Patch 5.4 Developer Interviews, Blue Tweets, Setup of the Month, Poll, Fan Art Update

[Deleted]

Orc, but I really hope they don't make it anything like Garrosh - one of the ugliest models ingame. Just make my ass round, not square. Trolls, Tauren, Humans, Dwarfs, Night Elves and Gnomes also need improvements.

[Shaede]

jesus, 25% is all? been waiting for these for what seems like forever. seriously, the first time I heard they were reworking the models was at the beginning of cataclysm... I don't think I can wait much longer. The games fun, but it's no secret the characters need an upgrade. They just look dumb in the newer zones where everything has better movement in their models. I wouldn't even care if they kept most of the designs essentially the same, just fix the glaring problems like the humans and how they run like they are marching for hitler with stiff legs, and their gargantuan hands and feet. Add some flowing hair and facial expressions. Shit, IDK... I feel like a dev team could probably brainstorm for an hour or so and point out the same shit I am.

[Xilurm]

Orc, but I really hope they don't make it anything like Garrosh - one of the ugliest models ingame. Just make my ass round, not square. Trolls, Tauren, Humans, Dwarfs, Night Elves and Gnomes also need improvements.

They are obviously talking about the new animations. Not the skin itself.

[Schaapa]

• The traditional player housing in MMOs isn't very interesting, maybe with the exception of Ultima Online. This was because you owned part of the world, making the area have real value. The idea of having an instanced chunk of the world that is decorated inside and no one will ever see isn't interesting, so housing in WoW would have to go beyond just visual customization with some gameplay elements or something else actually interesting.

Like in RIFT, where you can invite players to your instanced chunk of the world that you decorated so nicely?

[furydeath]

Racials are really supposed to be a flavor thing rather than something to balance the game around, so it isn't likely that we will see changes in the near future.

Ya them horde Racials are so "flavoring"

[SodiumChloride]

Moving Dalaran to use in the Siege of Orgrimmar was considered, but it would have caused serious performance issues for many players.

Is the WoW engine so fail that it can't support a floating city outside of Org?

During Cataclysm there was a revamp of the graphics system by adding shadows to the game, which required raising the ambient light in every zone, as the shadows made it too dark. This resulted in the night time having more ambient light than it used to.

BS. WoW had baked in light maps shadows before shadow maps in Cata - in fact we still have them now; just set "shadow quality" to low. It wasn't too dark then, why is it too dark now?

Patch 5.4 will have a test case for darker nights in Orgrimmar, Stormwind, and Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

Darnassus is the city that needs darker nights (and days) the most. They ruined the place with the cata ambient lighting changes.

The traditional player housing in MMOs isn't very interesting, maybe with the exception of Ultima Online. This was because you owned part of the world, making the area have real value. The idea of having an instanced chunk of the world that is decorated inside and no one will ever see isn't interesting, so housing in WoW would have to go beyond just visual customization with some gameplay elements or something else actually interesting.

You could give keys to your friends that allow them to access the public areas of your house ... Permissions can be set to allow all guild members access too.

[Shudder]

"The traditional player housing in MMOs isn't very interesting"

Says who? Hint: It's not your customers. Give us more crap to do, raiding and pvp isn't cutting it anymore.

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Ya them horde Racials are so "flavoring"

Racials need to go. I applied to a guild and was denied because I wasn't Orc. It's fucking stupid. I'm not race changing so I can get into Blood Legion wannabes.

[Beet]

Tough choice. Down syndrome male humans are terrible to look at, but then you have Draenei males which are even worse. But we see more humans than Draenei by far so it's tough to pick which I'd like to see changed the most. I guess Draenei because they could look awesome if they were more like their Eredar counterparts in looks, or Velen. But instead they have weird ugly hair, terrible goat hooves, and a weird protruding chest. And odd tentacles that could look a lot better. Just ugly all in all which is why they were the most hated race for so long. They were only behind Blood Elves as most hated race at one point which was in TBC. Funny how that changed to Belves being the most popular horde race by far. I remember on the realm I playd on and the forums there was so much Blood Elf hate. When people announced they were going Horde only because they could be a belf they'd get flamed so hard. My my how things change.

As for horde, I'd love to see Orcs changed. I love how their body shapes are and how they feel, but they need better facial animations and such. I love the new Garrosh model for example. Except I think his head could be bigger still. Trolls I want changed the most though. They're so ugly man. Is it any wonder why people despise them? They look goofy, have hunch backs and giant feet that stick out.

If Blizzard would let us have the option to be one of the other bulky trolls I'd be one in a heartbeat. And I don't mean one of the Gurubashi Berserker behemoths. Just another regular troll but normal!

Tauren could use an update too. Terrible fur quality, lol. Undead would be nice to see changed as well because torn plate armor looks so cheap.

[Deleted]

Cutscenes? Not a single cutscene in revamped SM or Scholo, or Deadmines or SFK for that matter. Not even revamped RFC has a cutscene.

There is in Deadmines, if you count the bit at the start of the final boss fight (which I was, since it's a part where you stand around doing nothing while waiting for the story to be told for the 10000th time). I was referring more to the current design philosophy though, ie. MoP instances with their linearity and lots of standing around doing nothing while waiting for the story to be told for the 10000th time.

