Here comes the next content patch (3.2)

[Selby]

They broke my server!  I've seen this happen before, but never on my server.  Usually it's the very oldest ones...

[bhodi]

Our server didn't crash; it was perfectly fine UNTIL they announced a restart around 8pm last night. When the server came back up, it was like the early days - casting lag, extreme loot lag, priests sitting in angel form for minutes at a time, it was great.

For some definitions of great.

[Nevermore]

That's exactly how our server was last night, too.  It was fine until the reboot, then it was next to unplayable after it came back up.

[Mattemeo]

I finished the night on a fishing daily, stuck looting the Ghostfish for 10 minutes, waiting for Marcia to appear in Dalaran for 10 minutes, 10 minutes to loot the treasure bag of the worthless junk the fishy tart's been fobbing me off with for two weeks now. I'm just ultra glad I got the Argent Tournament dailies done before the server fell down the K hole, though tuesday's patch bringing back the majority of the problems with Jousting that had all but disappeared the prior week, that was difficult enough as it was, thanks.

[Streamlet]

Waiting for the new mount in patch 3.2

[Ingmar]

New elf cats:

[Paelos]

They need more stupid looking jewelry.


And possibly funny hats.

[Mattemeo]

Of all the druid forms, Night Elf catform was going to be the hardest to update, as it's universally considered to be the only good looking form in it current iteration, graphically ancient as it may be.

And this update... yeah, I think I can live with those options, quite happily. The 'jewelry' doesn't bother me - perhaps it could be muted down a little, as they're quite vibrant, but other than that... a solid, worthy update. I like that the mane now makes more sense by starting from the head rather than just sitting on the shoulders like a boar. The face is feline and predatory though I think perhaps the fangs could have been made a little longer. The skins are crisp and sleek and I really do like the continuation of the facial markings from the bearform.

Roll on 3.2

[Nevermore]

It's ok.  Certainly more detailed and better quality, which is nice.  I was trying to figure out why the faces looked more lion-like than they should and I think it's because of the shape of the eyes and the slope of the nose.  I'd have preferred a more panther-like look.  But it's not bad.  I'll still probably get stuck with a color I don't like, which is still my only big beef with the whole implementation.  My only other small beef is it would be nice if they'd stop sticking black manes (bear) and pink manes (cat) on the white furred models.

[Musashi]

Meh.  Do they say if I get the option to stay my old cat form?

[Fordel]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/17631614423-new-druid-art-color-associations.html

Tauren Male

    * Black / Black with White Belly / Black Spots - Black Bear (top middle), Black Cat (top right)
    * Dark Grey / Dark Grey with White Belly / Dark Grey Spots - Grey Bear (bottom left), Black Cat (top right)
    * Red-Brown / Red-Brown with White Belly / Red-Brown Spots - Brown Bear (top right), Red Cat (top left)
    * Yellow-Brown / Yellow-Brown with White Belly / Yellow-Brown Spots - Yellow Bear (top left), Yellow Cat (top middle)
    * Steel Grey / Steel Grey with White Belly / Steel Grey Spots - Grey Bear (bottom left), White Cat (bottom right)
    * Light Brown-Grey / Light Brown-Grey with White Belly / Light Brown-Grey Spots - Yellow Bear (top left), Brown Cat (bottom left)
    * White - White Bear (bottom right), White Cat (bottom right)


Tauren Female

    * Black / Black Spots - Black Bear (top middle), Black Cat (top right)
    * Dark Grey / Dark Grey Spots - Grey Bear (bottom left), Black Cat (top right)
    * Red-Brown / Red-Brown Spots - Brown Bear (top right), Red Cat (top left)
    * Light Brown / Light Brown Spots - Yellow Bear (top left), Yellow Cat (top middle)
    * Light Brown-Grey / Light Brown-Grey Spots - Yellow Bear (top left), Brown Cat (bottom left)
    * White - White Bear (bottom right), White Cat (bottom right)


Night Elves (Male and Female)

    * Greens: Yellow-Green / Green / Dark Green - Violet Bear with Green Mane (bottom left), Blue Cat with Dark Mane (top right)
    * Light Blues: Teal / Light Blue - Blue Bear with Dark Mane (top left), Indigo Cat with Light Mane (far left)
    * White - White Bear (top middle), White Cat (top left)
    * Dark Blue - Black Bear (bottom right), Black Cat (bottom)
    * Purple - Red bear with Blue Mane (top right), Purple Cat (middle)

[K9]

Stolen from the official forums:

[SurfD]

You know what.  I would fucking PAY to have Drama Club Cat or Sailor Moon Cosplay Cat as actual cat skins.

