In case you have been living under a rock for the last year or so, Warcraft has not had a content patch in a long time – long by gaming industry standards that is.
In game discussion over the last year has centred on “When is Warlords of Draenor going to be released?” or “When will patch 6.0 be released?” The refrain has also been asking for change and lots of it. Well, change is here!
Now that the WoD release date has been finalised and patch 6.02 has been released what are players discussing now?
You Can’t Please All of the People… *
Some people never like change. Many of these folks play Warcraft. Or, if you believe all the QQ going on in game right now probably ALL of them play WoW! Folks have been asking for a shake up of the game and they have now got it. This is only a pre-patch and emphatically NOT the full WoD content release, but many seem to have confused the two.
Patch 6.02 is basically everything that will be implemented in WoD, but not the actual game content. As such, there is no levelling to 100, new skills or anything like that. From my perspective it is just Blizzard reasonably testing out the new mechanics before the release of Warlords proper – very sensible IMHO. Already there are many hotfixes that have been implemented, or are scheduled to be implemented. This means that the release of the actual content patch for Warlords of Draenor should be almost flawless.
The Good *
Personally, I like the patch overall. There are numerous quality of life improvements that have been made in this update. The ability to craft from bank bags being uppermost in my mind as I type this, but there are a lot – too many to list in fact.
You can read the full patch notes here.
A big plus for me is the guaranteed drops of various heirloom weapons from Garrosh called “Smash and Grab“. We only have a month until the release of Warlords and heirlooms will then become truly relevant again. As there are a number of ‘looms still missing from my collection I plan on making full use of this temporary buff.
As I have all professions spread across a number of alts, the inclusion of a reagents tab to the bank has been absolutely fantastic! I will be keeping my banker guilds, but the reagents tab, along with many items now stacking to 200 instead of 20 has greatly eased the pressure of finding storage space. If we could also list items on the AH, perhaps via an engineering bot, or a guild cooldown similar to guild banking my life as an AH tycoon would be heavenly.
I suppose my impression of the release is also being improved by the extra sales generated so far – about 20k already and we are only a few hours into the pre-patch! All that new gear and players returning to the game has been great for business. 🙂
The Bad *
The only real bad point right now are the new high resolution character models and animations are a bit lacking. While they are in most cases better than what went before, some certainly lack charisma. It is hard to say exactly why. Some of the models look a bit startled, or sad. The run and spell/combat animations are also a bit sub par. Players are QQ-ing about this a lot right now and perhaps it will die down. Blizzard has given us the ability to change faces through the barbers shop and the ability to turn the models off if you happen to dislike them that much.
Esc –> System –> Advanced –>un-tick “Show New Character models”
System Settings to Revert to Old Character Models *
Personally I will be keeping the new models, but will be indulging in a few trips to the barbers shop to change them more to my liking. I have no doubt that Blizzard will act to improve the situation if the moans do not subside in a few weeks.
Happy goldmaking!