[PC Game] World of Warcraft: Catch All Thread
- Thread starter Gilgamesh
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The costume contest was rather impressive this year. Normally you have a few stand-outs among a lot of rather meh, but I actually liked the majority that came out this year.
One cute scene, a couple come out in some really nice d3 barbarian gear for the contest. They walk in character to the middle of the stage for the pose, when the guy turns around and drops to his knee, pulling out a ring. The girl says yes and they kiss, before walking off the stage to continue the contest, her wiping away tears.
Also I never thought I could be attracted to Arthas.
One cute scene, a couple come out in some really nice d3 barbarian gear for the contest. They walk in character to the middle of the stage for the pose, when the guy turns around and drops to his knee, pulling out a ring. The girl says yes and they kiss, before walking off the stage to continue the contest, her wiping away tears.
Also I never thought I could be attracted to Arthas.
Way to much stuff to go over and I am tired as hell, so most can just read it on MMO-Champion. Biggest points...
Hit, Expertise, Block, Parry, and Reforging are being retired. They don't want required stats that you need to dance around to even preform, and remove the game of having to alter your gear every time you get an upgrade (This helmet has HIT!? Well crap, need to go back to town and reforge all my hit off these other items)
No more multiple gear sets for hybrids. Now all gear sets will automatically give the main stat for the spec. So if you deck your retribution paladin in some hot gear, only to find out your friends need a healer for the raid that night, you can change specs and all that strength will covert to intellect. They feel this helps hybrids from having to deck themselves out in up to three different sets just to do what is sometimes needed. Smaller items like rings, amulets, etc... will remain unchanged, and will not auto-alter to spec, so you still want to get a few extra items.
The item squish is confirmed. Reports indicate that all gear stats have reduced by near 95%.
They plan for inventory is not to keep increasing bag size, but instead remove stuff from the bags you shouldn't have to stash. Examples they gave are heirlooms and "toys" now having a unique collection interface similar to pets and mounts. Tabards are also on point to get something similar. Quest items no longer exist as physical items, and instead the effects you would get for quest items appear in the quest log. They also said they are looking at increasing material stack size, like let cloth stack to 100 rather then 20.
A future plan, but not for this expansion release, is to even remove the need to keep items for transmog.
There are a lot of changes, I recommend reading up on them at mmo-champion, these are just some of the bigger ones for me.
Hit, Expertise, Block, Parry, and Reforging are being retired. They don't want required stats that you need to dance around to even preform, and remove the game of having to alter your gear every time you get an upgrade (This helmet has HIT!? Well crap, need to go back to town and reforge all my hit off these other items)
No more multiple gear sets for hybrids. Now all gear sets will automatically give the main stat for the spec. So if you deck your retribution paladin in some hot gear, only to find out your friends need a healer for the raid that night, you can change specs and all that strength will covert to intellect. They feel this helps hybrids from having to deck themselves out in up to three different sets just to do what is sometimes needed. Smaller items like rings, amulets, etc... will remain unchanged, and will not auto-alter to spec, so you still want to get a few extra items.
The item squish is confirmed. Reports indicate that all gear stats have reduced by near 95%.
They plan for inventory is not to keep increasing bag size, but instead remove stuff from the bags you shouldn't have to stash. Examples they gave are heirlooms and "toys" now having a unique collection interface similar to pets and mounts. Tabards are also on point to get something similar. Quest items no longer exist as physical items, and instead the effects you would get for quest items appear in the quest log. They also said they are looking at increasing material stack size, like let cloth stack to 100 rather then 20.
A future plan, but not for this expansion release, is to even remove the need to keep items for transmog.
There are a lot of changes, I recommend reading up on them at mmo-champion, these are just some of the bigger ones for me.
The downside of the magic stat-changing gear is now you won't have the "oh I don't have a heal set" excuse anymore. It was one of my favorites.
Blackhand is a major player and is the orc in the top left. He's a major facilitaor of the creation of the Iron Horde. Orgrim was one of his first officers and not a major player at this point of the lore.
So how come, as far as I can tell, Blackhand and Orgrim are missing from this crew?
They said that Orgrim will appear, but since he was working under Blackhand in this age, he won't be presented in a leadership role.
You should expect at the least a lot of small cameos, like screenshots of Karabor show Akama back in his old vindicator days training some troops.
You should expect at the least a lot of small cameos, like screenshots of Karabor show Akama back in his old vindicator days training some troops.
Also for those interested in the movie...
