Max camera distance reduced (now live)

#1 - June 25, 2016, 8:45 p.m.

- Update: As of July 20th, this change is now live on EU realms -

- Update #2: <outdated, as of Augush 10th this functionality has been hotfixed out of the game> An addon is out that uses the WoW API to re-enable a much more generous level of zoom. It is uncertain whether the developers will allow this functionality to remain, but for the time being it seems like a functional, game-legal workaround that makes no use of third party methods:
https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/maxcam

- Update #3: The devs have now commented on the issue, and are taking steps in the right direction, but there are still no plans to fully revert the change:
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20748204616?page=8#post-147

- Update #4: A new CVAR is in game that allows an extension of the camera distance to 39 yards, higher than the new default maximum, but still only 4-5 yards more than the old default camera allowed. The command is: /console cameraDistanceMaxZoomFactor 2.6
You can use addons like Maxcam or FasterCamera to enable this by default.

---

There was recently a blue post on the US forums about how the current max camera distance is going to be significantly reduced in Legion via the removal of the console option that allowed it to be increased (which many players have been using for years). You can find the full blue post here:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745744692?page=1#18

The viewpoint of the devs is that parity is important, and that they prefer how the game looks with a more tightly zoomed camera. I cannot disagree more with this reasoning, as is stems from the "one size fits all" approach that has led to a huge number of WoW's more detrimental design decisions over the years.

Everyone likes playing the game in different ways, and the removal of options like this is only going to result in unhappy players. I enjoy having my camera zoomed in all the way when I'm running about town, doing dungeons, or roleplaying, but when I'm dealing with enormous room-sized bosses, gazing out over huge landscapes, or dealing with complex and spread-out raid groups, the increased camera distance is an absolute godsend, making the game much more enjoyable to play.

I actually find it horribly uncomfortable when games have enormous enemies that get all up in my camera, and I've always been grateful that WoW has the option to circumvent this with a very generous level of camera zoom.

I'd implore the devs to reconsider this change, since it is a huge decrease in quality of life that is only going to result in many players being unhappy and frustrated with the loss of a great feature they've enjoyed for many years now.

In a game played by millions of people with diverse tastes, the removal of options and flexibility (especially when it comes to things like the visual look of the game) is rarely ever a good thing. This has notable similarities to the issue Overwatch faced during development when the FoV was initially locked to a very narrow viewpoint, resulting in a lot of players being unhappy with the lack of flexibility in how they viewed the game. The reasoning via the devs was based on the same argument of creating parity between user experiences, but thankfully they saw sense and changed their minds prior to launch, resulting in a lot of very happy players.

Screenshots showcasing the change, and some of the issues it creates for both raiding and regular gameplay:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5789-Legion-Max-Camera-Distance-Reduction
http://imgur.com/a/PjCwX
http://imgur.com/a/dcJhQ

And a couple of albums I've been putting together myself to illustrate how poorly some of the game is designed around this new zoom:

http://imgur.com/a/1zh3A
http://imgur.com/a/W9OUw

A look at how the "ideal" level of camera zoom is entirely dependent on the scene at hand:

http://imgur.com/a/zwD8q

Edit -

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745704791?page=6#109

Really touching post by someone on the US forums who suffers from a host of serious medical issues, scared that this change will take away the refuge WoW gives them by making the game unplayable due to headaches and nausea.

These are the people I really feel for, not just those of us who'll be frustrated and annoyed by the camera distance reduction. If I were a developer, making a change that has this kind of an impact on my players would not be something I'd ever consider unless the upsides were tremendous. I can only hope the people at Blizzard read these posts and seriously reconsider whether their ideas are worth it.

Edit 2 -

It's also worth adding that this change actually reduces parity between player experiences in a much worse way than the console command ever allowed, since the way WoW works means that having a larger monitor effectively increases your field of view similar to how zooming out would.

What this means is that the barrier between players who see less of the surrounding area and those who see more is now purely financial, as opposed to being mitigated via a console command. People with very large, or multi-monitor setups will see significantly more of the world around them than those with smaller monitors.

You can see the difference illustrated on a basic single-monitor setup here:
https://i.imgur.com/sQVcynC.jpg

TBD

#1 - Aug. 5, 2016, 1:36 p.m.

