Guild Contest Status
All winners for the Cataclysm Beta -- Guild Contest have been selected and should be contacted via email soon. (
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In-Game Footage as Cinematics
Sort of taking it off subject to to start with, but it's inevitable that eventually computer graphics will reach the point where there's no such thing as pre-rendered cinematics. But we've all been hearing that for a while, and while we are getting closer, we're definitely not there yet.
We don't think we are. We don't pretend we are, and our in-house cinematics department is bigger than ever working on cinematics that are better than ever.
Regarding World of Warcraft - Each World of Warcraft release, including the initial and subsequent expansions, has had a single cinematic. It's what plays when you first launch the game. This intro-cinematic approach has been done primarily because, as an MMO, pulling players out of a multiplayer environment where anything could be going on at the time they hit the point where the cinematic could play is risky. Say you're PvP flagged and a cinematic starts to play. Or you happen to be having a very heated discussion in guild chat, etc. etc. It's not an ideal play space to be popping up full screen videos. The story was intended to play out within the game world itself through text, voice, and effects.
With Wrathgrate we tried something new. Using our in-house video team which had been making many of the machinima trailers for us (most of which can be found here
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/movies.html) for promotional use, as well as commercials, the South Park episode, on and on, instead used it as a way to show events to the player in a more cinematic approach. We had come a long way and with new technology a lot of the previous concerns were either completely squashed or had working solutions to remove a lot of the potential aggravation caused by interrupting the game.
The response was extremely positive. People really enjoyed it, and so it was used again as a way to give Arthas a more epic and cinematic end. Certainly befitting of a King. (Kael and Illy should have been so lucky...)
So, those are not pre-rendered cinematics, they're clearly using in-game assets, we don't claim otherwise. However, we do claim that they are completely kick ass and know that most people enjoy what they add to the game. Key word 'add', because they are truly additions which took nothing away from the intro cinematic each release has had.
The Wrathgate and Fall of the Lich King allowed us to really take it up a notch and deliver something spactacular.
Now, on to the subject of StarCraft II - In our opinion it also has amazing cinematics. The in-engine story telling in StarCraft II, which you say has detracted from the cinematics, is comparative to this -
http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/t...k/855f805c.jpg from the original StarCraft.
We think we've come a long way.
Bottom line, we still have an incredibly talented cinematics team and we'll continue to produce the amazing pre-rendered cinematics you've come to know and love. (
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Paladin (
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Retribution Rotation
The rotation won't be 121212 under any circumstances.
At the very basic level you could call it 1112111311121113 but almost every class boils down to something similar if you ignore all of the other talents and abilities. What will keep Ret from falling into a rotation that stable are:
1) Having to manage other attacks. Judgement isn't the kind of button you eventually get around to using.
2) Getting Holy Power coming in at somewhat unpredictable (but not completely random) intervals.
3) Dealing with procs like Art of War.
Seals do way too much damage on live and in Cataclysm. We haven't worried about that damage yet because we're still working out a basic rotation that feels good. We also are mindful that deemphasizing white attacks of any kind risks making haste less attractive. (
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