Based on how they were implying things, it seems one of the reasons the movie has been taking so long is that Metzen and company were not really happy with the script and focus. The original script focuses entirely on the Alliance as the heroes, because the studio felt that audiences wouldn't be able to relate with something like an orc. My guess is this is the script Sam Raimi wanted to go with and thus all the delays and headaches just lead to him dropping out, because Metzen secretly hoped they would figure out a way to do one that focused on both sides.
When Duncan Jones decided to try and fill the gap, he went to Blizzard with his pitch, saying the old script was good, but not great. He told them if they go through with the movie it has to have both sides represented, which Metzen said was a huge relief to hear. He made it seem like Duncan was the first person involved in film that didn't just say to focus on humans.
They spilled some of the beans on the story, saying that it will take place during the First War, when the orcs and humans first meet. Lothar and Durotan will be the main characters, and a lot of the plot will involve both of them trying to do the right thing both individually and for their people as a whole. Duncan does not want either character to be a villain, just two differing viewpoints in conflict.
When it comes to effects, they got Bill Westenhofer, who not only is an oscar winning effects artist who worked on movies like Life of Pi, but is an avid WoW player himself who said even during working on films he would find time to log on and raid with his guild. He still plays today with a level 90 mage. He said that the orcs will be real actors, but improved with CGI. When asked for an example he said a lot of the same people that made the Hulk in Avengers are going to be working on making the orcs believable.
When asked about the style, they said "Avatar meets Game of Thrones" with the feel being "Very down in the dirt, think Gladiator." Duncan says he feels people like Peter Jackson set the bar for movie fantasy, but that he wants to match or even surpass it but still make the franchise it's own thing.
Honestly just seeing the love Duncan and Bill show for the franchise I am very excited. Duncan even turned down some movie direction offers in the hopes he would get the chance to direct this movie, which shows some dedication.
Based on how they were implying things, it seems one of the reasons the movie has been taking so long is that Metzen and company were not really happy with the script and focus. The original script focuses entirely on the Alliance as the heroes, because the studio felt that audiences wouldn't be able to relate with something like an orc. My guess is this is the script Sam Raimi wanted to go with and thus all the delays and headaches just lead to him dropping out, because Metzen secretly hoped they would figure out a way to do one that focused on both sides.
When Duncan Jones decided to try and fill the gap, he went to Blizzard with his pitch, saying the old script was good, but not great. He told them if they go through with the movie it has to have both sides represented, which Metzen said was a huge relief to hear. He made it seem like Duncan was the first person involved in film that didn't just say to focus on humans.
They spilled some of the beans on the story, saying that it will take place during the First War, when the orcs and humans first meet. Lothar and Durotan will be the main characters, and a lot of the plot will involve both of them trying to do the right thing both individually and for their people as a whole. Duncan does not want either character to be a villain, just two differing viewpoints in conflict.
When it comes to effects, they got Bill Westenhofer, who not only is an oscar winning effects artist who worked on movies like Life of Pi, but is an avid WoW player himself who said even during working on films he would find time to log on and raid with his guild. He still plays today with a level 90 mage. He said that the orcs will be real actors, but improved with CGI. When asked for an example he said a lot of the same people that made the Hulk in Avengers are going to be working on making the orcs believable.
When asked about the style, they said "Avatar meets Game of Thrones" with the feel being "Very down in the dirt, think Gladiator." Duncan says he feels people like Peter Jackson set the bar for movie fantasy, but that he wants to match or even surpass it but still make the franchise it's own thing.
Honestly just seeing the love Duncan and Bill show for the franchise I am very excited. Duncan even turned down some movie direction offers in the hopes he would get the chance to direct this movie, which shows some dedication.
I loved how Bill was talking about playing on the sets of Golden Compass and Narnia and when he was in London for shoots, he was getting up at 4am to do raids. That really spoke to the crowd and to me on a level that a non-fan just wouldn't get.
Hearing Chris talk about how they're planning on having the wrap up parties in the Lion's Head Inn was just fantastic too.
Nope they also did displays/animations of Gnome and they were jaw dropping.
All races (Exception being Pandaren/Goblin/Worgen) are getting amazingly large polygon and bone increases. In many cases triple.
All the races from vanilla and BC will be getting updates, and if they feel they can, they want to update Goblin are Worgen too. The idea is to get all races in the game to the same quality as Pandaren. They also showed off slides of gnome males, gnome females, and unrigged, unfinished models for undead male, dwarf female, and tauren male. Here are some screenshots.
Troll Female was actually the last one they got a whole lot of work done on, but that most of the work occurred the two weeks before BlizzCon, so they didn't have anything to show setup.
