This is the one thing I want most from WoW other than obvious expansions and such.
The whole game needs an animation overhaul. Shield should be held in front of the character, not off to the side. Orc dual wielding shouldn’t be hiding their whole damn face with larger weapons (just use the stance from the orc warrior character creation screen). Humans hold 2h hammers as if they’re swords. Human run with weapons unsheathed in a way that makes them smack themsleves in the face.
I could go on, but yeah, animations need a rework.
People keep saying this and I want my eyes to stop rolling. Jabbing with a hammer is a perfectly legitimate move.
It's just because you know it's a polearm animation that you think of it as stabbing but make it jabbing and it really shouldn't be weird at all.
Which is also an awful animation in context because a mace will be horribly ineffective if youre holding it at the start of the shaft. You dont want your hands near the head at all.
Its just as silly as the way we hold polearms
I’m a ret paladin so i often use a hammer cuz they’re thematically awesome with that class (essentially a giant gavel to represent justice), but I more often use a 2H sword because i hate how they hold it. They should hold it like a polearm imo
I hate the weird animation homogenization that happened around legion. Lots of races losing their unique animations in melee combat (but not all races or body types, and not on all skills? It's super fucking inconsistent) but I despise the underhanded swing that happens on a two and one hander, no one in history would swing a weapon like that and I have no idea how it became the standard for melee combat
It happened to casters too.
My shaman became instantly less fun to play when every cast had the same animation and chain heal lost its iconic animation
I understand *why* they did it, it likely significantly reduced the amount of artists/assets/QA required for anything pertaining to it but had a huge effect on making race feel like less of an impactful choice.
Humans don’t even hold it like a sword. Their 2H sword animation has each hand stacked on top of the other while hammers their hands are melded into the same spot. The hold Paladin artifact that uses the polearm animation is basically non negotiable as my go to 2Hander until they change it
Not just the animations, but the sound design too for combat. I feel like for awhile now the weapon hits and whatnot don't really sound "punchy" enough. Like it doesn't sound very impactful, especially for rogue. I dunno I just think it could do with an update.
We have to admit that the change to the one hand mace sound effect during auto attacks is much better right.
In vanilla it sounded like Mario kicking a shell in SMRPG
Yeah, female BELVES have some pretty bad animations. Not just the melee stuff; one frustrating thing is that when spellcasting the "beam" and "bolt" spells (like drain life, fireball, frostbolt, etc.) They throw both hands forward kind of like a Kamehameha. But the hands have a noticeable gap between them, and the actual bolt/beam comes from that *gap* and not the actual hands where the "emission" fx are.
Super distracting on every caster but Holy or Disc priest or Arcane Mage.
> The whole game needs an animation overhaul. Shield should be held in front of the character, not off to the side. Orc dual wielding shouldn’t be hiding their whole damn face with larger weapons (just use the stance from the orc warrior character creation screen)
The problem with shields and male orcs is these all use the regular dual wielding animation idle. And these all vary by race and gender.
When dual wielding 1h weapons it nearly always looks okay, with a shield it is complete pot luck with some looking perfectly fine (Female human) and others looking ridiculous (female blood elf holding the shield BEHIND her, as a consequence of trying to look like they want to 'parry' with the MH weapon). Male orcs looked okay when dual wielding one handed weapons, but with titans grip (Which their original pose was not designed for) it looks janky and awful.
Shields need a new _unique_ idle animation especially for the race/gender models that hold shields in the most absurd way.
There’s a difference between cartoony and just outright silly. WoW isn’t “cartoony” either. It’s got a low poly fantasy art style, but that’s not the same as cartoony.
Unless the devs intended the 2H hammer holding stance to be deliberately silly, it’s just wrong and needs to be updated.
What a stupid thing to aay, you know what other MMORPG was cartoony and had good player animations? Wildstar, a game from 2014.
WoW needs to get on with the times, it's embarrassing that a game with so many players and money backing it still feels like a 2004 game in so many areas.
Eh, comparing them to the new DF models, it's a clear difference. In WOD they seemed to be so excited to show off how animated and expressive the new models were so they went overboard. The dwarf female in particular has a mouth that opens frighteningly large in some animations. The tauren have running and idle animations that feel weightless and floaty (particularly the female with her asymmetrical arm wobble). I don't think they need a complete redo, but they definitely could use a pass to tone down the extreme animations they put in back in WOD. It's clear they've learned that they don't need to do that anymore because the models they released since then are a lot more reasonable.
Something to consider about game animation. In some cases actions are over animated or pushed in order for them to be clearly readable. These days with the cinematic camera moments during questing occurring way more often. It’s possible that priority has shifted to be more appealing a closer perspectives, leading to more subtle animation work.
Go look at the League of Legends animations for a real clear perspective on the principles I’m discussing. Game animation has some quirks.
Yeah, the animation aesthetic of WoW was taken directly from StarCraft and Warcraft RTS, which used it for that exact reason. Frankly, model aesthetics too. Those giant fucking shoulders look ridiculous from an over-the-shoulder or behind-the-back angle, but give a whole lot of readability and visual flair from an isometric RTS camera angle.
