An interesting take on Reddit about why the art direction of World of Warcraft Forever misses the mark

Know little about WoW but interesting read, this was one of my complaints about Guild Wars 1 art style vs 2. Went from gritty (somewhat realistic) to every texture being overly vibrant and/or glowing. Shame but seems to be what sells better for these MMOs (better for screen cap/social media perhaps?).

I don't play the game, but I love seeing deep-dive analyses of designs like this. It's fun to see a breakdown of inspiration for aesthetics, and the differences between versions of the game.

My first thought seeing the Sky Elves: "why are they blue? Blue skin is more of a water thing, not a sky thing." ...actually that was my second thought. My actual first thought: "what the heck is with the guy's shoes??" Those shoes legitimately made me think of Mickey Mouse, maybe because of the color but also because they're just so plain. The lack of detail makes the feet look way bigger than they are.

I'd say the writer is on-point talking about the clothing, and lack of detail in newer models. Everything about the Sky Elf outfits feel a bit too "sleek" and perfect. It gives me a very "clean and light fantasy" impression, which doesn't really aesthetically fit with my overall impression of WoW. The clothes also just feel... Fake. They're TOO perfect and smooth, they look like they're molded from play-doh rather than fabric.

I think the points about the details and textures apply to a lot of modern game models, not just WoW. Something about a lot of "clean" models just don't look as good as the blurrier days of barely-perceptible details, when modelers and artists had to put in a bit more work to make sure it looked good and recognizable. It's like the increase in hi-def graphics caused modelers to get lazy, since it could look "good" with less effort... But that also makes the ugly bits stand out more.

First really noticed it when I saw footage of that King Kong game a couple years back, and just: look at this. "Foam" is genuinely the perfect description. It's one of the worst offenders out there, but there is a growing trend in this direction.

Maybe this is over simplifying, but I think this also helps demonstrate the difference between 2004 Blizzard and modern Blizzard.

The team working on WoW was at the top of their game. The artists drew on some of their favourite sources and made their detailed style.

No offense to the current artists. I'm sure they are good. It's just not the same people who worked at early Blizzard. We won't ever get that again and that's sad.

Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.

Mirror if you don't want to have the reddit nag

https://safereddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/1wolcxb/the_look_of_classic_wow_and_the_art_that_inspired/

I think that person has the right idea about why the Skyborne don't feel like they completely fit (and this is coming from someone who is both interested in their lore and is an overall fan of Retail WoW). For all we WoW players love to dunk on Metzen (and to a lesser extent, Didier's) quirks, their wealth of inspiration was extreme. Comics to pulp art to a surprising amount of middle/far eastern cultural elements make a world that feels both cohesive and expansive. But as is the case of media in a medium that had meteoric popularity (anime in particular comes to mind), modern creators were inspired by the old media and so they ape elements of it like the creators of the old media aped their own inspiration. The creative source grows narrower, more clearly defined, and by extension limits the creative expression of the modern media.

That's my sole biggest issue with Forever (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Retail) in terms of art style. There needs to be a broader spectrum of inspiration taken by the art team in general. But I also think part of the dilemma is the battle between texture detail and 3D fidelity. They pointed out the Forsaken paladin mount, and I think it looks fantastic--straight out of the aesthetic of a Deathcharger with a tattered-holy flair. But were it made in 2004, a lot of its armor plating would not be a distinct model. The cloth wouldn't have several layers of flat planes, it'd be just one. They wouldn't have as much 3D fidelity, so they'd have to compensate with higher detail textures. Every pixel becomes valuable, and it's why a lot of Vanilla armor has such staying power.

I wouldn't say that having greater 3D fidelity has made texture artists lazy, but it's simply easier to make a decent result if you can rely on dynamic lighting and shaders to impact an armor piece, or for a simple texture to look 'textured' when applied to a complex 3D object. Maybe the answer is for Forever to simply not have HD models, or for the HD textures backported to be re-created as if they were going to be applied to a 2004-era model in terms of polygon count (itself far from an easy process.)

My dream is for them to re-create the HD models and have them be more in-tune with the original appearance of character races, which they could even apply to Retail so there's no 'wasted dev time.' But I still chafe at how the HD models simply looked better at the Blizzcon announcing them versus when they were implemented (especially the human ethnicity additions) so time will tell if the art team is able or even willing to revisit their design ethos.

I (partially) don't mind the inclusion of Skyborne. I just wished they would have asked the player base and publicised the result of their votes á la OSRS.

But I do think they went with Skyborne because community polls from Reddit don't represent the player majority of WoW. But I also believe the conspiracy theory that Chris Metzen intervened last minute because he wanted something as outlandish as sky elves.

They're getting relatively close to matching Turtle WoW quality of Classic here based on my beta testing.

Some of the stuff is definitely missing the mark, e.g. the new druid forms, some of the new weapons, and to some extent the new race.

However, the new zones and dungeons have given me confidence they can do it. The new zones and dungeons I've seen fit perfectly with Vanilla. Now, they do get to use a lot of Vanilla assets for these, so that's part of it. But they very much speak the design language.

I think where they are still adapting is where they have to create new assets. Part of this seems like a tooling and skill problem, e.g. they have to create 2004 assets with 2026 tools and that's going to take some time to perfect. And part of it is definitely the art design, but they seem to be responding to feedback here, so my hope is that it improves as time goes on.