Mists of Pandaria PvP Recap, Diablo 3 System Changes, Blue Posts, Fan Art

well bottom line for me , if i dont get new models this expansion im done with this game , if they think were gonna put up with that shit when theres new games coming out offering more and more then their smokin the good shit .

the GTA/Cataclysm and the Drakanoid statue are both fuggin awesome.

Originally Posted by Inahu

I wish they'd stop trotting out the "We don't have enough resources" excuse for not delivering on things players want. If they can find resources to develop an entirely new feature that nobody asked for and a large portion of the playerbase don't want, I'm sure it wouldn't have been a stretch to find resources to direct to something players have actually asked for. It's not like I'm saying we should be able to dictate to them how to run their game, but if they won't listen to the things we want, they can't claim that it's not their fault when we don't want to play any more.

The game is going down the hole, they're milking it as much as they can alread. Some "vocal minority" asked for some stupid stuff not related to the game and they saw it as a good move to spend their few resources allocated for WoW. Easier to do and with better chance of extra "milk-leage" in the long run since it appear that most of what is currently playing the game is from the Pokemon generation and actually don't care about Warcraft anyways, it's just a graphical MSN/Facebook/Social Networking most of the time, so if they include more common things that ppl like so they can do with while pretending to still play Warcraft, the better. Baseball, Nascar/F1/Indy (why not? We have car mounts anyway), Soccer, Basketball, etc... you name it.

Yes, pokemon battles and other "suggestions" (including the ones that Blizzard didn't use) that aren't related to anything in the game (except for BS excuses like "we have pets in the game, why not waste resources on a fully battle system that will even need balance and etc.") screw it instead of implementing Warcraft related stuff and improving current systems and graphics (like models). Remember flying mounts in Wintergrasp? Even the Dance Studio (as stupid as Pokemons, but at least way more simple and actually had something to do with WoW since the special dance moves for each race are part of WoW pop culture)? Nah, too much hassle, implementing Pokemon is cheaper and will keep more ppl playing.

Their excuses are worse and worse, if during the course of a expansion is not the time to work on new models, and the creation of a new expansion also isn't the time to work on new models, when it would be the correct time then?

Yes, no answer for that. Maybe if they're cornered enough and with the exact kind of pressure, they'll pull some resources from other products to get rid of that. But not holding my breath over it.

Diablo 3 is likely going the way of "release it, now!" so they started removing stuff from the game (and maybe including it later with a $$ expansion or, if we're lucky, just a free patch) or simplifying it to release it asap. Activision pressure or not, it's happening.

---------- Post added 2012-01-20 at 08:46 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Prokne

The more likely scenario is that they would hire a few new people to do much less important projects like design a new type of bush and then promote someone who has been working on WoW textures for a while to the character update team. If they had spent as much time actually doing the visual updates as they discuss them, they would be done already. With Cataclysm they had to do textures for the whole world so it is understandable they didnt have a lot of time for character models(this is probably also why gear models for this expansion looked aweful also). I also don't understand how hiring maybe 2 people to make 3-4 new textures per race over the course of an expansion so it will be ready for the next one is so hard. Also I bet more people than they think look at the graphics of WoW compared to newer games and see how dated they are, they just rationalize it by saying that at least the game runs smoothly on an old computer.

All about $$ dude... all about $$.

As someone said, WoW is on "legacy mode" alread. So they don't want to spend more on it.

Originally Posted by Cablecow

well bottom line for me , if i dont get new models this expansion im done with this game , if they think were gonna put up with that shit when theres new games coming out offering more and more then their smokin the good shit .

HEAR HEAR! Im guessing blizzard thinks most of the player base are uneducated misinformed derps that they cant look up a companies financial information with a quick google search. And to all the lovers of pokewow I don't ever remember them posting polls asking if people wanted pokemon in wow or even any official forum posts where people said pet battles. I DO remember seeing a multitude of forums posts about people asking for updated models for the vanilla races. I also remember adding a comment about the animations for weapon attacks and how the weapons are held. Have you really LOOKED at a female human holding a 2 handed weapon? she holds it like a golf club, one hand on top of another. I race-changed my derp derp looking human male into a worgen female because i couldn't stand looking at his back of the bus face anymore.

And someone mentioned outsourcing the artwork team. They can do this and STILL maintain the artstyle. its called looking at a portfolio and choosing the work that best resembles your own style and hiring that person. Its called QCing the work they are doing to ensure it matches. OH NOE! you mean management might actually have to manage MORE than they do now to make paying customers happy? GTFO!!??