Please see source post at http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17612331418?page=89 for detail.

Taepsilum

Community Manager

#1371 - Aug. 5, 2016, 9:36 a.m.

Hey everyone,
We'll be increasing the max camera distance on the cvar setting to a midway point between what was possible prior to 7.0, and what is possible through the interface options.

Blue-tagging Watcher's full explanation on this subject for everyone's awareness:

We’ve been closely following the discussion around 7.0.3 camera changes, and especially feedback regarding specific sources of visual and physical discomfort. We recently released a client hotfix that addressed a number of mount-related camera issues, and we have another update in the works that addresses screen/FOV distortion resulting from addons that alter the viewport. Many developers on the WoW team are sensitive to various forms of motion and simulation sickness, and it’s an issue about which we care deeply. The last thing we want is for anyone who loves the game to feel unable to enjoy it due to physical discomfort.

Obviously, the cap on CVar-controlled max zoom distance has been a major focus of both community and our own internal discussions. My original post on the matter was not as clear as it could have been regarding our motivations for the change in the first place. It placed too much emphasis on “competitive advantage” in terms of a level playing field, when the core concern I was trying to convey is that “whatever the maximum allowed, that’s what competitive players will use in order to maximize performance, even at the expense of the game’s overall look and feel.” That shouldn’t be a terribly controversial statement: When you’re trying to dodge Fel Outpouring waves on Kormrok in Hellfire Citadel, the farther out you can zoom, the sooner you can see when they’re headed your way; why wouldn’t you zoom out as far as possible? (Corollary: Around what expected zoom level do we tune the speed and lethality of the waves?)

In the course of working on Legion, and trying to improve the overall look and feel of our combat, class abilities, and the ways in which players interact with the world, we took stock of all aspects of that experience, including the camera. World of Warcraft is an avatar-driven open-world RPG, placing the player in the shoes of a hero who adventures throughout Azeroth, yet with the previous max console zoom, that hero would commonly take up less screen real estate than characters in isometric games like Diablo or Heroes, or even many Starcraft 2 units. At that zoom level, details of your character get lost, and details in the world vanish. The game ultimately is designed to be experienced with the camera zoom range available in the default UI.

Now, that is not to say that we don’t at times fail in creating an overall experience that is smooth and free of frustration at those zoom levels. When a tank can’t see around a boss like Archimonde to know where incoming demons are in order to corral them, that’s obviously not ideal. There is much we can do to keep WoW’s scale from spiraling out of control, as well as UI and camera improvements to the experience of fighting huge monsters, and we’ll be paying close attention to feedback along those lines as we move into Legion.

We intended to limit the console-overridden camera zoom very early on in the Legion Beta, which would have left us with many months to iterate on gameplay and feedback that arose from the change before releasing Legion. However, due to an oversight (we capped one way of overriding it, but not another) the change did not properly go through until the very end of the development cycle. Since then, we’ve heard from many players that they’ve relied on increasing the camera zoom to counteract a number of sensitivities, ranging from motion sickness to headaches from spell effects.

Recently, a number of players have reported some relief through using a new addon that allows them to bypass any and all limits on zoom distance. That addon takes advantage of a bug that has existed for some time but gone unnoticed (passing a negative value into a function). In an upcoming hotfix, we will be fixing that bug and thus causing that addon (and others like it) to honor the standard camera limits.

However, in that same hotfix, we will also be raising the hard cap on camera zoom to a midway point between what was possible prior to 7.0, and what is possible through the in-game interface options. This increased cap will allow power users to once again be able to extend their camera distance via a console command, should they so desire. The choice of the new max was informed by reports from players regarding what zoom distance eased the discomfort they were experiencing. Ultimately, we would prefer to address the underlying issues rather than relying on increased zoom to mask those issues, but now that patch 7.0.3 is live and we cannot properly iterate on the sort of changes that would be required, reapplying the band-aid is preferable to leaving an open wound.

We look forward to hearing your feedback once these changes are live. We want to continue working to improve the readability, usability, and accessibility of our game from a visual standpoint, including camera functionality, and community feedback and discussion are invaluable when dealing with such an inherently subjective area.