[Cairenn]

Art Panel

I was very late to the art panel, which I highly regret, but even then, I was able to get some information.

Many of the artists learn a lot while working at blizzard. The artists come in with various levels of skill (all of them far above me ^_^), but the merging of people means that skills and tricks are spread among the team, and they learn and challenge each other.

There was a lot of Starcraft: Ghost comments and questions… I did not record them, as my focus was squarely on WoW.

The lead artist does not draw as much as he used to anymore. The art staff is more communal then hierarchal.

There is a lot of interaction between the concept artist and the modeler. Many of the people do multiple jobs, modeling for this one, concept sketch for the other. There is a blending and merging, allowing people to know all sides of the process.

Body shape options was played with at some point during the development. The problem they had was that it interfered with the armor models and animations. It also interfered with the immersion. While it’s easy to imagine various body times or scales with humans, the other races provided “lore” problems… A fat night elf would not be fitting. A tall gnome… a short… or skinny tauren would also be out of place. It is something that they still think about, but not likely to be implemented in any foreseeable future.

The general art philosophy is “Less is more”.

Q: Why does Finkle’s Lava Dredger not glow when an enchantment is placed on it?
A: We don’t know yet.

The topic of tabards and chest armor was brought up. The artists spend a lot of time on the chest armor design, and we players cover that up with our tabards to show guild loyalty. With the current technology it is not feasible to show both, but they are interested into looking up different ideas for it. Some ideas thrown around was to make them into cloaks, to put them on shields, or to otherwise integrate the design of the tabard with out obscuring the art design of the underlying armor.

Sadly this was all I had from the art panel. I was only able to go for the end, but at least I had some information.

Walking around

After the art panel, I had an hour to goof off before the next panel. An intentional lunch break designed into the Blizzcon schedule. A quick grab of crappy pizza, and I walked around… to see what I could see. I started talking to random “B” and “M” badges… my quest for Soulken was pretty much given up, so I decided to talk to who ever would listen, and listen to what ever was told to me.

The line for the expansion was longer than an hour, so I again watched over the shoulders of those playing. A group of 20 uber equipped pickups made short work of the trash mobs in the outdoor AQ instance. They were not organized, but they were decked out in the best possible gear for each class. The super shield from Nafarion and the orange sword that is the wind elemental one was given to the warriors. The classes were predone level 60s, all with the tier 2 gear. These group of pickups were able to fight in the 20 man, with some difficulty. The organized ones, fully equipped as they were, stomped the instance.

Nobody in my view was taking on the 40 man instance, but what I saw looked fun. Enchanting is going to get some very nice recipes in 1.9 and there appears to be some new librams, or at least new effects that can be applied to the legs and helm.

I chatted with a random “M”. For reference… “M” was the all access pass, while “B” was blizzard employee. “P” was for press, and “S” was for staff of the conference. I was a “G” for general or guest. One person told me that “M” meant master, another that it meant media… either way the “M” was for the people with no limitations on their locations.

The random “M” that I chatted with works in hardware compliance. His job is to test the various video cards and make sure they work with the versions of WoW. It seams like a interesting job, and he gets access to the new video cards from the companies early for testing. Listening to his lamentations about windows 98 was actually amusing. I don’t blame him, I have tried to code for 98, it’s weird. The official drivers from the companies are the officially tested by blizzard ones, but when they have time, they do test the alternative drivers, such as Omega Drivers and others. The big “thing” is that these are not supported, and they don’t provide support for people who use them.

For their own good they do test these alternative drivers. Even though they are not supported, if they can find a conflict, they are able to stop one potential support call or problem, since a percent of the end users will use them anyway.

I talked to a couple “B”s and it was interesting seeing the various perspectives on the con. They seamed blown away by the fan response, and enjoyed the turn out, and the enthusiasm of crowds. Many where bewildered and seamed a bit out of place, feeling timid about the attention they were receiving for… as one said “just working for a company… one just like many others”.