Playable race model revamp in the works

[Ket Shi]

It's been long demanded by players, but during Blizzcon, Blizzard stepped forward for the first time and officially stated that work on new player models is in the pipeline:

Art Director Chris Robinson spoke on this just moments ago at the BlizzCon Open Q&A panel. It was in reply to an attendee who brought up that, in the art panel, it was explained that the pandaren model has 10 times the bone structures of the classic races, allowing for many more facial animations.

To paraphrase his statement -- which isn't too different from what I've said here on the forums before -- we absolutely plan on updating the existing models. As Chris mentioned, we want to make sure we preserve the look and feel of the original models players have come to know and love, while vastly improving their model and animation quality to be more in-line with the newer races.

We're not going to hide behind the statement that too many players will get mad if we tamper with their models, but it's a concern -- not a concern that's going to stop us from doing it, however. I want to stress as well that it's a massive undertaking to go back and do this. And to a lot of people it's something that won't be considered shiny new content. But not only do we hear the masses of players calling for this update, we really feel it's time to bring them up to par with newer models as well.

The game continues to age, but as we have no plans of slowing down on development any time in the near future, we want to keep updating and polishing it to stand the test of time (again, without sacrificing the look and feel which has brought players in over the years).

Edit: Development as of March:

We already know that new character models are in the works for old races. Do you have any idea of when players will be able to see them and do you plan to also revamp newer races such as the Blood Elves and the Draeneis?

We are slowly in progress with revamping the races, but the reality is that at best we would get the Dwarves for Mists of Pandaria, and even that's on the bubble. It is something that we are planning to do, it is something that we want to get to and actually believe is valuable. As to when the the Blood Elves and the Draeneis would have that happen, they would probably be near the end of the list. We would probably get through all of the original races first before we go on to them since they are better than the original ones. Any of the ones we have done more recently tend to be a little bit higher fidelity.

So there you have it. New player models are definitely being worked on as we speak, but they will be a long time in coming.

[Britany]

Do they plan on updating Draenei and Blood Elves as well? I think that the draenei and blood elves have nice models already, personally.

[Ket Shi]

Do they plan on updating Draenei and Blood Elves as well? I think that the draenei and blood elves have nice models already, personally.

My guess is "yes", since they are potential Monk races. They will probably need less work.

[Lisaara]

I agree. Blood Elves and Draenei will need less work but they need updates too.

[Kayb]

You won't see this in MoP. All they're saying is that one day they'd like to do it.

I hope that when they DO go ahead with it, they take the opportunity to fix that horrid female worgen model

[Ket Shi]

You won't see this in MoP.

I'm not so sure they want to ship one of the biggest new features of the expansion -- Monks -- with crumby placeholder animations for all but one of the races. In any case, I wouldn't use definite statements when we know so little yet.

[Andine]

As much as I hate to be the party-crasher, I think you may be jumping to conclusions for now (the conclusions don't like to be jumped on, they WILL complain). For me those comments sound like "yeah we may, like, one day, in the future, like that, somewhere along the line, maybe perhaps we will do it", not "yes, we're doing it".
Pessimistic? Yes. But as I said, before it's better to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised than expect high heavens and get disappointed.

[Vephriel]

I'm eagerly anticipating a revamp for the older models, but I'm also in agreement with other posters that this isn't necessarily a guarantee that they're coming soon. In any case, I hope we'll be pleasantly surprised, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it for the near future.

[Umbriel of Halaa]

Not going to make any guarantees, but I'd guess that it's probably going to be approximately concurrent with monks going live. Considering how much clipping and bugging you get on standard animations with some vanilla models, imagine what entirely new animations would do.

[Ket Shi]

As much as I hate to be the party-crasher, I think you may be jumping to conclusions for now (the conclusions don't like to be jumped on, they WILL complain).

Where have I jumped to conclusions? I've made sure to use wording that signifies that my opinions and findings are spectulative, making no declarations that things will definitely occur the way I'm theorizing, and listing evidence that both suggest being implemented for MoP and not being implemented in time for MoP.

There is no guarantee when the model update will come or what manner it'll arrive in, but this isn't much of an ambiguous statement:

...we absolutely plan on updating the existing models.

[Drayk]

I find it very hard to imagine the extremely fluid and fancy Monk emotes working at all on the vanilla race's skeleton...let alone how awful it would look on their models.

Of course it's no guarantee that it will happen maybe they will just slap it on the old models, but with the Monk class upcoming now seems to be the best time to do it.

[Lisaara]

I find it very hard to imagine the extremely fluid and fancy Monk emotes working at all on the vanilla race's skeleton...let alone how awful it would look on their models.