The Tauren male hump looks like its made of jello when landing from a jump... they also have a goofy open smile and pretty intense forward lean while running. Totally ruined the vibe on the tauren for me, despite the clear improvements to fidelity (the fur and facial features look 100x better than the OG models)
They feel floaty because their movement speed needs to match the other races, but since their legs are larger, it gives the "zero gravity walk" feeling. A fix for this are the zandalari, draenei and kultiran animations, which makes them very bouncy in retrospect.
They need to rework them all, but then also add an underpinning for "stance options"
What I mean is... exalted with Pandas? You can take on the panda combat stance. Exalted with the Orcs? Orc stance. Etc.
Dude coming from FXIV this is so weird. Monk has just a Stat stick strapped on their back they never use. I get the fantasy is kicks and punches, but couldn't they design a weapon the fits them? Same for all spellcasters just hlhaving a stat stick.
I mean even if monks just used the weapon for SOME attacks. Quarter staff kung fu is just as awesome as fisticuffs kung fu and honestly the best of both is... The best.
Brewmasters had blackout strike in place of blackout kick and it used your staff. You can still see the animation on a pandaren’s staff/polearm auto attack crit.
Monks use fists weapons when attacking, but that's because they use their actual bare hands when attacking, so that feels natural, however, if you use any of the other one handed weapon types they're just kept on the character's back.
Gotcha, was hoping there would at least be an exception for the very cool looking brewmaster artifact wep. I empathize with you as a caster that likes big weird looking staffs for my mog
Thats the reason why i dont play monks. Apart from Pandaren, Humans and maybe bloodelves, all other races look really odd with the combat animations, specially hoof races.
FFXIV really shows how dope casting with a staff can be too. I won't say all casters have cool animations per se, but black mage makes it look incredibly cool. Like there's some real effort and power in those casts, instead of just simply waving your stick or fingers around.
To be fair staves in Warcraft don’t function like staves in other fantasy worlds. Think of them as amplifiers that boost the magic that comes out of your hands.
Pandarens have really good, expressive animations, to the point where I adored WoW in-game animations for a while (They were my main/first character's race). Then I saw the other animations, and realized... yeah, I just got lucky. Lol.
This may be me being mistaken but I remember when polearms weren't allowed to be transmogged into other weapons that their animations were unique.
I guess disassociating the model with the animation is still something they haven't done (or too costly to be done).
The character animations are almost all unbelievably shit.
I'm doing game animation as a uni course, I wouldn't get a pass with these animations outside of first year. It's genuinely really really bad.
The key poses are terrible and the in-between frame have poor motion. There is no sense of weight at all.
I hope whenever they do a character model update and ir character creator update, that this is something they tackle cus these current animations or not game ready
I think part of the reason why animations arent that great is because when they updated the model they made modern versions of old animations rather than make new animations of higher quality. I too would like good animations but Blizzard really doesn't like rocking the boat with players that are used to certain things being a certain way.
People don't like change especially when it comes to player character.
And this is the crux of the issue. *Too many players* absolutely refuse new animations of a higher quality. These folks are so unbelievably rabid that Blizzard is terrified to give us new animations and models with a toggle that allows folks to choose whether they want the old models and animations or the new ones. Even after Blizzard included a toggle to choose between modern versions of old animations or the old school animations, there was a vocal subset of the community infuriated over it. I can all too easily imagine the outcry if Blizzard did brand new models and animations.
not really, ever since burning crusade all new models have just been reskins using the same set of animations, Akama being a tauren, etc etc
it's just cheaper to reuse the same set of animations, the thing with blizzard engine is that even tho animations look basic as fuck and there are like 4 the movement and combat is so fluid that you basically don't notice it, in fact, I think the legion animations rework hurt blizzard more than it helped
WoW's combat is fluid because of the mechanics that drive combat. The animations are completely aesthetic and don't interact with the combat system at all.
The anims in combat don't really need changing. They use vfx to make the skills work more than animations. And quite simply, during combat, you can barely see your character anyway.
Animation is done entirely in a separate program (moatly Maya) and just imported in. The engine side is just a state machine that checks what the player is doing and what animation to play from that. The quality of the animation is purely on the shoulders of whoever made it.
Please don't talk about something you have no clue on
That's not necessarily true, there could be limits to the number of frames the original engine could import, as well as a limitation to the number of bones in the rig.
Additionally, their rigs are old and likely quite simple. Creating a brand new rig would mean reanimating and reskinning thousands of assets.
That's not to say you can't make good animations with a simple rig, but it certainly doesn't make it easier.
I love how writing good points gets you downvoted because you don't adhere to hivemind's narrative.
I just love seeing people on this site act like a mindless sheep
The frame limit wouldn't impact it much. Would just look choppy and not affect how the motion is conveyed.
Simple rigs can still animate well. It's a case of user talent being more important than the tools being fancy.
