World of Warcraft 1.12 was released on Tuesday, but we’re only now reporting on it because Blizzard Entertainment’s servers have been almost totally overloaded since the release. In case you play only infrequently, World of Warcraft has been updated to version 1.12, a content patch called “Drums of War.”
World of Warcraft is Blizzard’s popular massively multiplayer online role playing game for Mac OS X and Windows. The game puts you in the role of heroes of individual races, or species, that populate the war-torn world of Azeroth, a fantasy land populated by beings mundane and mystical. You create a persona with an individual look, character class and special abilities, then go on quests and adventures, either by yourself or — as an online RPG, with other players in tow.
“Drums of War” is a mandatory patch for all World of Warcraft players that’s updated automatically when you connect to the World of Warcraft servers. As a “content patch,” Drums of War adds new features and capabilities to the game.
For the first time, you can face off against players from other realms in the Battlegrounds. PvP (Player versus Player) battlegrounds link Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin so players from different realms are combined into one huge matchmaking pool.
What’s more, “World PvP” pits Alliance and Horde characters for control over important strategic positions and resources around Azeroth. A number of general gameplay enhancements have been made, and character classes have been rebalanced. Bugs have been fixed; raids and dungeons have been tweaked; and the user interface includes new capabilities. All of the changes are documented in patch notes online.
Of particular note to Mac users — the game can now control iTunes directly. You can bind a set of keys to control play/pause, next track, back track and volume up and down functions.