Just saw the new Gorehowl..

There's something special about eyes on inanimate objects…
I think it’s because they’re one of the most distinguishable and observed features in most sentient beings, the amount of emotions one can transmit with the subtlest eye movement and the amazingly fast ability that we have for detecting those fleeting patterns creates this tremendously weird feeling when we see something inanimate coming to life with the addition of eyes, sort of a mix between anthropomorphism and animism.

Then of course if you make them asymmetrical, even better ;) Or googly!

Anyway, what all of this means is…

18/07/2013 02:02Posted by Lumatar

To be honest it creeps me out just a little bit ;)

… Mission accomplished!

The problem with that approach is that whenever there is an alternative way to get the same or similar gear, players will generally always choose the easiest/fastest route, even if that goes against their own personal enjoyment of the game; obviously that is something we would like to avoid and should be able to avoid with good design.

If you’re a serious raider and you dislike doing PvP, you’ll probably feel left behind if the rest of your guildmates go into arena to complement their PvE gear, and vice versa in case you’re into PvP and dislike PvE.

I think these two groups are different enough to warrant a gear distinction, I believe that is good design. Can the current system be improved? Certainly, there are many things that are far from ideal, we’ve tried quite a lot of new ideas for PvP in MoP, some of those ideas were quite radical and we know that there’s always some risk attached to anything that’s drastically different and new. We made some mistakes, and we learned a lot from them, we’ve reverted some changes and we’ve tried a few new approaches and as time goes on the system will keep on maturing.

It’s also important to remember that new expansions will always give us much more leeway when it comes to design shifts. It’s very important to keep a certain level of consistency during the course of an expansion, even when you have a great new idea, if that idea is too radical, sometimes it will be better to wait for a new expansion before deploying it in order to avoid alienating and confusing the players.
There are certainly some things that we would do differently if MoP were to launch today. But frankly, I think MoP had (and will have) some of the most drastic changes I’ve seen during the course of any expansion, and 5.4 is really really packed!
I must say I’m quite excited and curious to see how 5.4 will play out on live and see how players will take some of the new features.