The 5.3 patch is going live May 21st (May 22nd for EU) and and like every major patch it brings a bunch of new things. It's always better to be prepare for what will come and if you missed our reviews we are here to remind you of each and every one of them.

Based on the 5.3 Patch Notes and our PTR tests, here are some highlights of the upcoming patch:

• New world event: Battlefield Barrens. You'll have to help Vol'jin with the Darkspear Rebelion and assist the Orgrimmar Siege.
• New Scenarios and Heroic Scenarios. Four new scenarios (Dark Heart of Pandaria, Blood in the Snow, Battle on the High Seas and Secrets of Ragefire)
• New Battleground: Deepwind Gorge.
• New Arena: The Tiger's Peak
• Brawler’s Guild Updates. New ranks and new rare bosses.
• Leveling is much easier now.
• In-game Browser and Support Tools.
• Item upgrades are back and the upgrade price changed.
• Reputation changes for some of the MoP factions.
• User Interface changes and additions.
• New pets and mounts.

Do not miss our interview with Cory "mumper" Stockton about the 5.3 patch and keep and eye on other fansites since more 5.3 interview are going to be published.

A few hours ago we had the opportunity to interview the Blizzard's Lead Content Designer, Cory "mumper" Stockton.

The topic was the new 5.3 patch, but we focused on the future of WoW as well. It was just a 20 minutes interview and we tried to squeeze in the best questions we had. Thanks to our twitter followers who sent us questions and, of course, thanks to my in game friends who also helped.

Usually, with every interview, we had just a transcript, but this time we changed the things a little bit... Since the interview took place on Skype, we recorded everything, we fixed whatever we could and we uploaded it on youtube.
Please excuse my accent, the low mic volume and my picture from the video. I swear it's the best picture I could find!

I hope you'll enjoy this. The transcript might come in the following days.

Big thanks to Blizzard Europe Community Team, Zarhym and of course to Cory!

We rarely see a new battleground added to the game, but this is one of those rare occasions. Deepwind Gorge is a new battleground where you have to dominate your opponents by collecting enough resources by capturing the area resource nodes.
If you want a comparison with another battleground, Arathi Basin is the first thing to think about.

Basics
The new Deepwind Gorge is located (by the look of it) in the Valley of the Four Winds and it's a level 90, 15 vs 15 battleground. You'll have access to three capturable resource nodes and two mine carts (one for each faction). First team to reach 1600 resources wins.

Gathering Resources
The main source of resources are from the three nodes of the area: the Pandaren Mine, the Center Mine and the Goblin Mine. Capturing and defending those nodes will reward you with a constant flow of resources (gold in this case), much like Arathi Basin nodes.

A new way of gathering resources is by stealing the mine cart from the other faction's base. That cart has to be pulled all the way to your home base (not to the captured nodes) for the gold within it to be captured. Each cart holds 200 resources, but is no easy task to move it across the map.
Both faction carts can be stolen at the same time and both carts are visible on the map. To capture a cart does no require your own cart to be present at your base.

You can not mount up while carrying the cart and if you are killed the enemies have to click the cart to send it back to their base, or your team mates can pick it up again.

Conclusion
Unlike Arathi Basin, the new Deepwind Gorge battleground seems too large for only 15 players, but since AB does not have the cart mechanics, I think it's ok to be a bit bigger. Speaking of that cart, I think it will play a big role on this BG strategy, since 200 resources can turn the tables anytime.
In my opinion the cart should be carried back to its base by the the faction that owns it. It would make the fights for that cart really interesting. But I guess sending it back only by clicking on it should be fine too...

So this is how shamans fight. I must say I never paid any attention before. Thanks to this comic now everything is clear to me

If you missed the previous comic, you can find it here.

Check out the author's profile, Lukali at deviantart

Besides the new pets, the 5.3 patch is going to introduce a few new mounts as well. Not all of them are obtainable right away but we can already find them in the game files.

Fey Dragon Mount
The new Enchanted Fey Dragon mount is the most interesting one. This mount changes its color randomly. We don't know how are we going to get it, but if you like to speculate, I think this will be the next Blizzard Store mount.

Alliance and Horde dragonhawks
The mounts collectors are the ones who will be rewarded with these mounts. You "only" need 200 mounts for the Mount Parade achievement.

Pegasus mounts
Apparently those who will Beta Test the new Hearthstone game are going to get these mounts.

Steelwarhorse mount
The exact source of this mount is unknown for now, but at least we know how it looks like.

Early today it was announced that World of Warcraft subscribers went down to 8.3M. This means that they lost about 1.3M subscribers since February this year.

Well, WoW is a 9 years old game and since it's launch a lot of players migrated to other games and even other Blizzard games.
We dug a little bit on our older announcement regarding WoW subscribers fluctuation and we decided to make a chart out of it. We also included the expansion releases and games like SC2 and D3 into the same chart.