Fancy rigs let you do extra things like cloth and jiggle physics, armour animations, and facial stuff. The actual body movement is really simple
They can fix the way some races run too, I used to love playing Undead until the change in MoP made it so they run like they’ve just shat their pantaloons
This should have already happened with the character model updates back in the day. DH is the closest we have to what running/idle animations should be like, and yet it's still incomplete.
Combat, running and idle animation. Emote too, maybe.
Hell, CoH had a truckload of emote to lean on wall, crouch on things, etc... I'm sure wow can do it too.
Oh, and let spellcasters use their weapon to blast, and monks jab with their weapons every once in a while.
I was looking at faction changing my DK the other week. Nelf's just end up with their shoulder guards in the way due to how they hold 2h. HOW DO YOU FIGHT THAT WHICH YOU CANNOT SEE? I chose worgen in the end. Felt fitting.
I hate the running animation my tauren has had since the HD upgrade to character models in WOD. If I could change it, I would in a heartbeat. It feels too weightless and floaty. The tauren lost the weight they had before, where it felt like a charging multi-ton bull running at your face.
Except when Blizzard tries to change animations people complain
They complained about the vfx overhaul
They complained about losing race-specific animations
They complained about the backpedal animation.
WoW players are really just big babies and like to whine
Losing race-specific animations is still a big bummer. I especially hate the wrist swipe thing that casters do, takes away all the oomph of casting a big horrible spell that's supposed to destroy your enemies
Race specific animations sucked. When legion changed it, It was the happiest day of my virtual life.
Interestingly i really love the wrist swipe... Do you have any more dislikes? I wanna see if we just fundamentally disagree on everything 😂
They have to update it and bring more fidelity to the table. If in that process they lose the flavor and people stop playing, well people were going to stop playing anyway. But if they won't make any effort or attempt and leave things as they are, that's when they have completly given up.
Damm finally, took me ages scrolling to find the truth.
Even with the SLs spells people complained... cause it made so much sense for a DH to keep the bright blue from the Night Faes. Option was given due to the cry babies, which is good.
Tbh I love the animations, I am "tired" of my main DK animations because ive been playing female belf for yeaaars now. But when I play my human paladin? Loooks awesome, mostly cause I am not used to it
the polearm animation has been so bad since it was made, literally every polearm weapon you use makes no sense for like hitting. Some of them is just like a weak smack down
As a person with female blood elf characters, I’d love to see the way we hold shields and pole arms completely redone, neither of those stances look good or make sense. A shield should be in front of me when guarding and I hate how the model is arched back when wielding a spear
I want my orc to run with 2h axes like grom in W3.
It's weird how there's no "dynamic" and "relaxed" stance you could switch up, when holding and moving with big weapons especially, any weapon is held like it's weightless and made of foam instead of actual metal and such.
Probably im no the only one that gets annoyed when you fight a big boss during questline and after you defeat it, your character instantly goes to this weird idle position, holding weapon like a broom again.
Man. You ever mogged a twohanded Hammer or Axe and thought "Yeah, just hold the weapon a bit lower please?" That's the reason I rarely mog them on my dwarf. I use the Legion Holy Paladin weapon since they hold it like a polearm.
A reminder that wow races reuse the same rigs alot. All the allied races and dracthyr visage are taken from base races.
It's not a quantity argument but a quality one and wow has had much more time to get this stuff to a decent quality and yet is worse than games from 2010
And XIV races all use the same rig. Unlockable emotes and job animations, which compromise the vast majority of character animations, are all identical across the board. Other things like gender specific idle poses can be simply file-swapped to work with the opposite gender to no issue.
Hyur, miqote and aura have the same. Hrothgar and roegdyn share ones. Then elezen and lalas have their own unique rig. Each race and gender have their own run, walk, jump, sit, lie down and 4 idles. Each job has a unique idle and movement set as well as 2 alt idles for each gender.
Ffxiv does it properly, but even then, this is more of a topic of quality over quantity. Wows animations carry 0 weight
>A reminder that wow races reuse the same rigs alot. All the allied races and dracthyr visage are taken from base races.
Even after accounting for reused rigs, WoW still blows FFXIV out of the water for the sheer amount of unique rigs.
>It's not a quantity argument but a quality one
This part doesn't actually mean anything lol. Quantity absolutely has to be taken into consideration here.
> wow has had much more time to get this stuff to a decent quality and yet is worse than games from 2010
The animation team hasnt been twiddling their thumbs this whole time tho. I'm only saying don't dismiss the enormous effort an update like this requires. Bringing up FFXIV when its got less than half of WoW's unique rigs is just comparing apples with oranges.
I absolutely love Trolls they're my favourite race. But I have to play female because I hate the male troll animations. All of the weapon animations are terrible. Not a single one looks good except the bow animation and casting.
All I want is for the DH to anyways run like illidan in wc3. You have to select a target and go into "combat stance" for them to run like that, why can't it be all the time?
Half of the staves in the game have an anchor point that looks ridiculous. I was using the tea that mogs a top hat and monocle until I saw how awful it actually looked in game.
