New forms for Druids, when? Continued!

#0 - Dec. 30, 2008, 3:41 p.m.
Blizzard Post
As the last post has reached it's post limit with 485 replies and 16889 views (so far), this is clearly an issue that the majority of the Druid community is interested in. Here's the original post from Primary (then 72, now 80) that sparked the whole thing off:
Q u o t e:
I've geared up solidly now in 10-mans and my Cat and Bear still look exactly like the lvl 10-20 versions, it's not been that much of an issue before when I was still in crappy greens but now it is, I wanna look good in my gear in my form as well!

On top of that the Cat form / Bear form are plain ugly, simple, old, low-polygon low-res form.

From what I've seen so far, Northrend is really pretty and polished, so is new armor for classes. This will make the horribly outdated Druid forms look really terrible and unenjoyable.

Because they don't display gear, animal forms for Druids should be one of teh most sxy things in the entire game, as they never change and we stare at them all the time as Feral.

I've seen the Upcoming changes post, that's all mechanics I know but can you please mention when the new Druid forms are coming? Specific date like for the relase of WOTLK or in the next content patch, or sometime before that? Blue post pointing to some sort of number would be very appreciated.

To me it's a bit surprising they spend time reshaping Dryads for wotlk but our forms are still old and ugly and need some immediate attention.

In case you can't make it before the New Year for example, I'd like to ask that the Glyphs of Lynx and Polar Bear are brought back in with wotlk so we don't have to go to Outlands clashing with the beautiful scenery thanks.

Edit: How about a teaser? Could you post the art design for the new forms, nevermind coding just the direction you wanna take with them? Or an art contest for the community to give you some great ideas that you may want, but do not have to use? Would be nice if you gave us anything more than 'some time in the future'.


My own personal ideas for changing our forms (I've been playing since lauch, and been staring at these forms for a long LONG time now) are as follows:

+ "barber shop" in Moonglade, offering customisation of 3 areas (same as the humanoid barber shop); say, for example, fur colour, horn/ear style and tattoos.

+ some method of showing your progression while in forms. This could be via a toggle in the Interface menu to show our armour, or some other method of differentianting Bear1, who is tanking Malygos25, from Bear2, who has just dinged 80 and is off to some 5-mans, from Bear3, who is resplendent in full Hateful Gladiator gear.

+ costumes in forms - it's bad enough that thry look horrible, but we can't even enjoy things like the gnome costume from Winter Veil (thus making a certain achievement VERY hard to achieve), the wands from Hallow's End (I wanna tank as a goblin damnit!) or Noggenfogger Elixirs. This is NOT a technical issue as we used to have access to these, but was rather an intentional change by Blizzard because it was "too difficult to determine what form a Druid was in". Well, I've got to say - how can I tell if I'm facing a Priest or a Mage when they're both in costume? I can't, unless I look at the tooltip. But people won't even need to do that, they can simply look at our mana/rage/energy to determine our form, or even our buffs.
Please give us back costumes in forms

+ removal/fix of the placeholder forms; Travel form shares the same skin for both factions, and also shares a skin with a pet trainable by Hunters (we've all felt embarrassed by this) in the Badlands. The icon is a hoof, please - give us a hooved animal! In addition, Tauren are still using a distictly Night Elven Aquatic form, with those silly extra-long ears.

So please, for the love of Druids - fix our forms!
#319 - Jan. 28, 2009, 7:26 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Some very nice ideas :-)