How can you say there is no argument to be made? This thread is bizarre if only because the styling has not changed AT ALL. Graphics improving is not a dramatic change in the styling and design of the game. It has always been cartoonish.
My opinion, which I will not state as fact, is that the game looks so much better in retail. When I went to classic for awhile, the visuals were noticeably worse in the vanilla zones.
3080 here as well. I honestly never tried WoW RTX on nor i was ever planing to do simply because how they marketed it.
However i use Reshade with Marty McFly's shaders and made something similar to this video but a bit less colorful and vibrant. Ofc turning it off in M+ and Raids.
Note that this is not my video, just showcase what you can do with a bit of playing around with Reshade:
I like a bit darker and grittier art style of older expansions, however i prefer the quality of the textures in latter expansions.
While i understand the need of details to uppen up the quality of the textures and overal presentation i dislike how excessive they can be to the point that they actually overtake the texture and make it oversaturated with details thus, for me, making it actually distracting - hence ugly.
I prefer simplicity and cleaner, a bit darker models so for me visually sweet spot was Throne of Thunder and majority of Ally side of BfA.
While both styles are cartoonish by its design, for me newer style just brings it out a bit more due to oversaturation with details and design.
One of the easy examples. Lets take new ProfessionUI - while i completely agree that old UI was starting to be clunky and way overdue for a rework both visually and functionally and i like the simplicity of new UI i dislike how colorful and saturated it is. Its just.. A lot of colorful details for UI that i will probably use a lot. Just distracting to the point that it actually bothers me.
So ill slap 2-tone ElvUI on top of it and, add a bit transparency to it and it will be right up my alley.
Now, dont get me wrong, i love new forest zone and as Ion hopes that one they there will be no need for PTS i hope that old zones, specially forest ones, will have visual overhaul.
Will any of that stop me to play the game IF i think that its good and jiggles all my bells? Ofc not.
I will just spend less time in zones that are not to my taste visually and set heartstone where i like it even so it means few extra mins of fly time to get to where i need to be.
Ofc this was my opinion, i respect other peoples opinions no matter how different they are.
This is one of those topics that will be eternal debate, we all prefer different things, art styles, design options.
WoW has always been colourful and cartoonish; that's part of why I actually really like the art style compared to every other game that aims for a degree of realism and ends up with the same green/brown/grey colour palate for everything. You're comparing darker old locations with brighter modern ones, when there are plenty of the opposite for both. This is slightly aggravated by the fact that they sort of "broke" nighttime and it never gets as dark as it used to if you're not using the potion, and some of your screenshots were probably taken at night when the game doesn't get that dark innately anymore.
New graphic quality is handsdown better. The only thing I miss is how particular characters I had looked since I think they missed the mark on some of the appearance translations, and some of my characters I was particularly fond of. (I also wish they'd make nighttime a setting slider rather than a special potion similar to how weather effects used to be, but that's another issue)
An argument absolutely can be made. What you are really saying is that "my opinion is fact therefore, you cannot argue agasinst my opinion". That is not how opinions work. Everyone absolutely can argue against your opinion and I , for one, think that modern WOW is an improvement over that.
Last edited by rrayy; 2022-07-22 at 03:40 AM.
"El Psy Kongroo!" Hearthstone Moderator
Let's not forget that when WoW came out in 2004 and when pictures were shown of what the game looked like, there was complaints the game looked cartoonish. And was a big no sell for a lot of people. Even people like Madseason and PlatiumWoW have mentioned they they didn't get into WoW at first because of the cartoonish art style.
I am older enough to remember people complaining about Warcraft 3's art style for being too cartoony and blocky (despite the fact that that graphical style was very common at the time). I remember being one of those complaining on the old battle net message board/forums... good times. I miss those old forums.
Last edited by Orby; 2022-07-22 at 07:15 AM.
I love Warcraft, I dislike WoW
Unsubbed since January 2021, now a Warcraft fan from a distance
Anyone who mostly prefers the older graphics has to at least admit this frog model is a significant upgrade.
Vanilla definitely wasnt more realistic lol.
I think its more tone that your talking about. warcraft 3 was cartoonish due to graphical limitations, that carried over to wow which was similarly limited graphically as its scope was incredible and getting the most players into the world was important. the tone however was fairly dark as it was the old blizzard that made the game.
I think the modern updates that purposely make things cartoonish is as well intentioned as 3D anime that stutters frames to emulate 2D anime and it looks shit.
Look at wows concept art and cinematics, that should be the art direction, not kung fu panda.
warcraft and vanillas tone was darker in general, it was cartoonish due to graphical limits but it wasnt intended to look like a pixar film.
Wows art direction changed a lot with MoP, even the cinematic was cartoonish and goofy which was honestly quite a change. I think that change put a lot of players off, i was certainly one of them and helping racist pandas weed their gardens with silly 'jAdE mAgIc' was insufferable, even though i liked many of the gameplay changes and basically everything after the first patch.
I think things have gotten too fantastical. The tone is too silly, the cartoonishness has undermined the gravity of the world and even traveling to the shadowlands didnt feel threatening at all. Poor graphics actually helps a lot in masking certain things, when something is lo res your brain fills in the gaps and you kind of see things the way you want to, then when clarity is added you see things the way the artist intended and that can be a turn off.
Mucky color palettes creates a grungy tone that feels grounded, the more clear style they have moved into has helped a lot with clarity but that murkiness blended things together a bit better. Everything in wow feels like a disco now.
I think diablo 3 is a good example of the difference, it felt too clean, shiny and colorful, it was like an amusement park whereas diablo 2 with its poorer graphics felt much more grounded. Not realistic but grounded. I always had this uneasy feeling while playing D2 which was magical that i didnt get playing D3, it wasnt that the game was better (it wasnt) it wasnt that the graphics were better (they werent), it was the mood that was better. Not even strictly better, but it was the right mood for my interests at the time while d3 just flew away with the spectacle.
Wow needs to reel in some of the spectacle and keep things grounded. Players should have an idea how it would feel to come into contact with void, arcane or fel magic, but they are all just silly colorful things for spectacle.