August 29 Hotfixes, Twitter Q&A, Blue Posts, Art Gallery Update

[Aery]

I don't understand how this is a relevant or appropriate reply to what I've posted. My opinion is no more irrelevant than yours and you and I contribute to the playerbase. I would say this makes our opinions directly important. Don't be fooled by the man behind the curtain - your vote does count if you give it that power.

Furthermore, I am not discussing remodeling. I am discussing reskinning. I believe, and this is a guess and I cannot back up this claim with anything empirical, that most people who speak of wanting remodeling really mean reskinning. The two issues get directly intertwined because of the wording blue posters use and because of the lack of knowledge of the way 3D art works.

I gave examples detailing my opinion and what I referred to included the feral reskins that continue to use the same old model as ever. Vibrant, modern-looking skins on older models with the same 3 point joint system in the arms, yet an increased poly count that makes the fur around elbows look smooth - not jagged and boxy like the tokens on a boomkin's mantle.

It's not that simple with character models, feral cats and flight form druids don't display armor or sit on mounts, i will agree though that the moonkin form could do for a reskin, regardless of the 'but players are attached to them' stance.

[Maleagant]

Depending on how successful Star Wars The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 will be is how soon you can expect updated player models.Until then Blizzard is going to milk as much money as they can from Warcraft players by putting out more recycled content,store mounts,companions and gimmicks like transmogrification.

[Rolly]

"It's something we'd love to do, but the fact is the art team has finite resources. " The citing of expense as an excuse by Blizzard is pathetic beyond words and not the first time they pulled this lie. This is a corporation that pulls in hundreds of millions if not billions a year. The Activision-Blizzard financials not more that 2 years ago had income over 1 billion dollars and they couldn't find resources for their most successful franchise? I call extreme bullshit, quit fucking insulting the intelligence of your playerbase Blizzard.

[faerjan]

"It's something we'd love to do, but the fact is the art team has finite resources. " The citing of expense as an excuse by Blizzard is pathetic beyond words and not the first time they pulled this lie. This is a corporation that pulls in hundreds of millions if not billions a year. The Activision-Blizzard financials not more that 2 years ago had income over 1 billion dollars and they couldn't find resources for their most successful franchise? I call extreme bullshit, quit fucking insulting the intelligence of your playerbase Blizzard.

Please read this. The idea that taking in millions of dollars somehow equates to being able to produce content faster only works up to a certain level. At that point, it actually turns into a slower process, the more artists/engineers/developers are added. Unfortunately, the idea that they can just throw more bodies at a problem gets parroted here far too often.

[Freese]

"It's something we'd love to do, but the fact is the art team has finite resources. " The citing of expense as an excuse by Blizzard is pathetic beyond words and not the first time they pulled this lie. This is a corporation that pulls in hundreds of millions if not billions a year. The Activision-Blizzard financials not more that 2 years ago had income over 1 billion dollars and they couldn't find resources for their most successful franchise? I call extreme bullshit, quit fucking insulting the intelligence of your playerbase Blizzard.

I think you actually insult your own intelligence with a comment like this. Throwing manpower and money at something doesn't always fix problems.

[Oboloz]

Lol at people QQing over Northrend XP being reduced.It needs it, don't bs me with the whole "It takes only one day!" No, maybe if you no life it for 24 hours straight with cups of ramen and mountain dew stains on your shirt.Northrend is boring and outdated.

[Cows For Life]

Lol at people QQing over Northrend XP being reduced.It needs it, don't bs me with the whole "It takes only one day!" No, maybe if you no life it for 24 hours straight with cups of ramen and mountain dew stains on your shirt.Northrend is boring and outdated.

Maybe it's just me but I don't hit Northrend until 70 and with just Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and then maybe Grizzly Hills, I'd be pretty close to 80 if not there already (plus dungeon quests for the rewards and XP).

Going to the next expansion at x8 seems to be counter productive because it becomes a complete chore trying to kill things above your level. It's much more efficient stomping on yellow or green things. Much less downtime.

[Harthmut]

Blizz is starting to annoy me

[Bub]

What 'bout pet bar? It's not worth to be hotfixed?? Oh yeah... FL patrols r way more important ....

[thelordymir]

I think you actually insult your own intelligence with a comment like this. Throwing manpower and money at something doesn't always fix problems.

As opposed to hardly throwing any manpower and money at something? Do you honestly think the pick of the crop are working on content for WoW anymore? Or that resources are being diverted to the game over anything else? The game is old, it's dying...be it very very slowly, but everything dies with time. So they will continue their slow trickle of "content" while taking players money to the bank, and at the same time will issue statements such as these were "Oh it's hard to do this."

