Wednesday, June 25, 2014

WoD Alpha: Keybind Interface

When it arrives, Warlords of Draenor will come packed with several quality of life changes. Some of these changes will go unnoticed by many (especially addon using) players, but some of them will certainly make things a bit easier for everyone else. What change am I talking about this time around? The keybind interface. Here are some previews.





(Click images to enlarge)


As you can see, the layout is much more clearly defined than it is on the live servers. No more scrolling through a massive list trying to figure out where to configure that one bar. Everything is beautifully labeled and easily accessible. For those who prefer to use the standard UI bars, or those of us who are on a rare occasion forced to use the standard UI bars instead of our favorite mods, this is a most welcome change.

Friday, June 20, 2014

WoD Alpha: Toy Box and Mounts Interface

Hoarders, rejoice! For the time of the Toy Box is nearly upon us. For those of you who are interested in getting a sneak peak at what the interface will look like, have a screenshot of it!





As you can see, our Toy Box will have a pretty snazzy search and filtering system, one that's nearly identical to what we have currently for our non-combat pets. Finding your favorite item should be pretty easy once this system is in place. I know that I'm definitely looking forward to this feature, as my shaman has been crying about inventory space since Wrath of the Lich King.

One thing to note about the toybox: it currently doesn't automatically add the items into the toy spellbook. You'll have to click on the item (current new Beta interface will actually indicate this), and it'll be placed in your spellbook, thus being removed from your inventory.



It appears that our mount page will get a similar treatment as far as sorting is concerned (hooray!), though it doesn't seem like all of the sorting functions are implemented at this time. My assumption/hope is that they'll break it down further into achievements, instance drops, crafted, and vendors as well.

Edit: Looks like they have a bit more filtering added in now!


I'm really looking forward to both of these quality of life implementations, small as they may seem. Personally I don't think they can get here soon enough!

Thursday, June 19, 2014

WoD Alpha: New Ghost Wolf and Feral Spirit Models

Those of you who happen to follow me on Twitter and Facebook may already know that I'm one of the lucky ones who have managed to snag an invite onto the Warlords of Draenor alpha test servers. Over the next few weeks I hope to write about my thoughts on the changes to Enhancement and shamans in general. For now though, I shall answer one of our most pressing questions: With all of the new model revamps coming in WoD, will we get a new wolf form?

The answer is apparently: Yes!


As you can see in the above images, we're most definitely getting an updated version for our ghost wolf forms. Both are rather transparent, much along the lines of our current unglyphed wolf form on live, and are nearly invisible when seen against light backgrounds, such as snow. Unlike the Glyph of the Spectral Wolf on live, the spectral version of our wolf is the same size as our unglyphed version.

But what about our Feral Spirits? Well, we're definitelly getting new versions of those too!

New Feral Spirits

As you can see, they're much larger than our ghost wolf forms. Currently on live servers, if we have Glyph of the Spectral Wolf activated, we're roughly the same size as our puppy pals. Since both glyphed and unglyphed versions of our ghost wolf are the same size, our new wolves will always seem large in comparison.

How about raptors? Well, at this moment in time our Spirit Raptors (if you use Glyph of Spirit Raptors) do not have new models. Perhaps we'll see those in future builds, but I have my doubts on those being terribly high on the priority list right now.