They haven't finished character models but they spend time making new mounts?

[KungFuFanta]

How many mounts does the game have now, 300? 400?

Are we in that big of a penury of mounts at the moment with the women and children of Azeroth crying over lack of mount choices to ride on?

They keep saying ressources are limited for this and limited for that and yade lade dah but then they keep bloating features which have practically no demand for at the moment.

Christ there's practically a mount for every day of the year to ride on.

[Deleted]

How do you know so much about development time?

For all anyone knows, these mounts were done a while ago, by a seperate part of the team. Or now, by a seperate part of the team.

Speculate, sure, but don't just assume the two things are mutually exclusive.

[schwarzkopf]

You do realise that a mount probably requires one artist a couple of weeks to do?

Do you also realise that redesigning the character models is probably an army of artists, programmers and designers a year to do ?

[Jimson]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...aracter-models

[ACES]

There need to be new mounts consistently added to give people motivation to do things.

And if you're talking about the Stormcrow, that was in the game files a long time ago, it just looks like they added a bit to it. And I'll also bet that the character model people are on a separate team right now than the people who do mount design.

[Sansnom]

How many mounts does the game have now, 300? 400?

Are we in that big of a penury of mounts at the moment with the women and children of Azeroth crying over lack of mount choices to ride on?

They keep saying ressources are limited for this and limited for that and yade lade dah but then they keep bloating features which have practically no demand for at the moment.

Christ there's practically a mount for every day of the year to ride on.

To be fair, they need to ensure the new character models does not break anything. Your character model will be wearing gear so they need to ensure there are no problems in this regard which would partly explain why it takes longer to do. There are also many new animations. If you have a look at some of the examples they have released, you should see the new facial expression the new models will have.

Mounts on the other hand are just a simple model on its own.

[daem]

I swear it's like some people don't know how game development works...
You realize there is more than one 3D artist/animator/programmer, right? These are all promotional and expected now; an expac with new mounts is mandatory, as is a new mount/pet for a collector's edition of the game. Are you telling me you didn't expect this? Or is it just shock because one was recently revealed on the store when you were hoping for a character update? Look, I'm as excited as the next guy about seeing what my potential future characters will appear like in-game, but honestly, take a step back and realize that they are going to be putting WAY more time and emphasis on perfecting people's 9-10 year old characters to avoid a shitstorm, while the mounts will be an easy topping that people want anyway, and they have the manpower to do both at once.

[Santti]

You are assuming that the character models don't already have enough developers doing them. There is a point when adding more developers will only slow the work down. It's possible this mount was done by people that have little to do with the new character models.

[Barkloud]

Considering the next expansion is going to dramatically restrict flying. Blizz is probably trying to sell as many as possible seeing how they will be mostly useless in the next expansion

[Tonath]

Your assuming things when you probably have no clue how anything works in development

[ComputerNerd]

Player models have a variety of emotes, large numbers of animations for combat/movement/casting/interaction etc, large numbers of sounds, customisation options, the need to wear and handle varying weapons and armor.
Mounts have limited animations, very few sounds, have no customisation, only need to take into account the how each gender of each race will sit, only have "armor" as part of the model and is non-changeable.

There is a HUGE difference in the requirements.
Mounts have no need to try and replicate the "feeling" of what preceded it.
Blizzard are trying to do that with the new models, whether you agree with the results or not.

[Mawnix]

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what their actual schedule is.

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what resources are going where.

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what teams are doing what nor how they work..

Explain to me how any of what you said is logical?

Inb4 "You're wrong, I'm right, but I have no concrete argument as to why so I'm simply going to say you're wrong".

Just saying: stop assuming crap with them. None of us know how they actually operate. You're poisoning your own mind by letting it get creative on more ways to "dislike" them.

[Tonath]

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what their actual schedule is.

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what resources are going where.

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what teams are doing what nor how they work..

Explain to me how any of what you said is logical?

Inb4 "You're wrong, I'm right, but I have no concrete argument as to why so I'm simply going to say you're wrong".

Just saying: stop assuming crap with them. None of us know how they actually operate. You're poisoning your own mind by letting it get creative on more ways to "dislike" them.

This This This...Couldn't have said it better

[Manataurus]

"Hey guys I know we want to release a new expansion but put I'm gonna need ou to put EVERYTHING on hold until we get these character models done. Forget about fleshing out WoD with new mounts and mobs and quests. Forget about creating new items and gear and revamping the stat system. Those character models are the most important thing we need to do."

