Midnight Alpha/Beta Thread

[WerebearGuy]

You would think that it wouldn't be a problem, but there's always outliers that really need to be considered. For example, the Brewfest chowdown was a prime example of a locked camera people could easily troll with. When Brewfest was updated for the first time, it was possible to see other players in front of your screen when you were doing the chowdown. This meant players could obstruct the view, and even more annoying (and now fixed after I posted on the forums for the first time in years) it was easy to spam flashing lights from abilities and items. I don't have epileptic situations thankfully, but it was still painful enough to almost cause a migraine when I kept getting flashbanged by constantly changing colored explosions.

While that example is significantly more annoying (and bad for players' health), the same concept can easily be abused with giant models. Imagine if a particularly annoying hunter decided to tame an amazard in the event that it got scaled up to kodo height. With clever Eyes of the Beast and move to placement, you could have the big thing's tail cover players' view of their sausages, or even the full screen. As someone who looks for ways to get around things and actually report bugs (despite my fear of being banned for reporting things again), I can easily find more ways for larger pets to get in the way. Hell, they haven't even fixed the big red raygun on a dire beast ikthik colossus yet, and that thing WILL block people's screens with relative ease.

As stated, amazards are in that happy medium area; they're big enough to be imposing, but small enough to not be distracting. Of course, the best solution to size issues is to have pets scale small for other players, but for the hunter, let them have whatever size they want. Or at the very least, add a way to double or halve the size of your own pets independent of one another (for example, animal companion at +200% and primary pet at 50%). That'd require a lot of resources though, and I doubt a silly side feature would get that kind of attention... is what I would say if housing wasn't so prominent now lol.

[Valnaaros]

Here is a side-profile shot of an Amazard right next to a Draenei


Also, just to confirm it, the Crystal Scorpids in Voidstorm do keep the various body parts, like the stinger, that the ones from Nighthold don't keep after being tamed.

[WerebearGuy]

Dang, I was nearly spot on with my attempt at comparing the length and size lol. As for the scorpid, is that a new green? Or is it just the lighting? The ones we have now don't have such vibrant gradients in their gems, unless those are the missing gems on live.

[Wain]

The Voidstorm scorpids did seem to me to have some light glows on their claws and stingers, but I wasn't sure if it was zone lighting.

The older crystal scorpids (i.e. the ones in Nighthold) are still broken when tamed in Midnight, so I'm trying to work out what the difference is.

I'm surprised they didn't use the new green scorpid skin for the Madexx model, i.e.:

But they didn't. (That skin was created for the Felcrystal Scorpion mount and can be used on the wild model but hasn't been).

[worgpower]

The new scorpid model looks identical. Now I’m going to get my abandoned crystal scorpid back, I couldn’t use a cool looking scorpid without a stinger, now I will. The scorpids are still missing their chelicerae, hopefully that will be implemented before release. And that lizard size is perfect, it’s going to be like a large dog for my orc

[Wain]

Update: the new crystal scorpions use the exact same model ID as the originals.

But, their displayIDs also have an attached 'StateSpellVisualKit' which I believe tells it to attach those missing body parts. That info is inherited by the tamed version, so it keeps them too.

I think the older ones might use the same or similar visual kits to add their body parts, but i think they may be applied in a different way that isn't inherited in pet display Info. It's a terribly messy design. The artists seemed to go through a fad of attaching independent model parts to various objects (including some mounts) but thankfully they don't seem to do that much any more.

It also looks like the ones in Voidstorm have a visual kit that doesn't apply the crystals for the chelicerae or back, but neither do the trash ones in the Nighthold (only Skorpyron seems to have them) and I assume the artist fixing these is going by the appearance of those. In my Petopia images I went by Skorpyron's crystals and may have to re-do them to have less bling :/ It's a shame they couldn't add the chelicerae at least, they improve the look a lot.

[WerebearGuy]

Scorpids in general have it rough, it seems. Lost Emberspit still has a broken leg, these poor crystal boys are permanently mutilated... Lurker dev, give justice to our unloved arthropods!