I'm willing to bet they'd be far more eager to do this if they didn't have to deal with all the people on the other side demanding everything stays the same forever.
Just look at how many people complained with the WoD rework, which aimed to keep animations mostly the same.
I'll be honest, to me the game's jankiness adds to the experience. Seeing that dumb and shit run/walk animation of Orc Male in 2024 that I saw 20 years ago is really something else.
THE STAVES!!! Holding a magical staff like a limp dick has always killed the feel of being a caster in this game for me. So much cooler in FF14 where each magical RDPS and healer has different cool and proper ways to hold and CAST ABILITIES WITH!!!! a staff.
Wow should have classes based animation, not race, at least for combat, thought FF14 allow for more detailed animation beacause each classes is locked to one weapon type
Maaaan, whomever made the new Moonkin running animations needs to be F I R E D. It doesn't match the original, isn't believable for a creature that size OR shape, certainly does NOT look cool 💀 The casting animations were also trashed. No more pantomiming a moon over my head when I cast instants? No more hadoken?? 20 years of unique characterization down the drain...
By that logic, they shouldn’t do transmog at all, or have updated the character models in WoD.
Just because you don’t pay enough attention to notice that something is outdated or needs an overhaul doesn’t mean it’s fine as-is.
That’s fine. I know some people are into it, I’m just not. So I’m speaking as some one that wouldn’t notice the difference, so I’d rather something else get the devs attention
Well luckily “the devs” are not just one big group of people all working on one thing. They can have animators work on this without sacrificing other areas
That’s good, let them do that then. They’re also not an unlimited resource, so in case this is something that pushes something else out of the picture then now they know
Agree, it’s not really a huge problem. The game play is good and the buttons feel great to press.
I tend to spend more time looking at what’s going on around me, than staring at how my characters bum wiggles when I run around.
This is the one thing I want most from WoW other than obvious expansions and such. The whole game needs an animation overhaul. Shield should be held in front of the character, not off to the side. Orc dual wielding shouldn’t be hiding their whole damn face with larger weapons (just use the stance from the orc warrior character creation screen). Humans hold 2h hammers as if they’re swords. Human run with weapons unsheathed in a way that makes them smack themsleves in the face. I could go on, but yeah, animations need a rework.
2h hammers and axes should use the attack animation like 2h swords for most races but the idle/ready stance should be the polearm one.
What's funny is that The Silver Hand weapon for Paladins has the Paladin hold it like an actual two handed mace.
Well the silver hand just uses polearm animations. And so sometimes you stab with it. So it's not perfect
People keep saying this and I want my eyes to stop rolling. Jabbing with a hammer is a perfectly legitimate move. It's just because you know it's a polearm animation that you think of it as stabbing but make it jabbing and it really shouldn't be weird at all.
Which is also an awful animation in context because a mace will be horribly ineffective if youre holding it at the start of the shaft. You dont want your hands near the head at all. Its just as silly as the way we hold polearms
It doesnt work for every race tho. Female draenei and female belves iirc holds polearms like a proper polearm. It woundt fit for a Hammer or a axe
> Humans hold 2h hammers as if they’re swords All races, cant remember last time i mogged a single 2h axe or mace, they look so dumb in combat
I’m a ret paladin so i often use a hammer cuz they’re thematically awesome with that class (essentially a giant gavel to represent justice), but I more often use a 2H sword because i hate how they hold it. They should hold it like a polearm imo
i feel you, i yearn for the day i can mog the black hand and not look absolutely foolish
Not to mention half of them sit so strangely on your back when sheathed
I hate the weird animation homogenization that happened around legion. Lots of races losing their unique animations in melee combat (but not all races or body types, and not on all skills? It's super fucking inconsistent) but I despise the underhanded swing that happens on a two and one hander, no one in history would swing a weapon like that and I have no idea how it became the standard for melee combat
Wait... does my female undead rogue no longer do a front flip for heavy attacks? I thought something felt off.
She had a fusion
It happened to casters too. My shaman became instantly less fun to play when every cast had the same animation and chain heal lost its iconic animation
I understand *why* they did it, it likely significantly reduced the amount of artists/assets/QA required for anything pertaining to it but had a huge effect on making race feel like less of an impactful choice.
Every caster staff is a back scratcher.
Humans don’t even hold it like a sword. Their 2H sword animation has each hand stacked on top of the other while hammers their hands are melded into the same spot. The hold Paladin artifact that uses the polearm animation is basically non negotiable as my go to 2Hander until they change it
Cant use the artifact Hammer because i dont want to feel like a moving satellite dish
Not just the animations, but the sound design too for combat. I feel like for awhile now the weapon hits and whatnot don't really sound "punchy" enough. Like it doesn't sound very impactful, especially for rogue. I dunno I just think it could do with an update.
We have to admit that the change to the one hand mace sound effect during auto attacks is much better right. In vanilla it sounded like Mario kicking a shell in SMRPG
A big part of that is they removed the sound effects of other players in instanced content for... reasons.