Here is a quick video with three of the shown models and the movement. They attempted to animate them to match the old movements as much as possible, even though the rig is entirely new.
P.S. More video, this one is actually the whole art panel, so if you want to watch the whole thing, just start from the beginning. Go to 18:55 where they show off the "new" movements if you just want to see how much more expressive the new models are.
P.S. More video, this one is actually the whole art panel, so if you want to watch the whole thing, just start from the beginning. Go to 18:55 where they show off the "new" movements if you just want to see how much more expressive the new models are.
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At the rate they're going, you'll have a doctorate by then.I'd love to check it out, but I'll probably be starting grad school when it comes out. So, WoW 2 will probably be out by the time I can ever play again
Just to prove I am not a total fan-boy, I do want to speak about the few things that worry me.
When it comes to some of the newer models, Blizzard has been really bad when it comes to female faces keeping unique features. Worgen Females and Pandaren Females almost all look the same, because the only difference they decided to really add to the face was different hair patterns. It's odd, since they did a good job making the faces feel different for the males of both those races, though Worgen Males have a hilariously low number of faces (I think only 5 total). However, I do understand why this kind of happens, and that's because more detailed faces the model ends up showing through more then the texture.
For example on the old models the face for say the night elf female is pretty much just a flat surface with a slight shift in position for the nose and eyes. Most of what makes the faces feel different is the texture, so you can make the nose seem "wider" or the lips "fuller" by altering the texture, and since you don't have the nose modeled in detail, or the lips modeled at all, you can get away with the texture representing those items. Expression can be "painted" onto a face through simply changing little things like the edge of lips or the shape of eyebrows, so one looks more stoic, and another more happy.
The new models won't have that luxury. They are going to have detailed lips and noses and eyes. They are going to have bones for the brows that will look odd if you put the brows in a different spot then the bones. What is that going to mean for some races? For instance, some of the orc male textures on the models we have now have different levels of teeth showing on the lower jaw, or in some cases no teeth showing at all other then the fangs. With the new model, the orc has a huge lower lip and no lower teeth showing when idle. This is going to change a lot of what certain faces will look like.
For example, this is the new idle look for the gnome female.
Now most of the side by side shots up to this point have been showing contrast, that this is what that face and texture will look like if you have the combo on the right when transferred to the new model. I won't even get into the change in skin color tone, that can be fixed, however the face concerns me. That face is one of the few faces where the gnome holds a more determined expression. The brows are angled down, the eyes focused, and the mouth straight. The new model on the left the brows are up, the mouth is stuck in a perpetual smile, overall looking like she is having a rather pleasant day.
Now this may not matter to some people, but I pick my faces based on how I want the characters personality to be represented. I picked an orc face that seemed more relaxed and grungy because I liked that personality. I made my gnome with a more stoic face because I liked imagining her taking things seriously. I picked the one undead face that didn't look like she was scowling because I wanted her to be a softer character. With the more detailed faces, they are going to model a base expression, and that expression is going to, I feel, overwhelm any personality they attempt to put into the textures, and in the end we will have an even more horrible feeling of "sameness"
Honestly, I wish Blizzard at least showed one of the models using their full range of face options (the undead male slide only showed a range of the facial altered textures), because as great as these new models are going to look, I would hate all my characters to sudden become the same looking in personality as every other gnome and orc around him/her.
When it comes to some of the newer models, Blizzard has been really bad when it comes to female faces keeping unique features. Worgen Females and Pandaren Females almost all look the same, because the only difference they decided to really add to the face was different hair patterns. It's odd, since they did a good job making the faces feel different for the males of both those races, though Worgen Males have a hilariously low number of faces (I think only 5 total). However, I do understand why this kind of happens, and that's because more detailed faces the model ends up showing through more then the texture.
For example on the old models the face for say the night elf female is pretty much just a flat surface with a slight shift in position for the nose and eyes. Most of what makes the faces feel different is the texture, so you can make the nose seem "wider" or the lips "fuller" by altering the texture, and since you don't have the nose modeled in detail, or the lips modeled at all, you can get away with the texture representing those items. Expression can be "painted" onto a face through simply changing little things like the edge of lips or the shape of eyebrows, so one looks more stoic, and another more happy.
The new models won't have that luxury. They are going to have detailed lips and noses and eyes. They are going to have bones for the brows that will look odd if you put the brows in a different spot then the bones. What is that going to mean for some races? For instance, some of the orc male textures on the models we have now have different levels of teeth showing on the lower jaw, or in some cases no teeth showing at all other then the fangs. With the new model, the orc has a huge lower lip and no lower teeth showing when idle. This is going to change a lot of what certain faces will look like.
