Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: There's a surprise at the end
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 21st 2011 at 11:00AM
Today's edition of The Queue discusses the nature of the death knight, the recent lack of creepy whispers, the nature of the vrykul, and ... something special. Enjoy!
Oscar asked:
Is it me or does it feel as if the whole "caster" part of DKs was just wholly abandoned and just being confined to Death Coil and a few other abilities?
I don't think it was abandoned -- because it was never supposed to be there. Not ever. Every time death knights have found a way to make themselves into primarily spellcasters, especially with a substantial amount of ranged damage, Blizzard has specifically gone out of its way to stop it from happening. Death knights are not primarily spellcasters now, and they were never supposed to be spellcasters. They do deal a lot of spell damage, sure, but so does every melee class/spec besides warriors.
If you want more evidence that death knights aren't intended to be casters, here's a statement from Ghostcrawler on the topic from the beginning of 2010.
Pilsner asked:
Why have the archaeology keystones stopped talking to me when I loot them? I need their counsel on which of my invisible enemies to be most wary of!
That wasn't a baseline feature. It was something that Deadly Boss Mods did if you had it installed. It had a "Make Archaeology More Interesting" option that was turned on by default. The mod authors probably noticed the sheer amount of people that were utterly baffled by the keystone noises and disabled the option by default. Your friends will not be abandoning you anymore. (At least, not because of archaeology.)
Noyou asked:
When you kill certain vrykul, why do they turn into powder?
The kvaldir in particular do this, but they don't turn into powder. They turn into water. The kvaldir are vengeful spirits of the sea. If you look at their model, you'll notice bits of the sea are worked into their bodies -- they have starfish and barnacles stuck to them, they're covered in seaweed (and in fact, it looks like their hair is seaweed), and their clothing is made up of bits of loose netting from fishing nets. When you kill them, you more or less beat the sentience out of them, and they lose their ability to hold a solid form. Their body melts into a pool of water again, and the bits of the sea that were stuck to them just fall in a pile on the ground.
The legitimately living vrykul don't fall to dust/water. They leave corpses behind like anything else.
Atraja asked:
You guys keep saying that you might bring Patches of Yesteryear back but I haven't seen it yet. Is it coming back or isn't it?
Yes. Tomorrow. Except it's called WoW Archaeologist now.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue, Archaeology
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 9)
Scunosi Mar 21st 2011 8:28PM
When they implemented the new 200 fragment cap I was surprised they didn't implement a race "lock" using the same technology. The way I figure it is like this:
You've got 200 fragments of something. That's a lot of dig sites. And yet you still aren't using them. That means obviously (barring stocking up for money patches/new rares etc.) you don't really need that race any more. So why not just make it so that 200 fragments=lock on that race? Or maybe something approximate as I'm not sure how hard it would be to get exactly 200 since you can't loot over that now.
Mortenebra Mar 21st 2011 11:08AM
A question for the Queue...
I often hear about "polygons" in the game: "This graphic had too many polygons" or "That thing has more polygons than my model," and the like. While I have a basic, geometric understanding of what a polygon is, what exactly are they in terms of game graphic design?
(Also, do I get a cookie for 1) not responding to the Queue's topics; 2) not mentioning Rebecca Black; and 3) posting an actual question on the first page? :D [I'm mostly kidding, by the way.])
Billlop Mar 21st 2011 11:15AM
Imagine Polygons as molocules of skin in a human. If you have less, then your skin is blurry and stretched. More means your much sharper and better looking.
You can notice it when you look at the Night elf model, for example, and compare it to the Blood Elf or Worgen
MattKrotzer Mar 21st 2011 11:15AM
Polygons are the number of surface area shapes that make up an object within the game.
Goblins and worgen=high polygon count. They look incredibly detailed and support richer textures easily.
Humans and orcs=low polygon count. They are blockier and less defined, with detailed textures occasionally looking out of place.
Billlop Mar 21st 2011 11:17AM
Found this picture form the new Strangers Wrath PS3 exclusive update.
http://oi55.tinypic.com/2hhpt7p.jpg
Billlop Mar 21st 2011 11:20AM
Sorry for the double post, but heres a humanoid character with the same comparison (showing clothes, skin ect.)
http://oi51.tinypic.com/28v3z9i.jpg
Amaxe Mar 21st 2011 11:21AM
Well, in regard to #2, you mentioned her by mentioning you weren't mentioning her...
/ducks
ithilielsilver Mar 21st 2011 11:29AM
The best way to explain how polygons work in models is to use a silly example.
A Minecraft character uses the bare minimum of polygons. He's composed entirely of blocks. A Minecraft character's head is a cube, with 6 polygons.
Now imagine if the character's head was a 12-sided die, like the kind used in Dungons and Dragons or similar games... or if you prefer, a dodecahedron. That's twice as many sides; 12 polygons.
Both are trying to represent the same shape (a sphere), but the 12-sided die comes a lot closer because it has more polygons.
Pyromelter Mar 21st 2011 11:37AM
Polygons basically refer to triangles. Images on your screen are made up of many thousands of triangles. The more triangles there are, the smaller they are, and the more detailed you can get.
in reference to 1,2,3...
1. Why would you get a cookie for that. As Chris Rock would say, you are asking for credit for "What you're supposed to do!"
2. You mentioned her by asking about her, so that's a fail.
3. This is also fallacious statement, because by lunchtime in North America, your original post will be off the front page.
