So, you’re a new player, and you’re level 22, and you’ve started listening to some podcasts (hopefully ours, regularly, and you’ve written an iTunes review). Anyway, you’ve been hearing the buzz about patch 3.1. Blizzard often releases game patches for WoW, and have done so since the first iteration came out in 2004. Patches in general are not new to gaming. Console gamers see them frequently for popular games, but few patches get as much attention as the WoW patches do. Is it overkill?
Now, the Patches have varied in importance over the years. 3.0.8 and 3.0.9 were minor patches. However, this one is a major patch and, as such, contains exciting new features such as the Dual Spec ability (which will be available to players @ level 40 with 1000 gold), battleground queuing on the fly and lots of character balance tweaks. Oh, and the Ulduar Instance.
The real question here is, should you a new player get excited? Well, if this is your first patch, yeah you should. It’s got a lot of ‘fixes’ that will make gameplay better. I think the addition of battleground queuing is going to be a big hurdle removed for players who don’t want to PvP, because it can sometimes be a pain to travel to the major cities just to jump into a 15-minute battleground. Also, Dual Spec will be nice to allow players to explore their characters more fully and robustly from levlel 40 on (if you can afford the 1000 gold). Dual Spec will also hopefully allow for more hybrid classes (Paladins, Druids and Shamans), and by default allow for more healers to be in the game. This will solve the ‘healer’ shortage a bit, and make PUGing a little easier for those not affiliated with a Guild. If you’re not a high level toon yet, then don’t worry about Ulduar, it’ll be there when you get there.
Patches will come and go. Some will be huge and some will be small. My advice to new players is to go read the Patch Notes especially for your class to see if anything will affect you right away.