We wanted to let everyone know that you can now also find WoW Weekly on Google+! So should you prefer G+ over another social media that we’re on you can follow us at google.com/
We’ve got a few possible editorial authors for the website so you can expect to see more of that type of content outside of the podcast and of course news in the upcoming weeks! So follow us on Facebook, Twitter and G+ to keep up to date with the latest Warcraft and Blizzard news!
Pax East has started and Blizzard is their with some announcements!
First off Heroes of the storm, 4 new heroes have been announced:
Brightwing has a trailer to go along with it!
LiLi
Brightwing
Zagara
Murky
We also shared a sneak peek of three additional new heroes who are also in development: Chen, Kael’thas, and Sylvanas!
Pax East panel video:
Now onto Hearthstone, where we’ve gotten the first preview of the PvE adventure mode!
Hearthstone’s highly anticipated single player Adventure Mode has been officially announced today at PAX East: Curse of Naxxramas, A Hearthstone Adventure!
The Curse Comes!
The ancient necropolis Naxxramas, a base of operations for the powerful lich Kel’Thuzad and his plague-bearing undead host, comes to Hearthstone in a single player PvE Adventure that anyone can undertake! Progress through one of the five unique wings of the dungeon and gain new cards for your Hearthstone collection by defeating the iconic bosses that you’ll face along the way – the oversized arachnid Maexxna, the fungal horror Loatheb and the shambling abomination Patchwerk are just a few of the horrors that await your challenge. Each boss has their own unique cards and Hero Powers at their disposal to challenge even the most seasoned of card-slinging adventurers!
New Cards!
Progressing through Curse of Naxxramas and overcoming the challenges that lurk within will reward you with all new Hearthstone cards! Once you earn these cards, you can start playing with them in your decks right away. A total of 30 new cards will be added with Curse of Naxxramas – Check out a few of the shambling creatures of the undead that are just dying to be a part of your collection below!
Peer Into the Plague Quarter
One of the bosses you’ll be pitted against within the Plague Quarter is the devious plague cauldron master Heigan the Unclean! His Eruption spell will put your minion’s dancing skills to the test, and Mindpocalypse will make you think you’ve got the upper hand! Speaking of hands, Heigan definitely never washes his. Gross.
Defeating Heigan will net you a brand new card to add to your collection, and the completion of each wing will reward you with a guaranteed new Legendary card!
All New Game Board!
Curse of Naxxramas will have its own unique game board Hearthstone players battle on while they are in the adventure, complete with brand new interactive corners! What could possibly lurk within that quivering mass of eggs? Do you really want to find out?
Test Your Might with Class Challenges!
On top of all of that, nine unique Class Challenges lie in wait within Curse of Naxxramas. These challenges put a difficult twist on existing encounters within the adventure and will put your Hearthstone skills with a specific class to the test! If you’re able to overcome the Class Challenges that face you, you’ll be rewarded with new class-specific cards to add to your collection.
Make Tracks to Naxx!
Curse of Naxxramas will open its gates to challenge Hearthstone players over the course of 5 weeks, opening wing by wing. The first wing of Curse of Naxxramas, The Arachnid Quarter, will be available free for all Hearthstone players. If players wish to venture further into Naxxramas to collect all of the new cards for their collection, each wing besides the Arachnid Quarter can be purchased with in-game gold OR real money. As each wing is released, the cards available in each wing will also show up in your Arena picks, even if you have not earned them for your personal collection yet!
Beware the Necropolis!
We hope you enjoyed this first look into Curse of Naxxramas, A Hearthstone Adventure. Curse of Naxxramas is planned to release simultaneously for PC, Mac and iPad. A release date will be announced at a later time.
Update on how the ingame chopper will be chosen and how you’ll be able to get them:
First, we want to make it clear that players globally will be able to vote for their favorite faction bike—either Alliance or Horde. Second, the bike that receives the most votes will then be made into a faction-specific-only mount and be available FREE to all players (usable when playing characters of the winning faction, of course). Your vote will be very important and could just be the one that lands your favorite faction a shiny new mount. If you haven’t watched the trailer yet, check it out here and stay tuned to Azerothchoppers.com for more details!
Led by legendary chopper builder Paul Jr., Team Horde will face off against Team Alliance to determine which epic custom-built bike will come out on top in the ultimate showdown. When the dust settles and the final designs are revealed it will be YOUR vote that decides which of these mechanical marvels will be recreated as an in-game mount.