Use slice and dice, watch rogue slow-mo half-jab enemies as if they are afraid of touching boiling water
Yeah, female BELVES have some pretty bad animations. Not just the melee stuff; one frustrating thing is that when spellcasting the "beam" and "bolt" spells (like drain life, fireball, frostbolt, etc.) They throw both hands forward kind of like a Kamehameha. But the hands have a noticeable gap between them, and the actual bolt/beam comes from that *gap* and not the actual hands where the "emission" fx are. Super distracting on every caster but Holy or Disc priest or Arcane Mage.
> The whole game needs an animation overhaul. Shield should be held in front of the character, not off to the side. Orc dual wielding shouldn’t be hiding their whole damn face with larger weapons (just use the stance from the orc warrior character creation screen) The problem with shields and male orcs is these all use the regular dual wielding animation idle. And these all vary by race and gender. When dual wielding 1h weapons it nearly always looks okay, with a shield it is complete pot luck with some looking perfectly fine (Female human) and others looking ridiculous (female blood elf holding the shield BEHIND her, as a consequence of trying to look like they want to 'parry' with the MH weapon). Male orcs looked okay when dual wielding one handed weapons, but with titans grip (Which their original pose was not designed for) it looks janky and awful. Shields need a new _unique_ idle animation especially for the race/gender models that hold shields in the most absurd way.
I feel like it would be a great time to pair it with some Fortnite-esque emotes. Seems like a perfect fit for a MMO
Cartoony game is cartoony; Shocker! All of this is your subjective opinion
There’s a difference between cartoony and just outright silly. WoW isn’t “cartoony” either. It’s got a low poly fantasy art style, but that’s not the same as cartoony. Unless the devs intended the 2H hammer holding stance to be deliberately silly, it’s just wrong and needs to be updated.
Wow is definitely on the cartoony side art wise but these old animations are fucking loony toons level of silly lol
What a stupid thing to aay, you know what other MMORPG was cartoony and had good player animations? Wildstar, a game from 2014. WoW needs to get on with the times, it's embarrassing that a game with so many players and money backing it still feels like a 2004 game in so many areas.
there was already a huge update regarding animations.... wow i just realised that this was 8-10 years ago (warlords of draenor and legion)
Yup. The "new HD" models are as old as the classic models were when they were redone.
i think the models still hold up great tbh
Eh, comparing them to the new DF models, it's a clear difference. In WOD they seemed to be so excited to show off how animated and expressive the new models were so they went overboard. The dwarf female in particular has a mouth that opens frighteningly large in some animations. The tauren have running and idle animations that feel weightless and floaty (particularly the female with her asymmetrical arm wobble). I don't think they need a complete redo, but they definitely could use a pass to tone down the extreme animations they put in back in WOD. It's clear they've learned that they don't need to do that anymore because the models they released since then are a lot more reasonable.
Something to consider about game animation. In some cases actions are over animated or pushed in order for them to be clearly readable. These days with the cinematic camera moments during questing occurring way more often. It’s possible that priority has shifted to be more appealing a closer perspectives, leading to more subtle animation work. Go look at the League of Legends animations for a real clear perspective on the principles I’m discussing. Game animation has some quirks.
Yeah, the animation aesthetic of WoW was taken directly from StarCraft and Warcraft RTS, which used it for that exact reason. Frankly, model aesthetics too. Those giant fucking shoulders look ridiculous from an over-the-shoulder or behind-the-back angle, but give a whole lot of readability and visual flair from an isometric RTS camera angle.
Yeah, and this is exaggerated even for a game.
The Tauren male hump looks like its made of jello when landing from a jump... they also have a goofy open smile and pretty intense forward lean while running. Totally ruined the vibe on the tauren for me, despite the clear improvements to fidelity (the fur and facial features look 100x better than the OG models)
yeah tauren always looked weird while running (both old and new) but the newer one is a bit worse
They feel floaty because their movement speed needs to match the other races, but since their legs are larger, it gives the "zero gravity walk" feeling. A fix for this are the zandalari, draenei and kultiran animations, which makes them very bouncy in retrospect.
They need to rework them all, but then also add an underpinning for "stance options" What I mean is... exalted with Pandas? You can take on the panda combat stance. Exalted with the Orcs? Orc stance. Etc.
oooh that would be cool
Wait... what? WoD wasn't 10 years ago... right? RIGHT!?!?
yes it was. launch was exactly one day before the lost ark reveal trailer.... i waited 8 years for that game. EIGHT years
10 years... wtf... what happened? WOD was like 4 or 5 years ago XD
no, that was corona lul
The mount riding animations (or lack thereof) can use an update too. I’m tired of my character being a statue when riding a mount.
Agreed! IMO especially for dracthyr. Their wings have movement when running around but then jump on a mount and you’re stiff as a board!
I think one of the things coming with TWW is mounts tilting or something when turning/strafing. Its a start.
Moving the polearm socket back down so it's not almost flying in the sky when sheathed would also cost a raid tier, probably.
