WoW Petopia Community

Ok, I know this topic has been brought up before. But, seeing as we do have a lurker and all...
So, I had ticketed about this and the GM wanted details, but obviously there isn't enough room on a ticket for the whole speech. So, I'm sticking it on here for a certain lurker to hopefully see!

When the birds are "wild" they fly normally, with tails out and the occasional glide. When tamed, their animation while moving looks like the one for standing still, with a slow flap, no glide and the tail tucked down. Oddly, they fly normally underwater, complete with the gliding. There are birds in both the Bird of Prey and Carrion Bird families that do this. In the Bird of Prey, the brown druid-style hawks from Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra are "broken." In the Carrion Bird family, both the white and blue condors from Borean Tundra and Dragonblight are "broken" as are the black druid style birds from Howling Fjord. Oddly enough, the black druid style birds from Blade's Edge mountains, which are the same model, skin and family, are not broken. They have normal flight and a normal swim animation as well.

Brown Druid Birds
Fjord Hawk
Oiled Fledging
Oil-covered Hawk

Black Druid Birds That Are Broken
Fjord Crow
Daggercap Hawk

Black Druid Birds That Are NOT Broken
Dire Raven

Blue Condors
Dragonbone Condor

White Condors
Carrion Condor
Dreadtalon

There's also the weird lighting issue with the Goretalon Matriach from Sholazar Basin. There are strange, blocky shadows all over the bird and it looks terrible. I think there was a time it didn't have this problem.

IN addition, the white tickbird hatchling minipet that looks like the Goretalon matriarch also has the weird pixellated appearance on the back side.

I noticed this the other day when my random pet macro pulled it out, and I went WHOA that looks bizarre... oh HEY I have seen that before!

Not sure what happened, but I am absolutely positive that pet did not look like that when I first got it.

Yeah, the white tickbird was definitely not always broken, I remember running with it out a lot in Naxx (to bug people with the singing ) and she was always just gorgeous. I don't know when it (or the matriarch) broke.

If the Matriarch was fixed I'd be sorely tempted to tame her. The white eagle is really a stunning model, the blocky shadows ruin it.

I've also noticed the Golden Eagle (on the PTR) seems to have the same animation issues.
The bird doesn't seem to have the blocky shadows that some of the other eagles have but it doesn't move correctly either.

This is pretty discouraging, honestly... I know Blizzard is aware of this problem, but it's like the hyena tail bug all over again. (For those who don't know that one, whenever the hyena attacked a target its tail sucked into its butt and made a huge polygonal crater on its rump. If it sat down/scratches, its tail elongated to a length rivaling a cat.) While I know that they have a lot on their plate with Cataclysm coming out, it's been, what, almost a year of broken birdy animations? I can't help but wonder how long they're going to let this sit, but I can only hope it won't be too much of a wait.

Teigan wrote:Oddly enough, the black druid style birds from Blade's Edge mountains, which are the same model, skin and family, are not broken.

Wrong.

These birds were added in the game before the druid flight form was given unique animations. They use the model called stormcrow.m2 which has the basic carrion bird animations. Just look at this raven standing idle flapping it's wings and it's very different from the normal druid flight form and birds that use the same basic model. These birds also never glide when flying.

All the other birds you listed where added after the druid flight form got it's own model with different animations, so they all use the normal flight form model base, called stormcrowdruid.m2, and it's animations. All these models are "broken" as they don't seem to have a normal run animation, but have fly, swim and walk. Seems they use the walk animation on the ground which looks odd. Because they have swim animations that are the same as fly, they fly normally in the water. Reworking the fly or swim animation to run, instead of the walk animation, would fix this.

The Daggercap Hawk has a lighting problem as well last I looked. It always has the lightened "highlighted" color. Like when you mouseover something it lightens the model, the Hawk always has that coloration and it doesn't lighten any more when you hover over it.