WoW Gets a 5-Year Celebration Patch

To celebrate the 5-year anniversary of World of Warcraft, Blizzard has released a new patch for the game. The upgrade from version 3.2.0a to 3.2.2 will bring some additional changes besides the usual bug fixes, class nerfing and paladin overpowering. Onixya returns to the spotlight as part of a level 80 raid, taking veteran players back to the original grand challenge of the game.

The instance will be in a 10 and 25 players raid format and will use some of the old loot, uprated in stats to match level 80 items. The original tactics of the raid won't have to change much, as the behavior of the Brood Mother remains unchanged, just scaled. Part of the loot drop will also be a very rare 310% speed mount that uses Onyxia herself as a sprite model.

Other general gameplay changes include reduction in armor penetration percentage and slight modifications in Shadowfang Keep and Ulduar. The inscription profession receives a new recipe that uses the effect of standard raid-buff of Power Word: Fortitude while leatherworking gets recipes for Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings. Drums of the Wild grants the effect of the untalented Mark of the Wild to the entire raid and is exclusive to the druid spell already applied to players. The same for the Drums of Forgotten Kings, which increases all stats by 8% for all players in the raid. This effect is exclusive with the Blessing of Kings spell.

Still on top of any multiplayer online game, WoW continues to dominate the competition. But 11 million subscribers gathered and ensnared along the 5-year existence hunger for more. The addition of the level 80 Onyxia raid can easily be seen by some as a great way to walk past raids and relish in the nostalgia of the classic World of Warcraft release but most of the players see it as something else. Blaming Blizzard for a lack of imagination, WoW fans seem unimpressed by this addition and the new content might end up celebrating 5 years of World of Warcraft with close friends and family.