For example, this is the new idle look for the gnome female.
Now most of the side by side shots up to this point have been showing contrast, that this is what that face and texture will look like if you have the combo on the right when transferred to the new model. I won't even get into the change in skin color tone, that can be fixed, however the face concerns me. That face is one of the few faces where the gnome holds a more determined expression. The brows are angled down, the eyes focused, and the mouth straight. The new model on the left the brows are up, the mouth is stuck in a perpetual smile, overall looking like she is having a rather pleasant day.
Now this may not matter to some people, but I pick my faces based on how I want the characters personality to be represented. I picked an orc face that seemed more relaxed and grungy because I liked that personality. I made my gnome with a more stoic face because I liked imagining her taking things seriously. I picked the one undead face that didn't look like she was scowling because I wanted her to be a softer character. With the more detailed faces, they are going to model a base expression, and that expression is going to, I feel, overwhelm any personality they attempt to put into the textures, and in the end we will have an even more horrible feeling of "sameness"
Honestly, I wish Blizzard at least showed one of the models using their full range of face options (the undead male slide only showed a range of the facial altered textures), because as great as these new models are going to look, I would hate all my characters to sudden become the same looking in personality as every other gnome and orc around him/her.
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I never have helms showing!!
Dave
Staff member
That's because you're one of the pretty people. I'm a two-bagger.
So they went into more detail how the "Free 90" will work.
Basically the first time you log on, whether you boosted a brand new character or an old one, you won't have all your abilities. It will give you the base abilities just like you were a new player, then as you quest through the new content, it will slowly add abilities until you finally have all the abilities for your level.
It's very similar to the Death Knight starting experience in which it ramps up the abilities over time even though you are already level 55.
They are doing it this way because they don't want new or returning players to log on for the first time and be overwhelmed by a massive ability list, instead letting the abilities slowly accumulate as you figure out what they do.
Basically the first time you log on, whether you boosted a brand new character or an old one, you won't have all your abilities. It will give you the base abilities just like you were a new player, then as you quest through the new content, it will slowly add abilities until you finally have all the abilities for your level.
It's very similar to the Death Knight starting experience in which it ramps up the abilities over time even though you are already level 55.
They are doing it this way because they don't want new or returning players to log on for the first time and be overwhelmed by a massive ability list, instead letting the abilities slowly accumulate as you figure out what they do.
Yes, you lose all but the main ones that can be used to kill stuff. They said you won't lose so much that you will be dead in the water, you will just have a more simple base rotation until you earn back all the other skills.
Not sure on stat squish, what exactly did you want to know?
Not sure on stat squish, what exactly did you want to know?
The way they are handling the squish is they are recalculating as if they never required new ilevel per each end game patch. Right now, to keep people interested and have the raids scale in difficulty, they always had to keep increasing the item level each patch for each expansion cycle. This is what caused most of the bloat.
For example, they are taking say vanilla, and saying "What if we never made any gear past Molten Core?" they then scale it down, move up to the end game of BC, and say "What if we never made any new gear past Gruul's Lair?" etc and so on until they smooth it over. This has lead to a 95% reduction in stats. An item that right now has 1500 of a stat, will likely in WoD have around 60 of that stat. We are going to be hitting stuff like the old days of WOTLK.
To balance this with old content, all the mobs are also being scaled, and all the raids are going to be scaled to be around the same amount of difficulty per expansion cycle, so entering Black Temple won't be any harder then Gruul's Lair if you decide to do it at the relevant level once the squish happens.
For example, they are taking say vanilla, and saying "What if we never made any gear past Molten Core?" they then scale it down, move up to the end game of BC, and say "What if we never made any new gear past Gruul's Lair?" etc and so on until they smooth it over. This has lead to a 95% reduction in stats. An item that right now has 1500 of a stat, will likely in WoD have around 60 of that stat. We are going to be hitting stuff like the old days of WOTLK.
To balance this with old content, all the mobs are also being scaled, and all the raids are going to be scaled to be around the same amount of difficulty per expansion cycle, so entering Black Temple won't be any harder then Gruul's Lair if you decide to do it at the relevant level once the squish happens.
