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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

World of Warcraft: Patch 5.2 Rise of the Thunder King

Good Morning and Welcome to Patch Day!  Servers are currently down for maintenance and are expected to be up around 9 AM PST.  It wouldn’t be unheard of for maintenance to be extended however, so while waiting remember to update your add-ons and read the highlights of Patch 5.2 here:

  • A new raid is being released, Throne of Thunder
    • LFR gear is ilevel 502 and ilevel 522 on Normal
    • Heroic gear is ilevel 535
    • Thunderforged items are included
      • these items are six levels above regular level for the raid tier
      • low drop rate for these items
    • LFR bags have been fixed, and should no longer be known as Fail bags
    • LFR requires a ilevel 480 to queue
    • Raid schedule can be found here
  • Two new world bosses
  • Isle of Giants is now open for business
    • new quests allowing players to discover new mounts and vanity pets
  • PvP Season 13 begins
    • 4 tiers of PvP gear
    • Crafters can learn new recipes via daily transmutes for ilevel 458 PvP armor sets
  • Isle of Thunder
    • Gated daily questing content, much like the Isle of Quel’Danas during the Burning Crusade expansion
      • Kirin Tor Offensive and Sunreaver Onslaught are the main factions: both battle one another and the Zandalari
      • Activities on the island are server wide efforts, so pacing on individual servers will be determined based on the server population and balance
    • Island unlocks in stages
    • The War Effort is being extended to the new island, the Isle of Thunder
    • Single player scenario coming, Troves of the Thunder King, if a player has the appropriate key to unlock the scenario
    • Portals to the Isle are located in Townlong Steppes near the Shado-Pan Garrison
  • New Factions:
    • Shado-Pan Assault
      • has the best gear of the three factions
      • ilevel 522 Epic gear for valor points
    • Kirin Tor Offensive and Sunreaver Onslaught
  • Changes are coming for Pet Battles
    • Elite Battle Pets are located on Pandaria and are indicated with a yellow paw on your map
  • Legendary chain continues, with the reward being a metagem
  • There are class specific changes comings, but here are a couple of highlights:
    • Hunters have the opportunity to tame three new spirit beasts and a new family: Direhorns
      • Check out the new models over at Petopia
    • Warlocks will finally have the opportunity to quest for green fire
  • Reputation changes coming:
    • Sunsong Ranch will now have Work Order quests allowing reputation boosts for two factions per day
    • Random instances and scenarios will offer a bonus reputation line allowing additional reputation to be earned for the first instance and scenario of the day
  • Transmogrification has some changes coming
    • Highlight is that many weapons that were once main-hand restricted are now available as one-handed weapons
  • Profession changes:
    • Archaeology: Mantid race is now included
    • Blacksmithing: if you have the Ghost Iron ingots, it is now possible to level from 1-525 solely utilizing Ghost Iron
      • New weapon are also available, resembling weapons from the Burning Crusade
      • New recipes are also learned from discovery by making Lighting Steel Ingots
        • ilevel 458 PvP gear and ilevel 522 epics
        • However, in order to learn these items your SERVER must first unlock the Thunder Forges on the Isle of the Thunder King
    • Tailors and Leatherworkers will also be able to craft ilevel 458 PvP gear and ilevel 522 epic gear via recipes learned via discovery
      • Tailors have a chance when crating Imperial Silk
      • Leatherworks have a chance once they have obtained one of two new world drop patterns (patterns are green so the drop rate shouldn’t be abysmally low)

Blizzard sent the development team out on a blitz of media events and interviews for this patch.  For a full listing, head here and pick the one that interests you the most.

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