14 DAY TRIAL // The last patch for World of Warcraft 3.02 before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King is finally out and the game servers are now stable and active following the patching process. The official name for the patch is Echoes of Doom and there are some pretty interesting and significant changes.
There are new skill sets available in the patch, professions and more raid buffs and an area, called Stormwind Harbor. The in game events calendar has been tweaked to work better and there are some changes to the mount system. Be sure to read the whole patch notes as you download because World of Warcraft regularly tweaks aspects of the game in order to create a more balanced gameplay experience.
There are different patches for the basic World of Warcraft and for the Burning Crusade expansion. Be sure that you download the patch version appropriate for the game version that you are running. Installation of both versions requires players to copy a folder into the game directory only to run the updater as you regularly would.
The Wrath of the Lich King expansion will arrive on November 13. The main elements that it brings are a new continent, more raid instances and a fresh character class, the Death Knight. There will also be a lot of small changes, improvements and tweaks. Full listings are available on the main World of Warcraft site and there are also numerous dedicated fan sites which try to decipher what the changes will mean for long time players.
At the moment, the Blizzard published MMO is facing a significant challenge from Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, which is developed by Mythic and published by Electronic Arts, having reached 750,000 subscribers about a month since launch.