Today Blizzard announced the arrival of a long-anticipated and much asked for feature in WoW. Shamans have been begging for new Ascendance forms for a large number of expansions now, and today their pleas were answered! Except, the answers weren’t exactly… well received.
From Old and Generic to New and… Scooby-Doo?
First off, let’s take a look at the old Ascendance and the new one(s).
The old form is pretty solid, but has been around a LONG time, since Mists of Pandaria in fact. Players are understandably a little tired of it, and wanted some better quality visuals. Better, as it turns out, is a relative term. First of all, there’s actually three forms coming, with recolors for each spec. The below red one for Elemental, blue for Restoration, and White for Enhancement.
Sooo, what could players possibly have a problem with here? Well, let’s see what their opinions are and what some of the.. flattering comparisons are like.
Community Reactions and Comparisons
Overall the reactions have been overwhelmingly negative. Criticisms range from a very clown-like look, to the general cartoonishness of the forms, especially compared to the old one and some already in-game alternatives players were hoping for. But let’s take a look at some of the more creative comparisons.
We’ll start off with our favorite, and definitely the one that looks most like the forms, Enhancement in particular:
Kevin better watch out for those Shamans…
Then there’s the basic reactions, but this thread in particular got a whole lot of comments on the forms, most of them pretty negative.
Then there’s this one, pointing out there’s some pretty cool options out there already.
Some players are even asking for the glyph that simply turns the special Ascension look off after this particular reveal. There were even some more polite players that didn’t directly comment on the new forms, but rather suggested alternative solutions.
The references continue, however, with some pretty great ones:
And there’s more where they came from!
And one special one for the end, to connect the reference at the top of the article:
Now, obviously, not all comments on the new forms are negative. There’s plenty of “good enough” and “better than what we have now” opinions as well. But those aren’t quite as fun (or numerous) as the above.
A Happy Ending?
It’s worth noting that Blizzard have been VERY good about responding to player criticism recently, and the Anniversary patch isn’t even on the PTR yet. We’ve also already seen some visual changes based on community feedback, so we may get some modifications to get the forms looking a little more… ascendant.