New Character Model Previews, Blue Tweets, Dev Interview Sunday

Double Exp and Double Goblin Buffs, Clarsen's Monk Guide, DH BiS Guide

BlizzCon 2014 America Regionals Deck Lists

Skin Spotlight: Master Tyrande, Town Hall: Heroes #34 - The Return of the Alpha

Hazzikostas & Holinka Interview Recap
The interview with ConvertToRaid mostly recapped things that have already been talked about, but the highlights are below:

  • The Blizzcon Live Raid is Method vs Midwinter in Heroic Highmaul.
  • The Simcraft DPS rankings are currently not accurate. (WatcherDev)
  • Warlords boss fights try to integrate the environment more, similar to the Siegecrafter fight in Siege of Orgrimmar.
  • Only the ring legendary is planned right now. Earning legendary items over the course of the expansion is the plan going forward.
  • Later patches may increase the rate at which alts can complete the legendary quest line, as long as one character has already done it.
  • The team is continuing to try and make arenas easier to watch.
  • Updating Moonkin and other shapeshifted player models is still on the list.
  • The Warlords world bosses won't be hard like the early version of Oondasta.

Originally Posted by Watcher
Just chiming in since I know my remark will be controversial. SimCraft itself is a very cool utility, and can definitely be helpful for better understanding and modeling rotations and trying to answer questions about a spec itself, such as "How much of a difference does my 2pc bonus make?" or "What if you tried a different rotation that prioritized X over Y?"

Where it breaks down, is when you try to compare across different classes/specs, which are using different modules. Some are better than others, but they're also making different assumptions along the way. I realize that players really want to understand where their spec falls in the overall rankings, and that in the absence of an up-to-date 6.0 raidbots or equivalent, a visual chart like the SimCraft output looks tremendously appealing. But it really isn't an accurate reflection of the current state of overall spec balance.

And again, this isn't to say that balance is perfect. It isn't. But I'd avoid focusing on these particular numbers.

Accuracy varies a lot from module to module. In general, most of the ones I've looked at are decent about answering questions within a given spec (stat weights, set bonus value, rotation variations, etc., like I said above), which is what the tool was originally (IIRC) designed for. In terms of being an accurate picture of best vs. worst... well... let's take a look at the SimCraft stack rank from a month before 5.4 went live, which I found with some quick Googling: http://8pic.ir/images/38469619794925350688.png According to that, I guess every warlock should've rerolled before Siege of Orgrimmar, because they were apparently terrible, huh?

Warlords of Draenor - New Character Models
We are finishing up our new character model previews with Gnome, Night Elf, Tauren, Troll, and Draenei. We looked at the other races yesterday. Blood Elves are coming in a future patch.

Gnome Male







Gnome Female
The happy Gnome Female from Blizzcon is gone now.







Night Elf Male







Night Elf Female







Tauren Male







Tauren Female







Troll Male







Troll Female





Draenei Male







Draenei Female







Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
was giving prismatic crystal a GCD intended?
Yes, and its duration increased to compensate (and then some). (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Are windwalker monks really supposed to have 30+ keybinds in warlords? I just counted the skills and the prunning did nothing to us
They had the lowest number of active buttons in the game. (holinka)

PvE
Are the normal 5-mans in the beta supposed to be incredibly difficult to do in heroic raid gear, or is it just me?
Your gear is being scaled to the bare minimum for the zone. Which dungeon(s) did you find to be too challenging? (WatcherDev)

Are the insanely long loot tables for dungeon bosses intended ?
Personal loot in dungeons means every boss needs to have at least something for every spec. (WatcherDev)

PvP
Why don't you guys make a PvP talent tree to a whole different one from PvE separated, so they don't interfere for more balance?
We already do so many thing to tune the game separately. A second talent tree sounds like a complexity nightmare. (holinka)

Reputation / Questing
Does WoD have hidden/alternative quests that reveal themselves after having a convo between an npc?
Quests are there to guide you, so we don't generally hide them. WoD has more "discover-able" content than any expac, though. (_DonAdams)

Does WoD give players choices that alter (at least slightly) the story while questing? Makes people pay attention to the story.
The building you choose to construct at your garrison outpost in each zone can lead to different quests in some cases. (_DonAdams)

Do WoD have optional (or interactions) that are morally driven rather than reward driven? (Saving a person in a fire for nothing)
We tend to create interactions that have a mechanical purpose (objective credit, buff) or add flavor. (_DonAdams)
If you save a person from a fire, we feel like we should reward you for that, in addition to you feeling morally good about it. (_DonAdams)

