Board Thread:Online Discussion/@comment-5918955-20130818191234/@comment-7153552-20130819210105

As I'm not sure how many betas you, or other posters, have been involved in, I'll keep this short and simple. In many beta-stage games you'll see stock animations used for a lot of different things. This is because the devs are spending more time on the "game-breaking" details than the fine-tuned stuff. They usually have a small team (sometimes even just one guy) who works on animations and action events throughout the developement stages. It's just a matter of importantace and coding, what do we care more about at this stage in the game? Small things can be done/added closer to release.

The reason we probably saw the "stabbing head on spike" animation twice was because of the length of the animation vs. the length of the action. If something has a channelling time to twenty seconds and they're using a stock animation that lasts from eight to twelve seconds, we'll see it twice. Sometimes things like this are left even in the final release of a game if it has the potential to make sense in order to save time in the overall process (as time is money). In this one, it could be said that the head is hard to put on the spike and it took two tries. They'll most likely add a head to the final animation, or it may not happen there at all. Keep in mind that Goblins didn't have a real pressence in Morrowind where the video took place (at least not in the Morrowind we're familiar with). This may have just been a preview quest they made for the event.