WARNING! Paladin is highly caffeinated.... I repeat, DO NOT give Paladin more caffeine today. Crunch GO MODE engage! We have so much going on! So, today I would love to focus on talking about the new Greenguard forest and our new swishy, motion trail filled, combo combat animations.
I asked Cysero to give you a glipse. He ran out into the center, figured out how to exploit (he calls it a feature) his way up a tree and took a shot showing you the gate back to Battleon.
Honestly, walking out into this new area feels amazing. It is vast and beautiful.... with enough room to start off all of your crazy level 1 to 5 adventuring.
These guys have been flying so much they got Red Eye. Bu dum dum.... *cymbal shot*. "Thank you, I will be here all week!"
Greenguard forest will both be a questing area and a hub for other adventures. I felt it was very important that there are lots of caves, dungeons, and strange areas to explore... but the main path of the game is a clearly defined trail. This is a huge departure from the discombobulated (is that a real word?) areas of our previous games which are added on almost chaotically. The very visible road that leads out of BattleOn will take you through Greenguard, over the bridge into the next part, then through the Trollok caves, then onto Doomwood.... past the Death Knight's Keep and onward to higher level areas. We will not restrict your exploration... unless an area is blocked by story content or some other unusual special purpose. If you can find a way to survive, exploration is fair game! If we are actually able to add in other races, we will have different starting towns for those races that ultimately converge on the town of Battleon which will serve as our adventuring & community hub.
The new version of Greenguard forest should go live for Alpha Testing starting next week!
Inspired by the research we all did together on top action movies and anime, Korin has been taking our sword swinging, spell casting animations to an entirely new level! Additionally, we are adding motion trails. The color of the motion trails will help indicate the element of the weapon attack you are using. For example, if you swing and it is red... it is probably a Fire Attack. Furthermore, a few players I talked to online said we should really aim for fluidity. So we are going to try for some combo swing animations to keep the flow of combat steady. This also means that special attacks need to be BIG, POWERFUL and VISUALLY WOW'ING. So if you use mana to do a jump vorpal strike... everyone knows it!
While I think you will love all of the new attack animations, Spell Casting is the most improved. The charge up is a little more DragonBall Z inspired, and when you hurl the fireball it has some serious kick to it. Smaller spell casts like the Mage's upcoming auto attack skill are a little more Iron Man and Harry Potter's Wand inspired. Notice I use the word "inspired". What I mean is, we studied hundreds of different sources... and when we locked on to something we liked we said, "OK, so I want it to feel like this, but make it our own." Thyton and I stood up acting out how we wanted the animations to look. Korin watched us (and told us to turn and keep doing them) while he animated the models. I guess you could call it a very manual "poor mans mo-cap." As an unexpected result, the way the character on screen swings the sword is very real, and very much like how I do in real life with fighting Dage in the hallway. These new animations should be going live next week.
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