Posts with tag barbershop

As a longtime fan of dwarf women, I got a bit of a shock when I logged on to the Cataclysm beta this evening and discovered my shaman's neat and tidy bun had morphed into an extroverted anime style! Obviously she's been visiting the stylist without my knowledge, but a quick trip to the Stormwind barber revealed a total of four possible new hairstyles for dwarf women. Who would have thought we'd be such trendsetters?

Now, the textures for a few of them do look a little funky, and some of them look like several styles combined, so the usual this is beta and it is possibly a bug caveats apply here. In spite of that, I feel optimistic and look forward to the possibility of new hairstyles for the other races. So far, tauren are still woefully under-served when it comes to choice, and the gnomes and elves of beta are sticking to tried and tested styles. As for the men? We'll be adding new styles to the gallery as we find them.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

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Every so often I get tired of the self-seriousness that infests some of (OK, most of) the other work I do here, and get the urge to write something purely for fun. After our series on evil achievements and the relentless misery of School of Hard Knocks, I'd like to spend some time on achievements that are nothing but an absolute joy from beginning to end.

The following is an entirely arbitrary set of five achievements that I personally believe are a hoot. Eventually, I'd like to expand this in the same fashion as the evil achievements series, and I'd welcome any comments or suggestions on your own favorites. Namely, what makes certain achievements fun? Is there any achievement you've made a point of getting on each of your characters?

Yesterday's Breakfast Topic was revealing. Revealing in that I revealed that I watch Project Runway. You guys said some stuff, too, I think? I'll have to go back and look.

Ah, yep. Okay. You guys hate the Goku haircut as much as I do. It's probably the worst one in the game. But hey, we're not here today to decry current hairstyles. Our trip to the stylist today is all about what we'd like to see added instead of removed.

I commented yesterday on the sheer number of awesome hipster haircuts that female goblins are getting, and that's what I want. I want more modern haircuts for all of the races, especially the girls. I think I count three bobs for blood elf females alone! Give 'em an awesome Rock Band-style pixie cut. Give troll females a few haircuts that don't make them look like Bugs Bunny antagonists. Let my night elf male be Morrissey. Let human males have a haircut that doesn't make them look like a member of the Village People (or Fabio). Give tauren females ... I don't even know what. Something.

What do you guys want to see added to the game in terms of hairstyles? Any cuts you can't live without?

Full disclosure here: The main thing that makes me want to play a particular race is their choice in hairstyles. Especially the females. Sometimes when I go to Stormwind and enter the barber shop I say, out loud, "All right, designers, let's send our models to the L'Oreal Paris hair salon! Make it work!"

Okay, that last part isn't entirely accurate. Or is it?

Anyway, yeah. Hairstyles are important to me, which is why I'm simultaneously happy and a bit miffed about the new styles in Wrath, a lot of which were just copy-paste jobs from other races. Night elf females still have a grand total of two good haircuts and human males can, joy of joys, be Goku now.

So my question to you, dear readers, the first in a series, is this: What are your favorite and least favorite hairstyles in the game? When you see a human male with the Goku haircut or the foxtail, do you want to kill a man? For female troll players, you don't even need to answer. I mean, you have what, two hairstyles anyway? Neither of them any good? Maybe next expansion.

Addendum: And just why do goblin females get all the good hipster haircuts, Blizzard? They can be Tegan or Sara. I can't even be the girl from La Roux.

Doubtless Druids all around the world are still absorbing the new-look Night Elf cat form which was announced yesterday. We know Blizzard was going for something of a colour-coded approach, trying to match skins to that of their owners but what does it all mean? Well, blue Zarhym posted on the forums this morning and went into a little more detail.

It seems that rather than being able to go 'oh I'll have the white kitty with the cut pink gem on it's collar', that your form is actually linked to your toon's physical appearance. Yes, you can easily change how your bear or cat form will look but the only was to do this, in my understanding, is by visiting a barber shop and changing the skin tone (and/or hair) of your Druid in humanoid form.