Sure it might take a year to update the graphics of all the old races..but you could do that WITH an expansion pack release and easily be done with it then. It's time consuming but it's not THAT time consuming, it doesn't take years upon years to rig a skeleton and model out some meshes and do up some textures. Shit I bet if they gave the community some time people could model their own versions of updated races, they could even hold a contest where the winner gets a job.

Please read this.

The Mystical Man Month you linked only makes sense if Blizzard was already updating the graphics AND were behind schedule on it. They havnt even started yet, nor will they. So they could hire on a crew of 500 ppl and those ppl would all have time to learn every in and out of how Blizzard does something before it started.

[jax]

I'd like to see proof that there aren't "enough people working on the project" when it comes to WoW content.

Unfortunately there is no proof, most intelligent human beings tend to use something called common sense... try it some time.

They explained why Firelands was delayed the way it was. It wasn't completed with Cata release, and then it was pushed back after 4.1 because it would have screwed up the progression pacing, as said HERE - Link not working atm due to servers being down.

What could possibly be the reason it wasn't completed? Perhaps because they did not allocate the proper amount of resources? I mean come on the game is almost 7 years old and they cant tell what is needed where and when yet? Then they pushed it back again... meaning AGAIN they didn't have the proper amount of people working on it. Lets call a spade a spade here dude... your telling me there is another plausible explanation?

Also, it's been said why the Abyssal Maw raid was scrapped, several times. If they couldn't make the story work, then they couldn't make it work.

This one cracked me up... if you can honestly sit there and think that just because Blizz said it, then that makes it true... I have a bridge in the Florida Keys that I own and would love to sell you... You do know that its a fact not conjecture that they are working on a game called Titan right? You do understand that they will put their top people on this as it will be the next big MMO as they have stated publicly right? You do know that we have been getting excuse after excuse from them on why they cant do this or that? If you cant see that they would use their top talent on their new baby and because of this (not exclusively) WoW has suffered then your just a fan boy and no one takes you guys seriously anyway. ROFL....

[Kuntantee]

Blizzard is good at revamping old stuff don't you think? and every single player demands it I dunno why the hell they keep persisting to not update it. I mean if all of the costumers want it and players don't care how hard it is, it can't be an excuse. They're making so much profit from WoW but when it comes to a hard task they say "omg it's hard we can't do it right now" just lame.

[faerjan]

The Mystical Man Month you linked only makes sense if Blizzard was already updating the graphics AND were behind schedule on it. They havnt even started yet, nor will they. So they could hire on a crew of 500 ppl and those ppl would all have time to learn every in and out of how Blizzard does something before it started.

The Mythical man month explains the reason why it causes projects to run even longer; the number of communication channels between developers increases as you add more developers, by adding more overhead. It's not about "having time to learn", it's about having to communicate between those 500 people in a coherent fashion. You have to read past the first paragraph of the wikipedia article to pick up on that. So not only do you have to ramp up staff to get them to learn the way Blizzard does things... you also have to weigh how much adding new staff will increase the amount of communication will be required between the new staff and the old staff to ensure things don't go off the rails. Again... simply throwing more people at a problem is a futile effort and a logical fallacy. Believing it shows a marked lack of understanding in how both business and software development works.

[lilbuddhaman]

I think you actually insult your own intelligence with a comment like this. Throwing manpower and money at something doesn't always fix problems.

But in this case it would. Hire 1 modeler and 1 artist for temporary work, pay them well and entice them with a great line to put on their resume/portfolio. Spend some time with lead designers on the direction they want the models to look, bang it out in 3 months. This is in no way rocket science. The models are in no way complex. The textures are in no way complex. Optimizing them is in no way difficult. Kids have been doing this stuff in their basement for years.

Smart ass blue posts like "Well if you think you can do it, or better, then put in a resume" is pure deflection of the truth.

[tylenol]

About the XP nerf... I'd say, having 5 85's and only questing from 1 to 85 on every one of them, no dungeons/pvp or anything like that while the XP nerf is nice, what isn't nice is the drop rates on about 99.9% of all Outland and Northrend quests that involve you killing and looting something, all the drop rates are atrocious with zero exceptions, I don't think I should have to kill 30 mobs just to get 7 items when all the mobs I'm killing technically should drop the item.

A tiny example is after the first few starting quests in Terokkar Forest you go to a camp and every quest is a kill or kill and loot quest, the amount of mobs you have to kill comes to about 130 or so and that isn't counting the absolute trash drop rates so its always going to be more. Since they are nerfing the XP they should also increase the drop rate on every loot quest to 100%, if the amount of mobs you have to kill is factored into the XP since they are nerfing it there is no reason to not increase drop rates. I don't bottom out when going to Outland or Northrend because of the zones, I bottom out because of quests like this and since there are about 2 billion of them in this game...

I remember one time going through Northrend I had to kill 42 bears to get 6? (no more than 10), 6 items totally unique to BEARS which means they all should always drop this item