World of Warcraft: Analysis of Patch 5.0.4

World of Warcraft received an update last week when Blizzard released Patch 5.0.4 this past Tuesday, August 28^th. This patch implements almost all of the new features coming with the Mists of Pandaria expansion, with the obvious exceptions of the new race, class, and the new 85+ content that will come with actual expansion on September 26^th. The first changes that most players will notice upon logging in are the many class and talent system changes. Abilities have been streamlined and moved around with the effect of reducing the amount of skills on active action bars at any one time. Talents have also been changed to a six-tier system with a choice between three skills at each tier, each of which becomes available every 15 levels. Glyphs have also seen major changes, as prime glyphs have had their functionality absorbed into the appropriate specialization or removed altogether. The remaining major and minor glyphs tend to have more tweaks to help specific playstyles or aesthetic and cosmetic changes, respectively.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure to read our Mists of Pandaria Launch Guide for some great information for when the latest expansion releases.

Mounts, pets, and achievements have also become account-wide. Some special class mounts such as the paladin and death knight chargers remain class-specific for the sake of lore and class-uniqueness, but otherwise all mounts are useable by all characters on the same account. Pets and most achievements are also account-wide, along with new meta account achievements such as leveling each class to max level.

Cross-realm zones are also live now. Essentially, this feature attempts to fix the problem of underpopulated zones and realms by allowing players from different servers to play in the same zone. The servers getting crossed are determined by Blizzard and are based solely on population, so you can’t necessarily go invite your friend on Mal’Ganis to quest with you on Spirestone.

The patch brings the data and update necessary to activate the Theramore’s Fall scenario, but it will not be activated until shortly before the launch of Mists of Pandaria next month. If it works similarly to the events to retake the Echo Isles and Gnomeregan, Blizzard literally just needs to push a button to activate the event in-game.

Area of Effect (AoE) looting is now live as well, meaning that your characters only have to select one enemy corpse to collect all the loot from nearby corpses, rather than having to go one-by-one. While this may seem a minor convenience, players that practice AoE leveling will find this feature a long time coming and a major time-saver

Blizzard also brought support for the BattleTag system from Diablo III over to World of Warcraft, allowing you to use a user-created name instead of your real name when using Real ID features.

These new features should give players plenty of content to keep them busy until the launch of Mists of Pandaria itself in less than a month. Anyone planning on playing Mists of Pandaria is recommended to try out the new class changes soon as they are quite extensive and learning them now is better than spending the first day or so of Mists of Pandaria running around on their warlock trying to figure out how burning embers and demonic fury work.