If they make female pandas( not happy i even have type that) fat and bloated like the males are im done. I also dont need another ridiculous looking permasnarl like the worgens have. Pandas are cute and the female ingame representation should be as well. Since human females look terrible at this point aside from a few face choices.

Originally Posted by Kaleredar

I think they were referring to the trash before Ultraxion, not Ultraxion himself. The trash is inconsequential... it's just annoying to get through (especially with the drakes that fly just out of melee range...)

As for problems with the Ultraxion fight, people just need to learn how to push the giant button in the middle of their screen so healers don't go OOM and watch the raid slowly die.

They just need to lower the duration of it or throw trash drops on it, so it feel like trash instead of just something anoying. No need to remove the event (it's fun and makes sense to see Deathwing mocking his "brothers" throwing their own children back at them and later a big one).

---------- Post added 2012-01-20 at 08:51 PM ----------

Originally Posted by rockdontroll

do you know there are hundreds of people that draw each episode of the simpsons? how many coders there are at google? do you know how many make-up artists etc there are on the film set for the Hobbit? when a project needs to be done, qualified people are brought in. Their excuse may work for minecraft, but if money is not the main limiting factor here, then why can't there be teams of people that are assigned to design and maintain BGs, dungeons etc and releasenew ones on a frequent basis? Hell, if they let players create BGs for fun, we could do the work and it might turn into the next DotA.

Unfortunatelly money is the limiting factor... they just don't want to spend it.

---------- Post added 2012-01-20 at 08:57 PM ----------

Originally Posted by rockdontroll

enough with the "synergy" bullshit, who cares what the employee's design philosophy is, you can't expect us to be satisfied with "cause we don't feel like it" argument for not hiring an appropriate number of staff to handle the work behind the biggest MMO in the world?

Yeap, synergy is just lame excuse.

They changed the original team of WoW more than once (altough they keep trying to make us believe that they're almost all there working on it since vanilla) and the game totally changed. No synergy there.

I'm not naive enough to believe that if the same guys were still working with WoW after near end of tbc, the game would still change so much even in their core systems and definitions like it changed.

Half of the game changes from WotLK, Cataclysm and future MoP wouldn't see the light of the day with the original team.

So I feel like for the next two weeks we will be recapping the Mists talent trees, but instead of doing it all at once we shall take it one class at a time to be on the safe side.

In other words... "We have the resources to hire more artists to design new models, but we believe WoW is getting old now and that any attempts to make the game newer/better, would be a waste of money and we don't like wasting money." Pretty much what they're saying... oh and that's what they call PvP? PvP = Player vs Ball? Player vs Minecart? Player vs Boss? Blizzard is stupid as hell and it's obvious. If you want to make a good game, you have to acknowledge your entire player base, not just the majority, but the minority... and that's something blizzard can't do.

Originally Posted by Ninetyseven

"•Scrolls of Identification are gone - players can now identify rares/legendary items without them." NOOOOOoooooooooo,,,,,, =P I liked having loads of unknown items in my bag and allways having to find/buy identity scrolls to see whats inside my gift =P Ah well. I hope its not just a "right click to identify the item"

You may want to avoid the blue post that goes into greater detail about the removal, then. >_>

Originally Posted by VanishO2

I'm not naive enough to believe that if the same guys were still working with WoW after near end of tbc, the game would still change so much even in their core systems and definitions like it changed.

Half of the game changes from WotLK, Cataclysm and future MoP wouldn't see the light of the day with the original team.

Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions (with a touch of /tinfoilhat, no less.) And you know what they say about assuming.

screw it instead of implementing Warcraft related stuff and improving current systems and graphics (like models). Remember flying mounts in Wintergrasp? Even the Dance Studio (as stupid as Pokemons, but at least way more simple and actually had something to do with WoW since the special dance moves for each race are part of WoW pop culture)?

You're assuming that the art and modeling team are working on programming the interface needed to make it so pets can attack eachother instead of the programming and user interface people. Why?

You're also assuming that creating the dance studio, which would have required creating numerous brand new model animations for every single race (something that the modeling department would actually work on, in addition to the user interface and programming departments) would have required less time from the art and modeling team than something they don't have much of a place working on. Why?

D3 is being totally revamped again? This is worse than Duke Nukem Forever.Calling it now, D3 will launch in November at the earliest.