Zarhym puts it better than I:

"Now that everyone has had a chance to check out the new art for druid cat and bear forms, we'd like to share with you the current break down of Tauren skin tones and Night Elf hair colors associated with each form color. Please note that, while we have attempted to associate each form color as carefully as possible, this list is subject to change before the next major content patch goes live. All options for skin tone (Tauren) and hair color (Night Elves) are listed below followed by the forms that will be associated with each set of tones/colors."

Click on the jump to see what your druid is going to look like.

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.

"Ask a Beta Tester" took a short break during patch 3.02 madness, but we're back!

DM7000 asks...

What happened with the glyphs that turned (Druids) into a polar bear or a lynx?

This is a question I asked constantly in the beta for about a week. As much as I was excited about the talent changes and new skills, I was even more excited about form customization, because I hate Tauren cat form. I love my class dearly, but all of the form models have basically been unchanged since the original game went live, which is very hard for those of us forced to live with the unadulterated suck of Tauren cat form. It's kind of a bitter pill to swallow wandering the beautifully rendered landscapes of Northrend and seeing the quantum leap of Blizzard's artistic touch while using an ancient, low-polygon model like Tauren cat form. I found out that Glyph of the Red Lynx (and other Druid-form glyphs) hadn't actually gone live, which was a devastating blow to those of us with Tauren cat form. The glyphs exist in the game files, but none are trainable or discoverable; the developers apparently came to the decision that forcing Druids to use a glyph slot to customize their forms wasn't a great idea, and they're leaning toward the idea of patching in the ability to get the hell out of Tauren cat form using the barbershop. Frankly I think most Druids would agree that's a much better option, especially if they have to use Tauren cat form. Or see it. Or occupy the same game with it.

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where for one glorious day, we don't have any passenger mount questions! But I know, deep down, there are a thousand more on the horizon.

Elmo asked...

How are Enhancement Shamans shaping up? I heard silly things like Elemental gear is great for them or 2x fast weapons with Flametongue. Are we really gonna make that much of a turn around? In other words, is my hard earned gear all worthless? Not just the epic gems and Strength enchants.

Enhancement Shaman did hit a weird point where that was true, but I don't think it was ever intended that the 'final product' would look that way. There were some Windfury bugs and wonky unfinished tuning that caused that, but as another reader mentioned, the devs are working on getting everything fixed and proper. Things will be a little different from Burning Crusade, but not so much so that Enhancement Shaman are wearing Elemental gear to melee.

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, with even more passenger mount questions! Don't worry, though. It didn't devour our entire column today. We have plenty more for you! For example, Sorano's question...

What I'd like to know his exactly how much protection warrior dps as changed. All the talents seem too good to be true.

Protection Warriors seems like one of the class/spec combos that have changed the most in Wrath. Their tanking is incredible and a lot more versatile now (all tanks are, actually) but you're asking about DPS and not tanking! Their DPS is good. It's not as high as DPS classes/specs, but it's not abysmal like it used to be. You might actually be DPSing with your shield equipped for the huge Shield Slam crits rather than dual wielding, even when you're not the one being beat on.

I don't have any concrete numbers or DPS charts for you, but I can say that what I've seen is really, really impressive. In yesterday's Ask a Beta Tester, reader Friday Knight gave you some more in depth information about the rotations of each spec, so I recommend reading that if you missed it. His information and what I've seen myself makes me want to gear up a Prot Warrior alongside my Prot Paladin instead of having just one tanking character.

The public test realm has just gone live, and if you've got any characters on it (or if you'd like to go copy some), you can head on over to enjoy all of the patchtastic frivolity likely to descend sometime soon.

In case you're catching up to the rest of us, patch 3.0 is another large content patch specifically designed to transition the player base to the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King. We won't be seeing Death Knights or Northrend (or at least, we're pretty sure we won't, unless they're planning on a big surprise). We will be seeing all of the 1-70 class changes, new features added to the default UI, barbershops, Inscription, a raid buff system overhaul, and more, in addition to four European servers closing due to Russian player migration. Read on for a quick guide to what you can expect:

Yes, you can have a Night Elf mohawk. That's the biggest thing you should take away from the new files uncovered by Andrige, a WoW fan artist. They show some of the new hairstyle options for various races showing up soon in a Barber Shop near you. He sent the files off to our own Big Bear Butt Blogger and to Phaelia of Resto4life. The Male hairstyles can be found at Big Bear Butt, while the female hairstyles can be found at Resto4Life.

