14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard continues offering more details about its upcoming patch 5.0.4 for World of Warcraft, this time sharing with the game's millions of players some of the gameplay changes that are included in the new update.
World of Warcraft patch 5.0.4 gets the game ready for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion by overhauling many crucial systems – like the Talent Tree – while making plenty of smaller changes to things like the different classes included in the online title.
Now, Blizzard has decided to highlight some of the more impressive changes that are brought forth by the new patch, including ones that make playing the game easier and more intuitive, like AoE looting, as well as ones that make interacting with friends a bit simpler, like the adoption of the BattleTag system from Diablo 3.
Check out these array of changes below.
- All Cooking awards have been combined into a single currency: Epicureans Awards. This not only cleans up your currency list a bit, but means that doing the daily quests in Stormwind can help you buy the Chef’s Hat in Dalaran. - AoE looting! Round up a ton of enemies, nuke ‘em, and then pick up all of their loot with a single right click – bag space permitting. - The Daily Quest cap is removed. While this will truly shine in Mists of Pandaria with far more robust daily quests, you can certainly take advantage of it before then. - Account-wide mounts, pets, and achievements! It’s finally here, and you’ll be able to enjoy just about every mount and pet you own on any character, and any license, under a single Battle.net account. You can also work on a wide variety of Achievements from multiple characters. Please be aware of the rules and guidelines we’ve just posted for how you can coalesce your account-wide pets and mounts smoothly and safely. - A new help system has been added to many of the UI elements and menus. You can toggle hints on and off by clicking the "i" button in the upper left corner of windows that have it. - New spells are now learned automatically when you level up. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature. - Mana pools are capped. Not necessarily a quality of life improvement, but this change will impact all mana-using classes and the stats they want. Intellect will still make skills more powerful, and Spirit will still regenerate mana faster. The amounts you choose for each is a bit more compelling now. - New buff and debuff design. This builds off the class section above, but the basic premise is that there is now a specific list of available buffs and debuffs, and each are castable by a few classes or specs. When stepping into a raid you know you should have 8 buffs, and if you don’t, there’s probably at least one person that can cast it. - BattleTag support. If you’ve played Diablo III you’re already well acquainted with BattleTags (and you have one!). If not, you should make one now. A BattleTag is your permanent account-wide nickname on Battle.net, so choose it wisely. BattleTags can do anything RealID can, but anonymously. RealID should be kept for your real-life friends and family, and BattleTag can be used for acquaintances or others you don’t want to reveal you real name to. - Unified PvE queue. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place, all at once, and just see what pops up first. - Cross-Realm Zones. We’ll be rolling this feature out beginning with a few realms at the launch of 5.0.4, and increasing until all realms are included for the release of Mists of Pandaria. If you’re looking to level a new character up before Mists of Pandaria, this feature will have a noticeable impact on the world around you. - There’s also a new roll frame that pulls all the loot rolls out of the chat window and into its own spot. World of Warcraft patch 5.0.4 will be released tomorrow, August 28.