Posts with tag colors

Want to know what's going to be available in the hairstyle department before you roll your brand new pandaren? Have I got the gallery for you! Featuring a bunch of hairstyles now easily accessed on the new character creation screen as well as some of the fur colors available for male pandaren, this gallery is your one-stop shop for locks of pandaren love. Take a look.

My personal favorite pandaren haircuts are the wild ones that make every pandaren dude look like a guy you went to college with. You know him. You know him.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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We found out on Tuesday of the new ability to toggle customized overcloaks that replace the look of your cloak (but leaves the stats intact). As a dwarf priest, I would proudly wear the Ironforge colours of gold and red. But I wouldn't have a problem wearing something else that looks as slick as say the insignias of the Argent Crusade. From a guild perspective, I think the guild tabards in game are okay. The problem with tabards? My beard covers it up. I know for other classes and races, the tabard has that "tucked in" look. Many comments from the overcloak post mentioned overcloaks with guild tabard designs on them. Not a bad idea and that is something I hope we'll get to see.

Now I have to ask, what cloak designs are you looking forward to wearing?

Warning: Not safe for work! While it's all in a good fun, there's definitely cursing and loud, riotous music.

This is the new short video from Myndflame, titled Theory of a Death Knight. Rumor has it that the creator went to herculean effort to get the video published. While I hate to see someone go to that kind of pain, I do have to say that it was worth it. "Theory" is one of those rare unique pieces that show why Clint is a stand-apart machinimator.

The premise of the video is pretty simple. The scene opens to a Death Knight rocking out in a music studio. A Belf stops the performance, demanding to know why they always have to sing such harsh stuff. In the ensuing conflict, the Death Knight shortly finds himself fired. He then has to go out and make his own way in the big wide world.

The first thing that struck me about this video was, ironically, the colors. While I've been exposed to vibrant imagery before, this whole thing felt like someone made it out of a paint bucket. They're bright, gorgeous, and vivid. The strong colors emphasized the frenetic pace of the Death Knight's music.

The final gag in the movie had me laughing out loud. I wasn't expecting it, and it seemed like a perfect finale to the video.

If you have trouble seeing the player above, you can catch the movie here.

AbleGamers has a conversation with Jeff Kaplan about the upcoming accessibility changes to the game in patch 3.1. We saw in the patch notes already that there would be a new colorblind mode added to the game, but Kaplan goes into more detail here -- Blizzard is making sure that even when the interface depends on color to get information across (as in, how difficult your quests are or whether you'll get a skill point from making a crafting recipe or not), there will be other text and symbols in there that relay that information without color.

Unfortunately, while the changes that are going in the game will be helpful. AbleGamers points out that the game isn't perfect for those with colorblindness yet -- mob levels are often shown to the player in a certain color, and there's no option yet for players to see that information in any other format. Additionally, Rogue combo points are shown by filing those little circles in with colors, and colorblind players who aren't able to see that color will have difficulty with that mechanic as well.

The good news is that, while Blizzard does want to make sure their core game is as accessible as possible, there's lots of room for addon authors to do more. Colorblindness is surprisingly prevalent, and everything coders can do to make the game easier to play will be welcomed by those who need it.

Our good friends at the OC (don't call it that) Register have an article up about how the University of California at Irvine has received a grant to study the differences between US and Chinese players of World of Warcraft. And the differences are fairly interesting: apparently US players use many more UI mods and addons than Chinese players do. Additionally, more Chinese players play the "more challenging version of the game" (seems like they mean PvP servers to us, though that may change with yesterday's big news), and Chinese players, say the researcher, tend to talk more about color schemes and architecture than American players. Finally, the demographics are fairly different -- here in the states, women make up 20 percent of the playing audience, and in China that number is almost halved. And while people here may play with parents or even grandparents, in China, the older generation isn't interested in the game at all.

These observations seem more to be based on anecdotal evidence of Chinese players in cafes more than anything else, but the study is just getting started, so maybe with some more research they can come up with some more solid numbers (or even more reasons) showing why this is the case. But it's interesting that inspecting how people play this game in two different countries can reveal something about the cultural differences between each.

As I mentioned on the WoW Insider Show the other day, reader Chad G. sent us a tip about the Figureprints character he received (probably one of the first shipped figures that we've heard about so far), and as you can see from the pictures, he was a little underwhelmed by the quality, While the actual process went OK, the figure itself just seems kind of dusty, which hardly counts as the "vibrant" colors we were promised back when these things were first announced. From across the room, he says, it's hard to make out any colors at all -- the whole thing looks "dusty black."

Chad says he doesn't know if he would buy this thing again, although since he posted the pictures, he says that Figureprints is sending him another figurine, so maybe this was a mistake (there was also apparently a spot of paint missing on the figure's arm, and that seems more like a flaw in the specific figure than the process). Either way, while it's cool to have your character in actual, real 3D form, maybe the Figureprints folks don't quite have all the kinks worked out yet.

