World of Warcraft®

"We know the players want it, as our games only lacking quality currently is it's extremely pathetic character customization"

Just because it is the only thing YOU care about doesn't mean it's the only thing Blizzard needs to work on.

It doesn't even matter how much money or how many people they have, they still need to make decisions on what should be done and how. That takes time and consideration. You can't just "hire more people" to make it be done faster.

I think you mis-read my post. Overall WoW is the top game in all aspects EXCEPT it's character customization.

Of course they have a lot to work on, but how much time do they need? It's been nearly seven years now and the only extra customization has been new haircuts and the barber shop.

The reason we don't use the barbershop often isn't that it's a bad feature. It's because we pick a hairstyle we like and we stick with it. :) I haven't used the 'shop on my old characters since WotLK launched, but tend to visit once or twice per new character.

04/05/2011 03:45 PMPosted by Káne

I dont know why blizzard dosnt hire more artist, they have the money..., I go to their job listings and there are no concept artists jobs open there are a few animation jobs. But most every good job requires 2-3 years in the industry, so people like myself who just graduated have no chance.

Have you tried working with indie studios for any new game projects they have coming up?

In response to the question of having ability of changing a characters appearance I had the the following idea.

Basically it would come down to, right now there is a core game and three expansions worth of animations, texturing, and coloring that has already been designed, implemented, and tested so why not use it?

I think it would be neat to be able to relayer a piece of equipment with a texture of another. Of course there would be limitations. A piece of plate armor could only be replaced with another plate texture. A bow would need a texture of another bow, etc.

This would give players a lot of flexibility with little to no cost. I'm not a programming expert but I'm guessing each piece of armor out there has a texture ID to it. You could have a menu similiar to the reforging menu. The stats of an item stays the same but the texture would be changed for a cost.

This would probably need to be disabled for PVP since technically what a person is wearing could be a sign of their skill, but that's also what the rankings are for.

On my main last expansion I had Alliance first Shadowmourne. I used it for a few months and now it just rots in my bank. It would be great to take a new axe and relayer it to look like Shadowmourne again. This however would add another limitation so everyone isn't walking about with legendary graphics. For legendaries specifically you would have needed to craft the item before you could relayer it. I guess this could technically apply to Tier suits or PVP suits (but not in a pvp setting) as well.

I'm sure a lot of people enjoy the looks of the old tier sets, but honestly, when will you ever wear them again? This would give people the opportunity to return to the looks they once achieved.

Just a thought.

I wonder if anybody has brought up the idea of tying the character's spec into the visual appearance of the avatar? Like fire mages have a reddish hue, or shimmering heat waves coming off the avatar, whereas frost mages look, you know, frosty? I would still like to see some gear customization options, but it seems like this would help one character to stand out from another and has the added benefit of letting players identify another player's current spec at a glance.

04/05/2011 11:00 AMPosted by Lylirra

We plan on implementing a system where winning an item via Need (when using the Dungeon Finder Need Before Greed loot system) will make a BoE item soulbound. We hope to have this working for the 4.2 patch.

/love Ninjas gonna get shut down

It really disappoints me when they reference finances as a reason for not doing anything. At this point, I really don't think money should stop them from doing anything. They have enough money to do whatever they want.

I think what they were trying to say is that if they're pulling in $10 million in profit every month, they'd be selective with the share of that that goes to development (vs. new servers, new office buildings, bonuses, and into shareholder pockets(assuming blizz is publicly traded)). So if they have to make a choice about whether to push out a new heroic dungeon, or make a dye merchant in a capital city, they'll pick the heroic.

No matter how much money they have they can't do everything at once, though I would be interested in knowing exactly how much certain past features have cost. I mean, what's a heroic cost to code? $100,000? $1 million? $10 million?

The major reason I want the Apptab, is so I no longer have to use the raid markers to find my party in high pop quest areas. I mean seriously everytime I party to do TB the first thing that gets done is everyone gets raid markers.

Dye just will not cut it, considering that we allready have 2-3 different colors of the same armor.

As for the sholder/belt size issue, please give us the april fools joke slider. The designs of a lot of them are incredible, only to be destroyed by being laughable oversized. (like a 9yearold in football pads)

Q: Is it possible to let the players create/edit their own looks? - Zed Loft (Taiwan), Vysha (NA/ANZ), Ráchel (EU|German)

A: As we said in an earlier Q&A, we definitely hear loud and clear from players that they want more customization for their character. This is something we want to provide, but we want to do it in the right way. Consider the Barber Shop feature. It lets you change your character's hair, but there’s not a lot of gameplay to it. We're not sure that feature really added a lot to the game in retrospect. Is WoW more fun for you now that you have a Barber Shop? Are you more likely to keep playing because of it? Maybe, but it wasn’t a cheap feature to add in terms of development time. Dumping a bunch of dyes on the game might have a similar effect, where some players might have fun playing around with the system for a bit, but a lot of players might change their colors once or twice and then forget about the feature after that. Now, not every aspect of the game needs a ton of depth and a lot of interesting decisions, but we tend to attract more players to a feature the more robust the feature is.

