new instances are harder than the old ones were.

            And I prefer it that way; I like having to put just a tiny little bit of thought into what I'm doing as opposed to just mashing howling blast and cleave.

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              February 25, 2011 12:49 PM

              IIRC, he's one of those guys who only started doing heroics after everyone had already out geared them, then started laughing at everyone who said they were ever hard.

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                February 25, 2011 12:51 PM

                You are very wrong sir. I just never tried to AoE stuff in random groups and actually learned mechanics and explained them instead of just facepulling shit until we wiped.

                Sure, I got to a point where I outgeared the stuff on all my toons and could just carry groups, but that was later.

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              February 25, 2011 12:50 PM

              Agreed on all counts; but with minimal CC and single targeting things down they're still really really easy even without gear.

              The only times things are even remotely difficult is if a healer is bad at managing mana (or dps takes too much dmg, or some combination of the two) but for the most part that fixed itself pretty quickly as healers got used to the new style of healing (it took me 2 runs or so to really get the hang of the new healing style on my shaman at 85).

              Sure, with gear you can start just AoE'ing your way through, but even with no gear at all nothing is truly difficult with a little CC.

              I just find it frustrating that everyone thinks things are hard when 99% of the time it's people playing poorly.

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          February 24, 2011 4:03 PM

          Looks like they will be harder. Item level requirement for current heroics is 329, and these have a requirement of 346.

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        February 24, 2011 9:29 PM

        Heh. I don't mind at all being a casual these days. I wonder when the game will finally become so easy that people will leave for good...

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        February 25, 2011 5:42 AM

        Blue level 353 items. Even as a quite casual player I really disagree with this step. It leads to overgearing resulting in lack of attention during encounters and to laziness in outfitting your characters.

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      February 24, 2011 3:35 PM

      What a strangely written story. The third paragraph is basically Steve grabbing three random items from the huge patch notes and calling them out specifically, even though they're no more notable than most of the others. It reads as if those are the only changes to class balance.

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        February 24, 2011 3:48 PM

        those 3 are specifically called out by blizzard in the full notes so he probably just grabbed that since it stood out.

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        February 24, 2011 3:49 PM

        it's basically a direct paraphrase of the battle.net article

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        February 24, 2011 3:49 PM

        Those are also the three class changes that are mentioned in the blog post above the actual change list, which is probably why it's worded like that.

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      February 24, 2011 4:46 PM

      Losing defensive dispel for shadow priests is a pretty large pvp nerf. Warrior changes look somewhat poorly thought out but should make arms pvp-capable again. Still not sure if/when I'll pick up cataclysm, but overall the devs seem to be making sensible changes. I was expecting some elemental shaman pvp improvements but overall looks like a nice patch.

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      February 24, 2011 9:25 PM

      Give me the option to do dungeons and raids with AI controlled members of the party versus waiting for a bunch of fuckers to get me killed, and I might be interested.

      Yes, I know this goes against the whole MMO aspect, but the worst part of this game is the other people and they have to know that. They've created one of the worst communities in the history of gaming, it's not too much to ask to want to opt out.

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        February 24, 2011 9:39 PM

        WoW community isn't that bad unless you're referring to their forums. Worst community in a landslide is HoN IMO

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          February 25, 2011 7:19 AM

          Trade chat and endless queue times drove me right out of the game. It's just me being a dick, but after putting 140 DAYS into a character, I didn't feel I should have to sit around for 40 minutes before I even get the opportunity to spend an hour (or 2-3 if it's a raid) to progress.

          I'm hoping for an MMO with an alternative progression at endgame for people like me someday.

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      February 24, 2011 9:46 PM

      As someone who just joined a 25man raid guild (havent raided since BC) this news is near useless to me. Give the baddies their epics I have more fun working in raids for it.

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        February 24, 2011 9:58 PM

        All about the items for you, eh? That sounds healthy.