Tenehuini over on the EU forums has an excellent point: currently, higher level characters have no way at all of seeing which NPCs, at a glance, have lower-level quests for them. What we need is another set of exclamation points, a toggled way of showing which NPCs have quests for us, even if they're below our current level.

Aeus says it's a good idea that just hasn't been acted on yet, but I'll add my voice to the crowd asking for action. Before, when lower level quests didn't grant XP or rep, this wasn't that big a deal-- if you were going back to do a certain low level quest (for lore or completion purposes), you probably knew where it was anyway. But since reputation has been buffed on lowbie quests, there's value in knowing where quests are. And there's really no reason for Blizzard to hide that info, anyway-- the quests are viewable right after you talk to the questgiver, so why not throw a exclamation point up there?

The only question, then, is what color. Later in the thread, Readbeard comes up with a whole list of exclamation point colors-- green, yellow, orange and red for quest difficulty, and black and gray for pre- or post-level status. As good an idea as that sounds to us WoW veterans, my guess is that Blizzard won't vibe with it-- explaining all the different colored exclamation points to a new player might be a little tough. But still, a toggle-able lowbie quest exclamation should be easy to implement, and would help those folks headed back to the starter areas to pick up experience, rep, or whatever else they want.

If you're a jewelcrafter (or just want to find some good gems to stick in your armor-- and who doesn't?), you'll probably find these two little online jewelcrafting applications invaluable.

First off, Xornot's Gem Finder by Xornot of Gorefiend is an awesome little application that lets you browse through all the gems in the game (so far-- I'm not a jewelcrafter, so I don't know if it's completely up-to-date) according to socket color, stat bonuses, crafting or vendoring, and even by name. All of the gems are color coded, and because Xornot is apparently a l33t web coder, everything is Ajaxy smooth. Very cool tool for finding just the right gem for that shiny new epic you just picked up.

Jesta has also created a jewelcrafting tool that may not look quite as shiny as the first one, but in fact goes a little farther-- not only can you browse all the gems in the game (by base gem, color, or class appropriateness), but it looks like eventually, jewelcrafters will be able to log in, list the gems they can make, and even list prices for prospective buyers on the server. It's kind of like a custom online auction house listing for jewelcrafting. Unfortunately, there's no date listed for functionality, and it seems like Jesta is a little too busy working on all kinds of other things to get it up and running, but we'll throw a hug his way and thank him for the great online app.

The 2.1 changes will bring a little more order to the auction house in terms of gems, but until then (and even afterwards), these tools look really useful for both prospectors and their customers.

[ via WoW LJ ]

For some reason I missed this in the small mention we gave it the first time around, but apparently the Netherdrake mount (which I'm currently grinding like a madman to get the skill for) is available in a bevy of colors! Our friends at WoWHead have posted not only the Tier 6 stats, but also all the different Netherwing mounts.

When the time comes, you'll get your choice of Azure, Cobalt, Onyx, Purple, Veridian (wha?), or Violet dragon mounts. I'm sure Onyx will be a popular choice, but you never know-- paladins might want to go for purple just so it can match with their Tier 5 gear. Unfortunately, all those colors seem really-- blue. Where's my red Netherwing, or my gray dragon? Veridian is actually kind of greenish. Looks pretty blah to me, but whatever floats your flying mount around faster than a mage spell, I guess.

The mount actually comes from a rep vendor, so as long as you get exalted with whatever quests need to be done, you'll have your pick of the litter. Even though each mount is Unique, I think that only means you can't have two Onyx mounts-- I believe that you'll be able to buy as many different colors as you have the gold for (maybe those of you on the PTR can confirm or deny*-- whoops, see update). Anyway, looks great! What color are you going for?

Update: Word from the PTR says it's actually a quest reward, so one dragon for you. Choose wisely. Also Veridian is apparently a typo-- the color should be viridian. (thanks, kind readers!)

Update2: Now we're being told that you can buy another color after you get your first one. Looks like we'll have to wait and see what happens on the live servers.

brkn_doll over at WoW Ladies rolled a Draenei shammy to join up in her friends' guild, and when she picked up the tabard for it, she saw... well, unless you're color blind, you can't miss it*. As she says, she looks like a pumpkin.

What do you do when you finally put on a guild tabard, only to find that you wish you could take it back off again? For April Fool's Day, my guild leader turned our tabard hot pink, which I actually thought looked kind of good on my female Blood Elf mage. My shaman wouldn't have looked good in it, but he's wearing the Tabard of the Protector anyway, so there's one option: get a new tabard.

Not all of them are bad-- my gnome warrior was in a guild for a while with a blue and gold tabard, and that little minitank looked good. Have you ever confronted a guild leader about their bad tabard choices? Or if you're a guildleader, what made you choose your tabard colors? If they're orange and green, you should probably just go ahead and pay the 10g to fix it, because if doll's experience is any indication, it's hard to look like a badass when you're wearing a pumpkin.

*Because I know someone will ask, her strikingly clean UI is apparently built with Tet's UI. You're welcome.