[Nevermore]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/17631614423-new-druid-art-color-associations.html

    * White - White Bear (top middle), White Cat (top left)

Fuck you, Blizzard.

[apocrypha]

You know what.  I would fucking PAY to have Drama Club Cat or Sailor Moon Cosplay Cat as actual cat skins.

Oh god yes, Drama Club Cat is fantastic 

[Lakov_Sanite]

At first I thought it was associated to skin color but found out it was elf hair color/tauren fur and all I can say is....really?

Are you really upset you have to change your hair color to have a form you like? Again customization is nice but you do need to have some kind of tethers to reality(or even fantasy reality) Any fantasy world worth it's salt has to have rules by which it abides, whether it be tolkien or some flavor of dnd or any other make believe world.  When an author starts pulling rules out his ass and saying a wizard did it, the more people lose interest.

Wow is by far very guilty of the wizard did it syndrome but people have become so used to being pampered they can't stand to have even the faintest of restrictions placed on them.  Why not just let every character start at 80, with full heroic gear? Why not let alliance and horde communicate? Shouldn't every race be allowed to be a druid?

If wow catered to every single request to dumb down an already user-friendly game you would get a world that made even less sense than it does now and a far less interesting product.


also, dance club cat is puttin on the ritz.

[Nevermore]

If there's one thing any MMO veteran should know by now, it's that a lot of players identify with and feel very strongly about the appearance of their characters.  For example, ask anyone who's ever played City of Heroes what they think the strongest feature of that game is.  It boggles my mind that some people don't understand that some of us would like to be able to choose the appearance of our characters.  "But just change your hair color!"  So my choice is to look crappy in NE form or look crappy in animal form?  Uh, thanks.

But yeah, use the tethered in 'reality' excuse in a game with

Now I'll go take my pampered ass to the forums and start lobbying to be able to auto-create a fully Ulduar geared out Gnome Paladin.  Maybe dumb it down to only have to push two buttons.  Because as your very reasonable and non-inflammatory post points out, it's exactly the same thing as asking Blizzard to not fuck up the look of my character.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Fresh vault taste

[Nevermore]

Fresh vault taste

That middle part of your post did smack of the vault, yes.

[Mattemeo]

At first I thought it was associated to skin color but found out it was elf hair color/tauren fur and all I can say is....really?

Are you really upset you have to change your hair color to have a form you like? Again customization is nice but you do need to have some kind of tethers to reality(or even fantasy reality) Any fantasy world worth it's salt has to have rules by which it abides, whether it be tolkien or some flavor of dnd or any other make believe world.  When an author starts pulling rules out his ass and saying a wizard did it, the more people lose interest.

Yes. Yes I am. My character does not have purple hair. My character does not have blue hair. My character does not have turquoise hair. Why then should I change my character to have that colour hair to obtain the look of the bear or catform I like? It's assinine. It makes no sense. It's not fucking 'tethered in reality', if I have a character that has white hair, why in the name of all good fuckery should my bear or cat form have a pink of black mane? My character has neither pink nor black anywhere on his body. If I wanted pink of black, in an ideal system, I'd be able to just choose the form at the barber. But no, instead it's tied to some incomprehensible, player baiting ruse to cover up a technical difficulty from what I can gather.

Wow is by far very guilty of the wizard did it syndrome but people have become so used to being pampered they can't stand to have even the faintest of restrictions placed on them.  Why not just let every character start at 80, with full heroic gear? Why not let alliance and horde communicate? Shouldn't every race be allowed to be a druid?

If wow catered to every single request to dumb down an already user-friendly game you would get a world that made even less sense than it does now and a far less interesting product.

Practically everything you just said there was strawman bollocks and you know it. For what it's worth, lack of communication between Horde and Alliance was a stupid last minute idea. Give players the choice to understand one another - it's a system that works perfectly in City of Heroes. Fuck it, if you're so hellbent on making sure no one has anything 'easy', go back to the alpha/beta system whereby you had to skill up in languages to successfully communicate. I'd be down with that, my main is a human and stuck with one single language yet has a 10% bonus to factional diplomacy? Yeah, that makes sense, that seems awfully 'tethered in reality'.

[Lakov_Sanite]

My character has brown hair, why can't my shadowform be brown?

My character just got new pants, why do I have to tear them up?

