Due to popular demand (and a few shady back-alley deals in Stormwind’s Old Town), the Alliance bike built for Azeroth Choppers will be rumbling its way to a vendor in Azeroth sometime after the launch of Warlords of Draenor. This mount will cost a pretty hefty sum of gold, however, so you might want to start saving up now if you want to ride around in style on this masterful machine. As a reminder, once the winning Horde Chopper is added to the game, it will be available for free to players who log in between now and September 30, 2014.
Remember, only characters of the associated faction will be able to ride each bike, so buyer beware!
Time for another Garrison preview! Today we’ll take a look at the Horde Garrison Warmill, Stables, Store House, Spirit Lodge, Lumber Mill, Tavern, Sparring Arena and Trading Post!
EU character copies are coming. We’re hoping to have them functional in the next major build.To give a little insight: the beta realms are located in one of our North American datacenters. European characters are, obviously, located in European datacenters. For a number of obscure technical reasons, getting those datacenters to securely communicate with each other to transfer character data has been a much larger challenge than we expected.We think we’ve got it solved, though, so (fingers crossed) you should be able to copy your characters soon!
Chris Robinson, Senior Art Director at Blizzard, has gone to twitter to explain that sadly the blood elf model update will not make it at the WoD launch. However the Trolls will still make it for launch! The artcraft should come next week or the week after.
We’ve been receiving a lot of questions about Blood Elves, so I wanted to give an update, cont.
— Chris G. Robinson (@artofcgrobinson) July 30, 2014
As we near the end of development, it’s become apparent that the new Blood Elf models won’t be finished to meet our standards before launch.
— Chris G. Robinson (@artofcgrobinson) July 30, 2014
I spoke too soon previously, and apologize. Blood Elves WILL be updated, and we’re pushing hard to get them out as quick as we can.
— Chris G. Robinson (@artofcgrobinson) July 30, 2014
@perculia They won’t be ready by Warlords launch (but will be added later).
Hello, and welcome to Artcraft! I’m your host Chris Robinson, art director of World of Warcraft, and today we’re going to tackle something I know a lot of you have been looking forward to: facial customization options.
When we began working on the updated character models, we knew it would be a huge project, and we weren’t sure we could do it all at once. The idea originally was that a few races would be available at launch, and all the others would be patched in throughout the course of the expansion. While it wouldn’t have been ideal to see a mix of lower-quality and higher-quality models running around side by side, it did seem like the most realistically achievable solution at that time. Since then, though, we’ve committed ourselves to getting all of the original character models in by launch. It’s been a monumental challenge for us, but we think the effort is worth it, and the finish line is nearly in sight.
Our next big focus is doing justice to the facial options. With the original models and their simplistic geometry and low-resolution textures, a lot of facial expressions were simply painted on. Now that we’ve moved to higher-polygon models with lips, teeth, and fully articulated faces—not to mention higher-resolution textures—recreating those same facial options isn’t as simple as painting them onto a flat surface. Previously, to get a sneer out of a model, you’d just paint a sneer on its face, and that was that. To do it correctly now—and make it look great—we have to fully pose a sneer, create a custom texture, and mesh that base pose with all of the existing emotes and animations.
These more detailed face customization options were also originally part of our earlier “update-as-we-patch” rollout plan. Our initial idea was to release the new models with their base face, and then add additional options in updates over the course of the expansion. Again, that plan was based on the sheer amount of work involved in creating what are effectively all-new races (art-wise) on top of all of the art a big expansion like this one generally requires. But stepping back, we came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t going to be a good experience to have everyone playing with the same face geometry and a slight texture change, not knowing what their character would really look like until some later patch. In the end, we decided it would be best to tackle all of a race’s facial options at once. Up to this point, you’ve seen one facial geometry set, but very soon you’ll start seeing more finished products for each option in upcoming beta builds.
The original Dwarf model (left) has his teeth painted directly on his upper lip to give him a snarl. With the new models, which have fully modeled and textured teeth, a simple paint job just isn’t an option—it would look terrible. In the middle, you can see what that same sneer looks like right now in the beta test; on the right is what you’ll see in an upcoming beta build.
On the left, we have a pair of original Orc faces. The second column represents what you’re seeing right now in the beta build, showing texture variation but the same facial geometry. The third column shows a posing rig to demonstrate how we’re customizing each of the face appearances further. On the far right, you can see the final product.
We’re working hard to ensure all of the updated character models have the high level of quality you expect from us, and that we expect from ourselves. This revamp is a truly enormous project that we care deeply about, and we know you feel the same. We’re looking forward to seeing all of these new, high-quality, awesome-looking models running around Azeroth, and we hope you enjoy seeing the characters you know and love in a whole new light.
On Thursday, July 31, we will continue Warlords raid testing. As this is early in the overall beta raid testing cycle, it is quite possible that there will be technical or gameplay issues that disrupt the testing. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Our general plan is to test every encounter on Heroic difficulty first, and then test sections of the raid on Normal and Raid Finder, alongside targeted Mythic tests.
Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below on all Beta servers.
As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.
Important Testing Notes
Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: In Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Dalaran, Shattrath, the two Vale Shrines, and your garrison, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.) Note that new teleport NPC locations have been added to other expansions’ capital cities, as well as near the zone portals in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
Q: What character should I use to test the raid?
A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players’ effective level to 100 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.
Q: How long does testing last?
A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we’re satisfied that we’ve received that information for a given boss, we’ll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.
Blizzard has released their schedule for Gamescom with one particularly interesting event for Thursday August 14th.
Two likely choices come to mind as to what it could be. It could be a WoD release date announcement, or it could be the release of the WoD Cinematic. We will of course have to wait and see. See the entire Gamescom schedule here.