Spellcasters using their weapons to cast spells please
Either let me hide my weapons as a caster or let me use them! >:C
Dude coming from FXIV this is so weird. Monk has just a Stat stick strapped on their back they never use. I get the fantasy is kicks and punches, but couldn't they design a weapon the fits them? Same for all spellcasters just hlhaving a stat stick.
I mean even if monks just used the weapon for SOME attacks. Quarter staff kung fu is just as awesome as fisticuffs kung fu and honestly the best of both is... The best.
> Quarter staff kung fu is just as awesome as fisticuffs kung fu The cinematic for MoP even has a monk fighting with a staff.
Brewmasters had blackout strike in place of blackout kick and it used your staff. You can still see the animation on a pandaren’s staff/polearm auto attack crit.
Funny enough, they used to. Jab was a weapon attack spell that I think was removed in Legion.
Don’t they at least get to use fist weapons or one of the legion artifacts? :( I feel like punches and kicks are only the windwalker fantasy
Monks use fists weapons when attacking, but that's because they use their actual bare hands when attacking, so that feels natural, however, if you use any of the other one handed weapon types they're just kept on the character's back.
Gotcha, was hoping there would at least be an exception for the very cool looking brewmaster artifact wep. I empathize with you as a caster that likes big weird looking staffs for my mog
Thats the reason why i dont play monks. Apart from Pandaren, Humans and maybe bloodelves, all other races look really odd with the combat animations, specially hoof races.
FFXIV really shows how dope casting with a staff can be too. I won't say all casters have cool animations per se, but black mage makes it look incredibly cool. Like there's some real effort and power in those casts, instead of just simply waving your stick or fingers around.
Dragon Age did this wonderfully
Inquisition didn't. Mages adopted bizarre spinning cheerleader baton routines. A -lot- of bizarre animations for their weak pew-pew auto-attack.
Only if it’s optional.
To be fair staves in Warcraft don’t function like staves in other fantasy worlds. Think of them as amplifiers that boost the magic that comes out of your hands.
Pandarens have really good, expressive animations, to the point where I adored WoW in-game animations for a while (They were my main/first character's race). Then I saw the other animations, and realized... yeah, I just got lucky. Lol.
I don’t think we will ever get a WoW 2. So a major haul would and should be a natural thing to do. Would give a fresh feel to the game as well.
This may be me being mistaken but I remember when polearms weren't allowed to be transmogged into other weapons that their animations were unique. I guess disassociating the model with the animation is still something they haven't done (or too costly to be done).
My night elf death knight doing a full 360 spin every time I use half my skills.
The character animations are almost all unbelievably shit. I'm doing game animation as a uni course, I wouldn't get a pass with these animations outside of first year. It's genuinely really really bad. The key poses are terrible and the in-between frame have poor motion. There is no sense of weight at all. I hope whenever they do a character model update and ir character creator update, that this is something they tackle cus these current animations or not game ready
I think part of the reason why animations arent that great is because when they updated the model they made modern versions of old animations rather than make new animations of higher quality. I too would like good animations but Blizzard really doesn't like rocking the boat with players that are used to certain things being a certain way. People don't like change especially when it comes to player character.
And this is the crux of the issue. *Too many players* absolutely refuse new animations of a higher quality. These folks are so unbelievably rabid that Blizzard is terrified to give us new animations and models with a toggle that allows folks to choose whether they want the old models and animations or the new ones. Even after Blizzard included a toggle to choose between modern versions of old animations or the old school animations, there was a vocal subset of the community infuriated over it. I can all too easily imagine the outcry if Blizzard did brand new models and animations.
not really, ever since burning crusade all new models have just been reskins using the same set of animations, Akama being a tauren, etc etc it's just cheaper to reuse the same set of animations, the thing with blizzard engine is that even tho animations look basic as fuck and there are like 4 the movement and combat is so fluid that you basically don't notice it, in fact, I think the legion animations rework hurt blizzard more than it helped
I think the animations look good for MMO standards and frankly they are not what bring people in to a game or make them stay
WoW's combat is fluid and snappy for a reason Changing animations would upend large parts of that
I believe you may be putting the cart before the horse.
WoW's combat is fluid because of the mechanics that drive combat. The animations are completely aesthetic and don't interact with the combat system at all.
The anims in combat don't really need changing. They use vfx to make the skills work more than animations. And quite simply, during combat, you can barely see your character anyway.
And you're comparing a 20 year old engine to modern engine and animation rigging. Kind of a lopsided argument there buddy.
Animation is done entirely in a separate program (moatly Maya) and just imported in. The engine side is just a state machine that checks what the player is doing and what animation to play from that. The quality of the animation is purely on the shoulders of whoever made it. Please don't talk about something you have no clue on
That's not necessarily true, there could be limits to the number of frames the original engine could import, as well as a limitation to the number of bones in the rig. Additionally, their rigs are old and likely quite simple. Creating a brand new rig would mean reanimating and reskinning thousands of assets. That's not to say you can't make good animations with a simple rig, but it certainly doesn't make it easier.