Meet the Blizzard Teams
Alliance
Chris Metzen
Terran Gregory
Monte Krol
Horde
Sam Didier
Jason Hutchins
Gary Platner
Don’t miss out on all of the action! Azeroth Choppers premieres 4.17.14 on http://www.AzerothChoppers.com
Blizzard came with quite a surprise tonight! After yesterday’s Tauren preview they have now released a female Draenei model preview, which is of course the real one and not the april fools one. Check out the preview below!
Animation is a big factor for the female Draenei specifically, so it’s important to keep it in mind when comparing the two. The original female Draenei has some fairly extreme posing that happens when she’s animated. If you were to see the static model of the original without any posing you’d see that it looks very similar to the new one. With her pose applied her shoulders stretch backward, her pelvis rotates forward, and her chin lowers—causing her head to angle downwards. The curvature in her lower back, and why the head shape looks slightly different, are also due to the new model not having the same posing applied yet. She also looks a lot taller! Ultimately all of those things will be addressed when we animate the new model, they just don’t take place until she’s rigged and sent on to the animation team.
We hope you enjoyed this super quick look at where we’re at right now, and we’ll continuing sharing more in-progress art as we go forward. The next article in the Artcraft series we’re planning is a look at the creation of the Spires of Arak, a new zone coming in Warlords of Draenor. Thanks for stopping by!
Senior Character Artist Joe Keller did the majority of the work on this revamp, with direction from our Lead Character Artist Tyson Murphy (@tysmurph), and myself (@artofcgrobinson).
Blizzard came out with the next character model preview surprisingly quickly! Not only just model previews, but animation previews too!
Hey there everyone, I’m Steve Aguilar, lead animator for the World of Warcraft animation team. Today we’re showing off the male Tauren, and with some help from the rest of the animation team, we’re going to give you a look at the animation processes we use to bring this big guy to life.
Before we even started animating him, we already knew the Tauren was going to be a blast to work on based on all of the detail the character art team added.
As we begin applying animations, we’re extra careful not to stray too far from the original. It’s important to us to retain the essence of the original animations, because how a characters walk, move, and carry themselves help to define their personality. We use all of the original animations as a starting point, and then go through the process of cleaning them up and adding additional articulation. Let’s delve into what that process looks like.
Steve Aguilar: The normal “stand” animation is one of the most important animations because this is what you, the player, see the majority of the time. When you stop moving or walk up to an NPC, the stand is the key pose that is being used. A huge chunk of animations also rely on this pose so they can easily transition into and out of it.
The second interview that took place today was over at Final Boss.TV! Again Zarhym and Celestalon joined them! Check out the transcript below, with a special thanks to Mario for transcribing it while it aired!
Jonathan Zarhym – JZ
Chadd Celestalon Nervig – CCN
Q: What do you do at Blizzard?
Title: WoW Senior Community Rep.
JZ – Is a weird title. Most people know us as Community Managers. Posting on Forums, Manage Official Pages (Face, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter), PR Marketing Campaigns, Community Feedback.We take seriously what we do.
Title: WoW Technical Game Designer
CCN – I work closely with the games mechanics designers. Systems design. I talk a lot with the core designers of the game. The main aspects of the game and how the class design and collaboration between the various departments that fine-tune the game experience.
I got started in Blizzard during WoTLK – during ICC. I was a theorycrafter. And back at that time, there were a lot of issues with “armor penetration”. So I created a few spreadsheets with numbers and calculations on the subject, to improve the mechanic of the game which seemed broken at the time. So I posted onto Blizzard pages and the next few days, I received a letter from Ghostcrawler that said: “Hey, I like your ideas, let’s have lunch”. And that’s how I ended at Blizzard.
Q: How do you feel about your job?
CCN – I think is important to follow what the community has to say about the game; I like talking to people and seeing what and how things are at all levels. Reason why I stay up late most of the time.
Q: Overall, does your information have a positive effect?
CCN – Absolutely yes. Players is what makes WOW alive and it inherently, makes the game better. We spend a lot of time on the patch notes to explain to the community everything about the changes or everything that we intend to do with the game. It helps the players to see the bigger picture with what we intend to do with the changes.
Reason also why we redesigned the patch notes format. People now can click directly on their class and skip down to that particular section, instead of reading through all the text.
Part 2 of episode 29 is now up on the youtubes! So check it out!
