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Submit your questions for BlizzCon art panel
BlizzCon 2013 is just under two months away, and preparations are in full swing. This year, there's a few new ideas in the works, as Community Manager Bashiok explains in a forum post. Specifically, Blizzard wants your questions for their art panel, particularly if you record them and post a video. The video isn't necessary, but if you make one and they feature your question, they'll play it at the panel before answering. Note that this post is for questions for the art panel only. Thus anything regarding class balance, PvP, lore, systems design, servers, etc are off limits and will be deleted. Appropriate questions to ask are more along the lines of character design, polygon count, animations, textures, color schemes, and so on. Good things to keep in mind are that WoW's art team has made changes to certain things in the past based on player feedback -- the male blood elf models and female worgen models come to mind -- so this is a great opportunity to have your voice heard. You can submit your questions, or link your videos, in this forum post, also stickied at the top of the US general discussion forums.
Reader UI of the Week: Tian's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, spotlighting the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. Welcome to another exciting episode of Reader UI of the Week, your repository of all things community user interfaces. I'm still working on my upgrades to my UI for Cataclysm, so you fine people don't get to see my deal yet. Soon. Soon. In the meantime, why don't we check out a submission from the ol' email box? Speaking of, I would love to get another big backlog of reader UI submissions that are Cataclysm-themed or designed specifically for the new expansion. If you've got something you've been working on for expansion day, show me! I would love to spotlight some Cataclysm user interfaces that are going to happily see the light of day when the world comes to the brink of death. As Wrath of the Lich King comes to a close with elemental invasions, Thrall babysitting lots of tiny elemental babies, and cultists totally wrecking our cities, I wanted to feature Tian's user interface. Why feature a user interface with so much Wrath artwork and motif? I think I want to say goodbye to Wrath of the Lich King in the best way I can -- talking about the art and the user interface that showcases it.
BlizzCon 2009: World of Warcraft art panel
One of the more underrated panels during every BlizzCon is the World of Warcraft art panel, which discusses the little things that players usually gloss over when playing the game. Environmental Art Lead Gary Platner and his team spoke about how the art in the game evolved through time, particularly with the advances in the game's technology. Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has evolved in many visual, if not always noticeable, ways. For instance, players can now see up to twice as far into the distance compared to when the game first came out. Projected texture effects are overlaid on some terrain, creating a more "realistic" environment, and vertex shading for richer, better lighting.The new Cataclysm expansion will continue to improve on the look of the game, utilizing new technologies such as texture blending - which allows distinct objects to be blended together visually. The team also previewed new water, which was just marvelous to look at. They also discussed the creation of new dungeons, which start from brainstorming, picking up lore, and getting real world inspiration.%Gallery-70709%
BlizzCon Roundup: Day 1
Whew. What a dizzying first day that was, wasn't it? Ok, well, I wouldn't know myself since I'm halfway across the world, but judging from the conference hangovers my colleagues have got, it's safe to say it was one whirlwind of an opening. If you weren't here yesterday to watch -- er, read -- the play-by-play, here's a quick recap of BlizzCon '08 Day One: Our tenacious guys at BlizzCon liveblogged the opening ceremonies, although nothing really spectacular happened here other than the announcement of the Wizard, a hot new class for Diablo III. It was mostly trailers, recaps, and a reminder for everyone that something historic will happen in November. And it's not the elections. Mike gave us all a preview of the people milling about in costume earlier in the day, but that was just a preview for the totally phenomenal costume contest this year. While past years have been pretty cool, this year's crop blew all the past ones out of the water. You'll have to check out the gallery for yourself to see what I mean. Can you imagine a turtle mount? Yes. A turtle mount. Krystalle snapped quite a bunch of shots from the convention floor just to give everyone an idea of how BlizzCon feels. Looking through the general floor gallery, it almost felt like I was there. Minus the trademark convention smell, I presume, and the sad inability to purchase any of the cool swag. The first World of Warcraft panel of the day dealt with the game's UI. It's pretty cool and was a proper teaser for the even cooler things that would pop up later in the day. Our man Alex did the liveblogging duties for this one. Itemrack will have to wait, unfortunately. More stuff from yesterday after the jump!