[Resentful]

"The traditional player housing in MMOs isn't very interesting"

Says who? Hint: It's not your customers. Give us more crap to do, raiding and pvp isn't cutting it anymore.

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Racials need to go. I applied to a guild and was denied because I wasn't Orc. It's fucking stupid. I'm not race changing so I can get into Blood Legion wannabes.

If a 1% wipe ever happens of course it matters lol

[Balo]

The team considered changing racials in Patch 5.4, as a lot of the top guilds are switching to Horde. The impact it has on the game is limited to a handful of guilds in the world, so changing it for everyone because a handful of guilds feel that the Horde racials will make the difference in PvE ended up not being worth it.

Racials are really supposed to be a flavor thing rather than something to balance the game around, so it isn't likely that we will see changes in the near future.

This is absolutely bullshit that they are going to do nothing about it. The fact that horde had a 5% dps increase on almost half the bosses in ToT was utter crap. not to mention in every possible way horde racials are vastly better compared to alliance.

Best 2 handed weapons are always axes. horde get a bonus to that. horde have racials that make there pets do more damage which makes them the best hunters/locks and can do more damage with bows, orc racials for a mini trinket. trolls for a mini fucking bloodlust is OP as shit. resit to stuns, more health for tanks, AoE silence the list goes on.

you ask how this really matters it drives populations of servers. more and more people who arnt full retards and pve go horde which makes it very difficult to recruit decent people if your alliance. plus it also affects world pvp. its really hard to have world pvp if your entire server is ONE FACTION.

If you go to wpw progress which shows populations and look at the top 30 servers for US with the highest pop so 5k or greater 20 of them are horde. top 10 servers with 10k or more people 7/10 are horde. for EU 9/13 top pop server are horde.

[Shudder]

If a 1% wipe ever happens of course it matters lol

An attack power bonus is not going to make up 1%. My logs are higher than all of them so it's cute that I was denied when I would have been their top dps even without the racial.

[ProfessorTjc]

Humans and Orcs getting new models first makes sense, they are THE races of Azeroth!

Even though I agree with you I would like to see Gnomes and Tauren come out asap. Those 2 models look soo bad and need to be changed.

[Shurkuris]

How long ago was it that races models upgrades were rumored or confirmed? 1 year ago for confirmation and 2 for rumor? (Tell me if I'm wrong please!)

So it's gonna be 6 long years, by that time the iPhone will be playing Angry Birds in a voxel based CryEngine 6...

GW2 will have over 150+ updates...

A dozen "WoW Killers" have released, getting better each time, reviewing upon the mistakes of the past.

Come on...

[Jerakal]

Gotta love Blizz reasoning. "We noticed that top guilds were switching to horde, but we feel the racials are probably fine anyway."

Derp derp diddly doo.

I think all racials should be profession related for the passives, not something that's going to make any real difference in PvP or PvE. As for the actives, I know there's no easy answer, getting rid of them entirely would add to the overall feeling of homogenization that we've had in the game from cataclysm going forward. I think it's nice to have a few functional differences for the classes, but not when some are obviously overpowered.

Then again, are these guilds also operating under the idea of trying to squeeze 0.00001% more dps/healing/whatever by forcing their raid members into a certain race? Or is it a much more noticeable and obvious bit of overpower we're dealing with?

[Alayea]

Can you please make maelstrom weapon a resource or give enhancement a resource in general?
To devil's advocate, does every spec need a resource? Does having resources make specs feel too similar?

Not just no, but heck no. And if I had my way, the paladin class would go back to just using mana.

Racials need to go. I applied to a guild and was denied because I wasn't Orc. It's stupid. I'm not race changing so I can get into Blood Legion wannabes.

Being rejected by the guild probably did you a favor by keeping you from joining bad company. Racials don't need to go because the very small amount of bleeding-edge raid guilds are choosing to spend the $25 to race change. I like the racials having some use instead of dead flavor -- and I have a toon of every race, FYI -- to the point that it would feel very unfair to be penalized for the choices of others. Racials have been such as they are since the creation of WoW, and we don't need to lose yet another aspect of what make WoW

[Blur4stuff]

i'd rather racials be changed to something everyone has access to. you get an offensive, defensive, and utility slot for your character so you can pick which ones you want.

if racials were truly just for flavor then they would have zero impact on combat

[Alayea]

i'd rather racials be changed to something everyone has access to. you get an offensive, defensive, and utility slot for your character so you can pick which ones you want.

if racials were truly just for flavor then they would have zero impact on combat

How would you compensate for that partial loss of identity, then?

[Resentful]

An attack power bonus is not going to make up 1%. My logs are higher than all of them so it's cute that I was denied when I would have been their top dps even without the racial.

Well in most cases they did you a favor :P

[Balo]

How would you compensate for that partial loss of identity, then?

who gives a fuck about identity. Horde dont want them changed because they know they are vastly better. the biggest offender is troll with a mini blood lust and the fact that trolls can be EVERY class in the game other then palys. so you can almost have your entire raid do a personal bl/hero every 2-3 minutes which will make the difference between something dying or not.