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PC | RPG | World of Warcraft

Boxart for World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft 150 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.5
  • SOUND: 4.5
  • CONTROL: 4.5
  • FUN FACTOR 4.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.3
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.7
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Feature: This Persistent Life: Is this Blizzard's Redemption?

Feature by Miguel Lopez | 09/28/2007 | 17:07:20 PM PST

After a shaky update Blizzard gets generous with info pertaining to WoW's next big content update.

To put it lightly, Patch 2.2 was a bit of a mangled mess. It took way too long to hit live servers, and the in-game voice chat feature that is its primary focus isn't even working correctly yet. Compounding matters is the fact that many players with Soundblaster Audigy sound cards are experiencing issues that make the game more-or-less unplayable. This should make it evident to Blizzard that lumping together system updates with all-new resource-intensive features is the wrong way to go about it, but I'll stop beating that dead horse.

The company recently began releasing tidbits of information on the next major content patch, version 2.3 to seemingly mitigate some of this damage. As I discussed before in this column, many people's hopes for the future of the game are riding on how 2.3 shakes down. Among other things, Blizzard is promising lots of class changes with implications on both PvP and PvE. In this installment of the column, I'll focus on the PvP-related changes that have been announced. Here's my list of the most monumental changes coming, and frankly, stuff sounds pretty exciting.

1) Disarms will matter

In WoW's current iteration, disarming effects are a non-factor for savvy melee PvPers. Warriors have a talent in the Arms tree that completely nullifies them, while rogues simply strap a crafted weapon chain on their off-hands in lieu of an enchant. In 2.3 instead of making players immune to the effect, all of these countermeasures against disarmament will instead lessen its duration. Rogues and warriors will definitely take note, as this will add yet another level of depth to the melee game, and will invariably make PvP fights last a bit longer.

2) Fear Ward for all

Since WoW's inception, the Alliance has had a monopoly on one of the best priest spells in the game: Fear Ward- a temporary buff that makes its target immune to fear effects for its duration. This made dwarf priests (and draenei, post-TBC) highly sought after commodities for both end-game raiding, and high-end arena PvP. Well, come 2.3, all priests will be getting this coveted ability, albeit in a greatly toned-down form: its duration has been reduced to three minutes (down from ten), and its cool down upped substantially to three minutes (up from 30 seconds). Naturally, lots of people are crying foul on both sides of the fence. What will dwarves and dranei priests get in place of their soon-to-be homogenized racial? An ability called "chastise," which will incapacitate a target for two seconds, and deal some holy damage. Think paladin's repentance.


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