Reason SOME druids are disappointed

#0 - May 28, 2009, 8:12 p.m.

Figured I would give my feedback to the general masses as to why quite a few druids are not exactly "happy" with the new form changes.

NOTE: I am glad we have a change, it's not what I was expecting or hoping for, but it is something. I will take what I can get.

First off, the main thing uninformed druids complain is the mouth... it's closed so I'm not touching that etc.

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Big complaint #1:
It's a re-skin... OK, it is a model upgrade with higher res, better polygon count, some things added, better mouth detail, another claw, re-done ears/horns. But from what a blue did say:
"It's not a simple re-skin"

Yes, it is not a simple re-skin, but a model upgrade re-skinned a few times that looks way too similar and not enough at the moment to consider an "upgrade" of the caliber we would expect.

New model upgrade none-the-less... but it still looks pretty much the same so far, and first looks are deceiving, at least I hope they are once we log in and see some great new attack animations and movement or something. But from first looks, yes, it's nothing to be "happy" about, but just "content".

Personally, I am happy we got the upgrade, gives something "different" but not what I was expecting after such a long wait.

Big Complaint #2:
The color is dependent on your current hair color, and guess what, we're stuck unless we go to the barber. This means we have to pick and choose what we want and it's all tied together. Want a different color cat and a different color bear... well there might be a combo color that does them both, there might not be one, plus now my hair color in my normal form isn't what I want. We are not able to just customize the forms independently.

Personally I think it's cool that you get uniformity, but I can see where combo's will get complex once they update options for tree's and moonkins without having enough hair colors to have all the combo's. Hopefully they separate the form models away from the hair in the future. I may want a white bear, a brown cat, a spring flowering tree, an evil looking moonkin... and the options may not be available with the current system in the future, so something will most likely have to change.

HUGE Complaint:
Low level bears and Epic bears will still look the same... just colored differently depending on hair color.

There's no level/gear scaling announced so depending on your level OR gear so that you will look any different. Even if someone has an average iLevel of gear of 226 will look the same as someone iLevel of 80 gear... no little graphic change. Anything would be nice.

If you show our exact gear or not in form, we want some way to see a difference. Depending on a certain formula have some back armour or something showing... SOMETHING. I am sure people would rather have their armour redone for forms, but anything is better than nothing.

Personally, this seems to be the biggest gripe even for me. I figured we might get something to reflect what we're wearing... exactly how it's done doesn't concern me, but that there have been no response saying that "It's in the works" or not when they've had years of this complaint makes me a sad bear/cat.

Huge Complaint #2
No differences between male and female in forms.

Pretty self explanatory...

Side Complaint
This is more from me, but other people do notice this as well.

Do a google image search for "Tauren Druid Lynx" (without quotes).
Do a google image search for "Tauren Druid Travel" (without quotes).

(with safe search on)
See the first image for lynx and 3rd image for travel.

Guess when those were available to edit in your WoW IF you were crazy enough to risk your account to be banned?

Back in 2007. Plus there are MANY more around the net if you can still find them. They don't work anymore I presume, but people who wanted to risk their accounts COULD have different visual forms. Yes it's against the ToS, no I did NOT do it, but the option WAS available.

When your customer base has been able to model edit to get what they want YEARS before you give us anything, something is a miss. For the people that realize what has been available to those who were technically inclined and were willing to risk account banning were able to do years before... blizzard doing the same thing which your customers were able to do years ago seems like... what people on the internet call a "slap in the face". (sorry if grammar above confuses people... running out of steam)

If all we're getting is a slightly upgraded model with new color options, then myself and others aren't impressed since the ability to already do this has been around, but not supported or accepted by Blizzard.

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Like I said at the top, I am happy we have something, especially something official. Something is better than nothing. The performance just isn't on par with what would be expected from Blizzard, hopefully there is much more in the works that they wont even hint at, but myself and some other druids aren't holding their breath for it.

TL:DR
Read it if you care, otherwise move along. Check the bold points and sentence after the bold for the main parts.

