HCTB: EP 25 - Winners and Losers Iron Tide

Welcome to this fourteenth day of October, 2014.   I’m John “Boomjack” Hoskin and this is Here Comes The Boom – EP #25.

I trust that all my Canadian friends had a wonderful Thanksgiving.   I travelled to see the in-laws.  Ate Chinese food and drove three-hours home.   Good times.

Make no mistake, this is a massive patch.   It’s so big it even dwarfs Rosie O’Donnell’s ego.

As Blizzard is often wont to do, they are pre-patching the next expansion.  My daughter’s mac showed 8GB of files to download.  I haven’t checked the size on a PC yet. 

Enormous!

Stupendous!

Outrageous!

Winners: Players Who Love Alts

New character models are being introduced, so those of you who love a change and have 50 alts will now have 50 new characters to look at.   Dwarfs, Gnomes, Humans, Night Elves, Orcs, Taurens, Trolls, Undead and Draenai are all getting new looks. 

Losers: Nostalgia Buffs

If you loved the look of your character then hopefully you took plenty of screenshots.    With the new character models your beloved character is likely changed forever.

Winners: Hair Stylists

More “facial-customization” options are being introduced.  Enter the “I mustache you a question.” jokes and the surge of characters named Mustachio Joe.

Winners: Dungeon Crawlers

Level 90 characters can enter a special instance of Upper Blackrock Spire, but only for a limited time.   But there’s more!  Sorry, the whole limited time thing had me going. 

Winners: Casual Raiders

The revamped group finder will allow premade groups looking for more players to post a “want ad”.   Both dungeon and raid groups can use this list.   Casual players and raid leaders who are short one poorly played, loot hungry toon in their group are rejoicing right now.  

Winners: Packrats

Inventory items will now have colored borders based on their rarity.  Trade skill mats now stack up to 200.  Bags can now be assigned to a specific item type (Equipment, trade goods, etc.)

Winners: New Players

Character stats have been squished into numbers that mere mortals can comprehend.  Likewise, the number of abilities has been reduced.  World of Warcraft for Dummies has been boiled down to Dumb and Dumber.   Jim Carrey will be introduced as the new Lead Designer at BlizzCon

Losers: Healers and Dungeon Groups

The least played role will continue to be the least played role. Healing has been made more challenging to play.   For a good healer this isn’t an issue and is probably a “Win”, but for others it will mean a much more difficult style of play and that means less healers and increased time looking for groups.   Remember all those instant cast heals that you had?  Many of them are gone. 

Losers: AskMrRobot

Reforging has been removed from the game.  R.I.P. Mr. Robot.

Losers: Every Class

I don’t believe this is likely true, but I do believe it will be the perception of most players.   After all is said and done, most players don’t like change and every class is receiving sweeping adjustments.

Winners: Auction House Sellers / Buyers

Auction items will now be able to be sold / bought cross faction.   Realms with low pop for one faction will now benefit from having an active auction house.

Losers: Guilds Who Leveled Up

Guilds no longer have levels.  Every guild has all bonuses.

This list could go on and on, but that is just a taste.   Who are your Winners and Losers from the 6.0.2 Patch?

Vin Diesel Fact: Vin Diesel picks oranges from apple trees and makes lemonade.

Now on to something more entertaining…