Kael

Huh. Three hundred thousand more chances to get an invite, and still nothing. We had a deal, Blizzard! We had a deal! Bah, whatever.

I'll just speak to the female draenei since that's what I play and have the most opinion on. Aside from just more polygons and higher-res textures, which are a given, I have a few things I'd like changed.

First, I want a better posture. It looks really uncomfortable for them to be puffing out their chests as far as they can all the time; I'd just like my character to just stand straight for once and relax. Also, can she please stop glancing around constantly? She seems so paranoid. I'd like the frequency of those animations turned down a lot.

The second thing is cloaks. I'm glad we can turn off capes, because they all look so stupid on draenei, especially the men. The cape just floats there above the tail, sticking out at a bizarre angle. Totally unnatural, totally stupid. I want the capes to flow straight down the back like they do for all the other races. Should be easier to do with a better posture, too. A tauren's tail doesn't get in the way of his cape, and neither should a draenei's.

Thirdly, I'd like the eat/drink animation and the Map animation to get fixed. Draenei knock back drinks (and loaves of bread) so far, they almost bend over backwards. When I click to eat a feast, she sits down at the same time, which looks like it should make her fall over. The Map animation looks great when standing, but when mounted up, my character leans back really far with the map in her outstretched hands; it's ridiculous.

Beyond that, I'd always appreciate more horn styles and hair styles, especially the kind of hair that animates. And in general, I hope one day that armor becomes more than just a texture. I know it's a tall order for the art team, but in a perfect world, the armor I wear would not be skin-tight, and would have more to it and actually change my silhouette like shoulder pieces, helms, and now belts do. Also, we've got dresses, but no skirts. And what about those lower-half capes that go from the hip down to the knee, but only in the back? I saw a few pieces of armor in TOR that did that and I really like it. Anyway, that's all. I'm not even talking about the character models anymore, so I'll stop.

@JohnFordColey

I've seen enough analysis of the "ending" to be pretty darn sure that they never intended this to be the real ending. And honestly, I don't see how anyone can say otherwise when you see the extra bit tacked on at the end if you do it right. That bit can only mean one thing, really. They had planned to sell the real ending as DLC all along, even before the game shipped. Seems clear to me now. Disgusting idea.

@Neofalcon Wow, that article is fantastic. It was a wonderful read! Thank you.

@Dizazter

Diablo 3 Defense Force: GO!
(just don't ask me to defend the change in art style)

"Attribute Points: Gone"
No, they're not gone, they're on the gear now. You can still stack whatever stat you want, and make your own build from it, it's just that you have to find the right items to do so instead of clicking on it when you level up.

"Skill Points: Gone"
That's right, skill trees are gone. They're doing something else for character customization that I feel is pretty unique. I don't see how this new system is friendlier to the "console crowd" than skill trees; there are plenty of console games with skill trees. It's just a different way to do it.

"Skills: Earned automatically"
As opposed to what? You didn't have to go see a class trainer or anything like that to earn your skills in either of the old Diablo games. If you mean to say you don't have to pick and choose which skills you get to use, that's not correct either.

"Number of skills useable at once: Very limited"
Just like it was in the last two games, yeah. You had access to all the skills you had picked out of the skill trees you chose, but the whole point of the skill tree was to make you pick a limited set of skills out of your class' repertoire, and lock the rest of them away unless you decided to re-spec. Which is exactly how it works now. It's just a lot easier to re-spec, which I suppose is the legitimate part of your claim that the game's been dumbed down, but then you'd have complained the opposite; that you can use too many skills and that you're not committing yourself enough to a small set of them like you used to have to.

"Max Number of players in a game: 4 (4 less than the 12 year old game!)"
You're not wrong about this one. It's up to personal preference how much chaos you want or will tolerate from the multiplayer; technically, I'm sure it's feasible to have 64 players or more running around the dungeon at the same time, and that if they thought that would be a good experience, I'm sure they'd have done it that way. You're not wrong to want eight players again, but they're also not wrong to think four is enough, you know?

"And they even categorized skills, and you can only have 1 skill in that category active at a time."
There's an option in the menu called "elective mode" that allows you choose any combination of skills you've unlocked. The default mode of restricting you to picking a skill from each category is to keep noobs from picking a skill set that doesn't have, for example, a skill that regenerates their resource, and gimping themselves without knowing why. For people who know what they're doing, make sure to enable Elective Mode.

So it'll be almost four years from announcement to release. Wow. Funny that everyone else in the industry can still make great games, but go from an idea to final product in about half that time. I wonder how many years they had been working on it before they even announced it! I love what these guys do, but the amount of sweet time they take to do it is just ridiculous.

Pretty cool stuff! I feel a little regret over having already cancelled my subscription. I really like the game, though, and I'll come back to it just as soon as they put in matchmaking for the flashpoints and operations (and hopefully improve the engine). I haven't quit Warcraft, and I have enough commitments there and in real life that I'd rather go solo in TOR, but I still want to see the group content without having to take the time to find or form a group the old-fashioned way each and every time I want to run something--I've got a stack of other games I'd rather get through than spend time doing that, to be honest.

@Traptz My cousin didn't like the first one when it came out. I don't remember when or why, but he gave it a second chance at some point on his own, and now it is his favorite series of all time. He's got all the achievements. He played all the way through 1 and 2 with each and every class. He's super hardcore; way more hardcore than I am, and I ADORE these games. He's been playing the demo for 3 online since it came out. He's already gone through the demo with every class, too. It's nuts.

Yeah, I voted Blood Elf. I'd have gone with Draenei, but the men are so goofy and the women have such bad posture.

And why aren't the Pandaren on this list? :P

I was NEVER going to buy one of these for my avatar before. How dumb is it that now that it's becoming a collector's item, I want it badly?