If I missed anything that actually something big, please enlighten me and add to it in your response, or discuss or whatever. Flame away if you must, but I just wanted to get this out there. There's a thread on a compilation of what changes are happening and confirmed, but there's no master list of main complaints with the forms, thus is why I added this.

edit: Huge complaint #2 added

edit #2: Responce to people here (reply #67):
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17367980894&postId=173663393891&sid=1#67

Zarhym

#90 - May 29, 2009, 2:23 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Big complaint #1:
It's a re-skin... OK, it is a model upgrade with higher res, better polygon count, some things added, better mouth detail, another claw, re-done ears/horns. But from what a blue did say:
"It's not a simple re-skin"

The models are quite different, but they're still going to look like World of Warcraft bears, albeit in much better resolution in keeping with the look of Wrath of the Lich King. If your argument is that the bear still looks like a bear though, you got me.

Q u o t e:
Big Complaint #2:
The color is dependent on your current hair color, and guess what, we're stuck unless we go to the barber

This is true. It might take some adjustment for druids to feel comfortable with a particular hair color/skin tone and their cat/bear appearance. We still feel this is leaps and bounds better than the current druid form art for cats and bears.

Q u o t e:
HUGE Complaint:
Low level bears and Epic bears will still look the same... just colored differently depending on hair color.

This is true. Druids are a very unique class that require a great deal of additional artwork. We decided to allow for players to customize their coloration rather than force specific looks on you depending on your item or character level. How that would be less limiting than tying it to hair color/skin tone, I do not know.

Q u o t e:

Huge Complaint #2
No differences between male and female in forms.

Yeah.

We do understand that it's taken us a long time to get out some updates for druid forms. Like anything else that has time to sit and be digested, we understand that most people want nothing less than everything they've ever dreamed or desired on an individual level. From a design stand point though, we have to make decisions we feel will have a moderately low negative impact, with a relatively high positive impact. We feel providing five different color schemes for two of the most outdated models for druids is a huge bonus. We feel strongly that druids will be happy to look at any of the five different color schemes for each form over the ones that currently exist once they see them in-game and have a chance to grow used to them.

Zarhym

#94 - May 29, 2009, 2:37 a.m.

Q u o t e:
New forms look good.

Q u o t e:

No they dont, I am highly disappointed.

It's almost as if these are the only two posts I needed to read today. :p

Zarhym

#101 - May 29, 2009, 2:43 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Zarhym, could you guys post a video instead of screenshots then, since the differences are more obvious animated than in still shots? Seems like it would remove at least some of the complaints.

That requires additional resources from additional departments which are all tasked with several other projects. Compared to the original art work for cats and bears, we feel the screen shots sell the new forms well enough. Players will have plenty enough chance to experiment with the new forms on the test realms when they're released.

Zarhym

#115 - May 29, 2009, 2:56 a.m.

Q u o t e:
WTB blue answer as to whether or not Moonkin/Tree will be looked at.

Definitely. They just won't be done for the next major content patch. We plan to revamp all of the forms, and may continue to iterate upon the new forms coming out with additional color schemes, adding armor or additional customization, etc.

Zarhym

#119 - May 29, 2009, 3 a.m.

Q u o t e:

I was expecting that answer.

I get that, but these days, video is the new screenshot. It's time your www team started adding videos to the website. But nothing that would require your cinematic team or localization team to get involved. We're talking web clips here, not full HD cinematic intros. It's fairly quick to grab 30s of footage from the game without text/narration, which avoids the need to translate it.

We try to release quality content at all times, even in previews. So whereas you may see a few simple screen shots, they actually went through several departments for review and approval. The same would go for a video, and our Video Production/Cinematics teams would definitely want a hand in whatever videos we're releasing. It's just the way of the beast. ;)

Edit: I will add though that we'd like to start incorporating more videos in the future. For druid forms we felt that a compilation of the images would portray that vast difference between old and new.

Zarhym

#266 - May 29, 2009, 8:44 p.m.

Q u o t e:

So...does that mean the actual model of the tauren cat isn't going to change? Don't get me wrong- I like the new bear forums. But are we still stuck the the wingless-taxi form?

Trust me. I'm confident you'll be pleasantly surprised with the tauren cat update. Stay tuned! It's coming next week. :)

Zarhym

#300 - May 30, 2009, 7:53 a.m.

Q u o t e:

I was curious... will blizzard be releasing the barber skin tone examples so I can turn my druid blue-y or will I have to consult the interwebs?

I'm not sure that we'll have visual examples prior to the test realms going live, however we will publish on the forums some sort of reference list for which skin tones/hair colors match which color schemes for the new druid form art.