I could have sworn that we interviewed Andrige here on WoW Insider, but I can't seem to find it in the archives, so I guess Resto4Life beat us to it. Phaelia has posted an interview with the artist (and machinimist) behind some of the best WoW fan art out there, and to the surprise of no one I'm sure, he seems like a fun, down to earth kind of guy.

He talks about his fascination with both the Horde and Druids, why he loves Feral, and what he's been up to lately -- he's planning to do a piece of the Night Elf bear and Tauren cat fighting each other, which should be awesome. He's also awaiting the art change in Wrath of the Lich King -- like a lot of players, he's tired of the sci fi and can't wait to get back into the old sword and sorcery style. He wouldn't turn down a job at Blizzard (who would?), but he humbly says that he's got a lot of work to do before he steps up to that level. Good for him. Finally, he shares some good advice about how to make machinima (the script for his film was actually written by a few people on IRC), and a few good ideas about Druid forms. A "Runic Wolf" -- I love it.

Nice interview, and good to hear from the guy behind the art.

What would it be? If you asked me this question a year or two ago, I certainly wouldn't have thought of moonkins and trees! Certainly a bird form would have popped into my mind, but other than that, I might have also thought of keepers of the grove, dryads, and possibly some sort of tauren equivalent (maybe something like a Liontaur!)

A new expansion is coming up, along with new talents and new abilities for the druid class. Who's to say one of them isn't a new form of some sort? Speaking both from a practical standpoint and also based on your wildest dreams (or nightmares), what sort of forms do you hope druids could learn in the future?

For a very long time now, druids have been bemoaning the "feral range bug," which makes it so that feral special attacks sometimes don't work, even though the regular auto attacks are fine. I've always thought this bug caused special attacks to have a shorter range than auto attacks (and I wasn't alone), but some videos demonstrate that the bug (as shown above, and also here) has to do more with positioning than the actual range between the druid and the target.

I play a feral druid, and I can't say that I've noticed this bug very much, but I tend to shy away from PvP situations where it would be likely to show up most -- mainly because I find feral druid PvP to be very difficult (though I keep trying now and then). Perhaps this bug is one of the reasons for that, but everything is just too fast-paced for me to see?

In any case, Vaneras on the European WoW forums responded to a poster in order to let us know that the developers are indeed aware of this "concern," and they ... well... that's it. They're just aware. Nobody knows if they'll actually fix it or not, though I would assume they will at some point.

In addition, Vaneras says the developers are aware of the some graphical imperfections in some druid feral forms, and they also "like the idea of new graphics and models for the Druid forms, however there are no plans for such in the immediate future." The key word here is "immediate," which implies that the not-so-distant future might be quite different! Is there hope for feral druid graphical updates in Wrath of the Lich King, perhaps?

[Update] I just got back from testing this in PvP, and sure enough I found my special abilities weren't landing, even though I was on top of my enemy. Click on the link below to see a video of this bug in a PvP situation.

Serennia, a gnomish warrior on Tichondrius, believes that the changes to druid shape-shifting [shown in the video clip above] in patch 2.3 make it too easy for druids to get out of snares without being caught in their vulnerable caster form. She puts it very eloquently:

In 2.3, druids can shift from any form to any form (ie cat to bear; bear to travel, etc) without having to enter human form. But, it gets worse, they can shift from the same form to the same form also (bear to bear). Why is this significant? It's basically a free snare removal without ever having to expose themself in human form, making it much more difficult for anyone to kill them. It still costs them mana to do it, yes, but it's an easy trade-off for never being locked in caster form with no armor anymore to get away from a melee. So much for those well-timed caster-form kidney shots, right?

Druids needed help in 5v5 with a bit better caster form survivability, and they got that with the new Natural Perfection changes and a bit more utility. However, they did NOT need to be even harder to kill with this short-sighted change. Melee might as well not even attempt to catch a good druid anymore, and well, casters never could to begin with.

She says that this may or may not be what Blizzard was intending when they decided to go ahead with this change, but for my part, I think it's a buff druids really need, especially feral ones, who are likely to get the most use out of insta-shifting between forms. I've said before that, although restoration druids enjoy a lot of success in PvP, it's very hard for many feral druids, and personally, I think this sort of mobility can help make up for other areas where the druid is not as strong, and can provide more synergy between the druid's different forms and abilities without some of the risks that made this synergy impractical before. What do you think?

Yes, I know this is 2.2's-day. One announced change for patch 2.3 has slipped way, way under the radar, though, and I think it could use some recognition. Using macros, Druids will be able to directly switch from one form to another (cat to bear, for instance), with only one keypress. Here's how it will work:
/cancelform
/cast Dire Bear Form (or whatever your target form is)
Fun, eh? This works because /cancelform is going to be recognized instantly in 2.3, like /dismount is now. The macro should function no matter what form you're currently in.

This also allows things like shifting from bear to caster, drinking a pot and/or using a healthstone, and shifting back into bear, all without interruptions and with only one keypress:
/cancelform
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Dire Bear Form
The 2.2 patch notes included an item that seems related to this ("Cast sequence macros no longer get stuck at feral druid abilities"), but I think that's just a bug fix; the above macros don't work in 2.2 as far as I know. Here's my question, though: if you can make a macro to shift forms directly, why not just make the default form buttons have that same behavior? Maybe they will, but I haven't heard anything about it yet.

[macros by Nandini of Darrowmere]