The second video in the Azeroth Choppers series was released today!
And in other news, the Warlords of Draenor Alpha patch notes have been updated! These changes include the return of active mana regeneration in a lesser form! Check out all the changes here. The changes compared to the last patch notes are now shown in the red.
Blizzard released a new WoW Source episode today. WoW Source is their interview / showcase type show where they shed some light on Warlords of Draenor and answer a few community questions. This time they talk about PvP, Ashran and a little about class changes.
It looks like players won’t be able to choose the location of their garrison anymore! The main reason seems to be that garrisons are now much more integrated in the leveling flow. For the horde it will be located in Frostfire Ridge and for the alliance in Shadowmoon Valley. Both their starting zones respectively.
@sdschimke We moved away from the choose your zone model once we realized we wanted heavily integrate the Garrison into the leveling flow.— Mumper (@mumper) April 22, 2014
@WarlockSoL @CM_Zarhym @sdschimke Horde is in Frostfire Ridge and Alliance is in Shadowmoon Valley.
— Mumper (@mumper) April 22, 2014
Watcher (Ion Hazzikostas), who was also in the WoW Source episode, announced there will be a lot of information about raiding and the philosophy behind it for WoD next week!
We’ll have a lot more information about raid structure and philosophy next week. In the meantime, please try to avoid jumping to conclusions — Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 22, 2014
LFR is an important part of the endgame in our eyes; it’s the only way many players can see the content, and power progression is essential. — Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 22, 2014
And finally BlizzCon 2014 has been announced!
Steel thyself, O mortal realm of Anaheim! The eighth BlizzCon is coming to your Convention Center this Friday, November 7 and Saturday, November 8, 2014. Prepare for two relentless days of Blizzard gaming and fellowship, including in-depth discussion panels with Blizzard developers, hands-on opportunities with the latest Blizzard games, and intense eSports tournaments featuring top pro gamers from across the earthly plane.
Tickets for BlizzCon 2014 will go on sale in two batches, one on May 8 at 4 a.m. CET and the other on May 10 at 7 p.m. CET through the online event ticketing service Eventbrite, priced at $199 each (plus applicable taxes and fees). In addition, a limited number of tickets to an exclusive pre-BlizzCon Benefit Dinner will go on sale Wednesday, May 15 at 4 a.m. CET for $750 apiece (plus applicable taxes and fees; BlizzCon admission included), with proceeds benefitting Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Check out the BlizzCon Ticket webpage for more information—we’ve made some changes to how ticket sales work this year, and fortune favors the prepared!
If you can’t make it to the show in person, the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket is the next best thing, offering comprehensive live coverage of the event via a multichannel Internet stream. Further details on the Virtual Ticket, including pricing, availability, and programming information, will be announced at a later date.
See the full press release or check out the BlizzCon Ticket page for more information, and be sure visit www.blizzcon2014.eventbrite.com at the dates and times above for a chance to purchase a ticket to the show. See you in Anaheim!
Blizzard released the first episode of Azeroth Choppers today, check it out!
Pax East was this weekend and although there were no official announcements regarding World of Warcraft, some fansites did get to interview a few devs over Warlords of Draenor!
First off, wowhead! You can find the full interview here. But here’s a recap of the most important new information:
WoW Insider also had an interview. Although most has been said some new things still came up in the interview here. It is worth mentioning though that in the context of sending your followers in your garrison to kill bosses the following was said:
On the subject of transmog:
Afterwards Ion Hazzikostas said on twitter that although nothing will happen in 6.0, they are working on an elegant system.
@perculia Not in 6.0. We do have major plans to make transmog more elegant as a collection game in the future, though.
— Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 14, 2014
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.