Matthew

@GiantGamer
Let's be fair, when they say "remaster", all they actually mean is "resize the dimensions of the internal viewport".

Do you want to know how that would translate to a game like Final Fantasy VII? Run Disc 1 in ePSXe with Pete's OpenGL2 plugin with the resolution set to your screen's native.

Looks horrible, doesn't it?

Granted, Final Fantasy X certainly has much more modern modeling and texturing going on, but the fact remains that all you're getting is an internal upscale- it will be less blurry on your HD TV, but it will be the same exact game otherwise.

That is, of course, if you ware one of the few that actually own a PS3 capable of playing PS2 games. This is what this is probably all about- bringing one of the better Final Fantasy stories to the current masses with little effort. I wonder if this is the reason Sony removed the PSX/PS2 capabilities from the recent crop of hardware: to force people to repurchase games in new formats. Genius. Evil bloody genius.

The crafting and professions systems in general tend to disproportionately favor those that can afford the investment of time (or the purchase of gold) than those that don't. You cannot say "bring the player, not the toon" when you can't afford the investment of time and virtual (or real) money to gear that player. Have you seen the cost of some of the common enchants the auction house recently? I have enough time during the week to raid- I don't have entire days free like some of my guildies to grind out gatherables.

Without going on a tirade here, what Warcraft needs is a are price controls in the form of alternatives from NPCs. Perhaps as a guild perk: the performance of your guild week to week, coupled with the skills available by its active members, result in a number of limited craftable items from a guild vendor. Or provide all craftable items on a server through vendors priced relative to the number of active players that know the recipes in question- the more that know how to make the Masterwork Elementium Deathblade, the cheaper it gets. This isn't submitted as a disincentive to crafting, but as a reasonable level of price control to a gamed economy facing significant hyperinflation.

And I do mean this quite literally. I only have 8 hours during the week that I can spend playing a game. I absolutely love having raids more accessible to players like me: I'm a damned good healer, too, so my guild is definitely happy to have me. But making raiding physically more accessible doesn't help if the gear, the gems, the potions, and the enchants are too far out of reach. You can't just have a 10-man instance portal and say "there, it's accessible to you". Not if it's going to cost 2 to 3 thousand gold a week to maintain a raiding character. And on some of the higher-population servers, that's what it comes down to: enchanting a new weapon can bankrupt you.

Going to guess 3D Studio Max. Getting model and texture data out of WoW's cache files has never been particularly hard. After that, it's just a matter of modification and positioning.

Actually, in response to MusedMoose and Suzaku, fixing model artwork in Warcraft is not an artistic challenge at all. It is solely a programming one. You see, everything in WoW, from the base models to the gear, is key-framed. That means for each and every unique character model and each and every animation, each piece of unique mesh needs to have it's position for each frame recorded. Granted, this process can be easily automated, but it's a throwback to the 1990's before we had Vertex Shaders, screens bigger than 1024x768, and processers pushing the 800MHz mark. Essentially, the majority of WoW's rendering hasn't changed since Warcraft 3 in terms of the algorithms involved. Applications like the WoW Model Viewer are a great resource for seeing these individual combinations of states and frames.

Changing the models themselves would be easy. Updating the graphics engine from a keyframed one to a physics-alike procedural shader based one is a massive challenge- and it would be a destructive one.

And it's a challenge that Blizzard has job postings to try and fix. (Yes, I applied, but I think I was a bit too new in the business to qualify. They want people with previous game development. Fun Fact for Trivial Pursuit: to get into the game design industry, you must first have experience in the game design industry!)

Here's a far more important question- did they fix the attack-cast animation slowdown, or is this just another broken port? Because I couldn't tolerate the first opening battle on the PSP- which is a shame because I love Final Fantasy Tactics.

If I recall correctly, Holy Shield was originally an ability that had to be used, up for 10 seconds and down for the next 20. Warriors had a similar ability. Both were removed in Cataclysm. So this is a comeback?

This is one of those games that could only be made more awesome with appropriate re-imaging- modern sprites, updated soundtrack, re-translation at least or re-scripting at best. There are so many avenues for plot in this game that a second look could reap serious rewards.

But will Square do it? I think not. In the face of a guaranteed financial success, Square will turn aside, and instead give us something like Final Fantasy XIV online. I don't know how they figured this choice- a Final Fantasy 7 PS3 remake that millions upon millions of people would pay a premium to buy, or an online game so horrible that they can't even give it away for free- see http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/10/final-fantasy-xiv-team-restructuring-ps3-version-delayed/

Apparently, my Gamestop starts the line at 10pm. We're looking at a high of 18 degrees today, so perhaps I should get a kerosene heater before heading over.

You convinced me to roll a mage. Who is now chilling out at level 24 and is probably keeping me from trying to finish all the stuff I want to get done on my main (Exalted with Cenarion Circle, 4k Justice Points, find a guild before next Tuesday, etc).

I wanted the Collector's Edition, but when I went to pre order at my local Brick&Mortar store, they told me they were already out. So I plunked down the full retail price for my pre-order of the regular version (I'll just walk over and get it and walk home) and went about my way.

They said that they would call me if any more became available though.