Thursday, June 4, 2009

[Druid]On the new NE cats...

My wife had this awesome and astute comment to make:

"They are a lot more pally cat than alley cat :P "

HAHAHAHA

They look okay, but I'm shocked seeing the other three forms how little the palette changed and how meh they are compared. The others totally wowed me. These...not so much.

17 comments:

Deathoak said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Allison Robert said...

I'm tempted to say that Blizz didn't want to screw around with a winning formula too much; the Night Elf cat form was almost inarguably the best of the classic forms. Changing it to the degree that Tauren cat form was changed would probably have been counterproductive.

That said, I do think the Tauren forms came out the real winners here, and whether that's just because they had nowhere to go but up or because the new forms win on their own merits is a matter of opinion, I guess.

Taran said...

I didn't get the joke...

Kalon said...

Aw, deathoak, that was funny. :)

Allison, thanks for coming by. I actually like the design of the new cats fairly well - and as you say, I think I like it because it is essentially a hi-res upgrade of the previous version, which was clearly the best of the lot. But...does everything have to be pink and purple to that degree? They managed to make the bears much more varied in color while retaining that Nelfness; I'm surprised that the color palette is so limited.

Especially when compared to the Tauren versions.

I genuinely think that the Tauren version are really good looking, and not by comparison. They stand on their own very well. Many people in my guild are rolling druids just for the feral forms.

I'm just glad I rolled horde :)

Darksend Mercenare said...

hate them!

cover your eyes if you read my write up about it though lol /rant as usual but hey when im pissed i say so not like blizzard ever reads anything i write anyway

Allison Robert said...

I've always been glad to be Horde if only because I love, love, love the Tauren, but had to love them in spite of the ugliest Druid forms in the game and really boring female Tauren cast animations. XD I'm really glad that the forms are changing, at least.

I think the crux of the matter is that there are certain elements of caster form -- pastel colors/glowing eyes for Night Elves and horns/long muzzles for Tauren -- that don't lend themselves to shapeshifting without looking terribly awkward. The palette, as you observe, is pretty limited for Night Elves, whereas Tauren have a lot more contrast and strong coloration in theirs, and it just looks better on the black background the forms were parked against.

I'm going to try to make my first video post on the day that 3.2 hit the PTR, looking at all the different combinations for both Night Elves and Tauren, and try to see how they look in motion. Til then I'll reserve judgment - but, wonder of wonders, we may actually reach the point where Tauren cat form looks better than its Night Elf counterpart. Surely the apocalypse is nigh.

Deathoak said...

yeah, i thought when i del the message, i can fix the "hi" to an "i". the mainmessage is still the same: i hate you and all horde druides ;). and yes, i´m an ally pally cat :p

Marino said...

Being Tauren my first reaction to when I saw em was: "WHAHA! Your's look gay!"

No offense to gay people ;)

Unknown said...

I think it's lovely that they didn't tinker with the old model too much but just made it smoother and sleeker.

If they could just fix 2 things - 1) give me back my long, ferocious claws! and 2) more distinctive tattoo markings like the Tauren models have, I'd be a very happy kitty indeed.

Lissanna said...

The pink on them remind me of:
Hello Kitty
Care Bears
and My Little Pony
all rolled into our new NE cat form.

The model is fine. The pink is not fine. It wouldn't be that hard to take the pink dangly balls off the middle one, and make the white one have either blue or green hair, then they'd look good.

The pallet for coloring NE forms does NOT have to include Hello Kitty pink...

Oak said...

One pink cat doesn't bother me, but others have the pink 'taint' to them also. I also don't care for the 'accessories'. Night Elves are maybe fruitcakes but they are capable more tasteful choices in decoration then a hanging candy lollipops and kinky leather bracelets.

Tenac said...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17615362510&sid=1

This topic on the WoW forums pretty much echo's my feelings on the matter of the new NE cat models.

FOR THE HORDE!!!

Anonymous said...

<- rerolling tauren
I don't care if I'm already 4/5 t8, the only hair color I liked on the Nelf was white.
those... are... just... terrible
Roots

Zoblefu said...

no updates since the 4th? You alive? :)

Kalon said...

Zoblefu - heh. Sorry; I've been busy at work and really haven't had much to write about. I'll be updating the loot pages soon for Ulduar, and probably doing some kind of ranking for cats if only so I can reference it myself.

I'll also probably be talking about niches here in the future and try and figure out a reasonable way to take that on.

What else would y'all like to see? Any requests?

Zoblefu said...

Actually the cat ranking is one I would love to see. Maybe talk about armor penetration some too? I've been reading over on EJ and they go on and on about how good ArP is for cat dps.

I've been using this for my cat loot rankings so far: (from EJ forums)
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filter=minle=200;ub=11;cr=123;crs=3;crv=0;gm=3;gb=1;wt=114:21:20:117:119:103:96:97:77;wtv=1.80:1.49:1.41:1.35:1.35:1.25:1.19:0.71:0.59

I love your blog -- I'm dual spec feral/feral (bear/cat) and raiding Ulduar every week and your posts are very insightful and helpful...

We've killed all the guardians as of last week (so the first 12 bosses).

Anyway, thanks for your work and your replies... a cat ranking and perhaps discussing ArP for cat dps would be great :)

Anonymous said...

No updates make me a sad bear :(