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          February 24, 2011 10:03 PM

          Not about the items as much as about having fun in an instance. I ran dungeon finder heroics from christmas to two weeks ago, was bored of the game. got an alt to level 31. then decided to step it up a notch, because I used to raid and had fun with it. Downed two bosses in BT so far and having a blast.

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        February 25, 2011 7:12 AM

        Some of those trinkets are pretty sweet, I'd love one or two for more situational healing flexibility. Plus those were two great instances.

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          February 25, 2011 7:52 AM

          Those trinkets are awesome, they are also ilvl391 and not going to drop from the new 5man dungeons with ilvl353 epics

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        February 25, 2011 7:32 AM

        they may not have had you in mind when they sorted this out

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          February 25, 2011 7:50 AM

          Youre exactly right, its for casual players specifically so they can get epics to satisfy their item lust.

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            February 25, 2011 8:10 AM

            and get new content, new challenges, etc

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              February 25, 2011 8:34 AM

              That is yet to be seen, I've run both ZG and ZA many a time.

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                February 25, 2011 12:32 PM

                again, not talking about you

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                  February 25, 2011 12:45 PM

                  well im not the only person who's run ZG and ZA before. we will see how fresh the content is when its released.

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                    February 25, 2011 12:50 PM

                    but there are a lot of people who haven't run them

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                      February 25, 2011 1:11 PM

                      lol Dravenport I think we are talking circles now my man, they did not have me in mind when they sorted this out. I agree with you. For new players the content will be great because they were great raids.

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                      February 25, 2011 1:20 PM

                      I think the confusion is stemming from equating "casual player" as someone who hasn't raided ZG/ZA. There are plenty of old-school casual players who have seen that content.

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        February 25, 2011 8:16 AM

        [deleted]

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          February 25, 2011 8:36 AM

          Grats man, you lucky sob. Would you say it was more fun doing those bosses than running a heroic?

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            February 25, 2011 8:47 AM

            [deleted]

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              February 25, 2011 8:55 AM

              Yea dps'ing Halfus was ridiculously easy, Valiona and Theralion we wiped about 7-8 times as people got used to their roles and we subbed out some incompetent players, but our last attempt we had no deaths and the 2nd to last attempts we got him to 30k hp before our tank dc'd. Very satisfying kill.

              The heroics were fun at first for me as well, but after doing random heroics daily for 30 days to get VP gear I burnt out on them completely.

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                February 25, 2011 12:35 PM

                lol @ only 30 days for vp gear.

                I'm over 60. :(

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                  February 25, 2011 12:44 PM

                  oh god i feel your pain dude. i guess i did a bit more than 30 days though, already back up to 700something after buying the t11 robes for 2200

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                    February 25, 2011 12:48 PM

                    I've bought the t11 legs, boe boots, trinket, relic, and cloak.

                    Not all of that is just from the vp daily, but I haven't missed one since I started running heroics. :/

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          February 25, 2011 12:48 PM

          I had some luck like that with my shaman. Another guild's alts-group had space for one late on Monday night before raid resets Tuesday morning, and since it didn't really matter wtf happened, they brought me in to fill for a DPS. Not only did I top the charts, but I was the only one who could make use of a Maimgor's Bite epic trash drop.

          Sure they could've sold it on the AH for about 25-30k, instead I got to have it and it was totally tits.

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        February 25, 2011 12:50 PM

        As someone about to hit 84 and hasn't raided since 3.0.1 I Love the Idea of ZA coming back, It's my favorite Raid zone, it will be fun to gear up for Cata raiding by doing an old favorite.

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      February 25, 2011 8:23 AM

      Loiosh would like CoT: War of the Ancients Plz.
      More dragons is better.

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      February 25, 2011 12:42 PM

      there's a lot of content out there that's just sitting there not being put to use, why not. I think they're doing a pretty good job of making use of the entire world... they should put a new dungeon or revamp in outland to get more traffic out there.

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