Is there any open-world non-raid reason to group in WoD? Do you think there should be? Is that supported gameplay?
We have some group quests while leveling up, and several of the max-level outdoor areas are group content. (WatcherDev)

In Diablo 2 there are random shrines that spawn to add flavor to the gameplay. I always wondered why WoW doesn't have this...
Timeless Isle had these! (Muffinus)
Will we see any random shrines like these in Warlords?
There are tons of useful buff items scattered around Draenor/endgame POIs, not shrines this round, different/new stuff (Muffinus)

Garrisons
Is the barn supposed to make cooking obsolete or is this an oversight? Garrisons shouldn't be more important than the characters.
Your shipments are limited, and not everyone will have the barn, how many feasts does your raid need? (Muffinus)

Any chance we can Have prisoners of enemy factions in our garrison? i'd love to have gnome slaves and goblin overseers please
This was going to be a feature of the barracks jail at one point, maybe we'll revisit it in the future with some fun questgivers (Muffinus)

some of us would rather have a "collect them all" than "research which follower comes from where in advance"
You can see them in your follower list (uncollected followers show up as grey but searchable), but yes that is a concern. (Muffinus)

What if we want to collect those other followers though!
Considering ways to allow you to gain them in the future. (Muffinus)

Hazzikostas & Holinka Live Sunday, 10/12
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
This Sunday, October 12 at 9:00 a.m. PDT, lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas and senior game designer Brian Holinka will be joining the Convert to Raid show panel live to discuss all things Warlords of Draenor. You can tune in via Convert to Raid's website or on GamebreakerTV's Twitch channel. My colleagues and I will be hanging out in Twitch chat during the show to mingle with you all too.

We'd love to have you tune in!

After live airing, rebroadcasts of the show will be available in MP3 and VOD formats at converttoraid.com.
This article was originally published in forum thread: New Character Model Previews, Blue Tweets, Dev Interview Sunday started by chaud View original post
Published on 2014-10-12 09:23 AM
145 Comments
Comments 145 Comments
  1. chaud's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Osoroshii View Post
    Uh, did they remove the dreadlocks/braids for Troll males? I didn't see them in the hairstyle images and that's the only style I use for my two Trolls.
    We only included the hairstyles available at character creation. If you used one of the additional ones at the barber shop, that is likely why it is missing.
  1. Osoroshii's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chaud View Post
    We only included the hairstyles available at character creation. If you used one of the additional ones at the barber shop, that is likely why it is missing.
    Oh, okay. I was going to be pissed if Blizzard removed my favorite hairstyle. Thanks for clearing that up!
  1. Somarlane's Avatar
    Void Storage Size Increase - Another Void Storage tab has been added. Try not to fill it up in a week.
    Pffft. I'll fill it up on the first day... and not just on my main character.

    please send help D:
  1. lethlora's Avatar
    female humans are some kind of fucked up uncanny kiera knightley. is blizzard's art team not aware that women generally have round cheeks? you know, one of the primary features of estrogen?

    a lot of the female faces look absolutely nothing like the original. it's really obvious they do not understand what made certain faces look the way they do--but i guess that's what happens when you have an all-male art team! hurp. the hetero male "here's my personal standards for beauty" is impossible to get past, sorry.

    also, who configured the male drae's idle pose? seriously. those arms are fucked up; male night elf as well, to a lesser extent. why are their arms locked so tight? the 3/4ths angle of the drae male looks like a warner brothers "scared to death" animation. i'm expecting the next frames involve the color draining out of his body, followed by falling over stiff as a board.

    these are so bad, ahh!! i feel bad they put so much time and effort into them. guess there's always 14 if you want a not horrendous game
  1. Nefastus's Avatar
    Was thinking about reactivating my account but after seeing how goofy the undeads became I gave up the idea. Besides some faces having NOTHING TO DO with the current ones there is also the weird face expressions they put. They tried too hard and in the end it looks like a weird pixar/disney character, specially when doing an emote.

    BTW about the the male undead faces... Some are completely diferent from the old ones. The "soulblighter" look alike face now looks like he had poop spread over his face. Come on.

    In short both my male and female undeads would end up totally diferent from what they used to be. Pure nonsense.
Page 8 of 8 FirstFirst ...
6
7
8

Site Navigation

Social Media

Services

My Account

Support

Advertise

Resources

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

Our Communities

© 2023 Magic Find, Inc. All rights reserved.