Comments:
Weather has been added to several areas of Azeroth. Good change that add to an already immersive graphical style.
"Along with the new Armor Sets, the high-level 5-10 man dungeons have received some changes regarding loot. Many items have been improved in quality and use. In addition, several epic items, such as Headmaster's Charge and the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare, have had their drop rates significantly increased. In order to preserve the challenge of these dungeons, they have had their instance caps lowered. Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Depths now allow a maximum of five players inside, and Blackrock Spire allows a maximum of ten."Finally Blizzard is getting a clue that challenge should rewarded instead of the number of people in the group. Just because a raid group has 40 people does not mean they should be rewarded for an easy jaunt through Molten Core. A hard five man dungeon should reward the player just as well (if not better) than a raid instance.
"Previously, quest experience was wasted if one completed a quest at level 60. In this patch, any quests done at maximum level will have their experience reward converted to a healthy amount of gold, thus adding additional incentive to completing those quests in your log once you hit 60."Great way to reward veteran players... oh wait... whats that? You already did most of the quests? Oh sorry you are SOL. Great for the long run after the Burning Crusade expansion and people begin hitting level 70.
"You will no longer lose your current target when affected by a crowd control spell (e.g. Fear, Polymorph etc...)"A change I had requested long ago! Sometimes it's the little changes that count!
"Frostwolf and Stormpike faction will now be gained by killing players of the opposite faction. Reputation will no longer be split up among the entire raid group."
Bye bye stupid collection quests and bye bye reputation gain in Alterac Valley for just sitting AFK. You actually have to kill people to get rewarded with reputation. Really sucks for the players that avoid fighting to complete objectives, but Alterac Valley was never really a worthwhile fight to actually care about winning.
I'm going to skip over the class changes as I realize Blizzard is going to do what they are going to do with class balance. Maybe in a few years they will have them balanced? Got me.
Overall the patch is looking good, but it is lacking any major content additions. Understandable with the Burning Crusade expansion they are building, but still disappointing since the patch took three months. Three months seems to be the rate at which Blizzard is going to patch and that is a slow down from right after launch. Most likely again due to the expansion they are working on. Hopefully we can expect a pick up on patch speed after the expansion release.
Update: 29 Nov, 2009 - Edited post, corrected spelling, and applied labels.
