The Mini Patch Got My Hopes Up

We did have a lot of new hairstyles we had created over time up on the patch 4.2 Public Test Realms. The problem was that, even though these hairstyles were added on the test realms, many of them were not finalized or approved by our art team. Because of this, a good portion of them (about half) were pulled shortly before patch 4.2 was released on live realms, leaving only a partial implementation of new hairstyle choices.

Unfortunately, this means some races/genders now have more hairstyles than others. This result had nothing to do with intentionally giving some races more choices than others. It was based purely on which hairstyles we felt were ready to go live, and which we felt were not.

These new hairstyles are also not available at the Character Selection screen and can only be chosen via the Barbershop. We definitely plan on going back over the hairstyles which did not make it into the game and adding them at a later date.

06/29/2011 04:53 PMPosted by Crepe

These new hairstyles are also not available at the Character Selection screen and can only be chosen via the Barbershop. We definitely plan on going back over the hairstyles which did not make it into the game and adding them at a later date.

And updating the forum avatars so they're not bald?

Let's not get crazy here. :p

06/29/2011 04:53 PMPosted by Strikara

We did have a lot of new hairstyles we had created over time up on the patch 4.2 Public Test Realms

this is what your development team was worrying about? hairstyles? really?

If "development team" denotes a collective wherein all members share the same talents, development experience, responsibilities, and tasks, I'd understand your question better.

But yes, the art team does spend time worrying about art for the game, if you want to phrase it that way. :)

06/29/2011 04:58 PMPosted by Ðiva

So the artists approved the new Draenei swim cap, but they didn't feel other styles were good enough? That boggles the mind.

In an ideal world I don't think any of them would have gone live in patch 4.2, as we prefer to release updates like this when everything is ready to go. It wasn't really our intention to throw them all in without letting players know we were adding dozens of new choices, but we ended up only pulling some of them out.