Andrew Mar 21st 2011 11:56AM
From what limited understanding I have of computer graphics, the more polygons a model of an object has, the more detail and particularly smoothness you can give that object. Imagine it as being the 3D equivalent to adding sides to a 2D object. If you give a rectangle another side, it becomes a pentagon. Give it fifteen more sides you get an icosagon. The more sides this 2D polygon has, the closer it comes to looking like a true circle with perfect smoothness. The same in 3D modeling: the more polygons an object has, the greater ability to model true smoothness and/or greater detail.
Pyromelter Mar 21st 2011 12:09PM
Sort of want to clarify, lest I step on any graphic designers' toes... yes, other polygons other than triangles can be used, but because triangles are the simplest polygon with only 3 sides, that allows for maximum flexibility in creating a 3-dimensional model. Also, triangle combos can create any other polygon (for example, two right-angle triangles can make a square or rectangle).
I'm not a graphic designer, but the people that I have seen making 3-d graphic design models, when you see the wire-frame of those models, many times you are looking at thousands triangles making up a model. Someone mentioned a ball, here is an example of a crapton of triangles making up a ball - http://wiki.gamedev.net/images/d/d2/Sphere.gif
It appears as though 4-sided polygons are the other most commonly used type of polygon. http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2000/07/17/ati/boxpoly.gif - a car model made up of a lot of 3 and 4-sided polygons, for example.
Suzaku Mar 21st 2011 1:25PM
Since I haven't really seen a satisfactory explanation...
A polygon is the most basic building block of a 3D model: a flat triangle made up of three lines. These polygons are attached to one another in order to create the surfaces of 3D shapes. For example, a pyramid made out of four triangles (four polygons).
The more polygons you add, the more surfaces you have, allowing for more detail. For example, the models for old WoW races, such as humans or dwarves, have fewer polygons than the models for newer races. As such, the older models look more "blocky" while the new models look more "smooth" or "curved".
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Dolphin_triangle_mesh.png
Texture maps or "skins" are flat images that are tretched over the surfaces of the 3D model, giving them their final appearance. Your character's face, skin, pants, shirt, and so on, are all flat textures stretched over their model. Basically any surface you see in the game has some sort of texture on it, be it skin, fur, stone, or a patch of grass.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Normal_map_example.png
In this example, the object on the left is comprised of approximately 4 million polygons; each curve, blemmish, and crack is made up of hundreds of tiny little polygons.
The middle is that same shape simplifed to just 500 polygons, and the object on the right is that 500 polygon shape with a texture map stretched over it in order to simulate the curves, blemmishes, and cracks.
anbilow Mar 21st 2011 12:58PM
All I know is that there are a lot of polygons in Utah.
Right?
ambermist Mar 21st 2011 12:59PM
I just ate my lunch and it's still on the first page! :-P
Rob Mar 21st 2011 1:55PM
I kinda like the low poly chipmunk. The high poly one looks like a vorpal bunny.
Croe Mar 21st 2011 4:20PM
I'm pretty that's it's just someone at Blizzard lamenting over their lost parrot.
Pray for its safe return everyone. The power of prayer cannot be underestimated.
Lemons Mar 21st 2011 4:48PM
So basically the more polygons that make up a character or any model for that matter, the more difficult it is for your graphics card to render. That's why you hear about them at all. A character than needs to look near-realistic will probably have millions of polygons...like Gollum in LotR...but they also need a render farm to bring him to life. Such a model would crash a desktop computer if it even attempted to render a single frame of it. Thus game characters have much less polys because they need to render very quickly in order to move in real time.
Blizzard's models actually have less polys than most and rely on interesting textures to give them more dimension because they want their games to run on low end systems which expands their potential market. It also adds to the game's lifespan. Because it was never meant to look realistic in 10 years it won't look as dated as the games that aim for realism, and considering it's an MMO that people have already been playing for six years and probably six more to come that's a very important factor to consider.
mike Mar 21st 2011 8:11PM
Speaking of Rebecca Black, i was just forwarded this and had to share it with all of you, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi00ykRg_5c
I's a Deathmetal remake of her "song" and i must say, it is much better than the original =D
Drecin Mar 21st 2011 11:12AM
When DKs first arrived via Wrath...they were OP...causing alot of balance issues...now several patches and a expansion later, DKs seem to be another class and not a hero class...do you think Blizzard will simply just bring a new class rather then a "Hero" class since it (understandable) makes a huge balance issue...if they make it a hero class...what makes it different than all the other classes???
N-train Mar 21st 2011 11:19AM
Hero has come to mean two things:
-Starts at a higher level. I blizzard's phrase for this was: "they were ex-elite minions of the LK, it didn't make sense for them to run around killing lvl 3 boars".
-And is, supposedly, more complicated to play. There was a recent discussion on the forums of people complaining that DKs had to choose between mitigating incoming dmg (thru applying diseases) and pumping out threat (normal attacks), something that no other tanking class had to deal with*. The CM response was something along the lines of the fact that DKs by nature account for those differences and that they (Blizzard) are fine with the "hero" class being a bit more complicated than other classes.
*Side note: It's comments like that that always baffle me. People are always complaining that classes are getting homogenized left and right, and yet here they are griping that DKs aren't enough like the other tanking classes. The moonkin "execute" question on the recent Q&A also reminded me of this.