The Artist Team didn't impress me today [IMAGE HEAVY]

[Palapop]

The tier sets are the most egregious failure to me. It's shocking how homogeneous and unidentifiable they are. Creatively bankrupt.

But hey! We have gay couples and oranges on the wall!

[Zigrifid]

It is hilarious to me that this so-called workshop of reality itself is just another 500 meter wide floating rock with rivers and ponds and frogs and trees and spiders. We will cross over into the clockwork fabric of reality itself and gather cosmic bear livers for the Ethereals I mean Brokers I mean Enlightened. It could be a parody of itself.

What happened to all that lore about mindbending fractals? I thought that was going to lead somewhere half interesting.

What is the deal with the fog? It makes the whole zone look like its inside a cave.

Listen about the fog! the place will burn so many GPUs blizz devs gone old school,remember when the 1st silent hill game for psx had fog so it would load more smoothly and no fps issues occur?? yeah there you go :P here is your answer x)

[Pakheth]

I actually really like the style they are going for here with those sleek lines and angles. Very mechanical but artistic and not crude like Azeroth technology. Less ancient Greece like the Titans and more basic shapes, down to the building blocks of life.

I am gonna give Blizz the thumbs up on this aesthetic but I understand if not everyone else likes it.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

I've seen people call it Bastion with green grass and they're not wrong. It had some partial steps in the right direction here and there to going more alien and something that would suit the afterlife, but it's still not far enough.

[OrangeJuice]

Ok, the snail looks cool though.

Bro, thats a frog.

[Sorshen]

"Alien" zone that reuses the BFA frog for the 2nd time now, it just gets another mask.

[Kalarm]

There are so many ways they could of made this look alien... but they just made it the same as other zones. They showed the "sand" biome and I thought it was uldum at first.

Like it's not rocket science, you want it to look alien? Don't use what WE feel is scenery. Forget trees, forget water, forget the sky, the mountains, etc. The sky could be anything, it could of been a giant clockwork or looking like the portal Zovaal used. The water could of been some swirling pitch black matter. Mountains could of looked like it was some form of energy or construct coming out of the ground. There is so many ways to make it look like nothing we've seen... But they don't have the budget to do any of that so instead we have this "Alien world like nothing we've seen" that just look like everything else. Even Deepholm looks more alien... As does every elemental lord domain actually.

[Exkrementor]

Yeah, the new art is not on blizzard standard. Maybe all the talented people were the bad ones and they were all fired.

[Moonrage]

They tried so hard making this zone and its inhabitants look 'alien' that it just looks soulless. The zone is so anti-warcraft, I would've rather stayed in the 4 original zones than go to this robo nightmare.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

They tried so hard making this zone and its inhabitants look 'alien' that it just looks soulless. The zone is so anti-warcraft, I would've rather stayed in the 4 original zones than go to this robo nightmare.

A robot zone would've been really cool. Would have loved if the Mechagon dungeon was a full blown zone rather than just a dungeon.

[TheWorkingTitle]

But hey! We have gay couples and oranges on the wall!

We're in the worst timeline it seems.

[Ihavewaffles]

Art team "we gonna make this water really weird n alien, by....making it blue n wet!" totally not something you would expect of water...

Meanwhile on Argus, you got those crazy swirly pools...that looks at the same time a portal into the Void...

[Biomega]

"Alien" zone that reuses the BFA frog for the 2nd time now, it just gets another mask.

It's not just that one.

Most of the mobs and NPCs are reskins, you can see they're based off other models. That's fine in terms of MMO and design workload, but going around bragging "this place is SO ALIEN!" when 90% (or more) of the units are reskins of existing skeletons is just stretching it a bit too much for my taste. And the same goes for the landscape - it looks cool and all, but it's not "alien". It looks like MANY things we've seen before. It is imminently FAMILIAR, which is the literal opposite of alien. Which, again, fair enough there's limits to budgets and all; but then don't go and pretend like it's something it's not, and blow it up like this is a big feature of the art/design when it very clearly, very obviously isn't. Why lie in our face like that? Could have just... not done that. Say 'look this is where all the looks you know came from!' or whatever. It feels mildly insulting to be flim-flammed so ineffectually.

[Advo]

The whole vibe of the video the devs saying a variation of 'were taking chances' and then what we actually see in the video is them taking basically zero chances whatsoever.

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

Completely missing what guardian of the first ones was. Also dont really think anything looked like nagrand at all. Thats like going "boo i've seen a mountain before".

[Cosmic Janitor]

Frankly, WoW's art and music is heavily overrated in the grand scheme of all things gaming.

Edit: I even like the concept art of the tier sets, the ones they showed ingame though look just way worse. Maybe a glow effects can make it better for the mythic sets.

[dacoolist]

bigup to the forums for really putting a positive spin on this 9.2 patch LOL

On Topic: The artist team can't impress people that have no idea what even goes into this in the first place - I'd say its at least a step in the right direction vs another orc xpac or another BURNING LEGION xpac like the games been since CREATION.. Sometimes no matter what people do they just can't win - Doesn't really matter to me in the slightest but deep down its just sad that no matter what this team does the forums create posts saying the complete opposite just because they have nothing better to do or at least give direction on what they would like to see in the future instead of whining all day

[infinitemeridian]

I think its safe to say that expansion patch zones get a skeleton crew to make the zones, while the rest of the team is put on creating the zones for the new expac. If we are actually getting a world revamp next, I'd be surprised if it wasn't all hands on deck.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

its just sad that no matter what this team does the forums create posts saying the complete opposite just because they have nothing better to do or at least give direction on what they would like to see in the future instead of whining all day

The fandom has given feedback on expansions they wanted to see.

• Emerald Dream/Nightmare

• Argus

• Azshara

• Old gods

Blizzard casually threw those expansion ideas away in a single patch.

People are still clamoring for:

• The other side of Azeroth

• The Underground

• Undermine

• The Dragon Isles

• Post-timeskip EK and Kalimdor

But Blizzard will more than likely go with their Light vs Void war as the next expansion.

The only time the fandom sorta got an expansion they asked for was BFA, which was sorta a South Seas expansion that gave us Kul'Tiras and Zandalar. Sadly it did not give us Undermine.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

God couldn't disagree more tbh.
My critique would be that that whole video was a big waste of time if it WASN'T for the amazing art.
I also can't even imagine what the music will be like, because they have absolutely crushed it with Shadowlands thusfar.

I think you are spending too much time on the words used to describe the zone and not enough on what is actually being seen and shown.

Maybe whoever wrote the script for that video didn't impress me either, but the "artist team" has not let me down once in recent memory considering how old this game is.

Honestly, all you need to do is go log on Classic and compare it to Shadowlands.