Username
Password
The panel wrapped up with a combination Q&A and a live demo showing senior artist Dion Rogers creating a tree in real time. The Q&A responses revealed some interesting bits of information. The team is working toward refreshing the older zones and races with coming expansions. Cataclysm will update a fair number of zones, but not all will get a refresh. Character skins are likely to be refreshed over the next two expansions or so.
The team is also working to increase the resolution of the older armor sets to pretty them up some. There are still no plans for customization features such as armor recoloring because the team is still thinking about how to implement the feature without winding up with hot pink goblins running around the world. It was also pointed out that one of the challenges in adding color to armor sets is that the art teams color the sets off of class to make it easier for recognition in player-vs.-player.
Random Facts: All the zones in World of Warcraft are still done by hand. The same is true of all textures.
The Takeaway: The upcoming Cataclysm expansion pack is shaping up to be the most drastic overhaul of World of Warcraft that has been seen since the game's release.