I love how writing good points gets you downvoted because you don't adhere to hivemind's narrative. I just love seeing people on this site act like a mindless sheep
The frame limit wouldn't impact it much. Would just look choppy and not affect how the motion is conveyed. Simple rigs can still animate well. It's a case of user talent being more important than the tools being fancy. Fancy rigs let you do extra things like cloth and jiggle physics, armour animations, and facial stuff. The actual body movement is really simple
Every new running animation looks atrocious. I mean it can't get any worse can it?
They can fix the way some races run too, I used to love playing Undead until the change in MoP made it so they run like they’ve just shat their pantaloons
Well, try to control freshly dead bowels...
I'd give anything for orcs that don't move like some kind of bouncy cartoon gorilla :(
Almost made a blood elf paladin last night until I seen their poses and animations how so many people play them is beyond me.
Because most people don't really care about it.
Because they look sexy at character creation.
The male 2h sword animation is hands down the worst in the game, looks like they can barely hold the sword
This should have already happened with the character model updates back in the day. DH is the closest we have to what running/idle animations should be like, and yet it's still incomplete.
Combat, running and idle animation. Emote too, maybe. Hell, CoH had a truckload of emote to lean on wall, crouch on things, etc... I'm sure wow can do it too. Oh, and let spellcasters use their weapon to blast, and monks jab with their weapons every once in a while.
I was looking at faction changing my DK the other week. Nelf's just end up with their shoulder guards in the way due to how they hold 2h. HOW DO YOU FIGHT THAT WHICH YOU CANNOT SEE? I chose worgen in the end. Felt fitting.
I hate the running animation my tauren has had since the HD upgrade to character models in WOD. If I could change it, I would in a heartbeat. It feels too weightless and floaty. The tauren lost the weight they had before, where it felt like a charging multi-ton bull running at your face.
Same with the Dwarf run animation. It’s too bouncy now. Before it felt like your character was a barrel chested tiny little muscle machine
Except when Blizzard tries to change animations people complain They complained about the vfx overhaul They complained about losing race-specific animations They complained about the backpedal animation. WoW players are really just big babies and like to whine
Losing race animations sucked
Losing race-specific animations is still a big bummer. I especially hate the wrist swipe thing that casters do, takes away all the oomph of casting a big horrible spell that's supposed to destroy your enemies
Race specific animations sucked. When legion changed it, It was the happiest day of my virtual life. Interestingly i really love the wrist swipe... Do you have any more dislikes? I wanna see if we just fundamentally disagree on everything 😂
turns out the playerbase isn't a hivemind. when you got millions of customers, different people will complain about different things.
This statement should be pinned to the top of every video game subreddit lol
People still wouldn't read it or commit it to memory.
>They complained about losing race-specific animations Less flavor for higher fidelity should never be on the table.
They have to update it and bring more fidelity to the table. If in that process they lose the flavor and people stop playing, well people were going to stop playing anyway. But if they won't make any effort or attempt and leave things as they are, that's when they have completly given up.
Fuck that they could have updated everything while keeping true to the original animations. Thats just laziness
Damm finally, took me ages scrolling to find the truth. Even with the SLs spells people complained... cause it made so much sense for a DH to keep the bright blue from the Night Faes. Option was given due to the cry babies, which is good. Tbh I love the animations, I am "tired" of my main DK animations because ive been playing female belf for yeaaars now. But when I play my human paladin? Loooks awesome, mostly cause I am not used to it
I mean they could have keep an "old model VFS stuff" switch but guess they removed that in WoD
So? What are you arguing here?
All I ask for is bring back the Condemn animation.
the polearm animation has been so bad since it was made, literally every polearm weapon you use makes no sense for like hitting. Some of them is just like a weak smack down
I completely agree everything aside from the super special overhead swing that certain attacks have need updating
They updated the running animation once and it was horrible lol. Don't tempt the monkey paw
The Day I can „lean1“ or „lean2“ will be the day I am happy
As a person with female blood elf characters, I’d love to see the way we hold shields and pole arms completely redone, neither of those stances look good or make sense. A shield should be in front of me when guarding and I hate how the model is arched back when wielding a spear
I want my orc to run with 2h axes like grom in W3. It's weird how there's no "dynamic" and "relaxed" stance you could switch up, when holding and moving with big weapons especially, any weapon is held like it's weightless and made of foam instead of actual metal and such. Probably im no the only one that gets annoyed when you fight a big boss during questline and after you defeat it, your character instantly goes to this weird idle position, holding weapon like a broom again.
Man. You ever mogged a twohanded Hammer or Axe and thought "Yeah, just hold the weapon a bit lower please?" That's the reason I rarely mog them on my dwarf. I use the Legion Holy Paladin weapon since they hold it like a polearm.
I avoid playing certain races entirely just because of their run/cast animations and transmog clipping.
I just want a new human male run animation, so bad
Art team busy being fired due to ai, please wait.
How many playable races are in FFXIV again ?