Right now, it looks like they've mostly swapped hairstyles between races -- male Gnomes have the Forsaken male hairstyles for example, while Night Elves seem to have taken a page from the Blood Elf book. Still, there are a few seemingly new unique hairstyles, such as the aforementioned Night Elf mohawk and new horn types for Tauren.

of course, most of these new hairstyles aren't even immediately usable in the Beta barbershop yet, either, but it's likely that we'll see them in a future build. Also, I would imagine that we will see more hairstyles (hopefully more new and unique ones, specifically) coming as the Beta continues, but it's nice to get a sneak peak at what we have so far.

Again, you can see the female hairstyles at Resto4Life, and the male hairstyles at Big Bear Butt. Be sure to check out our barbershop gallery as well if you haven't yet.

We're back again with today's round of Ask a Beta Tester questions. I tried to answer as many as I could, but time is a fickle mistress and I was going to write some sort of metaphor here but I can't think of one, so if you would all be so kind, come up with one for me. If I didn't get to your question today, don't worry, we'll be doing these for as long as there are questions left to answer. Just post it in the comments section below, and we'll try to get to it as soon as we can.

Jamesisgreat asked: How much gold are you getting rewarded per quest on average? I mean is it worth us saving up our gold for Wrath or are quests going to reward 100g a pop or something?

Most quests throughout the starter zones give around 5g each, though group quests offer more. On top of that there are the green rewards you don't use that you can vendor, so you don't need to save a lot of money. I advise saving up a little bit though, because questing to 80 is not going to get you the (roughly) 8,000g you'll want to buy the ring that ports you to Dalaran. You won't be totally broke at 80 if you don't save money now, but you won't be able to run around and buy whatever you want either. Northrend is a big place, so that ring will be nice even if you only use it for the portal. You can be free to set your hearth elsewhere.

The latest beta build has implemented the Barbershops many of us have been waiting so eagerly to see. They're fun for sure, but not complete at all. Regardless, we've put together a gallery for you to see a little bit about how the process works. You can check that out down below.

It's a quirky design and it makes me wonder why only Goblins know how to cut hair throughout all of Azeroth. It was fun to tinker around with, but I became bored pretty fast. The new hairstyles aren't in, so right now it's almost like staring at the character creation screen but a little bigger and there's gold involved. It will be much more fun on the live realms I'm sure, because I am a roleplayer and doing this kind of thing once in awhile should be pretty fun. There's just very little reason to play with it for a long time on the beta realms, I don't much care what my character's hair is like there. For all I care, it could be made of snakes. Hmm, that would be pretty awesome, actually...

Well, I did experiment a little. I decided my Human Priest grew her hair longer since I rolled her in the first days of WoW's launch, so I picked a longer hairstyle, purchased it, then decided I was bored and wandered off. Until I came back to take screenshots for you all, of course. All in all... yeah, boring until the new hairstyles are in or I'm in a spot to care. Bummer.

The biggest news of the day so far would have to be the Achievements system. Linked within Blizz's Achievements page is the screenshot you see above (click to embiggen), which contains some interesting new hints for the highly anticipated haircut system that we'll be getting access to in Wrath:

• You'll be able to change:
  • Hair Style
  • Hair Color
  • Facial Hair (and presumably the attributes in that slot for other races/genders, like jewelry)
    
• It looks to be pretty cheap - the example price here is a mere 2 silver. This is surprising to me because I was pretty sure it was going to be a big gold sink.
• The barber shop looks pretty cool; apparently, this one is run by goblins, although the engineering on the chairs looks more Gnomish to me.

Alright, there's not a lot there, and as the beta has not even begun yet any of this may well change (especially the price), but it's something. By the way, does anyone have a clue as to what the icon on the top-right of the minimap is? That's where the sun/moon icon usually goes. David hazarded a guess that it's a picture of a window, indicating that you're inside; my only theory is that it's the icon for the Achievements interface, though it's oddly big and in a strange place.