Are you tired of human/orc architecture? What about garrison looks?

[BurnetRhoades]

That's the kind of thing CS students have been writing for years. They could literally hire a programming intern to make such a system for them. The first time I saw something like this show up on a demo reel was somewhere around 1994 or 1995, by one of our interns at the time. The higher the quality CS student the more AI. These sorts of asset population routines are used throughout game design though.

[GennGreymane]

I want a Gilnean mansion!

EDIT: So I've chosen the second option, I really really want to see some difference.

*sits in his manor* I agree

[Caerule]

Trying to find a picture of the mage tower for Horde but I can't seem to find it. If that picture is what it looks like in-game though, it's kinda...derpy. What tier is it? 1, 2 or 3?

The Alliance one looks like this iirc:
http://www.wowjuju.com/wp-content/up...e-Tower-v3.jpg

When I look at that I pretty much go, "Yep, I can see mages poring through books in it." The Horde one, even though that picture is kinda tiny, kind of looks like towers you'd find in AV or something.

There's no big pictures of the Horde mage tower yet. Just the map previews of the finished buildings. The one I showed you is tier 3. I'll show all three tiers:

So yeah.. Not exactly the scholarous mage study you'd think about when you imagine the majority of mages in the Horde...

[BarosanuNr1]

There's no big pictures of the Horde mage tower yet. Just the map previews of the finished buildings. The one I showed you is tier 3. I'll show all three tiers: [...]

That tier1 building somewhat resembles the spirit lodge from War3, I think (hard to tell from that small picture).

[Kaleredar]

That's the kind of thing CS students have been writing for years. They could literally hire a programming intern to make such a system for them. The first time I saw something like this show up on a demo reel was somewhere around 1994 or 1995, by one of our interns at the time. The higher the quality CS student the more AI. These sorts of asset population routines are used throughout game design though.

Writing the programming is one thing; making the art assets is another. And even then, procedural generation tends to look pretty... well, like it was programmed procedurally by a computer.

[Conspicuous Cultist]

Racial themed garrisons is cosmetic so it'll probably be on the store.

[Fullmetal89]

I would love to have Blood Elf architecture in my Garrison. I absolutely loathe the caveman, Fred Flintstones architecture of the orcs.

[Azutael]

Yes I am tired of the generic Orc and Human architecture, at least it has improved over time.
But with great additions and existing architecture like the new Forsaken, Gilnean, Night Elf, Bloodelf etc it is a shame to not use those more often.

Sure there's a lot of work to be done to make all the garrison buildings in the different variations, but it would definitely be worth it. And I bet we will see it sooner or later, just not at launch or soon after.

[Kaleredar]

Yes I am tired of the generic Orc and Human architecture, at least it has improved over time.
But with great additions and existing architecture like the new Forsaken, Gilnean, Night Elf, Bloodelf etc it is a shame to not use those more often.

Sure there's a lot of work to be done to make all the garrison buildings in the different variations, but it would definitely be worth it. And I bet we will see it sooner or later, just not at launch or soon after.

800+ building models? (and that's if you count the human/orc ones as done, and assume the walls would be the same as they are now and assume the pandaren theme is shared between Alliance/horde.) Like I said, that's likely more than are added over the course of an expansion, if not several expansions. It's not a factor of "well if we do one a week on our off-time, it'll be done halfway through WoD..." No, that'd take several years.

[Deleted]

Well the Garrison consists of 144 buildings (both factions) where most of them are developed from the ground. It would take them a massive amount of time to build a garrison per race. While most races do have their unique architecture a majority of the buildings presented in the garrison shouldn’t be available or in some cases are looking horrible.

While it would be possible to assign each building type to a certain race I think it would look stupid. Most racial architectures differ quite a lot from each other their looks would clash and it wouldn’t look like a matching military base IMO.

It would be sweet to have a race specific garrison, but I’d rather not want them to put all their development into garrisons. And racial remarks at the buildings is enough for me to keep the flair of a military base and remember there are more than humans and orcs.

However it bothers me a bit that the Alliance buildings are Human and not Draenei. But that’s dependant on the presentation – and it only bugs me cause of logic: there should be more Draenei builders than human ones.

[Feali]

As someone who mainly plays Blood Elves, Pandaren or Undead I hate seeing all these Orc structures!

[Gurluas]

As a Blood elf player, I want a beautiful marble base, not dirty wooden spiked mud houses.

[Deleted]

I am one of the minority that actually likes the "black rock and steel" look of wrath-cata-mop orc building style.

But I think that racial garrison would be MUCH better.

Ok, warcraft started with orcs vs humans, but during Warcraft 3 it evolved into something more. After Varian return (that event imho was when Warcraft "jumped the shark"), the franchise just de-evolved, returning in "good human vs bad orcs" (ignoring the wounderful redemption arc for the orc race and the Horde as a whole during Warcraft 3).

So, yes for racial garrisons and more varied architeture.

[BurnetRhoades]

800+ building models? (and that's if you count the human/orc ones as done, and assume the walls would be the same as they are now and assume the pandaren theme is shared between Alliance/horde.) Like I said, that's likely more than are added over the course of an expansion, if not several expansions. It's not a factor of "well if we do one a week on our off-time, it'll be done halfway through WoD..." No, that'd take several years.

