Hello from Paragon Marketing

I'm not familiar with the WoW 3D printing company, but the impression I get is that it is based as much on art as it is on technology. Someone who is truly familiar with doing 3D prototyping would be able to take models such as the ones generated above and turn them into true 3D prototypes, plus you'd need a competent painter to paint and finish them.

This also explains why it is probably not an endeavor that Paragon Studios/NCsoft would want to undertake. There is a HUGE difference between 3D rendering for game design and 3D prototyping, and if they wanted to get into this business, they'd definitely have to invest a lot of money into buying expensive hardware, software, and experienced 3D prototyping gurus. In short, it would almost certainly have to be a completely different business unit, one they probably don't want to get into as a gaming company.

It also explains why the models are so expensive. Each one is a project unto itself, and it takes many hours of painstaking work to generate the finished product.

Now having said all of that, if someone has a lot of experience with 3D prototyping, or has a pile of cash and a lot of time and is willing to invest in learning it, it most certainly does seem to me to be a viable business model (no pun intended)--but only if Paragon Studios/NCsoft is willing to turn loose of some of the licensing rights, something I'm working on getting them to do for me as well. But it really would take a smart cookie: part computer whiz, huge chunk of 3D CAD guru, part sculptor, part artist. (Or someone willing to invest that pile of cash into hiring them and who has the leadership to get them coordinated.)

Edit: For what it's worth, I consider Arcanaville a really smart cookie, and that ain't so hypothetical. If I made a list of top contenders who I thought could pull it off based solely of what I know about them on these forums, she'd probably be at the top of it.

I have to stick my nose in here and comment that I've not only seen those WoW figurecrafts, I've held one in my hands. And they're absolutely hideous. I know that WoW doesn't have much in the way of character customization, but the figurecraft looked like it was gnawed out of lava soap by two rabid weasels that hated each other. And then the features were lightly airbrushed within a reasonable facsimile of where they ought to be. IE: pants were pants, but the face was a horrible monstrosity.

I'd love some figures of my own characters...but not like that.

Hi Black Pebble!!

I'm in marketing as well (graduating this fall) and I was wondering what kind of tips you could give for someone new to the industry, and what is particularly fun or difficult about marketing in the gaming industry?

I see some hypothetical experimentation has been going on.

My two cents as a 3d artist/modeler:

The "blockiness" of those models is due to the smoothing groups being lost. That's a minor thing to fix with a 3d program. Not a big issue. Stuff like the angled point the skirt makes in the Grief emote shot, that's trickier but no big deal.

Looking at the character with the tail, modeling work would have to be done to the hair and glove fins for sure. The tail I think would cause a lot of problems when it came time to print. Anything long and thin like that is going to have to be thickened up, and is still likely to snap off when an artist is painting the thing.

The character with the skirt, again the hair would need work and most likely the inside of the skirt would have to be filled in and the bottom edge chamfered to give it thickness.

These two would be "fairly easy" examples, but thinking about it, there's stuff that would create real issues. Wings, especially the Tech Wings for example. Anything that exists only as an opacity mapped surface. The devs likely ran into the same problem with the new shadow maps in i17.

There's also a number of considerations for things modelers really don't ever have to think about; weight distrubition, balance, stuff breaking off, etc.

To say the least, it'd be an interesting challenge getting them prepped.



.

Hello there Black Pebble

Firstly welcome to the forum [had a few weeks away from the game so only just got the time to reply] and hope we all dont scare you away too quickly. Now on to the topics that i feel that need raising.

In regards to the NA marketing side of things i know i can not and should not make any comments since i have zero experience on how things are over there. However i do feel that i can comment on the european side. Now being a loyal customer of 4 years i feel the most obvious thing to do would be to state how much things have changed in the last few years.

A number of us currently still subscribed to the game, found the game while browsing through our local computer shop and thus bought it and have been here ever since. Previously i had ever only heard of this game from word of mouth, now granted i am by no means the MMO type of gamer you more than likely market towards but i do have an interest in being a superhero [pretty obvious since i have been here for such a long time]. Now on to my main point, with physical advertising at to the point that it almost doesnt exist you can't help but agree with the european players who feel that the NA servers are the only servers with a healthy future.

What i would like to know is what are you doing to help get the european servers up to a healthy standard again like it used to be. Now we have been told that we are not getting a physical shelf presence over here due to it not being financially warranted which we can see why you'ld do this, however purely online advertising does seem to have a scent of keeping the servers on life support that bit longer.

Second of all, when the in-game advertising first launched there was also an announcement that supergroups could advertise on there [as an example] too. Has this plan been totally scrapped too? Because that is one way to really get the creative minds of players going and help create an authentic feeling that our heroes are actually "part of the city". With the option to turn ads on/off, i cant see many [if any] players saying they dont want this feature.

Finally i hope you can shed some light on future projects that you have planned / can get the community involved in.

Take care!

Damz/noob