Following the world wide Halloween event which involved a zombie outbreak that was seen as hailing the arrival of the feared Lich King, Blizzard announced having released a new patch for World of Warcraft, bringing the MMO to version 3.03. There are significant changes in the new update and, obviously, a lot of under the hood modifications meant to prepare the arrival of the second expansion of the game, Wrath of the Lich King.

One of the biggest changes is Paladin related. Following the introduction of the new skill trees in the previous 3.02 patch, those players who emphasized the Retribution tree were pretty much dominating Player versus Players encounters so Blizzard nerfed them. The Paladins will still be able to hit heavy but their Retribution abilities are now less powerful.

Druids are also getting skill points refund because some of their high level skills have been changed. Warriors are getting tougher. There are also numerous tweaks and changes detailed in the patch notes.

Blizzard also said that the achievement “A Mask For All Occasions” is now no longer necessary in order to get the meta achievement “Hallowed Be Thy Name” which adds the “Hallowed” attribute before the name of the player.

Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to World of Warcraft, is set to arrive in about a week. Blizzard is really aiming to attract other players and to deliver fresh content to old hands by offering a whole new continent for exploration and by introducing a class, the Death Knight, the first since the release of the popular MMO. At the moment, World of Warcraft has over 11 million players and there's no other subscription based MMO close to this number.