It wouldn't have to work that way. This is the sort of thing that can be proceduralized so that these are built up from smaller, simpler assets and motifs that get repeated anyway. What is any of these races can be broken down into components. CS students studying both artificial intelligence and computer imagery have been making "city generators" for decades. Procedural world building is built into a lot of commercial game engines. It's not an uncommon concept in game design.

Blizzard isn't a couple guys. They have the resources to hire the best and brightest in the business and as many as they need. But maybe they do still do things "the hard way" instead of the smart way and that's why so much stuff gets scrapped. Regardless, what they need is a project manager or team lead that understands proceduralism and how it scales. Because then you could get not only racial-based garrisons but the possibility of no two garrisons quite exactly the same even if you play two toons of the same race.

[okteej]

I mean we all know that orc and human umbrella architecture is an easy cop-out by Blizzard essentially designed so that we can't really argue with it. It's all about a "unified Alliance/Horde" and sure it may seem strange for a night elf to be associated with any Alliance architecture aside from their own + humans, but I do think we should have the choice to build a little Gnomeragon for our elves if we so choose.

[BurnetRhoades]

These are personal developments up to the individual to build and maintain and expand. If they were "unified" then it would make more sense to be assigned a space from a larger Horde/Alliance encampment, like a barrack or apartment, etc. That's not what these are. If these things represent your personal settlement on a virtualized plot of land somewhere then it only makes sense that a toon would do his racial architecture, to feel more at home in an alien place.

[Kaleredar]

It wouldn't have to work that way. This is the sort of thing that can be proceduralized so that these are built up from smaller, simpler assets and motifs that get repeated anyway. What is any of these races can be broken down into components. CS students studying both artificial intelligence and computer imagery have been making "city generators" for decades. Procedural world building is built into a lot of commercial game engines. It's not an uncommon concept in game design.

Blizzard isn't a couple guys. They have the resources to hire the best and brightest in the business and as many as they need. But maybe they do still do things "the hard way" instead of the smart way and that's why so much stuff gets scrapped. Regardless, what they need is a project manager or team lead that understands proceduralism and how it scales. Because then you could get not only racial-based garrisons but the possibility of no two garrisons quite exactly the same even if you play two toons of the same race.

Making a city procedurally, whether that means procedurally placing already-made buildings, or procedurally generating buildings based on pre-made art assets, still requires you to MAKE the actual art assets, i.e, what constituent parts will suit the potential criteria for placement on the building in the procedural generation program. The computer doesn't "whip them out of thin air" and suddenly you have a building. And you're still talking about 11 different races to make all the various doorways, windows, posts, rooves, stairways, bookcases, and all the other little minutiae you'd need to make to adequately populate the procedural generation list.

[Okacz]

Making a city procedurally, whether that means procedurally placing already-made buildings, or procedurally generating buildings based on pre-made art assets, still requires you to MAKE the actual art assets, i.e, what constituent parts will suit the potential criteria for placement on the building in the procedural generation program. The computer doesn't "whip them out of thin air" and suddenly you have a building. And you're still talking about 11 different races to make all the various doorways, windows, posts, rooves, stairways, bookcases, and all the other little minutiae you'd need to make to adequately populate the procedural generation list.

Thats perfectly logical and understandable. My question is: why have Garrisions, and why promote this feature so much?

When it was announced, they hype was understandably high. Not player housing, but something better! Building your own city whenever you feel like, wherever you feel like. Customize it with your chosen NPCs, each named by you. Select your additional features, choose between different buildings, choose their look. Pretty sweet, nearly a Warcraft III base in a MMO game.

Now, it's pretty much a, well, a slowly evolving quest hub "with a twist". You can't customize anything (which was a selling point of garrisons), you can't choose anything and everything goes down a linear leveling path. Yes, I get that making more option is "hard", but without them garrisons are slowly becoming the new Path of the Titans. A awesome and cool feature that was being slowly but steadily put to side by developers, just to be replaced by Glyph System - a boring excuse of a once hyped feature.

[BurnetRhoades]

Making a city procedurally, whether that means procedurally placing already-made buildings, or procedurally generating buildings based on pre-made art assets, still requires you to MAKE the actual art assets, i.e, what constituent parts will suit the potential criteria for placement on the building in the procedural generation program. The computer doesn't "whip them out of thin air" and suddenly you have a building. And you're still talking about 11 different races to make all the various doorways, windows, posts, rooves, stairways, bookcases, and all the other little minutiae you'd need to make to adequately populate the procedural generation list.

Wow. It's a good thing they have more than a couple guys in their art department and asset teams. ROFL

The components are all smaller bits, a lot of which already exist in game. In fact I'm betting a lot of them are already individual assets used to adorn what's already been built, all of it with repeating motifs, repeating designs and repeating layouts. They don't hand-craft every face and every structure of every building in game from scratch. They already very likely have a rich set of assets. That's why you see so much repetition throughout the game. That's how this stuff works.

This would have been proposed, outlined and the system designed during the initial phases of the patch and the very idea of Garrisons and these items feathered right into all the new assets being made. As is they beg the question why have them at all, with all the things they aren't and can't do, just have another phased quest hub somewhere that doesn't imply or involve player "ownership" in any way.

[Acelius]

It is pretty dumb for all races to use the same architecture (faction wise ofc). Racial garrisons should have been there from the beginning.