model-changes
Latest
Alganon making the switch to the full free-to-play model
It's been quite a while since we've heard much from Alganon, with the last major game announcement having been the switch to a subscription-free model back in April. The team over at Quest Online has apparently decided to take that philosophy to the next level, as on Friday, August 13th, the game is going fully free to play. The client will be free to download and play indefinitely, with no time limits. There will be certain restrictions on new accounts, with a lowered level cap and ability cap that can be ameliorated via microtransactions. Said microtransactions are also the game's way of compensating players who had already purchased a copy of the game, with existing purchasers getting several caps removed automatically. The full details, as well as details on a special offer within the first week of the game's free-to-play launch, are outlined within the official announcement. Alganon is certainly no stranger to controversy, but it remains to be seen what the MMO community at large will think about the game in its newest incarnation.
Shifting Perspectives: Let my kitties go!
Every Tuesday/Wednesday/some sort of day occurring midweek, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week Allison Robert yanks John Patricelli's column again, hoping to make good on a threat previously made concerning her "dissatisfaction" with Tauren cat form. And by dissatisfaction she might mean something else.I'll level with you; we have a huge Druid post in the pipeline that's going to round up the changes to the class in Wrath, new talents, new skills, new everything, and frankly I'm sick to death about reading or writing anything having to do with the expansion. So, just to buck the overwhelming trend that threatens to drive us all to the nuthouse, I'm going to turn to a topic that's plagued Druids for a while.By this I mean the perennial form issue, something that my Druid colleagues on the blog have previously termed the Same Old Animal Posterior, or SOAP. But it's one that we've been given reason to believe will change in...Wrath. Well, that didn't last long. You'll note that David's article was written in October 2007, more than a year ago, but the same thing could have been posted in 2006 as well. Druid forms haven't changed since launch*, and while they were never really at the cutting edge of Blizzard's art direction as a result**, they look more and more shabby in relation to the higher-polygon models and landscapes. As everything around you gets better and better -- more evocative lighting, more intricate details, fantastic animation -- it's hard not to feel a strange sense of displacement as you shift into a 2004 form within a 2008 game.But at long last we may see Druid form customization, an overhaul to the default forms themselves, or possibly (hopefully?) both.
2.4 model changes: Good or bad?
David Bowers touched on this just the other day, and the WoW community has mostly seen this change as a negative thing. Example: The original thread from the official forums.My favorite little change out of the various, random character model changes in patch 2.4 is actually the change to the human female eyes. Sure, it looks silly in some cases, but for my own characters it was an improvement. I could never find the perfect eye choice for them before, because they all looked either empty and sunken, or incredibly angry. I'm not sure exactly how to describe how the eyes look now, but there's some sparkle that wasn't there before. I like that! Yeah, there's some that look horrible, which is lame for the players with those particular eyes. Overall, though? I like it. Even if the iris seems a little over sized, they have character.The outcry over this very minor detail drives home a point that Blizzard has made before, too. It's a very unfortunate one. The character models most likely will not receive any substantial overhaul in the future because there will be a lot of people very angry about it. I didn't really want to buy into that, because I really want updated character models, but it seems much less likely after this. Such a big deal over eyes is not a good sign when it comes to model upgrades.