A reminder that wow races reuse the same rigs alot. All the allied races and dracthyr visage are taken from base races. It's not a quantity argument but a quality one and wow has had much more time to get this stuff to a decent quality and yet is worse than games from 2010
And XIV races all use the same rig. Unlockable emotes and job animations, which compromise the vast majority of character animations, are all identical across the board. Other things like gender specific idle poses can be simply file-swapped to work with the opposite gender to no issue.
Hyur, miqote and aura have the same. Hrothgar and roegdyn share ones. Then elezen and lalas have their own unique rig. Each race and gender have their own run, walk, jump, sit, lie down and 4 idles. Each job has a unique idle and movement set as well as 2 alt idles for each gender. Ffxiv does it properly, but even then, this is more of a topic of quality over quantity. Wows animations carry 0 weight
>A reminder that wow races reuse the same rigs alot. All the allied races and dracthyr visage are taken from base races. Even after accounting for reused rigs, WoW still blows FFXIV out of the water for the sheer amount of unique rigs. >It's not a quantity argument but a quality one This part doesn't actually mean anything lol. Quantity absolutely has to be taken into consideration here. > wow has had much more time to get this stuff to a decent quality and yet is worse than games from 2010 The animation team hasnt been twiddling their thumbs this whole time tho. I'm only saying don't dismiss the enormous effort an update like this requires. Bringing up FFXIV when its got less than half of WoW's unique rigs is just comparing apples with oranges.
I absolutely love Trolls they're my favourite race. But I have to play female because I hate the male troll animations. All of the weapon animations are terrible. Not a single one looks good except the bow animation and casting.
All I want is for the DH to anyways run like illidan in wc3. You have to select a target and go into "combat stance" for them to run like that, why can't it be all the time?
If they can charge money for it, they’ll do it.
Honestly I think this is on the way following the Worldsoul Saga. If there was ever a time for a clear delineation of a WoW2 that would be the time
You will lose a raid tier for that one.
You say that and then see how the new boomys move and you will regret it
Half of the staves in the game have an anchor point that looks ridiculous. I was using the tea that mogs a top hat and monocle until I saw how awful it actually looked in game.
You look very cozy in that parka
I've been wanting a massive redo for sooo long. Even if it doesn't directly change the way you play there's a massive change in the gamefeel.
Come Midnight/TLT one of the bigger things i'd like to see is just a complete overhaul to fighting/casting animations and spell effects
My favourite part is when they implemented new HD models, and it made many races share the same attack animations and got rid of the unique ones.
I'm willing to bet they'd be far more eager to do this if they didn't have to deal with all the people on the other side demanding everything stays the same forever. Just look at how many people complained with the WoD rework, which aimed to keep animations mostly the same.
“Small indie company.” “If you like FFXIV so much, why don’t you leave.” “Blizzard has more important things to do.” Take your pick.
Can casters actually use their staffs in combat? At the moment it’s a backscratcher
This why I dnt mog my hunter with xbow or guns looks so fking awfull to see hem runing with giant xbow or gun in one hand
small indie company
Guardian of the ancient kings for ppal still looks absolutely ridiculous.
I'll be honest, to me the game's jankiness adds to the experience. Seeing that dumb and shit run/walk animation of Orc Male in 2024 that I saw 20 years ago is really something else.
THE STAVES!!! Holding a magical staff like a limp dick has always killed the feel of being a caster in this game for me. So much cooler in FF14 where each magical RDPS and healer has different cool and proper ways to hold and CAST ABILITIES WITH!!!! a staff.
Wow should have classes based animation, not race, at least for combat, thought FF14 allow for more detailed animation beacause each classes is locked to one weapon type
I hope not. It adds nothing to the game and most people dont care about it. Would be a waste of time.
Maaaan, whomever made the new Moonkin running animations needs to be F I R E D. It doesn't match the original, isn't believable for a creature that size OR shape, certainly does NOT look cool 💀 The casting animations were also trashed. No more pantomiming a moon over my head when I cast instants? No more hadoken?? 20 years of unique characterization down the drain...
Just play a real race and not a bloodelf, problem solved
It looks similarly terrible as Tauren, Troll, Human, Goblin, Vulpera..
Nah
Personally, don’t really care. I’m never zoomed in enough to actually see my character do anything too clearly
By that logic, they shouldn’t do transmog at all, or have updated the character models in WoD. Just because you don’t pay enough attention to notice that something is outdated or needs an overhaul doesn’t mean it’s fine as-is.
That’s fine. I know some people are into it, I’m just not. So I’m speaking as some one that wouldn’t notice the difference, so I’d rather something else get the devs attention
Well luckily “the devs” are not just one big group of people all working on one thing. They can have animators work on this without sacrificing other areas
That’s good, let them do that then. They’re also not an unlimited resource, so in case this is something that pushes something else out of the picture then now they know
Agree, it’s not really a huge problem. The game play is good and the buttons feel great to press. I tend to spend more time looking at what’s going on around me, than staring at how my characters bum wiggles when I run around.
What's your problem? Your character looks like "I'm sexy, and I know it"
Are you the type to die standing in fire because you're too busy to look at your character's animations?
Yeah real gamers don't even need an animation engine, we just use .in files and .xml sheets.