Things I'm excited about from Blizzcon:
- No more hit/expertise/dodge/parry to maneuver
- No more reforging necessary to equip gear
- No more excessive gem costs
- No more bag space wasted on heirlooms and toys
- Flexible raids all the time, in every situation I care about
- I get my own town and minions
Things I'm apprehensive about from Blizzcon:
- No new content until the expansion releases, and no current plan for release
- Item squish by about 95%
- Max level content planned to be lots like Timeless Isle, and not so much in the form of questing
- No more hit/expertise/dodge/parry to maneuver
- No more reforging necessary to equip gear
- No more excessive gem costs
- No more bag space wasted on heirlooms and toys
- Flexible raids all the time, in every situation I care about
- I get my own town and minions
Things I'm apprehensive about from Blizzcon:
- No new content until the expansion releases, and no current plan for release
- Item squish by about 95%
- Max level content planned to be lots like Timeless Isle, and not so much in the form of questing
Okay, it can be rather rare that Blizzard says something that actually pisses me off, but GC takes the cake for me this week. This whole "no flying till 6.1" fiasco is turning into a real problem, and I actually AGREED with him originally because I felt it was fine holding off for awhile on flying as long as the end game content was compelling on the ground. So be aware, I was 100% behind that choice until all this crap this week.
Someone asked him on twitter for the "Tome" again, you know, the one in Wrath that allowed alts to fly at earlier levels if you had someone at max level with flying already, and he said this.
What was wrong with the Wrath model of grounded leveling for main, BoA tome for alts?
If leveling is supposed to be trivial for alts, why not just make them all jump to max level?
Are you frigging kidding me GC? Are you really going to play this game? How about those heirlooms? How about the monk Enlightenment buff? Why the hell do those exist? RaF? SoR? That experience potion? Why not just give us a free 100 if we have a full set of heirlooms, lord knows they make the leveling game "trivial", even more so then it already was after the Cataclysm revamp dumped half of it down. Why not remove flying from 60, 70, or 80? You seem so darn bitter about it, why not just do it?
There is nothing wrong with wanting to make the game easier on alts. This is a driving force behind dozens of various systems you have added to the game, even the new purple gear on the Timeless Isle was designed to make the process of forming alts EASIER, not HARDER. Don't play the stupid straw man game that adding convenience a second time around means we are going to slip down a slop to free max level characters because we are not doing quests how you want us to do them. I don't care if you feel it makes the content trivial, shut the hell up.
Someone asked him on twitter for the "Tome" again, you know, the one in Wrath that allowed alts to fly at earlier levels if you had someone at max level with flying already, and he said this.
What was wrong with the Wrath model of grounded leveling for main, BoA tome for alts?
If leveling is supposed to be trivial for alts, why not just make them all jump to max level?
Are you frigging kidding me GC? Are you really going to play this game? How about those heirlooms? How about the monk Enlightenment buff? Why the hell do those exist? RaF? SoR? That experience potion? Why not just give us a free 100 if we have a full set of heirlooms, lord knows they make the leveling game "trivial", even more so then it already was after the Cataclysm revamp dumped half of it down. Why not remove flying from 60, 70, or 80? You seem so darn bitter about it, why not just do it?
There is nothing wrong with wanting to make the game easier on alts. This is a driving force behind dozens of various systems you have added to the game, even the new purple gear on the Timeless Isle was designed to make the process of forming alts EASIER, not HARDER. Don't play the stupid straw man game that adding convenience a second time around means we are going to slip down a slop to free max level characters because we are not doing quests how you want us to do them. I don't care if you feel it makes the content trivial, shut the hell up.
Dave
Staff member
I disagree and am glad that they are doing it. As with my previous bitching with the automatic FPs, I think that there's a real lack of rewards in the game for players leveling. I mean, right now it's flying...*yawn*. I remember when flying was a big fricking deal. We need to get back to this again. If everyone is special, nobody is.
It's one reason I'm not a big fan of the Timeless Isle. Oh, I'll use it, but purple gear is so undervalued now it's not funny. I have a 600 BS who can't sell anything because nothing he makes is better than Timeless gear. Oh, there's the occasional Blessed Belt, but I have to spend 30 day farming mats to make them and they sell for squat as they are less than raid gear. Don't even get me started on the Haunting Spirit crap.
It's one reason I'm not a big fan of the Timeless Isle. Oh, I'll use it, but purple gear is so undervalued now it's not funny. I have a 600 BS who can't sell anything because nothing he makes is better than Timeless gear. Oh, there's the occasional Blessed Belt, but I have to spend 30 day farming mats to make them and they sell for squat as they are less than raid gear. Don't even get me started on the Haunting Spirit crap.
I thought the belts were pretty good? And sold well?
My hunter and shadow priest wear the 553 ones. I would have bought one for my dk but Ordos has been very good to her.
My hunter and shadow priest wear the 553 ones. I would have bought one for my dk but Ordos has been very good to her.