Alganon: Making Our Players Look Good.

I’ve always maintained that Alganon, graphically, is not a WoW-clone. Yes, the initial interface may have been nearly copy and paste, but the way the creatures and inhabitants were presented was in a style all of its own. One major issue I have always had with the graphics however, is not that the player models look bad, but rather that the combat animations were about two inches above abysmal. Somewhere between a jittery spastic, and a four year old who has had too much caffeine. The animations didn’t match the damage output, and most of the moves did not offer much more than a quick jerk, if the character decided to display any movement at all.

The 2.5.100.2444 patch for Alganon launched yesterday, bringing with it better models for player characters, with higher quality textures and more polygons (and more internets, presumably), and I have to admit: Either my eyesight has gone bad or the animations look at lot smoother. Animations now play out their full motion, rather than a jerky swing, and swinging my mallet actually looks like swinging my mallet.

Now that the graphical upgrade is out of the way, hopefully Quest Online will continue working on other glaring issues with Alganon, such as the heavy lag on servers despite low population. The team has done a great job of putting in content in the form of new quests, PvP mechanics, and more, and hopefully this slow upward trend from the “launch” over a year ago will continue.

More on Alganon as it appears. The photos included were from my own Alganon character, as I’m sure many of you are aware of my status as biting the hand that feeds me (and occasionally pissing off its President).