We also think it's fair to argue that the game just needs more armor and weapon art. As we said above, we deliver a lot of art these days, but we also produce an enormous number of new items every expansion or patch and it’s understandably disappointing whenever items use the same art. It would be really cool if not every mage or priest converged on the same look after a given expansion or patch.

I'm so incredibly dis-appointed with the apparent lack of reading skills blizzard devs seem to have. You know, maybe it's the fact that there just ISN'T a way to implement the appearance tab feature in the ways described by the numerous thread capped posts. If that's the case though, then tell us. The majority of the supporters of the App Tab have posted there, and clearly don't want a simple dye solution(punny?).

Brings me to the point of the barber shop. How in any way would they be the same? The only reason I don't use the shop is because it's just that; a shop out of the way. Make the new appearance thing part of the UI somehow and I can almost promise you that it will be used over and over and over again.

In response to the question of having ability of changing a characters appearance I had the the following idea.

Basically it would come down to, right now there is a core game and three expansions worth of animations, texturing, and coloring that has already been designed, implemented, and tested so why not use it?

I think it would be neat to be able to relayer a piece of equipment with a texture of another. Of course there would be limitations. A piece of plate armor could only be replaced with another plate texture. A bow would need a texture of another bow, etc.

This would give players a lot of flexibility with little to no cost. I'm not a programming expert but I'm guessing each piece of armor out there has a texture ID to it. You could have a menu similiar to the reforging menu. The stats of an item stays the same but the texture would be changed for a cost.

This would probably need to be disabled for PVP since technically what a person is wearing could be a sign of their skill, but that's also what the rankings are for.

On my main last expansion I had Alliance first Shadowmourne. I used it for a few months and now it just rots in my bank. It would be great to take a new axe and relayer it to look like Shadowmourne again. This however would add another limitation so everyone isn't walking about with legendary graphics. For legendaries specifically you would have needed to craft the item before you could relayer it. I guess this could technically apply to Tier suits or PVP suits (but not in a pvp setting) as well.

I'm sure a lot of people enjoy the looks of the old tier sets, but honestly, when will you ever wear them again? This would give people the opportunity to return to the looks they once achieved.

Just a thought.

sooo...appearance tab. i support this.

Q: Can we see gear won via need rolls become soulbound? - Lorinall (NA/ANZ)

A: Yes. We plan on implementing a system where winning an item via Need (when using the Dungeon Finder Need Before Greed loot system) will make a BoE item soulbound. We hope to have this working for the 4.2 patch.

To expand on that idea in case it’s not obvious, we don’t think players should be able to claim certain loot drops based on their class if their only intent is to sell the item. If you want to use the item yourself, awesome, go ahead and roll Need on it and you’ll get preference over players who can’t use that armor type. But if all you want to do is run to the Auction House, then everyone should have equal dibs.

I'm disappointed by this. I understand why you think it's a good idea very well, but I like to gear my alts with BoE items (after asking the group if it's okay to roll need, of course). If I lose the item to someone who rolls need to sell on the AH, that's fine, I know a similar piece will drop sooner or later.

But if rolling need soulbinds it, that essentially makes that piece worthless to me.

04/05/2011 04:04 PMPosted by Kharix

It really disappoints me when they reference finances as a reason for not doing anything. At this point, I really don't think money should stop them from doing anything. They have enough money to do whatever they want.

I think what they were trying to say is that if they're pulling in $10 million in profit every month, they'd be selective with the share of that that goes to development (vs. new servers, new office buildings, bonuses, and into shareholder pockets(assuming blizz is publicly traded)). So if they have to make a choice about whether to push out a new heroic dungeon, or make a dye merchant in a capital city, they'll pick the heroic.

No matter how much money they have they can't do everything at once, though I would be interested in knowing exactly how much certain past features have cost. I mean, what's a heroic cost to code? $100,000? $1 million? $10 million?

When they said expensive design time wise they meant TIME wise not financial cost wise. That means they need to weigh the benefit of adding the char visual thing vs adding something else that more players might enjoy more of. You only have so many designers capable of so much work.

I thought the comment on possibly adding more artwork in the game very interesting. Right now you are pretty much limited to one non-tier cloth hood that matches the mage set - bummer if you are the warlock or priest. Bummer also that the badge cloak matches the mage heroic set but not the normal set (red vs blue). Maybe player enjoyment would be improved if they just added more color and art choices that you could try to win drops of or buy at the badge vendor. I think that's what they are weighing.

I Have been w8ing for this answers in order to see a future "apperance tab" so all those nice-looking items i have in the bank some day they would be usefull to use them in high lvls instead of always using the new looks. For example i have the full Lightbringer set for paladin, so one day i could use it again in raids and heroics.

The barber shop i always use it, maybe not every day but when i change the armor i change the haircut. I dream that some day i would be able to use my Blood Knight armor set to do raids or Heroic dungeons. There's too many nice looking items in the game, gone wasted and i think there should be an option to use them, with the status of your higher item and the look of the item you want. i mean other cheap games have this feature, why not Wow? so many Wow-wannabe's have it.....