Of course it's no guarantee that it will happen maybe they will just slap it on the old models, but with the Monk class upcoming now seems to be the best time to do it.

Yeah. Thats pretty much my thoughts.

[Chimera]

Erm, ahem...

...we absolutely plan on updating the existing models.

They will update player models, but because of how many animations they have since they're player races and they can be several different classes, i kind of dont forsee the change being made and implimented when MoP is released but at the same time im worried about what monk will look like on the old skeletons if they dont implement the new models when it is released. But what my absolute most logical question is, why would they give player models extra moves so they can perform monk and NOT update them when they are essentially telling us straight up that they are going to at some point in time. Who knows, maybe they've been working on the new models and the new movements for the past anywhere from few months to year? We dont know what side projects they're working on, unlike trademark stamps like the name Mists of Pandaria where they gotta claim it before someone else does, they dont need to reveal what they're working on, its already blizzard trademarked. They didnt need to feed us all these screenshots of new things if they didnt want to, but of course they do need to for advertizement. Perhaps the new models will be advertized when they feel they are happy with their work?

Ket Shi wrote(quoted someone?) the summary of what the art director said at Blizzcon, they arent going to throw out the desire to update models because of concerns, the concerns dont outweigh the desires, they will update the models because they want to update the game.

[Andine]

Where have I jumped to conclusions?

Probably at the part where you said monks for older races would necessitate re-doing the models. They can do it with old models, and yes, make it clip horribly, but they can still do it this way (cf the failure that Worgen "racial mounts" were). Unless I see a definite statement (which is not "it's coming soon(TM)"), I can't put into it as much faith as you seem to do in your OP.

[Ket Shi]

Where have I jumped to conclusions?

Probably at the part where you said monks for older races would necessitate re-doing the models. They can do it with old models, and yes, make it clip horribly, but they can still do it this way (cf the failure that Worgen "racial mounts" were). Unless I see a definite statement (which is not "it's coming soon(TM)"), I can't put into it as much faith as you seem to do in your OP.

I didn't say it was strictly needed for monks. I merely speculated why the introduction of monks might push this through:

I've heard opinions that the clunky old race's models would take tremendous work to make animations as lively and smooth -- perhaps it would be better to start from scratch with a better model in the first place, instead of forcing those 2002 models to bend that way.

They could ram it through using placeholder animations, which is a very real possibility. When placed next to the new pandas, though, the whining would be deafening.

[Ket Shi]

I've added a list of all the reasonable "for and against"s I could think of. Is the OP better balanced now?

[pengupuff]

I think the old races will be tweaked before Pandaclysm hits, but not in the way that we're hoping for.

I interpreted all of this as them saying "We'll pretty much have to screw with the bone structure of old races to get this whole 'monk' thing to work." Aside from these animations that are crucial to the monk class, however, I don't foresee the overall appearance of old races changing much, if at all. I think this is something that they can tout for a future update patch, maybe halfway into MoP or something, but I seriously doubt they'll be completely revamping all the races in the short time before MoP.

[Andine]

After seeing the new Chuck Norris WoW commercial on MMO-Champion, I can't help but think something may indeed be going on. I mean, not only Chuck's hunter's model appears to be rather unique, use purported monk animations, but also bears some resemblance to the fellow posted as one of the concept arts for MoP soon after announcement on the Facebook page. Of course, the finished work doesn't have to look identical, but the fact they went out of their way to create a character model with seemingly unique animations and different body type makes me wonder.

[Chimera]

Agreed, as i posted earlier, we have no idea if they've been working in secret on new models and now they've shown us a new huma. Now dont jump to conclusions, in Wrath they added in new human models... they made a hag woman, they made a fat guy, they have those strange pirates that have totally different models then human characters that were in vanilla and i -think- may of tweaked one to look different for this one farmer guy thats at the ally farm thats crawling with ghouls, its by valiance keep, bunch of ally quests there..

But this human model does indeed have monk animations so theres a chance that he'll be the base skeleton for new human males

[Andine]

Agreed, as i posted earlier, we have no idea if they've been working in secret on new models and now they've shown us a new huma. Now dont jump to conclusions, in Wrath they added in new human models... they made a hag woman, they made a fat guy, they have those strange pirates that have totally different models then human characters that were in vanilla and i -think- may of tweaked one to look different for this one farmer guy thats at the ally farm thats crawling with ghouls, its by valiance keep, bunch of ally quests there..

I think those were all in the game files since before vanilla, and are actually early alpha models that were completely re-made from scratch before launch.