pre-expansion-patch
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World of Warcraft moves toward Warlords of Draenor with Patch 6.0.2
You won't need to wait until next month to start experiencing Warlords of Draenor, as the expansion's preparation patch released today with several new features. Patch 6.0.2: The Iron Tide will destroy World of Warcraft's famous Dark Portal landmark, prune away some class abilities, enact the talked-about "stat squish," update most of the racial models with better visuals, put in a toybox, include a special revised version of the Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon, and add prologue quests in the Blasted Lands against the Iron Horde. With the patch also comes a change in the game's retail package. The Mists of Pandaria expansion is now bundled with with the rest of World of Warcraft and is on sale for $20. You can get an overview of Patch 6.0.2 in the video after the jump.
Breakfast Topic: When do you expect patch 5.0.4?
We know that Mists of Pandaria is coming out Sept. 25, because they told us that's when it's coming out. But when's the pre-expansion patch? We know it won't be as early as patch 4.0.1 was, because that came out on Oct. 12, almost two months before Cataclysm on Dec. 7, 2010. (It would have had to come out this week to have a chance of being that early.) But patch 3.0.2 came out on Oct. 14, 2008, and Wrath of the Lich King released the next month on Nov. 13, 2008. And Patch 2.0.1 launched on Dec. 5, 2006, which was a little over a month before The Burning Crusade launched. This leads me to speculate that the pre-expansion patch will go live the week after Gamescom, so the week of Aug. 19. That Tuesday will be the 21st, which fits in with the general one-month-before-expansion launch window of BC and Wrath. It also makes sense because it gives them time to debut the cinematic at Gamescom and then patch it to use the following week. Of course, I'm just speculating, and am keen to hear your thoughts. Whenever we get the patch, it'll be a pretty big game changer as new talents and abilities, a fourth druid spec, and new stat caps as well as several changes to how established talents and abilities work (and some being gone entirely) and active mitigation tanking. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
