Something that has bothered me in WoW for quite a while now, is the lack of variety in armor models. Right now, there are 2 or 3 defining factors of an armor set, and those are the helm, the shoulders, and sometimes in recent sets, the belt.
The chest pieces and legs are for the most part, exactly the same but with different patterns and textures, there is never really any variety in shape or cut, the only difference being as I said, patterns and colours.
Then I started to look at some NPC's, specificly Mogu and Saurok NPC's from Isle of Thunder, and I noticed that they were wearing armor sets that actually had some definition, some shape and some "bulk" if you will. Take a look:
Looking at these models closer, I was astonished by the level of detail in their armor, showing much more variation and more interesting shapes to the armor pieces, without it looking like just another texture on a flat piece, even the gloves that the saurok is wearing have heavy levels of detail and look less bland than the sort of things our characters would wear.
Ofcourse, I realise these are just NPC models, and don't represent what we could expect from player armor models in the future, but I was thinking, wouldn't it be neat if they did?
I for one would love some of this level of detail in some of my armor sets, and with revamped player models coming in the near future, I think the next expansion would be a good time for blizzard to start being a little more adventurous with some armor sets, maybe limit it only to challenge mode type gear, so we don't kill some of the lower specced PCs.
What do you guys think?