WoW 2006 - A Year in Review2009-10-17WoW 2006 - A Year in ReviewBy: David "Xerin" Piner, Bryon "Messiah" Murdry, and Amber "Aurael" Weldon
The year 2006 brought many changes to World of Warcraft. The developers, in an effort to provide more flexibility to the game, released five major patches over the course of the year.
Patch 1.9 was released in the year's first quarter. It joined our auction houses at the major cities and reset our high-level instances. On every server the Horde and Alliance combined resources to combat the threat of the opening Anh Qiraj gates.
Rain fell for the first time in Azeroth in the second quarter of 2006. Gnomish engineers came up with a handy invention called a keyring and the flight masters for both Horde and Alliance taught their animals to carry their passengers extended distances. Dungeon sets became available through questing and level 60 characters were rewarded with gold rather than useless experience.
In quarter three, patch 1.12 brought changes to player vs. player play. Cross-server battlegrounds were introduced, causing shorter wait times for those who prefer to further their faction through the slaughter of an enemy over a field of battle. In addition, world PvP was added, allowing some contested areas to be conquered and controlled by a single faction.
Finally, the fourth quarter of 2006 brought 2.0. The last major patch before the new year and the Burning Crusade expansion brought us new talents, arenas and a new Looking-For-Group interface.
A total of three new instances as well as several talent changes for various classes were also introduced throughout the year.
We at Ten Ton Hammer now present, for your reading pleasure, an overview of the advances in World of Warcraft from the year 2006.Patch 1.9
Patch 1.9 was probably one of the biggest patches of the year for most raid players. It opened up two new raid instances for players, the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj and the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. The ruins were a 20 man raid that is on par with Zul'Gurrub in difficulty and filled a hole for smaller guild raids, while the Temple was a new harder 40 man raid that gave high end guilds something to aim for.
Both of these raids offered up new challenges for different players. At the same time it had offered the chance to work as a server to open the gates in the first place. It was one of the only times Horde and Alliance worked together to achieve objectives, even on PvP servers. Players crowded servers that were first to open the gates and fought to get on when they thought the gates would open to catch the sequence and to be there.
The other huge change to players was the linked auction houses, which people had been screaming for since the game was released. No longer would you be forced to bind just to Orgrimmar or Ironforge just so you could buy or sell items. You were now free to go to any of the capital cities to sell your wares or purchase your new loot. This was a critical update in allowing players more freedom in their movement around the continents, it also allowed more to go on in the other cities which had become almost ghost towns.
Lastly the Paladin talent update was huge to all Paladin players since it brought in some extra controllability and removed some of the tedium. It was however not enough for most Paladin players (myself included) and Paladins continued to be retire...
