New Character Models, a strategic decision?

[Hellspawn]

With the the warcraft movie finally in production (or somewhat still pre production), we finally get new character models too. Its an interesting collision, they probably needed a good reason for risking old players quite wow because they no more feel nostalgic about their characters. So with a successful Movie there is a good chance to get new player into World of Warcraft, but having the game look dated would be a problem then. So the gains of new models maybe finally overshadow its risk.

[Hyve]

Has the community seriously gotten to the point where they believe anything Blizzard does, is because of some sinister motive?

Maybe they updated the models because we've been asking for them, and they had the resource and time to do them?

[Hellspawn]

Has the community seriously gotten to the point where they believe anything Blizzard does, is because of some sinister motive?

Maybe they updated the models because we've been asking for them, and they had the resource and time to do them?

How is this a sinister decision?

[Chonar]

There is nothing sinister going on here.


But seriously though. Blizzard is a business. 99% of these sorts of decisions will be strategic ones.
When you're a multi-million dollar company you don't make decisions willy-nilly.

[Soulwind]

Thousands of players asking for them and new players getting a very bad first impression of the game are enough reasons to update them.

While Blizzard is a company, those who work there aren't robots, they have their own opinion about the games they make and how they want them to evolve. I'm sure those who work at the art team were thinking about it for a long time, too.

[PepperjackJig]

Here's how that would work:

Random guy/girl who knows nothing of The warcraft franchise sees a trailer for The movie, Thinks it's cool, sees it, gets blown away by the cgi and story, Decides to look up stuff on Warcraft, Finds WoW, starts playing.. Realizes that it looks nothing like the movie and is disappointed and stops playing.

[Cosmic Janitor]

But seriously though. Blizzard is a business. 99% of these sorts of decisions will be strategic ones.
When you're a multi-million dollar company you don't make decisions willy-nilly.

They are a multi-billion dollar company (million doesn't take much tbh), for all intents and purposes they are evil incarnate.

[Chonar]

They are a multi-billion dollar company (million doesn't take much tbh), for all intents and purposes they are evil incarnate.

I could say multi-dollar company and still be technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!
But yeah.
And nonsense. Entertainment companies take your money and give you entertainment. Nothing evil about that.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I could say multi-dollar company and still be technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!
But yeah.
And nonsense. Entertainment companies take your money and give you entertainment. Nothing evil about that.

Multi-million dollar companies are run willy-nilly though, believe me they are. The multi-billion ones are run by people like kotik. :P

[TJ]

I think a lot of people that want to start an MMO are instantly dismissing WoW because it looks so old, at least with better looking models it looks more modern. Still dated, but at least more modern.

[zombiesnakes]

Has the community seriously gotten to the point where they believe anything Blizzard does, is because of some sinister motive?

Maybe they updated the models because we've been asking for them, and they had the resource and time to do them?

I seriously think we are. Aside from posts like this, I'm concerned at other posts that don't understand concepts like the new gear, and seeing people unable to fathom a way for blizz to make that work just startles me. I no longer feel like mmoc is frequented by ragenerds but instead by people lacking basic imagination.

[MoanaLisa]

New character models have less to do with the movie--well, nothing to do with the movie since the work on them and the commitment to make the time to work on them predates the go signal for the movie by quite a bit. If you're making strategic decisions based on whether or not your movie project that couldn't find a director for several years and was in turnaround for the same amount of time is going to come out at some specific time....well, you see the problem.

If you want a good reason, you've been given many. It's been something that people have been wanting for years and is long overdue. If you still need to have sinister conspiracy theories I even have one of those for you that may have some validity. It will take years to clean up the game and modernize the really old stuff to make it attractive to new players should they decide to ever pull the trigger on F2P or more likely eventually make the stuff in the BattleChest B2P. I know, I know: they've said they'll never go F2P. Well, maybe. But it doesn't hurt to be ready in case minds get changed at some future point as all of this takes a lot of time.

So look around you and think about the stuff that Blizzard is adding like store functionality, cleaning up vanilla models and the like in that frame. You might find it makes sense. Especially if the BattleChest goes to B2P with no subscription required, all of this stuff like stores and new character models will be quite important. Fixing the models is good business in any case.

[Deleted]

Blizzard must hire you!!!

So smart
much sly
very mezzen
wow
much genius
much projetc
so mony
very A+ material
wow

...

[Octavius]

Yes, we need somthing newer than 2004 models

[Delthoric]

There is nothing sinister going on here.

Anytime I hear the word 'Sinister', that's the first thing my mind races to. XD Thanks for that!

I can't imagine any upcoming game releases will have anything to do with the movie. I'm fairly convinced the movie is a loooooong ways off.

[Chonar]

Anytime I hear the word 'Sinister', that's the first thing my mind races to. XD Thanks for that!

Its totally how he pronounced it.

MISSterrrr... Sinisterrrrr