Maybe you should STFU about the mounts takin away from the character models. It's not like once they're done with them, WoD will be ready to be released. There's still literally THOUSANDS of things that need to be worked on to make the new expansion a good one and character models, while important, aren't the only thing that needs work.

[Mirishka]

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what their actual schedule is.

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what resources are going where.

We continue to judge Blizzard when we have no idea what teams are doing what nor how they work..

Explain to me how any of what you said is logical?

Inb4 "You're wrong, I'm right, but I have no concrete argument as to why so I'm simply going to say you're wrong".

Just saying: stop assuming crap with them. None of us know how they actually operate. You're poisoning your own mind by letting it get creative on more ways to "dislike" them.

Well said. Couldn't have put it better.

[Reinaerd]

How many mounts does the game have now, 300? 400?

Are we in that big of a penury of mounts at the moment with the women and children of Azeroth crying over lack of mount choices to ride on?

They keep saying ressources are limited for this and limited for that and yade lade dah but then they keep bloating features which have practically no demand for at the moment.

Christ there's practically a mount for every day of the year to ride on.

T'is good to see there are still people valiantly putting the "Ass" in assumption.


Infracted, please post constructively.

[Avengerx]

"Hey guys I know we want to release a new expansion but put I'm gonna need ou to put EVERYTHING on hold until we get these character models done. Forget about fleshing out WoD with new mounts and mobs and quests. Forget about creating new items and gear and revamping the stat system. Those character models are the most important thing we need to do."

Maybe you should STFU about the mounts takin away from the character models. It's not like once they're done with them, WoD will be ready to be released. There's still literally THOUSANDS of things that need to be worked on to make the new expansion a good one and character models, while important, aren't the only thing that needs work.

Don't forget new tabards. Those have priority above everything else.

[StrayFox]

1. Character models are what you are looking at 100% of the time, they require way more time and effort to perfect not including the huge amount of animations they have to create.

2. You have no clue how it works, a mount is one thing that will probably have up to 10 separate animations and probably doesn't have much detail in it. Compared to the 100s of animations on the character models, so the time to create either one is drastically different.

and 3. Some things Blizzard makes are important to them, if you like it or not. A new mount for CE is a must... its tradition, a new mount for the store is just a business trying to make money. At least they aren't forcing you to buy the new character models. (Unless you count your monthly fee as "buying" content.)

[Bulwarked]

As someone who studied 3D animation and graduated this year let me shed a little light on the differences between mounts and character models. Modelling, rigging and animating a character model wouldn't take a whole lot longer than a mount if there wasn't thousands of armor and weapon models along with spells effects that attached to the new model and if it didn't have a full featured face. You're going to have to assign a team to make sure that the transition to an updated model of an already existing model is seamless without any random artifacts or awkward collision. With a mount you just have to make sure a dozen (or more, I haven't played WoW in like a year) or so models sit and move properly with it.

Also there's that whole thing that people grow attached to what their character looks like and you have to tight rope across a very fine line without pissing off a lot of people.

edit: Here's a very fast example of two different character models I have on hand and how many more controls even a basic face has versus no face.

[Eroginous]

How many mounts does the game have now, 300? 400?

Are we in that big of a penury of mounts at the moment with the women and children of Azeroth crying over lack of mount choices to ride on?

They keep saying ressources are limited for this and limited for that and yade lade dah but then they keep bloating features which have practically no demand for at the moment.

Christ there's practically a mount for every day of the year to ride on.

I just want to preface this post by stating I firmly believe character models should have been done a long time ago (preferably for MoP release) and there is very little excuse for them not to have been done already. I don't think Blizzard uses development resources very well for most of Wow's development cycles, there are far too many things left that need to be fixed or updated.

Instead, they spend a bunch of time making things that are disposable and will only be utilized by players for 3-6 months.

With that said, making playable character models requires the following teams:

-modelers
-skinners
-riggers
-animators
-coders

Some of these teams might overlap with their skillsets. For instance, someone might be good at modeling, rigging, and animating, and be able to handle all three tasks. However, Blizzard has a huge team of people who handle these tasks, and the development time for a mount is pretty small compared to the development time for playable character models.

One mount model, with one color scheme, one rigging, one set of animations, and one set of code is significantly different than character race (requiring male/female models), with two dozen different facial skins, two dozen different hair/facial features, and dozens of different animations. Not to mention, they have to code gear to fit the new models (which requires code for both old and new gear), as well as make sure everything looks/feels good enough for players to enjoy.

It's not an easy task and I don't envy their jobs. However, they should have anticipated the need to do it during Cataclysm while they were developing content for MoP and updated all the character races when they released a brand new character design for Pandaren.