They could have just left the old models in and then your white haired character would turn into a blue cat, does that make any more sense? Reall now, listen to what you people are saying. Things like 'player baiting' blizzard fucking us over' you say these things like there's someone rubbing their hands together cackling at blizzard because of how the druids are going to complain.

There's no technical difficulties involved either, if it's as easy as changing hair color they could easily just add a slider on the barber shop but they aren't It's called artistic liscense, suck it up and stop being such a bunch of sandy cunts.

[Koyasha]

WoW unfortunately is one of the games that demands you look the way they want you to, not the way you want to.  Their continued refusal to add an appearance tab or something of the sort shows that rather clearly.  It's little surprise that they're doing this with druids.  Frankly WoW in general tries to give players as little choice as possible in anything from combat strategies to character appearance, so basically par for the course.

[Nevermore]

WoW unfortunately is one of the games that demands you look the way they want you to, not the way you want to.  Their continued refusal to add an appearance tab or something of the sort shows that rather clearly.  It's little surprise that they're doing this with druids.  Frankly WoW in general tries to give players as little choice as possible in anything from combat strategies to character appearance, so basically par for the course.

Which is one of the biggest flaws in the game and one of the most consistent complaints you'll hear ever since the original beta.  Hell, even DAoC let you dye your armor.

[Vash]

It's pretty obvious *they* think that having really cool/unique looking gear (and even mounts) tied exclusively to raiding as an additional e-peen reward for those who participate and as an additional motivation for those who don't or are not as progressed serves the game better than letting the players customize their look however they like.

I'm definitely in the crowd that doesn't agree with this and think it's a pretty foolish mentality, but it's been a part of WoW for so long I'd be surprised if it ever changes.

[Paelos]

I don't think I've gone "wow cool" at a piece of armor since classic when T3 was announced. Since then, it's all been basically the same shit over and over again for warriors. They want us to all look like spawns from hell apparently. They also want pallies to look ghey, and druids to look like plants. Oh, and whoever designs gear plays a lock because they always are in the top 3 in coolness with tier sets.

[Musashi]

I don't think there will ever be a better warrior set than dreadnought.

All I know is, elf cats got hosed.

[K9]

I don't think there will ever be a better warrior set than dreadnought.

Onslaught was an awesome-looking set, better than dreadnaught for me.

Priests usually get really good tier sets, T3, T5, T6 and T8 especially. Paladins peaked early with their T2 and had the worst T4-6 without a doubt. I actually quite like the paladin T8.10, minus the helm. Hunters and druids get the worst-looking tier sets imo.

[bhodi]

Are you mad? The Priest t8 helm is one of the worst I have ever seen.

[K9]

I honestly love it.

[bhodi]

I will cut you.

[K9]

Ah, so the problem is that is doesn't hide enough of the dwarf; gotcha 

[Rasix]

I don't think I've gone "wow cool" at a piece of armor since classic when T3 was announced.

I've had better luck.  I've pretty much universally liked the shammy armor design (except for the shoulders) and the DK armor was pretty cool. The only upgrade I got out of Ulduar before I stopped going was a nice looking helm for the shaman albeit with a dumb looking chain coming off the chin.  Almost makes it look like you can pull it to flush your helm.

It's apparent that Blizzard really believes that their success is largely due to the cool stuff you can get from raiding and others aspiring to get cool stuff.  As long as you have people continually reaching for something (that may be unattainable), they'll continue to pay you money for the honor of doing so.  And a big part they figure is the noticeable appearance of the desirable gear.  I think that they'd honestly equate an appearance tab with a loss in monthly revenue.  As long as something is 100% visible and tied to advancement or grinding, it's important to Blizzard.

I imagine part of the reason we haven't seen housing in any form yet is they do not think the envy generated by someone having a better house than you will generate more revenue than the costs of the server hardware upgrades and development costs.

[Rasix]

I will cut you.

*image snipped*

Yo dawg, I heard you like rogues.

[bhodi]

I imagine part of the reason we haven't seen housing in any form yet is they do not think the envy generated by someone having a better house than you will generate more revenue than the costs of the server hardware upgrades and development costs.

It's hard to show off your envy-generating house-bling when it's all instanced. That, and all the people who would be able to program such a huge bolt-on to the main game are elsewhere doing other projects.

[Xanthippe]

They all look like Scar from the LionKing to me.

Yes. 

All the elephants in the game look like they came from the Jungle Book as well. 

There's definitely an old Disney tinge to the animation.