New Character Models"It's absolutely not a "too bad" situation, Sutei. I know the concept of us having near unlimited resources to throw at whatever we want to is intriguing, but it's just not the case. We don't have an army of artists on layaway that we can transfer onto a project."World of Warcraft Subscription: $15 a month - 10 million subscribers - that's 150 mil a month.. 12 months a year.. 1.8 BILLION dollars.. So you tell me why you can't invest money into a awesome army of artists.. Name me another game that made 1.8 billion dollars.. then tell me that game did it year after year.By the way, that doesn't include the cost of buying wow and its expansions.. Thanks bliz.

Originally Posted by VanishO2

The game is going down the hole, they're milking it as much as they can alread. Some "vocal minority" asked for some stupid stuff not related to the game and they saw it as a good move to spend their few resources allocated for WoW. Easier to do and with better chance of extra "milk-leage" in the long run since it appear that most of what is currently playing the game is from the Pokemon generation and actually don't care about Warcraft anyways, it's just a graphical MSN/Facebook/Social Networking most of the time, so if they include more common things that ppl like so they can do with while pretending to still play Warcraft, the better. Baseball, Nascar/F1/Indy (why not? We have car mounts anyway), Soccer, Basketball, etc... you name it.

See, I don't really agree. Sure, the game is getting old, but in the past Blizzard have demonstrated the ability to refresh it and make it seem almost as though it were a new game. The nature of an MMO, being able to be updated by patches, means that almost all of the game can be updated and modified; can be partially or completely re-written whilst keeping all or most of the player information and achievements intact. Blizzard keep creating problems for themselves in this regard by introducing new features that require a lot of maintenance and balancing, but don't really contribute to the experience of the game.

Based on the quality of 4.3, I believe they've reached a critical point where the maintenance of everything they've created has developed a situation that compromises the quality of all of it. Recycled boss models. Recycling part of Dragonblight for an instance. I don't think that they have done this because they cynically want to milk subscribers for as much cash as they can hope to, it just seems like they've unintentionally spread themselves too thin. They don't lack the will to push out more, better content; it has just become something that is beyond their capacity to do. And it's entirely their own fault.

Originally Posted by schwift

New Character Models"It's absolutely not a "too bad" situation, Sutei. I know the concept of us having near unlimited resources to throw at whatever we want to is intriguing, but it's just not the case. We don't have an army of artists on layaway that we can transfer onto a project."World of Warcraft Subscription: $15 a month - 10 million subscribers - that's 150 mil a month.. 12 months a year.. 1.8 BILLION dollars.. So you tell me why you can't invest money into a awesome army of artists.. Name me another game that made 1.8 billion dollars.. then tell me that game did it year after year.By the way, that doesn't include the cost of buying wow and its expansions.. Thanks bliz.

i'm quite sure if you look at their net earnings, it'll be FAR FAR FAR less than you're kindergarden business math. Also, not everyone pays $15/month.. just a sidenote.

Originally Posted by thetraveler12

If they make female pandas( not happy i even have type that) fat and bloated like the males are im done. I also dont need another ridiculous looking permasnarl like the worgens have. Pandas are cute and the female ingame representation should be as well. Since human females look terrible at this point aside from a few face choices.

Well, here's the trouble: If the females don't match the males to at least some degree...it's going to be thematic failure. You know, basically the equivalent of that ridiculous expression (it's not a snarl at all) that female worgen have.

And while I'd argue that the males are plenty cute in their own right, and that calling them "bloated" is base defamation...why focus on the females?

Originally Posted by Inahu

See, I don't really agree. Sure, the game is getting old, but in the past Blizzard have demonstrated the ability to refresh it and make it seem almost as though it were a new game. The nature of an MMO, being able to be updated by patches, means that almost all of the game can be updated and modified; can be partially or completely re-written whilst keeping all or most of the player information and achievements intact. Blizzard keep creating problems for themselves in this regard by introducing new features that require a lot of maintenance and balancing, but don't really contribute to the experience of the game.

Based on the quality of 4.3, I believe they've reached a critical point where the maintenance of everything they've created has developed a situation that compromises the quality of all of it. Recycled boss models. Recycling part of Dragonblight for an instance. I don't think that they have done this because they cynically want to milk subscribers for as much cash as they can hope to, it just seems like they've unintentionally spread themselves too thin. They don't lack the will to push out more, better content; it has just become something that is beyond their capacity to do. And it's entirely their own fault.

All i know is Rift / ToR do not even have anywhere near half the subs wow has and yet rift / TOR puts out more content then wow
Rift puts out twice the content in 6 months the wow do in a year. Something to thank about